The Demon's Blade (17 page)

Chapter 15: The Executioner’s Apprentice

Jerris slept long into the morning, so Darien used the time to collect his thoughts. Darien put the vision out of his mind and tried his best to focus on the present. The morning light shone brightly in the window now, illuminating the dreary ruin of the underpass. It was only when the light finally crept over to the spot where Jerris lay that the young man finally opened his eyes. The lad yawned and asked, "What time is it?"

"It is near mid-morning," the waiting shade answered. "Hurry and get ready to go. We need to reach the south door before nightfall."

"What?" Jerris exclaimed. "Why didn't you wake me? We should already be on our way."

"Yesterday you complained when I woke you," Darien cocked his head to the side curiously, "and today you complained when I did not wake you. It seems I must endure your complaints regardless of what I do."

"Aargh! You really have no idea how to act decently, do you?" Jerris groaned. "I'd rather not have water thrown in my face before dawn, but neither would I like to be allowed to sleep till noon."

Darien chuckled in amusement at his own wit. "I forget too easily that you aren't used to such exertion. You won't be able to find your hidden city or escape from our pursuers if you fall down dead of exhaustion in the road."

"Dammit, I hate being so useless. I feel like I'm being carried about like an infant."

"If you hate being useless, then learn something useful," the shade scolded. "But don't be too hard on yourself. I have lived this way for many years. This is your first journey, and neither your feet nor your wits were prepared for it. Given your background, I think you've done remarkably well."

"Thanks, I think. All your compliments sound like insults, so it's hard to tell." Jerris smiled as he spoke.

Darien had already prepared the horses for the day’s travel, so without any further delay, the two men mounted and set off. A fog lay upon the land outside the window. Here and there, the tops of broken hills raised their sullen gray heads above the fog. But for these few islands of gray and the scraggly trees that clung to their upper slopes, the Craglands below were obscured by the sea of white fog.

While the window continued with the path of the tunnel, the older half-elf made a point of explaining the route through the Craglands. Past the south door of the underpass, a road continued on to the south. They would take that road south to the ruins of Thordas, where they would strike a larger road, and turn west upon it towards Galad, the only pass open this late in the year. Beyond that pass lay the Golden Plains and the great nations of men. Those lands posed problems of their own, but at present, those difficulties seemed better than facing Avirosa. When the explanation ended, they rode on in silence.

After perhaps an hour of travel, the underpass turned into the rock, and away from the window. Shortly thereafter, the bending curve of the tunnel obscured the window from view entirely, and they were once again left with just the dim glow of the torches. Jerris began fidgeting nervously. Darien noticed immediately, but waited quietly for the lad to say whatever it was that he had on his mind. After several minutes of waiting, the lad still remained silent, but the fidgeting had increased in intensity. The young half-elf tapped his fingers rapidly, endlessly upon the saddle horn.

Finally, the older half-elf had had enough. “Alright Jerris, what is bothering you now?”

"Well, it’s just… you said I should learn something useful, so I was thinking, could you teach me to use magic like you do?” Jerris nervously stammered out.

Darien smiled, chuckling inwardly. The thought of taking on an apprentice amused him, but the timing could not have been poorer. Making his best attempt at consoling the lad, he answered, "Training in magic requires, among other things, a great deal of time to concentrate and learn to focus the mind properly. Obviously, we have precious little time, and for the moment, it would be better spent on more practical concerns. If we can make it past Galad, there may be time for that."

"Well, we're not really doing anything now," Jerris protested. "You could at least explain it to me as we travel."

"I suppose it couldn't hurt," the shade said. "You seem to have been taught so little about anything to this point, a bit of simple education would do you good. I'm not much of a teacher, so why don't you just ask me what you want to know, and I'll answer as best I can."

"Well, maybe this is a bit basic, but how do you do it?" Jerris asked. "I mean like when you collapsed the wall and broke those bars at the Duke’s castle, or when you hurled those ice shards at the gloom crawler."

Darien paused for a long while. He'd never heard it put quite so bluntly, so he was unprepared to answer such a basic question. Finally, he decided to ask his own question instead. "Well, how did you knock down those two men in the Inn the night we met?"

"I… guess I don't really know," Jerris answered as a look of befuddlement appeared on his face. "Mother always told me the talisman would protect me if I took it in hand and focused my mind on it, so I just grabbed the talisman and it just happened. I didn't really do it on purpose."

"An honest answer, and a correct one," the reluctant teacher complimented the eager pupil. "Magic is exactly like that. It is not a question of knowledge, like history, geography, or alchemy. Anyone can learn those. Magic is entirely different. You either can do it or you cannot. It is based upon the power of your mind to shape the world around you. When you become proficient, you simply think it, and it happens, like walking or standing up."

"That doesn't make any sense at all," Jerris said. "I wasn't thinking anything except how much I wanted to get away when I knocked those men down."

"Yes, exactly," Darien said. "Your desire to escape was manifested as the burst of power that knocked down your foes. It was a primal, unfocused form of magic, a simple force pushing outward. It's often seen in children with magical talent, and used to identify candidates for apprenticeship to various mage orders. That talent is inborn. You either have it or you don't. There's no way to teach magic to someone that doesn't have the gift."

"So do I have the gift? Or is it just the talisman?"

"It is believed that all elves possess innate magical abilities. The starstones just respond to it, focus it, and magnify it.”

"I see. So I could have done that without the stone then?"

"Well, yes and no," Darien said. "You probably could have manifested some sort of magic with the proper prompting, or were the situation desperate enough, but the stone probably made it easier, and magnified the actual force considerably, so instead of just pushing them away, it knocked them several feet through the air."

"So, what is magic? That force that knocked them away. What's it made of? Is it just wind?"

"No, it isn't wind," Darien leaned back and laughed aloud. "Magic is ... well, magic is magic, sort of like fire is fire. It's not something that lends itself to being defined in words. Still, the way it was first explained to me, magic is the energy that binds all things in the world together.”

"Now I really don't understand," the confused lad complained. "What's that supposed to mean? It sounds like a bunch of nonsense."

"Does it?" Darien feigned the question and continued. "Well, let me explain it this way. Our world of Terrallien possesses a dual nature. It has two parts, each existing together, and each having profound effects upon the other. The first part is form, and the second part is energy. Form gives things substance, structure, shape, and size. Energy moves everything and brings it to life. It is the fire's energy that burns, not its form. It is the stone's energy that crushes, not its form. That energy, in its purest form, before it is weight or heat or wind or cold or anything else, is magic. You must learn how to focus your mind in order to change it into a more focused type of energy, and achieve particular effects."

"Um... OK." The lad sounded more confused than before. "I don’t really get it.”

“Magic is the energy of possibility. It might be fire, or it might be wind, or lightning, or anything else. The mind of the caster takes the energy and makes it into something specific.”

“Ahh!” The lad’s eyes brightened with understanding. “So, it's like a block of wood before it's carved into something, or like blank pages before a story is written?"

"Yes, you can think of it that way if you like," the teacher acknowledged. "But it's also more. To continue your comparison, the pure magic that you manifested is like all the figures that can be carved from that wood or all the stories that could ever be written on those pages, thrown together haphazardly."

"OK," Jerris said. "Can I use magic that way? I mean like using it to push people in a specific way or push away arrows or something."

“No. Pure magic arises as a result of the instinct of the caster, to escape from danger, or some other desperate need. It’s highly unpredictable, manifesting in very different ways. What you did, pushing with invisible force, is called hyperkinesis, a powerful, sudden force pushing outward. Most mages can learn basic kinesis to move objects, but nothing as large as a man. There are other effects, too. Pure magic can blind attackers, paralyze them, or even cause them to fall dead on the spot. It sometimes causes the caster to vanish and reappear somewhere else, several yards or even miles away. I’ve heard reports that for some mages, pure magic manifests as a suspension of time, where they can move about but the rest of the world is frozen in place. It would be useful if it could be harnessed and controlled, but it can’t. Many have tried, and most of those died in the attempt.”

"Alright, so how do you make it useful?"

"Well, that’s a question with a rather long answer. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Of course,” Jerris replied eagerly, his eyes bright with curiosity. “That’s why I asked. I didn’t expect it to be simple.”

Darien nodded in agreement, then explained as he scratched the dark stubble of his unshaved chin. “I’ll begin at the beginning then. All magic is said to flow from pure magic, but there are different ways to harness it. The main divisions are called schools of magic. Most of what you’ve seen me use is called elemental magic. Those who use it are called elementalists, or sometimes conjurers, because we appear to conjure elements from nothing. That isn’t entirely true of course. Some elemental magic appears to be conjured, because it is energy without form. Fire, lightning, heat, cold, light, and wind are all simply energy, which can be called into being anywhere, so long as the mage possesses the necessary magical energy. Earth and water, on the other hand, require some materials to be present. Because those elements require some form or substance to make them useful, you must have some to begin with. When I use earth magic, I am simply imparting energy into the existing earth so that it changes in a predictable way. Water is used in a very similar way, though its uses are somewhat subtler. Earth magic isn’t simply limited to rock, either, it can be used to manipulate any material found in the earth, even metals like iron, silver, and gold. For those reasons, earth and water magic are sometimes grouped separately, and called transmutation.

“Like turning lead into gold?” Jerris remarked.

“Well, yes, but that isn’t very practical. Elemental spells are completely dependent on the concentration of the mage to maintain, so they can only be maintained for a limited period of time, and within a limited range. Needless to say, the ability to transmute lead into gold isn’t particularly practical when it turns back to lead after a few minutes, or whenever the mage decides to leave.

“Regardless of the element used, the variety of effects that can be achieved depends upon the mage's individual skill and practice, as well as the environment. One cannot, for example, conjure a fireball under water, or make a bolt of lightning travel along the ground, or produce a wall of earth in the air where there is no earth. When I knocked down the castle wall, I simply applied a vibration to an already vulnerable point. The ice shards are simply the result of shaping and then freezing the water that is suspended within the air. That technique would be almost impossible in a desert.”

“So how do you make them move? The ice I mean?” Jerris asked with eager excitement in his voice.

“Well, that involves the kinesis I mentioned earlier. Kinesis is the energy of movement. It’s easy to move small objects if the force is in a single direction, and you don’t need very precise aim,” Darien explained to his eager listener. “If you noticed, when I fought the gloom crawler, I used the ice shards when I had a large target and I wanted to inflict a lot of damage, but when I needed to hit a precise target, the eyes of the beast, I chose a throwing dagger. The shades are trained both in magic, and in traditional combat with many different weapons. The combined skill of both makes a more versatile warrior.”

“OK. So what about those balls of darkness?” Jerris asked, his curiosity still seemingly far from satisfied. “You used them on the gates. I’ve never even heard of magic like that.”

“Well, that’s something a bit different. They are called shadow voids, and they are not energy exactly, nor are they transmutation of other materials. What they are is an absence of energy, which is, surprisingly, nearly as powerful as any kind of energy. They are, in a very real sense, emptiness, and emptiness is something that can’t exist on its own. It requires a tremendous force of will to sustain the existence of something so unnatural. The shadow void violates the principle that magic can neither create nor destroy energy, because it does destroy energy, and substance as well. No other known spell violates this principle.”