Secrets and Spellcraft

by Michael G. Manning

  “Seth,” he replied. His roommate hadn’t visited once during his recovery, though he didn’t blame him. Seth’s situation was precarious, and the boy couldn’t afford the sort of attention that being friends with Will would bring. Will climbed up to his bunk to lie down. He was out of breath from the short walk.

  The saber he had used to kill Dennis Spry was sheathed and laying on the mattress. Will sat down and unsheathed it, examining the edge. There were still spots of blood on the steel, along with traces of rust. The edge still felt sharp, but his thumb detected a few rough spots. It would need some honing to get it back in perfect shape again. Later, he thought, storing it inside the limnthal.

  He made himself comfortable, then asked, “How’ve you been?” There was no reply. After a few minutes, he spoke again. “I understand if you don’t want to talk to me. Everyone seems to hate me now. It won’t do you any good to be friends with me. I’ll make sure to keep my distance outside the room, so people won’t get the wrong idea.” He closed his eyes.

  “I don’t hate you, Will,” said Seth a few minutes later. “I’m scared of you.”

  “I hope you realize I would never hurt you, Seth.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  Frustrated, Will tried to explain, “You know why I did it. You were here when I brought her back. You know what he tried to do. You heard what she said about her family. How else was I supposed to keep them from suffering for my mistake? That asshole deserved to die.”

  “Probably,” agreed Seth, “but I don’t think you understand why I’m scared.”

  “Explain it to me then.”

  “Normal people don’t just murder someone in cold blood.”

  “It wasn’t cold blood,” Will argued. “It was a duel. He challenged me, not the other way around.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Seth quietly. “I was there when you made up your mind. You wouldn’t tell us what you were planning, but you went right ahead. You decided he needed to die and then you executed your plan with no more remorse than a fisherman shows when he guts a fish. No sword? You went and bought one. Then you made certain he knew it, and you also made sure he couldn’t afford to ignore you. And you were so calm about the whole thing. Sure, you were yelling and making a scene when you were in public, but you were completely composed when you came back to the room.

  “Regular people don’t do that. They get upset. They make mistakes. Most of the time they’re afraid and they just swallow their pride. But you didn’t do any of that. You made a decision, then you made a plan, and two days later—you shoved several feet of sharp steel through his throat in front of your gym class.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to be afraid of me, Seth,” argued Will. “I’d never—”

  “How do I know that?” interrupted his roommate. “It’s like when you have a dog and it bites someone. Sure, maybe you know why the dog did it, but can you be sure they won’t do it again? You’re a killer, Will.”

  “You don’t seem that afraid,” countered Will. “If you really thought I was that dangerous, would you tell me all that?”

  “I’m not brave, Will,” said Seth. “I never have been. I’ve been nervous and scared my entire life. But I’m tired of living in fear. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t think you’d do anything to me, but violence follows you. There will be more to come when Dennis’ family decides to punish you for what you did.

  “Maybe I didn’t have any friends after coming to Wurthaven, but I felt safe. I don’t feel safe anymore. Not around you.”

  Will sighed. “I won’t argue. Everything you’ve said makes sense.”

  “Mom says I can change rooms in a few days. One of the guys in 311 is moving out,” Seth informed him.

  “All right.” Will swallowed, trying to clear the lump in his throat. He couldn’t even call Dianne ‘Mom’ anymore.

  ***

  Will returned to classes the next day and discovered that if he had thought he was something of an outcast before, he had been badly wrong. He’d merely been the new student. Now he was truly an outcast. No one talked to him directly, and whenever he passed near anyone, all conversations that were underway immediately ceased. After he was out of earshot, though, they resumed and generally the focus was on him.

  With his improved hearing, he was able to pick up snippets, however. “They say he was a black scout in the army.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re the ones who go behind enemy lines to take out important targets.”

  “What kind of targets?”

  “They kill people, dummy. Dennis never had a chance. He was dead the minute he caught that one’s eye.”

  “He looks too young.”

  “I heard that the king’s daughter came personally to make sure he lived.”

  “King Lognion didn’t want to lose his best assassin.”

  “Someone said he fought a demon.”

  “He didn’t fight it; he’s possessed by one. You should have seen the cold look in his eyes when he sliced through Dennis’ neck. I was there.”

  Will just ignored it all, but day by day the rumors got more outlandish, as though his fellow students were trying to outdo one another with their tales.

  Thanks to Seth moving out, he had a room all to himself, so he didn’t have to worry about timing his conversations with the ring for periods when he was alone, or Seth was asleep. A few people heard him talking through the door, however, and more rumors sprang up regarding his conversations. Most said he was unhinged, while others claimed he was talking to the demon that had supposedly possessed him.

  Worried that someone might break into his room, he took to keeping all his possessions in the limnthal. He polished away the rust on his sword and restored the edge to perfection, but when he returned it to storage, he left it unsheathed. Objects inside didn’t spoil or rust, and he figured if he needed it suddenly in the future it would be best to have the blade bare and ready for action. He even took some time to practice retrieving and storing it again, until he could perform the action so quickly that an observer would be hard pressed to realize he was using the limnthal rather than casting a summoning spell of some sort.

  The teachers in his classes stopped calling on him, and he never volunteered to answer questions, since that seemed to make it easier for everyone involved. He continued his work as Karlovic’s assistant, though the Alchemy professor would probably have preferred to let him go. Will hung on to the job, however, since he knew he would need every coin he could gather, and the professor didn’t have the guts to try and fire him outright.

  Likewise, Professor Dulaney continued his private sessions after Spell Theory, and since Will spent most of his free time practicing in his room, he mastered every lesson between one session and the next. He was capable of managing spells up to the second order within two weeks of returning to his studies, and he made a point of learning the silence spell from Arrogan’s book. He felt confident he would be capable of the unlocking spell within another week or two.

  His first real problem came at the end of his second week after returning to class. He remembered that he still had a piece of armor to pick up from the armor-smith’s shop, but when he attempted to leave through the gate, the guard stepped out to block his path.

  “What’s this?” asked Will.

  “I’m afraid you aren’t allowed to leave the campus grounds,” cautioned the guard. “Chancellor’s orders.”

  Will frowned. “I’m not under arrest. I’ve been charged with no crime.”

  The man was sweating nervously in his mail hauberk. Is he scared of me? He’s armed and armored and I’m not even carrying a weapon. “If you try to leave, I’ll be forced to—”

  “Do you honestly think you could stop me?” asked Will curiously.

  The guard’s eyes went wide. “Are you threatening me?” His hand was on his sword now.

  Will held up his hands. “No. I’m asking a simple question. You’re wearing mail and pa
dding, plus you’re at least ten years older. I could just run around you. The gate’s pretty wide. I doubt you could catch up.”

  The guard glared at him, his fear beginning to fade. “As I was saying, if you leave, I’ll be forced to report it to the proctors. The chancellor has ordered us to ensure you stay on college grounds, for your own safety. I’m not sure what he’ll do if you disobey him.”

  “All right,” said Will, retracing his steps. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous. I used to be in the army, you know. I have a lot of respect for men who are just trying to do their jobs and keep order.”

  The guard didn’t say anything as he walked away. On the way back, he considered his problem. If he’d still had friends, he would have simply asked one of them to make the trip for him, but he didn’t think that was currently an option. Not unless he was willing to resort to intimidating people.

  Shaking his head in disgust, he returned to his room and resumed his new favorite activity, practicing his spellcraft. The lessons Professor Dulaney gave him weren’t particularly interesting. All the spells involved practical tasks needed for artificers, etching turyn-sensitive runes in objects, polishing metal, annealing steel, or increasing the hardness of alloys. The only spell he’d found remotely useful for him in the present was one that sharpened knives, but he’d already taken care of the maintenance on his sword the old-fashioned way by the time he learned it.

  The one thing the spells did do for him, however, was improve his precision and skill, helping him to gain the experience he needed to attempt ever more complex spell constructs.

  Back in his room, Will summoned Arrogan’s Practical Magic and resumed his work on mastering the unlocking spell. After a few hours of that, he grew tired and examined his ring. Two weeks without meaningful conversation had left him feeling lonely, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to face the ring’s harsh criticism.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “That’s a stupid question, as usual,” responded the ring.

  Will smiled, feeling grateful for the ring’s rough response. I really am losing it. I’m starting to like abuse, he thought. “I survived the duel,” he informed his inanimate partner.

  “I already knew that, oh master of the obvious. How is it working out for you? Never mind. I just remembered—I don’t give a damn.”

  “Not so well,” he admitted. “I wasn’t expelled, but they won’t let me leave the grounds and no one will talk to me anymore.”

  “Ah, to be so lucky,” sighed the ring.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have this idiot who talks to me incessantly,” explained the ring. “I’d kill to have your problem.”

  “Killing is what got me this problem.”

  “And I warned you, didn’t I?” replied the ring sourly.

  “Besides,” said Will. “I’m starting to go crazy without anyone to talk to. Don’t you get bored being trapped in there without any conversation?”

  “I don’t experience time,” said the ring.

  “Huh?”

  “Listen, dumbass, don’t you think it would be exceptionally cruel to trap an intelligent mind in an object and then force it to wait in darkness and isolation for days or weeks? Even Aislinn isn’t that cruel. The magic is such that I basically cease to exist when you aren’t talking to me. You should do more of that, by the way.”

  “Oh.” Now that he thought about it, it made sense.

  “So, what did you want?”

  “Conversation,” said Will. “I’m getting lonely.”

  “Fuck me,” swore the ring. “Please melt me down. I can’t take any more of this slow torture.”

  Will laughed. “Maybe you can help me with a problem.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “I already mentioned they won’t let me leave the grounds, and I don’t have any friends to make the trip for me, so—”

  The ring finished his sentence, “You want to sneak out. How original.”

  “Well? Can you help?”

  “You’ve already got Arrogan’s book,” reminded the ring. “Why don’t you look through it? There’s a spell in there for climbing if I remember correctly.”

  “How complex is it?” asked Will.

  “It isn’t too hard.”

  “I mean what order is it,” Will clarified.

  “Order? What the hell does that mean?”

  “And here I thought you held all the knowledge of a master wizard,” Will teased. “They classify spells by their complexity here. Currently I’m able to handle up to second-order spells, but I think I’m close to managing third.”

  “What kind of fussy, ostentatious bullshit are they teaching wizards these days?” exclaimed the ring. “Back in Arrogan’s day you just worked until you could do something. Nobody wasted time classifying spells. You kept at it until you could do what you needed, whether it was complicated or not.”

  “It’s just a way of categorizing—”

  “It’s a load of shit is what it is. Take my advice. Don’t just sneak out. Get out and keep going. If you stay in this place too long, they’ll fill your head with so much crap you might as well cut your own balls off as soon as try to cast a real spell.”

  Will shook his head. “Well, how did they teach spellcraft back in the day? Surely you didn’t take a new apprentice and expect him to start with something like the unlocking spell right away, did you?”

  “Of course not! We started with easy spells, but we didn’t have to make up fancy systems to classify them.”

  “Then what did you call them?”

  “Well, there’s very easy, easy, average, sort of hard, really hard, and please-kill-me-now-since-no-one-should-ever-be-forced-to-try-this-because-it’s-so-fucking-difficult.”

  Will started laughing so hard it took him a minute before he could catch his breath. “All right. I concede. Your system is better.”

  “Damn right it is. What does ‘second order’ even mean?”

  “The silent thief spell in Arrogan’s book is what they consider a second-order spell these days,” explained Will. “The unlocking spell is in the range of third-order, I think.”

  “Then the climbing spell should be no problem. It’s easy, like the silence spell.”

  “I’ll look it up then.”

  “Are we done?” asked the ring hopefully.

  “Yes,” said Will. “And thanks, I feel better now.”

  “You’re making me sick. I’d vomit if I had a mouth—or a stomach.”

  Will was still chuckling as he took out Practical Magic again and began thumbing through the pages. After the unlocking spell came a variety of cleaning spells, some for laundry, others for floors, and one interesting one that was labeled ‘Instant Bath.’ As Dulaney had previously said, it appeared that most wizards did use individual spells to clean specific things. He hoped he would someday be good enough to learn Selene’s masterpiece so he could forego the others. As it stood currently, if he wanted to clean himself, he’d have to disrobe, use one or two spells to clean his clothing, and then a separate spell to bathe himself.

  Even so, he would have killed to have such an ability when he’d been in the army.

  Turning another page, he found the spell the ring had mentioned. It was simply titled, ‘Climbing, for Fun and Profit.’ Will climbed into bed and began to study the page.

  Chapter 17

  Fencing class the next morning followed the same pattern that it had since he’d returned from his injury. Will did exercises to stretch out his body and particularly his thigh, while everyone else avoided him. He hadn’t been up to sparring during the first two weeks, but his body was recovered enough for it now. Even so, no one wanted to engage with him. No surprise there.

  Composition was a disaster. Professor Conrad gave him terrible marks for his latest essay, as usual. The only bright spot was that she said nothing to him in front of the other students, so he was spared from embarrassment.

  History was rather interesting tha
t day, however, as Professor Fontenot got diverted down a tangent during the lecture. “I would like to stress that you must read the historical documents we have with a certain degree of skepticism,” she said.

  “In particular, the birth and death dates of some historically significant wizards are simply impossible. Many of them claimed to have lived for centuries, and while the writings that we have confirm this, it was very likely that the writers of the period simply believed what everyone believed, that it was true.

  “Given our modern understanding, and the dissipation of the myths and ignorance surrounding the use of magic, we know without a doubt that the claims of extreme longevity, or perhaps immortality, were nothing more than a show of smoke and mirrors. Very likely, the wizards of the time wanted to protect themselves by obscuring their most obvious weakness, the fact that magic use shortened their lives. In fact, they may have been desperate to believe their own stories, in order to avoid the very real fear of dying.

  “Further evidence of these deliberate acts of obfuscation can be seen in many of the spells that have been passed down from that time. As many of you know—or should know—if you’ve been paying attention in Spell Theory—we do not include very many ancient spells in our curriculum. The reason for that is very simple. A large number of the spells we have from that time would significantly shorten your life. A select few might kill the person attempting them with the very first cast.

  “In years past, we lost a few students every year when they attempted to ‘rediscover’ the glory of the past, and because of that we keep many historical texts under lock and key now, to protect the foolish and unwary,” she finished. Melinda Fontenot shook her head. “I’ve gotten off topic. Returning to our discussion for today, can someone tell me what started the Terabinian War for Independence?”

  A girl near the front, Heather Nelson, raised her hand. “The Betrayer wanted power and killed his teacher, Valemon.”

  His teacher? thought Will. Valemon was his student, not the other way around.

  Professor Fontenot shook her head. “That’s a popular theory among the less educated, but it ignores the context of the time. The rise of the Prophet and the cult that followed him were definitely factors that led to the split between our nations today, but the underlying pressures of the period were what led to the Prophet’s popularity.