Chapter 16

"There are two sides to a blade," the ancient master informed me. "but only one edge."

I ducked under his sweeping stroke, knowing it was intended to keep me moving more than it was to strike me.

"There are two ends to a sword," he continued, "but only one point."

The point sought me, and I avoided it, trying to focus on both the words and the weapon, unwilling to believe either was less dangerous than the other.

"The edge follows the point and together they draw a line,"

The blade flickered, weaving towards me and away, trying to intersect its line with me. I moved along a line of my own, away and around, all the while drawing a line of my own.

I have spent many long months under Master Ghordun's watchful eye learning to draw lines. Straight lines, curved lines, lines with hard edges and lines with soft ones. Lines that connected need to action and intent to consequence.

At the same time, I was still learning from Master Eliun. Here too I learned about lines, hard and soft. These were Lines of connection as well, but with Old Cunish, as with magic in general, the connections link pieces of Gaen together in new or interesting ways. Sometimes the ways were both new and interesting.

"The majority of wizards, regardless of their skill or power are not creators of magic, Pacasin," he told me. "They are users. Followers. Adapters. Cooks following a recipe. Now, tell me, what do you understand about 'Acrid'?"

Every time he got philosophical, Master Eliun seemed to quickly force me back into the concrete reality of my studies, which in this case was the Old Cunish ideogram called 'Acrid'. Personally I thought its name should be 'harsh speech', but the names were ancient and passed down across the long lifetimes of wizard after wizard: It was not my place to begin redefining the language I was learning before I had learned enough to even speak it with confidence.

"Pacasin, you worry too much," Kei laughed at me from my right.

"Really," Labo agreed, minus the laughter, from my left. "Here you are getting about the best education you could ask for in two fields of study that really interest you..."

"from wizards not just anyone has ready access to," Kei interrupted.

"And you walk around worried about what it all means!" Labo finished.

"Well, don't you wonder?" I asked the two. "My life is not normal, even for a wizard, and too many things have happened."

"Oh flapping wings," Kei laughed again. "What melodrama!"

"Are all you humans so angst-ridden at your age?" Labo asked. "Kei and I must be too young yet to suffer from it, or perhaps our race is too old."

With the coming of spring, the trails cleared of snow and Master Ghordun drove me outside the walls of the hermitage. He would fetch one or both of the boys and task me with accompanying them on a run to the western end of the valley and back. Somewhere along the return journey, he would meet us, and there he would begin another lesson.

Increasingly his lessons included brief sparring sessions with him.

I found those brief sessions very educational and humbling. As ancient and frail as Ghordun of Yalme was, with sword and dagger in hand, he was a force of nature. Sometimes his movements seemed to throw an extra spin or weave or hitch into what I saw as an otherwise elegant form, but I was too busy learning to worry about it. Time enough for questions later.

Eliun the elder's impact on me was more subtle. I absorbed what he knew and pondered what he thought and believed. The pace with which I absorbed the ideograms of Old Cunish picked up considerably. At my early pace it would have taken me almost fifty years to learn the more than 1200 ideograms that he knew. It was his belief that those 1200 ideograms comprised the bulk of Old Cunish, but was just as certain that others existed that he did not know. My pace had increased as what I had already learned began to facilitate my ability to absorb the remainder.

We began to hold short conversations in it. Master Eliun warned me repeatedly when we did that speaking Old Cunish was dangerous for wizards. The language, as with the wizards, was too closely connected to the Magic of Gaen. Even casual conversation; no, especially casual conversation in Old Cunish could have unintended consequences.

"The fact that Old Cunish can be spoken aloud doesn't mean it should," the old wizard spoke one day. "It is a language meant more for thinking than for speaking.

Three weeks after the spring supply train had come and gone, I had my first experience that reminded me of why the hermitage had been created in the first place.

Master Ghordun and I were walking out of the main hall, having met there to discuss our upcoming schedule, changed slightly due to the longer hours of daylight available to us now that winter was over and summer close upon us. Three wizards, Tynse of Uhl, Olvar of the Plains and Kenned the younger, were standing by the doors talking. Suddenly Tynse raised his voice over the rest of them. "Shut up."

Olvar and Kenned chuckled at his sudden outburst and Olvar went to clap the shorter man on the shoulder. It was an act of fellowship seen often around the valley, but this time the wizard Tynse reacted with anger to the gesture, pushing the man's hand away and repeating his angry words.

"Shut up!" he growled in a shaky voice. "I'm tired of listening to your prattle!"

"Uh oh," Ghordun muttered.

"What?" I asked, but even as I asked, I saw Tynse's magic flare to life around him.

"Damned bureaucrats!" Tynse screamed. "I do not have to put up with this kind of treatment!"

Ghordun was muttering and Olvar and Kenned were backing away from the angry old wizard with fear in their eyes. A wave of unfocused magical energy pulsed out of the frail looking frame. I fell backwards, pulling my sword out as I did, and muttered a quick bit of magic intended to soften my fall. It did so, but I felt the tip of my sword scraping stone and winced. Ghordun was only a few feet away and surely would have noted my poor form.

Back on my feet, I placed the tip of my sword against the stone floor, on purpose this time, and touched the magic buried within it, humming a familiar note and feeling it resonating within the sword. The waves of magic rolling off Tynse broke over it and parted, passing me by. I was just considering my response when the air shimmered around me and four figures suddenly appeared. I recognized Fenthil of the Green Isles, the wizard who had greeted my arrival in Kaya Tumic. The other three men looked familiar, so I assumed I had met them, but the glimpse of them I got was too brief to jog my memory.

The room was thick with magic then, and the four wizards attacked in what was clearly a coordinated fashion. One of them, I'm not sure which, cast something on the floor, and suddenly the stones were covered in ice. If I hadn't had my sword's tip touching the stone, I too might have been caught by it. Tynse was, and lost his footing immediately. Before I could react to that, or before anyone else could, including Tynse, Fenthil waved an arm and screamed something that I couldn't hear. Dark daggers of night black nothingness seemed to form out of empty air and move quickly to the just recovering form of the raging wizard.

Tynse had managed to suspend his own fall and began to come erect again. Even as he did the black daggers, growing more numerous by the second, began to reach him. Rather than stab him, they clung to him, falling flat upon him wrapping themselves about him, each growing and stretching, seeking to join with each other. It took a matter of seconds for the wizard to be completely blanketed in them.

I had just begun to think that this last ploy had succeeded in subduing the wizard when there was a high-pitched noise, then from where the darkly wrapped body lay, smoke and a harsh smell like burnt hair. The smoke that rose up from the form gave way to a harsh white light that outlined the edges of the wrappings, shooting out beams at odd angles in every direction. In no more time than it took me to stand and turn to face the fallen Tynse, no more time than that, the white light flared even brighter, bursting through the dark daggers biding him, obliterating them in a blinding flash.

One of the other wizards threw something towards the old wizard, but he stopped its flight in mid-air with a gesture, and before it could fall to the ground, was running, past me and into the hermitage.

The four wizards followed, and with a glance at Ghordun, I followed as well. With all the magic about, I felt it prudent to bring my own out, wrapping myself in it and letting it feed a little on the rawness of the conflict just past. Not a literal feeding, but more of a refreshing and re-invigorating.

It became obvious that Tynse was headed for the Big Dive. The fourth wizard, the only one I hadn't seen in action so far, threw a spell while at a full run. The spell streaked past Tynse, almost to the edge of the precipice. There it exploded into a huge yellow-brown cloud. I wondered if the cloud was some kind of poison, but very quickly, before Tynse had closed even half the distance to it, the clouds clarified until they were gone, leaving what looked like a translucent crystalline wall that covered the entire cliff's edge.

Tynse struck the wall, ran into it really, but it was not as delicate as it seemed. The wall and the wizard came together with a satisfactory thump. The four wizards I assumed currently represented the ice-water brigade ranged themselves evenly around the open plaza behind the Big Dive and waited.

"Come on now Tynse," Fenthil called out, breathing heavily as he did. "We're all far too old for this."

There was more going on here than just old men catching their breath. I let my wizard's sight open further than I normally did when near other wizards and saw the strings and threads of magic that stretched between them. Under such a gaze, Tynse was a scary sight. His magic was fully out, and it raged around him like a sail in a hurricane.