Guild Mage: Apprentice

“These are the mana beasts you are most likely to encounter during a king tide,” Professor Blackwood explained, as Liv’s class gathered around a series of large sheets that had been laid out near the enchanting workshops.

Spread across the fabric were an incredible variety of dead sea life, with a single commonality: each creature had been altered by high concentrations of mana, causing it to grow to an exorbitant and unnatural size. Liv wasn’t certain how long it had been since these particular specimens were caught, but the smell lay over the display like an invisible haze, and it was all she could do to keep from gagging.

“The Reef Crab,” Blackwood began, pointing with a driftwood staff, “grows from the size of a grown man’s hand, up to specimens as large as an adult boar, in excess of four hundred pounds. This is a mid-sized example. As they are infused with higher amounts of mana, the brown splotches on the shell become brighter and more luminescent, until they glow a baleful red. While the claws are dangerous, our chief concern is the toxicity. Anyone foolish enough to eat the meat of these creatures is in for a painful death, and even allowing the blood of the creature to come into contact with bare skin requires immediate treatment. The shells are approximately as dense as granite, so you either need a magical attack capable of crushing stone, or to target weak points, such as the eyes.”

The class shifted uneasily, drifting along in the professor’s wake to watch him shift the next carcass with the tip of his staff. “The Storm Eel,” he continued, drawing their attention to a long, gray body with a belly in shades of pink and orange. “Nocturnal, thankfully, so you can mostly avoid them unless you’re on a night shift. This one has only just begun to grow from mana infusion, at around eight feet in length. I’ve personally observed specimens that exceed thirty feet. They are able to send out a pulse of electricity, similar to a lightning strike, in two different orders of magnitude. A low power pulse, to stun their prey, and a high powered pulse, to kill. Note that the beast does not need physical contact for these assaults, only proximity.”

As the professor moved on, Liv remained, examining the Storm Eel more closely. “Professor?” she asked. “Is the royal word of power capable of turning aside the eel’s attack?”

Blackwood, who had moved on to a vicious looking gray fish of some sort, glanced back. “As it so happens, Duchess Julianne had some success redirecting the electrical pulses of Storm Eels when she attended as a student,” he said. “I know that she worked with the archmagus on developing that spell, so I imagine he is more than capable of managing the feat, as well. Unfortunately, Princess Milisant never showed any interest in continuing the research while she was here, and we don’t currently have any members of the royal family as students. Now, this is a Sand Shark -”

Liv bit her own lip. She wondered whether Julianne would be willing to send her the incantation - but then, it wouldn’t be safe to ask for that in a letter, would it? They hadn’t sought legal permission for the word to be shared, and if anyone found out that Liv had been imprinted with the royal word of power, she would be in a great deal of trouble. The business with the guilds when she’d been a child would be nothing compared to what Prince Benedict might do. No, if she wanted to protect herself from the eels, she would either need to create the incantation from scratch, or find some sort of records of Julianne’s research. She was certain the archmagus would have them - certain he knew the spell. But again, she couldn’t approach him, because of her secret. Perhaps a contingent spell, loaded into her wand? But then, she hadn’t even had a chance to practice basic use of the word since she’d come to Coral Bay. Grudgingly, Liv forced herself to move on, trailing at the rear of the class as Professor Blackwood moved on to his next specimen.

“Now this is not so much a threat as an opportunity,” the professor began. The butt of his staff tapped against a massive shell that reminded Liv of a mountain boulder, if you split the stone in half and gave it a hinge like a door. “Oysters, even those suffused with mana and grown to exceptional size, are not going to try to eat you. They’re filter feeders, and a human is simply too large. What we’re after is inside - where the pearl grows. And Coral Bay pearls are like no others in the world - not merely beautiful, but nearly as efficient at storing magical energy as mana-stone.”

“Do we get to keep them if we find them?” Celestria Ward asked, raising her hand. Liv pictured a necklace of black pearls above her collarbone, to set off that dark hair, and had to admit the effect would be striking. Then she shivered: was she thinking that because the girl’s word of power had affected her mind the other day? How long did those effects linger, precisely? That kind of magic was more horrible than Cade’s wounding spell, by her estimation. At least you could see when a wound had healed.

“By guild regulations,” Professor Blackwood answered, “a mage is due a percentage of the value of what is taken during a culling, based on their rank, with culling team leaders receiving a higher share and preference. You’re a first year, aren’t you?” Ward nodded. “Professor Every, or one of her journeymen, will go over all that in your course on guild regulations and law. Turn your eyes to this. The Flowering Urchin. One brush against it can result in convulsions and death...”

☙

Liv’s third class of the day came after lunch, which she ate on the second floor of High Hall. Now that Thora had made arrangements for proper ingredients to be delivered to the kitchen, she no longer had any need to visit the Crab and Gull for every meal. Eating with all the girls, however, Liv found that she missed Arjun, Rosamund, and Cade. While Edith seemed to have calmed down after the gift of a pie, and the other girls were nice enough, Liv only felt truly friendly with Sidonie and, perhaps, the shy Tephania.

On her way down to Basic Enchanting, she resolved to invite them all out to dinner again. Perhaps they could make a weekly routine of it, so as to not lose track of each other. When Liv saw that a positive mob of first year students had gathered at the enchanting workshop, she couldn’t help but grin, squeezing through the press to an opening next to Rosamund and Arjun.

“Oh good,” Liv said. “I was starting to worry we wouldn’t have hardly any classes together.”

“If I hadn’t been dumb enough to fight you, we might have had Advanced Magical Combat,” Rosamund grumbled. For a moment Liv worried she was actually upset, but a grin and a gentle elbow let her know it was just teasing.

“It looks like half the incoming class is here,” Arjun said. “And we have a class in the infirmary together, Liv.”

“That’s true,” she said. “Do either of you go to Basic Guild Law and History after this?”

“I do,” Rosamund said, but Arjun shook his head.

“Remedial for me,” he admitted. “I suppose I should have tried to study it more before coming, but we just don’t have anything like the mages’ guild in Lendh ka Dakruim.”

“Alright, gather round,” a girl with broad shoulders called out. Liv recognized her as one of the students who had helped Professor Norris transport the casque she’d brought. “My name’s Genne Fletcher, and I’m the journeyman you’ve got to listen to until you test out of this course. Welcome to the workshop.”

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It was clear to Liv the structure had been added onto Blackstone Hall only recently, extending out from the north side of the hall in a long, low structure of limestone foundations and wooden walls. Large sections were set with great barn doors, most of which were now open to the air, and she counted no less than three forges, as well as woodworking shops, glass-blowing furnaces, kilns for firing clay, and all manner of other equipment. The facilities were so extensive that they’d had to remove portions of the old wall that had once secured the Blackstone estates in order to make room.

“Raise your hand if you’ve bought something that’s enchanted,” Genne instructed them. Liv lifted her left arm, and glanced around to see that only perhaps a third of the students joined her, most of whom were wearing expensive fabrics and colors permitted only to the nobility. The rest wore merchant gray, but with flashes of brightness showing from the lining of their sleeves. Anyone dressed as a commoner kept their hand down, without exception.

“Good, you can put ‘em down now,” Genne said. “I expect most of you have had a chance to try out the enchanted pipes here, if you’ve never seen such things before? And if you’ve eaten meals in the great hall, you’ve had food brought by the drovers’ guild in barrels or crates enchanted to keep the meat cold and preserve it. Enchanting is what keeps the kingdom going, in a lot of ways. But how many of you have any idea how to actually do it?”

Liv raised her hand, somewhat hesitantly, one of only a handful of students who did. She was relieved not to be the first one called on.

“You,” Genne said, pointing out a boy with muscular arms. “How’s it work?”

“Well,” he began, looking around and blushing, “my father’s a blacksmith. We get orders all the time to make swords with sigils etched into the blade, or armor. That sort of thing. We just make to order, though, I can’t tell you how it works.”

“That’s fairly common,” Genne explained. “Especially in small towns with limited resources. Even those of us who specialize in enchanting, here at the college, can’t learn to make all of the components we need. You can usually trade with a student here who can do what you can’t, but if you’re in the arse-end of nowhere and bust your blade during an eruption, you’re going to have to hire help and hope for the best. You, what do you know?”

Liv lowered her hand; she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feeling of having so many eyes on her at once. It was easier in a duel - then she couldn’t afford to focus on anything but her opponent. When it came to talking, well, that left her all too aware of the attention. “I helped my teacher, Master Grenfell, make my staff,” she said. “And then later we designed my wand. I had to do like you said - find someone to polish the stone for the pommel, to carve the wand, to inlay the metal, all the steps. I didn’t know enough to do any of it. But then the last step, Master Grenfell wouldn’t teach me. He said I should learn it here.”

“Can I see that, for a moment?” Genne asked. Liv hesitated, but then drew her wand and handed it over.

“Bone, probably from a mana-beast of some sort,” the journeyman guessed, holding the wand up so everyone could see it. “Silver to inlay the sigils, and mana-stone in the pommel. Three buttons, and - does this handle rotate?” Liv nodded. “This is a pretty complex example,” Genne explained to the class. “You can hang up to four contingent spells, use the pommel to store mana, and then of course you’ve got these focusing sigils along the length, to help channel your mana and avoid waste.” She handed the wand back to Liv.

“I love seeing something like that,” Genne declared, “because it gives me ideas in my own work. Now. Enchanting, at the most basic, essential level, is simple. We begin with an object capable of being infused with mana. It could be driftwood that’s been exposed to the tidal rift below, the bone or casque of a mana-beast, stone, clay from a riverbed at the edge of a rift, or even plant fibers that have been grown in a shoal. But you need something that’s really soaked in a high density of mana for quite a while, and been changed as a result. That’s the first step, and it's things like that you can pull out of a rift when you go culling.”

“Then, you’ve got to figure out what you want your object to actually do, and what words of power you need to accomplish it. For wands and staves, we’re fortunate enough that we can use Aluth nearly all the time; that’s the word behind focusing enchantments,” the journeyman explained. “But a lot of the time, for something more complex, you need to work with another guild. Those enchanted pipes that heat our water? Those exist because the pipers - excuse me, The Most Worshipful Society of Pipes and Waters - licensed the right to use Vær and Ved from the barons that control those words.”

“Laying out the actual inscriptions is like any other incantation,” Genne continued. “Which is to say painstaking and mind-numbing, especially with a word you don’t actually have imprinted yourself. You need to conjugate it correctly, get the cases right, and often look up terms you’ve never actually used in casting spells of your own. Who knows the vædic word for ‘pipe?” She looked around, and no one raised their hand. “Point made. And once you’ve got all of that taken care of, there’s still one step left, which half the time, again, you can’t do yourself. You need someone who’s imprinted the actual word - or words - to resonate with the object. In the case of that wand,” she pointed at Liv, “it would have been Aluth, which means a guild mage. But if you want enchanted pipes, you need a member from each of two noble houses to finish the process.”

“Now, none of you lot are ready for any of that,” Genne said. “So we’re going to start with something simple. Follow me.” She led them through the workshops, past older students throwing clay, etching steel, or embroidering cloth, to a room with a series of long, low tables. On each table had been stacked sheets of paper, along with pots of ink and quills.

“Grab a seat,” the journeyman instructed them. “Time for your first enchantment, most of you. Turns out you don’t need to use metal for sigils - we just usually do, because it lasts longer. Ink will work fine. Each table has a simple vædic incantation written out as an example. Every one of you is going to copy it on a piece of paper. This paper, by the way, is made from the pulp of pine trees that grew in the shoals of a minor rift. It’s the cheapest enchanting paper we can possibly give you, and it’ll only hold a trace of mana. When you finish your work, bring your paper up to me, and we’ll see whose works and whose doesn’t.”

Liv, Rosamund and Arjun found themselves a table, and sat down together along one side. While Arjun passed out the paper and quills, and uncorked the pots of ink, Liv lifted up the example inscription and parsed it out.

“Aluthēvat,” she said, out loud. “So we’re dealing with a singular source of magic, and the future tense. I don’t recognize this word, but the case is ablative, which means this enchantment is going to push mana away from something.”

“Is it going to be dangerous?” Rosamund asked, dipping her pen in ink.

“I doubt it,” Liv said. “Or they wouldn’t give it to us on the first day. If I had to guess? Once this is active, it will expel the mana used to create the enchantment back out into the air. It’ll probably make some pretty lights. I’d still recommend being careful drawing your sigils, though.”

They arranged themselves so that all three of them could see, while the students on the other side of the table clustered around their own example. At every table, all throughout the hall, students bent to work, writing as neatly as they could. Liv was grateful to at least be familiar with Vædic script; she couldn’t imagine how that blacksmith boy must feel. He must have been at least functionally literate, or he’d never have made it to Coral Bay, but he’d admitted the sigils were entirely outside of his experience.

While she worked, Liv idly wondered whether it would be possible for someone with Luc to enchant a set of clothing that would repel the electrical attack of the storm eel. Or, at need, an assault from a member of the royal family.

Once everyone had a copy of the inscription they’d been given, Journeyman Genne called the students up by table. Half of their work she rejected immediately. “No,” she said, shoving a paper back into one girl’s hands. “This is sloppy. I won’t put mana into something like that. Now this one,” she said, accepting Arianell Seton’s work, “might actually function. Let’s see.”

As Genne held the paper in both hands, the students backed away. Liv had to put a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing: perhaps they’d never seen anything enchanted before, but did they really think there was going to be an explosion?

A flash of light erupted from the paper, and wisps of blue and gold mana swirled up into the air, twining about each other before finally dissipating when they reached the ceiling of the room, like smoke.

“Good,” Genne said. “That’s what happens when you have the right materials, the correct sigils, and someone with the word you need to resonate with the mana. Let’s see how many of you managed to make something that actually works, shall we? Next!”