Storm's Apprentice

A pebble from a mountain stream served as my sharpening stone. It wasn’t a real whetstone. Those were the work of skilled crafters who sold them for a price that matched their worth. But my pebble had a tight grain, and it had a bite, and it was about what the ancient rusted sword deserved.

Once I had an edge on the sword I used it to cut the tips of a dry reed, holding the blade across my lap with the reed in my hands. With a properly shaped tip, the reed became a pen, and then I only needed ink.

On the simplest level an ink was made from a pigment, a liquid, and a glue. Scribe Bevin made his inks by burning linseed oil into soot, then mixing the soot with water and powdered pine sap. Burning anseltree oil made the finest soot, and thus the smoothest ink, but I was more limited in my materials. Not only did I not have any oil, or an oil lamp, or any space to work, but my ink would also need to be maja-infused. My pigment at least would need to have a magical source.

The handfful ginsberry tree leaves I’d spilled in my cell a week before had dried out completely. They’d come from the spirit tree, Wild Century, and I was fairly sure they were full of maja.

I started by crushing the dry leaves in my hands, turning them to fine fragments that I dropped into my tin cup.

The sound of the mountain stream was pleasant background for my work.

I was out on the upper terraces of the academy, where the other students didn’t often come, and I had the stretch between the wooded area and the ledge mostly to myself.

I lit a twig from my camp fire and touched the flame to the fragments in the cup.

They went up almost before the flame could spread to the entire pile. I tipped ashes out onto the leather cover of Adventures in Thought to keep them in one place.

I had easy access to water, but finding a binding agent had been harder. Tree sap gum would have been ideal, but I’d realized that the water left over from boiling the oats from my scout’s pack might work as well.

I scooped up some stream water in my cup, sprinkled in some oats, and wedged it in my small fire. I lay back on the grass and waited for it to boil into paste, watching as the smoke from the burning wood drifted up into a gray sky.

I thought back to the book’s riddle as the water boiled.

Two figures crouch face to facae. One knows the other’s mind, the other knows nothing.

Was one of the figures a mindless servant, like the person I’d encountered in the library? But Ba hadn’t been completely mindless. She’d been given instructions to follow, so she couldn’t know nothing.

And how did one figure know the other’s mind? Was that an aspect of Thought aspect maja that Lectuous hadn’t spelled out, or was there another explanation?

It couldn’t be irrelevant that the scene was set by a forest pool. Riddles were so short. They didn’t usually contain unnecessary information. Every line had to be significant.

I tried to imagine the scene. Two figures facing each other. Leaves falling on the pond. What it would be like to stare at someone, face to face, and know their mind completely. It didn’t seem possible, even metaphorically.

Before I knew it, my cup was boiling dry. I had to quickly throw another handful of stream water into it to stop it burning.

I poked at the mixture with a stick until it was a thick, gluey sludge, then I scraped out all of the solid oats and mixed my ashes in with the translucent slime left behind.

From there I slowly mixed in water, grinding it with my stick, until I had a smooth glossy black liquid, with only a little scum floating on the surface.

It wouldn’t get me any credit with Scribe Bevin, in fact he’d have probably disowned me as his apprentice, but I didn’t need it to sell in a city market. All it had to do was flow from a pen and stay fast on paper.

I spread out my last assignment scroll, blank side up. I dipped my pen into the ink, and the reed drank it up. Holding my breath, I sketched a slow, hesitant line. The first line of the Winter Hearth canto.

The ink flowed smoothly from the pen. The cantogram came together, stroke by stroke.

I could feel a prickling in the air as the diagram took shape. The smells of damp earth and dry wood tingled in my nose as Wild Century’s trapped maja started escaping into the air.

Pins and needles danced along my fingers as I drew the pen along the final line. The mark connected. I felt a swell of energy, and instead of fizzling out, the swell only grew.

The light around me dimmed and heat flooded out from the paper.

Within seconds it felt like a second campfire had sprung up in front of me. It was working. I’d scribed my first successful cantogram.

I lifted the paper off the ground and waved it around, experimenting with it and enjoying the novelty.

It felt like I was waving around a burning torch from the heat on my face, except that the diagram dimmed light around it. Looking at it was like looking through a circle of oily smoke, or dark glass. It was a bizarre effect.

While I was waving it around, I caught sight of someone moving across the terrace. They’d come up the ramp, and were hurrying for the trees.

I lowered the paper, staring at them.

It took me a second to realise it was Adrian, my cellmate from the first day, the boy I’d scared away with my first uncontrolled burst of magic.

He’d failed his first assignment. If he failed another he was going to be the first of our group to find out what the failure’s fate really was. I didn’t think he’d even picked his scroll up from the barracks.

I looked down at my camp fire then around at the terrace. I doubted anyone would show up to steal my little cup of ink. I grabbed my bag with all my other valuables and started hiking across the terrace after Adrian.

I lost track of him as he disappeared into the trees, but I caught sight of him a minute later.

He was standing in a makeshift camp of his own. He’d stretched a blanket between three branches to create a shelter, and built a lean-to out of sticks beneath that. From the pile of dry grass underneath, it looked like he’d been sleeping out here.

There was no camp fire. There was no rain barrel. The blanket didn’t look waterproof at all. It had to have been a miserabe place to sleep during the wet weather we’d been having. I’d know. I’d spent a night out in it myself and it’d nearly killed me.

I stood still for half a minute, then started heading towards him.

I wanted to know if he was ready to hear my apology. I wanted to try and convince him to move back to the barracks. If nothing else, I could give him some oat cakes.

He heard me coming when I was still about forty feet away.

He looked up, shocked, then grabbed a crude quarterstaff from where it was wedged against some branches. He held the weapon out towards me with one hand. I could see a rock held in his other. From the look on his face he was ready to throw it at me.

“Stay where you are,” he called.

I came to a stop and put my hand against a tree, ready to duck to the side if he decided to throw the rock.

Closer up, I could see he was in bad shape. His sandy blond hair was dirty, two shades darker from the grease sticking it to his head. His robe was even more rain-marked than mine. There were dark rings under his eyes, and there was a hollowness in his cheeks.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I shouted back.

He lifted the hand with the rock, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it any more.

The movement still forced me to run through what I’d do if he did try and come at me.

I pictured how a fight might go, and I was surprised to realise he didn’t pose me any threat at all.

Adrian was taller than me, stronger than me by far, and he moved like he knew how to fight. He was the kind of man I’d feel an implicit threat from back in Kirkswell. And now he posed no danger to me at all.

If he threw the rock, I could deflect it with a wave of Force almost as quickly as I could raise my hand. If he charged me with the staff, I could knock him down. Even without Force aspect, I could reinforce my body with maja to drown out sensations of pain.

I was barely a sorcerer at all, and I already outclassed a superior fighter who couldn’t use magic.

I was starting to get a new appreciation for how far above everyone the Reeves really stood.

“Have you been living out here?” I asked.

“How did you find me?” he asked back.

“I wasn’t trying to find you,” I said. “I ran into you by accident.”

I could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe me, which I thought was a little paranoid of him.

After a few seconds of silence, I asked, “Are you working on your new assignment?”

“Why would I? I’m not one of you.”

“If you don’t they’re going to punish you.”

He raised his arms in a shrug, still not putting his staff or stone down. “What can they do? I’m already a prisoner.”

“They might kill you,” I said.

It was the worst possible answer I’d come up with to the question of the failure’s fate, but I thought it might get through to him.

“I’ll die sooner or later anyway,” he said. “I won’t fight their enemies. I’d die in my first battle either way.”

It sounded like he’d already given up hope.

“Can I come closer?” I asked. When he didn’t immediately respond, I added, “If you’ve already decided to die, what’s the harm?”

He stared at me for few long breaths, then jammed his staff back against the tree and turned away.

I took that as an invitation and started picking my way towards his camp

The camp wasn’t a well built. It looked like a campsite of desperation. The lean-to was full of holes and looked like it would fall down under a stiff breeze. The blanket strung over it was sagging, only held up by grass stalks used to tie it. The ground was muddy, and there was a cloud of flies buzzing around what had to be a trash pile.

“Have you been out here since you vanished from the barracks?” I asked.

“Since that night,” Adrian said.

“I really am sorry. I didn’t meant to attack you, it was an accident.”

“I know.” Adrian said. He was looking away. “As soon as I stopped panicking, I realized. You looked more shocked than I felt.”

“Then why are you out here?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “It feels cleaner out here. I’m not dependant on them.”

“Have you been eating?”

“What I can catch. What I can forage.”

I didn’t ask what exactly he was catching, or how he was cooking it. I knew some fish could be eaten raw, as well as wild fruit and vegetables. For the sake of my opinion of him I’d assume that was what he meant.

I hesitated for a second, then dropped my pack on a tangle of dry roots. I pulled out my stash of oat cakes, a short stack that was five cakes high, and held it out to him.

“Here,” I said.

He looked at me then at my hand.

“I don’t want to eat their food,” he said.

The look in his eyes conflicted with his words a little. He looked like he was about to snatch them out of my hand.

“It’s not their food any more,” I said. “It’s mine, and I’m giving it to you.”

That was all the excuse he needed. He reached out and took the stack. Most of them went into a nook of his lean-to, but he broke one in half and put one half into his mouth.

“You should come back to the barracks,” I said. “You can live there without endorsing the entire Antorxian empire.”

Adrian shook his head slowly. “I like it out here. It feels cleaner.”

I didn’t have any counterargument for that. If he was basing his decisions on feelings, no amount of logic would change his mind.

“Don’t you get cold?” I tried.

He gave me an unimpressed look.

“Let’s get you a fire started,” I said. I went back to my pack and started looking through it for my fire box. “If you keep it fed, you can keep it going for days.”

He watched me as I searched my bag, found the little metal box, and took out tinder, flint, and a steel striker.

After a minute of watching me grabbing at twigs he took off on a circuit around the camp, picking up bigger pieces of dead wood and piling them next to his sleeping spot.

Within minutes there was a small fire burning in a ring of stones. Adrian crouched next to it warming his hands.

“Thank you.”

I sat with him for a minute, feeling the weight of the silence.

“You should work on your assignment,” I said. “Do you want me to bring it to you?”

Adrian shook his head.

“I feel like my course is set,” he said. “They took me prisoner, and that’s my fate. I won’t become their soldier.”

I still couldn’t come up with an argument that would sway him. We sat in silence for a while.

Eventually, more out of hope than judgement, I asked, “How are you at riddles?”

“Not the best,” he said.

I recited the Lectuous’s riddle from memory.

“In a forest by a pool, two people crouch face to face. One knows the other’s mind, The other knows nothing.”

Adrian was shaking his head before I’d even finished.

“Sounds like nonsense,” he said. “Do you know any jokes instead?”

“How about a limerick?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“I don’t actually know any,” I confessed. “I didn’t really hang around with that type back home.”

Adrian looked off into the distance for a second, then started, “There was a young soldier from Calder, whose head was as big as a boulder. He challenged a knight to an arm wrestle fight and how his arm ends at the shoulder.”

I stared at him in silence.

“Now you do hang around with that type,” he said.

The silence grew, and I suddenly felt awkward.

“I should go,” I said. “I left a project behind at the stream.”

Adrian gestured at the woods, inviting me to leave.

“Thank you for the fire,” he said.

I stood up and dusted dried leaves off my robe.

“I’ll bring you your assignment,” I offered.

“No thank you. I don’t want it.”

His refusal put a knot in my stomach, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

As I walked back to my own small fire, I managed to convince myself that they really were going to kill him.

When I got back to the stream the Winter Hearth cantogram was still going strong, putting out gentle heat, filling the air with what looked like a cloudy miasma but was really just the dimming effect of the magic.

Antonyx hadn’t spoken highly of Wild Century’s power as a spirit, but the ink made from its leaves had to be potent to power the cantogram for so long.

I kicked water over the remains of my fire, slipped the paper with the active Winter Hearth into my robe, and set back off down the mountain, carrying my cup of maja-infused ink carefully all the way.

I tried to think about Lectuous’s riddle as I walked, but I found myself trying to make up limerics for my next meeting with Adrian instead.