“Why don’t you go talk to one of those earth magi that you were referred to?” Emonael suggested. “I have a light globe to try to copy.”
“Alright, I can do that!” Damiya replied, the determination in her voice causing Emonael to laugh.
Marin watched the trio of youngsters leave, the glass pane only slightly distorting the view of them. Of the three, it’d been quite obvious to her that only Emonael was actually interested in what Marin was doing. The other two might be interested in the potential breadth of power that her research might unearth in the end, but they weren’t interested in the research, or the why of it.
However, even Emonael herself was potentially an issue. The brown-haired, brown-eyed woman was gorgeous and attractive enough that Marin might have been interested in her if she’d been younger, and if Emonael had actually been the elf she was posing as.
“Rather fortunate that I was experimenting with that divination spell before they arrived. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had a clue,” Marin murmured, still seeing the faint outlines of Emonael’s tail and wings. Shaking her head, she asked aloud, “What in the blazes is a demon doing here, anyway? They don’t exactly come to our world on a whim.”
Still, Emonael had seemed honestly interested in Marin’s research, and it wasn’t as though many other people were interested. If she could meet Marin’s requirements . . . Marin drummed her fingers on the door for a minute, then finally shrugged, turning away from the door and heading back for the library.
“I told them what the requirements were. If any of them meet them, I’ll keep my part of the bargain. As for her, I’ll just have to take a few precautions. Not that I suspect she’ll be interested in an ancient relic like me.” Marin laughed, then her grin faded as she added, “Though I will need to make sure to keep an eye on the other magi. So long as she doesn’t start killing them, I think I can overlook her presence.”
As always, no one answered Marin, but she continued on her way, feeling much happier now that she’d come to a decision.
Chapter 4
Emonael didn’t hesitate before knocking on the door of Marin’s tower this time, fully expecting a long wait again. This time she was alone, but the morning had been interesting so far, and the previous night had been as well.
She’d spent nearly half the day trying to replicate one of Marin’s light globes, and it’d taken nearly a hundred attempts before she finally managed the red one. It’d been much harder than she’d anticipated, and despite everything, Emonael couldn’t understand why her words had ended up sounding so different than Marin’s to get the same result. With that in mind, she’d returned to the room with Damiya, spending most of the night pondering what she’d been doing, and feeling her decision growing firmer at the same time.
The morning was very different, though. She’d been surprised to see High Mage Valis waiting for her, and the attractive fire mage had promptly tried to convince her to become his apprentice. She’d managed to politely turn him down, but he was only the first mage to approach her, which was somewhat startling, at least until Damiya had guiltily admitted to having told one of the other students about what Emonael was considering. Word had obviously spread quickly, and one mage had even gone so far as to tell her not to ‘waste her talent,’ which had annoyed Emonael. Excusing herself from all of the other magi had been somewhat difficult, but she’d managed it in the end.
“Oh, hello, High Mage!” Emonael spoke quickly, startled as the door abruptly opened far more quickly than she’d expected it to. Based on her previous visit, she’d expected the woman to take several minutes, not barely a minute.
“Only you this time? Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised. Both of the others seemed more enthralled by the idea of what I want to do, not the work to make it happen,” Marin replied, glancing around before nodding slightly. “Come inside. Popular, aren’t you?”
“Pardon me, High Mage?” Emonael asked, feeling slightly taken aback. She wasn’t certain what the woman was talking about.
“This morning I had the dubious pleasure of entertaining two other High Magi, both of whom asked ever so politely if I’d refuse you if you came back,” Marin explained dryly, shaking her head as she walked over to her chair. As she walked, Emonael’s eyes narrowed. She couldn’t help but notice that the outfit was the same one that Marin had been wearing the previous day, though it didn’t look any dirtier.
Before she could consider it any further, Marin interrupted, sitting in her chair with a soft sigh. “Now, since I’m a stubborn woman I’m going to ignore their politely worded ‘requests’ and let you decide. Assuming you passed my little test, of course.”
“I did, and I’ll prove it,” Emonael replied quickly, frowning at the comments about the other High Magi trying to interfere. She quickly began to cast the spell, producing the orb of crimson light again and staring at Marin defiantly as she exclaimed. “See? I even cast it faster than you did!”
“Not bad, Emonael . . . but you’re wrong. You didn’t quite replicate my spell,” Marin replied, her voice unruffled as she looked at the orb. She began to cast a spell herself, at the same slow speed as before, and a moment later her own light orb appeared in the air. “See?”
“I . . . I’m not seeing a difference,” Emonael replied, looking between the two orbs with a dissatisfied frown. They were both crimson, both shed heat, and she would’ve sworn they were identical.
“Your orb is a quarter-fingerwidth wider than mine is. Mine is a sphere, yours is ever so slightly wider than it is tall.” Marin replied calmly, clicking her tongue as she sat up. “Details matter, Emonael. Still, close enough to pass, I suppose.”
“What? That’s . . .” Emonael paused, and gestured the orb closer to Marin’s. Only when they were close to each other did she see the difference that the mage had pointed out. With a hiss, Emonael frowned, shaking her head as she spoke plaintively. “That makes no sense! I couldn’t make it work when I used the same words as you, but I kept the gestures the same, though! Why did it turn out differently?”
“I can tell you that easily enough, but the question is, do you wish to become my apprentice?” Marin asked, her voice growing serious as she leaned forward and banished her light orb. “Are you willing to put up with the derision that such a choice will bring? I doubt it’ll be as bad for you as it was for me, but you’re still going to have to deal with those that think you’re mad, making such a choice.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to learn what you’ve discovered! While the others seem potent enough, none of the ideas they have can satisfy me. You, though . . . your idea is ambitious, and if you’re right, it’ll make an enormous difference in the world,” Emonael told Marin, folding her arms and shaking her head. “I didn’t come here to do things by half-measures.”
“In that case, I’ll require you to swear an oath on your very magic and soul that you will not share my research until it’s completed or I give you permission to share it,” Marin replied flatly, sitting forward and looking at Emonael seriously. “I’ve spent too long on this to let it be revealed halfway done.”
“That’s . . . isn’t that a little excessive?” Emonael asked, suddenly taken aback. While such an oath was dangerous for a mortal, for a demon like herself it would utterly cripple her if she broke the oath.
“This is my life’s work. I’ve abandoned everything else in the pursuit of my research, including the respect of my peers,” Marin replied, her gaze sharp. “So, make your decision.”
“I . . . very well, as you wish.” Emonael finally nodded, unhappily realizing that Marin wasn’t going to budge. While somewhat dangerous, she hadn’t actually intended to share the information with others anyway. Taking a deep breath, she spoke firmly. “I swear that I will not share your research until you’ve completed it, or until you’ve given me permission to share it. This I vow on my very magic and soul. Is that sufficient?”
“It is. Perhaps you might consider such a precaution to be a
bit excessive, but you’re coming into the middle of this rather late,” Marin replied, relaxing slowly and letting out a soft sigh, reaching up to rub her eyes. “Perhaps I’ve grown a touch paranoid as well.”
“Maybe you have. But please, I promised, so why are our spells so different, yet so similar?” Emonael asked, scowling at her orb before letting it vanish.
“Because the actual difference in our spells is minute, Emonael. Oh, to an outside viewer they’d appear quite different, but that observer would be wrong,” Marin explained, smiling suddenly as she stood up, stretching slightly before she headed for one of the doors leading deeper into the building. “For one thing, you started putting mana into your spell slightly too early, which helped warp the shape when combined with your use of the wrong tone in the first syllable of the spell.”
“Putting mana into it too early? The wrong tone? What are you talking about?” Emonael asked, growing still more confused as she followed the elven woman. “We used completely different words!”
They went down a short hallway, a couple of doors to either side closed, but Marin ignored them to open the door at the end, revealing a large library lit by bright lamps, thousands of volumes adorning the shelves. The old watchtower was attached to the room, and a large table was covered in books and dozens of sheets of parchment and paper. Marin paused in the room, pointing at the library, filled with more books than Emonael had ever seen in one place before. On the far side of the room was a writing desk and chair, resting against the wall of the tower.
“We’ll discuss your spell further in a moment. This is my library, Emonael. I wrote every last one of these books, they’re my notes on what I’ve learned over the centuries of my life. If you so much as damage a page of one of them, you will not be my apprentice for another day,” Marin spoke flatly. “You’ll be spending a lot of time here with me, but you will take the safety of the books seriously. Is that clear?”
“Yes, of course it is! You wrote all of them?” Emonael asked, taken aback by the thought. There had to be thousands of volumes in the room!
“All but Morda’s Musical Methods; that one I got from a conservatory I attended four and a half centuries ago,” Marin explained, passing the shelves and opening the door to the tower, revealing a broad room, empty save for the staircase winding around the outside of the building. “Here we are, my testing room. This is where any experiments are performed, Emonael, where they can be properly contained. And I’m not going to just tell you what it is that you did, I’m going to show you.”
The demon kept quiet, closing the door behind her as Marin began casting a spell, this one long and complicated. It took dozens of gestures, and nearly five minutes for Marin to finish the spell, by which point Emonael was surprised. She hadn’t heard of many spells as long as what Marin had just cast, but even stranger was that she didn’t see any sign of what it had done.
“What did you just do?” Emonael asked after a moment, and Marin smiled.
“Curious? Another good sign, at least for your prospects. See, when we cast spells, the gestures we make matter far more than anyone might expect. We expend mana to draw lines of mana through the air, ground, or wherever else we make our gestures, and that spell makes them visible. Like this,” Marin said, and began making the gestures to her light spell, and this time her fingers left lingering trails of white light in the air, creating a strange swirl of rune-like shapes. By the time she finished the gestures, the first parts had already faded, though, and Emonael frowned.
“Interesting. So, when you said that I put in mana too soon, you meant that I changed the shape of the spell slightly?” Emonael murmured, considering. “Still, that doesn’t entirely make sense. I’ve heard of powerful magi being able to cast spells without gestures at all.”
“You’re correct as to part of your mistake, and the latter is simple enough. You don’t have to gesture to draw the symbols. A powerful mage has been using magic for so long that the gestures are ingrained in their memory. They can form the symbol purely mentally, yet that’s only half the method of casting a spell,” Marin agreed, smiling widely. “I’m glad you’re picking this up fairly well; it means that I’m not completely delusional. The other part of the spell is the words, which don’t have to be words at all.”
“What? How is that possible? I’ve never heard of someone casting a spell without words before!” Emonael protested instantly, her back straightening suddenly.
Rather than replying, Marin began the gestures of the spell again, but just as she finished the first gesture, the woman sang a single, soft note, and the line flickered brightly and stopped fading, though the lines from her other fingers continued to fade away as she continued. As before, there were only a few gestures, and after each, Marin sang a different note, causing the symbols to stabilize and hang in the air together, and with the last the entire symbol flashed with light and the crimson orb sprang into existence.
“But . . . but how?” Emonael asked, staring at the orb in shock.
“You may have heard some musicians talking about the recent discovery of something called the ‘octave,’ Emonael. In an octave, there are a number of defined tones, and eight ‘steps’ above a tone sounds approximately the same as the first tone,” Marin replied softly, staring at the orb with a slight smile. “Each gesture aligns with one of those tones, or with one of the half-steps in between them, but it’s not quite that simple either. You not only have to have the right gestures and tones, but you also have to speak the tone at the right time as well. Otherwise, the spell won’t turn out right. However, almost no one would stumble across the tones on their own; they find words that have the right tones and the right timing. Yet people’s voices vary, so not everyone can use the same words.”
“You . . . are you serious?” Emonael asked, feeling numb. In some ways, it seemed so simple, yet she also couldn’t believe that it could possibly be the case. With her natural magic she spoke words after all, even if it was mostly by instinct. The ideas that Marin were presenting rocked her view of the world dramatically. “How did you even figure this out?”
“I’m completely serious. It was more difficult to figure out than you can even begin to imagine, Emonael, since convincing magi to share their spells is problematic at best,” Marin replied dryly. “Now, why don’t you give it a try? You have a good memory; I’m sure you can manage it, though I suggest using a word rather than the tones. Words are far easier to remember, I’ve found.”
Emonael nodded, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes to remember exactly what tone of voice Marin had spoken in, as well as the gestures she’d made. She hadn’t heard of the ‘octave’ idea before, but she had enough experience mimicking voices that she knew what it was that Marin was talking about. Getting the same tones as Marin had used right would take a little work, but she could manage it. And that, she realized, was what Marin had likely been getting at.
Opening her eyes, Emonael focused as she began her gestures, only to pause, frowning as the line started slightly too early, just like Marin had suggested. Her own mana trails seemed oddly thicker than Marin’s had been as well. She stopped, then restarted twice before getting the beginning right, and began to speak the words that Marin had used the first time, but this time in the right tones. It was hard, in its own way, but her demonic talents helped her get it right this time.
As her mana flowed into the symbol, Emonael watched in wonder as the orb slowly formed in mid-air, this time a perfect copy of Marin’s orb. Part of her couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and a host of strange emotions rushed through her. Before she could identify them, Marin clapped, smiling broadly.
“Excellent job, Emonael! On the fourth try, no less! You have much more potential than I ever had, obviously.” The High Mage spoke warmly, laughing softly.
“This is . . . this is incredible, Teacher,” Emonael replied, finally addressing Marin by the title that she obviously deserved, still in disbelief. “Just this would be enough to revolutioniz
e magic, yet everyone thinks that you’re wasting your time! Why haven’t you told them, yet?”
“Just Marin is fine. As to that . . . that’s just the barest tip of my research, Emonael, yet it took me ages to find that much. Putting together the pieces is hard, and I don’t want others to think that I spent my life finding just that,” Marin replied, shaking her head. “No, what I’m doing now is taking each spell I have and running through the different permutations on record, to figure out what each segment of a spell does. When I’m done, I don’t want people to just know that they can learn the spells of every mage across the face of the world; I want them to know how to modify the spells and make their own. That’s my goal, Emonael.”
The demon couldn’t do anything but stare for a long moment, stunned by Marin’s admission, but slowly she felt a smile cross her face. Finally, she could do nothing but curtsey deeply and ask,“Well, Teacher . . . where do we start?”
Chapter 5
“I can’t tell you. I’ve told you that at least a dozen times, Christoff,” Emonael replied patiently, taking a sip of her cordial and letting out a soft sigh of contentment. “Oh, that’s a good one.”
“You have, I just . . . I’m still trying to figure out why you even became Marin’s apprentice!” Christoff exclaimed, gesturing widely around them. They were at a small café that had been opened on the Association grounds by a student who was less talented with magic than at cooking, and since most of the magi of the Association were middling cooks at best, it did quite good business. He continued seriously. “I know that at least five magi would love to take you as their apprentice, as well as High Mage Valis! Both Damiya and I have made a lot of progress in the last few months, yet you haven’t seemed to improve much at all. It worries me.”
“Leave her alone, Chris. She’s a grown woman, and can make her own decisions,” Damiya interjected lazily, smiling as she added, “Besides, at least some of the magi you’ve mentioned are more interested in bedding her than in teaching her magic.”
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