Steel And Flame (Book 1) (53 page)

“I don’t know,” Tollaf replied honestly.  “If you have
good information or an object connected with him, I’ll have a better than
average chance. 
But
,” he said, becoming stern, “I won’t even bother if
you don’t!”

A good chance for a lead.  Hells, probably his only
chance at all.

“All right, old man.  If you aren’t talking out your
hind quarters, I can go along with that.”

“Good.  Starting tomorrow, I’ll be expecting respect
out of you!”

“Huh!  I never said I’d go that far!”

Dietrik shared breakfast with Marik, the morning’s
repast being fresh bread and a thick ham steak.  Luiez carefully selected the
best meat cuts or the plumpest rolls for Marik during his recovery, despite
never acknowledging that he did so.  Marik gratefully accepted the preferential
treatment unless his plate received a larger scoop of the noodle dish that
never improved no matter how often he ate it.  He was at a loss to understand
why, seeing as he liked the dish’s ingredients unless they all kept each other
company at the same time.

“Will you have any free time today, mate?”

“I don’t know.  What’s going on?”

“That new boy Knox has a wager with Kerwin.”

“Everyone wagers with Kerwin.  What’s so special about
this one?”

“They’re going to see who can stay fighting in the
snow in their smallclothes the longest.  Landon and I have a side bet on which
comes away with the most frostbite.”

Marik frowned.  “There’s no snow out there.  The last
flurry melted before it ever hit the ground.”

“It’s a Temperature Reality scheduled for the benefit
of this year’s D Classes.  I guess you won’t be involved with that.”

“No,” Marik replied with a scowl.  “I’m sure Yoseph
will handle it.”

“Oh, is that still bothering you?  I would have
thought you’d gotten over that.”

“I’m never going to be happy with magic.”

“So how are you going to work any spells with your
back hairs crawling up your spine?”

“I’m past that now.  The old man says all that
uneasiness and tingling and itching was my latent talent reacting to the magic
in the training areas, and it’ll leave me alone from here on, for the most
part. 
I
say it’s just good sense, but I have to admit my body doesn’t
react the way it used to.”

“Good!  I always thought you were overly paranoid
about it all in the first place.  So does that mean you’ll come to the exercise?”

“If I can,” Marik wavered.  “I have to put in my time
at the Tower today.”

“I’ll save you a good spot to watch from.”

“Thanks.”

Marik left the barracks after breakfast, seeing
Caresse leave the mages’ building when he drew near.  Of the six other magic
users currently employed by the band, only half chose to quarter in the Tower. 
Tollaf would have lived in his workrooms anyway, and the two female magic
users, Caresse and Lynn, took their rooms there to be away from the men in the
barracks.  The remaining mages, Yoseph, Ian and Jeremy, lived with their
respective squads.  All the men were assigned to specialist squads, each having
joined the band in the midst of a fighting season.

Of the magic users, only Caresse, like Marik, had been
discovered to possess unknown talents after joining the band.  Unlike Marik,
she seemed very much pleased with them.

She walked toward the officers’ quarters for
breakfast, nodding at him with a grin when she passed.  Being unaffiliated with
a specific squad, the officers allowed her to share their dining facilities
along with Tollaf and Lynn.

As usual, he found Tollaf in a workroom, this time
intent on a jeweled brooch.  The old man studied it through a jeweler’s loupe
and made clucking noises with his tongue.

“Finally decided to take up a sensible trade?”

“I was wondering how many of these it would take to
buy silence from you for a single day.”  Tollaf put the expensive looking
accessory down atop the table.  “I rather doubt I could find that many,
though.  Sit down, I have a lesson for you.”

“You always have a lesson.”

“This one is important.”

“You say they’re all important.”

“They are, so be silent for two moments and listen!”

“Wait a moment,” Marik said, holding up his hand.  “Is
Yoseph doing one of those workings out in the training areas this afternoon?”

“No, I’m having Caresse do it today.  Why?”

“I wanted to go over there.”

“Good.  Watch what she does with your magesight.”

“Yeah, right.”

“That’s a good place to start this lesson.  You can
see how the energies are different when Caresse is using them than with me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m a mage and she’s a wizard.  Or wizardess,
to be technical.”

“What’s the difference?”

“That’s today’s lesson.  But Marik, listen closely to
all of this for once.  This is important and you need to know it before you go
out onto a battlefield with other magic users.”  He watched solemnly until
Marik nodded.  “Good.  Because if you don’t I’ll make sure Torrance locks you
up in the holding cells!”

“Get on with it, old man!”  His mood always soured
considerably whenever Tollaf started his interminable lecturing.  He could be
practicing his swordwork right now!

“First thing is this, there are many different types
of magic and magic users.  People always refer to a collective group as ‘mages’,
but any group is rarely ever
just
mages, or any other one specific type.

“Some people say there are four types of primary magic
users and others say five.  I’ll let you decide whichever you like because it
doesn’t matter.  I want to give you a simplified explanation of each.  We can
expand on them in greater detail later.  The first type is like us, mages.  We
can see and draw directly on the energies of the etheric plane from the mass
diffusion or from the lines.  The knots, too, if we were strong enough.  Once
we have the energy, we can shape it for use on the physical plane.”

“And how long before I can use it for scrying?”

“Keep practicing and we’ll get there one of these
years.  The second type of magic user is a magician, which is what you ran into
up north.”

Marik frowned at the memory.

“A magician doesn’t use the same type of energy we do,
because he can’t.  Magician talent and mage talent don’t work the same way.  A
magician draws on the astral forms of physical objects.  He can use single forms
for simple spells, or mix different forms together for complex magic.  Then he
pulls the astral form into the physical plane from the astral plane where it
becomes his spell.  Magicians always need an abundant supply of spell
components because ripping the astral form away and forcing it into a new shape
destroys the physical object it started from.”

“I always thought a magic user was a magic user, and
the different names didn’t matter.  These magicians sound like alchemists
mixing things together.”

“Except an alchemist is mixing the physical properties
while the magician is mixing the astral.  You won’t find any magicians or
alchemists who think much of the other.”

“Why?  Are they always fighting each other over
supplies?”

“There’s a greater number of alchemists than
magicians, but that’s about right.  See, you can
think when you try. 
The third type is a sorcerer.  His talent lets him open pathways to other
planes and bring through spirits and devils.  He uses chants to keep his mind
focused and diagrams of power to restrain the beings he summons.  Once they are
restrained, they can be forced to the sorcerer’s will.  This is a very
dangerous talent because if anything goes wrong, a devil can break free and
cause all sorts of havoc.”

“Not to mention if it doesn’t!  Think of meeting one
on a battlefield!”

“That’s the other side of the coin.  The fourth type
is a geomancer, like Jeremy.  They are very well suited to battle.  They draw
on the astral and etheric properties of pure elements.”

“You mean like a magician?  I don’t see how that’s any
different.”

“No, they use astral forms.  Geomancers draw on the
pure essence of an element, such as fire or water, and bring it into the
physical plane.  They might use an actual element, like the ground or a river,
or they can form alliances with elemental spirits, who will then use their own
power in service to the geomancer.  Most of what they can do is ‘big effect’
magic that is only useful as offensive spells.”

“So the fifth type are the wizards?”

“No, the fifth type would be a priest.”

“You said there were only five.  No, four!”

“I said there were four or five
primary
types. 
Pay attention!  The reason priests are often discounted is that their powers
are not their own.  They receive their powers from their deity in exchange for
their faith.  Depending on who you’re worshipping, you can be blessed with
different powers.  You’re lucky the two priests who worked on you worshipped a
god who granted them Healing abilities.”

Marik blanched.  The rare magic user running around
loose in the world was terrible enough, but the idea that any scruffy ruffian
could suddenly unleash chaos and mayhem on a cataclysmic scale horrified him. 
“You mean
anyone
can get these powers just by changing their religion? 
I thought healing priests had to be gifted Healers in the first place!”

“Not at all!  Only the truly faithful are ever blessed
so, and most deities only grant power to the topmost ranks of their clergy. 
You can see why many don’t count them as being true magic users.”

Tollaf’s denial did nothing to sooth him.  Marik
forced himself to appear calm.  “Then where do the wizards fit into all of
this?”

“You were born with one talent, for magecraft.  Yours
isn’t the strongest I’ve seen, but it’s hardly weak.  Many are born with two
different talents.  For everyone born with a reasonably firm talent, you can
count on a different person having two weaker ones.  A wizard is a person with
the talents for both magecraft and geomancy.  Caresse could have trained solely
as a mage, yet even if she had excelled at it, she would always be far weaker
than I.  By training in
both
talents and combining them together, she
can practice as a wizard and be much closer to my level of strength in magic.

“What’s more, by merging her different talents, hybrid
spells can be created that are impossible for either a mage or a geomancer to
cast, and so are unique to wizardry.  There are many secondary types of magic
users depending on how the talents combine, and I don’t feel like getting into
them all today.  To name a few though, you have witches, enchanters, and
wizards.”  He ticked off each on his fingers as he spoke.

“And hedge-wizards.  Don’t forget those bastards.”

“A hedge-wizard is merely an untrained magic user of
any class.  It’s not a true type and fairly weak.  Sort of like you at the
moment.”

“I don’t know about that.  With nobody telling them
how to do things properly, I’m sure a few have come up with some bizarre spells
during their experiments.”

“Possibly.”  Tollaf nodded in acknowledgment.  “Many of
the most interesting discoveries in magic come about because nobody told the
discoverer that it couldn’t be done.”

“Exactly.  And there’s no damned way
I’ll
ever
underestimate one of those bastards again!”

“The ones you should never underestimate aren’t the
hedge-wizards.  They’re petty and weak.  No, the ones you need to be careful of
are the harvesters.”

“What type is that?”

“They’re not a type, or at least not a different one. 
You could simply call them ‘dark’ mages.”  Tollaf rubbed his forehead slightly
in unease.  “Each discipline of magic produces less savory types, but ours tend
to overshadow the others.  Perhaps because the source of our power is much
simpler and more insidious.  You know a mage draws on etheric energy, and you
know etheric energy is produced by the excess life energy created by living
things.”

“Yes.  And?”

“And so a harvester is a mage so depraved he’s willing
to go too far.  Anyone who practices the harvesting ways is power hungry in the
first place.  Most of them can’t draw on the knots and go mad knowing how close
they are to such power without being able to touch it.  They aren’t satisfied
drawing from the lines even though there are few workings that require the
enormous energy of a knot.

“So he draws from people, mostly.  He doesn’t want to
wait for the extra energy to bleed off naturally; he wants the entire load. 
When a person dies, especially young persons, all their life energy is wrenched
away at once and flows into the ether.  A harvester can capture the freed
energy and use it, because it hasn’t joined a line yet and become wild.  Go ask
the fighters in your unit who have been around the longest about battlefields. 
If they came across the same field a year later, they’ll tell you how vibrant
the growth and plant life was.  All that energy settling into the ground from
the dead fighters saturates it with life force.”

“I’ve heard stories about witches and warlocks
sacrificing people on pagan altars.  Is that what that’s all about?”

“Mostly, yes, but they’d be harvesters, not true
witches.  Actually, a person would be lucky for a quick death from a
harvester.  The body creates life energy to stay alive and keep itself
healthy.  When it’s injured or in immanent peril, it increases the production,
like when your heart is racing from fear or excitement.  Falling into the hands
of a harvester means being tortured without mercy.  It maximizes the production
of energy while the body tries to repair the damage.”