Many Words

Eirik followed Baltasar out of the main hall, and they walked in silence until they reached the compound’s outer wall. They turned to walk along the path that ran in its shadow, and only then did Baltasar speak. “The letter I sent may have been a little… well, misleading.”

Suspiciously, Eirik asked, “How?”

“It doesn’t look like they’re going to try to pin anything on you.”

Eirik spun to face him. “What was all that about unhappy circumstances, then?” he demanded, waving an arm toward the main hall.

“General Assemblies are never happy,” said Baltasar, “pitting us against ourselves like they do. Twelve’s breath, you should see what they do to friendships. I’ve already had to tell three of my acquaintances we’re not on speaking terms anymore, and all over a question of admissions—”

“Admissions?” Eirik shouted, smoldering with barely-controlled anger. “I’ve spent the past month worrying myself out of my mind about how to defend myself against all sorts of charges and now you tell me that the whole Assembly’s only been called because we can’t decide whether to give some little boy—”

“Girl, and—”

“—the chance of a lifetime? It’s…” He trailed off, frowning.

“—she’s not as young as you were, even,” Baltasar finished. He raised an eyebrow, and Eirik was beginning to get the uncomfortable feeling that Baltasar, ever the teacher, was waiting for him to come to some conclusion.

He stalled for time. “Why,” he asked, “can’t we decide?” It was a reasonable question. There were few enough good prospects that deciding where they went was probably the biggest source of inter-guild tension.

“A reasonable question,” Baltasar said, smiling. “She spent about a tenday dead earlier this year.”

That would indeed disqualify a great number of candidates. Spending a few days dead, spirit untethered from the body and vulnerable to all the horrors of the magical side of reality, was perhaps the quickest way of changing one’s way of looking at the world. Those who came back usually ended up with an understandably nervous outlook when it came to magic and spirits, and training such an outlook away was rarely worth the effort it took.

Eirik had a sinking feeling as the realization hit. “The girl from the west.” He searched his memory for the name. “Grevdarsdottir,” he came up with.

Baltasar nodded. “Anja,” he said, “and you shouldn’t have needed the hint.”

“So I am involved,” Eirik said glumly.

“Peripherally, at least.” Baltasar walked on. “A friend of hers sent us a letter three months ago. We drafted a few replies. Our first was perhaps too hasty, and our second too inviting. Others objected to the third. It was all handled very poorly, and it came out that some proxies had gone against the wishes of their principals. There were declarations of no confidence, things descended into ugliness, and we didn’t have a choice but to call the Assembly.”

“Have we found out who?”

“It hardly matters at this point,” said Baltasar, “and we’ll all find out soon enough anyway. I’ve only come across all this in the last tenday. I would have sent another letter if I’d known earlier.”

It was the closest thing to an apology that Eirik could hope for. “No use getting angry about it now,” he allowed. “Where do you stand?”

It was Baltasar’s turn to round on Eirik. “The girl’s been dead, but more than that she’s been under the influence of a draug.”

“And?”

“You don’t see it? She fought back and won. She clearly has a great deal of natural talent, but as far as I’ve been told nobody knows quite how she did it. I can take a guess, though—she watched what it did to her, then went and did it right back.” Eirik frowned. “You see it now, then. It’s magic of the mind—she’s not a prospect, she’s a danger to herself and everyone around her.”

The Hall of the Guild of Aendemancers was not as blatantly ostentatious as many of its counterparts. It was a walled compound, a couple of smallish outbuildings surrounding the main hall. The latter was the most impressive of the buildings by far—even if it would have looked a little drab next to the massive edifices of the heliomancers or the aeromancers—dozens of skylights arranged in rows along its steep-sided roof.

As the boom of the knocker bouncing off the gate echoed across the street, a head poked out over the parapet. There was a shout, and a few moments later the gate rumbled open. A pair of servants emerged, taking Eirik’s luggage before he could say a thing. One of them filled the remaining space in which he might have protested with a pleasant, “Welcome back, Master Eskilsson.”

“Thank you,” said Eirik automatically, watching as the servants bore his load away toward one of the smaller outbuildings. He went through the gate, which closed behind him, and set off for the main hall.

It was quiet, which Eirik regarded as a small mercy. He guessed that the Assembly had thoroughly interrupted the Guild’s regular routine. A pair of aspirants in formal robes heading for the main hall confirmed it: the aendemancers weren’t particularly hard on their students compared to the other guilds, but they weren’t so soft as to let their students waste perfectly good daylight on something other than training.

He followed the aspirants into the main hall. There was an atrium separating the outside from the Assembly Hall itself. It was a relatively small room by floor area, but it reached all the way to the peak of the roof, and standing in the center of it Eirik could almost convince himself it was taller than it was wide. Chairs and couches were scattered around low tables in groups around the room, which Eirik had always regarded as more than a little optimistic. Aendemancers were not by nature particularly social.

He was, therefore, shocked to see the atrium bustling, mages gathered into small knots, standing where the seating had run out. A babble of conversation ran around the conversation, carrying an undertone of nervous energy. Eirik saw a number of familiar faces all trying to avoid being recognized by anyone outside their immediate vicinity, and one familiar face approaching him.

“Baltasar Hrafnssen,” Eirik said. He smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

Baltasar was an old man, hair gone white long before Eirik had met him for the first time. He wasn’t any less imposing now than he’d been forty years ago, if the stories were to be believed, still as tall as Eirik and almost twice as broad across the shoulders. More impressively he had kept a solid grip on his faculties in a line of magical study which did its level best to wreck them. “I would have preferred happier circumstances,” he said, “but here we are, Master Eskilsson.”

“Happier—”

“The Assembly,” said Baltasar, waving a hand irritably. “Everyone all worked up, the aspirants running wild, and nobody getting anything done. It’s trouble enough keeping this place running as it is, and now this business—”

“What business?” Eirik managed to put in.

“Twelve’s ears, you haven’t heard yet?” Baltasar was incredulous.

“I’ve just arrived.”

“Yes, I know,” Baltasar said, tilting his head toward the assembled mages. “They’ve been gabbling like a flock of geese for a pair of tendays now. I’m surprised you didn’t hear on your way in. Walk with me, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Eirik would have found it very difficult to explain the way the world looked to him right then, particularly to someone who had never consciously used magic, and even more particularly to someone without a solid technical idea of what a spirit was. It was something he hadn’t yet had to do—his circle of associates included little more than mages, who didn’t need the explanation, and his family, who had always seen his talent as something to be sheepish about in polite company and who had therefore not asked any questions they didn’t need to—but Captain Eriksson was a curious man, and Eirik had little doubt that he would want to hear more about the practice of magic. For his part, Eirik had enjoyed listening to tales of the Wandering Spirit‘s exploits, and certainly wouldn’t mind hearing more.

And so, as the coach rolled on, Eirik turned his thoughts back toward trying to describe the sight before him. It was possible to begin with coarse detail. He saw a world of brilliant scintillating lights—not entirely unlike looking up from underwater on a calm day, he thought, realizing that although he’d never put it in those terms before the description was apt enough, and certainly one the sailors could relate to.

He did not see the physical world, or even anything more than the merest of suggestions of it, but as an aendemancer he was able to form a picture of it anyway. Nearby—though distance was an ill-defined concept here—some of the lights moved in unison, and if Eirik looked closer he felt strength and a plodding sort of determination, and there and gone in an instant a start as the driver cracked his whip. He felt, in short, the essence of the horses, saw the brief flare of joyous energy that was the whip in motion, heard the driver’s petty greed, rising irritation, and simple boredom.

He could shift his focus outward and see a field of thousands of lights, and look at any one to find a thousand more, flickering in and out of existence as the reality which shaped them slid forward through time. He could look still further outward, see the city as a single unified entity, huge and vital, and feel its pulse as its residents lived their lives.

Something like that would do, Eirik decided, even if it failed to capture every little nuance. It was very much like trying to describe color to a blind man—there was only so much he could do.

The world shifted around him, and he felt the carriage pass the confluence of the Hrimdal and Heimdal. They’d be coming to the Bridge of the Twelve soon, and the guards would want to see his papers. Reluctantly, he let his spirit sight fade away, staring out the window for a few minutes to let himself get used to the bleakness of the city again.

They came to the bridge, and Eirik waved his sanction papers out the window. The coach took a right after they’d crossed to continue along the road running just inside the High Quarter’s north wall. Eventually they turned southward—the High Quarter was a triangle with its point to the east, bordered on the north and south by the rivers, and the Aendemancers’ Guild hall was in the southwest corner—and about halfway there, Eirik spotted a woman walking alone. He thought he recognized her. She was short, with hair he would have called brown, but, he remembered, she insisted was dark red. Either way it was cut short, which seemed as much a concession to practicality as the sword and the armor. They had met once or twice when he’d ended up doing a favor for the Magehunters; she had enjoyed the work rather more than he had. He couldn’t remember her name, though, and didn’t think it worth the effort to dig around in his memory for it, so he let the coachman pass her without stopping to say hello.

They came to the Guild of Aendemancers, and the coachman brought his vehicle to a stop, helping Eirik get his trunk down before clambering back to the driver’s box, cracking his whip above his team, and driving off.

Eirik sighed. Here he was again, at the closest thing he had to a home in the city. Funny, he thought to himself, how in spite of that he was not at all happy to be here. There was nothing for it, though, and he let the knocker fall against the heavy oak door.