‘I’d hate to think I was talking to myself.’ She gripped the piece of white chalk in her slender hand and motioned to the blackboard. ‘So, just for my edification, remind me what is the basic principle of elemental conjuration.’
Waylian felt panic grip him. He glanced towards the chalkboard for a second, hoping the random scrawl upon it might suddenly offer some kind of answer, but no – it was still utterly meaningless.
Elemental conjuration – now that was a tough one.
Or was it? Was that actually one he knew?
Conjuration referred to summoning – that was easy enough – but was it elemental beings, like giant fire daemons, or was it elemental phenomena, like lightning storms and tidal waves?
He had no idea.
For a second he considered trying to bluff it, perhaps making something up that might sound convincing, but he knew that was stupid. Gelredida accepted nothing tentative, tolerated no guessing. She wanted the answer and she wanted it as it was written in one of her dusty tomes, spoken verbatim and with confidence. A wrong answer would have been just as bad as no answer at all.
Waylian gave a shrug of his shoulders, trying to go for the brave kind of shrug, the one that demonstrates valour and overarching confidence. He knew deep down he just looked pathetic.
‘What a surprise,’ said the Magistra, clearly unsurprised that her student didn’t have a clue. Well, she must have been getting used to it by now. ‘Just in case you choose to remember it next time, the basic principle is harmony. All life is, at its most fundamental, made up of the same elements. Components for elemental conjuration do not determine the results; that is for the magister to decide. A component will simply translate the form to a specific task. Understand?’
Waylian nodded.
‘Somehow I doubt it,’ said the Magistra. ‘But essentially it means even by using water, with enough practice, you could conjure and harness the element of fire to your will. Though why I’m bothering to elucidate is beyond me.’
She closed her eyes. Waylian didn’t know whether she was quelling her anger or merely showing frustration. Either way it made him nervous.
‘From now on, my non-conversant student, we will call you
Pultra
. I believe you are now familiar with our arrangement, Pultra?’
He nodded despondently.
Waylian was all too familiar with the ‘arrangement’. The Magistra would pick a name, an insulting, demeaning or otherwise unpleasant name, from some foreign and obscure dialect. Until Waylian could identify the origin and meaning of the name, he would continue to be known by it. This in itself might not have been so bad, but until he found the answer to his mistress’s little quandary he was also given the most menial of menial tasks to perform, like clearing the swill after mealtimes and wiping clean every blackboard in the tutorial chambers.
‘Excellent, Pultra. Then I believe you have some studying to do.’
‘Yes, Magistra,’ Waylian replied, closing the book on his desk. He stuffed the book, his quill, ink and some loose parchments into his battered leather satchel and shuffled past the empty rows of desks towards the door. He didn’t dare look at the Magistra; he didn’t want to meet her withering stare.
In the corridor outside, Waylian felt relief wash over him. Without the twin swords of
expectation
and
disappointment
dangling over his head, he could breathe again. It was all he could do to stop himself from running to the Grand Library.
The
Liber Conflagrantia
took up an entire floor of the Tower of Magisters. It truly was the grandest of libraries – the repository of five thousand years of history. It held tomes on cultures and religions long dead and maps and parchments showing borders and boundaries trampled into obscurity under the feet of ancient conquerors and kings.
Whenever Waylian entered its hallowed confines he was struck dumb.
Two Raven Knights, standing like black armoured statues, guarded the doorway to the library, their spears reaching almost to the ceiling. Waylian kept his head bowed as he passed them – though he couldn’t see their eyes within the beaked full-helms he wasn’t going to chance drawing undue attention to himself. The Raven Knights were the guardians of the Tower of Magisters, an order dedicated to the protection of the vast citadel and those housed within it. They had no magickal abilities, but their martial prowess was unrivalled – even by the Knights of the Blood. They lived only for one purpose – to carry out the will of the Crucible of Magisters, and this they did with a fanatical zeal. Even though he knew each one would lay down his life to protect him, Waylian could not help but be fearful of them.
Inside the library, the overwhelming smell of parchment, dust and old wood assailed his nostrils. In one corner stood the huge skeleton of an Aeslanti warrior – over seven feet tall, the bones twice as thick as a man’s, the fangs of its skull as long as Waylian’s middle finger. Even in death the beast was a fearsome thing to behold, a grisly reminder of the courage shown by the armies of the Free States and their king.
The vast chamber was eerily quiet for a room of such size. Two old magisters sat at the far end, silently poring over antiquated codices, but otherwise the place was empty.
Waylian’s heart sank as he began to understand the size of the task ahead of him. The place housed thousands of tomes, and he was charged with finding a single piece of information.
He had never been one to admit defeat; he would just have to begin somewhere and carry on until he found it.
Magistra Gelredida had registered her displeasure this way before. She had always selected the most obscure languages from the least known cultures to test Waylian to the limit. Previously she had called him the ancient Sword King name for cow dung, a word used by the monks of Han-Shar for the ring they inserted through a bull’s nose; then he had borne the Khurtic slave word for goats’ testicles.
Pultra
sounded Teutonian in origin, but there was no chance it would be that simple. Perhaps it was Golgarthan or from the Ice Holds of Morath further north – though it didn’t sound guttural and savage enough.
‘The Red Witch given you another one of those tedious names to work out, Grimm?’
Waylian almost leapt out of his skin at the whispered question, but when he saw the speaker he let out an audible sigh.
Rembram Thule sat at a small wooden desk, squirrelled away between two extremely large bookshelves. He was smiling, as usual, his dark hair flopping down over his handsome face. He was charismatic, self-assured, attractive – everything Waylian wasn’t.
‘How did you guess, Bram?’ said Waylian in lowered tones, moving to sit in a chair opposite. ‘And stop calling her that out loud. If one of the magisters hears, you’ll be doing menials all through the Feast of Arlor.’
‘Those two old goats are deaf as posts.’ He motioned casually over a line of study desks towards the magisters sitting deep in thought.
‘I’m sure. But she has … ways, you know. I’m sure she hears everything that goes on within these walls. I wouldn’t be surprised if she can hear this conversation.’
‘You sound paranoid, Grimm.’
‘Well wouldn’t you be? I feel cursed; it’s like nothing I ever do is right – nothing I say, no answers I give. I’m sure she’s just waiting to expel me from the Tower, or worse.’
‘What, turn you into a frog?’ Bram smiled slyly.
‘It’s no laughing matter. You don’t know how good you’ve got it.’
‘Oh yeah, I’ve got it easy, apprenticed to a senile old bat. Why do you think I’m here stuck in the library when everyone else is relaxing in the apprentices’ lounge? Because nothing Magister Arfax teaches me is of any bloody use, that’s why. I may as well be tutoring myself.’
Waylian suddenly felt jealous. Bram was an exemplary student, breezing through the theoretical tests of magick all first year students were given, and it seemed he did it all off his own back. Even with the stern ministrations of Magistra Gelredida, Waylian hadn’t even managed to master the basics.
‘Trust me,’ Waylian said. ‘You’ve got it much easier. Besides, you seem to be doing fine. The way I’m going I won’t be here for much longer, anyway.’
‘Don’t give in so easily, Grimm. Trust me, you’ll get it eventually; it’ll be like turning a corner and the whole thing’s just laid out before you. Everything will be clear. I promise: you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.’
‘I hope so,’ Waylian replied, thinking of life back in a provincial town, a dull life inescapably mapped out. He would make any deal, any pact to avoid returning to it.
‘I know so.’ Bram closed his book and stuffed it into his satchel. He stood up and squeezed Waylian’s shoulder. ‘Anyway, what’s the name you’ve got this time?’
‘She’s started calling me
Pultra
.’
‘Sounds nice. Got a bit of an Eastern ring to it, but the morphology’s a bit too archaic. How did she say it?’
‘She said,
Pultra
.’ Waylian repeated the word as best he could remember, but there were no stresses on any of the syllables.
‘Yeah, that’s no help. What was she teaching you when she decided you needed a new name?’
‘Something about elemental conjuration. I can’t remember exactly what.’
‘Then I suggest you start there.’ And with a wink, Bram walked across the library towards the exit, sandals clicking rhythmically on the wooden floorboards, leaving Waylian alone in that vast repository of knowledge.
He gave a sigh, glancing round the massive library, then began searching for the section on conjuration.
It took him three hours, but eventually Waylian found what he was looking for. It was in a little used tome regarding elemental definitions entitled
The Way of the Five Sages
. There was a small section on materialising golems from the earth itself, all theoretical and very confusing, but Waylian kind of got the gist. Right at the bottom of the section it explained that if these conjurations were cast incorrectly, the golem would fail, becoming nothing more than globules of earth and tar. These failed abortions were known as
pultra
.
Waylian wanted to feel happy that he’d managed to discover the answer to his quandary, but somehow it seemed a hollow achievement. Magistra Gelredida was obviously sending him a message loud and clear – he was a failure of the worst kind, lingering around the place like a leprous old dog.
As he watched the moon shining through the grand window of the
Liber Conflagrantia
, Waylian hoped she would have the grace to put him out of his misery sooner rather than later.
T
he smell of the streets was repugnant, the sound clamorous, the view dazzling. Northgate was lit up, a thousand fires twinkling from windows or glowing from street braziers, the dots of light mirroring the constellations that burned in the clear night sky above.
For River it was the perfect setting in which to ply his trade.
He wore the shadows like a cloak, the light slipping off his shoulders like blood from a blade. With noiseless tread he moved across the dark rooftops, his every sense heightened to sights and sounds that both repulsed and thrilled him. He yearned to be back within the sanctum, safe from the din, but also relished the freedom of being out in the open, moving across the rooftops like an animal, testing his mind and body to their limits.
The warehouse lay up ahead, shadowy against the surrounding illumination. To River it stood like a beacon in the middle of the city, a dark target towards which he was drawn
like a shark to a cornered fish
.
He homed in on his prey, eager to reach the warehouse, to reach his mark and carry out his task, padding across the rooftops with unparalleled surety. His clothes were dark rather than black, able to reflect the light and better hide his movement. A hood drawn over his head disguised his scarred features, not that anyone would see his face – not see it and live, anyway.
River reached the edge of the roof. Between him and the warehouse was almost twenty feet of empty air. With a lunge he was across the gap, grasping the edge of the warehouse roof within a steel grip, the sound of his landing muffled by the crowds of revellers below. River pulled himself up easily, crouching low to reduce any silhouette against the dark sky. He searched the roof for an entry point. A single window sat in the centre of the crooked pattern of tiles and carefully River tested its edge. He let out a long breath as it moved in his grip, and he willed it to be silent and not let out a noisy creak alerting those inside to his entry. The gap was less than a foot wide, but River easily slid through it. He hung in the darkness for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the black, then dropped to wooden floorboards, more gently than a pattering of raindrops, but deadly in the dark.
Muffled voices echoed from the floor below – one raised in anger, others making the placatory noises of assent. The angry voice bore a hint of desperation, as though some man were in a rush, and to tarry here made him fearful. River knew this was the right place.
He moved to a rickety wooden staircase leading down from the loft, careful to distribute his weight evenly lest he cause one of the ageing timbers to creak. This was second nature to him, to move silently, to be aware of his surroundings, keeping his eyes and ears open, to recognise smells and even tastes that might aid his silent passage through unfamiliar terrain.
Peering ahead he could make out a lone figure standing at the top of a second staircase – a single guard … not enough. River moved, flowed through the shadows,
like the water in a stream
, creeping up on the bulky figure to within an arm’s length. Even in the gloom he could see him picking at his fat nose, his finger probing deep for something in that vast cavity. He hadn’t washed for at least five days – River could smell him – the faecal matter in his trews, the musk of sweat from his armpits, the stale smell of sex in his crotch.
River darted from the dark, his short blade silently slipping from its sheath to embed itself in the back of the guard’s head. The man trembled in River’s grip, his finger still stuck way up in that big gaping nostril until his body realised it was cut off from the brain … dead. River removed the blade, helped the corpse to the floorboards with almost reverential care, then moved on without remorse.