Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (18 page)

“So what you are saying is that you reshaped yourself
into the form you have now. You are physically weak but do not require much
aether to keep yourself alive?” Brannis asked, intrigued by this more than he
expected, and less horrified, though he realized he probably should be.

“Yes and no. This form is essentially my body from my
younger days. By the time I was able to harness immortality, I was well along
in summers, and despite my excellent age control, I was feeling the age of a
non-sorcerer nearing fifty summers. I look, as best as I could recall, as I did
just as I entered Imperial service. And as to the other half of your question,
I could break your neck with hardly an effort. Strength is relative. If I had
crafted a body the size of an ogre, I ought to be able to crush boulders in my
fists and stave in castle walls. Why bother with that, though, when through
aether I can accomplish all that and more, without the nuisance of looking like
a monster.”

Brannis sat back in his saddle. He noticed he had been
leaning in, rapt attention on every word Rashan had spoken, but he needed to
digest this information. He had only seen the aftermath at the fortress, a
result of angering this diminutive demon who had apparently once subdued half
the continent through force of arms, but it was difficult to reconcile with the
pale, frail, wispy young woodsman who sat atop the horse next to his.

Chapter 12 - Masterless Apprentice

Kyrus stared into the bluish glow lighting the lantern
on his desk. It was a gentle, pleasing light, soothing and comforting, despite
its other-worldliness. He had been practicing at length—hours a night—and had
made progress in modifying the light to suit his desire. A bit of a change of
inflection and he could adjust the brightness or the hue. Subtle changes to the
way he moved his fingers could make it last longer or shorter, how close to him
it formed, and whether it would stay fixed in space or follow an object as if
attached to it. He was feeling rather proficient at it; everything seemed
familiar once he tried it, and it came almost naturally to him.

Regarding his latest experiment, he scribbled some
notes about how he had managed to light the lantern just so. He had already
managed to get it in shades of white, yellow, and orange. Blue was the first
one he had tried that had made it a color that he had never seen in a fireplace.
As he finished his notations, he let his senses drift into that other place,
where the aether was visible, and mentally tugged at the light. It went dark,
as if a candle had been blown out.

He had been quite relieved to discover that trick,
since as he performed the ritual more and more precisely, it tended to last
much longer of its own accord. The previous night, he had left one aglow to see
how long it might last and had fallen asleep before it so much as dimmed. It
had been unchanged in the morning, and he had felt better snuffing it out lest
anyone discover it, preferring caution over curiosity. Still, one day, he ought
to figure out the limits of this magic, and to do so would require someplace
more discreet than a scrivener’s shop on a city street.

By the light of a normal lamp, Kyrus gathered up his
night’s notes in a neat pile and set them in a drawer, along with notes from
his previous few nights’ work. Sooner or later, he thought, he would have to
get them bound up, lest they become disorderly. A whole new world was opening
up to him, he could feel, and he did not want to miss any part of it.

Kyrus went to bed determined to peer into that other
world he saw so often but remembered so little from. Things had been getting
easier to recall, though, the more he practiced with the lights. Something
familiar to that world was making the connections to the rest that much easier.
There were things there he wanted to see, to learn, to understand. There was
more to magic than simple tricks of light;
that
he was certain of. It
would be akin to learning a language by watching children play: haphazard,
unfocused, and never certain of a correct example, but until he discovered a
better way, he would watch and study.

If he were to dream instead of Abbiley, that would not
be so bad, either. Alas, he saw naught but the same magical world, same as
ever.

*
* * * * * * *

The morning’s work seemed interminable. Kyrus
scribbled his way through one page after another of the new bylaws passed by
the Shipping Guild. He had finished two copies already and was midway through a
third. Eight had been commissioned by Expert Harone, enough copies to allow
each of his shipping masters to keep a copy. While he appreciated that Expert
Harone had gone the traditional route, rather than bring such a repetitive
tasks to the typesetters who specialized in such jobs, he was growing weary of
it. The saving grace was that the shippers were not going to be as picky about
the niceties of penmanship as some of Kyrus’s other clients; they just wanted
accurate, legible copies of the document distributed among their membership.

And Kyrus was in a rush. He had woken up with a fresh
memory of another bit of magic to try. He had seen and heard it quite clearly,
across from a campfire: an incantation to lift and move small objects about.

“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora.”

That was how it went, and the one who spoke those
nonsensical words had also gestured at the same time. He had started with his
hands out at his sides, then brought them together as if to clasp them, but at
the last moment turned and lifted them instead, and the subject of his spell
lifted off the ground a foot or so. After that, he had seemed to be able to
control the movement of the objects—in this particular case the remnants of the
campfire-cooked dinner—but Kyrus could not see how he had managed that. He
could not wait to try, and to figure it out.

As Kyrus’s hand flew across the pages of the shippers’
bylaws, he could not help but notice that there were things written within it
that he likely should not know. There were all the usual mundane procedural
rules and whatnot, but couched within the otherwise trite old standbys were a
number of rules they had set up, whereby they regulated the trade of the city
and much of the kingdom. There were rates set within it that could not be
undercut by any of the members, though they were free to charge more should
they be able to get more money from a customer, keeping the prices higher than
if they were at each other’s throats for business. There were lists of
contraband items that could not be transported, but there were also notable
listed exceptions for those with certain paperwork, signed by the proper
officials, and who those officials were. There were lists of nations and their
various tariffs, and brief lists of what they considered contraband in their
own lands. It listed what nations were lax about enforcing these restrictions,
and which were not. There was a notation about two nations, the Empire of Sak
Qual and the island kingdom of Silk Waves, which only allowed their people to
travel under certain restriction and with official permission. All told, it was
not just the rules of the tradesmen, but an insight—albeit a commercial and
nautical one—into the wider world beyond Acardia.

As the day wore on, Kyrus scribbled away relentlessly
to get through the shippers’ commission. He was making more mistakes than
usual, he knew, and was probably making it take longer than if he slowed down
and did a more careful job, but he was unable to contain his excitement. He
crumpled yet another sheet, walked across the room to the stove, and tossed it
into the fire.

*
* * * * * * *

When finally he penned the last line of the last
letter of the last sheet of the last copy of the shippers’ bylaws, Kyrus let
out a deep sigh. He would take them to the binder in the morning—a simple,
inelegant job, just enough to hold the sheets together—but for now he was done.
He set aside the eight stacks of paper and opened the drawer that contained his
latest notes from his dreams.

He gathered them up and took a quick stop in the
kitchen. He opened a drawer containing various culinary implements and selected
a single spoon. Satisfied, he headed up to his bedroom, notes and spoon in
hand. Ash, not usually the curious type, nevertheless followed him up the
stairs, padding along silently behind.

Kyrus laid his notes out on the little desk by the
bedside and sat down in the small, worn wooden chair. Scratched out hastily in
the foggy aftereffects of slumber, the notes were something of a puzzle in and
of themselves. The first part of Kyrus’s experimentation would be deciphering
his own notes. Normally, if he had jotted something down in haste, he would
have taken clues from the context to help him unravel the meaning of the words
and identify wayward and misbegotten letters. These notes were different,
though; they included a lot of nonsense, and intentionally so. The words Kyrus
needed to remember were words that were not spoken in Acardia, or any part of
Tellurak that he was aware of, and he suspected they might not be spoken in any
land he had ever heard of.

Kyrus eventually decided that he would have to rewrite
his notes as he went along. After some time and a trip back downstairs to
retrieve a quill, ink, and more paper, he set about trying to figure out the
mysteries of the universe. He took a deep breath to calm himself, then went
over and closed and shuttered the windows. He was left with only the light of a
single candle on the desk. He sat down and blew the candle out, and the room
was suddenly pitch dark.

“Aleph kalai abdu.”

A warm yellow glow lighted the room, as if a cheery
fire shone in a hearth, except this light did not flicker as would a fire,
cheery or otherwise. It lit the room fully and effectively, banishing shadows
from all but the farthest reaches under the bed, and certainly removing from
the ambiance any hint of the creepy, macabre, or occult—or so Kyrus hoped.
There was still some part of him that rebelled against the possibility that
this was actually happening, that he was not actually tapping into forces of
unknown origin and moral character. A brightly lit room to work in made it seem
more scientific, like being a chemist, or an astronomer—
No, wait, that does
not work at all; they work nearly exclusively in darkness.
No matter. Kyrus
had felt the rush of cool aether invigorating his mind as a reminder that he
knew this power and had already plumbed its shallowest waters. It was time to
test somewhat deeper waters.

“Baru bedoessi leokl kwatuan gelana.”

Kyrus remembered the accompanying gesture much more
clearly than the gibberish the magician in his dreams had spouted and thus
swept his hands inward and then upward.

Nothing happened. Kyrus had some small hope within him
that it would have worked on the first try, but he was not so fortunate. He
squinted back down at his notes and tried to figure out where he had guessed
wrong at his own writing. He tried also to remember from his dream how
everything had sounded, felt, looked, as the spell came together.

“Baru bedaessi leokl kwatuan gelana.”

Still nothing. Perhaps that first “b” was supposed to
have been an “n”?

“Naru bedaessi leokl kwatuan gelana.”

Again, there was no result. But Kyrus was not easily
deterred. He pored over the letters and phrases, trying to see how his
half-sleeping self had been forming letters by comparing them to words he could
figure out.

Several more attempts later, and …

“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora.”

Success! The spoon on the desk lifted to chin height
and hung there, suspended by aether. In his dream, it appeared that there was
nothing holding up the plates and pans his unwitting mentor had levitated, but
here in the waking world, Kyrus could feel and “see” the aether as it supported
the spoon, with wisp-like tendrils of the magic stuff tethering it to him.
Kyrus stared at it in wonder.

After the initial mesmerizing effects of his newfound
magic passed, Kyrus reached out and gently touched the spoon. It drifted away
from his finger as if it were a toy boat on a still pond. The magic seemed to
be holding it somewhat level in the air at a constant height but did not
prevent it from floating about. Kyrus gave it a bit harder push and could not
help giggling as it bounced off the wall and ricocheted awkwardly back in his
general direction.

Kyrus caught the spoon as it returned, and steadied it
in the air, leaving his hand beneath it. He reached his mind back into the
aether and sucked in what was wrapped around the spoon. Just as it did with his
lights, removing the aether ended the magical effect. The spoon dropped smartly
into the palm of his hand. He clenched it in a fist.

“Ha! I am getting good at this.”

Kyrus beamed. Ash, unnoticed on the bed behind him,
could not disagree. Kyrus turned the spoon over in his hand and examined it. It
seemed unharmed. The wispy tendrils of aether had left no trace on the spoon,
neither of physical nor an aetherial nature—as best as his knowledge of aether
allowed.

Kyrus set the spoon back down gently on the desk and
repeated the incantation. It lifted off the desk, same as before. Kyrus reached
for his quill and a fresh sheet of paper and began writing out the spell
properly. He noted the inflection of each syllable he had used, and began to
write out a detailed description of the gesture but stopped short; he intended
to experiment with the subtleties of the spoken component of the incantation as
well as the motions, and a lengthy longhand accounting was going to be
cumbersome. He needed some quicker symbology for his work.

Kyrus paused a moment to think of what he should start
out with. He held no illusion of coming up with a perfect solution
straightaway. He expected that he would refine his methodology, and that it
would improve along with his newfound mystical talents.

He began to draw a pair of hands, held apart, just as
they would be when the spellcasting began. However, he noticed a problem almost
immediately. Despite his extensive expertise at writing, he was no artist. The
blotchy little squiggles that appeared on the paper more resembled a
glove—discarded and trodden into ill-repair in the gutter of a
thoroughfare—than of a human hand. His sense of perspective was awful, and the
fingers were uneven, differing in length and thickness, with no anatomical
analog to where they seemed to bend. Despite several attempts, he saw no way
that an uninformed observer would ever decipher what motions he was trying to
portray.

Slightly discouraged, Kyrus decided to have a little
fun.

“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora.”

He levitated the pages that held his poor attempts at
documentation, lifting them as easily as he had the spoon. They began to drift
slightly, as even his breath was enough to set them adrift, but he reached out
and steadied them a bit. Then, reaching into the aether, he drew some of the
magic essence into himself. Not using it for any spell, he just refocused it on
the paper. Remembering the heat such an action produced, he was unsurprised
when, before long, the paper smoldered then caught fire. He watched the aether
around the paper lose its grip as paper turned to ash, and ash sprinkled to the
ground, cut loose from the bit still unburnt. Eventually there was nothing left
unburnt, and the aether no longer held anything at all.