A Touch of Magic (14 page)

“For instance, that first cluster I’ve drawn there is the most commonly known configuration for romantic love. It won’t produce much more than a childhood crush, but for some that’s enough to get things started in a relationship. That other group of runes is a mild combination for gluttony. That one’s been known to be used to stimulate the appetite in the sick. You can practice them both, to give you some feeling of how bind runes can influence the base rune.”

“Master, I’m confused,” Randall said.

“Boys your age are always confused,” Erliand chuckled.
“What’s your question?”

“Well, I thought you said you could draw a rune slightly differently and change its meaning. Why then am I learning bindrunes to do the same thing?” Randall asked.

“Hah!
Cause it’s
easier
lad!”
Erliand grinned. “Let’s say you have five runes. If you wanted to change each of them in some way, you’d have to learn a new expression for each one. That’s ten runes you’d have to experiment on and develop for ten different effects, right? Now, let’s say you happened to know of a bindrune that worked with them all in the way you wanted. That’s only six runes you have to know for the same effect. Learn two common bindrunes, and now you can potentially make twenty combinations from learning only seven. Of course, not all bindrunes will work with all base runes, but even so, learning bindrunes greatly speeds up learning and making practical use of symbology.”

“Oh!” Randall said, grasping the obvious. “That makes sense!” In his mind’s eye, Randall could see how much faster it would be to try out many combinations of runes he already knew to achieve new effects instead of learning a new expression every time he wanted to do something new with a rune.

“‘Course it does!” Erliand chortled. “Everything I say makes sense! Now be off with you and bring me some tea before you get to work. And be glad I didn’t give you some null-power bindrunes to learn. Now
that’s
dull work!”

“Yes master,” Randall said, standing up. He stopped at the doorway, still examining the parchment. “Master?” he asked.

“What is it lad,” Erliand replied, already back to examining his copies of the Buk rune.

“Is Eoin an elven rune?” Randall asked.

“And why would you think that?” Erliand asked as he looked up at Randall.

“Well, it’s all swirls and curves and you said elven runes were like that. You said Buk was a dwarven rune, and it was all straight lines and angles, to be easier to carve you said.”

“Anything else?” Erliand asked.

“Well, Eoin is also…more complicated,” Randall answered, struggling to put his thoughts into words. “Buk seemed like a very straightforward rune. This one has whorls and bits twisting upon itself. It doesn’t seem very straightforward at all. Instead, it feels more mysterious. You said that the elves magic was subtle, and that seems a lot like this rune.”

“Very good lad!” Erliand said, obviously pleased. “Glad to see you were paying attention. You’re exactly right. Also, if you think about it, the dwarven rune was about something tangible. Much like the dwarves themselves, their magic is rooted in the physical. Even in magic, they are down-to-earth, dealing in things you can see and touch. The elven magics, on the other hand, deal with the intangible: the heart and mind. You don’t need to smite an enemy with lightning if you can convince him that you’re a friend. In matters of the soul, the elves have no equals in magic. But they lost the secret of Eoin to men long before my grandfather was born. Legend has it that an elven Duchess used it to woo the heart of a young and handsome Mage, but the Mage discovered her chicanery. He divined the secret of the rune and used it against her, escaping the elven kingdoms, and bringing back with him the secret of Eoin.”

Erliand chuckled to himself. “Of course, he didn’t live long after that. As the story goes, they found him in a fairy circle a fortnight later, stone cold dead.”

Randall nodded, only half listening to the tale. His mind was already working furiously, fantasizing about how he might use this new magic. Not only could he charm Melinda into liking him, but he could use the other set of runes to help make more money for her father’s inn! He excused himself and went back to his room with the parchment to work. Settling down, he began copying the set of love runes. In his young mind, it was the most practical choice of the two.

After his tenth failure, he rolled over and sighed.
It’s going to be a long winter,
he thought despondently.

* * *

Twice a week, Erliand tested Randall’s progress with the runes he was learning. Randall was improving, though it seemed to be at a snail’s pace. It had been nearly a year since he first came to Master Erliand’s home, and Randall still sometimes had trouble drawing power when he wanted it. The rest of the week, Randall and Erliand would have after-dinner conversations about Randall’s progress in his symbol practice, and also about the Buk rune Randall had drawn. Erliand had made a charcoal rubbing of the rune, so that they had its dimensions, but he had been unsuccessful in his efforts to create and empower a similar one. So, they would look over Erliand’s notes, and talk about style, stroke speed, line lengths, and all sorts of technical detail. Though they never seemed to make any real progress, Randall loved these investigations. Erliand lost most of his gruff exterior, and treated Randall nearly like an equal. The excited curiosity was infectious, and Randall found himself thinking more about ways to draw a simple symbol than he ever thought would be possible.

Half-way through winter, they met after dinner as had become their custom when Erliand cleared his throat and took a long look at Randall, as if coming to a decision. “I’m changin’ your routine, boy,” he finally announced.

Randall waited patiently. He had come to learn that Erliand liked to make announcements with a sense of deliberation and maybe a bit of melodrama. Interrupting or rushing him would just lead to an irritated Mage and a chastised pupil.

“I’m cancelling our evening-time discussions. I’ll be teasing out the secrets of that rune for years yet, and you have new things you need to be learning,” he said.

“But I’m learning a lot about runes during our discussions, Master!” Randall protested. Part of him noted the irony of wanting to spend more time around the irritable old man. But the truth of the matter was that there was no one else to spend time with, and Erliand was at his most amenable when they were studying the Buk rune together.

“Indeed,” Erliand said with a hint of a mischief. “But I said that you need to move on to
new
things.”

“Oh!” Randall exclaimed, realizing that Erliand meant something other than learning a new rune. He felt as excited as if he were getting a new toy. “What am I to learn, Master?”

“Well boy, at the start of your training, do you remember what I told you about the types of magic?”

“Uhm,” Randall thought, scratching his head. “There are symbols. I know that. And…words. And somethin’ else, but I don’t remember what.”

Erliand chuckled. “That’s fine, boy. It’s been a while. But if it helps, you can think of magic like a kind of language. A language that makes things happen. Now you can write a language. You can speak a language. And you can also think a language.”

“That’s right!” Randall said, slapping his forehead. “Will! I forgot will! But didn’t you say only elves could work magic using will?”

“Not just elves but all of the fae can do it, lad. And only they have the power to use magic by will alone. That’s why we’re going to work on spoken magic. But it’s important to not forget the power of will. When facing the fae, it behooves you to remember that they can be weaving magic over you, while seeming to be carryin’ on an innocent conversation. You shouldn’t ever let your guard down around them.”

Randall nodded. “Yes, Master. So which spells am I going to learn? How to call fire, or turn invisible? Or change my enemies into toads, maybe?” He was practically hopping with excitement.

“Well, let me show you.” Erliand said, and instantly the room felt full of magic. Randall couldn’t help but still be jealous and a little awe-struck at how easily his master was able to connect to Llandra and draw large amounts of magic nearly instantly.

Then Erliand spoke a word. It was a musical word, spoken with an odd inflection. It sounded almost familiar. Randall kept repeating the word to himself in his head, trying to figure out where he had heard it before. Something about the cadence of the word was annoying in the way it teased his memory. The accent seemed to be on the wrong syllables, but he wasn’t quite sure. The slight lengthening of the last ‘n’ and the trill of the ‘r’ gave the word an exotic sound. Finally, he sighed and gave up, looking back to his mentor.

He was immediately hit with a wave of disorientation.
What am I doing in the snow?
He looked at his feet and realized that he was in the garden.
What the…
Spinning around in a panic, he slipped in the snow and fell on his posterior.

He heard Erliand laughing from over his shoulder, and jerked his head over to see his master sitting on a clump of firewood, smoking his pipe.

Randall was still too confused to be embarrassed about falling on his rear end. “Why…what…?” he tried to ask. His discomfiture caused Erliand to laugh even harder.

“I’ve been following you around for fifteen minutes to make sure you didn’t do something daft like fall into the well! Get your bearings and let’s get out of the cold boy!” he guffawed. “I’ll explain inside next to the fire.”

Randall stood up groggily, and did his best to brush the snow off of his breeches. He tried to collect this thoughts but his mind was sluggish and he felt as though someone had wrapped his head with cotton. He stamped the snow off of his boots and followed Erliand into the house and into the study.

“Have a seat on the hearth and dry off.” Erliand ordered. “I was showing you an elven word of power. It confuses the mind and causes forgetfulness.”

The word had seemed maddeningly familiar to Randall, even though its features were totally alien to every word he knew. “Tsan’laran,” he said to feel the word on his tongue, more to himself than his master.

Erliand’s eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s surprising! You shouldn’t remember anything, much less the very word that brought on your insensibility. But yes, that’s the word. And your pronunciation’s already pretty good, too.”

“Then how come nothing happened when I said it, Master?” Randall asked.

“Gotta empower it, lad, same as all magic!” Erliand said. “With symbol magic, you draw power into yourself and then push it into the symbols after they’re drawn. With words of power, it’s a lot more complicated.

“With spoken magic, you don’t just push the magic out there into something that already exists. You sort of weave the magic together with the word as you speak it. The word infuses the magic and gives it purpose. I can’t really tell you much more than that, though. It’s something you have to work on and figure out for yourself through practice.”

Randall pulled a face. “I’ve heard
that
before,” he groaned.

“That’s the spirit, boy!” Erliand said, laughing. “But before I send you off to your room to practice, there are some more things you should know about spoken magic.”

“Yes Master?” Randall asked, suppressing another groan. He felt another lecture coming on, but getting too insolent would earn him extra chores in the morning.

“Well, I’d told you before that symbols were ‘personal magic’. They can also be known as ‘inward’ magic. They only affect the person who has possession of the symbol, or the thing the symbol is drawn on. You can’t point a talisman at someone else and make something happen. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Randall nodded at that, though something at the back of his mind was bothering him. He ignored the feeling for the moment and continued listening.

“Spoken magic is different. We can call it ‘external’ magic. You say a word, and it affects something or someone else. You can’t use it on yourself, even if you wanted to,” Erliand continued. The thought that had been teasing Randall came into sharp focus.

“Master?” he asked, figuring out what it was that had been bothering him.

“What is it boy?” Erliand snapped. He hated being interrupted when he was lecturing.

“What about magic wands? In all the stories, wizards have magic wands, and use them to do all kinds of magic! If symbols and talismans are personal magic, how does a wand work?” Randall asked.

“You ever see me with a wand, boy?” Erliand asked, looking angry.

“Uh, no Master,” Randall answered, beginning to feel stupid.

“That’s right. Now tell me how ‘all of these stories’ go.” Erliand ordered sarcastically. Randall was taken aback by Erliand’s reaction. He knew that his master hated being interrupted, but the Mage seemed more bent out of shape than usual by this line of questioning.

“Well,” Randall started carefully. “The wizard pulls out his wand, says ‘abracadabra’, and…”

“Exactly!” Erliand snapped, cutting Randall off. “Spoken magic! The wand’s a crutch, is what it is, boy. These wands you’re talking about are just folk tales of wizards who had to use elemental magic to give their spoken magic some power.”

“Elemental magic?” Randall asked.

“Got wax in your ears boy? Elemental magic. I know I’ve mentioned it to you before. It’s not even real magic.” Erliand said, still sneering. “Some materials have an affinity for magic. It makes it a little stronger, gives it a better effect.” As he began warming into the lecture, some of Erliand’s nastiness began to subside.