Camp Nano Magor - Chapter 4 - The Spell
First Draft - 4955 words
It was not long before Celila had settled into the routine of the house. She learned quickly. Tev was not an easy teacher; he gave an abundance of reading assignments and he expected full attention and retention. He was fair with his lessons and he always made sure that Lila understood everything before moving on to the next. Not once had he ever made Lila feel inadequate or belittled her for coming into this, Tev’ s world, as a grown woman rather than a prepubescent child, as was the norm. Nor was she treated as a poor relation, she was simply another person living under the roof, with the freedom to do as she chose, for the most part.
Unable to live with the complete mess the rest of the house was in, Lila set herself to cleaning it, little by little. The Magor had not asked her to do so, she did it for her own peace of mind. In the process, she found quite a few things that had ‘gone missing’ in the past - much to Tev’s delight. She was allowed to keep a very fine jewel-crusted wand that had been misplaced and subsequently replaced by the Magor years earlier, Tev was unsure of how long it had been. The rare smiles from her Master were a treat, and encouraged Lila to continue surprising him. Sometimes the most innocent things Lila found, for instance, a half-knitted scarf - still on the needle - made her Master practically giddy. As a reward for finding that, Tev presented Lila with a different scarf. As usual, Tev didn’t explain anything about the scarves. Knowing there was probably something behind it since the scarf had the slight tingle of magic about it, Lila folded the gift and placed it in the trunk in her room to save for the coming winter. Winters were long and cold, the scarf would be welcome.
Tev pronounced her perfectly capable of controlling her abilities and warding herself within the first moon she was there. He rolled his eyes and snorted when she confided her fears that she would have to be stripped of her abilities. He patted her arm and told her she was the best apprentice he had trained in centuries. He didn’t bother to tell her she was the only one he had trained in centuries.
The summer passed quickly, and by the time the mild Autumn Storms were nearly upon them, Lila was adept enough to reinforce the trees around the house. She worked diligently to strengthen the branches to withstand the worst of the winds. Learning control and warding had been a chore. Exploring her element, learning what she could do with Earth magic was a joy.
Using her newfound magic, she coaxed a late crop of summer squash and a field of grain to bloom. Her happiest accomplishment was when she was able to ‘push’ a nearby fallow orchard and gain them a late season harvest of apples and pears, which now filled the corners of the cellars. Her magical efforts helped provide them with an abundant stock of food for the winter. Lila had a good hand in the kitchen, and was able to put up preserves enough to last a long time, without using magic. She had, unfortunately, tasted some of Tev’s magically preserved foodstuffs; and she had no intention of surviving on her Master’s cooking all winter.
Tev allowed her to take a cart to the market and trade the late harvest crops for meat that could be cured and stored for the cold season to come, as well as some new, badly needed robes and under clothing for them both. She traded apples for molasses and honey, pears for salt and spices. The villagers of Hilldown were polite and kind to her, going to the market was nothing like it had been back home. An old woman that was trading woolen goods called her over to her stand and went through a stack of folded shawls, coming over to her with a soft, fuzzy scarf made of a lambswool that had been dyed bright green. Lila tried to decline buying it, for it was a luxury she did not feel comfortable spending Tev’s coin upon, and she had nothing left to trade. The old woman smiled and pressed it into her hands, insisting it was a gift and Lila should have it because the green matched her eyes. She returned from her marketing with a light heart.
She learned very early on that Tev would often work through meals. He became quite single minded about his work and if she did not interrupt him, he would only stop when he ran out of ink, needed a new quill or needed more paper. At that point, he would look up and around, blinking as if coming out of a daze. At first, Lila waited for him to stop before suggesting that it was time to eat, but quickly stopped doing that. She prepared meals for both of them, sliding breakfast and midday plates onto the worktable beside Tev and clearing away later after he had picked at the meals.
With regular, decent meals, Tev’s face began to lose some of the gauntness Lila had noticed when she first arrived. His skin was less sallow, his eyes less sunken, he generally seemed healthier. Lila suspected that Tev had spent many, many nights working away without stopping for food or sleep. Having Lila in the house forced the Magor to stop periodically to teach her, and since he had stopped, he also ate, bathed and slept with a new regularity. One evening, while they were discussing a lesson, she had him sit on a stool by the fire and she trimmed his ragged and unkempt hair.
Tev put up with her without complaint. Knowing she was a burden and a distraction from the Magor’s paying workings, Lila tried to keep to the shadows as often as possible. She read, voraciously, and saved her questions from the readings to discuss as they ate. The Magor forced himself away from his work for a time each evening, usually without prompting from Lila. She wasn’t certain if it was his duty to teach her or the meals that brought him, but either way, it became their habit to dine and talk at sunset each day.
Every once in awhile, Tev would get in a dark mood and ban Lila from the workroom while he stayed within. On those occasions, Lila always made sure to grab an armload of books to take to her bedchamber, the window seat in a small unused study at the front of the house, or to the practically abandoned kitchen, which she had appropriated as her own space. Refused entry to the workroom, she left trays for Tev at the door, and eventually, Tev took them in and ate whatever Lila brought him.
The arrangement worked for them. With practice and Tev’s guidance, Lila had quickly learned control and basic warding. With all the reading she was doing, she learned a lot of history too, things she had never been taught in the conservative schoolroom back in her village. She learned about the Redanni Arch, the energy source the Magors had worked with to start the Storms. Before it had been destroyed, many had believed that the Redanni Arch might have been used as a gateway to other realms. But no one could go near the Redan Plains where the Redanni Arch stood or had once stood. Death waited there for any foolish enough to try. Those who attempted to go there did not return to report what they had found. She read about an Obelisque near the Forbidden Lands that had once been a source of great power but was now simply a stone monument, all energy burnt away by some great working in the past.
On her own, she learned a lot about mirrors too, a subject Tev adamantly refused to discuss after her first days there. There were no mirrors in the house. All the mirrors were kept in the iron lined drawer in the workroom. There was one on the wall in the workroom, but it was always covered by a heavy black cloth. Not once had Lila even seen the surface of it. In an old book that frequently mentioned Zesdan magic, Lila read that a mirror could be used like miniature Redanni Arch, if a proper working could be done upon it. A passage from one place to another could be made from a mirror. Not knowing why the topic was forbidden, Lila was nevertheless fascinated by it, her curiosity roused, and she tried to find everything she could in Tev’s vast library on the subject. Tev didn’t forbid her the study; he merely refused to discuss it.
~*~
“Stance, Lila.”
Looking over her shoulder, Lila asked, “Is my starting position really so important? Is it part of the casting?” She tried to remember if there had been accompanying diagrams in the book that this spell had been written in.
Chuckling as he rubbed his chin, Tev replied, “No. It doesn’t really matter where your hips are in relation to the spell.” He walked over and kicked Lila’s foot in; which caused her to fall back into the pose she had been in before Tev’s reminder caused her to move. Tev stood in front of her, between Lila and the fire pit. “Move your arm, as if you’re throwing the alsweed into the fire.”
Doing as she was told, and feeling a little silly, Lila swept her arm around. With a mischievous grin and a roar, Tev hurled himself forward, catching Lila around the waist and rolling her backwards. She landed on her bottom with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m the sneaky, wicked beastie that got through the spell and broke the ring. Knocked you right over, didn’t I?”
“I was hardly expecting to be tackled.” Lila sighed and flopped down in defeat as Tev smirked at her and rolled to the side, sitting up.
“One never expects their callings to go wrong. But it pays to be on guard. If I was a real rogue creature, you’d be my midday meal by now.” Tev picked up Lila’s bare arm and bit her, on the fleshy underside of her forearm. He pulled a face, dropped her arm and pretended to spit. “Bleh! You need salt. More sweat! Now, start again, stance!” He jumped up and offered a hand to Lila, yanking her to her feet.
As she resumed her position, Lila thought that at times, Tev was rather peculiar.
~*~
Lila knew that Tev was heavily marked. She’d seen his left arm, the day she arrived, when Tev had shown her his scars, and then his right when he had cast the spell to detect the worm spell in the library. She had glimpsed another on the back of his neck, the only bare skin she’d had occasion to view as she had trimmed his hair. Now that she had a few months of study under her belt, Lila knew that most of the markings she had seen on his body were wards. Wards and protection were Tev’s primary focus, his specialty, his area of expertise. He did not just cast upon his home and workroom, he was constantly walking around within the protection of his own skin. She wondered at his past, the experiences that he had been through as a Battle Warlock and later a Magor that had made him go to the extreme of permanently marking himself with ink as he had.
She understood now why the Council had sent an Earth potential to study with an Air adept. At this stage of her life, Lila needed to learn how to protect herself and others from what she was capable of wielding. She wasn’t looking to make her fortune or even her living at magic. For her, it was about control and safety.
Tev was the best person in the region to teach that to her.
~*~
Flipping through the pages of a kitchen spells book, Lila found one that seemed like it might work to preserve fresh meat without giving it a charred, sulfuric taste. Bored of a steady diet of smoked meat, and dreading a menu of more of the same through the imminent winter, Lila thought to try the working.
She brought the book to the workroom and asked Tev if she might give it a try. Distracted with his writing, Tev had barely looked up from his paper, waving an ink-stained hand over his shoulder in tacit approval. It warmed Lila to know that she had earned her Master’s trust in such a relatively short time. He no longer stopped to read through any spell she brought to him to check if she should be able to do it or not, he left it up to her to choose her challenges.
Perusing the pantry and storeroom, Lila collected the ingredients she would need. She fetched a freshly butchered and cleaned hen, as well as the dried herbs listed in the book from the kitchen. She wandered around the shelves in the corner of the workroom, carefully gathering each of the other ingredients and lining them up on the table where she was preparing to do the casting. She double and triple checked the names of the ingredients, just as she double and triple checked the measures of each one. Needing a vessel to mix into that would be safe to heat over a flame, she spied a large glass jug in the basin. Retrieving it, she gave it a quick rinse with water and took it over to the worktable.
Humming to herself, she measured out and tossed the components into the jug. Then she mixed the ingredients with a wooden spoon, stirring in the prescribed manner; shins and then widdershins, first one way and then the other. She glanced over at Tev, hunched painfully on his chair over the tome he was writing. She’d learned a lot from the Magor since coming to his house, she feared what he had taught her was more than she could repay with a little housekeeping, cooking and assistance with workings. She wondered if she would ever be able to find a way to show her gratitude, not that Tev ever asked her for anything. It sometimes seemed that he was satisfied that Lila was soaking up everything he taught her, taking pleasure in getting ideas and skills across to his apprentice.
The concoction had to heat up to boiling before she could pour it over the hen. The small burner on the table wouldn’t heat a vessel as large as the one she needed to use. She would have to work very near to where Tev was sitting, at the fire pit. She didn’t want to irritate him and be a bother while Tev was writing, but the other fireplace wouldn’t do to heat this, and she wasn’t allowed to cast on the kitchen stove. “Excuse me Tev, may I use the stand over the pit for a short while?”
“Yes, of course,” Tev grumbled, rubbing his eyes. He’d been writing equations for hours; Lila didn’t know how he did it sometimes. He worked constantly. Lila’s hands would have cramped into claws if she tried to do half the amount writing her mentor did each day.
She set up quickly, starting a fire in the pit. Soon her mixture was steaming, she would be able to do her casting as soon as the potion was ready. She leaned over, stirring, keeping a careful eye to see that it didn’t boil over. That was an important rule when working with potions. There was to be no bubbling over, that would be bad for everyone and everything, it made a lot of work and clean up and unexpected consequences which required more work and cleanup. It was better just to watch the pot, or in this case, the glass jug. She snorted as she imagined what her mother’s reaction to what she was doing might be. When she had moved back to the farm after her grandparent’s deaths, her mother had always criticized her kitchen skills, banning her from the kitchen. Here she was, for all intents and purposes, cooking.
Tev turned slightly on the high-backed chair and asked, “What is that song you’re humming?”
She hadn’t realized she’d been noisy. Feeling guilty, she fell silent and apologized quickly. “Sorry.”
With an indulgent look, one brow raised and a small half smile, Tev said, “I didn’t say you had to stop; I just wondered what the tune was. I’ve heard it before.”
“Oh. It’s one my grandmother used to sing. I knew the words when I was a child. I’ve forgotten most of them since then, I only remember the melody.”
Setting his quill aside and waving his hand around in a circular motion, Tev urged her to continue. Lila hummed, a little subconsciously now that Tev was paying such close attention. Eventually, after nodding in time to the tune, Tev closed his eyes and then began to sing in a language Lila didn’t recognize. “Dashnir cletentos, morgoso fizente. Amil logetli, hensh nenente.”
Completely entranced by Tev’s singing voice, which she had never heard, Lila forgot to continue stirring the glass jug. She heard a quiet crack an instant before the jar exploded, showering Lila and Tev in glass and the remnants of the heated potion. Lila yelped and jumped back, holding her hand where it had been cut and burned. She was wearing a skirt, shirt and apron, her sleeves rolled up as she worked, leaving her arms bare. Tev was better protected by the heavy robe Lila had never seen him without. The Master jumped up, hurled a protective ward around the fire and went to where Lila was huddled in a crouch, cradling her injured hand in her lap and whimpering in pain.
“Come over to the pump, we need to rinse that with cold water quickly,” Tev’s arm was strong around Lila’s shoulder as he helped her up and walked her to the corner. Lila held one violently shaking hand under the stream as Tev pumped the water. She bit her lip to keep from crying out against the pain.
After the majority of the potion, blood and glass had been rinsed off, and the worst of the pain had subsided, Tev held Lila’s hand up to the light coming from the window. “Not too bad. A little scalded but I don’t think it will blister. I can stitch the cuts closed. I have some salve. Let’s get the glass out and wrap it up. I’m sorry, I’m not a true healer, I can only do a casting to alleviate some of the pain and ward you against infection, I can’t heal the wounds completely. Do you want me to mark you with a healing spell? I know a few of those. Then you could heal yourself, from the inside out.” He touched a mark on the back of his hand, a stylized sun with ancient glyphs around it.
She shook her head, permanent spell marks were a serious step, one she was not yet ready to make. “I don’t think I’m up to that. The pain isn’t too terrible, I think I’ll be fine when it is cleaned up and bandaged. I can heal the ordinary, mundane way.”
He gently pushed Lila over into the window’s light near the end of the small worktable against the wall and went to fetch a stool, a tiny metal tong and a jar of salve. He dampened a clean wash rag, dropped it over his shoulder and came back to Lila. He put the stool behind Lila, pushed her onto it, dragged over a second stool, and held a hand out as he sat down. “Let me have your hand.”
It hurt, but Lila put up with it as Tev bent over her hand to tend to the damage. Using the metal tongs, Tev got a number of small shards out. Lila gasped as Tev poked and squeezed at the cuts to clean them out. She wasn’t used to him touching her, he so rarely did, and usually only by accident, a brush of hands or a careless bump. His hand was warm around hers, distracting her from the pain. Staring at the top of Tev’s head as he worked, Lila willed herself not to blush.
She had not noticed that Tev was also hurt until he sat up and Lila looked at his face for the first time since the jug had exploded. “You were cut too, Tev.”
“Hhmmm?”
With her uninjured hand, Lila gently tugged at the edge of a shard of glass that was embedded in Tev’s cheek. She held up the bloody piece. “Didn’t you feel that? It’s huge.”
Apparently he hadn’t. Tev shrugged. Lila grabbed the washrag from Tev’s hand and pressed it to the cut, which was now bleeding profusely since she had removed the glass. She felt a slight tingle run through her hand and up her arm. Pursing her lips and frowning when he began to protest and pull away, she snapped, “Just let me clean it.”
With a heavy, put-upon sigh, Tev let her press the wet rag to his face to soak up the blood. His eyes shifted over to the fire, back to Lila, and then to the book that was standing open on the worktable beside him. He tilted his head to read the spell. “Did you use fresh alavar root?”
“Fresh enough, there was some in the kitchen; I picked it three days ago when I made the spicy stew.”
Distracted, Tev mumbled, “Fresh alavar root, there’s something about fresh alavar root.” Lila dropped the blood soaked rag into her lap and scooped a bit of the salve onto her finger, smoothing it over the slice in Tev’s cheek, the same way Tev had covered the cuts on Lila’s hand after cleaning the glass out.
“What were you making?”
“A simple kitchen spell, a meat preservative. I was going to put up that hen.” She tilted her head in the direction of the poultry on the table.
Tev’s eyes drifted over to the sink basin and his eyes widened slightly in alarm. “Lila, did you take the glass jug from the sink?”
“Yes, it was thick, I thought it could stand the heat. I apologize, I was wrong, apparently. I didn’t expect it to shatter like that. I’ll go to the village and see about getting a replacement at the glassblower’s stall on market day.”
Tev began to shake his head. “That wasn’t properly cleaned. I used it last night. I meant to get to it today, but I got involved…” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his face, but it immediately fell back into place, as tousled and messy as it always was.
Leaning away in silent refusal when Lila started to fuss over a second, smaller cut on his neck, Tev pulled the book Lila had been working from closer to him, running a finger down the list of ingredients. He occasionally looked up at the ceiling, his lips working as he recited parts of spells silently. “Bat nuts!” Tev exclaimed, looking over at the fire, then back at Lila. His eyes were a little wild. “It should be all right. I was the only one singing, you were just humming, right?”
“Yes,” she agreed, beginning to wonder at his mood. “I was just humming. What were you singing?”
“Amrol Gestin, it’s a shepherd’s love song. But I wasn’t casting, you were casting, you hadn’t even started casting, you were still making the potion.” Tev pointed to twards the fire pit and made a stirring motion with his hand, miming Lila stirring the potion. “And there was no blood involved in the working at all.” He looked relieved and began to smile, until he glanced over at Lila.
Lila spotted it at the same time Tev did; the bloody rag in Lila’s lap. Tev touched his fingers to the slice on his cheek, where Lila had thoughtlessly pressed the damp rag soaked with her own blood.
Tev breathed out, “Your blood, mingled with mine.”
Lila stroked a finger along the back of Tev’s hand, coming away with the herb-encrusted remnants of the potion. “It was on us both, the potion was on both of us, it was on the glass that cut us, it got inside both of us on the glass.”
“Co-cast and blood sealed! Oma’s eyes, we’re in a bind,” Tev blurted, tangling his hands in his hair.
In all the months Lila had been here, she had never seen her Master so upset. Tev went out of his way to hide his emotions from Lila, to maintain the illusion of being one of The Heartless, taking it as far as locking himself in the workroom when he was angry. Tev threw himself off the stool and began pacing around in circles, muttering and waving his hands when he wasn’t yanking on the ends of his collar-length hair.
“I don’t understand, Magor. Please, explain to me what has happened,” she deliberately used Tev’s rank, which she had rarely done since the first day here. She needed to catch Tev’s attention, distract him from the panic she thought she saw rising in her Master.
Tev looked at her, a flash of anger briefly crossing his face. “It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing.” He laughed hoarsely. “Just elements, pieces and parts, none a whole, nothing with intent. An accident. I’m of The Heartless; it can’t possibly hold. It wasn’t deliberate enough. Magic is deliberate!” He had walked over to stand in front of Lila, his eyes now looking a little desperate as he clasped her by the arms and repeated, “Magic is deliberate!”
“Tev?” Lila reached up with her good hand, needing to sooth the trouble she saw. She touched her palm to the uninjured side of Tev’s face and made a hushing sound. “What have I done? Tell me what I’ve done.”
“We! It’s what we did! Both of us together,” Tev released her and waved a hand between them. “Separately, we mixed portions and elements of a spell, a major working, a banned spell,” he was breathing heavily as he looked into Lila’s face, his eyes wide, the pupils very dark.
Lila was finding it hard to concentrate. But she was starting to catch on to what might have happened. She stared at Tev, clapped her hands onto his arms and coaxed, “Breathe, Tev. Take a moment to gather your thoughts. Talk me through it so that I understand. What kind of spell?”
Taking Lila’s advice, Tev spoke slowly. “The jug had everleaf in it from last night. The leaf is a binding agent; it has to be cleaned with a special acid mixture to remove all of it from any surface that it touched. That means there were traces of everleaf in your mixture from the vessel. Fresh alavar root is potent. Whichor use it when they make love charms. But they don’t chant, they don’t use words. It isn’t dangerous when they use it, because Whichor never do blood magic.”
Lila touched her fingers to Tev’s face, tracing the red, salve-smeared line of the cut. “I added blood.”
“And I added the words, while you stirred, I sang lyrics. Lyrics charged with emotion from both of us, me from a memory the song brought back, you no doubt remembering your grandmother singing it to you.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Lila said, her fingers moving across Tev’s cheek, over his eyebrow.
“No, not at all.” Tev shook his head as he stared down at Lila. “Magic is deliberate.”
Relieved, Lila smiled. “I have read that over and over and over in the books, Tev. Love potions aren’t real. You cannot make someone love someone else with a spell.”
“Exactly.” Tev breathed out a slight sigh of relief and gave her a tremulous smile. “You cannot manufacture an emotion that wasn’t there at the start.”
Lila stood up, the motion bringing her even closer to Tev, her skirt brushing against Tev’s robe. He was close enough that she could feel Tev’s breath on her cheek. She could feel each heavy breath, warm on her skin. Tev’s hair had fallen down over his face. Casually, naturally, as if she did it all the time, Lila reached up and tucked it behind his ear. “And you cannot bind someone to another with an emotion that doesn’t exist,” Lila concluded.
Shifting closer, Tev nodded, but said nothing as he looked at Lila.
“But what if it was there?” Lila whispered raggedly in a small voice as they came to the surface, the feelings that had been growing for months, deep inside her. “What of if the emotion was there, if it were, could it be bound? Can one be bound to another if the emotion were strong enough?”
The noise Tev made was halfway between a groan and a whimper. He bit his lip and nodded and stared straight into Lila’s eyes.
“Well, then one of us might be in trouble,” Lila whispered. Unable to stop herself, she went up on her toes and pressed her lips to Tev’s. The noise Tev made was a full groan as he leaned into it, opening his mouth and kissing Lila ardently in return.
He suddenly pulled back and turned, heading for the door. Lila was certain she heard her Master mumble, “I think we’re both in deep trouble.”
It was not long before Celila had settled into the routine of the house. She learned quickly. Tev was not an easy teacher; he gave an abundance of reading assignments and he expected full attention and retention. He was fair with his lessons and he always made sure that Lila understood everything before moving on to the next. Not once had he ever made Lila feel inadequate or belittled her for coming into this, Tev’ s world, as a grown woman rather than a prepubescent child, as was the norm. Nor was she treated as a poor relation, she was simply another person living under the roof, with the freedom to do as she chose, for the most part.
Unable to live with the complete mess the rest of the house was in, Lila set herself to cleaning it, little by little. The Magor had not asked her to do so, she did it for her own peace of mind. In the process, she found quite a few things that had ‘gone missing’ in the past - much to Tev’s delight. She was allowed to keep a very fine jewel-crusted wand that had been misplaced and subsequently replaced by the Magor years earlier, Tev was unsure of how long it had been. The rare smiles from her Master were a treat, and encouraged Lila to continue surprising him. Sometimes the most innocent things Lila found, for instance, a half-knitted scarf - still on the needle - made her Master practically giddy. As a reward for finding that, Tev presented Lila with a different scarf. As usual, Tev didn’t explain anything about the scarves. Knowing there was probably something behind it since the scarf had the slight tingle of magic about it, Lila folded the gift and placed it in the trunk in her room to save for the coming winter. Winters were long and cold, the scarf would be welcome.
Tev pronounced her perfectly capable of controlling her abilities and warding herself within the first moon she was there. He rolled his eyes and snorted when she confided her fears that she would have to be stripped of her abilities. He patted her arm and told her she was the best apprentice he had trained in centuries. He didn’t bother to tell her she was the only one he had trained in centuries.
The summer passed quickly, and by the time the mild Autumn Storms were nearly upon them, Lila was adept enough to reinforce the trees around the house. She worked diligently to strengthen the branches to withstand the worst of the winds. Learning control and warding had been a chore. Exploring her element, learning what she could do with Earth magic was a joy.
Using her newfound magic, she coaxed a late crop of summer squash and a field of grain to bloom. Her happiest accomplishment was when she was able to ‘push’ a nearby fallow orchard and gain them a late season harvest of apples and pears, which now filled the corners of the cellars. Her magical efforts helped provide them with an abundant stock of food for the winter. Lila had a good hand in the kitchen, and was able to put up preserves enough to last a long time, without using magic. She had, unfortunately, tasted some of Tev’s magically preserved foodstuffs; and she had no intention of surviving on her Master’s cooking all winter.
Tev allowed her to take a cart to the market and trade the late harvest crops for meat that could be cured and stored for the cold season to come, as well as some new, badly needed robes and under clothing for them both. She traded apples for molasses and honey, pears for salt and spices. The villagers of Hilldown were polite and kind to her, going to the market was nothing like it had been back home. An old woman that was trading woolen goods called her over to her stand and went through a stack of folded shawls, coming over to her with a soft, fuzzy scarf made of a lambswool that had been dyed bright green. Lila tried to decline buying it, for it was a luxury she did not feel comfortable spending Tev’s coin upon, and she had nothing left to trade. The old woman smiled and pressed it into her hands, insisting it was a gift and Lila should have it because the green matched her eyes. She returned from her marketing with a light heart.
She learned very early on that Tev would often work through meals. He became quite single minded about his work and if she did not interrupt him, he would only stop when he ran out of ink, needed a new quill or needed more paper. At that point, he would look up and around, blinking as if coming out of a daze. At first, Lila waited for him to stop before suggesting that it was time to eat, but quickly stopped doing that. She prepared meals for both of them, sliding breakfast and midday plates onto the worktable beside Tev and clearing away later after he had picked at the meals.
With regular, decent meals, Tev’s face began to lose some of the gauntness Lila had noticed when she first arrived. His skin was less sallow, his eyes less sunken, he generally seemed healthier. Lila suspected that Tev had spent many, many nights working away without stopping for food or sleep. Having Lila in the house forced the Magor to stop periodically to teach her, and since he had stopped, he also ate, bathed and slept with a new regularity. One evening, while they were discussing a lesson, she had him sit on a stool by the fire and she trimmed his ragged and unkempt hair.
Tev put up with her without complaint. Knowing she was a burden and a distraction from the Magor’s paying workings, Lila tried to keep to the shadows as often as possible. She read, voraciously, and saved her questions from the readings to discuss as they ate. The Magor forced himself away from his work for a time each evening, usually without prompting from Lila. She wasn’t certain if it was his duty to teach her or the meals that brought him, but either way, it became their habit to dine and talk at sunset each day.
Every once in awhile, Tev would get in a dark mood and ban Lila from the workroom while he stayed within. On those occasions, Lila always made sure to grab an armload of books to take to her bedchamber, the window seat in a small unused study at the front of the house, or to the practically abandoned kitchen, which she had appropriated as her own space. Refused entry to the workroom, she left trays for Tev at the door, and eventually, Tev took them in and ate whatever Lila brought him.
The arrangement worked for them. With practice and Tev’s guidance, Lila had quickly learned control and basic warding. With all the reading she was doing, she learned a lot of history too, things she had never been taught in the conservative schoolroom back in her village. She learned about the Redanni Arch, the energy source the Magors had worked with to start the Storms. Before it had been destroyed, many had believed that the Redanni Arch might have been used as a gateway to other realms. But no one could go near the Redan Plains where the Redanni Arch stood or had once stood. Death waited there for any foolish enough to try. Those who attempted to go there did not return to report what they had found. She read about an Obelisque near the Forbidden Lands that had once been a source of great power but was now simply a stone monument, all energy burnt away by some great working in the past.
On her own, she learned a lot about mirrors too, a subject Tev adamantly refused to discuss after her first days there. There were no mirrors in the house. All the mirrors were kept in the iron lined drawer in the workroom. There was one on the wall in the workroom, but it was always covered by a heavy black cloth. Not once had Lila even seen the surface of it. In an old book that frequently mentioned Zesdan magic, Lila read that a mirror could be used like miniature Redanni Arch, if a proper working could be done upon it. A passage from one place to another could be made from a mirror. Not knowing why the topic was forbidden, Lila was nevertheless fascinated by it, her curiosity roused, and she tried to find everything she could in Tev’s vast library on the subject. Tev didn’t forbid her the study; he merely refused to discuss it.
~*~
“Stance, Lila.”
Looking over her shoulder, Lila asked, “Is my starting position really so important? Is it part of the casting?” She tried to remember if there had been accompanying diagrams in the book that this spell had been written in.
Chuckling as he rubbed his chin, Tev replied, “No. It doesn’t really matter where your hips are in relation to the spell.” He walked over and kicked Lila’s foot in; which caused her to fall back into the pose she had been in before Tev’s reminder caused her to move. Tev stood in front of her, between Lila and the fire pit. “Move your arm, as if you’re throwing the alsweed into the fire.”
Doing as she was told, and feeling a little silly, Lila swept her arm around. With a mischievous grin and a roar, Tev hurled himself forward, catching Lila around the waist and rolling her backwards. She landed on her bottom with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m the sneaky, wicked beastie that got through the spell and broke the ring. Knocked you right over, didn’t I?”
“I was hardly expecting to be tackled.” Lila sighed and flopped down in defeat as Tev smirked at her and rolled to the side, sitting up.
“One never expects their callings to go wrong. But it pays to be on guard. If I was a real rogue creature, you’d be my midday meal by now.” Tev picked up Lila’s bare arm and bit her, on the fleshy underside of her forearm. He pulled a face, dropped her arm and pretended to spit. “Bleh! You need salt. More sweat! Now, start again, stance!” He jumped up and offered a hand to Lila, yanking her to her feet.
As she resumed her position, Lila thought that at times, Tev was rather peculiar.
~*~
Lila knew that Tev was heavily marked. She’d seen his left arm, the day she arrived, when Tev had shown her his scars, and then his right when he had cast the spell to detect the worm spell in the library. She had glimpsed another on the back of his neck, the only bare skin she’d had occasion to view as she had trimmed his hair. Now that she had a few months of study under her belt, Lila knew that most of the markings she had seen on his body were wards. Wards and protection were Tev’s primary focus, his specialty, his area of expertise. He did not just cast upon his home and workroom, he was constantly walking around within the protection of his own skin. She wondered at his past, the experiences that he had been through as a Battle Warlock and later a Magor that had made him go to the extreme of permanently marking himself with ink as he had.
She understood now why the Council had sent an Earth potential to study with an Air adept. At this stage of her life, Lila needed to learn how to protect herself and others from what she was capable of wielding. She wasn’t looking to make her fortune or even her living at magic. For her, it was about control and safety.
Tev was the best person in the region to teach that to her.
~*~
Flipping through the pages of a kitchen spells book, Lila found one that seemed like it might work to preserve fresh meat without giving it a charred, sulfuric taste. Bored of a steady diet of smoked meat, and dreading a menu of more of the same through the imminent winter, Lila thought to try the working.
She brought the book to the workroom and asked Tev if she might give it a try. Distracted with his writing, Tev had barely looked up from his paper, waving an ink-stained hand over his shoulder in tacit approval. It warmed Lila to know that she had earned her Master’s trust in such a relatively short time. He no longer stopped to read through any spell she brought to him to check if she should be able to do it or not, he left it up to her to choose her challenges.
Perusing the pantry and storeroom, Lila collected the ingredients she would need. She fetched a freshly butchered and cleaned hen, as well as the dried herbs listed in the book from the kitchen. She wandered around the shelves in the corner of the workroom, carefully gathering each of the other ingredients and lining them up on the table where she was preparing to do the casting. She double and triple checked the names of the ingredients, just as she double and triple checked the measures of each one. Needing a vessel to mix into that would be safe to heat over a flame, she spied a large glass jug in the basin. Retrieving it, she gave it a quick rinse with water and took it over to the worktable.
Humming to herself, she measured out and tossed the components into the jug. Then she mixed the ingredients with a wooden spoon, stirring in the prescribed manner; shins and then widdershins, first one way and then the other. She glanced over at Tev, hunched painfully on his chair over the tome he was writing. She’d learned a lot from the Magor since coming to his house, she feared what he had taught her was more than she could repay with a little housekeeping, cooking and assistance with workings. She wondered if she would ever be able to find a way to show her gratitude, not that Tev ever asked her for anything. It sometimes seemed that he was satisfied that Lila was soaking up everything he taught her, taking pleasure in getting ideas and skills across to his apprentice.
The concoction had to heat up to boiling before she could pour it over the hen. The small burner on the table wouldn’t heat a vessel as large as the one she needed to use. She would have to work very near to where Tev was sitting, at the fire pit. She didn’t want to irritate him and be a bother while Tev was writing, but the other fireplace wouldn’t do to heat this, and she wasn’t allowed to cast on the kitchen stove. “Excuse me Tev, may I use the stand over the pit for a short while?”
“Yes, of course,” Tev grumbled, rubbing his eyes. He’d been writing equations for hours; Lila didn’t know how he did it sometimes. He worked constantly. Lila’s hands would have cramped into claws if she tried to do half the amount writing her mentor did each day.
She set up quickly, starting a fire in the pit. Soon her mixture was steaming, she would be able to do her casting as soon as the potion was ready. She leaned over, stirring, keeping a careful eye to see that it didn’t boil over. That was an important rule when working with potions. There was to be no bubbling over, that would be bad for everyone and everything, it made a lot of work and clean up and unexpected consequences which required more work and cleanup. It was better just to watch the pot, or in this case, the glass jug. She snorted as she imagined what her mother’s reaction to what she was doing might be. When she had moved back to the farm after her grandparent’s deaths, her mother had always criticized her kitchen skills, banning her from the kitchen. Here she was, for all intents and purposes, cooking.
Tev turned slightly on the high-backed chair and asked, “What is that song you’re humming?”
She hadn’t realized she’d been noisy. Feeling guilty, she fell silent and apologized quickly. “Sorry.”
With an indulgent look, one brow raised and a small half smile, Tev said, “I didn’t say you had to stop; I just wondered what the tune was. I’ve heard it before.”
“Oh. It’s one my grandmother used to sing. I knew the words when I was a child. I’ve forgotten most of them since then, I only remember the melody.”
Setting his quill aside and waving his hand around in a circular motion, Tev urged her to continue. Lila hummed, a little subconsciously now that Tev was paying such close attention. Eventually, after nodding in time to the tune, Tev closed his eyes and then began to sing in a language Lila didn’t recognize. “Dashnir cletentos, morgoso fizente. Amil logetli, hensh nenente.”
Completely entranced by Tev’s singing voice, which she had never heard, Lila forgot to continue stirring the glass jug. She heard a quiet crack an instant before the jar exploded, showering Lila and Tev in glass and the remnants of the heated potion. Lila yelped and jumped back, holding her hand where it had been cut and burned. She was wearing a skirt, shirt and apron, her sleeves rolled up as she worked, leaving her arms bare. Tev was better protected by the heavy robe Lila had never seen him without. The Master jumped up, hurled a protective ward around the fire and went to where Lila was huddled in a crouch, cradling her injured hand in her lap and whimpering in pain.
“Come over to the pump, we need to rinse that with cold water quickly,” Tev’s arm was strong around Lila’s shoulder as he helped her up and walked her to the corner. Lila held one violently shaking hand under the stream as Tev pumped the water. She bit her lip to keep from crying out against the pain.
After the majority of the potion, blood and glass had been rinsed off, and the worst of the pain had subsided, Tev held Lila’s hand up to the light coming from the window. “Not too bad. A little scalded but I don’t think it will blister. I can stitch the cuts closed. I have some salve. Let’s get the glass out and wrap it up. I’m sorry, I’m not a true healer, I can only do a casting to alleviate some of the pain and ward you against infection, I can’t heal the wounds completely. Do you want me to mark you with a healing spell? I know a few of those. Then you could heal yourself, from the inside out.” He touched a mark on the back of his hand, a stylized sun with ancient glyphs around it.
She shook her head, permanent spell marks were a serious step, one she was not yet ready to make. “I don’t think I’m up to that. The pain isn’t too terrible, I think I’ll be fine when it is cleaned up and bandaged. I can heal the ordinary, mundane way.”
He gently pushed Lila over into the window’s light near the end of the small worktable against the wall and went to fetch a stool, a tiny metal tong and a jar of salve. He dampened a clean wash rag, dropped it over his shoulder and came back to Lila. He put the stool behind Lila, pushed her onto it, dragged over a second stool, and held a hand out as he sat down. “Let me have your hand.”
It hurt, but Lila put up with it as Tev bent over her hand to tend to the damage. Using the metal tongs, Tev got a number of small shards out. Lila gasped as Tev poked and squeezed at the cuts to clean them out. She wasn’t used to him touching her, he so rarely did, and usually only by accident, a brush of hands or a careless bump. His hand was warm around hers, distracting her from the pain. Staring at the top of Tev’s head as he worked, Lila willed herself not to blush.
She had not noticed that Tev was also hurt until he sat up and Lila looked at his face for the first time since the jug had exploded. “You were cut too, Tev.”
“Hhmmm?”
With her uninjured hand, Lila gently tugged at the edge of a shard of glass that was embedded in Tev’s cheek. She held up the bloody piece. “Didn’t you feel that? It’s huge.”
Apparently he hadn’t. Tev shrugged. Lila grabbed the washrag from Tev’s hand and pressed it to the cut, which was now bleeding profusely since she had removed the glass. She felt a slight tingle run through her hand and up her arm. Pursing her lips and frowning when he began to protest and pull away, she snapped, “Just let me clean it.”
With a heavy, put-upon sigh, Tev let her press the wet rag to his face to soak up the blood. His eyes shifted over to the fire, back to Lila, and then to the book that was standing open on the worktable beside him. He tilted his head to read the spell. “Did you use fresh alavar root?”
“Fresh enough, there was some in the kitchen; I picked it three days ago when I made the spicy stew.”
Distracted, Tev mumbled, “Fresh alavar root, there’s something about fresh alavar root.” Lila dropped the blood soaked rag into her lap and scooped a bit of the salve onto her finger, smoothing it over the slice in Tev’s cheek, the same way Tev had covered the cuts on Lila’s hand after cleaning the glass out.
“What were you making?”
“A simple kitchen spell, a meat preservative. I was going to put up that hen.” She tilted her head in the direction of the poultry on the table.
Tev’s eyes drifted over to the sink basin and his eyes widened slightly in alarm. “Lila, did you take the glass jug from the sink?”
“Yes, it was thick, I thought it could stand the heat. I apologize, I was wrong, apparently. I didn’t expect it to shatter like that. I’ll go to the village and see about getting a replacement at the glassblower’s stall on market day.”
Tev began to shake his head. “That wasn’t properly cleaned. I used it last night. I meant to get to it today, but I got involved…” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his face, but it immediately fell back into place, as tousled and messy as it always was.
Leaning away in silent refusal when Lila started to fuss over a second, smaller cut on his neck, Tev pulled the book Lila had been working from closer to him, running a finger down the list of ingredients. He occasionally looked up at the ceiling, his lips working as he recited parts of spells silently. “Bat nuts!” Tev exclaimed, looking over at the fire, then back at Lila. His eyes were a little wild. “It should be all right. I was the only one singing, you were just humming, right?”
“Yes,” she agreed, beginning to wonder at his mood. “I was just humming. What were you singing?”
“Amrol Gestin, it’s a shepherd’s love song. But I wasn’t casting, you were casting, you hadn’t even started casting, you were still making the potion.” Tev pointed to twards the fire pit and made a stirring motion with his hand, miming Lila stirring the potion. “And there was no blood involved in the working at all.” He looked relieved and began to smile, until he glanced over at Lila.
Lila spotted it at the same time Tev did; the bloody rag in Lila’s lap. Tev touched his fingers to the slice on his cheek, where Lila had thoughtlessly pressed the damp rag soaked with her own blood.
Tev breathed out, “Your blood, mingled with mine.”
Lila stroked a finger along the back of Tev’s hand, coming away with the herb-encrusted remnants of the potion. “It was on us both, the potion was on both of us, it was on the glass that cut us, it got inside both of us on the glass.”
“Co-cast and blood sealed! Oma’s eyes, we’re in a bind,” Tev blurted, tangling his hands in his hair.
In all the months Lila had been here, she had never seen her Master so upset. Tev went out of his way to hide his emotions from Lila, to maintain the illusion of being one of The Heartless, taking it as far as locking himself in the workroom when he was angry. Tev threw himself off the stool and began pacing around in circles, muttering and waving his hands when he wasn’t yanking on the ends of his collar-length hair.
“I don’t understand, Magor. Please, explain to me what has happened,” she deliberately used Tev’s rank, which she had rarely done since the first day here. She needed to catch Tev’s attention, distract him from the panic she thought she saw rising in her Master.
Tev looked at her, a flash of anger briefly crossing his face. “It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing.” He laughed hoarsely. “Just elements, pieces and parts, none a whole, nothing with intent. An accident. I’m of The Heartless; it can’t possibly hold. It wasn’t deliberate enough. Magic is deliberate!” He had walked over to stand in front of Lila, his eyes now looking a little desperate as he clasped her by the arms and repeated, “Magic is deliberate!”
“Tev?” Lila reached up with her good hand, needing to sooth the trouble she saw. She touched her palm to the uninjured side of Tev’s face and made a hushing sound. “What have I done? Tell me what I’ve done.”
“We! It’s what we did! Both of us together,” Tev released her and waved a hand between them. “Separately, we mixed portions and elements of a spell, a major working, a banned spell,” he was breathing heavily as he looked into Lila’s face, his eyes wide, the pupils very dark.
Lila was finding it hard to concentrate. But she was starting to catch on to what might have happened. She stared at Tev, clapped her hands onto his arms and coaxed, “Breathe, Tev. Take a moment to gather your thoughts. Talk me through it so that I understand. What kind of spell?”
Taking Lila’s advice, Tev spoke slowly. “The jug had everleaf in it from last night. The leaf is a binding agent; it has to be cleaned with a special acid mixture to remove all of it from any surface that it touched. That means there were traces of everleaf in your mixture from the vessel. Fresh alavar root is potent. Whichor use it when they make love charms. But they don’t chant, they don’t use words. It isn’t dangerous when they use it, because Whichor never do blood magic.”
Lila touched her fingers to Tev’s face, tracing the red, salve-smeared line of the cut. “I added blood.”
“And I added the words, while you stirred, I sang lyrics. Lyrics charged with emotion from both of us, me from a memory the song brought back, you no doubt remembering your grandmother singing it to you.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Lila said, her fingers moving across Tev’s cheek, over his eyebrow.
“No, not at all.” Tev shook his head as he stared down at Lila. “Magic is deliberate.”
Relieved, Lila smiled. “I have read that over and over and over in the books, Tev. Love potions aren’t real. You cannot make someone love someone else with a spell.”
“Exactly.” Tev breathed out a slight sigh of relief and gave her a tremulous smile. “You cannot manufacture an emotion that wasn’t there at the start.”
Lila stood up, the motion bringing her even closer to Tev, her skirt brushing against Tev’s robe. He was close enough that she could feel Tev’s breath on her cheek. She could feel each heavy breath, warm on her skin. Tev’s hair had fallen down over his face. Casually, naturally, as if she did it all the time, Lila reached up and tucked it behind his ear. “And you cannot bind someone to another with an emotion that doesn’t exist,” Lila concluded.
Shifting closer, Tev nodded, but said nothing as he looked at Lila.
“But what if it was there?” Lila whispered raggedly in a small voice as they came to the surface, the feelings that had been growing for months, deep inside her. “What of if the emotion was there, if it were, could it be bound? Can one be bound to another if the emotion were strong enough?”
The noise Tev made was halfway between a groan and a whimper. He bit his lip and nodded and stared straight into Lila’s eyes.
“Well, then one of us might be in trouble,” Lila whispered. Unable to stop herself, she went up on her toes and pressed her lips to Tev’s. The noise Tev made was a full groan as he leaned into it, opening his mouth and kissing Lila ardently in return.
He suddenly pulled back and turned, heading for the door. Lila was certain she heard her Master mumble, “I think we’re both in deep trouble.”