Chương 40: The Practitioner

Long after Kalen made it back to town, Yarda returned from the Acress Enclave in an excellent mood. Though she hadn't seen the sorcerer, she liked the other healers she'd met. They hadn't been able to cure her outright, but they had done something to reduce the terrible swelling in her legs and arms. She was supposed to return in two weeks, when Sorcerer Nigel might be available. Kalen was relieved for her. And conflicted.

When she asked why he didn't want to stay at the Enclave even though he'd been so excited about it before, he lied. He told her that after studying a lot of books in one of their libraries, he'd realized that his time would be better spent focusing all his attentions on the text he already had. She had no reason to doubt him, since even as he said it, he was lying on the floor of their shared room, busily making notes on some of the brown paper Swift Wind Magery had been wrapped in.

He was just trying to distract himself. Magic had always been a good distraction. Days passed. Kalen studied. Whenever he left the inn, he tried not to stare at the wrists of every child he spotted in the streets. But he couldn't stop himself. Everywhere he looked, someone was wearing one of the leather name bands that proved they were not the sons or daughters of Iven Orellen. I hate him, thought Kalen, as he wove through the city's bustling main square one cool pink dawn. He kept a tight grip on his satchel.

Someone had finally tried to rob him yesterday. A girl around his own age had attempted to slip up behind him and slide her hand into his bag. She was quick and quiet, and she had her fingers on one of his silk flags before he whipped around and grabbed her by the arm. He yelled at her and told her hoped Veila dropped her with a stone from her mighty sling. People had stared. The girl raked her nails across the back of his hand and ran away in a panic. Kalen barely noticed the scratches she'd left.

He was too busy remembering the feel of the leather bracelet under his palm. Of course the thief had been wearing one. It was mostly the poorer children who did. Only around one in five had them. And though Kalen almost never saw them on the wrists of well-dressed young people, when he did, they seemed to be displayed unusually prominently. As if they were a point of pride. He'd even seen a pair of sisters who had decorated theirs with pearl charms.

He didn't know exactly what it all meant, and he was afraid to ask anyone. One in five is not that many, he thought as his eyes scanned the square. One in five is less than half. Kalen's own bare wrists did not stand out, because most children's wrists were bare. He told himself this over and over again. He would not let himself unwrap his parcels of new clothes yet. There was no reason to do it just because Aunt Jayne had made them with longer sleeves. I hate Iven Orellen. I hate his wife Atra, too.

He had learned her name finally. It came during a whispered conversation he overheard while he ate beef stew with Yarda by the inn's warm hearth. Iven and Atra. Lord and Lady Orellen, the parents of a Magus prophesied to be the greatest in all the first world. The Magus was a being of such might that he or she would change the whole continent, the whisperers said. They were someone whose life was being protected by the existence of people like Kalen…

though the non-practitioners having the conversation didn't seem to be clear on how the Lord and Lady adopting a bunch of corpses made that possible. Kalen had a better idea. Zevnie had said people long-range scrying for Orellens had difficulties and that when they found anyone it tended to be one of the fakes. The lizard's tail, twitching, to distract the hunter. I hate Hamila of the Lamp the most, he decided. She should mind her own business.

The fact that even the gods didn't like her should have been enough to tell her she ought to keep her stupid prophecies to herself. If a couple dozen gods had come down from the heavens to tell Kalen to stop doing a thing, he would have quit doing it. In the square, he dodged around a wagon filled with barrels of cider and ale, and soon afterward, he spotted an elderly woman trying to raise an awning over a corner stall. She didn't seem to have any assistance, and she reminded Kalen of Nanu.

He knew that meant nothing, really, but it made him feel like she was less likely to be offended by his request than others might. It was market day in Granslip Port, and in a couple of hours, the stalls would be ready and the crowd here would swell with people from all over the city and the surrounding countryside. Kalen had decided it was the perfect setting for testing out his new spell.

The couple who kept the inn would probably not appreciate him spying on their guests, but people in a busy market should expect their conversations to be overheard, shouldn't they? And with lots of folk passing by, he wouldn't ever have to wonder if he was messing up the spell or if there was just nothing to hear. He approached the old woman and offered to help her set up her stall.

She had pale wrinkled skin and deep-set brown eyes, and she seemed very suspicious of him until he finally admitted he wanted something in return. I would have helped her set it up anyway, he thought, struggling with the awning's prop. Everything in the city is so different from back home. The market stalls around the edges of the square all abutted buildings, creating temporary storefronts where none usually existed.

The canvas awnings and booths had been partially set up yesterday by people Kalen assumed worked for the city. The canvas draped from iron loops on the building's side, and there were poles that fit into settings on the other. He had no natural gift for this kind of work, but he and the woman managed it before the rest of her helpers arrived with a cart full of their wares for the day. They were a family of bakers, as it turned out.

There were loaves of bread, liquor-soaked cakes, and buns stuffed with different fillings to be sold. The old woman, Edder, bossed everyone else around a lot. Sometimes they listened to her, and sometimes they didn't, but it was all good natured. There was a comfort to being around a large family for Kalen. The rhythm of the arguments and the way everyone knew their place and their purpose felt familiar.

When he'd finished helping unload their cart, they gave him a brown bun stuffed with sweet potato and stood him off to one side while they debated whether or not it looked good to have practitioner work prominently displayed on their booth. It didn't matter one way or the other to Kalen. He'd spent the past two days meticulously carving a spell circle into a wooden board, painting over it with his magepaint, and then sealing it. It was the easiest of several different options for setting up Ears of the East.

Now he just needed a place to put it. Edder was adamant that having Kalen's carving out in front of the bread would make people curious and draw them in. One of her sons was convinced it would scare off customers who might fear something unnatural had been done to the food. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Finally, the man won the battle, and Kalen was given permission to tuck the board under the booth.

"Just a moment," he said "I need to empower it." Feeling excited, he held the square of wood in one hand and placed his fingers on the three runes that would call ambient mana into the pattern and keep it going for longer. This part was just enchanting work, though the chosen runes had strong associations with wind and therefore should function better for Kalen. He thought that they did.

It was supposed to be an anchor for a mage level spell after all, but it wasn't any harder to empower than his heating circle in his bedroom back home. It took him a minute, and then, to his eyes, the carved design began to glow faintly white. Non-practitioners shouldn't be able to see it. The whole family watched with interest as he propped the board up beneath their booth. Then he pulled out a green silk flag twice the size of a handkerchief and hung it from the awning pole with pieces of string.

It was deemed acceptable since there were no magical markings on it. He didn't point out that technically there were, if you looked at it closely enough. They were just dyed in such a similar shade of green to the rest of the flag that it was only obvious to Kalen which ones were currently drawing in mana.

"Thank you," he said, standing back to watch the flag shiver a little in the faint breeze.

"And thank you for the breakfast."

"What's he going to do with it now?" the youngest member of the baker family asked her mother. She was around Illes's age.

"I'm going to go find a quiet spot and finish the other half of the spell," Kalen said.

"And then if you say things in front of the board I can hear them." The girl's eyes widened.

"Maybe!" Edder informed everyone.

"It's Nerth's first time doing it. It's for his magician training. We ought to put the board out in front of the bread so it can catch more sound for the boy. It's good for the country to have more practitioners, you know!" Her son sighed. Kalen had a strong suspicion that his board was going to get moved back and forth all day. # Kalen walked away from the square, trying to keep himself downwind while he looked for a good spot to finish the spell.

He wanted to feel the wind well and not draw too much attention to himself. It was an annoyingly still day for a port city. And buildings were in his way. That reduced his options. He ended up traveling much further than he'd intended, but he finally settled on the conveniently flat rooftop of a pub. For the price of buying the owner a cup of his own drink, Kalen was given permission to, "Sit up there with the feathers and the droppings for as long as you can stand it."

Apparently the man didn't like the dovecote his wife maintained on the roof. Kalen didn't see why. It was perfectly comfortable, and the pen full of birds wasn't any trouble. He took the second flag from his satchel, imbued the appropriate mark on it with magic, and held it by the corners, watching with bated breath. The flags had been expensive. They weren't a requirement for this particular spell, but they were a great convenience. Ears of the East didn't create wind.

Instead, it relied on what was already present around Kalen. This flag was magically bound to the one in the market. If there was "a thread of connecting breeze" between them, then this flag should… Kalen almost cried out in excitement as the green silk fluttered to the left. If it had ignored the wind here altogether and held still, it would mean the spell wouldn't work in this location. But this was a good strong flutter even though the wind was so light!

He watched it for a while, noting how it shifted a little this way or that. Mostly the connecting wind was coming from the sea, as Kalen had expected, but if he'd been lower down at street level, he thought the buildings might have changed the course of it a bit more. Satisfied that he had the direction right, he folded the flag and tucked it away carefully in his pack and turned to face the breeze. He'd gotten the internal pattern right last night. Finally. It was going to work. He was going to make it work.

He pulled the steady, ever-present magic of the continent into his pathways. He directed it through them, flooding them, and then he slowly began to move them into the desired new shape. New Developments in Swift Wind Magery was a book that was meant to provide quicker casting patterns for mages who needed certain spells to work more… swiftly. The simplified patterns Mage Batto had designed came with the drawback of requiring a lot more power from the practitioner. He talked about power in percentages.

Maintaining a casting of Ears of the East for a few minutes should require a third of the power stored within the pathways of the average low level mage. The author spoke of this apologetically, as if he knew that asking the practitioner to use such a large amount of magic for a single spell was unreasonable. Kalen thought he ought to apologize instead for the fact that even his swiftened patterns were such a lot of bother.

It took Kalen ages to set this one almost completely in place, in a particularly dense spot near, but not fully within, his wind nucleus. He checked it over twice then held out his cupped hands in front of him, in the direction of the connecting breeze. The last part of the spell was supposed to happen simultaneously. Kalen filled his lungs with air, then connected the last bit of the pattern and pushed magic quickly through it as he blew lightly over his palms. Oh, he thought in surprise. It feels nice.

As soon as he cast, the pathway pattern felt like it settled into him. Things seemed to shift around it, and still blowing, Kalen closed his eyes and tried to feel everything that was happening. It was almost as if the pattern had become cleaner and more perfect on its own, and the mess of other pathways that had been trying to snap back into their usual positions and crowd it gave it a little more room. Kalen had never felt anything like it.

It relieved a large part of the burden of focused attention that every spell required, and Kalen had the sense that if he could only keep this spell steadily supplied with magic for long enough, it would get even easier to hold onto. After several surprisingly enjoyable seconds, voices reached him. Beaming and trying to hold back a shout of delight, he stopped blowing and listened.

"And I said to her…I said, Emilia, you can't marry a man that does not bathe himself before church. He sits there before Yoat smelling like a goat, and the fact that it rhymes does not make up for it!" Kalen giggled.

"I need six of the buns. The meat ones, now. Make sure to get it right." The sound of sheep. A cough. A bell.

"D'you think that magician boy's spell thingy is working?" It is! thought Kalen. It works just fine! He opened his eyes. The voices sounded like they were coming from his cupped hands. And against his palms he could feel a faint swirl of air, as if someone were giving it a gentle stir. A thump. Another cough.

"Oh look! They have some cakes."

"—caught him stealing the bottom halves of candles."

"They say that in Laen, they've started talking about branding. Like cattle."

"That's just a rumor."

"The price of the barley is ridiculous this season."

"You wouldn't believe the itching."" Why is the board out in front of the bread again? Ma? Ma, I know you can hear me!"

"Is it magic bread, sir?"

"Eh? No. Wait… how much would you pay for it if it was?" Kalen listened and listened. The spell pattern he'd made seemed to settle deeper into his pathways as he kept channeling magic toward it. The voices became even clearer. He even started to pick up noise that he thought came from farther than the immediate area around the bakery stall. It was hard to tell because all the sounds through Ears of the East were at the same volume.

Things that must surely have been said in whispers were just as easy to hear as shouts or conversation. He hadn't expected that. It hadn't been mentioned in the book. It really does make it even more of a spying spell. Kalen had assumed he would hear the same things he would have if he'd been sitting right there in the market where the board was positioned. But it seemed like distant noises were missing, and near ones were much clearer.

He could hear the gurgle of someone's stomach like his ear was pressed to their gut. When Kalen felt his magic running low, he bit his lip and focused, trying to draw more in. He'd been able to do it that day on top of the rock even while casting, and this was a much calmer setting. If he… yes. It was more work, but it was manageable. The continent had magic. Kalen just needed to call it toward him. I might not be able to do every pattern.

And it might take me several minutes to cast a spell that only takes others seconds. But at least I have this. Ecchun Batto said a low mage should only be able to cast Ears of the East for around half an hour. But as Kalen pulled magic into his pathways and pushed it into the casting, he realized something wonderful. He could cast this spell forever. He could replenish his power as fast as he expended it; he never had to stop. Well, that's not entirely true, he amended after he'd been eavesdropping for an hour.

The magic on the board is probably draining too fast. And my arms are getting really tired. Next time, he'd make sure he had a table to rest them on. He listened in wonder for as long as he could, marveling at himself in a way he would have been embarrassed about if he wasn't so happy. I've learned my first real wind spell. And it's a good spell. A mage spell. It feels like it was made for me now that it's all tucked in to my pathways where it belongs.

I think the place it's settled is where it should be built next time. It feels so natural now. And I did it by myself. If I can learn this one, I can learn every spell in that book by myself. I think… maybe… I might finally be a real practitioner.