by B. T. Narro
I might just make it in time if I practiced into the night. I wouldn’t be able to use the vibmtaer after sunset, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter. It had helped me enough already. I could sometimes cast each of the four notes from memory by now.
I had no doubt that my spell, when finally cast, would be very weak. I didn’t even want to try to figure out how sorcerers could practice putting power behind their spells. There was more than enough on my plate as it was.
I practiced my highest note, uuD, over and over again. Two days ago, the high-frequency note strained my mind like a scream, but now it felt more like performing a mental push-up. I finished the last of my food as evening came and went.
Soon I realized my previous theory of needing only ten hours was vastly optimistic. If I really wanted to feel comfortable using my mana at a high frequency, I would probably need more than a hundred hours of practice. That was time I didn’t have.
I convinced myself I didn’t need to be that comfortable by tomorrow morning. I just had to be able to cast the spell one time in front of Leon. Just once.
I moved on to the other two notes in between the natural vibration of my mana and the highest I could force it to achieve. I practiced these notes back and forth, uG and uuC. I had to learn how they felt without checking the vibmtaer if I had any chance of casting with them. However, the note I made didn’t always click in my mind quite right. It was an irritating feeling, like trying to remember a name that I knew started with a certain letter, yet another name that was close kept sprouting up in my head. It happened frequently when I tried to reach uuC. I just couldn’t get my mana to settle on the exact frequency I needed no matter how hard I tried. I could probably use a break, but I didn’t have time for one.
Soon the sun had almost set. The sky had a beautiful crimson hue around the eastern horizon. I wasn’t high enough to see all of Curdith Forest from here, but there were many dark and tall trees that jutted out from the middle of it that I couldn’t miss. The forest unsettled me, with its assortment of trees of different sizes and colors. There was an unnatural feel to it.
The few minutes I’d taken to look around was all I could afford for a break. It was time to cast the spell. My mind went blank as I tried to remember what I had figured out earlier about casting multiple notes at once. I didn’t know if I’d ever been this exhausted.
I tried a few times, only to fail spectacularly, messing up even uF when I tried to single it out. I was getting worse. I needed to sleep.
I got comfortable in my bedroll. Leon said we had to be back at the castle in the morning. He didn’t specify a time. I would rise early and give myself a few hours to cast the spell before I left.
I didn’t know how long I’d slept, but I woke in the very early morning with the chill of night still in the air. My body urged me to lie back down and close my eyes, but I didn’t have the time.
*****
I ran through the streets of Newhaven. I was hungry, dirty, and too enraged to tell if I was tired. I would be late to the castle, but there was something I had to do first. I stormed into the Enchanted Devices shop. Or I tried to. The door was locked. I beat my fist on it until I heard a response.
“We’re not open yet!” Greda called.
“Greda!” I shouted. “Let me in right now!”
“Jon?”
“Yes, open the door!”
She swung it open. “I was wondering—what are you doing?”
I pushed her back and slammed the door shut behind me. She stumbled backward to get away from me as I came after her.
“Jon, what are you doing?” she asked again as she backed into the counter.
I stopped and held the moonstone up. “What the hell is this?”
She was looking down and away, her hands up to protect her face.
“What did you sell me?” I yelled. “Take it!”
The stone shouldn’t alter my mana too much in the time I had it with me, but even a little alteration was not what I needed right now. I hated having to carry it back here, but I wasn’t going to leave behind my only evidence of foul play.
She nervously glanced up. Her chest heaved with each breath as she reached out for the moonstone. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s the one you gave me yesterday!”
“I didn’t give you one yesterday,” she said, sliding along the counter to gain some distance from me.
“I don’t have time for games, Greda. Don’t lie!”
“Jon, I didn’t see you again after I left to take care of my mother. I returned after two hours. You never came back.”
“I saw you! You gave me this stone. You were rude.”
“I didn’t!” she yelled.
I stepped back, my head spinning. I wanted to believe her, but was I just a fool?
“But it was definitely you,” I confirmed.
“I swear on my mother’s life it wasn’t! I didn’t see you again until right now!”
“Is she all right?” I managed to ask through my enraged confusion.
“Yes. The healer believes she was poisoned. We don’t know who might’ve done it.”
I put my hand over my head and leaned against the counter. My exhaustion was catching up with me. Greda said something, but I was busy envisioning what Leon was going to tell me when I arrived and had no spell to show for all my time. I’d hoped to discover malfeasance and use it as an excuse to buy more time.
“Jon.” Greda touched my arm. “Tell me what happened after I left.”
I took a breath and stood. “I walked by less than an hour later and saw you had returned. I walked into the shop, and you pushed this stone toward me on the counter. I asked if your mother was all right. You nodded. You wouldn’t speak to me.”
“Oh no,” she whispered. “I didn’t say a single word?”
“No.” I lowered my voice as well, unsure why we had to. “I told you I had to be certain this was a ward of dteria. You nodded and gestured for me to leave.”
Greda was shaking her head as I finished.
“What?” I asked.
“That was an illusion, Jon.”
“What do you mean?”
“That was someone else who looked like me because of an illusion!” She rushed over and locked the door. Then she drew the curtains over her large window. She went behind the counter and grabbed a dagger, then slowly crept around the small store. “They could still be here,” she said, “listening to every word.”
I still wondered if this could all be an act, but the simplest answer was usually the right one. Why would Greda go through all this trouble? An illusion made much more sense, not that I understood how something like that could even be possible.
I was beginning to learn that many things were possible that I had once thought to be myth, so I was inclined to believe her.
After I helped her preform a quick search, Greda deemed that no one was in the storeroom or the back office. She put her dagger back and looked at the moonstone again.
“I don’t know what this is or why someone gave it to you, but it’s not a ward of any kind.”
I would let Leon figure it out. “Tell me more about the illusion. And hurry, I’m already late to be somewhere important.”
“An illusionist specializes in ordia, like myself, but it’s very different than enchanting. They have to be an extremely talented sorcerer, with access to vtalia. Are you familiar with it?”
“Very.” That was uF, my natural mana.
“To create an illusion, they have to maintain the spell during the entire time. It takes a lot of effort just to resemble the image of a person. I’m sure if you looked closely, you would’ve noticed differences from the illusion of me to my actual self, like the size of my hands, the width of my shoulders, and even my height. Sound is something else entirely. An illusionist can’t alter their voice or silence a noise. They can only alter the perception of others.”
“That’s why they didn’t speak.”
“Yes.”
<
br /> If Greda was right, then casting an illusion was within my range of mana. But I was too focused on other matters to care about that right now.
Greda gasped as she seemed to realize something. “That was why my mother was poisoned! The illusionist needed to draw me away from the shop.” She stared at me with horror in her eyes. “I don’t know who this sorcerer is you’re apprenticing for, but I don’t care to find out.” She took out a moonstone from behind the counter and held it out for me. “This is the one I made. It’s an actual ward of dteria. Take it, and don’t come back until you figure out what’s going on and know it to be safe. I don’t want this kind of trouble.”
I nodded as I took the true ward. The false one was sitting on the counter.
“I’m going to need that back to show as evidence, but I’d rather not hold it close. It has done enough damage to me already. Do you have a case that might stop it from trifling with my mana?”
She went into the back room and returned with a thin metal box. “You can take it free of charge,” she said as she handed it to me.
“I appreciate that.” I put both wards in my pack. They looked the same to me, but I had made sure the false ward was the one in the box.
“Just please don’t come back unless it’s safe for you to do so.”
“I understand.” I walked to the door, but she put herself in front of it.
“Be careful.” She extended her hand.
“I will,” I said as we shook.
Greda was right. The version of her who had given me the false ward was taller. I was sure of it now.
I rushed back to the castle. I wasn’t sure of the time, but it was closer to noon than sunrise. I was worried I wouldn’t be let inside the castle, but the two guards in front of the open drawbridge let me run by as they gave me a stern look, probably for being late.
CHAPTER TEN
Leon had everyone standing in a line in front of him, his hands on his hips. “It’s about damn time, Jon!” Everyone turned toward me. Many had looks of worry, but not Reuben. He was grinning. I figured Leon had been saying some pretty nasty things about me.
Shock hit me as I realized that it looked like the king was here as well. Next to Leon were Barrett and a man wearing a crown and a regal cloak. There was a girl beside him who had to be at least a few years younger than the rest of us burgeoning sorcerers. I assumed she was the princess of the kingdom.
“I’m sorry, but there was an issue!” I called as I ran to get in line next to Michael on the end.
“I don’t want to hear excuses,” Leon said. “Everyone else has already gone. What essence did you choose?”
My eyes shifted to the king. He was staring impatiently with gray eyes. His silky brown hair was long for a man. He had an abundant beard that hung down a few inches from his chin. The crown was tasteful, just a gold band around his forehead. I sorely did not want to disappoint him, but it looked as if I already had for making him wait.
“I didn’t choose an essence,” I answered Leon. “I chose dvinia.”
“You stupid tit,” Leon said with a shake of his head. “Let me guess what your excuse is. You need more time.”
“Something happened. When I—”
“Yeah, something did happen. You just failed.”
The king spoke in a smooth baritone. “He cannot cast anything yet?”
Surprisingly, it was Barrett who looked the most disappointed. “Allow me to explain, sire,” he told the king. I let go of the hope that he would stand up for me when he eyed me as if I had embarrassed him. “Jon Oklar was told to choose an essence, but he ignored the order.”
“Why did you do that?” the king asked me.
Unsure if I should bow before his majesty, I gave a small, quick one. “I knew I could learn to cast a spell of dvinia, sire, if I purchased a vibmtaer instead of an essence. That’s what I did, but there was a problem.”
“So you admit that you ignored a direct order from Leon.”
“I told him the same thing, sire,” Barrett said.
“You ignored both of their orders?” the king asked me incredulously.
“I do admit that,” I said. “But—”
Worried murmurs sprang out from my peers. Except for Reuben. He laughed snidely.
“I told Leon that Jon does not belong here,” Reuben boasted. “I said it.”
I withdrew the moonstone from the metal box and walked toward Leon. “This is what I was given when I went to purchase a ward of dteria.”
Leon looked as if I was trying and failing to amuse him as he took the moonstone from me. But then his eyes gaped as he looked at it.
“Everyone back away!” Leon ordered.
Many responded with confusion. I was the only one to hurry away from the moonstone, glad to have finally unloaded it off my person.
“Get away now!” Leon yelled.
Everyone collectively backed away.
“That’s fine,” Leon said when we were all about five yards away. He tossed the stone in the other direction. It landed on the ground ten yards from him. “It’s going to stay there for now.”
“What is it?” the king asked.
“An essence of dteria.”
My heart stopped for a beat. So it was the opposite of a ward. No wonder the vibration of my mana had been slowed while that thing was near me. Dteria must be of a lower frequency.
The king spoke to me again. “You said this was given to you instead of a ward?” His tone sounded a lot more forgiving now.
“Please allow me to explain, sire.”
“Yes, explain.”
“I visited the shop Enchanted Devices and asked for a ward of dteria. I paid the woman behind the counter, Greda, and watched as she started to make it with a moonstone and a dog’s claw.”
The king looked at Barrett. He murmured something, probably telling the king that these were the correct ingredients for a ward of dteria.
“She said it would take an hour,” I continued. “That’s when I decided to buy a vibmtaer instead of an essence, but that’s not important right now. Soon after, a guard rushed into the shop and told Greda that her mother was found unconscious on the street.”
“That’s really the truth?” the king asked me skeptically.
“It gets even more unbelievable, sire, but I swear this is the truth. Greda ran off but told me she would be back in an hour or two to finish the ward. So I left. I checked back at the shop in less than an hour. I saw her there already, which was a surprise. What was even more strange was that she refused to say one word to me. She hardly even looked at me. In fact, she rudely gave me that stone and tried to gesture for me to leave. I asked if her mother was all right. She nodded. I then said I needed to make sure that this was a ward of dteria. She nodded. I left. But it wasn’t Greda, sire. I confirmed it later.”
“Are you trying to tell me that it was an illusionist in her place?” the king asked.
“Yes.”
There were more nervous murmurs from my peers.
“I didn’t know such a thing was possible,” I continued. “But after I returned from the mountains, I confronted Greda. She had no idea what I was talking about.” I realized this was not reflecting well on Greda. The last thing I wanted was her mother’s shop to be closed down while she was put in the dungeons. “I spoke with her at length about this. I really feel that it wasn’t her. Somebody poisoned her mother. The healer who Greda spoke to confirmed it. Greda figured that the poisoner was working with the illusionist to trick me into taking the essence of dteria. She banned me from her shop out of fear when she pieced it together. I know this either sounds unbelievable or that it was really Greda who tricked me, but I firmly believe it was someone else. The illusionist was taller and refused to speak. Greda explained that the perception of sound cannot be changed.”
“That is true,” the king said. He glanced at Leon. “And you confirm that the stone you tossed is an essence of dteria?”
“It isn’t the strongest essence I’v
e come across, but it certainly is strong enough to do some damage.” Leon looked at me. “Was this with you the whole time?” There was a great weight to his question, like asking if I had symptoms of what he knew to be an incurable illness.
“It’s not affecting me anymore,” I told him. “However, it was with me from the first evening through the next morning, but then I realized something was wrong with my mana. I moved it far away. That’s what I was trying to say when I came here. It messed with my mana severely and wasted nearly a whole day. I’m sure I would’ve been able to cast the spell of dvinia if this hadn’t happened. I’m very close.”
“I believe everything except that.” Leon walked toward me. “You’re going to prove that right now.” He grabbed my pack and started looking around.
I took the vibmtaer out of my pocket and presented it. He snatched it.
“Go.”
I took a breath to compose myself. My heart was still racing from the whole ordeal of presenting my case in front of the king. And it certainly didn’t help that everyone’s gaze was on me.
I started with my easiest note, uF. I let the mana disperse and quickly followed with uG. It felt right, but I couldn’t be sure. My eyes drifted down to the vibmtaer as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the color displayed, but Leon pointed it away from me. I let go of uG and pushed out my mana again, this time so that it was vibrating higher, uuC.
I watched Leon’s face for clues. He just stared at the vibmtaer in silence. I really couldn’t be sure I was casting uuC without checking the color on the vibmtaer, but I knew I was at least close. I hoped that would be enough. The final note was easy. uuD was a comfortable strain on my mind, like doing a mental sit-up.
“So you learned the four notes,” Leon said, unimpressed. “It could be weeks before you can cast them at the same time. And even then your spell will only be strong enough to lift a feather.”
Lift? It wasn’t much of a clue as to what the spell could do. Wind, fire, even water could blow a feather into the air.
“I just need one more day—the day I missed. Please give me a chance.”
