Guild Mage: Apprentice

22. Aspen and Silver

Liv had never been in the baron’s suite before, though she’d lived at Castle Whitehill for her entire life. She’d sometimes imagined how luxurious it must be; but she’d never expected to recoil at the smell of sickness the moment she entered. Someone had lit honey-scented candles, but they could not conceal the mingled odors of blood, pus, and vomit.

Henry Sumerset was propped up in his bed on a pile of pillows, with a blanket stretched over his outstretched legs. His arms were wrapped in bandages, and spots of blood had soaked through the linen. Liv remembered Master Cushing working on her own body with a surgical knife, and did not envy him.

Liv gave a curtsy, then kept her eyes lowered. "You sent for me, m’lord?" First Footman Archibald hovered at her shoulder, and Liv was shocked to realize that his attitude reminded her of nothing so much as how Mama acted when she was sick.

"I did," Henry said. Even his voice was weak. "I owe you my gratitude, Miss Brodbeck. I have heard stories from several people I trust, and every one of them agrees that you risked your own life to protect my wife and child. As you can see, more than ever before, I cannot afford to spurn loyal service."

"Anyone would have done it," Liv said. "I just happened to be there."

Henry laughed. "Do you hear that, Archie? Anyone would have done it. Miss Brodbeck, most people would have run or hidden themselves in a wardrobe. And of the few who chose to fight, nearly all of them would have met the same end as the guards who died at the door. You happened to be the only one in the castle capable of making a stand in that room, and you chose to do so. You paid a cost, as well," he said. "I hear your ribs were broken. I suspect you’ll spend some time under Aldo’s knife, as well."

Liv bit her lip, mustered her courage, and then asked her question. "Most of the stonebats were killed by men with crossbows," she began. "They weren’t very powerful, were they? Could you have killed two of them?"

"I killed half a dozen before they flew too far south for me to finish any more," Henry said. "You are correct, young lady. The bats are some of the least of the beasts that spilled out of Bald Peak during the eruption."

"If Lady Julianne had been in a state to fight, she would have destroyed them herself, wouldn’t she?" Liv asked.

"She could have, yes," the baron confirmed.

"And they almost killed me," Liv said. "It doesn’t sound like I did very much, then."

"You did what was needed, in that place at that time. I’m told my wife has already arranged to reward your service, in her own ways."

"Lady Julianne has been very generous," Liv said.

"Good. But I am the Baron of Whitehill, and I would be remiss to allow her gratitude to outshine my own. Service must be rewarded." Henry shifted on his pillows; the movement must have brought him pain, for his face twisted in an effort to remain silent. "More willow-bark tea, Archie. In my father’s Room of Curiosities," Henry said, when he could continue, "is a very old book. It was written by the founder of my line, Semhis Thorn-Killer, after the war against the old gods. I hereby grant you permission to study that book, so long as it is not removed from the room."

The first footman approached the bed with a cup of tea, and Henry paused to take a drink. "You will find it contains records of Thorn-Killer’s spells," the baron continued. "As well as his battle against Ceria, the Vædic Lady of Thorns. Permission to study the book was one of the conditions of Kazimir’s employment here as Court Mage, and now I grant you that same right. Whatever components you can pull from those spells, with the sole exception of my family’s word of power, are yours. May it aid you in your studies."

"Thank you, m’lord," Liv said, giving the baron another curtsy. "With your permission, then, I’ll leave you to rest."

"Go on," Henry said, waving his hand at her in dismissal. "Go out and be alive. There is only death in this room."

Liv backed away, and Archibald followed her. After he’d shut the door behind them, he leaned in to speak to her in hushed tones. "The pain overwhelms him," the first footman said. "The back was not the only wound he suffered. Sometimes he does not know what he is saying."

"Will he get better?" Liv asked.

"Master Cushing says that in some ways, he will," Archibald said. "But he will never walk again. I knew him from the time he was a little boy," the footman muttered. "To think he should suffer like this. Go on. I know you have a great deal to do. I will stay with him for a while."

?

The servants quarters filled with new hires. Meredith, one of the women who had applied for the position as lady’s maid, was hired to be little Matthew’s governess. Two younger women, Agatha and Joan, were brought on to fill Sophie and Liv’s former positions, respectively. With Edward, the new footman, Liv found that she only knew half the people around the table in the kitchen. It was with mixed feelings, therefore, that she saw her few possessions moved upstairs to a room on the second floor, down the hall from Masters Cushing and Grenfell.

"I don’t feel I belong up here," Liv admitted.

"Nonsense," Lady Julianne said, throwing the windows open to let in the afternoon light. "This castle has been half empty the entire time I’ve lived here. As my attendant, you need to be near me when I call. This room would have been for a daughter," she explained, "but I will not be having any more children, so there is no point in letting the place gather dust."

"I’m sorry," Liv said.

"It isn’t your fault," Julianne told her. "And it is between my husband and I. You know, when you agree to be wed, that eventually there will be pain. Some wives die in childbirth; some men’s hearts give out when they are young. I didn’t think it would be this, and I didn’t think it would be so soon, but I knew we wouldn’t both be young and healthy forever. This is what the agreement is, dear girl. Keep that in mind when it comes your turn. Now, the footmen will bring your things up. You can still go down and visit your mother whenever you like, as you have the time."

And she did. Liv made certain to go down and help Gretta and her mother with the cooking whenever she could. Partly, it was to make certain they didn’t grow apart; but it was also because she enjoyed it, and that she still felt more comfortable in the servants’ kitchen than in the main hall. It also gave her an opportunity to tell Gretta she no longer had to pay Master Grenfell.

"Between the pension, and the salary from Lady Julianne, I can pay thirty myself," Liv told her while rolling out a pie crust on the counter. "And Master Kazimir agreed to put aside the remaining two crowns. So you can go back to putting your coins away for retirement," she assured the old woman.

"That leaves you no money at all, as far as I can tell," Gretta grumbled.

"I don’t need it for anything, anyway," Liv assured her. "I spend all of my time studying, or here in the kitchen with you. I don’t need to pay for food or anything like that."

"You can help me buy clothes for her, if you like," Mama offered with a nudge to Gretta’s hip. "We can’t have her eating in the great hall upstairs dressed as a scullion, after all."

"That’s true," the old woman said, and brightened. "We have to uphold the standards of the family, after all. We couldn’t have her shaming us when visitors come."

So it was that Liv found herself the owner of three new dresses, all in dark gray. They were merchants’ dresses, like Mirabel or Griselda might wear, with bright linings that peeked out from the sleeves, or when the skirts moved. One was lined in blue, one in pure white, and one in forest green. She wore the blue on the first day that Master Grenfell took her out of the town walls and into the woods that lined the lower slopes of Bald Peak.

It was full melt season by then, and the mage chose a warm day to have a carriage bring them north. His bandage was gone, but the culling expedition had left Master Grenfell with a new scar along his scalp. Liv examined it during their journey, and wondered what sort of creature had gotten him with its claw, and how close it had come to killing the mage. The mine-road followed the river, but they turned off long before the camp maintained by the workers of the Hall of Bricklayers and Masons.

"Is it really safe?" Liv asked, following Master Grenfell uphill along a deer-path. Master Cushing had finally allowed her to set aside her crutch, and the plaster had been knocked off her ankle. While she could walk, she didn’t yet feel very confident about it. Even the skin around her ankle and calf was pale and tender. Her ribs had stopped aching, at least.

"We killed just about everything that was corrupted by the eruption," the mage said in a dismissive tone. "If we do come upon something, consider it further training. But now what we want is a good, healthy young aspen. Something a bit thicker than your arm, perhaps. A sapling."

"We could have gotten that a lot closer to Whitehill," Liv complained.

"But then it would not be infused with mana," Grenfell pointed out. "Which is what we want. Wood that has been steeped in power since the moment it sprouted from a seed. We’re in the shoal, now - can you feel it?"

Liv stopped walking for a moment, and the older mage waited for her. She frowned, trying to feel if something was different in this part of the forest. "It’s harder to breathe," she said, at last. "Like the air is thick. Or like we’re under a blanket."

"That is the mana," Master Grenfell said. "The shoal is permeated with it, all the time. During the eruption, this whole area was flooded with just as much magic as you would find in the depths. Even now, this amount of power is dangerous. It can cause mana sickness if you stay too long, so we must be quick."

He must not have been all that worried about speed, Liv decided a bell later, because the first three saplings she’d pointed out had failed to pass some incomprehensible test. The fourth, however, Master Grenfell found acceptable.

"Good," he said, finding himself a large boulder to sit on. "Now, cut it down."

"With what?" Liv asked him.

"Your magic, of course," the mage said with a smile. "Consider it a test."

Liv scowled, then squared herself up to the tree. If she could kill a stone bat, she could cut a tree down. The only question, she decided, was how many frozen shards to use. She’d found that it took less mana to cast her modified version of the spell Master Jurian had first taught her, and fling two or even three shards at once, than to try to cast a new spell for each shard. With an eye toward not using all twelve of her rings before they left the shoal, she decided on two shards, aimed as close together as she could manage.

"Celent’he Dvo Scelim’o’Mae," Liv intoned. With every day of practice, the magic awakened more easily, and bent to her will with less of a struggle. Two daggers of ice shot forward, right next to each other, and carved out more than half of the sapling’s trunk. Splinters flew in every direction, and the shards continued on, whistling off into the underbrush. The sapling creaked and swayed for a moment, then came down. Liv had to jump back to avoid being sideswiped by a branch.

"Good," Master Grenfell said, rising to his feet. "I’ll trim the branches; tests are all well and good, but we don’t want to be here all day." With a muttered incantation, an arm-length blade of bright blue mana surrounded his hand. It must have been as sharp as a kitchen knife, for he began lopping branches off one after the other, as easily as chopping carrots. When the sapling was trimmed sufficiently, they hauled it back down the slope together. By the time they’d dropped the tree on the ground next to the carriage, Liv could do nothing but pull herself inside and collapse on the bench.

The driver spent a few moments lashing the cut sapling to the top of the carriage, and then they were off. Now that it had been pointed out to her, Liv felt it the moment they left the shoal.

"If it’s dangerous to stay there for long," Liv said, once she’d had a drink from a wineskin, "how can the miners work?"

"There is a reason they are paid well," Grenfell said. His face was red, and he loosened the collar of his doublet. "Most of them die young from mana sickness, or from bad air in the depths. Sometimes a tunnel collapses. That is the worst."

They managed to get back to the castle in time for the evening meal, but only just, and then Liv had to attend her lessons with Master Cushing the next morning, so it wasn’t until nearly a day later that any work could be done on the aspen wood.

"I’ve told you that I won’t teach you enchanting, and I mean to hold to that," Master Grenfell explained to Liv when she joined him in his chambers. "I have neither the resources, nor the expertise that you will find at the college. I was never more than a middling enchanter myself, and I do not want to give you bad habits. But I have enough skill to do this."

"What do we do first?" Liv asked with a grin.

"First," Grenfell said, "you remove the bark." He handed her a dished blade with three cutting edges. "This is called a spud. Get to work."

The bark was not removed that afternoon, and Liv didn’t see how breaking her back for two days in a row was teaching her anything about magic. On the second day of working with the spud - what a stupid name! - she got the last of the bark off, revealing the green wood beneath. She also managed to get herself blisters all over her hands; apparently, scrubbing pots and pans was a quite different kind of work.

From there, Master Grenfell took over, though he did allow her to watch. With a variety of tools, he carved Vædic sigils in the wood. Once that was done, Liv accompanied him into town for meetings with both a blacksmith and a silversmith. The first was to cap one end of the staff with steel, so that it would last longer. The other was to fill the sigils carved into the wood with molten silver, which was at least interesting to watch.

The final step of the process was the best. The older mage gave Liv strict instructions to stay quiet and out of the way, but he at least permitted her to watch. He sat with the staff in his lap, cradling it in both his hands, and chanted. Liv recognized a form of Aluth, which Master Grenfell had told her was the word used to manipulate raw mana itself. Pressure built in the room, similar to what she’d felt in the shoal, and then sparks and lashes of blue-gold fire cracked up and down the staff, flaring from the silver sigils.

When it was done, the master mage slumped, breathing heavily, as if they’d taken another trip up the mountain slope. "It is done," he said, after getting his breath back. "Come over and take it, apprentice."

Liv scrambled to her feet and hurried across the room. When she took the staff, she couldn’t help but smile. The wood of the staff was so pale that it might be mistaken for white, with a faint brown grain that was hardly noticeable after it had been polished. She set the steel-butt on the carpeted floor of Master Grenfell’s chamber, and it took her weight easily.

"This is much better than a crutch," she observed. "How does it work?"

"A properly enchanted staff or wand," Master Grenfell explained, "such as this, provides a path of least resistance to the flow of mana. I’ve told you that you are wasting much of your power, and why that is dangerous. The mana that escapes your control leaks out in all directions, much of it through your own flesh and blood. That uncontrolled magic is what causes mana sickness. Casting with this staff as an aid, that excess mana will be drawn into the wood, forced forward by the sigils, and focused into the spell you are casting. You will waste less, and infuse your spells with more mana at the same time. The biggest adjustment you will have to make is in the amount of mana you use: you will need less than you are used to."

Grenfell rose. "Come along," he said, lifting his own wand from his desk. "There is no time like the present to practice. Let us go to the courtyard, and see what you can do."