Heritage of Fire

by Dave Luckett

  It was like that first session with Corporal Sankey, doing foot drill, when he had expected to be learning swordplay. Nela refused to say a word in... well, Gerd had no word for the language he usually spoke. The language he knew. The language everyone spoke. And she did no magic, made no spells. Just the words for wood and window, book and floor, all the things around them.

  At noon they went out to the market. Nela at least spoke ordinary words to the stallholders, but only the strange ones to him. Gerd learned the words for buy and sell, bargain and pay. He began to put them into sentences, stumbling.

  It was past high summer, and fruits from the south, from Gleddis and beyond, were beginning to appear in the market. Gerd pointed at a stack of honeymelons, wondering if he could tempt Nela with them. "H'va ti?" he asked.

  But Nela only looked slightly embarrassed and shook her head. "No word," she said, in the language Gerd had begun to call "Mage Tongue", because it was apparently a requirement for wizards. She shrugged. "Shela," she offered, but it was the word used for all soft fruit. There was no special word that meant "honeymelon".

  Gerd pointed at a crock of honey, wax-sealed, for sale at another stall. "H'va ti?" he asked again.

  "Meyul va ti," said Nela.

  Gerd nodded at the honeymelons again. "Meyulshela, sa."

  But she shook her head, making a cutting gesture with a bladed hand. "Nid." Strongly. Then, still in Mage Tongue, "No word."

  "New word, then?"

  "There are no new words. New words possess (?) no sta." A pushing out of the hands, done forcefully. Gerd nodded. Sta meant something like force, power.

  Clearly, he would have to work on this language until he had the means of understanding why new words had no force, no power. It wasn't apparent for the rest of the afternoon.

  Alissa was late for supper that evening. Gerd was finishing, a tangle of strange words in his head, as she came in through the common room and ran up the stairs. He saw that she was carrying her bowcase. She'd been showing her masterpiece to some swordsmith, then. She came down directly afterwards, and tackled the tavern ordinary with appetite.

  Gerd remembered that he'd only managed to inveigle Nela into eating a decent supper by insisting that she go through the words involved again. Eat, chew, bread, meat, fruit, milk. He remembered them well enough. He wondered how long he could stretch out the subterfuge.

  "You're looking pleased," he remarked. Alissa had just sat down with her platter, and was breaking bread.

  She nodded, smiling. "Yes. I've got a place. And it's with Master Thullow."

  She said the last as though it meant something. "Congratulations," said Gerd. "Who?"

  "Thullow," said Alissa around a mouthful of broad beans. She grinned. "It’s not the Old Duke's workshop, but he was trained there, and everyone says he's the coming man. He liked my work on the bow. Said it showed good tempering, and the backsight was worth copying for its own sake."

  "That's good." Gerd picked up his mug and swallowed thoughtfully. "How much of a prentice-fee did you have to pay?"

  "No prentice-fee. That's the best part. I've bought myself in as a journeyman. Thirty crowns, but he'll allow me a part-fee on every piece we sell that I work on. He showed me his order book. There's some really interesting stuff there." She shovelled meat on her bread and ate it. "How did you do?"

  "Oh, about like that. I've actually got a place, as well. Mage, too. I think it'll do well."

  "Good." Alissa seemed a little distracted. "I'll be moving out tomorrow. Found a place in Basden. Widow lady keeps clean rooms, that sort of thing. Only ten minutes' walk from the workshop, and much cheaper than here."

  Gerd had walked through Basden on his first day in Walse. It was the metalworker’s district, down in a cleft between two hills, smoky and grimy. He hadn't cared for it much. And it was over the other side of the city, on the wrong side of the Tasse. "I might stay here for a while," he said, not thinking.

  A second later he realised that he had just told Alissa that their paths had diverged. He glanced at her, wondering what she would make of it. She said nothing, though, and her face showed only contentment.

  *

  Gerd arrived the following morning, again burdened with food. Nela said nothing this time, but when they had finished, she brushed crumbs from her lap and leaned back. She seemed a little more comfortable. A full stomach is a comforting thing, and he knew how comforting. Now was the time.

  "I pay you ..." he started, but he lacked the other words. Fee? Charge? Apprenticeship? He had none of them. To be a mage? That would be.... "mage atay va."

  "'Majis ataych va.' Ma nid."

  No? He hauled out the little bag. One of the gold pieces was worth sixty times its weight in the part-silver coinage of the coast and the islands, but probably only twenty times that of the Wizard's Isle. He brought out two, and placed them on the table. She frowned at them as if he'd just put down a raw and long-deceased fish.

  "H'va ti?" she asked.

  "Fee, va ti," he said.

  "Mulut. Ma nid mulut shallaw'ch"

  No fee is (required?) (payable?) (accepted?) plus the "-ch" sound that means "to be". No fee is to be accepted. Gerd frowned. That made it sound as though she were quoting from a rule of some sort. He opened his mouth to protest that he didn't wish to take something for nothing, but didn't get the chance.

  She stared into his face for a moment, and then waved a hand in a gesture that combined resignation and decision. She turned away as though the coins were completely irrelevant and opened the soft pack leaning on the wall. Out of it she produced a number of odd objects. A feather, long, stiff, brown, the outer pinion of some large bird. A tiny knife. Four small muslin bags, very tight-woven, dyed different colours, and a flat wooden scoop the size of a salt-spoon. A tightly-corked glazed stoneware bottle. A small shallow bowl made of what appeared to be hammered silver, but enamelled on the inside. This she wiped out very carefully with a square of soft full cloth, white wool from the look of it.

  She placed the bowl on the table between them, uncorked the bottle and poured a dribble of what seemed to be pure water into it. Then she opened each of the muslin bags in turn and scooped a small amount of powder from each into the bowl, using the spoon. The powders were the same colours as the bags. She stirred the mixture - it coloured instantly, becoming deep reddish brown - tapped the spoon on the side of the bowl three times, producing a clear ringing tone, and set the spoon aside. She leaned over once again and reached down into the pack. This time she brought out a flat stack of papers.

  Papers? No. They were parchments, the scraped inner skins of... goats? No. Not goats. Gerd realised that he had been feeling the faint tingling sensation on the backs of his hands and his neck for some time, and that it was getting stronger. The parchments were varied, some thick, some thin, different colours and sizes. Some were a faint, nebulous blue, some pinkish, one or two silvery, as if dusted with powdered metal. Gerd wondered how they had been dyed, and then wondered if they had been.

  Nela was leafing through them. They were all blank, and they had never been used, apparently. Gerd could see no faint network of spidery letters on them to show where they'd been cleaned. She was feeling each piece in turn between finger and thumb, looking for some texture, some grain, that meant something to her. Now and then she would pause, holding the sheet, and look enquiringly up into his face before giving a tiny shake of the head and going on.

  She reached the bottom of the stack, frowned, and then worked her way back to one she had paused over. She rubbed it again, then twitched her head and turned the corners of her mouth down in the expression that means, "this is the best I can do." She pulled the sheet out and returned the rest to the pack. Then she laid the parchment out on the table beside the bowl, pushing aside Gerd's coins. She took up the feather, pared it with the knife, then expertly sharpened and split the quill to make a nib.

  She dipped it in the ink, and closed her eyes for a moment, as one who is recalling words to
mind. Then she bent over the parchment and began to write.

  "Chwi forsh'wr vi, ol," she remarked evenly. Gerd puzzled over the words. This (something-will do) you, also. Learn? "You will learn this, too"?

  "I write in the common tongue," he said, having worked the words out one by one, and she nodded. She was not writing in the common tongue, he saw, but the characters she was forming were vague echoes of the ones he knew.

  She formed them slowly, with exact strokes, thick and thin, crowded together in the old way, with hardly a space between them. One line, then two, then a half of a third. The last stroke she drew down into a long tail, and finished it with a flourish.

  She cleaned her pen with a piece of rag, then packed the rest of the things away in the pack, working slowly and methodically. Finally, digging in the bottom of the bundle, she produced a dried twig. It looked perfectly ordinary, simply a rough stick that had been stripped of its bark.

  "Teca dim," she said. “Sit” plus something. Gerd wondered what the other word meant. It didn't mean "there". He knew that word. Still? Quiet?

  While he pondered, she placed the twig on the parchment, the ends pointing at right angles to both of them, using both hands, and moving with a sort of ceremonial grace. Then she lifted both hands away and whispered a single syllable.

  The twig quivered, as though it were on a live tree in a gust of wind. Then it slowly rotated until one end pointed at Nela, and the other, the thinner one, at Gerd.

  "There, you see..." she started to say.

  But she never finished it. The twig was still moving. It began to slide, slowly at first, then faster and faster, towards Gerd, thin end first. He tried to catch it when it reached the table edge, but the grab turned into a clumsy swat as it leaped the gap, accelerating madly. He tried to knock it aside, but his timing was hopelessly askew, and he was too slow by a foot.

  It hit him in the midriff with a stab that he felt as a sharp prod, rebounded, and clattered to the floor. At the same moment there was a crack like a whip, as if the twig had snapped in two. He rubbed the place, looking down at the twig. He bent and picked it up. It seemed unchanged. He put it back on the table again, rose, turned, and lifted his tunic and undershirt to look at where it had hit him. There was a small mark two fingers above his navel, and in the middle of it, a bead of blood was slowly growing. The impact had been strong enough to break the skin, even through his clothing. If this went on, he'd really have to start wearing his mail again. He blotted the place with a corner of his shirt. It was no worse than a scratch, a slight puncture.

  "Do you have a ...?" he asked, over his shoulder. Then he stopped.

  Nela was looking down at the twig on the table. Her mouth was opening and closing, and her eyes were staring wide. They were fixed on the twig, which was now lying there innocently.

  Gerd felt an instant rush of concern. He turned, wondering what he had done wrong. "I'm sorry," he stumbled out, and then realised that matters would not be improved if she thought he was showing her his abdomen. He tucked his garments in again, hastily.

  The sudden movement seemed to recall her. She looked up. "Do you have any idea what just happened?" she asked, the words coming slowly. She asked it in ordinary speech, the first words of it that she had addressed to him in two days.

  "I'm sorry," he mumbled again. "I didn't know... is the wand all right?"

  "Wand?" She glanced down at the table again. "Oh, that. It's no wand. It's just a willow twig. The magic was in the spell. The writing. And..." she looked up and stared into his face. "... in you."

  With a strange sort of hissing, sighing noise, the parchment on the table before her quietly dissolved into dust, leaving a patch of grey fluff. She didn't look down at it.

  "In you," she repeated. "I knew you were talented, but now..." She gestured at the stick, a small flip of the hand. "The stick points towards magical talent. All I meant to do was to show you that you are mage-born. Mage-born indeed."

  Gerd felt his pulse increase, a thudding in his ears. "I'm a wizard's son?"

  "Yes. Father and mother, certainly. And grandparents, both sides, I'd say. Seven generations, for all I know, though I think that's only a story, the idea that you need that many to be accepted as a Magus. Although there was the case of Selamassa Varch..." Her voice died away, and her eyes fell. She seemed to contemplate the wand and the patch of dust on the table.

  Then she shook herself. "But that's the point, and this makes it only the more strongly. It is wrong - wrong and dangerous - to keep the mage-born in ignorance. By teaching you I do no more than what is right. A mage must not take money for doing what is only right and necessary, especially within the craft itself. You owe me nothing but obedience in matters of the craft."

  She pushed the coins away, touching them only with the tips of the fingers, as though they might be dirty, waited until he had picked them up and put them back in the bag, and it in turn had disappeared. Then she rose, paced to the window and stood looking out. A slice of sky, Gerd knew, could be seen between roofs, and at its lower tip, a blue hint of distant mountains.

  "We go," she said, in Mage Tongue, and added a word new to Gerd. "Forsedra."

  Forsedra? It sounded like "ahead-day-now". Gerd looked a question. She smiled, pointed to the shadows, mimed them moving across the room in counterpart to the sun, mimed going to sleep and waking up again. Forsedra. Ahead-day-now, which is tomorrow.

  "We go tomorrow," repeated Gerd, and she nodded. "Where we go?"

  "Where are we going," she corrected, sounding the little words clearly.

  "Where are we going?" he repeated, correcting himself, but asking again.

  "Aera," she said. Another word he did not know. She walked towards him until she stood next to him, almost touching. "Naha," she said. She moved to the further side of the room. "Nid naha. Aera," she said, making gestures to show that she was a long way off.

  Not near. Far. Tomorrow we go far away. "For what?" he asked.

  "Why? For plants, herbs, fruits. To the r'hanwerod, to see the gathalod. To learn the gathalodha. In Walse, we cannot see. We go to the r'hanwerod, to see."

  R'hanwerod. It meant mountains, he learned. And gathalod, stars, from gathal, star. It was late that afternoon before he learned what -ha meant, on the end of a word. Sheep was wo; more than one sheep, wod; wodha meant a flock of sheep. Gathalodha, therefore, was a flock of stars. Star-pattern? Constellation?

  He sat, absorbing the information. He felt the weight of his sword, and of the heavy little bag hung around his neck. He, too, got to his feet and walked to the window. The mountains looked distant, high and cold. Snow still lay on their summits. He considered.

  "Nid forsedra," he said, after a moment. They couldn't leave tomorrow. Tomorrow was too soon.

  He needed a cold weather cloak and a sleeping-roll. His canvas pack was adequate for a march of a day or two, but this was going to be longer, it seemed. Maybe much longer. He asked as best he could, but Nela wasn't forthcoming about it. That might have been because she couldn't tell him in the Mage Tongue, or it might have been because she didn't really know; but he also had the feeling that she wasn't particularly interested in the details. Nevertheless, there were the usual necessities. Tools - at least a hatchet and a spade. Blankets. Clothing. Oilskins. A tent, perhaps. Cooking gear.

  "We need..." he began. He began to list things, the ones he had words for, ending with: "a horse." He couldn't say pony, nor mule either.

  Nela disapproved. "Learn to use less," she said, dismissively.

  Gerd understood her, though she said it in the Wizard's Tongue. He nodded as if agreeing, and went on considering the needed supplies. "Food?" he asked.

  "What of it?" she asked. Nela appeared to believe that it was some sort of luxury.

  "Do we buy it? Where we are going?" He had to think to put the words together, but they came.

  She only shrugged, indifferent. "People give it," she said. Then she frowned. "Mostly," she added.

  Gerd didn't ca
re for the last word, nor for the concept generally. He said nothing, though. "Not tomorrow," he said again. "One day again."

  "One day more," she said, correcting, but he took that for acceptance.

  "I will come, then," he said. "The day from tomorrow."

  "The day after tomorrow. Why the day after tomorrow? Why not tomorrow?"

  "I must do..." He gestured, to show that he didn't have the words. She allowed that, frowning.

  He was meaning to make his farewell to Alissa that evening. They sat in the common-room, their feet in the sawdust, Alissa's pack between them on the bench. She had already moved out of the inn.

  Gerd was parsing through his mental list. "I don't suppose your master does anything so ordinary as a hatchet, or a camp trivet?" he asked, into one of the silences that grew up between them.