Engineered Magic

37 AL: Grandmother

Grandmother sent Ellen, Alex and Todd hunting in the Greenspace. Ellen was surprised by this decision. She expected to stay with Sarah in the gallery. “I will look after her,” Grandmother told Ellen. Ellen told her young sister to be good for Grandmother.

Sarah was surprisingly well behaved. She spent some time chasing the fish with her shadow but she managed not to fall into the water. She settled down with her stylus and a sheet of vellum on the tile beside the pool. Grandmother sat on her sofa when she finished her tasks for the morning.

She watched the young girl tracing the pattern of the pond tiles onto her sheet of vellum. Once again Grandmother was reminded of magic in its precision and repetition. Memory stirred and this time a bit of conversation overhead long ago rose up to the level of conscious thought.

“They could be some kind of enchantment.” Grandmother heard those words echo in her memory. She thought about it now and wondered if it was true. Control watched for symbols and direction. It would be simple for it to read symbols inscribed in an object. There would be safeties put into place. Only certain sets of symbols in predefined patterns would work. Their effects would already be defined.

The fact that in all these years no one figured out how to enchant an item hinted at it not being possible. Actually she didn’t know if no one figured it out. She only knew that no one told her about it. Her recent discovery of the presence of green wizards among the crafters made her realize there was a whole segment of the human population that she knew very little about.

The stylus in Sarah’s hand hinted at it being possible. The stylus was integrated. They were available at the general store vendors and were occasionally found in room debris. Everyone used them for writing. The group forming board at the square probably had a stylus attached to it on a string. Control seemed to exist in a world of numbers and icons. It was unlikely it would provide the stylus just for writing messages.

There were plenty of inscriptions Grandmother never deciphered. There were also a lot of other symbols in the structure which she long since decided were just decor. The tiles on the bottom of the pool that Sarah was sketching were a good example of that. Grandmother leaned forward and studied Sarah’s drawing.

It looked like the zero symbol intermixed with twos and threes. Two was the force tree, while three was ice. Although ice was a simplification. Grandmother found that sometimes it referred to temperature and other times it referred to water. Considering it was on the bottom of a pool, Grandmother thought it could mean something like ‘hold water’. She remembered the water draining back into the pond after Sarah got out last night. Maybe it meant ‘gather water’, Grandmother thought. If that was enchanted on a container would the container automatically refill with water? That would be useful. The farther down into the structure you went the harder it was to find water.

All spell work began with a start signal. Since an enchanter would be holding the stylus it could be the same start signal used to imbue a weapon. The enchanter could flex their hold on the stylus for each symbol. The finish signal could be as simple as setting the stylus down.

That idea didn’t seem right to her. It seemed very clumsy to try and hold a stylus with every finger in order to signal the higher numbers. Perhaps the drawn symbol was enough, Grandmother mused. The hand signs were made to tell Control what the caster wanted. The written version could do the same. If the symbol for zero was enough, the other symbols for the other values were likely enough too, so no need to flex your hold on the stylus. Which brought Grandmother back to the start symbol. The start symbols for warrior skills and wizard skills were related but they weren’t the same.

If the symbols were all written, the start symbol was likely written as well. Grandmother didn’t remember any pattern that was repeated across multiple inscriptions or mosaics. Sarah stopped drawing. She seemed unhappy with the last section she drew. She flipped the stylus and lightly ran the back end across the line in question. It disappeared. Sarah inspected the remaining drawing and was still unhappy. She pressed the end of the pen onto the vellum and waited. The ink streamed across the vellum and disappeared into the end of the stylus.

Was it as simple as that? Grandmother wondered. Could the finish move be not setting the pen down but erasing the start symbol? With an arrangement like that an enchanter could work on the same piece for multiple days. The downside was it would mean the start symbol itself was hidden.

Grandmother thought about the casting start symbol. It was the start symbol she was the most familiar with. It was deceptively simple. Spread your fingers and make a fist. For years she thought of the signal as five-zero. The largest number followed by the smallest. But it really wasn’t the largest number. That was six. The start symbol for a weapon skill was to flex all your fingers in order, then once all together. Maybe both start symbols were a way to say this is what I am going to use to signal with. In that case the start symbol for enchanting would need to include all the symbols that were going to be used. That way an enchanter would not be bound to a single symbol set.

Grandmother always rolled her right hand fingers to the left into the fist but she knew that was not required. She picked up that leftward roll from that same overhead conversation in the officer’s restroom. What did the long ago officer say? Grandmother thought.

“It was a leftward spiral of color…” He was talking about a complex inscription Command was trying to translate into language. Grandmother wondered if anyone ever decoded it. She didn’t see it herself. Grandmother knew now that the colors could also be used to depict numbers. The multicolored inscription on the wall in the pool was a perfect example of that.

She didn’t know any magic that required a left spin. Could that leftward spiral be a hint about how to write the starting symbol in an enchantment? The order of the colors could be describing the sequence of symbols to start with. Didn’t he say something about a rainbow effect? The colors of magic could be described as a rainbow. They were in order: yellow, green, blue, violet, red, orange. And white, Grandmother thought, for zero.

If she started with zero and encircled that with the symbols for one through six would that be a leftward spiral? Actually she should reverse the order. She could start with six, then circle around ending with a zero in the center. She really wished she saw that inscription, maybe it was still in the records.

Sarah erased her drawing again. Shaking herself from her thoughts, Grandmother focused her attention on the young girl. Grandmother thought she was too old to be learning a new kind of magic but here was a young person who already liked to draw. Would she be interested?

“Sarah,” Grandmother called, “Do you know your letters?”

“Yes,” Sarah responded with pride in her voice.

“Can you write them for me?” Grandmother asked. The girl wrote down the alphabet. It was mostly lowercase but there were a few capital letters mixed in. A few questions and hints later and Sarah was able to produce a full set of both lower and uppercase letters and say what sound each symbol represented. Grandmother moved on to words. She called out a series of one, two and three letter words and asked Sarah to transcribe them.

“You is spelled y-o-u, not just the single letter u,” Grandmother told Sarah.

“Why?” Sarah asked. “It sounds the same.”

“Because our ancestors spelled it that way,” Grandmother said to the child. “We honor their memory and the sacrifices they made to get us here by remembering their words.” She didn’t want to burden the girl with the long history of the evolution of language and how words and spellings drifted over time.

“Oh,” the girl responded. She seemed to consider that. Slowly she added the y and an o to the u on her vellum. On the whole, Grandmother was impressed with the girl's knowledge of writing. Her math skills on the other hand seemed very lacking.

Sarah could count to ten but her grasp of higher numbers was sketchy, along with addition and subtraction. Grandmother asked, “If you have three apples and I gave you two more. How many apples would you have now?”

“A lot,” Sarah replied.

“Five,” Grandmother told her. Holding her fingers up to match her words, she said, “Three plus two is five.”

“Oh,” the girl responded. Grandmother decided that was the girl's standard response when she learned something new. Grandmother gave her a quick lesson on addition, keeping all the numbers under ten.

Sarah was a quick learner and if not interested at least respectful enough to listen. Grandmother kept the lesson short. Grandmother was often horrified by how much human knowledge was lost. Other times she was impressed by how much was passed on to the next generation.

She switched to a subject she thought the girl would be more interested in. “Have you thought about what color you would like your magic to be?” Grandmother asked.

“I have some questions,” Sarah said tentatively.

“Go ahead,” Grandmother told her, “and ask them.”

“What color wizards can heal a green crafter?” Sarah asked.

“A blue wizard and probably a yellow one can heal a green crafter without the enslavement problem,” Grandmother explained.

“Why only probably?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t want to lie to you child. I have met very few yellow wizards in my life and none of them were healers,” Grandmother answered. “It follows the pattern. A yellow wizard should be healed by someone with green or orange magic.”

“That seems good to me,” the girl said. “Them being rare makes it better.”

“Yellow wizards?”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. She leaned in close to the older woman and lowered her voice, even though the two of them were alone in the gallery. “Todd and Alex are afraid a wizard will enslave them. If there aren’t any yellow wizards I won’t have to worry.” Grandmother was impressed by the insight in that observation. There were dangers in being the rare wizard too. Grandmother remembered a time when a group of blue and red warriors tried to imprison her, so she could serve as their personal healer.

“So you want to try for yellow?” Grandmother asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Sarah responded.

“Well, talk it over with your sister,” Grandmother recommended. “If you still want to try for yellow after that I will help you.” Sarah was visibly excited. She got to her feet and danced around.

That evening as they relaxed around the pool after the meal. Sarah fell asleep and Ellen carried her to a nearby sofa. When Ellen returned Todd asked, “Is there no skill in wizardry?”

“There is skill,” Grandmother replied. “It just isn’t what you think it is. There is a small amount of skill and dexterity in being able to make the required sign quickly and precisely but the real skill is in knowing what to cast. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of spells. How can I say this?” Grandmother said as she struggled to explain, “I know of a lot more than I learned. You can only actively remember a limited number. You need to make sure those spells are ones that work well with how you fight. I recommend you learn all the tier zero spells, they are easy to learn and easy to remember. After that you need to work with them until you decide which works best for you. Use that experience to pick your tier one spells more carefully.”

“Can’t you just tell us which is best?” Alex asked.

“No,” Grandmother replied. “What works best for me might not work for you at all. I will give you advice but you will have to decide for yourself.”

“Do you have any advice on Sarah wanting to be a yellow wizard?” Ellen asked.

“I listened to her reasons and they seemed good to me,” Grandmother responded. “I believe that if we had a more varied allotment of wizards and warriors our society could become more balanced.”

“What does she need to do?” Ellen asked.

“We can all go hunting in the morning. I will instruct her in how to cast fear so she will benefit from the bonus of having an instructor. If she learns it, we can test her on the crystal and see if she turns it yellow,” Grandmother explained.

“All right,” Ellen said.

“What do you know about enchanting?” Grandmother asked, changing the subject.

“Enchanting?” Ellen replied, stumbling slightly over the word. “What is that?”

“It is a way to cast a spell onto an object, giving it a magical property,” Grandmother replied. “I heard it proposed once. Sarah’s drawing reminded me of it. I thought she might be suited for the craft. It is a field of magic I know little about. I thought as a crafter you might have learned more.”

“Do you mean like how a gathering bag preserves its contents?” Ellen asked.

“Sort of,” Grandmother responded. “Gathering bags are integrated products. Their ability to preserve contents is a magical property but every bag has it. Enchantment would allow unique properties to be added to items. For instance an integrated water flask keeps its contents clean. An enchantment might also keep the water cool or allow the flask to automatically refill over time,” Grandmother said, putting her earlier thoughts about the pool mosaics into words.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Ellen said. Todd was also shaking his head. Grandmother looked over at Alex. The young warrior was sharpening his long sword. She wasn’t sure he was listening to the conversation. He looked up and saw that she was looking at him.

“When I was young my Gran told a story about a wizard that owned a cloak of invisibility. He used it to spy on his enemies and his own people,” Alex offered. Alex’s grandparents were probably first generation. That meant this story of an invisibility cloak could have come straight out of Earth fiction. Grandmother could almost remember reading a book that contained something like that in it when she was a child.

“What was the wizard’s name?” Grandmother asked. She thought more information might help her remember the book.

“His name was Darien. He lived far to the north and was one of the founders of Chicago,” Alex replied. That wasn’t a story, Grandmother thought, that was history. She wondered if Darien really owned a cloak of invisibility. He managed to stay in power longer than most who didn’t heal. This story could be an attempt to explain that. She would have to think about it. Grandmother always thought that Darien’s success was due to a different kind of magic, namely charisma and networking. Still if he figured out enchanting that would indicate that inscriptions in that area might contain hints to how it was done.

“Where is your Gran now?” she asked Alex.

“She went on an expedition to the south when I was about Sarah’s age,” Alex replied. He left unspoken the fact that she did not return. If Alex’s Gran left to go south less than a decade ago, she was one of the last of the first generation. To have survived that long in the structure she would have been at least tier four if not five. Grandmother wondered what event led to the formation of an expedition going south.