The Hammer Unfalls

1.19 Freeze Tag

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A woman’s voice whispered to Glim’s dreaming mind. Perhaps the wind? Or perhaps his mother? The voice wavered, barely audible, and indistinct.

Glim squirmed himself deeper into his bedroll and tried to ignore the voice. Or was he dreaming about pulling the covers tight, as well?

“You’ve fallen for it,” she whispered, finally saying words Glim could understand.

“Fallen for what?” he murmured.

“The trap.”

The hairs on Glim’s neck stood up. He bolted upright and looked around, seeing nothing but gray stones lit by the orange coals of the fire. Flames sputtered to life at his sudden movement. Glim stabbed at the fire with a poker and shoved another sliver of firewood into the hearth. He listened to father’s steady breathing, and to the yips of hinterjacks far off in the distance, but otherwise heard nothing out of the ordinary.

The last year had passed in a blur of scrubbing vials, learning about polarities, and chopping sword-after-sword from maple trees—only to have father split each fresh sword in two with some new attack or gambit. In fact, the year had been so tedious that Glim had settled into the stupor of routine.

But the dream warning had broken that stupor. Glim suddenly felt wary, as though he’d missed something he should have noticed. In truth, a sense of dread had been building in him for weeks, though he couldn’t say why.

Walking to breakfast, Glim hugged the wall and kept an eye out for trouble. He cringed as marble chips crunched beneath his feet. The kids playing in the plaza hadn’t noticed him yet, but the sound gave his presence away.

Two boys turned towards him, who nudged a third. Glim could almost hear their minds searching for cruel things to say. Each of them found one.

“Going to play in the snow again, Halfie?”

“We’re doing chores today. You know. Actual work.”

“Yeah, Halfie. Keep your eye on your lessons.”

The boys snickered as Glim continued his endless walk across the plaza. But he wasn’t truly embarrassed until the girls noticed the teasing and joined in. His sworn enemy, Gyda, stepped in front of him.

“Have fun drinking rat blood, Eyeball.”

The smug look on Gyda’s face when other girls giggled behind her burned Glim more than anything. He focused on the other end of the plaza and feigned nonchalance. But their words stung.

People would not tease him as much if they knew about the lessons. How horrific they were. How much he ached afterward. Not just physically, but inside his mind.

Glim walked through the haphazard marketplace more slowly than usual, wondering why dread plagued his steps. What trap had he fallen for? He eventually found his way to the gardens beyond the marketplace, to Master Willow’s pristine tower.

The wizard paced a walkway outside it. Glim’s late arrival earned him a glare. Master Willow’s trim brown beard and beady eyes reminded Glim of a weasel.

“Taking your time today, I see. If my experiment is ruined by your dawdling, you’ll be collecting more spores from the crags.”

Master Willow walked down a gravel pathway lined with plant beds to an alcove away from prying eyes. Glim took it as an implicit command and followed. The semicircle of hedges featured a statue of a giant, with huge curled horns. It loomed over people the size of beetles at its feet. Water arced from its splayed palms. Glim looked around the garden and wondered why Master Willow had led him here. His tutor stood over him, frowning.

“Those with small minds call us Icers. Icers! You yourself have used the term, I believe?”

Glim shrank as Master Willow snorted in condescension. He kept his mouth shut as the man continued.

“As I’ve told you a dozen times, the correct term for what we do is ply essentiæ.”

Glim nodded vigorously to prove his attentiveness.

“Tell me the five forms of plying.”

“Algidon. Aeolia. Phyr. Douse, and Inspire.”

“That’s right. But no one has any idea how essentiæ work. Some think they are the remnants of gods, or elemental purities so inherent they course through everything in Æronthrall.”

The Mage-at-Arms sighed at some private irritation in his mind. “We only know that algidon and phyr ever oppose each other, and aeolia spans them both. Dousers once had an incredible power to calm minds, while Inspirers could incite rebellions and entire movements with words alone. Dousers could convince an entire army to lay down and sleep forever, while the merest whim of an Inspirer would linger in one’s mind for decades afterward. If we believe the records, such plyers were incalculably powerful.”

Glim shifted restlessly, trying to shake off the dream warning that still haunted his mind. His tutor scowled.

“Am I boring you with this? Would you rather work the goat pens?”

“No, Master Willow. Though I do not understand the bridge essentiæ.”

Glim looked at the symbol embroidered in Master Willow’s robe. A nicer version of the symbol he’d once scratched into the dirt:

Three ovals in a line joined by two diamonds. Master Willow had once called it the needle theorem, which described algidon and phyr as opposing ends of a compass needle.

“No one understand the bridge essentiae, you clod! That is what I’m trying to get through that thick skull of yours. It hardly matters. Douse and Inspire have died out anyway. Only women have the ability to become that powerful, for only they can wield the wind.”

“Perhaps I could.”

His tutor snorted. “If you had any wind essentiæ to speak of, you’d be the first male Douser in human history.”

“The wind talks to me.”

Master Willow peered at him, raising one eyebrow. “Does it now. What do you two chat about?”

“Nothing serious. Stinky smells and such.”

For once, Master Willow seemed at a loss for words. His mouth gaped open, like a shored fish seeking water. “I… see. My dear boy, if you could ply aeolia, you would have blown all of my parchments off their tables long ago in a tantrum. You would have flown sweets out of the kitchen when no one was looking. Babies with wind essentiæ are not subtle.”

Master Willow got a sickly look in his eye. Something about his expression made Glim’s stomach churn. Somehow, in some unseen way, the tension of the last few weeks had come to a head.

“Tell me, how does a Algist make ice?”

Oh, good. An easy one.

“An Icer… er, Algist, is a ress… ress-ipticle for heat. He draws warmth from the invire-ment into himself, which leaves cold behind.”

Glim smiled at Master Willow, but his tutor sighed.

“I’ve tried my best to teach you over the years. The focusing rituals. Restoration rituals. The simple basics. Before she left Wohn-Grab, your mother swore to me that you can ply algidon. Glimmers of talent are there, but I don’t see much potential in you.”

Master Willow gestured to a pail of water in a nearby garden.

“Prove me wrong. Freeze that.”

Knees trembling, Glim extended his hand above the water and concentrated. At first he felt nothing. Then his mind drifted. He thought of the sun, how his eyes could sense its light, even when closed. Matte yellow light, diffused by his eyelids. The breath of sunlight warming his face. Similar tingles suffused him, responsive to his drifting thoughts, but Glim had trouble sorting them into anything usable. He pictured the bucket freezing. Willed it to freeze. Instead, snowflakes drifted from his palm and melted into the water.

“You can’t think it into freezing, boy! You have to freeze it.”

Glim tried again, and his palm coughed a puff of cold air. A flush spread across his cheeks.

“Feel the cold. Guide it.”

“I don’t know how, Master.”

“Of course not, you clod! That’s why you take lessons from me.”

Master Willow loomed over him and extended his palm with an expression Glim had never seen. Eagerness? Glim shrank away. His dread caused the mage’s lip to tug upward in something like triumph.

“You need to feel the cold. Know it.”

Mist swarmed from Master Willow’s hand to surround Glim. Tingles pricked along his skin, then started to burn. Glim shivered as his breath came in short gasps. He struggled against the ice that coated his limbs.

Don’t cry, Glim thought. Don’t give that weasel the satisfaction.

“Do you feel the cold yet, Glim?”

“Y-yes, M-m-aster Willow.”

“Are you going to freeze that pail, or die here in my garden?”

Glim extended his hand again and checked his reflection in the water to see what was happening to him. White frost caked in his black hair. One dark eye and one silver eye looked back at him in alarm from a face turning gray with cold.

His clattering teeth distracted him. Glim clamped his jaw, recalled the frigid tingles pricking along his skin, and sought them in himself. Something responded. Mist swirled from his palm to surround the bucket. When the mist dissipated, Glim saw a solid block of ice in the bucket.

Master Willow glanced down in surprise. “It is about time.”

The unseemly light in his eyes returned. He seemed dazed, as if making calculations for some formula Glim didn’t understand.

“C-can you w-warm me up now, Mast-ter Willow?”

“Warm you up? I’m an Icer, you clod! How am I supposed to do that? Light a fire or something.”

Master Willow turned away and went into his tower, where a cheerful fire blazed in the hearth. He tossed a firesteel to Glim and closed the door.