Finally ready, Benen hesitated. He was afraid of the pain that would surely come and, worse, afraid he would fail somehow and the magic would kill him. He trembled where he stood, unable to continue.
“The first time will be the worst, but remember, this is all to one day be great and to strike down the wizard who took your family and life away from you,” the rat whispered in his ear.
Determination filled Benen at the thought of one day being as powerful as the wizard and making him pay for what he had done to him — and to Orafin too. He brought to mind the Trickster stars and the facts he had memorized about them while remembering his intention for the spell
and
saying the incantation Orafin had taught him. This alone was quite a bit of mental gymnastics and hurt his brain, but the real hurt began when Orafin started letting his power flow into Benen, to fuel the spell. Only then did Benen burn.
It felt like every nerve in his body was on fire. He screamed and flailed. His breath scorched his lungs, throat, and mouth on its way out of him. Inhaling felt worse. He collapsed and lay there, feeling himself reduced to cinders over the course of minutes. Gratefully, he relinquished consciousness.
He was woken, only seconds later, by a new, sharp, pain on his arm. Opening his eyes immediately felt like a mistake. Light stabbed at him through these new openings and pierced his brain. He screamed anew. The pain in his arm was repeated; Benen flailed that arm and felt it connect with something.
“Wake up!” it was Orafin.
Some part of Benen remembered life before the pain and tried to assert itself over the being he had become, a being totally consumed by the need to cope with an existence consisting only of pain.
Orafin didn’t warn me it would be like this,
Benen thought.
So much pain!
Forcing his eyes open again, Benen kept them open through the pain and tried to see. His head wanted to burst with the new agonizing sensations coming through his eyes.
Everything is pain!
He moved to the piece of wood from the loo, crawling every painful inch. Extending his arm, he tried to mold the wood, to mark it with the star pattern of the Parallels, but he couldn’t think. He couldn’t remember what it looked like through the agony he was feeling.
Orafin helped.
The rat guided his fingers to the right places and Benen hollowed out the spots he was directed to. The wood acted like soft clay under his fingers, some part of Benen was amazed by this, but it was drowned out by the animal part of him that was wanting the pain to stop, wanting to just sleep and hide from this agony.
Eventually, the rat nodded and stopped giving Benen new places to mark on the piece of wood and the boy simply let go of consciousness then.
The last thing he heard before oblivion claimed him was the rat saying, “Well done, boy.”
He awoke, still on the floor, but no longer in burning agony, when Overseer came for him in the morning. Although the fire in his nerves was gone, Benen still felt like he had been beaten black and blue. He managed to stand.
“I want to talk to the wizard,” he told Overseer. It pulsed brightly and zapped him. He took this to mean he should go with it. He brought the piece of wood with him to show the wizard. But Overseer did not bring Benen to the wizard. It took him on his usual cleaning rounds. Resigned, Benen did what he had to, he cleaned the places that needed cleaning as directed, thankful that the impossible stain was not on today’s schedule. Late in the day, he prepared the food for the wizard’s supper and his own — he was famished, he found — and resolved to accost the wizard during his meal.
He brought out the roast chicken to the wizard, carrying the plate on his engraved loo plank. Benen served the plate, revealing the Parallels when he removed the plate from the plank. The wizard either did not notice or did not care. He ignored Benen altogether.
Undeterred, Benen held out the plank for the wizard, but he did not look at him or the plank, pointedly ignoring Benen.
Overseer pulsed threateningly.
Orafin said the wizard might respect spunk. Now is the time to see if that’s true,
he thought.
Extending his arms, Benen interposed the plank between the wizard and his plate of food. The wizard could not ignore this and turned to look at Benen, their eyes meeting. Benen wondered what the wizard saw; he knew he must look a mess from the previous night’s hardships.
“If you want to chisel wood so badly, so be it,” the wizard said mildly. “Leave this piece of wood with me.” Benen put the wood down where indicated. “Hold out your right arm.” Benen did. The wizard took his hand and held Benen’s arm out steady. With his other hand, using his index finger, the wizard traced the Parallels onto Benen’s forearm. “There,” he said. “Never forget that, although I might be choose to have my will defied in small amounts, there is always a price to pay for disobedience.”
The pattern of the Parallels burned later that night, etching Benen’s skin where it had been traced. He had difficulty sleeping, despite his exhaustion, and in the morning, found that his arm bore a brand, as though burned by a branding iron into his skin, in the shape of the Parallels.
It had been painful, but worth it. Now he would be able to continue his studies with the wizard without having to carve future star patterns into his skin.
Benen’s life from that time took on a new character as he spent his days cleaning and the time after supper being tutored by the wizard. The wizard had Benen use the wood chisel on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of wooden plates, requiring him to carve out the patterns of constellation after constellation. Some nights, he would carve many copies of a new pattern, other nights, he would learn new patterns all night. Later, once he had learnt all the constellations, the wizard demanded he carve each one again in one night. He succeeded in this and the wizard, for the first time, seemed pleased with him.
Orafin had not been absent during this time. After the sessions with the wizard, Benen returned to his room and learnt from Orafin details of the stars he had been carving. Things like their visual magnitude and what that meant. His magical education was proceeding, slowly, it seemed, but proceeding. It was obvious to Benen and confirmed by Orafin, that it would take up to a decade for him to become a proper wizard; but Benen was encouraged by his progress and persevered.
CHAPTER 4: ADOLESCENT
Everything was going well enough for a few years, with Benen losing himself in his studies instead of dwelling on the things he missed from his village and his previous life. Unfortunately, this could not last. When Benen turned thirteen, the loneliness that had plagued him, but which he had managed to suppress became too much for him. He wanted contact with others, with people other than the vengeful rodent Orafin or the unfriendly uncaring wizard.
One night, while Orafin was trying to teach Benen about the planets, explaining how some were made of gas more than solid matter, Benen found his mind wandering to a different subject.
“. . . and what’s more, they are highly flammable, these gas planets. Do not throw a torch up into the air in their direction while they are in the sky lest you cause a catastrophe . . . you really are not listening, are you Benen?” the rat said.
“I heard. No torch tossing on gas nights, or something . . . okay, you’re right, my mind wandered,” he admitted. “I’m sorry, Orafin.”
“What’s the matter? Is it something the wizard has done?”
“No. I’m just . . . bored with this. I want to go somewhere other than here,” Benen waved his arms about indicating the tower. “I want to meet people, do normal things. I’m tired of planets and stars and the moon and the sun and all their relative masses and luminosity.”
“You’re restless?” asked the rat.
“I guess so.”
“It will just be a few more years, maybe three at the most, before we can take on the wizard together. Can’t you just focus for that much longer? After that you will be free!”
“Okay, let’s just get through this,” Benen said with new determination.
But it was for nought, he could not concentrate on his work. It was bad enough when he couldn’t follow Orafin’s teachings, but it became dire when he had trouble paying attention to the wizard’s.
“These are basic star patterns! How can you get them wrong, boy?” the wizard threw the wooden plank at Benen, hitting him on the shoulder. Where it hit, his arm went numb with pain. He cried out. “Cease your whining at once! Make such an error again and it will be back to the knife for you,” the wizard threatened.
That night, when Benen recounted this to Orafin, the rat paced the room, thinking.
“You have to get your focus back or you will not live long enough for us to rise up against the wizard together; he will kill you if you fail to learn.”
“I know, I am trying,” Benen assured the rat.
“I believe you and I understand, but the wizard won’t and wouldn’t care even if he did.”
“Then I’m doomed,” the boy said tragically and threw himself down onto his bed.
“Maybe there is a way for you to leave this place and come back. If you’re lucky you might even meet some people,” the rat suggested this with some hesitation. “It might be dangerous and if the wizard discovers you missing, it will go badly for you.”
“If I don’t leave here, it will definitely go badly for me!” complained Benen.
“Then we’ll have to take the risk. Have you noticed a pattern to the landing and taking off of the tower, my young friend?”
“Not particularly,” Benen said.
“The spell the wizard uses to levitate the tower relies on The Pinnacle constellation,” said the rat. He was interrupted by Benen’s giggles. The Pinnacle was the constellation common folk from Benen’s village called Feldin’s Cock. This was the constellation Benen had identified for the wizard back in the village so long ago.
“Sorry. Old memory,” he apologized to Orafin.
“The point is, that constellation never sets, so the magic supporting the tower in the air can be maintained without cease — in theory.”
“But not in practise?” asked Benen.
“No. The moon or the sun sometimes obscures one or more of the stars as seen from here and at those times the flight spell becomes potentially erratic. The wizard knows full well when those times occur and lands the tower for the duration. Sometimes he will even keep it on the ground for an extended period in order to gather more power to himself and do something he hadn’t been able to do while maintaining the flight spell. This might allow you more time.”
“Why not just teach me how to fly? Then I can come and go without bothering with any timing other than my off-times,” asked Benen. His two instructors had not taught him much in the way of spells so far. As far as Benen could tell, magic was all astronomy.
“Do you remember when you and I did that spell to inscribe the star pattern into wood that time, years ago? It will be like that,” the rat told him.
“Really? Haven’t I learnt enough by now to be able to cast a spell like flying without any trouble?”
“No. I think you underestimate how difficult of a spell flight is, and overestimate your ability to hold constellation information in your mind.”
Chastised, Benen dropped that subject. The two instead worked out when the tower would land next. This information allowed them to plan and make sure Benen was ready to leave when the time came. Orafin insisted that he be taken along in order to keep Benen out of trouble.
“What trouble would I possibly get in?” asked Benen.
“Knowing you, any sort of trouble,” replied Orafin. “You’re a boy who’s been very sheltered for the past few years. You need to be escorted.”
“Well, you’ve been a rat for at least that long and living here for longer than me, what do
you
know of the outside world?” countered Benen.
“I left here for a time after my defeat at the hands of the wizard. I know plenty about the world that is out there Benen, believe me.”
Benen did believe him then, the rat spoke with such intensity, it was difficult to doubt him.
Benen put on his best clothes, which weren’t very good considering they were made by Benen himself. The wizard had let him have some cloth over the years and the means to stitch clothing together for himself, but Benen had never gotten very good at it and his efforts weren’t stellar. Still, the clothing was functional. What he considered his best clothes were really the cleanest, newest pair of pants and tunic he had made for himself. His shoes were made of the same cloth and shaped as a sort of bag. For a belt he wore a rope. In this case, the nicest bit of rope he could find. Orafin disappeared for a time while Benen was getting ready. When the rat returned, he was laboriously carrying a silver coin.
“It’s more than it looks. It’s worth sixteen of the copper coins and one of those will buy you a meal and ale to go with it.”
“Where did you get it?” Benen asked.
“The wizard is sometimes careless with his purse,” Orafin replied.
“His loss is my gain, I guess,” Benen said with a smile.
“He owes you at least that much in back pay, I’d say,” the rat said agreeably.
“I’ve never even held money before,” Benen was examining the coin closely. He could read now and tried to understand what was written on it; it didn’t make any sense.