A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

  Chloris had produced an emphatic nose-wrinkle at the explanation, incomprehension, not disapproval, well, disapproval of the incomprehension. Chloris’d really, really like it if sorcery, metaphysics, talent, anything, had only one set of rules. I’d almost agree, even if it’s obvious we’re, the whole point of this particular class and teaching style is, to come up with yet another set of workable rules, only most, nearly all, of the existing sorcery rules are wretched. If there was only one set of rules, who’d take the bet the rules we got were one of the numerically rare nice, or at least avoiding blood sacrifice, sets of rules?

  Wake had looked calmly at Dove and I, after we’d tried to explain what we thought we were doing, still without anything much in the way of useful precise words, and said “Praise then darkness and creation unfinished,” as though quoting something.

  Then Wake’d said “Praise then fire, and the impulse of making,” and that was a quote, too.

  Chloris says something, I can’t readily describe it. Tentative, and obviously words, but not a familiar kind of language.

  Wake smiles, and repeats it, with no hesitancy at all, so it sounds like an incantation. “Hearing the original in undertone is excellent,” Wake says to Chloris, who still looks startled about it.

  “Is that why Edgar did so well with the fire elemental?” Zora says, and Wake does the back-and-forth head tip and said “It might be.”

  It’s a viewpoint provided by a terrifyingly powerful necromancer from somewhere in the northern hemisphere, from a specific place so grim it was worth it to flee from it across half the world and find a pre-Commonweal Halt a reasonable choice of neighbour, seven or eight hundred years ago.

  Or, alternatively, the effective metaphor provided by a patient and caring teacher.

  With the Power, how you decide to look at something really matters.

  Rather like being formal students. On the one hand, you’re committed; succeed or die. This reduces Dove’s level of stress, which I don’t understand at all. I hear the point about taking the complexity out of it, I really do; it’s not like we’ve got any major decisions left to make, even the own-work project’s a much smaller thing than deciding to go for Independent in this formal, irrevocable, submit-to-judgement way.

  On the other hand, our teachers will now just tell us things. Not everything, but a whole lot more than they used to. And we’re our names a lot more, rather than ‘students’, unless it’s Halt. Halt goes right on saying ‘children’.

  So Wake just told us, we didn’t have to figure it out, that Block is Steam’s teacher, formal, heáhláreów, teacher, and that Steam’s route to being an Independent was weirder than ours, Steam was in the Line, right tail of the main modality of the talent distribution, moved into a magical metabolism by accident as an alternative to dying of exhaustion. Never meant to be an Independent, doesn’t like being one, but the basic definition is the magical form of life one. So Steam had to go back to school and learn all the other things you’re supposed to know, and was nearly done when we met in the early fall. All done now, but still in Westcreek Town, back serving with the Line. Which mostly means running training for hundreds of new recruits.

  We see Steam a fair bit, on the other side of the big training field the Line uses. It’s ostensibly clean land, but it won’t grow anything much, something about minerals and acidity. In the winter it isn’t muddy, Block says, and runs us through Power-handling drills. Complicated ones; toss the sphere over there, sprint to the other place, catch the sphere coming for you while you’re sprinting. Or manage three different Power manifestations, keeping track of which is which, while running backward uphill in waist-deep snow.

  Block thinks this is good for us, even when the weather doesn’t co-operate and it takes using the Power to pile the snow up so it’s deep enough in the right spots.

  I think I shouldn’t be accompanied by a little wreath of mist. If I make the considerable mental effort to pause the Power circulation, the mist fades away and I get cold.

  Cold, and a small question from Dove in my head, wanting to be sure I’m doing that on purpose, not hurt.

  Did that twice, and gave up. Has to be the same thing that kept, keeps, Kynefrid warm when actually doing something with the Power. Just have to get better at modulating it, so I’m neither cold nor melting a hole in the snow.

  Block’s the only person I’ve seen who can effectively spar with the Captain. They put on armour and use staves that are spear-shafts with an end cap at both ends. It’s impossible to follow what they’re doing with my eyes, and using the Power isn’t much better. Not for Dove, either, which is some consolation. Chloris can follow the individual events better, though not well enough to explain how, or what’s happening. It’s got something to do with fatal implications. “It’s not that they’re trying to kill each other,” Chloris finally says. “They’re trying to be able to kill each other.” There’s a pause. In the winter, it’s not water, it’s buckets and buckets of tea. It’s usually only almost warm, but you need it, running around in dry winter air. “They mean the kill part. Just not this time.”

  Dove and I can’t do the push-hands thing anymore, none of the pair drills.

  Well, strictly, we can, and it’s even a good way to raise Power. Doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do for training responses. We’re doing the one-mind-two-heads thing by the end of the first exhale. Got an actual change of expression out of Block, one eye got a tiny bit wider. Translated out of Block, that’s shouting and waving arms. Or Halt saying ‘Hmmm’, though I’ll take most anyone else shouting, given the choice. Halt’s take on watching Dove and I do push-hands for Power raising was to ask if we could keep the Power strands distinct.

  We can; we get a coiling thread of red-gold fire and one deep grey thread twisted of whispers. With a little practice, we got the twist even and started running more than one ply, so it looks like actual cable, multi-layer, multi-strand rope. You don’t notice when you’re doing it, Dove doesn’t notice either, but it’s apparently very pretty; we got a look of positive glee out of Zora, wing-waving and all. Halt had produced a benevolent look; Wake had looked at us, the benevolent look, made the head shake of disbelief, and looked at us to provide a clear approving nod.

  “Of course Halt’s up to something. To be Halt is to be up to something.” Dove said that without any kind of concern. “We’ll find out what things we are sooner or later.”

  I can do the push-hands thing with Steam. Much more experienced than I am, but about the right size, and I’m stronger, Power-wise. Steam’s stronger, physically, but not as much as I’d expected. I suppose all the running around is having an effect. It’s tiring, so I suppose it must be good practice. “Just enough,” Block says, meaning not melting circular holes in the snow around ourselves. That’s tricky. I get better, Zora gets better, Dove, I shouldn’t be surprised, gets it apparently as a consequence of being told it’s a requirement of the drill. Chloris has days with perfect control and days where there’s a snow tornado.

  “Death has many moods,” Wake said, and Chloris took a deep breath and nodded and kept at it. Some of that has to be helping the temporary ghosts in the Headwaters hospital. Those Line patients, all of them, sent Chloris a letter of thanks, extremely formal, hand-done charter script by a trained clerk on parchment, actual sheep’s hide parchment, and they all signed it. Chloris took it out of its silk and thin smooth hardwood boards, read it, put it back, then Chloris’ whole posture changed. Got a lot more relaxed about the neck, Dove says, and it’s stayed that way, though that’s not all of it. The letter itself is up on Chloris’ bedroom wall in a narrow frame behind water-clear corundum on both sides.

  Zora got a thank-you from the medics, with a formally attested certificate that will count toward medical qualifications, and a mantel clock jointly from both groups, a good one. “Not smitten,” Zora had said, grinning.

  The fighting parts of the drills — “This is what I know,” Block said — are harder, it’s not a que
stion of the Power, it’s a question of keeping the Power from leaking into what you’re worried about. Control is pretty easy when it’s ‘use the Power’ or ‘don’t use the Power’; ‘use the Power sometimes’ is hard, and ’use the Power, sometimes, on very short notice', is harder still. Dove and I have a bunch of discussions about how to move the reflexes into the new brain, there’s no sense in leaving the best impulse to duck or dive out of the way in the flesh, but we’re different. Getting everything balanced so I don’t try to do anything that would take Dove’s strength and Dove doesn’t try to get out of the way on the basis of my narrowness takes some work.

  We mostly get it, and it improves. By the end of the winter we’re doing well enough that Dove and I can reliably toss a file, eight recruits, around. Can’t do it with more than four of the veteran troopers, and that not every time, but it’s still progress.

  Actually hitting things yourself, especially with your hands, is something regular Commonweal fighting classes tell you not to do if you can possibly help it. If it’s each other, you’ll do less harm wrestling, and if it’s a weed or a critter expecting to get your hand back is rash. Block explained all this before setting out to teach us how to punch “In a way that adjusts for these deficiencies.” Block doesn’t see ‘more harm’ as a deficiency. The first décade of punch drills makes me think my arms are going to fall off; Zora grumbles, Wake has to tell Chloris to stop the first couple of days, before having more will than sense causes damage, and even Dove looks like it’s work. There’s five basic punches, according to Block; you pick up weights, five-kilo weights in my case, and you do a thousand, per hand, of each five. Then you do another thousand, per hand, of the straight punches, and then you’re done that part of the warm up. Once you do the rest of the warm up, which involves some of that running backwards uphill in the snow while juggling different Power manifestations, you may actually train.

  Did I mention that the passing-Power-spheres part of the training, Blossom started showing up some days and joining in, the very soul of cheer?

  No one gets fried. Definite progress. Catching Blossom’s casually-produced head-sized spheres of white light goes right on making me expect an abrupt demise, but I can do it.

  The first décade of punch drills is wretched and the second décade of it isn’t much fun, but after that it turns into a regular part of the day, even as Block starts easing the weight up. Sometime in the middle of the winter Block decides we’re no longer utterly incompetent and we start hitting things. Illusory things, initially anonymous squishy illusory things.

  The first time it’s an illusory thing with eyes and a density gradient something goes off in Chloris’ head and the punch, which is done hard and badly. We all hear the wet crack from Chloris’ wrist breaking. Block’s eyes narrowed microscopically before showing Chloris how to hold their injured hand to reduce the risk of further injury, sitting out. “Not yet a sufficiently advanced class,” Block says, not entirely to us.

  The rest of us keep going. Grue shows up and, rather than fixing Chloris’ wrist, teaches Chloris how to manage the pain well enough that it’s possible to pay sufficient attention to Grue, somewhere between teaching and explaining, how to fix it. “I’m not going to damage any of the rest of you for teaching purposes,” Grue says, “but pay attention, it might be easier when it’s your turn.”

  Chloris’ wrist is fine by dinner time, as both Grue and a Creek doctor carefully confirm. Chloris has a long talk with Wake after dinner, I think, I’m guessing, part of it is being surprised someone who is such a pure necromancer, talent-wise, can heal anything.

  The next day, Chloris punches the back out of the illusion, and gets this look. If none of the teachers were there, I’d be backing away.

  Figured out we’re allowed to hit things, Dove says, and I find myself nodding. Chloris gets scary, after that, at the block-and-strike part of what Block’s teaching us. I don’t care if fellow Creeks think Chloris’ a bit ethereal, willowy, whatever the polite term is among Creeks for someone who floats, Chloris is a substantial person, and even without being an incipient necromancer the intensity would be unnerving. Since, well, all those ghosts, there’s a question about incipient, not necromancer, Zora tries making a ‘fist of death’ joke, and gets Block doing a tiny solemn nod. “An expected outcome of the training for one such as Chloris,” Block says. Whatever’s going on in Chloris’ head takes that in stride and goes right on being scarily intense.

  Before anybody can get to being scarily intense, we had to live through the first day of thousand-punch-drill. Dove managed not to wince, eating lunch.

  We head back up to the Round House: it’s getting to be the usual pattern, do something strenuous in the morning, do something studious in the afternoon. We’ve been been doing a lot of hydrology and geology with Wake. All the thousand things mud is made out of have names. It’s drifting into chemistry. None of us have figured out how you make illusory diagrams stick to the page yet, though we’re assured we’ll get it eventually.

  Up by the path-pillars, right on the edge of the big ward, there’s Grue, feeding chickadees cracked sunflower seeds out of an open hand. There’s nothing involving the Power about that; aside from the seeds, it’s mostly holding utterly still. Grue can smile and hold completely still.

  Grue’s wearing a loose white wool tabard-thing, and nothing else, not even shoes. That’s the Power, or at least being comfortable doing it.

  The ward itself has been getting stronger, we’re all getting better at adding to it, so even without Kynefrid it’s strengthening. Wake assures us Kynefrid’s name will stick so long as the ward itself endures. In a few centuries, it’s going to be a memorial for many names, as well as a ward, the way Independent half-lives go.

  Grue hardly has to wait outside the ward, Grue’s entirely one of our teachers, can walk through the ward or the front door alone. Grue’s got an odd sense of politeness, claims, cheerfully, that it goes with the utter lack of tact.

  Everybody says Grue and Blossom did the same thing, used the same ritual, for how they became magical life forms, but the results don’t look much alike. Blossom’s appearance of flesh is an obvious manifestation, something put on about like you’d put on a coat to go out. Grue’s invisible to the Power; you can get a sort of halo, you know there has to be something happening from the eddies, but you can’t get any direct view of Grue. No amount of knowing that keeps Grue from looking entirely real, in a way I lack words to describe, it’s got something to do with not looking contained, which is silly if I think about it. Grue’s an Independent, and there’s that complex warding, Grue might be the complex warding. It prevents at least freezing, melting, catching fire, being crushed, or clawed by ocelotters, I’ve seen the last one, and Grue still looks entirely physical in a way that Halt or Blossom don’t. Even Wake, if you pay attention, it’s obvious the dominant presence is the intangible presence.

  Watching Grue walk through the snow barefoot makes me uneasy; I know Grue’s at much less risk of freezing than I am, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I’ve got boots and a fellow-citizen doesn’t, even if Grue looks like the snow has incidentally failed to be cold. Grue’s breath doesn’t smoke on the air, Grue’s bare feet, for all they leave prints, aren’t melting any snow at all.

  Must be a lot of uneasy, because I get my shoulder patted. “Ask Blossom about the glacier sometime, Edgar.”

  I wonder if the glacier survived.

  All of us with boots get our boots off, we get something to drink and perch, at Grue’s indication, on a windowsill. Two metres deep, two metres high, twelve metres on the curve. I keep thinking there should be a better word than ‘windowsill’.

  Grue goes right on smiling, but is suddenly serious. No idea what changed, Grue doesn’t look different. “This is the first difficult thing we’re going to teach you.”

  Certainly gets my attention. Chloris makes a faint sound of despair, half for the form of the thing.

  “Everything else y
ou’ve been able to pick up in a couple of tries. This is — ” suddenly Grue is Blossom, then Dove, then me, than Chloris, then Zora, then Grue again — “shape-shifting, and it takes practice.”

  I look really silly in a white wool tabard too long for me. It’s the only thought I can get in my head for a second. White’s not your colour, comes into my head, in gentle good humour.

  Grue’s doing the tabard belt back up. “That’s the demonstration, not of what you’re going to do, but that I know what I’m talking about.” Still smiling. “In terms of talent flavour, I’m a shape-shifter, which is not something much discussed even inside the community of Independents.”

  Most people really don’t like shape-shifters. Even the poor folks who have some kind of hereditary shape-strong thing going on, simple and obvious and limited to the one other shape. Grue, Grue’s reputation as a life-mage is considerable. Must make it easier to keep people from worrying about the patch of mist or a passing crow.

  “There aren’t any shape-strong Creeks,” Grue goes on, “so I’m going to mention the main feature of the stories about the shape-strong, which is that you do it a little bit wrong, you get stuck in the other shape. Since it’s hard to stand for an Independent when you’re stuck in the form of a swan, the first thing you learn is to turn into yourself.”

  We’re learning. Everybody thinks about that before they say anything. I can’t get it to make sense.

  “From yourself, into yourself?” Chloris sounds like this is the least implausible plausible possibility, but not like it seems in the least convincing.

  Grue nods, all cheer. “Your happy, rested, hale self. You should have lots of contrast to work with.”