Secrets and Spellcraft

by Michael G. Manning

  “He died when the Prophet’s army invaded.”

  “And you’re here because the king sponsored you. Does he know all this?”

  And more, thought Will. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I suppose I don’t need to worry about any legal issues. How much did your grandfather teach you?” asked the professor.

  “I only know one spell,” said Will. “The one for linking to someone’s source.”

  “Demonstrate it for me.”

  You asked for it. In the blink of an eye, he manifested the simple spell construct and linked to Dulaney’s source. He felt a brief resistance, and then the link firmed up. On a whim he tried to separate the professor’s will from his source and he was surprised when he succeeded.

  Professor Dulaney sat rigidly in his chair, only his eyes moving as the rest of his body was paralyzed. Will released him a second later. “How was that, sir?”

  His teacher took a deep breath, visibly attempting to calm himself. Leaning over, he opened a drawer and pulled out a tall, brown bottle and a glass, pouring himself a drink. He took a long sip before answering. “Your will is extraordinarily strong for someone who only awakened his sight a few years ago. Do you mind if I return the favor?”

  Will nodded. “Go ahead.” The professor’s spell was so quick he never even saw the construct appear before a green line shot toward him. It vanished a moment later as his body absorbed the foreign turyn. “Oh,” said Will, shutting down his reflexive absorption. “Try again. I wasn’t ready.”

  Professor Dulaney blinked, trying to process what had happened, then he repeated the spell. Will was surprised when it connected. His teacher was obviously skilled, but when the man attempted to paralyze him as Will had just done, he fought him. Beads of sweat broke out on Dulaney’s forehead, but after a few seconds he lost control. Working through the connection between them, Will paralyzed his mentor once again. Then he dismissed the spell.

  Dulaney let out an explosive breath and took another sip of his drink. “What on earth? That’s the only spell you learned? How long was your grandfather teaching you?”

  “A little less than two years,” said Will. “But almost all of it was focused on learning self-discipline, though I didn’t understand that at the time.”

  “How exactly did he teach you that?” said the professor slowly.

  Will hedged. “Meditation? He used a spell to link my source to a candle. I had to carry it around for months.”

  “And what else?”

  “That’s it,” Will lied. “I thought he was crazy at the time. He would yell at me if I forgot to keep the candle with me.”

  Dulaney rubbed his chin. “We still use the candle exercise, but only for a week or two. I can’t imagine how that would make your will as strong as it is now, much less allow you to transform turyn from one type to another.”

  “He was surprised by that as well,” Will temporized. “One day I got bored and changed the color of the candle flame and it shocked him.”

  “You’re suggesting you were always a transducer?”

  Will shrugged. “Maybe? I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing until you told me today.”

  The professor sighed and finished his whisky with a final swallow. “I really don’t know what to make of you, Mister Cartwright. This is uncharted territory. I’ll tell you what we will do, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Since you no longer attend the Alchemy class, I’d like to devote some of my time. Every day, after this class we’ll spend some time working on your spellcraft. I’d like to see what you’re capable of.”

  Will groaned inwardly. He had just gained some time from being exempted from Alchemy; now he’d lose that time in private lessons. “How much time?”

  “Half an hour of one-on-one. The same amount of time we’ve spent here today. If you do well, I’ll give you credit for your first semester of Spellcraft. Ordinarily you wouldn’t get to take it until next year.”

  “Do I have to keep coming to Spell Theory, then?”

  “Learning spells is one thing, but you need a good foundation in the underlying principles,” said the professor firmly.

  Will sighed.

  Chapter 7

  “What is all this for?” asked Will. He was in a lower basement laboratory within the Alchemy building. Unlike the classroom lab he had seen the day before, this area was divided into discrete portions with large metal vats, tanks, and a variety of glassware.

  “This,” said Professor Karlovic, “is how we pay the bills. What do you think the number-one product of this facility is?”

  Will had no idea. All he knew how to make was ink, glue, and herbal tinctures, and none of that involved such oversized pieces of equipment. “Ink?” he answered tentatively.

  His teacher laughed. “No. What do you think the main purpose of alchemy is?”

  “Making potions for specific purposes?”

  “Yes, and no. We can indeed make a variety of potions, but that is not what we mainly do. Alchemy is the art of taking raw ingredients, herbs for example, and distilling from them their vital essences, the turyn they possess. Using various formulae, we can then take those concentrated essences and create magical potions, without—and this is key—without needing a wizard to burn his or her own life to do so.”

  Will stared at him. “Huh?” None of that sounded remotely like what Arrogan had taught him.

  Karlovic nodded. “The old recipes call for base ingredients and then use turyn from the creator to empower them, but that method has all the same drawbacks of spellcasting. Honestly, when I look back at the work of the Founders, I cannot help but think they were a little insane. They wasted their lives. What we do here is take those old recipes and find ways to recreate them without forcing the alchemist to burn up their own turyn.

  “In order to do that, we work with large amounts of raw materials and distill them down—concentrating them to get the full amount of turyn required to empower a potion.” The professor waved a hand. “But I digress. The purpose of my initial question was to get you thinking about what our main product is. Which potion do you think people need the most?”

  Will tried again. “Glue?”

  “Good guess. That is one of our more favored products, but what I am referring to are healing potions. I’m sure they’ve covered this in your Spell Theory class by now. Once wizards graduate, they go into a number of different occupations, but one of those jobs requires more of the practitioner than the others. Healing.”

  He made an ‘o’ with his mouth. “I see.”

  “To help keep from overusing their powers, one of the most demanded products are healing potions for use with minor problems. We make elixirs for fever and sickness, tinctures for wounds, and even minor healing potions that can close wounds and mend broken bones. We make these things without spending our own lives, and we sell them to healers to help them avoid spending their lives on any but the direst of injuries. Do you understand?”

  Will nodded slowly. “That makes sense.” More and more, he was beginning to understand how the practice of wizardry was crippled by the fact that magic users were forced to burn up their own lives to create spells. He was also interested in seeing those old recipes the professor had mentioned, since he obviously didn’t suffer from the same restriction. It would be far simpler to just make a potion with base ingredients and empower it himself than to concentrate or distill essences from large quantities of raw materials. “So what will I be doing today?”

  The professor smiled. “See that vessel there?” He pointed to a massive metal tank set above what appeared to be a burner. “Grab a shovel. You’ll need to load it with pennyroyal from that bin over there. Once it’s full, we’ll add water and start the first phase. Have you ever done fractional distillation before?”

  He blinked. He had, but it had involved a small glass setup in Arrogan’s workshop. “That’s for fractional distillation?”

  Karlovic pointed to the top of the tan
k, where a long, vertical pipe emerged. “That’s a fractioning column. The part you see coming off the side is where the condenser begins. Over here is our thermometer…” the professor went on, naming and describing each component of the system until Will could understand what was happening.

  The scale of it awed him. Then the professor pointed to a rack. “Get the shovel. I need you to load the distillation tank.”

  An hour later, Will was sweating as he rested on a stool. Is this what I’m here for? Manual labor?

  It was then that the professor motioned him to come over to a small desk at the corner of the room. “Now that the hard part is over for tonight, let’s see if you can work through these calculations. What you see here is a list of the raw materials we are starting with, along with a table of yields we have gotten from similar materials in the past. I’ve already done the calculations several times, but you can get some practice working through it again and double-checking my work. I’d like you to calculate our likely yield given these raw materials.

  “Once you’ve done that, see if you can tell me what step we will be using next to further purify the azeotropes that emerge from tonight’s process.”

  Will stared at the ledger. He had learned the principles from Arrogan, but he had a lot of questions to ask before he could begin to do what the professor asked. It seemed he would be learning after all.

  ***

  When Will finally got back to his room Seth, was already there. His mild-mannered roommate sniffed the air as Will entered. “What have you been doing? You smell like you’ve been rolling around in a mint haystack.”

  “Close,” said Will. “Pennyroyal.”

  “Lucky you,” said Seth, reclining on the bottom bunk. “If you keep working around that stuff you might be able to stretch your laundry to two weeks.”

  Will had already heard that the dorm offered a laundry service, and that most residents availed themselves of it at least once a week. “How much does it cost?” he asked curiously.

  “What, the laundry? Almost everything is a penny each, a penny for a shirt, a penny for trousers. But if you want to get your fancy dress clothes done that costs more since they have to starch and iron them. That’s six pennies.”

  He only had one set of clothes. The expensive linen clothing the king had given him. “What would my clothes count as?”

  “Six.”

  “Uh…” Will realized he had a problem. Between the clothes his father had sent and the clothes the king had given him, he had three sets. If he changed them every day, he would wind up spending almost two silver clima a week. At that rate he’d spend more than three gold crowns just getting his clothes washed during the first term.

  Of course, in the past he had worn his clothes for up to a week at a time without changing them, but that had been in the army, and even there he’d been expected to wash himself daily. The standards at Wurthaven were considerably stricter. He hadn’t come across anyone yet that didn’t appear to be wearing fresh clothing.

  If he was to wear freshly cleaned clothes every day then he would also have to bathe at least every other day. Correction, every day, he told himself when he remembered that he had Fencing class every morning. The bathhouses behind the dorms cost a penny each time, which would add another crown plus change to his expenses for the term. Adding it up, he arrived at a total close to five crowns.

  Then there was food, incidentals, and probably other expenses he hadn’t even learned of yet. “Are there any extra fees we have to pay?” asked Will.

  “There’s a lab fee for Alchemy,” said Seth. “But since you’ve been taken as an assistant, I suppose you won’t have to pay that.”

  “True,” said Will. He had forgotten that. Professor Karlovic was also paying him two clima a week for his help in the lab, so that would help keep him solvent.

  “Have you paid your library fees yet?” asked Seth.

  Will leaned over the edge of his bunk and looked down. “There’s a fee for the library?”

  Seth nodded. “Five crowns each term.”

  He groaned. There went his surplus from working as an assistant. Worse, that put him down another two gold for the term. If he was very careful with his money and there were no surprises, he might make it through with a few coins left over, but he didn’t like not having anything extra to cover emergencies.

  Lying down, Will pillowed his head with his arms. Having an actual pillow would have been nice, or bed sheets. Unlike Seth, he was still sleeping on a bare mattress. How much would those things cost? Damn, he cursed silently. After he bought bedding, he’d have to pay to have it laundered as well. He started to ask Seth what the cost for washing sheets was, but he heard a soft snoring beneath him. His roommate had fallen asleep.

  Will wasn’t sleepy so he stared at the ceiling, which, thanks to his elevated position, was only four feet away. Thinking back over the past year he found it difficult to believe all the things that had happened to him, that had led to him being there. He lifted his right hand and stared at the ring he wore. He still had no idea what it was or what it could do. His life was full of mysteries.

  Turning his hand over, he looked at his palm and thought of the limnthal, causing it to rise and hover in the air above his hand. It was yet another mystery. What it could be used for, what it meant, he still had no clue. Not long after he had received it, Aislinn had given him a gift, something she had stored within it, but what that might be was also an unknown.

  “Sometimes I think I know less about myself than I did about Selene,” he mumbled.

  “Who the fuck is Selene?” asked a cranky voice that clearly did not belong to Seth.

  Will bolted upright in the bed, dismissing the limnthal. “Who’s there?”

  Silence was his only answer. Leaning over the edge of the bed, he searched the room with his eyes. There was only a dim light coming from the window, but that was no hindrance to his sight. He adjusted his vision until the room seemed as bright as day, but there was no one there. Will backed up until he was sitting with his back against the headboard, his head resting in the corner of the room. I’m not crazy, he told himself. Someone spoke to me.

  He studied his hand. Was it the limnthal? With a thought, he summoned it again. “Were you talking to me?”

  “No. I was talking to your ass. Who the hell else would I be talking to?” said the voice.

  Will stared at the limnthal. “You can talk!”

  “Yeah. I’m starting to wonder about you, though. Moron.”

  “I didn’t know the limnthal could talk,” said Will slowly.

  “Of course, it can’t. Were you always this stupid?”

  The voice was extremely familiar, and with every insult Will became more certain of who it belonged to. “Grandfather?”

  “Who? Kid, you are seriously deluded.”

  “You’re Arrogan,” insisted Will.

  “Sort of, but I’m afraid there’s a good chance he wasn’t your grandfather.”

  “He told me he was.”

  “Then he lied. He lost track of his descendants within a couple of generations. I’m starting to think you’re a few cards shy of a deck,” said the voice.

  Will shook his head. “You’re wrong. He told me I was his grandson. You told me that.”

  “First, I’m not Arrogan. Second, I know everything he knew, and he most certainly didn’t know anything about any of his descendants. It’s even possible that they all died off.”

  “What are you then, and how would you know everything he knew if you aren’t him?” asked Will.

  “You’re wearing a ring, aren’t you? Probably with something weird mounted on it, such as a bone or something.”

  Will stared at the ring but didn’t say anything. Is it the ring talking?

  “Well, am I right?” demanded the voice.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it. What does it look like?”

  He frowned. “If you’re the ring, shouldn’t you know?”

  “How
the hell should I know, you moron? I can’t see.”

  “Why can’t you see?”

  “You really are dense, aren’t you? Do you see any eyes on that ring? No. I don’t have a body. I’m just a disembodied intellect, bound to a piece of fucking jewelry,” answered the voice, then it snorted. “Typical. You still haven’t told me what the ring looks like.”

  “It’s gold, with a tooth mounted on it. I think it’s a wisdom tooth.”

  Will heard the ring begin to chuckle. “That’s Aislinn for sure. She always did have a warped sense of humor. Let me guess, did she tell you it was a ring of wisdom?”

  “No. She just said it was an object of vile and unspeakable knowledge and power.” As he said the words, he couldn’t help but think his grandmother’s label was more apt than he had realized.

  The ring paused. “Oh. I rather like that. Let’s just shorten it to ‘Ring of Vile and Unspeakable Knowledge.’ I don’t really have any power.”

  “Are you Arrogan’s spirit, his ghost?” asked Will, feeling hopeful.

  “No, you nitwit. I am not. Nor do I feel inclined to tell you what I am. Knowledge should be held by those who are responsible, not by dim cretins who can’t even figure out what sort of ring they’re wearing.”

  Will closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “You sound just like him. I was his apprentice. You can trust me.”

  “That’s just what a sorcerer would say. I’m not falling for your tricks. I was old before you were even a gleam in your daddy’s eye,” said the ring.

  “I was his apprentice,” insisted Will. “I can prove it.”

  “No, you weren’t. I—I mean he—he killed all of them.”

  “If you know everything Arrogan knew then you should remember me. My name is Will, William Cartwright. And you just said ‘I,’ so you really are Arrogan.”

  The ring growled. “No, I’m not. Listen, it’s confusing, especially for me. I’m just his knowledge. The technical term is a spirit of intellect, but even that’s confusing since there’s no spirit involved. His spirit is long gone. How did he die, anyway?”

  The words triggered the memory of a conversation. What had Aislinn told him? A mage, or any human, consists of three things: the mind, the will, and the soul. She had also said that death wasn’t the destruction of those things either, merely their separation. Had she somehow bound Arrogan’s knowledge to the ring, while letting his will and soul go their separate ways?