by Jeff Wilson
“Some men can shape it through force of will alone,” Seoras continued. “Sigil knights devoted their lives to becoming spiritually attuned. Sorcerers experimented endlessly on it, devouring and hoarding whatever arcane knowledge they could pry loose in order to bend it to their will. The starting points and the ends differed, but at the core, the means were always the same.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Edryd said. And for the most part he didn’t. He knew the story of the rise of the Sigil Order of old. They fought devastating wars to eradicate the immortal sorcerers who had dominated and defined the last great age. Those wars, the memory of which survived now more as myth and legend than actual history, belonged to another time. The rest of it, especially the parts about barriers and bridges, the æther or the dark, was mostly foreign to Edryd. The talk of starting and end points and methods or means seemed like nothing more than cryptic nonsense.
“You don’t need to understand any of that, not at this stage of your training. What is important is that you understand your connection to the dark. All men, all physical things for that matter, are connected to it, and we displace it through the actions we take. Through it, everything that exists in this world, and in all others, interacts. When you entered, I was shaping. It intensified when you approached because you became a focus that amplified the strength of the distortion that I was already actively creating. That is what you felt when you came near.”
Seoras was throwing a lot out at once and making too many assumptions. Edryd did not recall ever having said he had felt anything. He had not agreed to accept training either, or at least he had not verbally expressed that decision yet. Edryd stiffened. Could Seoras have known his thoughts? It sounded absurd, and Edryd was not willing to accept that such a thing was even possible, but he had just finished watching the man lift a rock in the air and completely destroy it, so he couldn’t be quite so quick to dismiss the notion either.
“I never said I felt anything,” Edryd said.
“You did feel something,” Seoras insisted.
“I felt the shards of rock flying at my face, but apart from that, unless you are saying that you can read me, and know my thoughts, you cannot tell me what I did or did not feel.”
“It is supposed to be possible, but no, that isn’t something I know how to do,” Seoras replied. “But, on a very good day, I can sometimes send a thought or an emotion, if the target is receptive enough.”
Slowly, Edryd became aware of Seoras at a deeper level, and he could clearly sense a dominant emotion. It was an eager hope, akin to the experience of finding a wrapped item, which you believed to be a long sought after and much anticipated gift. There was something more; it was something seemingly unwarranted but there all the same. Seoras was regarding him with an undeniable sense of terrible awe. That feeling was reciprocal. Edryd could no longer doubt what was now evident. Seoras was an aberrant force in action, capable of manipulating unnatural powers.
And then the demonstration was cut off. Edryd thought it disappeared entirely, but after a moment he realized it wasn’t gone. He felt instead an effort in the opposite direction, meant to dampen and conceal. It was a flawed technique. It greatly weakened the connection between them, but it actively drew Edryd’s attention, and far from obscuring anything, the shield Seoras had raised was nearly transparent to Edryd.
“You felt something,” Seoras said. It wasn’t a question, but Edryd didn’t acknowledge the statement. There was no reason to let Seoras know just how successful he had been, nor any reason to reveal that a window into the dark man’s mind remained open. Better to keep those insights to himself.
“I don’t know whether I felt anything,” Edryd lied.
“You have potential, I am sure of it,” said Seoras. “I can guide you, if you will let me.”
“While I am getting my strength back,” Edryd answered, “I don’t think it would hurt anything to see if you can train me.” He had done it timidly, but it was a relief to finally take the step he had been dreading that whole morning. There was no going back now.
“It will not happen overnight, but when you commit to it, I am certain you will become very strong.”
“Would I be able to use my old room while I stay?” Edryd asked, interrupting his teacher’s appraisal of his new student’s prospects. He wasn’t worried about imposing. Seoras was after all still holding a generous sum of money that he had refused to return, and he had no doubt that Seoras would want him to stay there anyway.
Seoras looked a little puzzled. “Are you not comfortable staying with Irial?” he wondered aloud.
“Of course I am,” Edryd answered. He felt a little embarrassed for some reason. “Only, I feel I would be… I think that I would be a problem to her.”
“Did she say so?”
“No, she didn’t. It’s just… I understand an impression has been formed regarding me in the town. Those who don’t believe I am one of the Ash Men will surely think that I am at least a source of contagion.” Edryd did not add that he was trying to avert the inevitable disaster for Irial that was sure to come if Seoras and Logaeir were both frequenting the cottage. Instead he merely said, “I would be doing her no favors if I allowed anyone to make an association between the two of us.”
“I’m afraid it is much too late to do anything about that,” Seoras said.
“People already know that I was there?” Edryd asked.
“No, but they will have assumed as much. Irial has what would in An Innis pass for a substantial amount of medical knowledge and training, but when people get sick they do not seek her out, not even if they are dying. You don’t seek her help unless you are convinced you are afflicted by the contagion. You go there to be kept apart, and you go there because you believe she knows how to prevent you from living on in a half-death after you die.”
“You can’t be serious,” Edryd said.
“I am perfectly serious. And your miraculous recovery isn’t going to help things. People are going to say that you died, and that she didn’t prevent you from returning. It isn’t helping that she works for me either. People whisper that I am a necromancer, that I command draugar, and turn living men into the undead.” This was all alarming to Edryd, even if it wasn’t much different from what could have been expected. “Of course one of those things is completely untrue, and the other two are wrong in important ways.” Seoras added with a laugh. “You see, you are putting her into a danger that was already there, and I can only see one useful thing for you to do about it.”
“What is that?”
“You may not be adding to the problem, but that doesn’t mean she is not in a position of some risk. She needs better protection. You can travel here in the mornings with her, serve as her guard if she needs to leave the estate, and return to the cottage with her at night.”
“I will do all that I can to keep her safe,” Edryd promised, agreeing much too quickly and without giving the situation any thought. He might have at least tried to first determine whether or not Irial would be bothered by the arrangement. Edryd knew that he ought to apologize to her, but Irial wasn’t there to hear it.
“I will teach you as time allows. When you are here, you can use your old room to study and this building to practice,” Seoras offered.
Edryd took in a breath of air, experiencing a rising elation that could not be stemmed. The dread that had been pressing upon him had lifted. He wasn’t going to be condemned to remain trapped on this property. Seoras had been surprisingly open, and though Edryd knew that he was obviously not free of controls, Seoras was allowing a lot of room. It wasn’t that Edryd felt grateful, but he couldn’t deny that he felt excitement when he thought of what he had already witnessed this morning. He couldn’t begin to understand any of it, but he wanted to. Edryd felt nagging doubts that he was overlooking something important, but this had gone far better than he expected.
“We get started now then,” Seoras declared.
Edryd felt the change—the odd sens
ation that he was somehow lighter, or heavier, or both at the same time. Seoras had a stupid grin on his face that was both happy and full of expectation. A rock from the pile rose in the air and began to move smoothly towards the center of the room. Remembering what had happened to the last stone, Edryd began looking for a place to take cover.
“Don’t worry, I was surprised by the symmetry when it broke last time, but I have a feel for it now,” Seoras said. “You don’t need to do anything. Just try to get an impression of the shape of the distortion as I make it.”
Edryd wasn’t sure what that meant, but he complied without argument. He could feel it, and he could make out the boundaries. There was an area that encompassed both Seoras and the stone where the displacement was more profound, and there was a range, measured from the center of the distortion, beyond which the effect decreased dramatically until it faded completely. A force was being exerted that countered the one that should have pulled the rock to the earth. Others were pushing in towards the stone from all directions to hold it in place.
“To do this, you create an upward lifting force that is equal to the weight of the stone. That is not all though,” Seoras said, explaining the concept. “You push at it from all around, or it won’t stay in one place. It will go in whatever stray direction imparted by the slightest nudge otherwise. If you stay calm and clear your mind, you should be able to begin to feel it. It will take time, but with practice, eventually you will form a picture of the distortion.
Edryd hid his reaction—eventually had already arrived. He could see what Seoras was describing, and he now knew what Seoras had meant before when he said that he had crushed the stone. The pressure Seoras had been exerting to hold the stone steady had pulverized it when the forces he was using suddenly intensified. These perceptions came to Edryd without any effort or practice. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have a clearer picture of the displacement than Seoras did. Being able to detect it and being able to create it were different things though. Edryd didn’t have even the hint of an idea on how to go about doing the latter.
“How is it done?” Edryd asked after Seoras had been silent for a couple of minutes.
“You need to be able to feel your connection to the dark before you can shape it,” Seoras answered. “Don’t worry, just focus on what you can feel. It will take some time.”
Edryd gave Seoras another couple of minutes. He didn’t want to seem impatient, but as amazing as it all was, he didn’t seem to be advancing his understanding at all. “Why do you call it the dark?” he asked.
“Because it isn’t something you can see. To the Sigil Order, they felt it as a type of darkness, incapable of holding or responding to the light. Those who called it æther, saw it as perfectly transparent, a medium through which all energy is transferred between physical objects. Both understandings are incomplete and wrong. Where these ideas venture close to the truth, it amounts to the same thing. No light will ever shine on it, it produces no sound, and it has no physical presence, though all of those things travel through it and could not exist without it.
“I’m sure you must realize that you haven’t managed a very clear description,” Edryd said. He was not trying to be rude, but this wasn’t making sense.
“No one ever has,” Seoras replied. “Trying to do so is missing the point. It is natural to want to impose some physical description to it, so that you can understand it and share it more easily, but that will always lead to a corrupted understanding.”
Seoras altered the shape of the distortion, and continued to do so in irregular intervals over the next several hours. Sometimes it would make the stone rotate or move in one direction or another, and at other times it showed no visible effects. Edryd was supposed to focus and inform Seoras whenever he noticed any change. He obliged by making an outward show of strained concentration. In truth it required no effort and only a modest amount of attention. He identified most of the changes quickly, but some of the more subtle shifts he deliberately ignored. Seoras was measuring him, and it seemed a wise precaution to ensure there were some gaps in the information Seoras was collecting.
“That is a very good start,” Seoras said, letting the displacement fall away, leaving behind subtle temporary reverberations in its place. “If there are not too many ill effects, we will take up something a little different tomorrow.”
“What kind of ill effects?” Edryd asked. When Seoras paused and said nothing, Edryd became insistent. “You can’t just say something like that without explaining what you mean.”
“Let’s just say you may get a very bad headache,” Seoras said. “Forcing the mind to accept a new kind of perception can knock things around in unexpected ways,” he explained. “You will be cursing my name this time tomorrow, but once you get over the first crisis, it won’t happen that strongly again.”
Edryd didn’t know whether he should be worried or not, but he was. This seemed like information he should have known before Seoras started. “Did I pass your test?” he asked.
“I don’t know if I would call it a test, but if it were one, I would say you performed well.”
If this was a compliment, it wasn’t an enthusiastic one. Edryd hadn’t exactly been trying to impress, so that shouldn’t have mattered, but he felt unsatisfied in the realization that he had become no more proficient than he had been to begin with. Everything he had experienced was entirely passive. He didn’t have the vaguest sense of how to actively interact with what he was learning.
He could sense though, that Seoras was extraordinarily pleased. The transparent little window remained open, and Edryd could see that his teacher felt none of the same frustrations over what had been accomplished. From his perspective, all expectations had been exceeded. Edryd realized it was foolish to be so quick to discount the day’s achievements. It was progress of a sort.
Sensing the discontentment in his pupil, Seoras offered some encouragement. “I think tomorrow will be more to your liking, you did well today.”
His instructor had accurately read his feelings, either in a conventional way, or more worrying to Edryd, perhaps Seoras also had a little window into his mind as well. If so, he had been lied to. It was an apt reminder not to blindly trust the knowledge Seoras was offering.
Something else of specific import to Edryd had also been revealed. He was certain that he had experienced these kinds of distortions before he had ever met Seoras, before he had ever come to this island even. He had fought a shaper back in Nar Edor, though not one nearly so accomplished in the art as Seoras. Edryd understood that now.
There was no way that his brother and Seoras could ever have crossed paths. Someone else, someone in Nar Edor, had to have taught Beonen some of these skills. Seoras might be able to provide some insights on the subject, but only if Edryd dared to risk revealing who he was by asking some hazardous questions, and that, he instinctively knew, would be remarkably unwise.
“I promised Tolvanes that I would talk to him,” Edryd said, trying to end the conversation and anxious for an excuse to get a little separation from this man who had become his teacher. He could not disclose to Seoras, any of the thoughts that were troubling him, not until he had had the chance to sort through them.
“He will be working on the noon meal,” Seoras said, endorsing the implied request. “If he hasn’t finished, he might be able to use a little help if you can convince him to accept it.”
Edryd found Giric Tolvanes in the kitchen of the barracks common room, in the middle of preparing a porridge made from the cereal grains he had been carrying earlier. He was already getting help. Irial was placing round flat sections of dark fresh dough into an oven.
Tolvanes, who had been expecting him, barely looked up, but Irial stopped in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“He came to see Master Seoras,” Tolvanes answered on Edryd’s behalf.
“Did you now?” Irial said. It was plain that she was not pleased.
The kitc
hen grew quiet. They both wanted to talk with Edryd, but neither of them wanted to do so in the other’s company.
“Won’t be ready for another half hour, but you are welcome to share the meal,” said Tolvanes, interrupting the silence.
Irial bricked up the oven and walked over to Edryd. Without warning, she began to brush away the layers of dust that had settled on his coat. Bits of white chalk clouded the air as she hammered away at him. “How did you manage to collect a year of neglect in less than a day?” she complained.
“Seoras said it was an accident, but I’m not so sure.”
Irial gave him a disapproving stare. Now he knew where Eithne had learned her craft. Irial didn’t demand any further explanation, but she clearly would have liked a more complete account of his visit with the master of the estate.
“I will prepare your old room,” she said, abruptly taking her leave.
With Irial gone, Tolvanes took a break from preparing the food and looked to Edryd in expectation. Edryd remembered what the older man had asked of him when last they spoke on that first day at the estate. Edryd was no more willing now to commit himself to that request than he had been before, and in truth he was certain that he had moved much closer to ruling it out, but he did not need to tell Tolvanes that.
“I have agreed to let him train me, and he seems convinced I will be a quick study,” Edryd said.
“That’s good… that’s very good,” Tolvanes approved. “What did happen though? You look like you took a nap in a pile of chalk.” Irial was not the only one who was curious about Edryd’s appearance.
Edryd thought back to what Irial had said before leaving and realized that she had made a point of telling him where she was going. She had also chosen a task that would create a natural opportunity for them to speak alone.
“The less I say about that, the better for everyone,” Edryd evaded. “I need just a minute to settle a few things, but I’ll be back to eat and we can talk more then.”