The Foundling (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  “You poked me with your staff,” shouted Elerian, overcome with anger and disbelief. It was beyond comprehension that Tullius could betray him in this way.

  Instantly, Tullius’s face darkened with anger. “If you cannot be respectful, then go home!” he said coldly to Elerian.

  Elerian had never felt so angry in his life. For a moment, he actually considered storming out of the mage’s house, but gradually, his good sense reasserted itself. Tullius was not given to malicious acts; therefore, his action must have some purpose, or at least Elerian hoped it did.

  “Why did you interrupt my spell?” he asked in a calmer voice.

  “Words do not teach as well as experience,” Tullius said with a sudden gleam in his dark eyes. “I explained the dangers of my craft yesterday, but I wanted to be certain in my mind that you understood what I meant by those words.”

  “I could have been killed or injured,” said Elerian, some of his anger seeping back into his voice.

  “That would have been most unlikely,” said Tullius brusquely. “The spell you attempted to cast is a minor spell, requiring only a little power. You may have a few bumps and bruises, but I doubt you suffered any permanent damage. A more powerful spell, on the other hand, would have killed you instantly,” said Tullius in a grave voice. He paused for a moment to let his words sink in, probing Elerian’s face with his dark eyes as if searching for some sign of fear. “Do you still want to be a mage knowing that you risk your life with every powerful spell that you cast?”

  With an effort, Elerian put aside his anger, as he considered Tullius’s question. Although he still felt ill used, he now understood the purpose of Tullius’s lesson, harsh as it was. Up to now, he had performed magic without any conception of how powerful were the forces he was dealing with. Knowing his life hung in the balance, could he now utter a spell without fear freezing his tongue or making him hesitate? A deep silence filled the room as Elerian searched inside himself for an answer. He was relieved to find that, deep down, his confidence in himself was unshaken. Rightly or wrongly, he still believed that he could become a mage. Tullius’s lesson had given him new found respect for the powers of magic, but it had not made him afraid of them.

  “I still want to be a mage,” said Elerian firmly, as he lifted his eyes and returned Tullius’s searching gaze without flinching. “I still think that what you did was not fair,” he added with an edge of annoyance in his voice. “You could at least have warned me to prepare myself for the backlash of my failed spell.”

  “You will find that many things in life are unfair,” said Tullius, unperturbed by Elerian’s lingering anger. “The rules of this lesson are fixed by tradition. Every apprentice mage is given the same test you just endured, and no warning is ever given since it might reduce the effect of the lesson. You would be amazed at how many budding mages suddenly turn to other careers when they realize firsthand the extreme dangers of the powers they are dealing with. There are good mages, and there are bad mages, but there are no cowardly mages,” said Tullius firmly.

  Elerian’s sense of fair play was still offended, but he put aside his anger and even smiled a little. While he did not doubt that the test was genuine, he wondered if Tullius had not garnered a bit of revenge at the same time. Elerian suspected that Tullius still thought he might be connected in some way with the wolf that had attacked him in the garden. The memory of the incident widened his smile as he recalled, once more, the startled look on Tullius’s face when he had first seen the black wolf spring out from behind the cedar.

  “There is nothing to smile about you young fool,” said Tullius severely, almost as if he had some hint of what was on Elerian’s mind. “Even though you have demonstrated the courage that a mage needs, you must still prove to me that you possess the caution that will keep you alive. A reckless apprentice will seldom live to complete his training, and some of them have destroyed their masters, as well as themselves, through their rashness. If you display any signs of irresponsible behavior, I will send you home at once. I have no wish to be blown apart in my old age by a reckless, young fool. Do you understand?” asked Tullius sternly, raising his voice for emphasis.

  “I understand,” said Elerian drawing his face into more serious lines although his eyes still sparkled with laughter as he remembered how Tullius had cleared the garden wall in a single leap. “I understand that I must not be afraid, but I must also be careful,” he added dutifully.

  “Good,” said Tullius, but there was still a tinge of doubt in his voice. He had never doubted Elerian’s courage, but there was definitely a hint of recklessness in the boy that worried him. “He must have his chance in spite of the risk to both of us,” Tullius decided at last. “With or without my training, he is certain to continue using his power. If he does not learn to control it now, then it will surely destroy him some day.”

  The severe expression faded from his face only to be replaced by a threatening look a moment later. Eyes flashing fiercely beneath his bushy gray eyebrows, Tullius pointed his staff at Elerian and thundered, “Suppose I were to direct the spell which destroyed the plate at your beating heart?”

  Elerian started and tensed involuntarily at the sudden change that had come over Tullius. The mage actually looked as if he might be capable of loosing the spell he had threatened. There was no fear in Elerian’s voice, however, as he calmly replied, “I suppose I would be dead if that were to happen.”

  “Yes you would,” said Tullius emphatically, “therefore, one of the very first things you must learn is how to defend yourself from spells which might harm you.”

  “Why would another mage wish to harm me or anyone else?” asked Elerian in a puzzled voice. As far as he knew he did not have a single enemy in the wide world except the Goblins, and they had not used magic against him.

  “Not everyone you meet in your life will be your friend, Elerian,” said Tullius. “There are evil mages as well as good ones in the world, and you must know how to defend yourself against the wicked ones.” He cut off further questions by producing Elerian’s spell book as well as his own. Tullius read the words of the shield spell from his own book while Elerian wrote them down. As he wrote, he looked with satisfaction at the dark letters written in his own neat handwriting that appeared on the creamy white page of the book.

  “Do not sit there gawking,” said Tullius brusquely. “Memorize the spell so that we can practice it.”

  Elerian sighed and began his assignment, wishing that Tullius was not such a hard taskmaster. He still did not understand why the mage was placing so much importance on learning a shield spell that he would likely never use. As far as Elerian knew, Tullius was the only real mage in the area. There were a few others whose powers extended only to performing minor spells, but Elerian did not consider them true mages. Certainly, they were not dangerous. Tullius impatiently began to pace the floor, and Elerian sighed and bent to his task. The spell was not overly difficult, and before long, he raised his head and said, “I am ready.”

  Rather than take Elerian’s word, Tullius had him repeat the spell several times until he was sure that Elerian had committed it perfectly to memory. “Cast the spell then,” he said at last. His nervousness seemed to have returned, and as Elerian began the words of the spell, Tullius unobtrusively moved to stand behind him again. If Elerian had turned around then, he would have seen a tense, apprehensive look on the mage’s face. Training an apprentice to cast the more powerful spells was a nerve-wracking task, for at any moment, something could go horribly wrong. With his nerves on edge, Tullius prepared to cast a shield spell, if necessary, over himself and Elerian to protect them both from any missteps the boy might make.

  Unaware of Tullius’s anxious frame of mind, Elerian slowly and clearly recited the words of the spell, hoping all the while that Tullius was not about to poke him again. As he spoke the last word, he felt a familiar flow of power in his right arm, and his capricious third eye showed him a golden light spreading from his fingertips. The l
ight flowed up his arm, and in an instant, covered his whole body like a gleaming cloak. Elerian leaped to his feet in excitement, and the light of the spell promptly vanished as he lost his concentration.

  Lacking the gift of mage sight, Tullius was unable to see the spell, but he was satisfied from listening to Elerian recite the words that it had been cast properly. He also guessed correctly that the spell had broken, along with Elerian’s concentration, when the lad sprang out of his chair.

  “You must maintain your focus, Elerian,” he said sternly. “If you were in a struggle with another mage, that moment of inattention could have cost you your life. Now, cast the spell again.”

  Tullius spent several hours observing Elerian as he cast the spell over and over again. Elerian became thoroughly bored before long, but with Tullius’s dark eyes constantly trained on him, he dared not let his concentration waver for an instant. Unexpectedly, Tullius walked away from Elerian until a distance of about ten feet separated them.

  “Stand up!” said Tullius, turning to face Elerian. “I will now attack you with a sleep spell while you use your shield spell to protect yourself.” He raised his staff into the air with his right hand and said, “When I lower my staff, we will both begin our spells at the same time.”

  As Elerian stood, waiting nervously, Tullius suddenly dropped his staff and said, “Somnus!” in a commanding voice before Elerian could even begin his own spell. The next thing Elerian knew, he was sitting up on the floor, rubbing a painful bump on the back of his head. Tullius’s spell had put him to sleep before he could speak a word of his own spell. To add insult to injury, his third eye had failed to open, denying him an opportunity to try to avoid Tullius’s spell.

  “This is not a fair contest,” protested Elerian angrily, for between the bruises on his back and the ache in his head, he was beginning to feel abused. “You are faster than I am.”

  Tullius leaned on his staff and looked at Elerian from beneath his bushy brows. “This is a lesson not a contest, so the word fair does not enter into it,” he said sternly. “Do you wish to quit? If you are afraid of a few bumps and bruises, it might be the best thing for you to do.”

  Tullius sounded quite serious. Elerian still felt the mage was being overly harsh, but he set aside his anger and stood back up. “I do not wish to quit,” he said firmly. “What am I doing wrong?”

  “When casting a spell for the first time,” explained Tullius, “the safest way to proceed, especially for a novice, is to speak each part of the spell aloud. As your mind becomes more familiar with a spell, you will find that fewer and fewer words are needed to cast it. For example, when casting your defensive spell, you may eventually only need to utter tego meum, or better yet, tego.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before our match?” asked Elerian with an irritated look on his face.

  A slow smile spread across Tullius’s face. “You now have an incentive to practice which you might not have had before,” he said complacently.

  Elerian wondered uneasily if Tullius had somehow sensed his earlier boredom and was using the lesson as a way to motivate him and amuse himself at the same time. When he looked deeply into the mage’s sharp brown eyes, however, he saw a deep concern there along with the humor. Amused or no, Tullius was quite serious underneath. Even though his methods were harsh, he was doing his best to see that both he and Elerian remained alive.

  Tullius watched with satisfaction as Elerian put aside his irritation and grimly prepared himself for another challenge he would surely lose. “He has spirit,” thought Tullius to himself, “and he is beginning to learn the prudence that will keep him alive.”

  Elerian was surprised and relieved when Tullius said, “Return in two days. Practice the words of the shield spell, but on no account are you to try to cast it on your own. The danger is too great at this point.”

  After returning his spell book to Tullius, Elerian took his leave and wearily made his way home, favoring his various bumps and bruises. He tried to use his healing power on himself and sighed in disappointment when it refused to respond. “This is certainly not what I expected from my training as a mage,” he thought to himself wryly. “Even Balbus never gave me half so many bruises during all of our weapons training.”

  A DIFFICULT TIME

  In the weeks and months that followed his first attempt to use the shield spell, Elerian entered into one of the most trying periods of his young life. Several times a week, he traveled to Tullius’s home where he defended himself endlessly against Tullius’s sleep spells. His control over his power remained unpredictable, and even when it did obey him, he was never able to cast his shield spell quickly enough to protect himself against Tullius’s spells. After each attack by Tullius, he unfailingly ended up on the floor in the grips of a sleep spell. It soon became a wearisome business with no end in sight, for Elerian failed to see any improvement in himself, and Tullius seemed obsessed with the idea that Elerian learn this one spell before he could move on to any others.

  Elerian became heartily sick of waking on the cold stone floor of Tullius’s house with the mage poking him none too gently in the chest with the end of his staff. Invariably, as Elerian ground his teeth in frustration, Tullius spoke the same words each time. “If I were an enemy, you would be dead now; you must try harder to protect yourself.” As failure followed failure and his accumulation of bumps and bruises grew, it became harder and harder for Elerian to restrain himself from making some angry outburst against Tullius, an outburst that he knew he would surely regret.

  “The fault lies with me, not Tullius,” Elerian reminded himself as the days dragged by without any change. More than once, he was tempted to quit, as he began to despair of ever making any progress. He began to linger along the path that led to the mage’s house, postponing his hours of torment for as long as possible. In the end, the only thing that sustained him was a core of stubbornness that forced him to return on each appointed day and which drove him, grim faced, to his feet after each failure, determined to try to try one more time. Throughout the whole ordeal, Tullius never offered a word of encouragement, and in his darker moments, Elerian began to wonder if the mage secretly wanted him to quit.

  The seasons changed, summer into fall and fall into winter, and the unequal contests, one loss after another, blurred one into another in Elerian’s mind. He was, therefore, quite surprised one day, after another failed attempt to defend himself, to hear Tullius say, “Well done, Elerian, you are beginning to make progress at last.”

  “What is he talking about?” wondered Elerian, for Tullius had beaten him again. It was only after he had shaken off the effects of the sleep spell which had dulled his mind that he realized that Tullius had spoken the truth. He legs felt weak, and he had to fight an overwhelming urge to close his eyes, but for the first time, he was still standing at the end of one of their contests.

  That day marked a turning point for Elerian. Each day after that, he noticed a gradual, almost imperceptible improvement in himself. It became rare for his power to fail him, and the shield spell became so firmly embedded in his mind that he could cast it with just a single word. Only his third eye still remained beyond his control, opening and closing at unexpected times.

  Despite all his progress, however, Elerian was still unsuccessful in completely defending himself against Tullius’s spells. Although he no longer fell to the floor lost in a deep sleep after Tullius’s attacks, the mage’s sleep spells still left him feeling drowsy and unable to defend himself if Tullius had chosen to attack him again.

  “If my speed in casting a spell now matches Tullius’s, why am I still losing every match?” wondered Elerian to himself. After another string of failures, his pent up frustration finally got the better of him. After still another failure, he suddenly shouted at Tullius “What am I doing wrong?”

  Tullius raised his bushy eyebrows at the outburst, and Elerian caught his breath, expecting to be reprimanded for losing his temper. Surprisingly, Tullius did not ta
ke offense. “A counter spell,” he said, with unexpected patience, “must match or exceed the power of the spell it is defending against; otherwise, it will not be totally effective. Your ability to cast your counter spell quickly has improved, but you still have not learned to gage the strength of the spell I am using against you. Your counter spell is always too weak to block the full effects of my sleep spell.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” asked Elerian, thinking of the weeks of frustration he had just endured.

  “You did not ask,” said Tullius calmly.

  Elerian felt ready to explode, but he forced himself to remain calm. He had endured too much to fail now. “What if I make my spell as strong as possible then?” he asked in a calmer voice.

  “If you overcompensate, you will use up your strength too quickly,” replied Tullius. “In a long battle against another mage, you would stand no chance of winning. You must learn to counter my spells without wasting power uselessly.”

  The satisfaction Elerian had felt in his improving abilities all leaked away at Tullius’s words. How could he, in the blink of an eye, gage the strength of a spell he usually could not see? Even when it opened, his third eye was no advantage. Tullius cast his spells so quickly that by the time Elerian saw them, it was already too late to defend against them. “How can you anticipate and guard against a spell you cannot even see?” he asked hopelessly.

  “Not every apprentice has the ability to learn this skill,” admitted Tullius honestly. “Even if you do have the ability, it must be honed through endless practice. Only then will you be able to read the subtle signs an opponent will give you with his body and voice as he prepares to cast a spell.”

  Elerian groaned aloud at the thought of another series of endless, tedious contests against Tullius. “It may take years to learn such a skill, if I ever learn it at all,” he protested.