I am called to Val Maxis’s study that evening after supper. I have been at the tower for nearly a year. The war has been raging through Elysium while I have spent my days studying in safety. Val Maxis’s tower has countless wards and protections cast on it so, even without guards, there is no chance that the orcs could hope to penetrate its defenses.
I knock firmly on the door. A moment later it unlatches and swings open by itself. As much an invitation to enter as any.
The private study of Val Maxis is a sight to behold. A cavernous room situated atop the squat tower with rows upon rows of tomes lining the shelved walls, cabinets and cases bursting with artifacts, and workbenches affixed with every magical apparatus imaginable. At its center is a polished platinum disc resting in shallow pool of water on an ornately carved stand that could seat easily twelve, were it a table. I know it as a surface for practicing catoptromancy: the magic of observation over great distances. A reflecting apparatus such as this is impractical for someone who travels, much as I have. I’ve never seen one in person before but books I have researched depicted them. This one is exceptionally large and ornate.
I feel a twinge of jealousy but discard it quickly as a fool’s fancy.
Val Maxis is standing behind a workbench watching me take in the room. It is not a place many are invited to. This meeting will prove to be either exceptionally good or bad—no in between.
Setting the room in my memory to pore over later, I approach the workbench.
“Apprentice, why have I asked you here?”
So it is going to be a rebuke then. Let me see. What criticisms might he have?
It could be my treatment of the other apprentices. That is to say, my avoidance of them. It might be my clarity of thought, which I prize but is a source of near constant conflict between Val Maxis and I. It could be the spellbook I borrowed from the third-year library even though I am considered still in my first. There is no room for deviation in his tutelage so, despite being wholly capable, I am still practicing simple cantrips next to children most days. There is also the issue of my using magic to do the menial tasks he has us perform such as cleaning, which is both admonishable for using magic at all, but also for using magic beyond first-year. I’ve been using that kind of magic for decades and I see no reason to stop, other than just to comply. On top of everything else, I am a bad influence on the other students. Observing me has given some the courage to ask their own questions of his teachings or experiment with spells not yet taught.
How am I to choose?
I glance at the workbench to see if some object there might provide a clue. I see the third-year tome. This particular tome is covering aspects of necromancy. Since I have a knack for entropy and a disgust for animating the dead—both due to the unfortunate incident in my youth as well as my faith to Ner Ngal—I thought it the best to start with.
I decide to attack the heart of the issue instead of this corollary, “Because I am not the student you’d hoped and you are not the mentor I thought.”
Val Maxis’s eyes narrow slightly and he looks me up and down. “The colossus in the room, then?” He sighs and looks suddenly weary. Not his usual spry affectation. He rests his hand on the tome as he speaks calmly, his head bowed. “I know you do not see it but there is a method to my instruction. One must crawl before he can walk in life. It is the same with the arcane. You came to me with brutish methods and years of misconception that you taught to yourself and I have toiled to repair. You are hungry for knowledge—don’t think I don’t see it.”
He picks the tome up from the polished wood surface and turns it over in his hands as though it is his first time seeing it. Looking up at me to make eye contact, his eyes gleam with questioning, “This is not the first time you have taken a tome from libraries you are restricted from. When you systematically went through the second-year volumes you started with necromancy then, as well. Why?”
He’d noticed that? Apparently there are no secrets in this tower. I will have to be more careful.
“I favor the element of darkness. It is known.” Will he buy it? It is true but it is not the entirety of it.
“You expect me to believe that?”
I wait. Better to let him fill the pause with his own thoughts than to reveal more of mine.
“You want to raise the dead, is that it? Perhaps you lost someone you were close to? I’ll caution that the vast majority of peoples don’t think too fondly of one who animates the dead. Be that as it may, there is power in controlling the fallen. If you have a marked interest in necromancy, you can say it.”
He doesn’t actually expect me to fall for that, does he? Rather than have him expel me or sully my reputation on suspicion of raising an army of the dead, I add a little more to pacify him. “The dead should stay dead. My interest is in countering its effects.”
“I see. Yet this is a third-year tome and you are in your first. I will not tolerate deviancy. If you wish to continue to be my pupil you will comply with my rules.”
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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