I was twenty six years of age when Magister Montigo assigned me to my wayfaring and when I subsequently met Lord Hester and Sister Gena… and Lady Iltara.
That morning, I sat on the stool beside the workbench, freshly cleaned of the evidence of the herbalism project of the night before. Painstakingly cleaned, I might say. Saint Thal’s Wort stains wood eagerly and I was in no mood to sand the entire three yards of walnut yet again.
“So, you are nearly my peer in fundamental alchemy,” Montigo mused.
“If you say so,” I humbly replied.
“Quite the talent for astronomy.”
“Yep.”
“You are my equal in logos, as I cut the field, anyway. As well as the histories, both mortological and theological.”
“I’m quite proud of that!”
“Yes, yes. And then there’s the Acts themselves. Astromancy, linguimancy, elemancy. You try too hard at the elemancy and make a damn fool of yourself, but you’ve still matched my expectations in all of them.”
“I’m, uh, flattered.”
“Do you know what the problem is, Horwendell?”
This turn in the conversation did not surprise me much. Magister Montigo was sparing with compliments, which she seemed only to employ as rhetorical whips or pulleys.
“What is the problem, then, Magister Montigo?” I replied, bracing myself.
“You haven’t done a damn thing by yourself. You’ve learned all this under my careful instruction…”
“… and my diligent studies!”
“Which you undertook as necessary, indeed.”
“Is that… should I have diligently studied unnecessarily? That doesn’t seem so diligent…” I ventured.
“That’s what we wizards are, you clod. We’re the obsessives with the fancy hats who make diligent study of anything, whether or not the world might scoff at it. And only,” she said, raising her index finger to physically punctuate this next point, “once you understand that…”
“… will I possess the skills to be a wizard and not merely a student,” I chanted wearily.
“Just so.”
“So I shall need to… study. Something. To no real end.”
“That’s the traditional rite of passage. Self-directed study, a dissertation that nobody shall read, that sort of thing. But you’d just try to con me into assigning you a problem.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“… Maybe.”
“So instead I shall recommend that you do that which you have always said you wanted to do. Go out and leave your mark on the world. And don’t come back until you have.”
“Wait. What does that mean?”
“It’s not a trick, Horwendell. It’s exactly what you’ve always wanted to do. Transparent, really. Change lives. A lot of them. You want to matter, right? Well. Everyone is born with the ability to change lives. But at my direction you have practiced a set of skills—and you have a knack for them—that gives you the blessed opportunity to do even more. So go do that, you lazy frosh.”
“But…”
What I wanted to say was “I don’t know how.” I wanted to ask “where?” Or “aren’t those opportunities hard to find?” But, hard-headed though I could be, I was clever enough to see that her trap lay exactly in that path. Unfortunately for me, by speaking even one word, I had already sprung it.
“No buts. Get out of my sight, Horwendell. You have important work to do.” Montigo lowered her gaze to her book.
“Yes, Magister.” I slid off the stool and dusted off my robe.
Which, apparently, I did not do in satisfactory haste, because Montigo looked back up at me with a glint in her eye.
“But you could use my help, I’m sure. Tell me, Horwendell, where do you think you’ll start?”
I fought to keep my voice level and free of frustration. “Not here. Dijain, maybe? Or Anteianum. There are resources there. Can study and find the…”
“Anteianum, eh? Not the worst idea, all told, but you’re liable to get stuck in the libraries. Try not to. Ta-ta, Horwendell. Go in Ae’s light. I expect great things.”
And then Montigo cast me from her office.
Rather literally, in fact. Montigo raised her right hand in a sign of mortal binding, pointing her index and middle finger toward the stars1, with her palm aligned to the plane that could be drawn between our two figures and the sky above. A series of arcane secrets unfolded in her mind like spring flowers blooming in a single perfect instant, and she tugged with her mind at a single taut line of meaning that lay between myself and the stars.
And before I could even yelp with alarm, the world was changed. Specifically, my location was changed. In one moment I was standing in Montigo’s study, just a few inches from the stool before the wide workbench, and in the next, I was standing in the great square at the heart of the holiest of the Seven Kingdoms.
Anteianum is a highland capital at the heart of the kingdom of the same name. The city is a blanket of earthy orange-red shingles atop moon-white plaster, spread over a saddle of land between two tall mountains.
I stood in a city square directly in the center. Behind me, over the rooftops and the little haze of hearth fire smoke, rose the great castle of Anteianum, near the crown of Mount Tethia. Before me, a street led out of the square, then into a dense cover of pine trees. From there it would climb up, up, and up, until it reached the white-walled College of the Apostles, huddled like a fat snowy owl on the northeast face of Mount Caelias.
I was shocked. Not because I didn’t know what had happened. Of course I knew what had happened. It’s generally called an adversarial transposition: a spell that moves an unwilling or unaware subject great distances (the spell that moves willing subjects is somewhat simpler). I was shocked because for all Montigo’s talk about my having reached attainment in astromancy, she had just cast a spell on me that I would have struggled to prepare for weeks, and she had done so without the barest hint of difficulty or hesitation.
I had seen that old lady pull off plenty feats of magical strength, plenty of dazzling displays of wit, and even her fair share of dirty tricks. But that one topped them all.
I wondered briefly how long she had been arranging that little surprise for me, but then I realized I had more pressing matters to attend to.
It was noon, I hadn’t eaten lunch, I had a few silver and my student’s robe to my name, and I was standing in the middle of King Lotreas’ Square.
A cold highland wind whipped at my robe. My ears popped, adjusting to the thin, high air. And then the smells: pine, spruce, bacon, lumber, horses and their feed and their waste. And then the sounds: children laughing and yelling, farmers hawking their produce, a holy chant, in two-part harmony, from the north end of the square.
I sighed, and I started toward the west end.
Libraries have a sort of gravitational pull on me. Especially the ancient, storied sort, filled to the brim with original tomes and overindulgent architecture, beautiful walnut shelving and tasteful (if sometimes inexplicable) filigree. Having been sent on the traditional wizardly wayfaring but lacking any sense of where I should wayfare, I found myself sucked into one of the greatest libraries of them all: the collections of the College of Apostles.
I felt shabby having no proper offering to make at the narthex, but it was still invigorating to attend mid-morning prayer and be welcomed as a guest to the monastery.
Apostles and their guests bustled about at the college, all of their robes and cloaks set to flapping in the zealous breeze. Just a quarter mile farther up, the Chapel of Ae2 crowned the summit; seen from below at the college it cut a knife-sharp silhouette against the infinite blue afternoon sky.
The tall west windows of this library I sat in looked up the mountain toward the chapel. The east windows faced out to a cozy little cloister, sheltered on all sides by more of the college buildings (mostly residences by their looks).
And I, characteristically, was staring at none of this civilized beauty, but instead at Interhemispheric Astromancy, the magnum opus of one High Wizard and Scholarch of Hyngvaryr Pirhan. My eyes slid over the pages. I wasn’t taking much in, really. It was more like I had chosen this inspiring and highly strong-willed volume, written in the most staid and formal of Classical Ivian, to accompany me in my brooding.
Where in all the Seven Kingdoms would I start? How does one even begin to leave their mark on the world? History is full to bursting with people who had, but it was so dreadfully impossible to imagine myself as one of them. How would I find myself in the history books? Even if Montigo approved of the results of this expedition, it was just as likely that some twist of Marquis Henri’s rule would involve my service and that would be how I would ultimately be remembered, I thought, sourly.
What if the Seven Kingdoms weren’t the right place? Here, I was a trained apprentice wizard, destined for service, and that’s what everyone would see me as. That might limit my opportunities. But elsewhere I would be an unknown agent with considerable magical power, which could serve as a resource to leverage, to turn into more resources, to gather possessions or power to myself. To do… something… with. So I could journey North, or East, and make my name as a wandering hero, perhaps. But difficulties presented themselves readily. Foreign languages, for one. Surprisingly few of the sagas really bothered to dwell on how many foreign languages are involved in saga-ing. And that’s the thing about wandering heroes: you have to be a hero and not just an alien madman with a talent for violence, and not knowing the local tongue doesn’t do you many favors in that regard.
Wasn’t this entire train of thought stupid anyway? Wandering hero? What was I thinking? My talent was for magic and history. Surely, I thought, I should be pushing the bounds of mortal knowledge. Surely that was what I was meant to do. My mother would send me fewer reproachful letters about getting into trouble in foreign lands that way, anyway.
Leading research. That was something. I could stare at this Interhemispheric Astromancy dissertation for a while longer looking for gaps in knowledge to apply my research to. But my mind had gotten away from me. The book wasn’t holding my interest, and that was a bad sign for an effort that could require years of held interest.
I closed the book with a satisfying whoomph and took it to the librarian.
“Where do the symposia meet?” I asked. My Late Ivian was good, but I had a pretty thick accent3.
He eyed me suspiciously. “You’re not an apostle.”
“No, but the symposia are public, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but…” he adjusted his spectacles and squinted at me. “I have never met a single layperson who wanted to attend one. Even most apostles barely tolerate the ones they put together themselves.”
That was how I knew I was headed in the right direction. “Send me to the next one.”
The librarian reached down beneath his desk to retrieve a paper and then slid it across to me. “Your funeral.”
“Isn’t that a bit melodramatic?”
“See for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Specifically, I believe it was the star Redilius Teli at the tip of the constellation Serenity. ↩
Central Ivian tradition prescribes that writers should refer to Ae as the Lightbringer if they write by night and as Ae if they write by day; many also insist on mutating quotations and the like to match the correct name for the time of writing. This is, frankly, lunacy. I have adopted the northern tradition where we honor Ae by her name or her title according to the internal timeline of the narration. ↩
Court wizarding almost invariably involves education in Classical Ivian, the written language of most of our historical sources; and Late (or Low) Ivian, the living language of Anteianum and most of the courts of the kingdoms. Most court wizards also come by some Yaria, although at this point in this chronology, mine was quite pathetic. I am a native speaker of Orlan, which is featured regrettably little in this narrative. ↩