“Healer Reaving has told me you can read, so I have chosen one or two books that might interest you.” He looked at me with his piercing blue eyes. “There is so much to know, so much power to discover. Isn’t this feeling intoxicating, knowing that you have so much potential and that I can help you unleash it?”
Unable to speak, I nodded. I had never imagined being able to learn those things he promised. When I had first discovered my ability to slow down time, I had assumed that this was something everybody could do. When I discovered that this was not the case, I had thought that this one trick was all I had. Now Lassadar offered me a multitude of possibilities. I could stay here and learn, explore what I was capable of.
When I returned to my room, I discovered that someone had left the books that Lassadar had promised on my table. ‘One or two books’ turned out to be a pile of at least half a dozen. I had been overjoyed at the thought of having the herb book lent by Healer Reaves to read, but now I had several books, all to myself. When imagining all the interesting things they might contain, I almost forgot the circumstances under which I had come to be in this position.
A candle was flickering on my bedside table, throwing wild shadows onto the whitewashed stone walls. It was late at night, my eyes threatening to fall shut any minute. A tray of food, still untouched, was waiting for me on the large table in the middle of the room, but I was too busy to eat. I was sitting on my bed, a thick book lay on my crossed legs. Its dusty smell reached my nose from time to time, making me want to sneeze. The book was ancient, its thick parchment pages held together by a cover of hard leather. On some pages, the neat black handwriting had faded so much that it was illegible. Yet I could not put the book down. It resonated with me in such a way that nothing else mattered, my surroundings forgotten, my hunger erased. This book was giving me more sustenance than food ever could. It told of the history of magic in a way that was not only exciting to read, but also giving me answers to question I had not even known to ask.
The book said that magic was something natural, something that used to be a common ability in humans. Once, people had spoken to their relatives that lived hundreds of miles away simply with the power of their minds. They hunted by extending their consciousness, leaving their own bodies to float through nothingness until they found the soul of an animal. They would simply sever the soul from the body, leaving the animal’s spirit to float away, not feeling any pain. The men and women who possessed this skill would then simply get up and look for the carcas they just killed. With nothing but a simple thought, they could ignite a pile of wood to roast the freshly caught meat.
It was a time of truth and simplicity because in a world where everyone would know their neighbour’s mind, lies were meaningless. In their free time, the magicians would focus on art and music, developing enchanted instruments, each one more beautiful than the next. There was learning everywhere, with knowledge passed to the next generation through books and songs.
Yet something happened, a change in the fabric of the world, that closed the large energy reservoir those people had drawn on. Suddenly, they were left to their own devices. Many perished, not used to living off the land without their magic. Those who survived were the physically strongest, not those that had possessed the most magical ability. They learned to hunt with their own hands, despising this bloody task, yet knowing that there was no alternative. While others had encouraged grain to grow by carefully supplying their crops with the limitless energy they could sap, they now had to fall back to ploughs and their own back’s work. Animals that they had kept by their side through talking to them in their minds, were now silent to their pleas to stay. They had to learn to build fences around their pastures and to train those animals they wanted to keep by their side. With the price of living off the land increased a hundred-fold, magic soon became a distant memory. Those who felt the once familiar pull towards the supernatural were quickly discouraged by their peers. The age of enlightenment was followed by a dark age, where survival was all that mattered. Each one fought for himself, letting their neighbours starve and friends perish. But through the years, people got better at living off the land. Some began to focus on crafts that were no necessity to survival, and beauty and elegance began to matter once more. And slowly, very slowly, people with magical abilities were born again. No one knew why or how one baby was gifted with magic while another one was not. The time when everybody had access to the power blanket beneath the earth had passed. Left was a world that favoured those that had no magic. Still, some of those that were born with peculiar gifts gathered in places of learning, entrusting their self-taught knowledge to books and scrolls. Others supplemented those books over the years, adding their own methods and abilities, to give the next generation an advantage over their own. Yet the magnificence of magical skills that had once been present in the world never again came to be.
7
Gynt’s Keep
The capital city of the Kingdom of Fer lies perched on a mountain overlooking the southern shores of Lake Veilvar. The castle itself is the seat of King Gynt and his court, while the space between the castle and the outer city walls is occupied by the common folk. The high stone walls of the keep have only been breached once, when the former Elasia was conquered by invaders from the Western Counties under the command of Fer, later to be crowned as King Fer the First, during the Fifth War. Following a tradition from the invader’s homelands, the capital city is named after the current monarch, currently King Gynt the Wise.
- An Introduction to the Geography of the Continent, Sir Tom Delavell
I overslept on the day that came to be the first time I was allowed to leave my room and exchange its solitude for the hustle and bustle of the keep. The book I had been reading well into the night was lying next to me in my bed, still opened on the page I had last read. When someone knocked on my door, I jumped out of bed.
“It’s me,” I heard the familiar voice of Healer Reaving call out. “May I come in?”
“Just a moment”, I shouted back, already slipping out of my nightclothes and into the simple dress Lassadar had provided me with. In lack of a brush, I combed my fingers through my hair, putting on my slippers at the same time. I hastened to open the door to a smiling healer. He had donned a shimmering green robe which went well with his emerald eyes. He looked a lot more formal than usual, but his wide and open smile was all I had eyes for. He seemed genuinely happy to see me, and when I thought about it, I noticed that I felt the same. This would be a day to enjoy, I was sure of it.
When he led me out of the room, we turned right and down the stairs, instead of left and up to Lassadar’s study. On and on they went until we came to a hallway that we followed through. The windows on the right side of the room looked out over the lake, a familiar sight. A door led us outside into a wide courtyard. There were a few lonely trees standing around a large fountain in the middle of the courtyard. A mermaid was presenting her half-naked body, surrounded by large spouting fish. It was an amazingly ugly fountain.
I had expected people bustling around on their errands, yet we were here all alone.
Healer Reaving offered me his arm and together we strolled through a gate into a more beautiful part of the castle: the gardens. There was a multitude of flowers and herbs growing everywhere, with only a small path leading through the confusing array of plots. Sunflowers stood next to half-withered rose bushes, lavender grew in the same place as something that looked like beanstalks. And everywhere, weeds had conquered the space between the flowers. In a way, this garden reminded me of a wild meadow, somewhere no man had stepped a foot in for decades. It was attractive in an unruly sort of way. As we walked through the garden, I spread my hands out and felt the plants touch me reassuringly on both sides. A host of smells and aromas reached my nose and made it almost impossible to identify the individual scents. In the middle of the garden, there was a solitary bench, its wood looking rotten around the edges. Here, we sat down. I closed my eyes and leant back, feeling
the autumn sun on my face, breathing in the multitude of scents. Insects were buzzing around the flowers, taking care of some last-minute pollination.
Healer Reaving’s voice broke through the orchestra of humming insects.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful!” I took in a deep breath. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so unorganised and chaotic, yet still, it all fits together, in a way that is not man-made but natural. How I envy you to be able to spend time in this garden.”
“We can come here again, as often as you like and our work permits.” Our work. I liked the sound of that. Not that I would be of much help, with my limited and newly acquired knowledge of herbs and cures. Still, I would try.
“I only recently acquired the permission to use this garden, but I’m planning to bring it back into shape. Some plants will have to be removed, but there will be many new ones instead."
We sat in the garden for a while, with Healer Reaving explaining his plans. When the sun disappeared behind a colony of clouds, we left and walked around the stone wall surrounding the garden until we reached a building that looked like several stone cottages fused together.
He took out a large bunch of keys and selected a simple bronze one to open the thick wooden door to his laboratory. It opened without any sound. “I oiled it only yesterday,” he confirmed my suspicion. “But it’s weird not hearing it creak and groan, just like it always did. It’ll take some time getting used to.”
He motioned for me to go ahead. The large room was lit only by a small window that looked out over the garden we had just visited. There were a wood stove and a large work table in the middle of the room, with several pots of all sizes covering the stove’s fire holes. All four walls were covered by shelves and cupboards, reaching all the way up to the ceiling. A ladder was leaning onto one of the shelves, making access to the higher racks possible. The shelves were bending under the heavy weight of bottles, jars, earthen pots and other containers. In some of them, weird shapes were floating in a translucent liquid. When I went closer, I saw dead frogs and lizards swimming in glass jars, in another I thought to recognise a small chick, yet another held living mealworms, crawling over each other in the limited space of the jar. On the rack below the window, books and scrolls filled the shelves, sometimes stacked in such a way that it looked as if a single touch of the shelf would make them collapse. There was a string which spanned from one end of the room to the another, on which dozens of bundles of dried herbs were hanging. The mixture of their potent scent tingled in my nose. There were no chairs, only a low stool next to the stove.
Healer Reaving entered his laboratory behind me, holding a torch he had just taken from a holder in the alleyway outside. He lit dozens of candles of all sizes and shapes that were standing in every part of the room, then kindled a fire in the large wood stove.
“My father was a chandler, and I learned his trade before I started to apprentice as a healer,” he explained. “I’ve been experimenting with not only adding flowers to the wax as my father used to do to create the most delicate scents but also healing herbs. Sometimes I want a remedy to be taken continuously, yet I cannot expect my patients to drink their potions every few minutes. So I’ve come up with the idea of burning herbs together with the candle wax. These candles give off a steady dose of healing scents, yet I’m still experimenting with the amount of herbs I have to add. This taper here, for example, contains anise and coltsfoot-“
“For inflammation of the lungs?” I asked, remembering something I had read in the book he had lent me.
“Exactly right, well done. To this red candle I’ve added lavender and peppermint, do you know which ailment this is for?”
I thought for a moment. “Peppermint is for aches and muscle cramps, lavender again for aches and fatigue. So maybe for headaches or muscle pains?”
“Spot on. Although I would also give it to someone complaining of a continuing sadness.”
One by one, he explained the use of this candles to me. After a while, I asked him for some paper to make notes on what he was telling me. It was fascinating to think that these simple candles could not only help people with their pain but also ease and cure their ailments. It was a much more comfortable way of administering medicinal herbs, for both the healer and the patient.
“Would you like to see how they are made? It will take some time, but if you don’t have anything else to do today, we could make some candles together.”
“Of course! I’d love to try that, that is, if you really have the time to show me.”
In response, he put a large cast iron pot onto the wood stove. Using one of the lit candles, he kindled a fire beneath the fire hole on which he had put the pot.
“I am currently treating a patient suffering from a severe cold. I’m thinking of preparing a mixture of chamomile, marjoram and thyme and then add this to a beeswax candle. Other chandlers prefer tallow as their base material, yet I agree with my father that beeswax not only gives the candle a much better scent but also burns more purely, without producing a smoky flame. My father rarely had a choice and had to use tallow, as beeswax is very expensive to produce. For every ten pounds of honey that a beekeeper extracts from a honeycomb, there’s only one pound of wax. Therefore I’m quite lucky that we have a bee master here at the keep who provides me with fresh beeswax; although now that I’m not only making candles as a hobby but use them to burn medicinal herbs, I’m relying on travelling merchants to add to my wax supply. If they don’t have any on offer, I have no choice but to add tallow to achieve the quantity that I need for my recipes. Yet this candle is meant for a member of the king’s court, so I’m going to use only pure beeswax today.”
From a barrel standing in a corner of the room, he took a chunk of dark yellow beeswax and threw it into the pot to melt. The melting combs became bubbling gold on the bottom of the cast iron pot. Tiny bubbles broke the surface. The heat around the stove began to smell like honey and spring.
Reaving stepped onto a small stool to reach the bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. With a small knife, he cut off one small branch each. The intense smell of thyme and chamomile filled the room. He passed the herbs down to me and pointed to a mortar standing on his worktable. I started to pound the chamomile flowers, enjoying the strong scent that filled my nostrils. Once the yellow herb had been reduced to powder, I added the thyme needles and marjoram leaves. While I was grinding the herbs, Healer Reaving was walking around the room, gathering all the supplies he needed.
“Many people think that it’s the wax that makes the candle. Yet in reality, the most important element is the wick. It acts as a pump that pulls up the liquefied wax up into the flame to burn. The larger the wick, the more wax gets burned at once. However, if there’s too much fuel, the flame will flare and soot, and if there’s not enough, the flame will sputter out.”
He opened a drawer, filled with wicks of all lengths and widths.
“These ones are all made from linen threads that I twist together. I’ve also experimented with silk, yet I think the way linen wicks draw up the wax is more predictable.” He chose a suitable one and attached it to the middle of a wooden stick.
“There are two main ways of creating a candle from molten wax. You can either dip a wick into it again and again, each time forming a new layer of wax over the wick until you’ve got the width you want. Or you can drip wax over the wick. This is quite a messy method, as you must get the wax’s temperature just right - if it’s too hot, it won’t stick or melt the lower layers, if it’s too cold, it won’t flow properly and form lumps. Today, I’m going to show you the easier way, the dipping. Please, add the herbs to the wax now. It should be nice and soft by now. We’re going to wait just a bit longer until it drips off the spoon.”
While we waited for the wax to melt, he showed me some of the candles that he had finished earlier. They were beautifully made, some the shapes of pine cones, others formed pyramids or even balls.
�
�Why did you become a healer if you so obviously enjoy making candles?” I asked. He frowned and thought for a while.
“I didn’t really have a choice in this matter. I was chosen to become a healer, and if you’re chosen by his lordship, then there’s no way around it. Not that I don’t enjoy it, don’t get me wrong. It was just a shock, being taken away from home so suddenly, and offered an opportunity that topped anything I had ever imagined myself doing. I’m not sure you understand what it means to be chosen. My old life ended in a split second, on the whim of another.”
He stopped. “I shouldn’t be saying this.” He turned away from me and walked around the stove. With a large metal spoon, he stirred the wax, mixing the soft material with the herbs I had ground. When I looked at him, he avoided my glance. In silence, I watched him work. He tested the strength of the knot he had used to tie the wick to the wooden stick, then with a satisfied smile, he began to stir the wax again. The scent of warm honey rose from the pot. Somehow, it made me feel safe and comfortable. Yet the silence between us seemed to thicken the air until I could no longer stay silent.
Heart of Time (Ruined Heart Series Book 1) Page 9