Nature Mage (16 page)

This creature seemed built for killing alone, each muscular limb ending in thick, wicked black claws. Heavy veins bulged on its neck as it strained against the invisible barrier, its feet digging into the ground again and again as it surged fruitlessly forward.

“Now, watch!” said Professor Worrick. “It has nothing but hate. It won’t stop, even though it will destroy it to keep going. The enchantment held in the stone is designed to resist evil, not to kill indiscriminately, but if something continues to push against it, unrelenting in its hate, then the barrier will begin to cause them pain, burning the invader with increasing heat, and if that doesn’t stop them, they will burn up.” He said nothing more, but stared at the dJin, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

The dJin’s snarl turned to a hiss of pain when smoke began to curl from its skin. As the pain increased, the creature spat and roared alarmingly, its fevered gaze flicking from person to person as its anger swelled, stimulated to new heights by escalating pain levels. The hiss of pain turned to frightful cries as tiny flames flickered along its arms and torso, and then its legs and shoulders. Emea hid her face in Gaspi’s shoulder at the horrible sight, but Gaspi couldn’t feel sorry for the dJin. Even in the face of its own death its only feeling was hate, its only thoughts of killing them. Its cries turned into screeches of torturous agony as its head went up in a ball of flame, and all they could see was a writhing ball of fire flailing with dying strength against the barrier. The sound stopped as its lungs finally gave out, and it collapsed in a ball of smoking dust, utterly consumed by the magic of the barrier.

The class stood in shocked silence. Gaspi glanced around, and saw Ferast staring at him, or more precisely at the way Emea leaned into him. No-one had known until this moment that there was something between them, but the lank-haired boy had clearly taken notice. Gaspi could have sworn that Ferast’s gaze had a calculating edge, but then Professor Worrick was speaking again and he looked away. 

“Could you manage that level of hate, Matthius?” Professor Worrick asked. Matthius shook his head mutely. “Then you don’t need to worry about the barrier.” As he led them back to the classroom, whispering broke out in small groups, excitement replacing the shock of witnessing the horrid creature’s painful death:

“Did you see it burn? Whoosh!”

“Never seen anything like it...”

“I thought it was going to get through for a moment!”

Professor Worrick had to calm them down when they were all back in their seats.

“I’ve been teaching long enough to know that you won’t listen now if I bore you about enchantments. What would you like to know about the dJin?”

“Where does it come from?” a slim, dark-haired girl at the back asked. Professor Worrick looked thoughtful, and was silent for so long that they began to think he wasn’t going to answer. He stood staring out of the small window by his desk, hands clasped behind his back.

“The dJin is from Hades,” he answered at last. “It is a demon.” Lydia gasped, hand clapped over her mouth. Everand looked incredulous, Ferast almost eager. Gaspi didn’t understand the reactions of their classmates. He’d heard of demons, but not in any way that made him believe they were real. They were the subject of fireside tales told by old folks to scare youngsters.

“Demons are very real,” Professor Worrick said, as if reading Gaspi’s mind. “They inhabit a plane far harsher than this one, where it is kill or be killed, where the mighty crush the weak without a thought. They are summoned to our realm to do our bidding by those with the skill, bound with powerful spells so they cannot attack their summoner. The dJin is the lowest of all demonic forms. It has no magical power and is not physically strong, though in our realm it is a ferocious killer despite its small stature. In the demonic realm, they are no more than ants. They live in giant underground complexes, finding safety in numbers, but are no more than a nuisance to the real forces of that plane.”

Faced with the fact that demons were real, Gaspi started to wonder about the creature that had attacked them at the gypsy camp. Was it a demon too? Something else niggled at Gaspi, something that didn’t add up about what Professor Worrick had said, but it remained just out of reach.

“Any more questions?” Professor Worrick asked.

“Did you summon it, sir?” asked Emea. And then Gaspi understood what was bothering him. If the dJin couldn’t get past the wall of the college, then how did it get in?

“Me?” exclaimed the Professor with dark amusement. “No, my dear. Summoning is forbidden. It is a dark art punishable by Severing.” Professor Worrick must have spotted Gaspi’s confused expression. “Severing is the ultimate punishment for a magician,” he explained. “It’s the full and final severing of your magical power.”

A heavy silence reigned in the classroom for several seconds, before Professor Worrick continued with his lesson. “To summon and control an evil creature, a demon of any type, takes the kind of magic you would not want to be involved in. And besides,” he added, “I wouldn’t have the power. It takes extraordinary talent to be able to summon even the smallest demon, and my skills lie elsewhere.” He lapsed into silence.

Gaspi put his hand up. “So, how did it get here?” he asked.

“And that is where I cannot go any further,” the professor answered. “It’s an important question, but it takes us into areas Hephistole would not have you study yet. Please accept my apologies, young Mage, but for now you must suspend your curiosity.” Professor Worrick clapped his hands together. “And now it is time to return to the topic of enchantment,” he said, accompanied by the disappointed groans of the students.

Chapter 12

Gaspi listened intently as the lesson continued, eager to learn as much as he possibly could as quickly as possible.

“The practice of enchantment is not complicated,” the professor explained. “As with most magic, it is a question of focus, willpower and release. For instance, if you wanted to enchant this piece of chalk to divine water, you would have to first of all focus intently on the chalk; the stronger your focus, the more effective the enchantment. Then you would have to imagine the chalk being able to achieve divination. Picture it in your mind until you can feel it, until you know in your bones that the chalk is able to sense water. Developing a fertile imagination is one of the keys to exceptional magic. Once the picture is strong, the last stage is to release your power. This is the interesting bit. Everyone releases power in different ways. Some use a motion of the hand, some use words. Healer Emelda sings her magic into being. I’ve known a man who could only release his magic through dance.

As some of you already understand, the release of your magic is like a signature. It is something unique to you, and something that will come quite naturally. Watch!” The professor picked up the piece of chalk, took out a small knife from his pocket and made a nick in one end of it, and placed it on his open palm. There was nothing dramatic to see as the professor imbued the piece of chalk with the desired property. After a couple of moments of quiet, he simply shut his eyes, closed his fist around the chalk, whispered something under his breath and opened his eyes again. Gaspi was certain that as Professor Worrick whispered he had felt something, a kind of tingling in his belly, a tickling against his skin, and then it was gone.

In the professor’s still-closed hand was the same stick of chalk, but in the dim light of the classroom they could all see that the top of it, peeking out of his closed fist, was now glowing gently. It was subtle, but there could be no doubt that the previously normal piece of chalk had been magically altered, imbued with magical properties. Professor Worrick opened his hand. The small stick of glowing chalk burst into movement the second it was free to do so, spinning rapidly for a moment on his palm. It stopped, twitching like a navigator’s compass, before settling into position, the end with the nick in it pointing right at a half full glass of water sitting on the professor’s desk. Gaspi was impressed. This was the first magic he had seen consciously performed, and the excitement of the possibilities it opened up to him sent a thrill along his spine.

“Everand, you’re able to release your magic consistently now,” Professor Worrick said. “Come and have a go.”  Everand slid out of his desk, and walked straight-backed up to the front. Professor Worrick gave him a different piece of chalk, again marking one end of it. “Now remember to focus, Everand, and imagine the chalk is able to detect water. You want the marked end to be your pointer.”

Everand screwed up his eyes in concentration, staring forcefully at the chalk. He stood like that, shoulders hunched, for several moments, before closing his fist tightly around the chalk. “Seek!” Everand pronounced in a loud, ringing tone. He looked down at the now glowing chalk sticking out from his fist, and smiled. Looking confident, he held out his arm, and opened his hand. The chalk twitched into life, but instead of spinning in a circle it flew right out of his hand, across the front of the room (narrowly missing a surprised Professor Worrick), and smashed into the glass of water. The chalk exploded into shards, white dust billowing into the air, and the glass, perched on the edge of the table, toppled off and smashed on the floor, its contents flowing away from the glass and pooling at Professor Worrick’s feet. Several students burst out laughing, but a furious look from a red-faced Everand silenced them.

“What did you imagine, Everand?” Professor Worrick asked, without a hint of mockery, though Gaspi thought he could detect a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“I imagined it finding the water,” Everand said indignantly, glaring at the smashed chalk as if somehow it was to blame.

“Ah yes, perhaps I should have made it clearer,” Professor Worrick said. “A divining device points to water; it does not itself go to the water, or find it. Well, well. Let’s not be discouraged. This is a good lesson in the importance of focus and accuracy, wouldn’t you say? And anyhow, Everand, your enchantment may not have been right, but it was certainly powerful.”

Everand straightened his shoulders, mollified by the inference of potency, and went back to his desk. Professor Worrick set the class some homework; to imbue a small fragment of rock with the power to resist heat. He handed out the fragments of rock to each student except for the three newcomers, who he asked to stay behind once the other students had left.

He explained to them what the rest of their day held. Students only attended communal classes in the morning, and in the afternoon divided their time between personal studies, projects and one-on-one tutoring. Professor Worrick explained that each of them was to be paired up to an appropriate tutor; one who best understood their talent and could train them in its use. Emea was to study with Miss Emelda, one of the Healers at the infirmary and a teacher at the college. Professor Worrick‘s secondary gift was prophetic, and so he would be Lydia‘s mentor. The professor explained that as there were no Nature Mages, Gaspi would study under Voltan, a warrior Mage skilled in martial magic.

Before they began their mentoring, however, they had to learn to release their power, a process which would begin after lunch in the adjacent classroom. Gaspi was full of conflicting emotions when the professor sent them on their break. Seeing magic performed up close had awoken a kind of hunger in him. Up till that morning, magic had been something that had threatened his life, something very serious and frighteningly powerful. Having seen the controlled way in which magic could be used had started to make Gaspi feel for the first time that he might actually want to be a Mage, but it wasn’t easy to cast off the terrible memories of his first experiences with magic. He just hoped that whoever taught him how to safely use his power was able to cope with the strength of his gift. After all, they didn’t have any other Nature Mages around, so how could they be sure they knew how to teach him to control his magic? Full of uncertainty, Gaspi followed his friends out of the classroom.

The three friends went to the refectory, where lunch was still being served. They each grabbed a steaming chicken pie, and piled their plates with roast potatoes and onions. They chose an empty table and sat down, pulling up the long bench with a loud wooden screech. On the tables around them, the other first-year students were talking excitedly about the dJin; Everand, recovered from his embarrassment in the classroom, was holding forth on demonic creatures, the attention of several pretty girls raptly fixed on him. Gaspi felt a sudden surge of resentment at this pompous boy, who seemed to have taken it upon himself to make his time at college harder than it needed it to be. It was hard enough learning to tame his magic, without having to deal with this kind of thing.

Emea caught him glowering at Everand. “Gaspi, why are you staring at that boy?” she asked. Unable to hide his feelings, Gaspi told the girls about the conflict in the dorm that morning. “Oh Gaspi, I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically. “You really don’t need this.”

“Tell me about it!” he said. In a transparent effort to distract him, Emea started talking about what their next class would be like, and was inadvertently successful. She couldn’t hide her nerves about what would be revealed about her, or more to the point what wouldn’t be revealed, and Gaspi’s sympathy for her did what her conversation failed to do, and drew his attention away from Everand. He put his arm around her shoulders. “You’ll be fine Emmy. I know you will,” he said. It sounded vacuous, but it was all he could think of to say.

“I know you will too,” Lydia added confidently. “And I’m a Seer, remember?” Emea smiled unconvincingly.

The lunch hour passed quickly, and soon they were heading back to the classroom next to the one they’d studied in that morning. No-one was in the room and the door was slightly ajar, so they went inside.

“Oh, how lovely!” Emea exclaimed in surprise. The desks they expected to find were nowhere to be seen, and across the floor were scattered deep, comfortable cushions, surrounding three padded armchairs in the middle of the room. The light coming through the windows was warm and golden, almost orange, filtering through stained-glass windows, caressing the leaves of enormous plants that sprung out of giant pots placed liberally around the room. Gaspi felt immediately restful; the worries that had plagued him over lunch seemed somehow less of a problem, less urgent. Emea began to explore, pinching the large, heavy leaves of the plants, testing out the cushions. She was humming happily to herself, obviously delighted by the peaceful atmosphere, until her musings were rudely interrupted by a large cushion slamming into the side of her head. An impudent Gaspi grinned at her from across the room, daring her to retaliate. She had caught the cushion reflexively, and held it defensively before her.