“She’s well-proportioned and pleasing to the eye,” said Eynon. “She also sings like a songbird and can shoot a cherry off a tree at a hundred yards.”
“Braith sounds like an accomplished young woman,” said Nûd. “A musician and an archer.”
“I’d be glad to introduce you if you’re ever in the Coombe.”
“I’m not likely to be in the Coombe unless the Master leaves his tower,” said Nûd.
“And joins the other Crown Wizards to serve the young king?”
“Yes,” said Nûd. “I don’t know which outcome I’m truly hoping for.”
With that, Eynon decided enough time had passed to check the cylinders for more gold. He moved them to shore, one by one, and emptied their collections into the panning dish. To his surprise, and Nûd’s, they’d collected enough gold dust and nuggets to fill six small cloth bags with the precious metal.
“You must have a pound of gold here,” exclaimed Nûd as he hefted the bags. “That’s enough for four or five settings, even for a magestone as big as yours.
“Great,” said Eynon. “Does that mean we can go back to the castle and I can cook dinner now?”
“It certainly does,” said Nûd.
“Chi-chi-chi-CHEE!” said Chee.
The raconette was making it clear he was ready for dinner.
“There’s only one more thing to accomplish,” said Eynon after he’d put his pack back on his shoulder and reclaimed his staff and crossbow.
“What’s that?” asked Nûd.
“We have to do something my grandfather said a person should never do.”
“Which is?”
“Wake a sleeping wyvern!”
Merry
Fercha’s workroom was at the top of the tower, of course. On the climb up the interior spiral staircase, Merry was surprised dust wasn’t everywhere. The tower had reputedly been abandoned for years, after all. Then she remembered the animated broom and the moving black circle that substituted for a dust pan and knew why the tower was tidy.
The workroom was half library, half storeroom, with books and scrolls on one side and shelves filled with oddments on the other. In the middle of the circular room were two large worktables topped with dark, polished granite. Beneath the tables were chests of drawers with round brass pulls. A tall, wide, highly-polished mirror in a wooden frame stood against one wall. The room smelled of furniture oil, plaster dust, old leather, lye soap, oak galls, and a hundred other exotic scents Merry couldn’t recognize.
A horned owl regarded Merry from a high perch.
“Hoo hoo!” it called to Fercha.
“I know, I know, I’m late,” said the Blue Wizard. “Things came up.”
“Hoo?” asked the owl.
“Verro, that’s who,” Fercha replied. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
The owl sat impassively, then swiveled its head to stare at Merry, who stared back.
“Hoo?” asked the owl again.
“This is Merry,” said Fercha. “I found her at the gate pool. She’s my new apprentice.”
The owl shrugged and let its feathers fall back into place. Merry sensed the night-hunting bird didn’t approve of her. She stuck her tongue out at the owl when Fercha wasn’t looking and the horned bird blinked twice and shifted position on its perch.
“Be nice, Tuto,” said Fercha.
“I don’t think your owl likes me.”
“Tuto doesn’t like very many people,” said Fercha. “He’s mostly unhappy about me mentioning Verro. He’s one of his least favorite individuals.”
“Who’s Verro?”
“A wizard from Tamloch,” Fercha answered. “He’s powerful, but not to be trusted.”
“If he’s from Tamloch, doesn’t that go without saying?”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Merry. Not everyone from Tamloch is an ogre.”
“You sound like my father,” said Merry. “He always looks for the good in everyone.”
“Your father is a wise man,” said Fercha. “Don’t worry about Tuto. He’ll warm to you if you read to him, won’t you Tuto?”
“Hoo-wheet!” said the owl.
“What kinds of books does he like?” asked Merry.
“All kinds,” said Fercha, “though he’s partial to bestiaries.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good,” said Fercha. “You can read to him tonight.”
“With pleasure,” said Merry.
She hesitated for a moment, remembering something, then spoke tentatively.
“Fercha…?”
The wizard in blue read the worry in Merry’s eyes.
“What’s on your mind?”
“I need to get a boat loaded with four tuns of cider to Tyford for my father. It’s tied up to the dock under the tower. I don’t want to break my word.”
“Don’t let it concern you further,” said Fercha. “I’ll send Tuto with a message for Madollyn at Flying Frog Farms. Maddy is wiser than she seems. She’ll have Llyffan send a crew downriver to get your cider to the city.”
“Thank you!” said Merry. “I’ll gladly read to you from a beastiary tomorrow night, Tuto.”
The owl nodded, as if that was an absolute requirement of Merry’s continued existence.
“Don’t let the old bird intimidate you,” said Fercha. “Madollyn always feeds him well, so he’s glad to make the trip.”
Merry smiled at Tuto. The owl blinked twice.
“Very good,” said Fercha. “Now that your cargo’s disposition is settled…”
“Ummm,” said Merry.
“Is there something else?”
“Yes,” said Merry. “Doethan has Rowsch, Eynon has Chee, and you have Tuto. When will I get a familiar?”
Merry watched Fercha hide a smile.
“I don’t know,” said the short-haired mage. “I’ve known powerful crown wizards who’ve never been chosen by a familiar, and simple hedge wizards with two, or even three.”
“But what if I never…”
“You’re young. You have plenty of time to be chosen.”
“I guess so,” said Merry. “Being patient is hard.”
“You don’t need to be patient about everything,” said Fercha. “It’s time for you to pick out a magestone.”
“Pick one out? From where?”
Merry scanned the shelves filled with unusual objects, looking for blue gems.
“I don’t see any.”
“Don’t look with your eyes—reach out with your senses,” said Fercha. “If one of the stones in my workroom resonates with you, you’ll know. Give it a try.”
Merry closed her eyes and visualized the room at the top of the tower. Her mind detected over a dozen glowing points of blue light. The training stones around her neck and at Fercha’s throat glittered like tiny stars. Two very bright glows elsewhere in the room particularly captured her attention. She told the other woman about the nearer one first.
“I can feel a magestone at the back of the topmost shelf,” said Merry. “It’s whispering to me.”
“You can’t have that one,” said Fercha. “That’s mine. Keep trying.”
Merry extended her senses again, seeking the other bright blue glow, and made contact. Instead of whispers, this stone was shouting. When her attention touched it, the magestone seemed to say, “Mine!” She felt a tight link to the gem snap into place.
“I’ve connected with the magestone in the lower drawer, over there,” said Merry, pointing with her right hand. “Underneath the far worktable.”
“Ah, that is a good one,” said Fercha. “I look forward to teaching you how to use it.”
“And I’m looking forward to learning,” said Merry. The c
orners of her mouth turned up and she bounced on the balls of her feet.
“Get it, then,” Fercha instructed. “Now that you’ve connected, it’s best if it stays close to you.”
Merry ran the five steps to the chest she’d indicated earlier and pulled out the bottom drawer. She didn’t need to see the magestone—it called to her and snapped up into Merry’s palm the second her hand touched it. She held it in front of her, admiring its inner glow and symmetrical beauty. Fercha moved to stand beside her and examine the gem.
“It’s one of the largest I’ve ever seen,” said Fercha. “It must be half the size of a plum, and as blue as a glacier-fed lake.”
“What’s a glacier?” asked Merry.
“A river of ice a hundred feet tall.”
“I’m glad I’ve never seen one. They sound terrifying.”
“They are,” said Fercha, “but they move slowly. Their ice is a blue so intense it hurts, and the lakes they leave behind when they retreat are cold and deep.”
“If you say so,” said Merry. She was more focused on her new magestone than Fercha’s words.
“Don’t worry,” said Fercha. “The glaciers are all north of Tamloch now—north of the dragonship raiders in Bifurland, too, for that matter.”
Merry had grown up hearing tales of the dragonship raiders from the older men and women in her father’s levies. The Northmen from the Kingdom of Bifurland had attacked Dâron a generation ago, before she was born. They had rowed their way up the Moravon as far as Tyford, looting and burning as they came.
The men and women who’d fought with her father told Merry stories about how fierce the invaders were in their conical helmets and round, iron-rimmed shields, painted with dragons and krakens. Merry’s mother had once told her that a scar on her father’s upper arm marked where one of the dragonship raiders’ axes had cut him, but Derry never spoke of his own role in Dâron’s defense.
Her magestone pulsed in her palm, filling the room with blue light.
“It’s so beautiful,” said Merry, staring into the gem.
Fercha closed Merry’s hand around her stone.
“Careful. It’s all too easy to be enchanted by your stone, instead of being its master,” said Fercha. “Put it on the worktable and we’ll cut and set our stones together.”
Fercha crossed to the shelves and collected the other magestone Merry had identified, along with two small, odd-looking vice-like wooden stands.
“Here,” she said when she returned to Merry. “Mount your stone for cutting.”
Merry wasn’t sure what the older woman meant, but figured it out when Fercha mounted her new magestone in a stand. Felted clamps could be adjusted to hold the stones firmly in place. The older woman opened a drawer below the worktable and produced two wooden mallets and a roll of soft cloth with slots holding a dozen fine cutting chisels in graduated sizes.
Fercha handed a hammer and the largest chisel to Merry, keeping the second-largest for herself.
“Now you cut,” she said.
“I’ve never cut a gem before,” said Merry. “Don’t jewelers train for years to learn how to do it?”
“They do,” said Fercha, “but their stones don’t guide their hands. Just breathe, hold the chisel loosely, and let the stone instruct you.”
Merry took a deep breath, opened her mind to her magestone, and positioned her chisel. Her hand seemed to know the exact pressure needed on the mallet to chip away its outer layers, revealing an even more beautiful faceted gem within. When she finished, she had a round stone with a flat circular center and beveled edges coming down to a point, so that anyone looking into the center of the stone would see dozens of reflected sparkles of blue light.
Fercha had finished cutting her own magestone and leaned over to inspect Merry’s.
“Very nice,” she said. “Here’s mine.”
Merry saw that Fercha’s new stone looked a lot like the one in the artifact Eynon had found. It was oval, with a smooth upper surface, but like Merry’s, it sparkled inside from facets cut into its lower half. Both stones pulsed with strong blue light that reflected off the whitewashed walls of the workroom.
“Do all magestones glow like that?” asked Merry.
“They do,” said Fercha. “Though the glow responds to the will and emotional state of the wizard.”
“So mine is glowing brighter because I’m excited?”
“That, and because the magestone itself is pleased to be used,” said Fercha. “Now we need to make settings for them. Doethan did tell you the secret of wizardry, didn’t he?”
“He did,” said Merry. “Congruencies.”
“Correct,” said Fercha. “Did he also tell you about what’s happened to wizardry since you were born?”
“What has my birth got to do with wizardry?” asked Merry. She raised one eyebrow, accentuating her question.
“Nothing, that I know of,” said Fercha. “You’re what? Fifteen?”
Merry nodded. “My wander year starts in a month.”
“You know the kinds of magic crown wizards typically perform, right? It’s flashy, to amaze farmers and townspeople, or destructive to demoralize attacking armies.”
“Y-e-s,” said Merry, drawing out the word.
“What’s strange is that starting about fifteen years ago, wizards have been able to work increasingly sophisticated magic, far more subtle than we had before,” said Fercha. She rubbed her chin. “We don’t know why things changed, but they have.”
“Clearly, it’s because I was born,” said Merry with a smile.
“Don’t confuse correlation with causation,” said Fercha in mock-admonishment.
“That sounds like one of Ealdamon’s epigrams.”
Fercha snorted in disgust.
“I’m sorry,” said Merry. “I was trying to compliment you.”
“You won’t do it with that comparison,” said Fercha.
She turned to face Merry.
“Did you know that some old-guard wizards insist apprentices find their own magestones in the field?”
Merry tilted her head and regarded her mentor.
“They also require their apprentices to collect the materials for their own settings,” Fercha continued. “How would you like to spend a month in a silver mine?”
“I wouldn’t,” Merry replied.
“Good,” said Fercha, “because I’ve got plenty of precious metals, beeswax for carving, and plaster for molds right here.”
“Wonderful,” said Merry. She paused for a few heartbeats then posed a question. “Is Doethan an old-guard wizard?”
“No,” said Fercha. “He knows the difference between custom and practicality. During the last war with Tamloch he trained thirty apprentices in less than…”
Fercha stopped herself.
“You don’t need to hear old stories—at least not right now,” she said. “You need a fully functioning, well-set magestone to continue your training, and I certainly need my new stone in that condition as well. Storm clouds are gathering and so are the armies of Dâron, Tamloch and Occidens Province, for all I know.”
“Occidens Province?” asked Merry. “The Eagle People?”
“Correct,” said Fercha. “Dragonships may be sailing south, too, and there are rumors of the barbarians in the northern and southern Clan Lands arming.”
“It sounds like the whole of Orluin is preparing for war,” said Merry.
“It does indeed,” said Fercha. “So, let’s get on with crafting settings fit for our marvelous stones.”
“Full speed ahead,” said Merry.
She thought about shooting the water gap by Rhuthro Keep with Eynon and wondered how he was faring on the other side of the gate. Maybe when she had a fully-functioning magestone, she could figure out
a way to contact him?
For that matter, maybe she could talk Fercha into helping her? That would probably be faster.
First things first, she said to herself. She followed Fercha’s example, took a block of beeswax, and began to carve.
Chapter 23
“The power of magic is enhanced by the proper setting.”
— Ealdamon’s Epigrams
“Eynon,” said Damon, “at the risk of giving you a swelled head, you’ve amazed me three times today.” The older man pushed back from the table and patted his stomach. Chee raised his head from his spot in the middle of the table where his midsection was quite rounded from stuffing himself on carrots, onions and wild rice.
“Three times?” protested Nûd. “I only count twice. Once when Eynon returned on wyvern-back with his new magestone, and once when he collected over a pound of gold in a few hours.”
Damon smiled at Eynon. “The third time I was amazed was when I ate dinner tonight,” said the older man. “The soup was wonderful. Every meal you cook is better than the one before, lad.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Eynon. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I certainly did,” said Damon.
He noticed Eynon leaning forward on his chair, as if he had something to say.
The older man decided not to string Eynon along any further.
“What is it, lad?” he asked. “You look like you’re ready to leap out of your seat.”
“I’m just excited,” Eynon replied. “I’ve got my magestone—and I’ve got the gold you asked for. When do I make a setting fit for my stone?”
“Tomorrow,” said Damon. “Meet me in the artifact studio after breakfast and we’ll get started.”
The Congruent Apprentice (The Congruent Mage Series Book 1) Page 27