The Congruent Apprentice (The Congruent Mage Series Book 1)

by Dave Schroeder

  “Now what?” asked Eynon.

  “Now I show you how to pan,” Nûd replied.

  “I can make three different kinds of pie crust in pans,” said Eynon. “My sister says they’re quite good.”

  “Is your sister pretty?”

  “I’m her brother, but yes,” said Eynon. “Several of the boys in the Coombe think so.”

  “Hmmm,” said Nûd. Then he got back to more immediate topic. “Panning for gold is different—and I should have warned you. You’re going to get wet.”

  “The water is barely above freezing,” Eynon noted.

  “You’ll still have to do it,” said Nûd.

  “Show me. I’ll watch you do it first—then I’ll get wet.”

  “If you must,” said Nûd. “Stand guard while I do, since Rocky’s eyes are closed.”

  “Right,” said Eynon.

  He took off his pack and stood at the ready with his small crossbow cocked in his left hand and his staff in his right. Chee moved from his current spot at the neck of Eynon’s coat to back on the crown of his fur hat.

  Nûd took off his own pack and removed a pair of shallow, circular ceramic pans as wide as the distance from his wrist to his elbow. He stepped out into the river onto a pair of flat rocks, and squatted down so he could scoop up half a pan full of sand and gravel from the riverbed. The rest of the pan was full of water. Nûd stood and turned to show the contents of the pan to Eynon.

  “There are flakes of gold in the sand,” said the big man. “And sometimes nuggets. Gold is heavy, so it sinks to the bottom. Panning is a way to wash away all but the gold.”

  “That makes sense,” said Eynon. “How did you learn how to do it?”

  “My mother taught me,” said Nûd. “We’d come here and have picnics when I was young.”

  “That sounds like fun,” said Eynon.

  The other man seemed lost in thought for a few moments. Eynon tried to picture the scene replaying in Nûd’s mind. It was hard for Eynon to picture Nûd as a small child, since the other man was so big now, but Eynon tried, holding back a smile.

  “If people have been panning for gold here for a long time, how can there be any gold left for us to find?”

  “The river brings new gold flakes and nuggets downstream all the time,” said Nûd. “It washes out of veins of metal in the mountains and collects in places where the current slows and it can sink.”

  “Oh,” said Eynon. “That’s a lot better than trying to dig it from a mine.”

  “You might not agree after a few days of standing in a cold river,” said Nûd. The big man took off his gloves and stuffed them in his coat. “Let me show you how to pan properly. You swirl—and tip.”

  Eynon stepped closer to follow Nûd’s movements. The big man tilted the pan from side to side until the water was rotating and beginning to slosh over the edge of the pan. Eynon saw there were ridges around the upper part of the pan that would catch the tiny flakes.

  “I get it,” said Eynon. “You want the water to carry the lighter sand out of the pan…”

  “Leaving the heavier gold dust behind,” Nûd continued. “Right. First you get most of the sand and silt out of the pan.”

  Nûd expertly manipulated the water in his pan until it was mostly gone. Eynon could see larger pieces of gravel and flecks of shiny yellow dust in the bottom.

  “Always check for nuggets at this stage,” said Nûd, “and remove big pebbles that clutter things up while you’re at it.”

  Holding the pan in he left hand, he picked out small stones with his right, dropping them into the river with a series of tiny blip sounds. Chee clapped his front paws and Nûd bowed. Then Nûd squatted again and put more water in his pan.

  “You repeat the process to eliminate all the lighter stuff, and what’s left will be gold—or lead or platinum, sometimes.”

  “Fascinating,” said Eynon.

  “It takes lots of patience,” said Nûd, “but when you’re done, flakes of gold will be left in the bottom.”

  “How long does it take to get an ounce of gold dust?”

  “An ounce? Days and days,” Nûd replied. “You’ll probably be out here for a month to get enough for a setting for your magestone.”

  Eynon considered spending a month out in the cold, standing in frigid water with his hands chilled and his feet wet.

  There’s got to be a better way, he considered. Eynon reviewed the method he’d used to make sweet-tasting water back in the castle’s kitchen. Maybe he could turn panning for gold into a continuous process?

  Nûd had finished two more rounds of washing away impurities. He showed the contents of his pan to Eynon. A dozen yellow flakes remained in the bottom.

  Now Eynon understood why it would take so long to get enough gold to make a proper setting.

  “That’s an interesting technique,” said Eynon, “but I’ve got an idea that should speed it up.”

  Nûd stepped back on shore and moved next to Eynon.

  “I don’t doubt that you do,” said Nûd. “How can I help? Your ideas often pan out.”

  Eynon grinned at Nûd’s pun, then gave him a serious reply.

  “Please stand guard,” said Eynon, handing his crossbow to Nûd.

  When Nûd inspected the weapon, he seemed surprised, but didn’t say anything.

  Eynon leaned his staff against one of the larger driftwood logs and approached the riverbank. Carefully considering distances and angles, he constructed an open, translucent cylinder of solidified sound the diameter of Nûd’s pan and twice as long as Eynon’s staff. It was shaped like a larger version of the terracotta pipes that brought water to cottages in Haywall. Eynon thought about the ridges in the ceramic disk Nûd had used for panning, and added ridges to the inside of the cylinder to help trap gold dust.

  He lowered the pipe into the current and tilted it, so the downstream end was a bit higher than the upstream one. Nûd closely followed Eynon’s progress, while simultaneously scanning the area for threats. Eynon created a hemisphere of solidified sound and used it to scoop up gravel from the riverbed, then dump it into the downstream end of the cylinder. Nûd’s face lit up.

  “I see what you’re doing,” said the big man. “You think the current will wash away the lighter stones, leaving the gold dust in the ridges.”

  “Precisely,” said Eynon. “It’s a lot faster than collecting dust one pan at a time.”

  “Maybe,” said Nûd, “but you’ll lose a lot of dust because you’re trying to do things faster.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Eynon.

  He let the current stream through the cylinder for a quarter hour, then lifted it from the water so he could inspect what had collected in the ridges. It was hard to see colors against the walls of the translucent cylinder, so Eynon adjusted his spell and turned the ridges black. Flecks of gold were now clearly present.

  “It’s working!” Eynon declared, seconded by an enthusiastic chee-chi-chi-chee from his raconette.

  “How will you get the gold dust out of the cylinder?” asked Nûd.

  “That’s easy,” Eynon replied.

  He put Nûd’s panning dish on a rock, rotated the cylinder until it was oriented vertically above it, and removed the ridges. Eynon instructed his red magestone to send a gentle puff of warm air down the cylinder and watched precious yellow dust fall into the panning dish like a shower of pine tree pollen. Eynon’s approach had collected ten times as much dust as Nûd had when he’d demonstrated earlier.

  “At this rate,” said Nûd after he’d examined the bowl, “you’ll have enough gold for your setting in a week.”

  A shadow passed over the dish holding the gold dust. Eynon looked up and saw a large, oddly shaped hawk circling high above.

  Wait! That’s not a hawk! thou
ght Eynon. That’s a gryffon!

  The monster wasn’t attacking them—but it was descending in a spiral path, trying to determine whether or not Nûd and Eynon would be good eating.

  Perhaps it’s the same gryffon I saw this morning? Eynon considered. It might not have had a chance to finish the old bull wisent back in the clearing and was still hungry.

  Nûd brought up Eynon’s small crossbow and was prepared to shoot, but Eynon held him back with a hand on his arm.

  “I want to try something.”

  Eynon launched the translucent cylinder toward the gryffon, imparting a rotation to the long tube as it went up to add stability. He tweaked the base of the cylinder, adding a resonance slot to transform it into a giant flute.

  As it came close to the gryffon’s altitude, the cylinder sounded a deep, mournful note, like the baying of a giant hound. When the cylinder brushed the gryffon on its upward journey, the creature decided that Nûd and Eynon were more trouble than they were worth and flew off toward the north.

  Nûd lowered his crossbow and looked at Eynon with more respect.

  “That was impressive,” said the big man.

  “I wasn’t sure what would happen,” Eynon admitted.

  “Neither was the gryffon,” said Nûd with a grin.

  Chee chittered at them both and Rocky opened one of his massive eyes to confirm his attention wasn’t needed. The wyvern returned to napping and soaking up the afternoon sunlight.

  Eynon dispelled the cylinder of solidified sound before it could fall into the river and put his hand on his chin. Something about the gryffon’s spiraling path in the sky and the rotating cylinder was tugging at his brain. He thought back to how the farmers in the Coombe moved water up to their high fields in the summer, using screws inside a series of hollow logs.

  Drawing on the congruencies inside both the red and blue magestones, he constructed a new, even larger and longer translucent cylinder of solidified sound. Inside it, he crafted a long spiral—an Archie screw, the farmers had called it—to lift the water. He added a vertical baffle to the lowest turn of the screw at the bottom and moved the entire thing out into the river with its lower end in gravel and its upper end a few feet above the water. He took a deep breath and directed the cylinder to rotate as he exhaled.

  This might work, thought Eynon.

  Nûd was staring at Eynon like the younger man had grown three heads.

  “You’re either a genius or a fool,” said the big man.

  “We should know one way or the other in half an hour,” said Eynon.

  It didn’t take that long. After fifteen minutes, Eynon lifted the lower end of the cylinder out of the gravel and they could see a sizable collection of gold dust and even a few nuggets gathered against the baffle. When he dumped out what had accumulated, the nuggets made loud clinks against the ceramic of the panning dish and gold dust covered the bottom.

  “You’re a genius, then,” said Nûd. “At this rate, you’ll have enough gold for your setting before sundown.”

  “Or maybe sooner,” said Eynon, quite pleased his idea had worked.

  “What are you planning now?” asked Nûd. “I can tell you’ve got something creative in mind.”

  “Not creative,” said Eynon. “Duplicative.”

  “Oh,” said Nûd.

  The big man laughed and slapped his hand against his forehead while Eynon returned the cylinder to the river. Eynon focused his concentration and constructed seven more cylinder-screw combinations, placing four along each bank. When all eight were all properly situated and rotating, he used his blue magestone to magically lock them in place and leaned against a driftwood log, finally able to relax.

  Eynon glanced back at Rocky sleeping on the beach and envied the wyvern.

  “I could use a nap myself.”

  “Here,” said Nûd, holding out a leather bottle. “Have a drink. You’ve earned it.”

  Eynon extended his hand and grabbed the bottle. He squirted a jet of liquid into his mouth, unsure what he was drinking.

  “Honey wine!” he exclaimed. “It’s delicious.”

  He sent more of the amber fluid down his throat.

  “Be careful,” said Nûd. “That’s not honey wine. It’s winter mead—and that’s a lot stronger.”

  “Winter mead?” asked Eynon.

  “You leave honey wine outside during the winter and collect what doesn’t freeze,” said Nûd.

  “Like applejack?”

  “Exactly,” said Nûd.

  The big man pulled a small package wrapped in leaves from his belt pouch and handed it to Eynon.

  “This should go well with your drink,” he said. “It’s candy made from maple tree sap. You’ll need to replenish your energy after working so much wizardry.”

  “Thanks,” said Eynon. “I can feel it taking a toll.”

  He unwrapped the candy from a maple leaf and found that the confection was shaped like a small maple leaf itself.

  “How do you…” said Eynon.

  “Molds,” said Nûd.

  Eynon felt like less of a genius for not realizing such an obvious answer. He put the candy in his mouth and smiled at Nûd, feeling his energy return.

  “Thank you,” said Eynon. “That was exactly what I needed. How do real wizards manage great feats of wizardry, like building castles, without running out of energy?”

  “First,” said Nûd, “you are a real wizard, just quite a junior one.”

  He gave Eynon a stern look, then smiled to make sure Eynon knew he wasn’t upset.

  “Second, by and large, wizards don’t build castles, at least not using wizardry. They hire architects and workers to construct them, like nobles do.”

  Eynon nodded as he enjoyed the maple candy melting on his tongue. It was very sweet.

  “Third,” Nûd continued, “most wizards can only do very small magics, like the hedge wizards, or very large magics, like casting fireballs, shooting lightning, or building gateways from this place to that. The Master told me that it’s only been in the last decade that more intricate workings, like your cylinders, were even possible. He said it seemed like the congruencies had become more nuanced, able to support more subtle works of wizardry.”

  Eynon was quite interested now. He leaned forward.

  “The Master said that only wizards closely attuned to their congruencies can work this new kind of magic,” said Nûd. “I think you’ve got the knack for it.”

  “That would be great,” said Eynon. “I wasn’t thrilled with the first fireball I cast. I blew up a tree.”

  Nûd laughed.

  “You can tell that story to Damon and me over dinner,” he said.

  Eynon realized that he’d said more than he should. He wasn’t ready to tell Nûd and Damon about finding the artifact with the blue magestone at the crossroads. Dinner was several hours away, thought Eynon. Maybe Nûd would forget about his comment by then?

  “I get the sense that you’re not interested in being a military wizard?” Nûd continued.

  “I’ll fight if I have to,” said Eynon. “But I’d rather learn how to build things with wizardry, not destroy them.”

  “I hope you’ll have that choice,” said Nûd. “There are times when conflict comes to your doorstep and you can’t ignore it. As you heard from Doethan, the young king is trying to get the Master to join the war effort.”

  “And he doesn’t want to?”

  “So far, he’s not convinced it’s necessary,” said Nûd. “The young king has plenty of wizards.”

  “But none of them are as powerful as the Master?”

  “I don’t know about powerful,” said Nûd. “Wise, perhaps. The Master was the old king’s most capable Crown Wizard and the head of the Conclave.”

 
“Did he retire when the young king took the throne?”

  “Long before that,” said Nûd. “He came to Melyncárreg to get away from the intrigues at the court.”

  “Now that sounds wise,” said Eynon. “Where is Melyncárreg?”

  “Far to the west of the Coombe and Dâron.”

  “How far?”

  “Far,” said Nûd. “Too far to travel without a gateway.”

  Eynon’s face fell, even though he tried to hide it. He wouldn’t be able to walk home—or back to Merry.

  “How did you end up here, working for the Master?” Eynon asked, realizing he knew next to nothing about Nûd.

  “I grew up here,” said Nûd. “My mother lived here and my father wasn’t in the picture. When my mother left, I stayed.”

  Nûd’s face fell. It seemed to Eynon that he was reliving unhappy memories.

  “And the Master offered you a job?” asked Eynon, hoping to distract Nûd.

  “Something like that,” Nûd replied, his expression more neutral now. “I was a lot younger at the time and fell into the position.”

  “It must get lonely without anyone your own age to talk to.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Nûd. “No, better yet, tell me more about your sister.”

  “If you’d like,” said Eynon. “She’s fifteen, a bit over a year younger than I am, and her skin is covered in freckles.”

  “With red hair?” asked Nûd.

  “Uh huh,” said Eynon. “Long red hair. She keeps it braided. Her name is Braith.”

  “Is she tall? Short? Thin? Buxom?”

  Eynon was uncomfortable with Nûd’s questions—his sister was his sister. They teased each other constantly, but each would rush to the other’s defense when necessary.