Engineered Magic

37 AL: Todd and Ellen

Ellen was on the last watch for the night. She relieved Alex. He fell asleep in moments. Ellen envied him this ability. She found falling back to sleep once she was awake to be really hard. That was why she volunteered for the last watch.

She paced the outer rooms of their suite, checking the hall for any signs of motion. The hall lights darkened sometime during Alex’s watch. Ellen used the light spell to turn them back on. Some of the panels refused to light up but it seemed to her that more worked now then when they turned them on last night. She sat down in the doorway to the room everyone was sleeping in, using the illumination from the hallway to watch for danger.

She pulled her knife and started fingering it. She was thinking about trying to learn imbue fire or maybe ice. She couldn’t believe how much magic she already learned. Grandmother’s lectures emphasized how all magic was the same and that they would all learn a little of every school.

Ellen heard movement in the room with the sleepers. She looked into the darkness behind her. Todd was awake. He sat up and looked at her. Ellen nodded at him, so he would know she was alert and on watch. Instead of settling back down he rose to his feet and made his way carefully from the room. Ellen slid around so she was on the right side of the wall and Todd could pass her. Ellen assumed he was heading to the latrine.

Todd stepped past her and stopped. He sat down next to her, leaning back against the wall in the darkened room. Ellen slid out of the sleeping room a bit so they could talk without waking anyone.

“I can’t sleep,” Todd told her. “I keep thinking of the openness beyond with the snow falling from above.” A shiver ran through the warrior. Ellen was touched that he allowed her to see his fear. Most warriors would never allow it to show.

“Do you remember in the beginning when Grandmother said the journey would be part of the test?” Ellen asked. “Right after Alex told that story about the wizard’s tower in the east?”

“Yeah,” Todd responded.

“That’s how I try to think of it. The journey is a trial to prove I am worthy to learn magic,” Ellen offered. “When we get there a powerful wizard will teach us.”

“That helps, I think,” Todd said, after a few moments of thought.

“Do you know where Alex heard that story about the wizard’s tower?” Ellen asked.

“No,” Todd answered. “Alex came to the guard as a street orphan. I never heard him speak of his past or his family until he told that story about Darien's invisibility cloak. I thought he made the tower up until I saw Grandmother’s reaction to it.”

“There is something out there,” Ellen said. “I am not certain it is a wizard’s tower. There is always a twinkle in Grandmother’s eye when she tells Alex something about it.”

The two of them sat in silence for a few moments. Ellen listened for the sound of animals approaching.

“If Grandmother lives there, doesn’t that technically make it a wizard’s tower regardless of its shape?” Todd observed.

“It would, I guess,” Ellen conceded. “Do you think she lives there?”

“Everyone has a place they call home, even if they don’t visit very often. Grandmother strikes me as someone on their way home,” Todd replied.

“Well that is good news for Alex, I just hope he isn’t disappointed,” Ellen replied.

“What about you?” Todd asked. “If we get to the tower and there is nothing else to learn, will you be disappointed?”

“No,” Ellen replied. “Grandmother has already taught me more about magic than I thought there was to learn and we are mostly still at tier zero.”

“What tier do you think Grandmother is?” Alex asked.

“Tier six,” Ellen replied immediately.

“Six?” Todd questioned. “Does that even exist? She told me the bear spell was tier five. I think that is what she is, tier five.”

“You were just wounded,” Ellen observed, “so that is probably how you missed the column of light. The spell she cast after it was much more powerful than the ones she cast before. I think she was tier five at the beginning but tier six at the end. I have never seen or even heard of how that sofa reacted to her. Although Grandmother tried to be calm about it, I think she was surprised too.”

“Yeah,” Todd responded. “And her presence seems to affect more than just the furniture. When we got here that altar was so worn I didn’t think it would still work. When I went by it just now it looked like someone carved it last week.”

“I think her presence energizes the surroundings. It might be Control’s way of warning the rest of us that a power is near,” Ellen commented.

“How can she be so powerful and no one has ever heard of her?” Todd asked.

“I think we have heard of her. We just don’t recognize Grandmother in the stories.” Ellen explained.

“What do you mean?” Todd asked.

“Do you remember the tales about the mad queen’s daughter?” Ellen asked.

“Which one?” Todd responded.

“The youngest, Irene,” Ellen responded. “My father would tell these funny stories of how she would come into town for a couple days and cause all kinds of trouble before slipping off again.” Todd smiled as he remembered some of those tales. The mad queen’s daughter was known for revealing secrets in the most embarrassing way possible. She would innocently start a sequence of events that would cause someone in power to be revealed as a cheat and liar. There were also stories of her poor trading abilities. A street smart orphan would trick her with a smart trade that would get them started as a crafter.

“Yeah I remember them,” Todd replied.

“My father knew her,” Ellen said. “He told me she wasn’t nearly the bumbling fool the stories depict her as. That she was smart and played the long game.”

“If she wasn’t a fool,” Todd responded, thinking about some of the stories, “what was her motivation?” Ellen leaned back against the wall and sighed. She knew Todd was unlikely to believe this part.

“My father said no one could understand her, because she wasn’t motivated by greed or power. Instead she was kind,” Ellen explained.

“Kind?” Todd questioned.

“The mad queen was her mother. The tyrant was her brother. She couldn’t do anything about them but she could try to soften their effect. She revealed the corruption of the worst officials, getting them removed from their positions. She distributed tools and supplies to the crafters and hunters but she didn’t give those things away. You had to pay for them,” Ellen replied. “What made her different was how she set the value of things. The more precious a thing was to you, the more she would value it. The more care and work you put into a product, the more she would pay you for it. Even if the end product was not that great. That is how poor orphans could trade for the tools to start a craft.” Todd thought about it. Many of the stories ended happily for everyone other than the queen’s daughter.

“My father told me something else, something very few people knew. The queen’s daughter was a wizard. He called her a storm wizard because she called lightning,” Ellen explained. She gave a side glance to Todd. “That is who I think Grandmother is.”

“The mad queen’s youngest daughter?” Todd said with some shock.

“Yes,” Ellen responded.

“If even half of what Grandmother told us about the narrative is true, Control must love her,” Todd commented. “That story she told us, about the death of thousands becoming someone’s backstory, well her backstory beats that one hands down.”

“I imagine she is the hero, the villain and the fool in a lot of people's stories,” Ellen replied. “We need to look past that, to what she really is. I think the people who told those stories didn’t understand how she could not be interested in wealth and power. The result is instead of revealing who she is, the stories conceal her. If you think about it none of those stories ever say why she would only visit for a few days. None of them tell us what her goals were. None of them tell us where she went.”

“Can we trust her?” Todd asked.

“It is a little late to be asking that question,” Ellen responded. “The fact that we are discussing her where she could easily overhear us indicates we already do.” Todd shifted a little uneasily as he thought about Ellen’s observation. He decided she was right. If the mad queen was sleeping in the next room no one would have said a word.

“Her weakness, if she has one, is her unwillingness to rule. When the mad queen finally killed herself, my father told me that his father wanted Irene to take over. She told him that she had seen a lot of bad rulers and didn’t want to become one herself,” Ellen observed.

“She couldn’t have done any worse,” Todd commented.

“That is what my father thought. That story is the reason why he decided to gather a group and step forward to become our leader,” Ellen replied.

“Narrative,” Todd murmured, “or maybe just an indication of how small the world is.”

Grandmother

It stopped snowing in the night. There was about four inches of snow on the ground. The white ground reflected back the light of the winter sun, making the day cheerier than expected. The morning air was cold but not too cold. Grandmother thought it would probably warm to above freezing by noon.

Ellen and Todd both walked with care through the white stuff like it was going to eat them, while Sarah and Alex were playing in it like they saw it every day of their lives. Grandmother was raised on a ship between the stars. She remembered her own mix of fear and wonder the first winter she saw snow. She was envious of Sarah and Alex’s joy but she related to Ellen and Todd more.

Grandmother walked out into the outer courtyard. She looked around at the broken columns and collapsed walls. There was no sign of any human occupation. The last remnants of the carts and repeaters disappeared years ago. The walls with their fallen stones and rusty reinforcements were completely unchanged. The broken sections of wall separating this last courtyard from the grass of the meadow were still marked by hashes of the inscription with its blank regions forming horizontal lines. The last section was covered in vines, hiding the circular panel with its inscribed fist.

She made her way over to the last section, Ellen and Todd followed closely behind her, still wary of the snow. Grandmother climbed up on the fallen stones and cut the vines from the wall with her knife. She tapped out a quick clean spell to clean the panel of the clinging rootlets. She ran her hand over the blank area within the hashes that formed the fist symbol before climbing back down.

“Are those claws?” Todd said. He and Ellen were studying the revealed panel. Grandmother's spell affected more than just the wall. A large circular section of courtyard centered on the wall was now free of snow. The paving stones gleamed. Their light color almost matched the white of the snow.

The loss of snow caused Sarah and Alex to stop playing. They came over to see what was happening.

“Count the fingers,” Ellen commented.

“Five fingers and a thumb,” Todd observed. He turned to Grandmother. “You mentioned this before.”

“Yes,” Grandmother responded. “This is the first training inscription.” She turned and pointed to the sections of wall leading up to this one. “Do you see the lines on the broken wall, with the ends that curl up? That is the symbol for a thrown spell. The closed fist is the zero symbol. Look closely and tell me the value of the symbol it is drawn with.”

Sarah scrambled up the stones and looked at the finely carved symbols of the background and the sections of stone with no markings. “There isn’t any marking on the lines,” she observed. “What is nothing? Zero?” she asked.

“Exactly.” Grandmother said with a smile. “Now see those lines arcing away from the fist. What do you think that indicates?”

“Light!” Sarah responded.

“The inscriptions are easy to figure out if you already know the spell,” Grandmother commented. “Try to remember that when you don’t know the spell.” She waved for the young girl to come down and stand by her. Sarah scrambled down and raced over to Grandmother. Grandmother caught the girl and turned her around to face the light panel. She squatted down next to the girl. “Now,” she said to the girl, “let’s see you turn the panel on.”

The young girl cast the light spell perfectly. All of them received plenty of practice with this spell during the last few days. A ball of light formed just off her thrown hand and impacted in the center of the round panel. The panel flashed with light. Unlike the panels in the halls, the light only held for a few minutes before starting to fade.

“Since this is a training inscription the number of tries needed to learn the spell is greatly reduced,” Grandmother explained. Alex stepped forward and threw a light ball into the panel. The panel was still glowing, now it grew even brighter than after Sarah’s cast. Grandmother was amused when Todd cast next, followed by Ellen. Grandmother admitted to herself that it touched something in her to see their light mingle and build. The round panel was two or three times brighter now than when Sarah first ignited it. Grandmother threw a light spell at it.

The circle flared. It was so bright they all turned their eyes away. When it showed no signs of fading, grandmother squinted her eyes and cast pull light, the panel went dark. She turned to see everyone looking at her with astonishment on their faces.

“What?” she said. “Didn’t I teach you how to turn them off?”

“Umm,” Todd replied, making it clear that was not what shocked him, “no.” Grandmother sighed.

“Well we better cover that now. Maybe the inscription will make it faster but I am not certain. I am pretty sure this one is just light on, not off,” Grandmother commented.

They all took turns learning how to turn the light off. Grandmother would have a different person turn the light on than the one learning to turn it off so the learner didn’t mix spells. She didn’t turn the light on again herself. They all learned the new spell in about three tries. It was the fastest Grandmother ever saw anyone learn a spell.

“I want to wait a couple hours and see if this snow melts. Let's go inside and see if we can find an inscription close to the entrance. I will show you how to use your interface to read it,” Grandmother said when they were done.

They found the training inscription for lightning. It was still where Irene found it all those years ago, just within the central entrance. That was unusual. The inscriptions changed or moved all the time. Although inscriptions did reappear in the same spots over and over. This lightning inscription may have been many different inscriptions or none at all, at different times over the years. Grandmother decided that the fact that it was lightning again now was a lucky sign.