Spellscribed: Provenance

by Kristopher Cruz

  As they crossed the bridge, they saw that the city was active even during the night. Large fires were burning in stone basins along the bridge, and there were travelers approaching the gates on the far side of the bridge as they crossed. Endrance leaned over in the saddle and watched the dark waters of the river flow under him, the stars of the night sky rippling across the surface like a writhing mirror in the dark.

  On either side of the gates at the end of the bridge were guard houses, and four guards stood nearby each. The guards wore suits of chain mail, with steel skullcaps and tabards bearing the insignia of Fini across their breasts. They had a small steel target shield strapped to their backs and at their waists steel longswords were slung. They were stopping other travelers as they entered the city, asking questions before they let them pass.

  They let the travelers pass, and then it was Joven and Endrance’s turn to stop before the guards. They stopped the two of them as they approached, and the guards eyed Joven warily as they walked up to him.

  “State your names and purposes.” The first guard demanded, twitching a bushy mustache that protruded from his lip. “And are ye holding any contraband?” he eyed the two with an experienced gaze.

  Joven slapped his hand against his chest, ever playing the dumb barbarian. “Me Joven. He…” Joven’s gaze followed his hand as he pointed at his ward. “He… End… Ender...” Joven scrunched his brow as he seemed to struggle to concentrate. Endrance took his queue. “My name is Endrance.” He replied, nodding his head to the head guardsman.

  He seemed unimpressed. “What’s your purpose here in Fini?” he demanded gruffly.

  Endrance smiled. “I am the Wizard Endrance of Wayrest.” He stated, nodding his head at the man. “I come to the city to restock supplies before continuing my journey north. Would you let me pass please?”

  The guard snorted as he considered them, his mustache bristling. He had seen his share of poor people hoping to make it big in Fini, but this was the first time he’d seen someone with the guts to attempt impersonating a wizard. If the kid was telling the truth, he was either far younger than any mage he’d ever seen or was of elven descent. “Great, another elf blood…” He grumbled, waving the two in. “Very well, welcome to Fini…” He turned away as the two walked their horses past the gate.

  Endrance and Joven entered relatively unhindered beyond that point into the main of the city. Along the sides of the roads a great many buildings were packed end to end next to each other, so much so that much of the time there was literally perhaps a hand span’s space between two buildings, if there was a gap at all. Every building was made from the same white stone, and almost every building on the main street bore a pennant with the kingdom seal upon it.

  The streets were relatively busy, lit by torchlight, and the two were tired from their extended ride but needed to go about trading for supplies before they could find an inn. They searched around as they rode into the city, and eventually found a stable that satisfied Joven’s standards. They housed the horses and took up a room at an inn across the street. The place was expensive, a gold piece for the night, but the room was large, had two beds, and had a bath they could use. There was even mention of a warm meal in the morning.

  As they settled down, Joven took the time to strip off his armor and perform regular maintenance on his gear. Endrance sat on his bed and tried his best to keep his nose in his book, but after a few minutes of the barbarian taking care of his gear left him staring. The man had changed into a sleeveless shirt and clean pants, and left his dirty boots by the foot of the bed.

  The young mage watched as Joven set a package the size of a loaf of bread to one side on the bed, and then began laying out his weapons. The greatsword was first, followed by his battle axe, his short swords, an array of knives, a pair of sickles, long daggers, punching spikes, throwing hatchets, a sap, and one odd looking club with three spikes on one side and iron rings around its haft. His eyes were wide with awe. How did the man manage to carry all that, much less hide half of it?

  “That seems like overkill.” Endrance said flatly.

  “You don’t have just one spell to kill your enemies with, do you?” Joven asked in reply.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Certain creatures may have resistances to particular types of magic, or they may be adept at countering certain spells. Having a variety of offensive magic can help you survive a fight if that happens.”

  “Well, that’s why I do it.”

  “You’ve had enemies that are immune to steel?”

  Joven chuckled as he undid the string on the package to the side. It opened up to reveal several corked jars and several tools that invariably had to do with cleaning and maintaining weapons.

  “No, nothing I’ve ever met was immune to steel itself. But I have met some creatures that just got angry when you bashed it on the head, or had scales that could turn even the best of blades from it. I have so many different weapons to handle because there are so many different kinds of things I may have to kill them with.” Joven took a cloth and one of the jars and carefully went over his greatsword before opening it and applying the oils that were in the jar.

  “Endrance.” Joven called his name, and when the mage looked up stared him in the eye. “If you want to learn more about this, then take out your knives and watch what I do. I will teach.”

  Endrance watched, and learned. It was the first lesson in something physical, and he had to learn to be careful handling the knives that Joven had given him: they were very sharp.

  While they were working on cleaning the assorted arsenal, Endrance noticed that Joven had a dark mark on his neck that disappeared down his collar. He pointed to the man’s muscular neck and called attention to it.

  “What’s that?” Endrance asked.

  Joven touched the side of his neck and grunted. “Ah.” He said. “Tattoo.”

  “A tattoo? Of what?” Endrance pried. He was trying to learn more about the man whom he was going to be trusting with his life. Learning about things like that might give him some insight into him and perhaps the people whom he was going to be working for.

  “Oh. It’s just my totem.” Joven responded. “My uncle was good with ink and a needle, and I was pretty confident of my abilities.” He grinned. “I didn’t make a sound when he did it.”

  “Your… totem?” Endrance asked. “I’ve never heard of that before.” Yet another time he pulled out the guidebook that Kaelob wrote and paged through it.

  “In Balator, if you have enough honor, your family can ask the Spengur to divine their newborn child’s birth totem, something that is set in the stars. It is a great honor for the king to allow the family to ask the Spengur for such a task. One’s totem animal can tell you a great deal of their future, and only those who know their totem animal may go on a vision quest.” Joven explained. Endrance found nothing about totems or their significance in the book.

  “So how would you find the totem of a person after their birth?” The mage asked.

  Joven shrugged. “One of the prior Spengur had made a drink that you could take that would grant you a vision. Many who had taken it had claimed that their totem animal visited them in their dream.” The man shrugged, his muscles straining at the simple cloth of his shirt. “I do not know for sure if this works for those who have not been told their totem before, but whenever I take it I see it.”

  Endrance nodded. “What is your totem?” he asked.

  “Bear.” Joven said simply. “As it should be.”

  “Yes.” Endrance said in agreement. “I couldn’t think of anything more fitting for you.”

  Joven shrugged, having cleaned and maintained over half his gear. “Why do you ask so many questions about totems?” the barbarian asked. “Did you not know your own totem?”

  “Sadly, no.” Endrance replied. “We in wayrest didn’t believe in totems and Kaelob never told me about that stuff.” He shook his head. “Never even talked about that at all, now
that I think about it.”

  Joven grunted. “I think there is still some of the paste that we mix in my pack somewhere. Let me check that for you.” The barbarian put the sickle into Endrance’s hands and went to his pack. Endrance noticed a plethora of tiny nicks and notches on the blade of the sickle. It looked like it was going to need some time at a whetstone before oiling. While the barbarian rummaged through his pack, the young man picked a thin whetstone from the tools pack and followed the directions Joven had given him. He tested a few brisk strokes down the edge, not along it, and seemed satisfied with the motion. He didn’t even notice Joven look up from his pack and check to make sure he was doing it properly.

  Joven returned when he had finished what he could with the sickle. As he handed it back, Joven dropped a small leather pouch into his hands. It seemed heavy for its size, and shifted as if a thick liquid was inside.

  “You’ll need some ale, or something to mix it in.” Joven stated. “Go get some, and I’ll keep watch while you go on your vision.”

  “Why ale?” the young mage asked.

  “Alcohol makes the process happen faster.” Joven said. “And taste better. Take it from me, you don’t want to know what it tastes like mixed in water.”

  Endrance went down and found the innkeep as he was closing up the front. After some bartering and another of his precious few gold coins remaining he returned with a bottle of white wine. Joven quirked an eyebrow at the wine, but shrugged.

  Endrance undid the cap on the pouch and squeezed the paste out into a wooden tankard from the cupboard in the room. It was a thick, brownish paste with black flecks and green strands in it, and it fell into the cup in clumps. The smell wasn’t too terribly pleasant, an acrid and bitter odor that curled itself up in his nose and made his eyes water. He finished squeezing out the paste and poured in the wine until the tankard was half full, stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon. The wine did much to reduce the odor, but the drink was now a disguisting sludge color.

  “Are you sure this is the right stuff?” Endrance asked. “It looks foul.”

  Joven leaned over and looked down into the cup and grimaced. “Yeah.” He said gruffly. “Looks about right. Drink up.”

  Endrance held the tankard in one hand and tried to figure out how to stomach the concoction. If it tasted a fraction as bad as it smelled he was going to be gagging the whole time. He pinched his nose, held the cup to his lips, took a deep breath, and drank the contents quickly. It tasted horrible, and he almost spit it back up, but once it touched his lips it seemed to just slide down his throat into his stomach as if it had a mind of its own.

  He stumbled to his bed and crawled up on it. He sat upon the covers and waited for the drink to kick in. He felt the drink sitting warmly in his belly, felt it coiled inside him. It seemed to start spreading through his body as the warmth wound its way through his legs, his arms, and then curled itself around his mind. The world seemed at once to become more intense, colors leaping out at him like they were being projected from their sources. Joven worked on sharpening the other sickle. The steady rhythmic sound of the whetstone on steel was soothing, and he felt like he could drift away in its beautiful noise forever. He started to taste the feel of the soft sheets beneath his palms, and it was sweet to him. He almost fell over despite the fact he was sitting, and had to prop himself up with an arm.

  The air strummed at the beat of his heart, and… things flickered at the edges of his vision. He could feel the very meridian lines scribed on his skin pulsing not with his heart but with the flow of the world around him. He stared at his hand, watching the darkened lines of the two fingers on his right hand quaver and jump on his skin, as if they were trying to escape. The reddened scar like confluences on his back vibrated angrily as he breathed. He was starting to feel very uncomfortable.

  He struggled up onto his knees, the shifting chaos of sensations around him making even moving difficult. His back ached sharply once, then again and again in an ever increasing frequency. He tried to speak, but only gibberish came out. Joven barely glanced up at him before returning to his work, no stranger to watching someone under the effects of the foul drink.

  The ceiling started rattling, and Endrance stared up dumbfounded as the planks of the roof trembled on their rafters. White light shone from between the cracks and seams of the boards, and brightened before the boards resounded with a crack, and started peeling up into the light. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw only an endlessly distant sky above him, a brilliant blue expanse for which he could see winged figures flitting about the clouds in the distance.

  A shadow fell over him, and Endrance looked up to see what had shut the suns away from him. Above him glided down a tremendous scarlet bird, with its wingspan so large it could block out both suns as it drifted down to land on the bed in front of him. Its feathers were brilliant scarlet, and towards the tips seemed to bleed into a fiery orange for which licks of flame danced every time the beat of her wings stretched them to full extension. As it landed its wings stretched out, blocking the suns but limned in their own fiery light.

  It was easily large enough it could have scooped him up in its claws and carried Endrance away to a house sized nest if it wished. Endrance couldn’t help but kneel in awe of such a powerful and majestic creature. The bird seemed to take in Endrance deeply with one brilliant burning ruby eye. Endrance could see himself reflected within the eye. But the reflection seemed strange to Endrance. The other him he saw had burning arcane runes spinning in a circular orbit behind him formed of burning, glowing lines of power. As he watched, more lines burned into place, forming a pair of circles, one on the inside of the runes and the other outside, bracketing them in a circular band.

  The bird cried aloud, its shriek a chorus of hundreds of eagles that pierced Endrance’s mind to the very core and filled his nose with the smell of burning cloth. Flames washed out from the bird in a brilliant coruscating display. Overwhelmed, he fell forward on his face and collapsed, unconscious.

  He awoke, and the smell of burnt cloth still lingered in his nose. He sneezed and carefully pushed himself to his hands and knees. His body ached horribly. It felt like his bones had gone dancing without him and were just now settling back in from a long night out. His head was filled with a ringing sound and his heart pounded hard in his chest. The skin of his back burned like it had been lashed with a whip repeatedly.

  He shook his head, and his vision cleared enough to see he was still on the bed, but it looked different. He stared at it for what felt like hours until he realized that it looked like the pattern of the cloth was scorched. He looked up, and blinked again in confusion.

  Silently, the room around him was in complete disarray. While none of the furniture was broken, almost everything was knocked over or tilted on edge. The bedposts were blackened, and smoke rose in wisps around him. As he turned his head to the right he saw both the innkeeper and Joven standing by the door. It looked like the innkeeper was staring in shock while Joven barred the door with a mighty arm and mouthed something to him.

  The ringing started clearing, and Endrance rubbed at his ears. No, his bodyguard wasn’t mouthing words at him, he was actually shouting at him.

  “Endrance! What happened? Are you well?” Joven exclaimed, his voice sounding strangely distorted.

  Endrance tried to push himself up to just his knees, but dizziness overwhelmed him and he fell back on his hands again. He shook his head again, and crawled to the edge of the bed, falling on his face again on the floor. He stood carefully this time, gripping the scorched posts for support. He felt very much off balance.

  “That… felt very, very real.” Endrance concluded. He kept his eyes locked on Joven, as the rest of the room had a way of spinning around when he wasn’t paying attention to it. Stupid room; it needed to hold still like the rest of reality.

  “Endrance, what did you do?” Joven asked. This time his voice sounded almost normal, maybe only an octave higher. Endrance tried shrugging
and fire shot up and down his back. He cried out, and fell to his knees.

  Joven abandoned the door, and rushed to help him. “What happened to your back?” Joven asked, gripping the sides of his arms. “What did you do?”

  “What?” Endrance asked. “I didn’t do anything… I just did what you told me to. Was I casting spells?”

  “No. You were sitting on the bed there and suddenly you glowed with those lights like that other time.” Joven said. “Then suddenly it seemed to get even brighter and burst out from you like a flash fire. From it came some kind of push that knocked everything down, even me. And when I stood back up, you had that on your back.”

  “I had what?” Endrance asked, he craned his head to the side and looked over his shoulder. In the reflection of a nearby knocked over mirror he saw what the source of his pain was. The spell inscribed lines of his back had formed a miniature version of the circle he had seen in his vision. The lines etched in his flesh burned with energy it was draining from his aura. Even for the scant moment he watched, the circle continued writing itself on his flesh, marking more and more elaborate arcane symbology into his back. As the pain increased in volume for every mark the spell scribing inflicted upon him, Endrance did the only thing he could think to do then: he fainted.

  An hour later, he was conscious and aware enough to talk again.

  “Does it hurt?” Joven asked. He had apparently smoothed things over with the innkeeper and righted most of the toppled furniture while Endrance was unconscious.

  The young man sat on the edge of his bed. He had awoken an hour later, and by that point the circle had finished working itself into his skin. The lines no longer glowed with power, but were a dull orange-ish color that was slowly turning black each time he checked it. The meridians on his back had been forcefully changed and realigned, something that would have been mind numbingly painful no matter who the subject was.

  Now the circle was dormant. His body still hurt; the aftereffects of the drink, falling on his face twice, and the muscle strain he inflicted on himself contorting in pain had left him exceedingly sore. He stared at the reflection in the mirror for moments, but did not comprehend what he was seeing. Only after a few minutes of staring at it did he realize that he was just too tired to concentrate on mentally discerning a reflected image of the arcane language.