The servant at the door, the man who would be ringing the bell, chuckled and shook his head at Tarranau as the apprentice ran for the doors, holding them open to allow the lad, gown flapping, to rush into the serving area. Tarranau quickly grabbed two plates of food that looked like it still retained some warmth, before sitting down at the nearest table, his stomach forcibly reminding the apprentice that the hour was later than it liked, and that he could still consume large quantities of food when given the chance. He waved to a few of the people that he knew, but they were finishing up their meals, and Tarranau was too busy eating to want a conversation.
When Tarranau returned to his room, he collapsed on the bed, resting and digesting his meal. He fell into a half-awake coma, only to have his dreams split by the sound of a hand connecting solidly with the wood of his door. “Tarranau, you’ve got a message here from Magister Gothren.” The young apprentice staggered up, straightening as he walked over to the door, opening it to find a fourteen year old student holding up a scrap of paper and a bucket full of water. “He wants you to practice, Magister Gothren said.” “I can see that.” replied Tarranau. “I’m sure I’ll have a wonderful night, doing the same damn exercise over and over until I collapse from exhaustion. Oh well, thanks for this.” Tarranau took the two items from the young student, sending him on his way and closing the door with a foot as he re-entered his room, placing the bucket of water on his desk and flipping open the note. “Practice your water purification. You are deficient in this area. Magister Gothren.” Well, he was nothing if not direct, thought Tarranau. The apprentice looked into the bucket, which turned out to be full of brackish, salty water that was unfit for drinking or any other use. Shrugging, Tarranau sat down at the desk, placing his hands on either side of the container and staring into the thick green mess, focusing his will on making it pure, clean drinking water.
Two hours later, Tarranau crawled into bed, the smell of salt water still wafting at him from the bucket. He’d cleaned it, mostly, but it still wasn’t drinkable, and he knew Magister Gothren would send someone round to collect it in the morning. Shrugging slightly, Tarranau collapsed into sleep.
The morning bell and the sun peering through his window dragged Tarranau out of bed the next day, groggy and bleary-eyed with the early hour, shortly after sunrise. Walking over to the desk, he reached down and splashed some water on his face, then went to the mirror to try and straighten the horrible mess of hair that sat atop his head. A glance told Tarranau that he had used the murky sea water from yesterday to wash the sleep out of his face, and back he went, this time plunging his face into the wash bowl that sat on one side of his work table, the fresh water waking him fully and cleaning off the green and salty residue. Another quick pass with the comb made him presentable, and, shrugging his robes over his nightclothes, he went off to the dining hall, in search of some breakfast.
A bowl of oatmeal saw Tarranau on the way to his first class, about the theory and nature of tides and waves. Important for those who planned to be mariners, the apprentice never gave it much attention, except when the class was sailing, examining the sea from a boat. Today was not one of those days, and so he stayed in the back, paying attention with one ear, but mostly dreaming, as much about going back to sleep as any other occurrence.
Tarranau struggled through most of the day, grabbing a quick lunch between two classes, before finally ending up in his last class. Unfortunately, this was the class was taught by Magister Gothren, the same one who had sent the bucket of sea water the night before as homework. It was a class called “The Theory and Practice of Transmutation”, and the teaching revolved around the alteration of one liquid into another, similar liquid. The most basic of these was purifying water, changing it from a less pure form to a more pure, and sometimes the other way around for practice. Tarranau was not skilled at either of these transmutations, nor any of the more difficult ones, and so Gothren drove him hard, especially as the apprentice was above average in all other classes that he took, although never the top of the class. Extra assignments such as the bucket were becoming the norm and resulted in Tarranau spending more of his time on his worst subject than on any other. He also knew what Gothren’s argument would be this time, since it had occurred several times since the beginning of the term, and always when Tarranau did not fully complete an assignment.
Sitting down in the middle of the classroom, Tarranau ploughed through the class, the lecture about excising the impure elements, leaving the pure element of water behind, waiting for the moment afterwards when Gothren would dismiss the rest of the class and turn to the unskilled student and crook his finger, indicating that Tarranau was to stay behind and talk. The bell struck, dismissing the students and ending the class day. Tarranau got up and moved to file out of the classroom with the rest, but a discrete cough sounded behind him, and the apprentice turned around, catching Magister Gothren’s eye and his hand, which was gesturing to a seat just in front of the teacher, and on top of which was the same bucket of water that had been sent to Tarranau’s room last night.
Tarranau made his way to the seat, sitting down and waiting for Magister Gothren to begin his lecture. Gothren stood up and began to pace behind the lectern, four steps to the left, then around and four more to the right, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the ground with occasional glances over at the bucket of the sea water and at the student sitting behind it. The teacher continued this pacing for more than five minutes, drawing it out so that Tarranau began to feel nervous and uncomfortable in the chair, wondering if he should be the one to speak first, even though Magister Gothren disliked being upstaged by students, and was often harsh in the class room on those who tried to make a counter argument to points that he made.
Magister Gothren finally stopped pacing, turning to look straight at Tarranau, his face contorted into an expression the students had learned as one that meant he was angry or annoyed, and even more curmudgeonly than normal. Tarranau sat back in the chair, shifting away from the glare of the Magister, wishing that he had not turned around when the teacher had coughed. This was going to be one of the bad times, where the apprentice would have to withstand a long yelling period without saying anything to aggravate it more.
“Do you know why you have been called here?”
“Yes sir. Because I was deficient at water purification.”
“No! It is because you are lazy! You do not try. You do not pay attention in class. Today, you were thinking about something else. You focus on anything but the assignment. Your attitude makes a mockery of the goals of this class, and your work is pathetic. You have barely completed a single task that has been given to you, and those that you do always take far longer than is required. Unless you manage to bring your performance in this class up to a level that is acceptable, I will recommend that you are unfit for service as a ship’s mage.” Given that almost every student in the school had a goal of being a ship’s mage, this was tantamount to saying that the student’s time here had been wasted. Tarranau’s parents would have scraped and struggled, shortening their own meals, and it would have come to nothing.
“Well, what do you have to say? Do you have no response? Will you sit there mute and uncommunicative, just as you are in my classes?”
“No sir.” There was little Tarranau could say. Talking back would infuriate Magister Gothren, and nothing the apprentice could say would help, so he just had to wait this storm out
“Well, since I have you here, I want you to finish this task.” Gothren slammed the bucket on the desk in front of Tarranau, sloshing some of the water out onto the student’s robes. “Don’t wait, student, this is the time for you to show me you can actually work.” Magister Gothren swept his robes about him and sat behind his desk, his eyes a focused stare on the bucket in front of Tarranau. When the apprentice waited before beginning to focus on the water, Gothren gestured imperiously. “Begin, boy.”
Tarranau sighed, placing his hands on either side of the bucket, leaning over
to stare down at the water, and concentrated, clearing his mind of all but the purity of water, and envisioning the water in front of him as pure and as clean as the ideal water held in his mind. The apprentice closed his eyes, attempting to blank out of the sight of Gothren, but the image persisted in memory of the eyes focused on his face. Tarranau pushed it as far away as it would go, thinking only of the cleanliness of the water, hands grasped tightly around the bucket, his muscles taut.
Tarranau began to sweat, the concentration demanding bodily exertion, the liquid slowly sliding down his face, pooling on the tip of his nose. It held there a moment, beading and swelling as more sweat ran down the apprentice’s face, before finally gathering and falling, its grip failing as it plunged towards the salt water in the bucket. The droplet hit the surface of the water, a loud plop as it slapped into the brine, ripples rolling out across the top, little waves rebounding off the sides of the bucket.
The sound snapped Tarranau’s concentration, his eyes opening as he shifted away from his internal focus back to accepting input from external sources. The water in the pail coming into view as the blurring disappeared, his eyes refocusing on the desk before him. Tarranau looked at the water, and while it had cleared somewhat, there was still a green tinge. Algae and other debris floated on the surface, giving it a pungent, unpleasant odour.
Magister Gothren uncoiled himself and adjusted his robes before walking over to the container. There, he paused, then dipped a finger into the water and brought it to his lips, running his tongue over the tip, savouring the taste as if it were a delicacy. Tarranau waited, one hand wiping the sweat off of his face and onto his robe, leaving a wet smear across his thigh.
“You need work. There is touch, as well as willpower. Practice, and bring me another pail, purified, at the end of next week. Now go home and clean that mark off your robe. I will not have you looking uncouth while representing this institution of learning.”
Those words of effusive praise ringing in his ears, Tarranau fled from the room, looking not to clean his robe, but to remove himself from the presence of that teacher. Tarranau’s first thought was to head to the cliffs for a view of the sea and a place of peace and quiet, but that option was stolen away when he looked upwards, for growing winds and grey clouds told Tarranau that a storm was coming. Up on those sheer rock walls, there would be no barrier between him and the wind and rain, and fog could easily disguise the drop from the cliff’s edge.
Tarranau shuddered as he remembered the events of the spring of this year, when a young student had fallen from the crags, and thus the apprentice turned his feet from the path to the cliffs, heading instead to the harbour, where an open bar and a few coins would let him forget Magister Gothren for an hour or two.
Tarranau arrived at the bar to find that he was not the only student from the school. A few of the rough around the edge lads, ones who had been born into sailor families, had already gotten a start on the day’s drinking. The boys were swapping stories and talking with the fishermen and other denizens of the docks, the people amongst whom they had been born. Tarranau heard their raucous laughter from where he stood near the door, looking for a quiet table to sit and ponder Magister Gothren’s recent threat.
Spotting a booth in the back that looked quiet and small enough to discourage others from sitting with him, Tarranau went to the barkeep, getting a drink brewed from one of the seaweeds that grew along the shores of the island. Tossing a coin onto the bar, he sat in the booth with his back to the door and stretched his legs, enjoying a peaceable moment for the first time today. An image of the grim Gothren swam back into the forefront of his mind, causing him to reach for his drink and wonder what to do. Tarranau came from a family of mussel farmers, and it was expected that he would repay them by becoming a full-fledged ship’s mage, entitled to good pay, prime choice amongst the houses of Tregonethra, and eventually perhaps a position teaching at the school. However, a mage spent long hours, days, and weeks on ships, travelling from Tregonethra to Miath Mhor, up the coast to Arnich and Massick, or south and west to Buid, Dulais, Niam Liad, and even round the peninsula and through the islands to Bethra and the other westernmost towns. These were all long trips, some that might take months in either direction. After the first two weeks of the voyage, he would be eating salted pork and dried biscuits, living out of a cabin smaller than his room was now, with rancid water and the eternal rocking of a ship at sea.
While Tarranau knew many to whom that style of life appealed, he was not among them. The apprentice looked for a role where he could own a house and enjoy the comforts of home and fresh food, small things perhaps, but rare enough for those who would set out on the ocean. One of Tarranau’s friends, a young man who had completed his apprenticeship a year before, possessed no home and kept what few things he owned in a crate, using whatever room was spare on those few times that he spent days in port. Money was easy for a man who had nothing to pay for, but no house and no roots was not a life that Tarranau looked for, and so, with the end of his apprenticeship in sight, he wondered where he could go. He could work with the crops, helping the waters reach the plants, but this was a wet island and work of that sort was often unneeded. Beyond that, there were many minor tasks that could be done, but none of those would pay as well as a ship’s mage, leaving Tarranau in the predicament of turning his back on the poverty of his family, the anchor that kept him firmly attached to the prospect of being a ship’s mage, even if it was not what his heart desired.
Sipping at the dregs of his cup, Tarranau put his feet up and waved at the bartender to bring another one of the same over. Tarranau made sure the man noticed by placing two coins on the table in front of him, quickly swept up and replaced by a filled mug and a nod, the barkeep an experienced server who had seen many a person disappear into thoughts and drinks. Tarranau ignored the rumbling in his stomach and sank back into himself, seeing his face many years down the road, creased and weather beaten from salt and spray and wind, still alone and unmarried. He had spent too much time on the sea to have a wife and child, his parents were dead from old age, siblings gone their separate ways, and he was wealthy. It was a scenario that appealed not at all. However, no other option presented itself to Tarranau as he sat there, morosely staring into the fast emptying mug before him, thinking empty thoughts of wished for employment.
A few more mugs of that drink left Tarranau with a muddled head, and he began the slow process of crawling back through the evening twilight to the school. Too late for dinner, he made his way into the room where he slept, fumbling with the latch as his uncoordinated hands tried to remember how to open a lock. Inside, he stumbled to bed, not bothering to undress or perform his evening ablutions before collapsing in a tipsy stupor, sleep quickly enfolding a dark, thick blanket over him.
Tarranau awoke the next morning with a parched mouth and a throbbing head, reminding him of the morose and downbeat state of mind from the evening before. Struggling to the desk, he washed his face and drank some water, while his stomach complained bitterly about missing dinner. Tarranau went quickly to the food chamber, still dressed in the robes required, crumpled and worn after a night’s sleep. Grabbing at whatever seemed edible, he soon had a plate full of food, stuffing it down in order to make it to his class on time.
The bell rang while he was only halfway done, and Tarranau scampered off, blue robes swishing around him as he strode to his class room, a baked roll still in his hand, idly munching on it as he made his way across the campus. Sitting down on the bench, off to the side so he had a wall to lean against, Tarranau looked around, wondering where the rest of the students were, and why Magister Holbenth hadn’t filled the board with writing and assignments, as was usually his wont for the early morning classes. Shrugging and slumping against the wall for support, Tarranau waited there, trying to remember if he had missed an announcement that today would be a day spent studying water on the ocean. Unable to recall any such event, he waited a few minutes, napping against the wall, before dec
iding that wherever the class was, he had missed it anyway. Grabbing his things and straightening his robes, the student walked out of the class building, back towards his dormitory. Tarranau had half an hour before his next class, so he might as well freshen up some more.
“Oh blast, I forgot, today is rest day.” It was the one day a week where the students were not required to be learning, and could be the young boys that they were. Glancing around showed Tarranau a few other students sitting in normal clothing, laughing and chatting, having only just made their way out of bed into the bright sunshine of the morning. Smiling to himself at the realization that he had free time, the apprentice’s step lightened, a bounce coming into his stride as made his way to his room, changing into rougher, sturdier outdoor clothing, putting together a few pieces of food and drink to go with them, appropriate gear for climbing and hiking along the cliffs and seashores outside of the city. A grinning smile took him south out of Tregonethra, along the well worn road that branched into a dirt track as it left the urban sprawl behind and meandered up on the cliffs, glowing walls of stone constantly sprayed and battered with water. The roaring of the surf made a throbbing background noise, a low contrast to the high-pitched squawks of the sea birds as they fled along the cliff front, nesting in the crevices and little nooks dug into the face of the stone.
Tarranau continued walking, heading to a little spot that was rarely bothered by other people. It was a small cove set between the cliffs where they sloped down, forming a little inlet that had stone walls and a sandy floor, hemmed in by dunes that marked the high tide line. Here, he would often spend his rest days, sunning himself as he lay on the beach, freed from the stifling robes. Now he stood atop of the path down, where it curved from the westerly spit to the sandy beach. Grinning, Tarranau saw no one on his shore, and jogged down the path, eager to enjoy the rushing water and welcoming sand. Piling his food and clothes in a dent in the beach, he lay down, eyes entranced by the natural beauty of the surroundings, lit by brilliant sunshine reflected off of the blue waters of the sea. However, the apprentice had too much energy for contemplation this day and he dove into the waters, swimming out into the waves, enjoying the cooling feel of the ocean on his skin, a boy at play in a warm and welcoming sea.
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