by A. Giannetti
At first, Elerian was content just to rest and spend time with Balbus, but before long, his sense of mischief, long suppressed by hard work and exhaustion, began to resurface. The urge to have some fun after two years of sustained, difficult lessons became irresistible for Elerian. One evening, on the spur of the moment, he used his ring to disguise himself and hid in the loft of a neighbor’s barn. Through a wide crack in the floor, he watched as the farmer, a stout fellow with an excitable nature, set a milking stool down by his cow and prepared to sit on it. Just before the farmer’s substantial seat contacted the stool, Elerian cast a spell which moved the stool backward. The farmer missed it entirely and dropped heavily onto the thick layer of straw covering the flagstone floor.
More startled than hurt, he rose and examined the stool with a puzzled expression before attempting to sit on it again. At the last moment, Elerian moved it away for a second time, and the farmer ended up sitting heavily on the floor once more. Flushed and obviously irritated, he stood up and positioned the stool yet again, this time holding it firmly in place with both hands as he carefully lowered himself onto it. Elerian, eyes shining with mischief, pulled the stool away at the last moment, and the farmer landed on the floor for a third time. Sputtering with anger, he jumped to his feet. Giving in to his hasty nature at last, he impulsively seized an ax and chopped the stool to bits before stomping on the broken pieces with both feet. Breathing heavily, he regarded the stool with a vengeful look before turning away to set down the ax. Elerian immediately cast a spell to reassemble the stool. When the farmer turned and saw the offending piece of furniture in one piece again, his eyes widened in fear and surprise until the whites showed all the way around them. At this critical moment, Elerian cast a weak destruction spell at the stool, and it fell to pieces again with a sharp cracking sound that caused both the farmer and his cow to start violently. Convinced at last that some evil presence had taken possession of his stool, the farmer uttered a loud, inarticulate cry of alarm before turning and running out of the barn.
Shaking with silent laughter, Elerian reassembled the stool and then left the barn unseen, stifling a fresh round of suppressed laughter at the thought of what the farmer would say when he returned to the barn and found the stool whole again.
Encouraged by the success of his first prank, Elerian left a silver coin in front of the doorstep of another nearby farmer who was notoriously tight with money. He entertained himself for some time by moving the coin away each time the farmer sought to pick it up. In the end, he sent it into the farmer’s pocket and watched with amusement as he pulled it out with a mystified look on his face. Other pranks followed, limited only by Elerian’s fertile imagination. Soon, they became the talk of the countryside. Opinions varied as to the source of the strange doings. The majority thought that a malicious shade was involved because none of the victims ever saw any sign of the prankster. A smaller minority hit closer to the mark in thinking that a mischievous mage might be the cause.
Eventually, the pranks ceased, and the talk died down again. Elerian never entertained any fear of being found out, but after a time, he came to consider his neighbors such easy marks that he became bored with playing tricks on them. His roving eye began to seek a more challenging target, and it was only a matter of time before it settled on Tullius. Elerian clearly recalled the near disastrous consequences of the last prank he had played on Tullius, but the element of risk attracted him like a moth to a flame. He carefully made his preparations, and one morning, well before his lessons for the day were to start, he showed up at the edge of Tullius’s clearing unannounced.
As a precaution against being discovered, Elerian disguised himself with an illusion that would allow him to take on the appearance of his surroundings. When he looked down at himself without the benefit of his mage sight, he saw only a pattern of rowan branches covered by green leaves. Slipping silently through the ring of rowan trees growing behind Tullius’s garden, Elerian stopped just behind the screen formed by their low hanging branches. Secure in the knowledge that he blended perfectly with the leaves and branches around him, Elerian peered through a gap in the leaves, his eyes sparkling with anticipation. As he had hoped, Tullius was working industriously in his garden, waging a never ending war against the weeds which sought to invade his herb beds during the spring and summer months.
Elerian smiled to himself when he observed that Tullius paused often to glance warily about him. Even after all this time, the mage evidently still remembered the black wolf which had chased him through the garden. “It will be a real challenge to take him by surprise,” thought Elerian to himself, almost shivering with eagerness to match wits with Tullius again. The possibility of being fatally injured by one of Tullius’s spells fazed him not at all. The risk only lent spice to the adventure.
Carefully, Elerian raised the small cage woven of grass stems which he held in his left hand. Inside the cage was a large, very angry hornet almost the size of his thumb. His armor gleamed in the morning light, bright yellow with black stripes, and an ominous hum came from the cage as he angrily tested the confines of his small prison. Abruptly, the hornet vanished as Elerian’s sending spell carried him away to appear, without warning, barely six inches in front of Tullius’s nose. As the hornet hung there disoriented, filling the air with the dangerous drone of his anger, Tullius gave a shout of alarm and stumbled backwards, waving his hoe wildly in the air as he sought to fend off the angry insect. Quickly, before Tullius could inflict any damage, Elerian brought his small warrior back for a moment and then sent him back to appear near Tullius’s left ear, eliciting another shout, more wild stabs with the hoe, and another disappearance by the hornet.
As Tullius looked about him with wild eyes, his chest heaving from his exertions, the hornet appeared next to his right ear, filling it with a menacing, buzzing sound. It was too much for Tullius. Throwing his hoe down on the ground, he bolted for his back door, forgetting even his staff in his panic. Immediately, Elerian brought the furious hornet back for the last time. As he retreated back through the rowans, he saw Tullius’s door open a crack, and one dark eye gleamed in the opening as the mage looked out to see if the hornet was still about.
Elerian retreated to a safe place in the forest and laughed until tears came to his eyes. Eventually, when he could stand again, he returned to the upper forest and released the hornet in the first meadow he came to, sending it far out into the middle of the clearing where it hung buzzing furiously, as it looked about for some victim on which to vent its anger. Elerian made his own quick retreat and took his time returning to Tullius’s house. Tullius answered his knock immediately, but Elerian thought that there was a wild, rather hunted look in his dark eyes. He looked carefully around him and appeared to be listening for a moment before giving Elerian a suspicious look. Elerian gazed back at the mage with wide, guileless eyes that made him seem incapable of any mischief.
“It has reached my ears that there has been an outbreak of strange occurrences on the hilltops in the last few weeks,” said Tullius severely.
“I have heard the same thing,” said Elerian. “What do you think might be causing them?” he asked with a puzzled look on his face.
“If a certain young apprentice is discovered to be the cause, there will be no more lessons,” said Tullius. There was no mistaking the note of warning in his voice.
Elerian allowed a surprised look to cross his face, as if he could not imagine which apprentice Tullius was talking about, and the mage favored him with a stern look before turning and leading the way inside.
“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” thought Elerian regretfully to himself, as he followed Tullius. It would be too risky to attempt more pranks in the face of Tullius’s suspicions, but at least he still had his memories. With Tullius’s back still safely turned, Elerian’s eyes sparkled with laughter as he recalled how Tullius had fled from his small warrior.
Once he no longer had his pranks to distract him, Elerian became subject to a va
gue restiveness. It vanished for a time as he and Balbus celebrated his sixteenth birthday but returned stronger than ever a few days later.
“Why do I feel this way,” he wondered. “I am finally realizing my dream of becoming a mage. I should be happy.”
Despite his attempt to reason it away, the restlessness Elerian felt persisted. In an effort to banish it, he went over, in his mind, the spells he had mastered over the past two years, hoping to draw some satisfaction from his accomplishments. Surprisingly, he felt no pleasure in reviewing what he had learned, for a small voice in the back of his head whispered, “Except for a few spells like the destruction spell, they are all minor spells, more worthy of a beginning apprentice than an accomplished mage.”
Elerian felt disloyal to Tullius, listening to that voice, but he realized that it spoke the truth. Most of the spells he had acquired from Tullius taxed his growing powers only a little, and now that his first excitement at learning them had worn off, he found that he derived little satisfaction from them.
“It is all very well to be able to open a door lock with a word or to bring a cup from across a room without touching it, but the ability to perform these actions does not make you a great mage,” thought Elerian to himself. Out of loyalty to Tullius, he made no complaint, trying instead to make the best of the situation. This grew even more difficult when Tullius stopped giving him new spells. Elerian now spent his time practicing spells he already knew while Tullius dozed by the fire. Despite a growing weariness with the direction his training had taken, Elerian still made no complaint, for he did not wish to appear ungrateful after all that Tullius had done for him. He hid his dissatisfaction, all the while longing for something new, a spell that would arouse his interest and challenge him again.
Of their own accord, in his idle moments, Elerian’s thoughts often returned to the girl he had seen in the enchanted pool. Hoping to see her again and to penetrate the mystery of the place, he had returned to the ravine many times over the past two years. He discovered, as he had suspected from the beginning, that an illusion lay over the ravine. When he saw it with his everyday sight, it appeared to be a drab, ordinary place. When seen through the invisible lens of his third eye, however, it became, once more, the magical place he had seen on his first visit, but nothing out of the ordinary ever appeared in the pool again, and the beech tree near the pool maintained its hostile silence, even when he saw it in its true form. With the passage of time and much thought, Elerian had come to the firm conclusion that the girl he had glimpsed in the pool had changed into an otter to make her escape. Even after all this time, he could still recall, with perfect clarity, the creature’s curious, strangely unsettling stare that seemed so inappropriate for a mere animal.
The thought of shape shifting carried an allure for Elerian that he could not explain. “If I had power to change my shape like that girl in the pool,” he often thought to himself, “I would finally feel like a real mage.” He could still recall the time when his ring, acting in concert with the old wolf skin, had worked some sort of shape change upon him, and he began to long to repeat the experience.
For reasons of his own, Tullius had never touched upon the subject of shape changing. He had shown Elerian how to cast illusions, but he did not seem to think much of that type of magic. He seemed to regard it as more trickery than anything else, and Elerian wondered if he held the same attitude toward shape changing. On his next visit to Tullius’s house, Elerian impulsively brought up the subject which had been on his mind a great deal of late. “Tullius,” he asked abruptly when they were seated at the mage’s old table, “do you know anything about shape changing?”
Tullius, who was taking a deep drink from his wine cup, suddenly went into a fit of coughing and spilled a good portion of his wine on the tabletop. When he had recovered himself, Tullius sent the spilled wine to the sink with a word so that the table was dry once more.
“What brought the idea of shape changing to your mind?” he asked. His voice was carefully neutral, but Elerian thought there was an anxious look in his eyes. Unaccountably, the subject of shape shifting seemed to have disturbed him for some reason.
“Well,” said Elerian, uncertain of how to begin without offending Tullius by sounding ungrateful, “I thought it might be interesting to learn how to change my shape.”
The alarmed look left Tullius’s eyes to be replaced by one of sadness. “Is anything wrong?” Elerian asked quickly.
“There is nothing wrong with your request, Elerian” said Tullius and fell silent for a moment. For some time now, he had known that this day was fast approaching, but it was not any easier for him to deal with. “The fault lies in me,” said Tullius after a moment. “You see, Elerian, when I first apprenticed as a mage, my teacher thought I showed the greatest promise of all the youths who wished to apprentice with him that year. This was the only reason he accepted a Hesperian as an apprentice, for my teacher was an Ancharian, and mages of that race seldom train outsiders. At first all went well, but as time passed and I grew older, it became clear to both of us that my powers would not fulfill their early promise.” From the pain in Tullius’s voice, Elerian could only imagine the bitterness of that discovery.
“When it became obvious that I could not progress any further, my master dismissed me from his service,” continued Tullius. “I left Ancharia and returned home to become a country mage, able to perform only simple spells for the most part. This is the reason why I have never taught you any of the great spells. Because the power required to perform them was beyond me, I was never taught any of them by my master. An apprentice is only allowed to record in his book spells he can actually perform. True shape shifting is one of the spells that requires a power I do not possess,” he concluded sadly. “I can show you how to alter the appearance of something, but it will be a surface change only, more like casting an illusion than true shape shifting.”
Rising from his chair and walking over to the sink, Tullius drew a cup of water from the pump and spoke the words of a spell. Without a word, he returned to the table and handed the cup to Elerian.
“What do you see?” asked the mage.
Elerian looked into the cup and saw that the water had taken on a ruby color, and the sharp odor of wine came to his nose. “It appears to be wine,” said Elerian excitedly.
“Taste it then,” said Tullius in the same sad tone as before. He watched the disappointment spread across Elerian’s face when he tasted the liquid in the cup. “The appearance of the water has changed, but it has none of the qualities of wine saving only the appearance and the odor,” said Tullius before Elerian could speak.
“Do not feel badly, Tullius,” said Elerian sincerely. “It does not matter to me which spells you can perform. I would not have wished to be apprenticed to anyone else no matter how powerful they were. I would be happy to learn this spell, if you care to teach me.”
Tullius smiled but his eyes still had a bleak look. He debated with himself for a long moment whether he should teach Elerian this final spell. He had planned to give it to the boy only in the event that Elerian learned his true identity. “If I refuse him, it may rouse his suspicions,” he thought to himself. “It cannot do him any harm in any case. The spell does not carry the dangers of a true shape changing spell. He can only alter his appearance with it, if he is rash enough to try it.”
Tullius quickly recited the spell for Elerian from his spell book. “The spell I have given you is written to change the appearance of water,” he said quietly as Elerian wrote the words in his book, “but the principle is the same if one wishes to apply it to other things.”
After waiting patiently for Elerian to memorize the spell, Tullius drew a fresh cup of water and watched as Elerian changed the appearance of the water in the cup a number of times. Whenever Elerian glanced in Tullius’s direction, however, he appeared distracted, as if he had other thoughts on his mind.
When Tullius was satisfied that Elerian could perform the spell properly, he pu
t his hand over the top of the cup and said unexpectedly, “This was the last spell I had to teach you, Elerian. Because of the speed with which you learned the small number of spells I possess, you have accomplished far more than I ever expected in the past two years. Despite your youth, I am releasing you from my service. You are free to perform, on your own, the spells I have taught you, but for now, I still want you to conceal your mage powers from everyone except Balbus. I must also caution you not confuse knowledge with experience. Do not overreach yourself. Practice your art prudently until you have gained more years and experience.”
Elerian found that he was not really surprised by Tullius’s announcement. In the back of his mind, he had been expecting it for some time now, ever since it became obvious to him that his training had ended. He felt no elation, only sadness for Tullius who still seemed to think that he had failed to instruct Elerian properly.
“Thank you for your time and patience, Tullius,” he said warmly and was surprised to see a gleam of moisture in the old mage’s dark eyes.
“On your way then,” said Tullius abruptly, “and stay out of mischief.”
Elerian smiled and rose from his chair. He shook off the sadness of the moment, and when he left through the front door, his mind was already deeply occupied with the latest spell Tullius had given him. Despite the fact that it performed only a change in appearance, he felt a rising sense of excitement as he reviewed the spell in his mind, for he felt that there was a very good chance that it might provide him with the key to performing a true shape change.
