When I became spontaneously attuned to magic in my youth, there were no other arcanists around. It wasn’t until I left home, a man, that I learned that we can sense one another. I can sense Val Maxis’s power now. It feels like standing near a blacksmith’s forge, arcana radiating off him like heat. I can only imagine what it might feel like to stoke those flames, to squeeze the figurative bellows and channel it into powerful magic.
I go over in my mind what I know about him, which isn’t much aside from his reputation. The son of the previous Duke of the West and uncle to the current one, he is said to regularly take on apprentices at his tower to the north-west of Nodkis.
The idea that magic can be trained like any other skill makes sense, but not many have aptitude. Unlike my homeland, children here are actually assessed and trained. When I attuned, I threaded arcanum through my body and shaped it to my will unknowingly. The raw energy felt as though it would tear me asunder. I was just a boy and I had been frightened. There had been no one to turn to for answers, but I’d worked hard, studied, trained, and learned to control it on my own. I am better for it.
As usual, this land coddles its people and nurses its young through the trials that would otherwise mold an individual. Without challenges or life altering events such as these, what is left to make the measure of a man or shape his character?
Movement catches the corner of my eye. There is a young man standing timidly beside me, I realize at last. He is dressed plainly, with sandy hair that hangs slightly into his honey-colored eyes. A holy symbol of Risha hangs from a leather cord at his neck.
“You are Zer Khaldun?” he says uncertainly. I realize he’s repeated himself. Where was my mind that I failed to notice the end of the meeting?
I give a curt nod.
When it becomes clear I have no further response, he continues, affixing words to his sentence as though he were stacking bricks, “We’re partners. I guess. I’m Ralith. Gellantara. Cleric. Of Risha.”
I sigh inwardly. He can hardly make his way through an introduction without forgetting himself and he can’t be more than twenty. I’m to obey the rationale and expertise of this sad creature in the chaos of the moment?
Unlikely.
I will have him hopping-to before the day is out. But first I need to know which station is ours and I had stopped paying attention a while ago. He doesn’t need to know that though.
I straighten up and give another nod toward the cots further in to the tent to indicate he should go to our station. He picks up on the cue and leads us to a row of twenty tight-grouped cots. The other pairings are spreading out to their sections as well. Looking around, I’m not sure there is a cleric I would prefer to be paired with instead of Ralith so I’ll just have to make this work.
Aside from a few commands I give him, we organize our space in relative quiet. I can see he’s an earnest young man with a desire to help others; subservient almost. Perhaps it won’t be as bad as I thought.
I wake before dawn and exercise as I always do. One hundred each of squats, push-ups, side lunges, sit ups, and jumping jacks. Then I meditate and realign my mind to the arcane energies that pervade the material plane. When the brightening sky finally reveals the sun, I help myself to a bowl of hot, flavorless oats and go to wait in the tent.
To my surprise and chagrin, Ralith is already there.
Great. He looks nervous. The last thing I need is a conversation about mortality and the horrors of war. I walk past him and go to the herb cart parked out the back. Yes, this will be his first war and the last couple weeks have been child’s play. Today we will test the mettle of the Orc Hordes and see just how serious they are about this incursion into Elysium. If they retreat at the first sign of opposition, then it was either opportunistic or a feint. If they fight until the last, well, then they were pretty serious, weren’t they?
I don’t know enough about orcs. Depending on the outcome here I might just have to pack up shop and move there. Perhaps the capital, Kadrakan. I’m sure I could manage at least two years among brutish thugs who lust for might and seem to eschew tactical acumen and civilized exchange. I lived among goblins, after all.
I browse the herb stock for some time and pulp some heatherwort in case the orcs have poisoned their arrows. Just as I am straining its pinkish oil into a phial, I hear the charge. This should be interesting.
One, two, three more twists on the cheese cloth to extract the rest of the oils. I plug the top with a small cork and stride back into the triage tent. No patients yet but no patience either. The other medics are anxious: some wringing their hands, others pacing about, some agape at the tent openings, others whistling annoyingly. Returning to my station, Ralith looks up at me from where he is sitting quietly. He smiles weakly.
I hand him the phial of heatherwort oil and press into him my gaze so that my words may press into him as well, “So often the light is blinding and it is only in the darkness that one’s path is revealed.”
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
Follow @LieseAdler