Firebrand

Chapter 269: Homework

Chapter 269: Homework

Homework

When Martel arrived at the apothecary for this morning's work, Mistress Rana awaited him. "Come along. It is time for your next lesson in alchemy." He squeezed past Nora, mutely at work, to go through the backdoor.

Following his teacher, Martel returned to the laboratory that he had only visited once before. In his mind, he urgently went through everything he had read as proscribed by her, hoping he remembered it all. It had been some days since he went to the library, and with everything going on with Julia, alchemy had been pushed out of his thoughts.

As they approached a worktable, Martel saw a row of herbs lying on it, and he recognised them as being on the list Mistress Rana had given him to memorise.

She grabbed the nearest. "Which one is this?"

Martel looked at the plant. It resembled a dandelion, but since that had not been on the list, he knew which it was instead. "Coltsfoot."

"Which parts do we use?"

"Leaves, flowers, root," Martel recited.

"And what is each of those parts useful for?"

"Leaves and roots can ease coughing, flowers help with wheezing breath. Flowers are also used for warming tea."

She placed the plant back on the table and picked up another, repeating the questions for each of them. To Martel's relief, he remembered the answers to every one of them.

"Have you figured out what connects them all?"

He had noticed something. "All of them have a part that is used for warmth."

She nodded. "An apothecary can make a simple tea, better than nothing, for someone caught in the cold, protecting against hypothermia."

An unfamiliar word, but Martel thought it best not to interrupt.

"However, if you awaken the dormant magic in these simple plants, you can create an elixir to keep someone warm for hours even in a blistering blizzard," she explained.

Martel felt his interest piqued. He could think of many times in Nordmark when that would have been useful.

"This is a good potion to learn as a beginner. It requires only these herbs. Easy ingredients to gather. But first you must learn to draw their magic out." She placed the leaves from one of the plants in his hand.

He looked down as they lay in his palm. "How do I do that?"

"It helps to visualise something at first, but nothing related to the basic elements. That will only confuse you Asterians," Mistress Rana said pointedly. "Try to think of the magic as a spark of light, hidden inside the leaves. Call upon it. Draw it out until the light suffuses the plant material."

Frowning, Martel tried to obey the instructions. He looked at the dry leaves and imagined it as best he could, like a mote of light trapped within.

One of the leaves burst into flames. A little panicked, and a touch embarrassed, Martel quickly quelled the fire with his magic. "Sorry."

"I see why they gave you red robes. Keep trying."

For the next two hours, Martel did just that. At the end of the bell, Mistress Rana gave him all the ingredients to bring back to his room; he would have to continue on his own time.

***

For his lesson with Master Alastair, Martel also had to do magic that felt counterintuitive; drawing on water as a fire-touched did not come naturally, but at least it was still within the frame of the elements. Some aspects of Asterian magic might be hard, but Martel understood what it involved.

He pulled water into his hand while drawing all heat from it, leaving a frozen pebble. That was only the first step; now he had a small ball of ice. He could throw that at someone, and it might annoy them, but probably nothing more.

No, he had to imbue the dripping pebble with his magic; in some ways, the reverse of what he had tried to do in Mistress Rana's laboratory. He watched the shimmer as his gift filled the small chunk of ice. Now controlled by his will, it flew through the air to strike Master Alastair on the shoulder.

His teacher laughed. "There we are!"

"I did it?" Martel smiled a little from relief. Given all his difficulties when he first tried to learn the elements one year ago, he had been worried a spell like this would take him ages.

"You did. Granted, it took you twenty breaths. We'll have to work on reducing that to one."

"Right." Martel nodded a little. Every step of the process had been conscious and slow. It had to be instant, taking no longer than the duration of the thought that willed the spell into being. Water, ice, magic, attack. Four steps that had to become a single action.

"You can practise for the rest of this bell. Once it looks like you might have it, you'll get to do it under duress."

Martel looked at his teacher. "How do you mean, master?"

"First you learn the spell. Then you learn to do it swiftly. Finally, you learn to do it while someone's trying to kill you." Master Alastair let a flame appear around his hand in a motion that Martel had grown to recognise as a fire bolt waiting to be launched.

He tried to imagine what it would be like fighting an experienced battlemage instead of acolytes. Martel doubted that would go well for him. "That doesn't have to be today, does it? The third step."

His teacher dismissed the flame rather than releasing the spell. "I suppose not. But I don't want you motivated to be slow, trying to avoid what comes next. So here's what we'll do. You got the rest of the bell to practise, and all your spare time until our lesson next fiveday. But come that next lesson, you better be ready." Master Alastair wore a faint smile that blunted his threat, but Martel assumed he was serious all the same. It looked like he had a lot of after-class work to do.

Clearing his throat, Martel practised the spell once more, counting his breaths all the while. His next attempt took eighteen; when the bell rang, he had reduced it to sixteen.