Knights Magi (Book 4)

by Terry Mancour

  “Where I can explain to her, proudly, that I am now slightly less ignorant of the Lesser Elements,” Tyndal said, dejectedly. Rondal looked at him with an amused smirk.

  “Well, it beats admitting that you are slightly more ignorant, doesn’t it? Start with Thaumaturgy. Master Indan is a good scholar. He’ll be fair.”

  Tyndal groaned yet again and picked up the book. He opened it to the first page and began reading aloud.

  “ ‘When approaching the delicate art and discipline of Thaumaturgy, that most noble of pursuits for the mage, one must be aware that you are beginning to understand the very nature of magic; for Thaumaturgy is but the Science of magic, just as Medicine is the Science of the body. The ability to impart one’s Will on the universe and see it resolve to your satisfaction is, of course, the very essence of magic, yet it is practiced by many, understood by few. The basics of this sublime science are easy to fathom, in general, but when it comes to the practical application of thaumaturgy to the dissection and analysis of a spell, putting those basics into practice can become one of the most difficult tasks any mage ever does. Beginning with the assumption that magic flows from—”

  Rondal dropped his book on the table in disgust.

  “What?” Tyndal asked, alarmed.

  “DO you mind?” Rondal asked, annoyed.

  “Do I mind what? Thaumaturgy? Hell yes, I mind it! It’s—”

  “Not that,” Rondal said, through clenched teeth. “Do you mind not reading out loud? I find it distracting.

  Tyndal’s eyes bulged. “You mean . . . read without . . . without saying it?” he asked.

  “I do it all the time,” demurred Rondal. “You don’t have to speak the words to hear them in your head.”

  Tyndal looked at him skeptically. “You don’t?”

  Rondal rolled his eyes. “No, you mud-brained pud! You read with your eyes. You just don’t . . . talk. You think. Just like mind-to-mind communication, only you’re talking to yourself. Makes things move much faster when your mouth isn’t involved.”

  “That’s not been my experience,” Tyndal quipped with a snicker. His humor was wasted on Rondal. “But I’ll try it.”

  And he did. To his surprise, he found that not vocalizing the words as he read them increased his pace. Enough so that he wasted precious minutes mentally kicking himself for not thinking of this ages ago. If he just relaxed, and let his eyes move as fast as they needed to . . .

  “Hey!” he said, sitting up, suddenly, and forgetting that Rondal wasn’t hearing what he was reading. “Is this true?”

  “What?” groaned Rondal. He hated to be interrupted. That was one of his more annoying traits, as Tyndal had no compunctions about interrupting, and being upbraided about it was irritating. Indeed, Tyndal had to admit he enjoyed interrupting Rondal because it annoyed him.

  “That the first magi each made up their own personal systems of magic?”

  “That’s what the text says. I wasn’t there.”

  “So . . . wild magic . . . that’s just what the first magi were doing?”

  Rondal sighed, realizing that his brother apprentice wouldn’t leave him to his book unless he explained. “Right. Before the Alka Alon stepped in and taught us Imperial magic. Only that was before the Magocracy, really, so it wasn’t exactly Imperial magic. It was just . . . human magic.”

  “So what did the Alka Alon do that was so important if we were already practicing magic?” Tyndal continued to dig.

  “They – you know, you could just read the text!”

  “I’m just looking for context,” Tyndal insisted. “If the first magi were all wild magi, why did the Alka Alon teach them to be . . . well, civilized about it?”

  “It wasn’t a matter of civilization,” Rondal explained. “It was a matter of standardization. If each mage used their personal system of magic then working together – or even teaching magic to anyone else properly – would be hard. The Alka Alon gave us the means by which to measure the nature of magic. Like figuring out just how much energy it takes to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree in temperature. Or to force an empty sphere of space to illuminate. The Alka Alon gave us a . . . a common language. Like theirs, only . . . dumber.”

  “That . . . that makes complete sense. How come when you tell me stuff like that I remember it, but when I read it, it just . . . evaporates?”

  “I don’t know! Memory spells are Blue Magic, and I haven’t studied that yet!” Rondal was annoyed – which he didn’t mind – but that caught Tyndal’s attention like a flipped skirt.

  “Wait, there are memory spells?”

  Rondal groaned and slammed his book shut. “Yes! Blue Magic! The magic of the mind and the consciousness! You are the loudest silent reader I’ve ever seen. I think I’ll go read in the courtyard!”

  “Memory spells,” Tyndal said, thoughtfully, as he ignored Rondal’s huffy retreat. “I had no idea . . .”

  * * *

  Tyndal spent the rest of the day in the library, only he wasn’t reading any of the books on Mistress Selvedine’s list. Instead he was doing something he’d never imagined himself doing in a dozen lifetimes.

  He was doing magical research. On his own.

  It had never occurred to him that there might be spells that could help him learn magic. But the somewhat obscure branch of the Art known as Psychomantics, or more commonly Blue Magic, had a solid and dependable history. Blue Magic was the sorcery associated with the human mind.

  Tyndal quickly discovered that the most elementary texts on the subject were not even found in the Main Library of Inarion Academy. Most of the discussions on it were in books on other subjects, though the assistant archivist informed him that there was a small but in-depth collection in one of the reserve libraries. That surprised Tyndal. He had never suspected the school would even have more than one library, but it did. Indeed, it had six.

  There was the distinguished and stately Main Library, which Tyndal admitted, upon reflection, did imply that there were non-main libraries. He’d just never thought of it that way. He even recalled Master Secul mentioning more than one library. But upon inquiry with the helpful advanced student on duty at the main reference area, he learned that there were in fact six libraries at Inarion Academy.

  The student librarian told him of the others: the Master’s Library (off-limits to all but faculty and reputed to be a vast repository of old examinations) and the Scriptorium Library, where commonly-used texts were kept (and where all advanced students could – and were required to, as a condition of their graduation – copy the books for their own use. And at their own expense, the student explained with disgust). There was the Enchanter’s Reference Library, a vast technical archive specific to the art, and the Student’s Reserve Library in the basement of the East Tower, where nonmagical works were kept.

  And then there was the Manciple’s Library.

  Stuck in an out-of-the-way chamber, the Manciple’s Library was where the more rare works on the more obscure branches of magic were kept. It was kept under the care and authority of the manciple, not the principle archivist, for reasons of tradition and academic feudal obligation that Tyndal didn’t quite understand.

  But he tracked the man’s student assistant down in his closet-sized office just off the school’s large buttery and begged the key from him, after confirming that it was the campus’s only repository of Blue Magic texts. The library was located in a spare tower that didn’t look useful, nor particularly decorative, a chamber built for some forgotten purpose and then re-purposed repeatedly over the years.

  Now it was the dusty home to hundreds of volumes unlikely to be regularly consulted by the normal students. Advanced students would sometimes find their way here, but the place was almost unused.

  Tyndal surveyed the scrolls and books around him after floating a bright magelight in the air, and he was suddenly glad that the place was warded against insects and pests. It was creepy enough as it was without spider webs. He pushed a pile of scr
olls off of the main table in the small library and created a space in the dust, pulling a rickety stool into place.

  Then he got to work. The Main Library archivist had given him the names of a few books or monographs on Psychomancy he could start with, including the helpfully-named Primer On Psychomancy, by Master Loden, whoever he was. Tyndal found the book after ten minutes of searching, and then pounced on it like a free meal.

  Quite against his nature he learned he was fascinated by the magic of a man’s mind. He learned how many common spells had a psychomantic component, but that the discipline as such was rarely taught, due to its obscure nature and dubious use. The well-trained Psychomancer, Master Loden frequently pointed out, could be a menace to society if he lacked good moral character.

  Tyndal hoped they weren’t too specific about that.

  Blue Magic was the study of the conscious, the subconscious, the dreamworld, the Other World, and of course such basic factors as memory, recollection, learning and knowledge.

  Tyndal found himself in awe of the idea of the mind being an objective thing for study, like carbon or pinecones.

  Tyndal found himself staring off into wonder as he appreciated the scope of the discipline. Master Loden wrote that human consciousness is merely the accumulated aggregate of experience and memory. And that made sense to Tyndal. We begin life as an empty sack, he reasoned, and along the way our mind picks up what it needs. He could relate to an empty sack.

  The art of Psychomancy was how to put things into – or take them out of – that sack. And it was, he discover quickly, much, much harder than merely producing flame out of thin air or manifesting a light in the darkness. Compared to the human mind, the mechanics of the basic magic of manipulating mass and energy were children’s games.

  Part of the problem, as Loden explained, was that the Alka Alon, the masters of magic on Callidore, had no cognate for the discipline; the human mind worked differently than the Alka Alon mind, and so outside of some basics in common with both cognitions, they had little to give the humani in that regard. What had evolved into Psychomancy was largely of human invention.

  As was (it was pointed out repeatedly in the text) the science of Theurgy: the magic of the Gods. The gods of the humani were the aggregate subconscious expressions of humanity clustered around a psychomantic architecture of abstract symbols, based on the needs of humanity. The human gods could take material form on Callidore, when conditions were ripe and the need was great. Some had even played a role in history.

  The gods of the Alka Alon or the gurvani, by comparison, were more hallowed ancestors or culture heroes. The gods of humanity, when they manifested in reality, were magically strange expressions of pure ideals crammed through the combined sources of thousands of minds over hundreds of years. They could appear or fade from existence as individual entities, reforming later in different form for different needs.

  But they responded, theurgists theorized, primarily to the primal needs of the human mind. The gods existed because humanity willed them to exist, needed them to exist, and Callidore gave them shape. But it all began in the mind.

  Beyond basic theory, which Tyndal was surprised to find fascinating but difficult to accept, Loden also gave some examples of spells of special utility . . . including one that allowed the mage to theoretically remember every word of everything he read under its influence.

  It was built on the third series of Antodine glyphs most Imperial-style magi used, one of the less-common sets dealing with abstract concepts rarely useful for warding away insects or making fire dance on your palm. Tyndal had never seen much use for the set of glyphs, even as he learned it by rote back in Boval his very first year.

  But once he saw them in the light of Psychomancy, suddenly many of the glyphs and sigils began to make a new kind of sense to him. When viewed in the context of the human mind, then understanding how to invoke a man’s memory or rouse his emotions might, indeed, require a sigil designed to suggest or imply, for example, as opposed to command.

  When he figured out the spell’s architecture, he cast it on himself.

  And he remembered every word of the book he’d just read.

  Remembered it as if it was floating there in front of him.

  Luin’s liver! Why the hell don’t the masters teach that one the first day? he swore silently.

  Then he got started in earnest, with Bannerbane’s Introduction To Thaumaturgy and a big grin on his face. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as he thought.

  * * *

  After that Tyndal’s exams got a little easier.

  When he met with Master Indan the next morning, he was able to rattle off – nearly by rote – the complex interplay between Will, Desire, and Intent, and how they differed, according to orthodox magical theory. By using the Blue Magic spell, he was quoting almost word-for-word from Bannerbane’s Introduction.

  The words just kept spilling out, as they appeared in front of him, and he interjected just a few “If I recall correctly,” and “I believe Master Minalan said . . .” variables in each recitation to keep it from sounding . . . too scholarly.

  Master Indan was impressed. “I knew Minalan was a thaumaturge, but from what Mistress Selvedine told me about you, I had . . . well, lower expectations,” the old mage admitted.

  “My master is enamored of thaumaturgy, Master,” Tyndal pointed out. “He has often given me lessons framed in terms of a thaumaturgical, as opposed to practical approach.” Considering that’s precisely what Bannerbane’s Introduction recommended, he figured it was the answer Master Indan was looking for.

  “Why yes, that is the way it should be approached,” he agreed, stroking his gray beard. “But too often the pragmatic approach is preferred, simply because it is more immediately useful, particularly in an apprenticeship. An academic student, of course, usually comes to a more enlightened understanding of the science of magic. You are a credit to your master’s instruction. Let’s go into your knowledge of the theory of systems, then . . .”

  At the conclusion of the examination, without revealing his official notes, the venerable Master Indan indicated that he approved of Tyndal’s impressive basic understanding of the discipline, and would report as much to his master.

  That pleased the lad so much he skipped the study session in the Manciple’s Library he’d planned for the early afternoon and worked out for a few hours with Galdan in the guard’s yard, practicing footwork and combinations of blows until after lunch, when he went directly to Master Trondel for his next test on Elementary Enchantment.

  This one was a little more difficult, as his knowledge of the elements of enchanting physical objects was very limited. But he had discovered a tightly-written monograph on the subject in the Main Library that covered many common materials, and he was able to rattle them off as if he was reading the scroll.

  “More study,” the taciturn old master insisted, “but you seem to know your knot coral from your knuckleweed,” he agreed. “And your understanding of the role of thaumaturgic glass in placing a permanent enchantment is noteworthy. I only wish my other students were as canny with that.”

  Tyndal was elated. With only his Thermomantics, Photomantics, Geometry and Symbology exams to get through next, he started to regain some of his confidence. And since the next two days were feast days (Briga’s Day, specifically) with no regular classes he had some time to study. The lousy weather helped: Inarion had a wet, cool winter without even the benefit of snow. That lent to studying, instead of swordplay. No one liked to spar in the mud.

  Tyndal was discovering that despite himself he was beginning to appreciate magic as an academic subject, now that his challenges with reading were abated. In some ways that made the task harder. As easy as it was to recall a text with a spell, that didn’t automatically bring understanding of the subject to the apprentice. He realized that Rondal’s perspective of the value of knowing why a spell works was, indeed, important.

  Being able to recite the five kinds of knot coral, for
instance, didn’t give him any true understanding of how it worked. Or how its properties could be best used. He could rattle off one symbol after another from the Symbolography of Master Mires, but that didn’t tell him how or why they were useful.

  Rondal, on the other hand, seemed to be absorbing knowledge like a sponge . . . without the secret benefit of Psychomancy. Despite his new studying regimen Tyndal found him even more resentful of his fellow’s easy understanding of magic. Especially when he seemed to prefer it to all other pursuits – feminine companionship, for example. Tyndal didn’t hesitate to use his ability to easily talk to girls against Rondal when Rondal started showing off his impressive brain.

  When Tyndal had returned from his final exam before the festival holiday, Rondal was finishing a book he had started in the morning. The rain made an almost hypnotic sound on the roof, and that encouraged the exhaustion they were both feeling. The warm fire in the grate did not help their languor. Rondal stretched tiredly.

  “I love this place,” he admitted, after they had both agreed to get some sleep. “I could live in that library.”

  “You practically do live in the library,” Tyndal grumbled as he slipped off his day clothes. “Really, you should go meet some girls. You . . . you do like girls, don’t you?” Tyndal asked, feigning a sudden unsureness. “If you don’t, I understand, I just—”

  “Of course I like girls, you idiot,” sighed Rondal. “I’m not an Adrusine. But I have my whole life to chase skirts. I’ve only got a short time here at Inarion to chase parchment.”

  “You need to carefully re-evaluate your personal priorities, Sir Rondal,” observed Tyndal, thoughtfully.