The Hammer Unfalls

1.10 Fair to Middling

⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅

The next morning, with his headache gone and pride swelling, Glim floated through breakfast. On the way to Master Willow’s tower, he pictured the sword in his hands, and tugged on the air to slay invisible foes. When he reached the tower and pulled the rope near the door, it flung open immediately.

“Come with me.”

Master Willow led him not into the garden, but through the antechamber and down a side hall. Glim had to hustle to keep up with the mage. He watched his tutor’s silken robes and neatly combed hair sway before him and stuck out his tongue, twisting his hands in the air as if guiding an invisible sword.

“We’re going to study the polarities a bit deeper. You’ve had plenty of time to mull them over. Today we’ll really drive the point home: how the polarities are orthogonal to each other.”

They walked up a curved marble stairway and emerged into a round room the size of the entire tower. Colored mosaics etched a triangle of interlocking rings on the floor. It reminded him of the circles in the training room at the guard headquarters.

Three silver columns had been embedded in the stone, one at each point of the triangle. Rounded spirals coiled tightly around the top like snakes. The very tips ended as smooth silver spheres.

“Step inside,” Master Willow indicated with a sweep of his hand.

When Glim passed the invisible line between two of the columns, the globes on top emitted tiny wisps of silver light, which disappeared into the air.

Master Willow followed his student inside the triangle. The spheres hummed. Silvery tendrils shimmered from each, wending their way towards each other, until faint lines of white light caught the dust in the air.

They stood, facing each other. Master Willow extended his hand. A puff of snowy air formed from his palm. The sphere behind him pulsed slightly. Master Willow pointed back over his shoulder. “Algidon.” He pointed at the other two columns. “Aeolia. Phyr.”

Keeping his hand in front, Master Willow summoned a jagged shard of ice and caught it in midair. The spheres of algidon and phyr fluttered.

“Creation, and focus,” he said, pointing at the two columns.

He dropped the shard of ice, turned to the side, and conjured a new shard, which he flung at the wall with a flick of his hand. All three spheres lit up briefly.

“Creation, flinging, and focus. Now watch this.” His tutor repeated the same actions. But this time, his hand swept dramatically. The shard of ice erupted from his hand and shattered against the wall with a resounding crack.

The sphere of aeolia hummed loudly. A beam of silvery white light shot from it, illuminating the ceiling with swirls of light that faded.

Master Willow sighed, with a pained look in his face.

“Creation comes easy to us. Focus is a bit more challenging. Flinging is the furthest from our natures. By experimenting in here, you can see the effects of what you re doing. To a limited extent, of course. The spheres don’t know if you’re obscuring or not. They don’t know if you’re plying fringe or not. They don’t know your intent. They simply show us which essentiæ respond. A useful tool, to be sure.”

Master Willow looked down at him sternly. “I’ve just prompted you with a few reminders. Tell me again the four core polarities of plying.”

Glim recalled them more easily this time. “Balanced versus skewed. Obscured versus clear. Centered versus fringe—”

“—central” he interrupted.

“—central versus fringe. And harmonic versus this harmonic.”

“Disharmonic, you whit! Not ‘this harmonic.’”

“Dis-harmonic.”

“You remember what they mean?”

Glim nodded.

“You think so now. We’ll soon see. The toughest part in all of this is that each of these polarities is independent from the others. Balanced vs skewed has nothing to do with obscure vs clear. You can ply balanced yet disharmonic. Obscured yet central. There are some synergies among the polarities, but strictly speaking, they are unrelated to each other. That concept is known as orthogonality.”

“Orth-o-gallety.”

“Close enough. How can I describe it…” Master Willow trailed off, thinking to himself, then snapped his fingers.

“Remember when I said: just because the marble is in the bottom of the bowl doesn’t mean the bowl is balanced?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Which polarity was I speaking of?”

“Central vs fringe.”

“Very good. Plying the fringe is something we all must do from time to time. It goes against the common paths of essentiæ, but isn’t inherently right or wrong. But plying the fringe in an unbalanced way leads to a grim path for the unwary. It takes a special kind of confidence and huge tolerance for risk. Some things cannot be accomplished without pushing outward. But any mage who walks an unbalanced fringe is playing a dangerous game. I don’t recommend it. It’s tricky to do and it’s easy to fail.”

Master Willow stopped pacing and looked directly at Glim. His eyes seemed haunted by some memory. The ghost of tragedy lingered in his gaze.

“Failure is quite horrible. Both for yourself and for others. Therefore most plyers strive to use essentiæ in a central, balanced, clear, and harmonic way. Plying is easiest when it is inherent and cohesive. The less centered your plying becomes, the more you’re on the fringe. The less lore you have to guide you, and the less support you’ll have from others. You’ll be on your own. Balance is quite precarious on the fringe.”

Glim’s hairs rose on his neck as he got the feeling there was something hidden and sinister behind his tutor’s words. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because soon you’ll have to choose. Plying the fringe is seductive. At some point, it will tempt you. You’ll see a path that is just a hair to the side of center, and you’ll want to walk it. Then the next detour takes you just a hair more to the side. Eventually, before you know it, you’ve embraced the fringe at the expense of what came naturally to you at first. This is not necessarily bad in and of itself. Stretching beyond the comfortable is one form of growth. Some mages explore the fringe and specialize in things others do not. But it’s at the expense of commanding the basics, and being vulnerable to common tactics. You have to decide, because it takes many years of study to perfect either central or fringe essentiæ. There isn’t room in one lifetime for both.”

Master Willow held his gaze. “Do you understand?”

In truth, Glim did not understand. He didn’t even want to be here in the first place. He wanted to be doing chores like other kids. Even helping the housemaid Hannah tie up dung lures would be better than this. He didn’t give a rat’s behind whether or not he learned central or fringe plying. None of it mattered to him. But Glim played along as he’d said he would, and nodded.

“This disconnection from each other works the same way for all of the other polarities, and leads to similar decisions. You can ply obscured with the intent of harmony. You can ply unbalanced, but central, with the intent for disharmony. The polarities don’t necessarily rely on each other. Prove you are listening. Give me some other examples.”

Glim shifted his weight from one foot to another. They were still sore from the day before.

“Um, you could ply unbalanced and obscured, but using central essentiæ for the purpose of harmony.”

“Fine. You seem to get the basic idea of orthogonality. But there are tendencies. Central, mostly balanced, harmonic, and semi-clear tend to be the lightest, easiest, most intuitive path. The one most people have to think the least about. Therefore, easier for most to excel within.”

“So that’s the best choice?”

Master Willow uttered a laugh that sounded like the barking of a hinterjack. “Would that it were so simple. There is power that comes with ease. Another kind of power comes from struggle. Most mages more easily understand the central. Hence its name. But if you need the element of surprise, you’re unlikely to surprise others by casting centrally. As for the alternative? Each understands the fringe in their own way. No one can guide you clearly along such paths. Different kinds of power and insight lay along them.”

“What if I don’t choose, and just practice?”

Master Willow sighed. “If you don’t make a conscious choice, you are choosing not to choose and this is all a waste of time. You’ll probably fall into the most common pattern. The one most of us choose. Because as a rule we who ply are not morons, and this is difficult enough without complicating things. Come over here and I’ll show you.”

The Mage-at-Arms led Glim over to a table tucked under another staircase near the back. He grabbed a square of parchment and a quill, and scribbled out the four polarities, so Glim could read them for the first time. Such as disharmonic.

Why didn’t you start with that? Glim thought in irritation.

Then he noticed something that made Glim’s hairs raise up along his arms. He’d seen this very same symbol before, on the walls of the guard’s training chambers. Four intersecting lines that formed a star pattern. When sketched out like this, the four polarities looked exactly like the eight-in-eight.

“See,” Master Willow said, stabbing at dots he’d made somewhere along the lines connecting each pair of opposites, “most people naturally will show a middling preference for balance, an unmistakable preference for central, a strong preference for harmony, and somewhere in between obscured and clear.”

He handed Glim the parchment. Glim studied it in fascination, with possibilities exploding in his mind. Did these polarities somehow match the sword strokes? He couldn’t see how. The physical did not seem to match the essentiael. But there had to be something here. The coincidence was simply too great to ignore.

Master Willow nodded supportively at Glim’s sudden interest.

“There’s no choice that is free of consequence. Focusing on one extreme of a polarity lessens your facility with the other. Focusing in the middle makes you good at compromise but poor at specialization. Emphasizing one polarity over the other three determines which abilities you’ll excel at, and which will elude you. Emphasizing them equally makes you average at everything. The extremes tend to provide more power and more risk. The middles tend to be comfortable, less stressful, and easier to gain expertise within.”

Throughout his training, Glim had nodded his way to this point. Suddenly he felt afraid, and wished he’d paid closer attention. His father’s favorite warning popped into Glim’s mind: skewered.

“How will I know which path to walk, Master Willow?” Glim heard the panic in his own voice.

“I see you’ve started to comprehend. It is best to begin in the middle. Neither balanced nor skewed. Neither harmonic nor disharmonic, and so on. Your unique blend of essentiæ and temperament will guide you.”

Master Willow pursed his lips thoughtfully and stroked his neatly trimmed beard. “If I may offer a suggestion? Some mages believe there is merit in testing their own natures, and extending past the comfortable. That is true up to a point, and keeps the mind flexible. But if a path feels as easy to you as breathing? Run down it, and don’t look back. There is little to be gained by striving against our own natures.”

Master Willow had been right about one thing: Glim had started to comprehend. And it made him wonder: what was in Master Willow’s nature?