“Shut up and help me get rid of this,” said Benen. He wasn’t just irritated by the colouring, he was scared. The wizard had laid an elaborate set of enchantments just as a test for his apprentice. Benen feared that despite all their preparations, the fight with the wizard would end poorly for them.
The next day, Benen, still red — he couldn’t find a way to return to his proper colouring — and Orafin discussed what the rat would do during the fight. Their progress was hindered by Orafin’s outbursts of laughter whenever he gazed upon Benen; the rat did his best to avoid looking at him as he spoke.
“Mostly, my part is done once the fight starts. Most of what I can contribute is my knowledge, Benen. As a rat, I can’t cast magic,” Orafin said.
“What about the telepathy? You’ve done that.”
“It was a spell I had cast before my change. I can still maintain it, but not cast it anew.”
“Okay, but couldn’t I change you back into a human being?” Benen asked.
“I’m not sure that’s something you can do well, yet, Benen. No offence, but better a rat than a puddle of goo . . .” answered the rat.
“I see what you mean,” Benen said, “but this might be important. Two apprentice wizards have a much better chance than one.”
“I just think shape-shifting someone else is beyond your current abilities, and I don’t want to have to die to prove it to you,” Orafin was getting defencive.
“How about I try to change a small part of you and only that part. At worst you’ll lose a hand,” Benen said.
“That’s a pretty bad ‘at worst’, Benen!” Orafin objected. “You’re talking about my hand!”
“Okay, how about a tail?” Benen countered.
Orafin twitched his tail, looked at it as if evaluating its worth and looked back to Benen.
“All right,” he answered reluctantly and turned around to present his tail. Benen could see the rat was nervous, he shook perceptibly.
Shape-shifting, he knew, was governed by multiple constellations. Such effects were some of the hardest to correctly perform. One of the two constellations he would need would be the one that is constant for all such magic: Great Sky River, governed magic involving change. The other constellation was chosen based on the change being attempted. In this case, Benen was getting rid of the tail, so he could have used The Cleaver, since he was removing a part, but he felt this would not demonstrate his ability to shape-shift the rat back to a human form. Instead, he chose The Builder as the second constellation.
The Builder was the constellation associated with humanity and their works. Using The Builder in concert with Great Sky River, Benen could change an animal to a human being. In this case, he would change the tail to its equivalent on a human: no tail. The theory was sound and he began calling to mind the details on all the different stars of both constellations, keeping straight which stars belonged to which constellation.
Eventually, he was ready. By then, the rat was quite nervous and growing impatient. Benen got on with the spell. He cast it carefully, keeping in mind the desired result. The moment he finished the incantation and movements, he felt the magic flow through him — painful as always — and the rat’s tail began shifting and changing.
It acquired strange lumps in some places, bulging oddly. It pulsed as though containing a new heart.
“It doesn’t feel right!” Orafin proclaimed, his voice filled with panic.
Benen saw the tail gaining in size and bulk and decided Orafin was probably right. He didn’t know what to do. Should he cast The Cleaver on it?
Orafin had twisted around and was staring at the pulsating mass that used to be his tail with new horror and fainted.
As he watched, filled with indecision, Benen saw the mass become more defined. Some of the bulk extended into two pseudopods; one on each side of the tail. The tail’s tip became bulbous and soon it became clear to Benen that the tail was becoming man-shaped, with one of its legs still connected to the rat’s bottom. The tail’s head grew a mouth and began screaming a high-pitched scream that sounded like metal grinding against metal. Panicking, Benen ran for one of the knives he had taken from the kitchens for use in fighting against the wizard and picked it up. He stabbed at the ‘heart’ of the man-thing and the screams changed, but did not cease. Benen kept hacking at the thing until it quieted and stilled.
The mess was disgusting and much too man-like for Benen’s comfort. He cut the ragged tail nub cleanly off at Orafin’s bum and picked up the rest of the mess, disposing of it in the loo. Then he added to the lot his own sick. Returning to the room where the rat was bleeding, Benen bandaged the poor creature.
An hour later, the rat woke up.
“Tell me it was a nightmare,” Orafin said, his voice weak.
“I wish I could,” Benen said. The rat hesitantly curled to look at where its tail used to be. It saw the bandaged stump and sighed.
“I told you you weren’t ready,” it said and sighed, lying down again. “But I guess you had to try.”
“I’m sorry, Orafin,” Benen said, he didn’t know how to apologize enough. “I’ll drop shape-shifting you for now. After the wizard is defeated, I’ll make changing you back a priority. You shouldn’t have to be a rat . . .”
“You get used to it, after a few years . . .” Orafin said sleepily. The rat was falling asleep again. Benen left it alone, giving it as much quiet as he could so the rat could rest and recuperated. He read books on the subject of shape-shifting, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The more he looked, the more confused he became. It looked like he had done everything correctly.
He resolved to ask Orafin about it when the rat felt better. Benen felt he must be misunderstanding something fundamental about shape-shifting magic, something the books assumed you understood and did not bother explaining; he could think of no other reason for the spell to have gone so wrong.
When the rat did wake up, later that night, it was feverish and in no shape to answer questions. Benen tended to it and helped as best he could. He thought of trying to use healing magic on Orafin but decided to save that as a last resort measure; his faith in his ability to safely perform magic to help or change someone else was not strong. He nursed the rat through the night and by morning it felt better, if still weak.
Benen could not stop apologizing to the rat, once he had recovered enough to hear.
“Oh stop,” Orafin said. “It was worth a try, I don’t begrudge you that.”
“Still, I feel really bad about what happened.”
“You learnt the lesson that shape-shifting isn’t easy and shouldn’t be tried by the inexpert magician, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then it was worth it.”
The matter was dropped when Benen left to go serve lunch to the wizard. Being still coloured red from head to toe, Benen worked to change that in-between tasks in the kitchen; examining what had been done to him using the lunar detection magic he had learnt. He was hoping to be Benen-coloured by the time he had to see the wizard. Unfortunately, what he discovered was that he had been shape-shifted to a red-coloured version of himself. The change was permanent and not a sustained magical effect, so he could not simply dispel it. To get back to his proper colouring he would have to shape-shift, changing his colour as part of that spell. Unfortunately, he had just seen what could happen as a result of poorly executed shape-shifting. He decided to bear being red until he could do the change safely.
He served the wizard his dinner, still red. Thankfully, the embarrassment could not make him any redder.
When the wizard was finished, he addressed Benen.
“Come up to my study at sundown, boy. We need to talk,” the wizard said.
Benen returned to his quarters at a run after that. He found Orafin was still there, resting. The rat came awake immediately at the sounds of Benen’s rapid footfalls and laboured breathing.
“Is the wizard coming?” Orafin asked.
“No, not yet. But he asked me to meet him in his study after sundown.”
“You think this is it?”
“Seems like it might be.”
“We haven’t prepared for fighting him in his study,” the rat pointed out.
“I know!” Benen was panicking. “What do we do?”
Orafin held up both front paws.
“Calm down, you can salvage this.”
“How? All our preparations were for the kitchens or here.”
“Then you have to bring the fight to those places,” Orafin said.
Benen stopped for a moment, giving this some thought.
“I could try . . . I guess.”
“It’s going to be do or die, Benen,” Orafin said very seriously.
What was left of the day, the two spent discussing tactics for the coming fight. Benen did not feel ready at all, but it wasn’t his choice to have this showdown; it was the wizard’s. He didn’t know if he was going to survive the night, but if he was going to die, he was going to die fighting.
Before going up to the wizard’s study, Orafin had a last minute question.
“Do you still have the curse on you from the wizard?”
“The fumbling hands?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I’ve not bothered dispelling it so far. I’ve found it motivates me to do things with magic instead of my hands.”
“That’s not why he did it to you,” the rat said, his tone ominous.
“What do you mean?”
“Did the wizard ever teach you never to kill with magic?”
“No. Why?”
“Because you should never do it. It’s bad. The consequences will haunt you for the rest of your days. Just don’t do it tonight. Make sure you kill him in a mundane way. Make sure to get a knife from the kitchens.”
“Can I use the knife with my telekinesis?”
“No magic, direct or indirect. You can hurt and disable with your magic but the kill has to be mundane. Got it?”
“Got it, I guess.”
“Make sure you do. Also, make sure you get rid of the fumble curse.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He did get rid of the curse before going up then, it was not a difficult spell to identify and The Cleaver worked fine on it.
When Benen got to the study, he found that the desk had been cleared and the majority of the wizard’s things were gone from the room. The wizard was nowhere to be seen. He stepped into the room and looked around.
“Master?” he called.
He had one of the knives from the kitchens hidden in his pants; in a special holster he had sewn for it on the inside of the waist. He kept one hand near it, ready to draw it if needed. He took another step into the room.
“Mast—” he was interrupted by being grasped from behind. The wizard had been invisible!
Benen felt a blade at his throat and an arm across his body, trapping his own arms. The wizard was in his natural form, not shape-shifted, Benen noticed. He guessed, he had to be natural shaped to avoid killing Benen with magic indirectly. The blade at his throat kept Benen from struggling. He needed time.
“Master?” he said as pitifully as he could manage.
“Am I your master, boy?” the wizard said from near Benen’s ear. “I know about your rat! Isn’t it your true master?”
“I - I don’t know what—” Benen started to say.
“Don’t lie to me, boy!” the blade bit into Benen’s neck slightly. “I know about your lessons with my former apprentice. Do you think anything that happens in this tower escapes me?”
Benen used telekinesis to draw his own knife from his pants, doing so slowly, making sure the wizard felt and heard nothing. He was glad the knife he had grabbed was one he had enchanted previously.
“It served my purposes to let the rat teach you, it spared me from having to do it. But now, your usefulness, such as it was, has come to an end,” the wizard said. Benen felt the blade withdraw from his throat for a second as the wizard prepared to deal the deathblow with it and knew he had to act immediately.
He moved the kitchen knife through the air as quickly as he could, launching it at the wizard. The knife bit deep into his master’s thigh. The wizard howled in pain and, in his surprise, his grasp was easy for Benen to escape. The boy ran for all he was worth.
Benen went through the kitchens, using the telekinetic enchantments he had laid on the pots, pans, and knives to throw them blindly behind him in case the wizard was following him closely. He did not pause even for a second to look over his shoulder; he didn’t think he could afford the time and distraction. He needed to make it to his
sink.
He made it to his quarters, and the sink, without seeing any sign of the wizard. He worried about what the wizard was doing, what he was planning.
“The wizard!” he yelled as he arrived. He went to stand on the sink and spun around to face the door.
“Where is he?” answered Orafin, coming out from under the bed.
“I don’t know!” Benen responded. He felt a rising panic and tried to breathe in and out deeply to slow down his heart. Orafin coached him from the corner of the room.
“You can do this, Benen. We’ve prepared, he won’t expect that,” he said. As the rat spoke, Benen saw the shadow of an over-large wolf.