Guild Mage: Apprentice

Learning to make adamant ice, as her father called it, proved to be an exercise in frustration for Liv. She had been warned that learning new words of power wouldn't come as easily to her as Cel had, ever since that day on the frozen river. Now, she found that even magic which had seemed so instinctual for most of her life could balk her like a stubborn horse.

Liv spent every spare moment trying to compress even the smallest shard of ice, but every attempt ended in one of two ways: either she didn't press hard enough, and only normal ice formed, or she pressed unevenly. In that case, the ice cracked outward from the top, the bottom, or one side, whichever direction she'd failed to keep under control. Then, the entire attempt was ruined.

It got so bad that her father began purposefully distracting her with other techniques, so that she didn't empty her mana reserves every day on failed experiments. He taught her kreus - or creus, as he wrote it - the word for crystal in Vædic. With that, she was able to practice the invocation Valtteri had used to rescue her in the alley back in Freeport.

She didn't bother to record set invocations in her notebook, now, only new words or notes on how to use them. Flexibility was what had won Liv her duel, and she refused to let herself be trapped into defeat by relying on rote habits or patterns, like the princess. Liv determined that she would shape her ice like a growing thing, as she needed in the moment.

With every incantation, her father insisted she practice the technique of controlled heat transfer. That, at least, she mastered as easily as ever - though Liv had more than a few nights of burned fingers or toes to deal with, before she was finally confident. Auntie Rhea gave her a clay pot of burn salve to use, and most of it was gone within a ten-day.

Even the burns were useful, though, because they gave her a chance to practice circulating her mana to heal her body. She kept the technique secret, as her father had asked her to. She used it only in her bed at night, after Thora had left her alone, and gave all the credit to Rhea's medicine if someone commented on how quickly she healed. Her conspiracy was aided by old Master Cushing's theories that her Elden blood accelerated her natural healing - thoughts he'd left to Mistress Trafford in his extensive notes on Liv.

"It isn't your Elden blood," her father explained, as they sat on the snow at the top of Deer Peak, strapping well-sharpened and waxed wooden skis onto their boots. "It's the Vædic. I would wager that I heal faster than you do, and I know my father heals more quickly still. I can only imagine what sort of wound would be required to put one of the old gods themselves down. That's one of the reasons you can hold more mana than your Master Grenfell expects, also. Your Elden bones were designed to hold magic, but Vædim practically were magic."

"Speaking of my bones," Liv said, pushing herself up with her gloved hands and wobbling on her skis, "is there anything we can do about them? I don't want to break an arm or a leg every time I fall. It's been better since I started eating mana-rich food regularly, but Mistress Trafford still thinks there's a danger."

"She is an intelligent woman," her father said, using a nearby tree to get himself upright. "It's why I've avoided practicing fencing with you. If the right food hasn't fixed things yet, I can only think of two things to attempt. One is prolonged exposure to a mana-rich environment, such as the shoals of a rift. The other would be to attempt circulating your mana through your bones, specifically, as if they needed to be healed. But I'm no chirurgeon, Livara. I'm only making guesses on this."

She bent over and passed him two poles cut from strong aspen wood, keeping another pair for herself. "I'll try it tonight," Liv decided, turning herself to face downslope.

"Start small," her father said. "With a finger or something you won't mind breaking. Now. On the way down, I want you to strike as many trees with your shards as you can, in succession. Only one shard at a time. You're to channel the waste heat into your own body, to keep yourself warm."

"You realize that, with the skiing, you're asking me to do something like three things at once?" Liv complained.

"What do you think a battle is like?" her father shot back. "Better you learn to think quickly now, when no one is trying to kill you. Follow me!" He pushed off with his poles and shot down the mountain, skidding around trees as he went. Liv took a deep breath to center herself and followed. Choosing her first target, she shouted: "Celet'co Scelis'o'Mae!"

A glittering shard of ice shot off to her left, shattering against the trunk of a pine tree, and a flush of warmth crept through Liv's body. She couldn't help but grin as she sped after her father, down the mountain.

☙

Gradually, the pieces required to assemble Liv's new wand came together, as different artisans completed her orders. The payments made a noticeable dent in her account with the bankers' guild, but she'd been receiving a royal pension for eighteen years with little to spend it on, so she wasn't worried.

Auntie Rhea finished the carving and set Liv to doing the polishing herself while she did delicate work carving buttons. The springs had long since been made and delivered by Dustin, Emma's betrothed. The stamped leather double-wrap belt was done, stained a beautiful rich brown and sporting a shiny steel buckle. Once all of the major carving was done on the wand itself, Liv brought it to Hardwin so that he could make notes on the measurements for the sheath. Then, it was back to polishing, until Rhea judged the process finished. Another hefty pouch of coins went to the jeweler, who would inlay the sigils carved into the bone with silver.

In the meanwhile, preparations for Emma's wedding accelerated: the ceremony would be held as soon as the snows began to melt, in the temple of the trinity. Osric Fletcher, the same priest who'd laid old Master Cushing to rest, would perform a blessing in the name of Sitia, Lady of Changes, as he'd done for all the couples in the town since Liv was a small child.

"How do you know for certain?" Liv asked her friend. She watched from her seat in the dress shop on The Hill while Emma was fitted with new skirts and a bodice in deep blue, dyed with indigo from Lendh ka Dakruim. It was the color of the goddess who blessed weddings - for many women, the only time in their lives they would be permitted to wear such a vibrant color, if they could afford it. The underskirts were white, and white lace decorated the sleeves and hem of the overskirt; the dress was her wedding present from Liv.

"You just know," Emma said. "He's the only person I never get sick of spending time with. Do you ever feel like you have to put on a face for people? Like a performance, to be who they expect you to be? I don't need to do that, with Dustin."

"It sounds nice," Liv said, and wondered whether she would ever feel that way about someone. There'd been no letter from Cade, yet, but it was also the depths of winter and the passes were all closed. Unless he was going to send a messenger by waystone - which was a ridiculous idea, for something that wasn't urgent - she didn't expect a letter until after the snow had melted.

"Thinking about your boy back at the capital?" Emma teased her.

"No," Liv lied. "Anyway, I don't expect him to wait six years for me. I told him as much. I'm sure he's already found someone else. Are you living at your father's house, after the wedding?"

"No, we're buying Master Gregory out of his shop," Emma explained. "The upper floor is set up for a family to live in, though he never ended up having one after his wife died."

"You can afford it?" Liv asked, prepared to offer up her own money if it was needed.

"I've had years of selling the castle meat from mana-beasts," Emma assured her. "It's paid me well enough - probably better than most people in town realize. If we really wanted to, we could probably afford one of the smaller homes up on The Hill, but there's no point when the forge is in the Lower Banks."n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Your journey continues on empire

"Even if you moved it all up The Hill, the merchants would complain as soon as Dustin got up in the morning and started hammering away," Liv agreed with a grin.

☙

By the time the flood season came that year, Liv's wand was finished. Master Grenfell did the enchanting work - a skill that her father admitted was not his strong suit. Duchess Julianne and Baron Henry - the proclamation that he was now to be addressed as Baron of the Aspen Valley had been made - as well as Emma, Liv's mother, and even Gretta all gathered along the edges of the practice yard to watch her put it to use for the first time. Even the soldiers on the castle walls seemed to be facing the wrong direction, and Liv was surprised that no one had yelled at them to get back to their patrols.

A half dozen archery targets had been arranged at one end of the courtyard, and Liv couldn't keep a smile off her face at the feel of the wand settled in the sheath at her left hip. "Take your time," Master Grenfell said. "Try out everything slowly and deliberately. There is no rush, no crisis. Better to get everything right now, and make any adjustments needed before you have to use it in an emergency."

Liv nodded. She'd cast four spells using the future tense as soon as she'd woken up that morning, the bone wand the focus for all of them. It held the magic nicely, she could feel, almost as well as mana-stone. A big breakfast of sausage made from mana-rich venison, and potatoes cooked in garlic from Auntie Rhea, hadn't quite managed to make up for all the magic she'd used. All told, the morning preparations had used every single one of the seventeen rings Liv could hold inside her body.

With everyone's eyes on her, Liv drew the wand. It felt right in her hand: the handle was tightly wrapped in soft leather, smooth and comforting, and the mana-stone set in the pommel gave the entire length of bone a nice, solid weight. She couldn't help but caress it with the fingers of her left hand, just for a moment. Then, she thrust the wand at the leftmost straw target and pressed the first button set above the wand's grip.

Liv felt the smallest click, and a single shard of ice shot out from the tip of the wand, streaking across the length of the courtyard and impaling the target. When she lifted her thumb from the button, the tightly coiled spring she'd purchased from Emma's husband-to-be pushed the polished piece of bone back up into place.

"That's faster than I could ever speak it aloud," Liv said. With an eager swipe, she pressed the second button, sending a full spread of five shards fanning out. Some of them hit the targets, while others missed, but that wasn't really the point. If she sent that kind of spell into a group of men - say, up on a rooftop loading their crossbows - aiming carefully wouldn't be her primary concern.

Liv pointed the wand down at the ground in front of her and cut it through the air as if drawing a line between her and the targets. With a click of the third button, a wall of ice rose in front of her, piling up rapidly until it stood tall enough that she couldn't see around it.

Finally, she walked around the wall and over to the straw targets. There, she pulled the length of the wand away from the handle, using both hands, and rotated until the pieces snapped back into place with another click. Layers of ice coalesced around the wand, building a new shape with the length of bone serving as a core.

While the magic worked, Liv gathered up the waste heat produced, and shunted it into her own body, paying special attention to her hand. By the time the spell had done its work to completion, she was holding a sword of ice, built up around the wand. She made a few stabs at the target, and then used the last of the remaining heat to melt the ice away so that she was holding, once again, a length of bone. Only now, it glistened with beads of moisture.

Applause sounded from the castle walls above her, and Liv couldn't help but blush.

"Next time there's an eruption," Piers called from above her, "we'll just put you on the wall, and the rest of us can take a nap!"

Liv shook her head and waved him off, then strode back across the courtyard to where her mother and Gretta waited to give her one hug after the other. When they'd returned to the kitchen, she huddled with her father, Master Grenfell, the Duchess and the Baron to answer their questions.

"Everything moved easily?" Henry asked. "Nothing felt like you had to struggle with it, or as if it might break?"

Liv shook her head. "No, it was all perfect," she said. "Everyone involved did incredible work."

"Good," the baron said, with a satisfied nod. "When you go into a fight - whether it's culling a rift, a duel, or an ambush in an alley - you need to be able to rely on your weapons."

"How much mana did you use for that load out of spells?" Grenfell asked her.

"All of it," Liv admitted.

"I thought so, from the way you were eating at breakfast. You're giving up flexibility in the name of speed."

"Not really," Liv said, raising her left hand, from which the gold rings and bracelet once owned by Princess Milisant glittered. "I have eight rings of mana here, if I need it, plus what I regained from breakfast. By the time luncheon is done, I'll be back to normal."

"That girl was wearing around eight rings of mana?" Henry exclaimed.

"I told you," Julianne teased her husband. "She may not be a magical prodigy, but she has plenty of money to spend. I bet she's already got a replacement."

"Well, I'm happy enough to have this one," Liv said, replacing her wand in its sheath. "It gives me enough leeway not to worry about fully loading the wand each morning. The only problem is I don't have enough mana to put a spell on the ring, as well."

"Give it time," her father said. "You aren't done developing yet."

☙

The first letters from the outside world were delivered just before Emma's wedding: one each from Triss and Matthew at Coral Bay, one from Sidonie, and not only a letter but a package as well from Cade Talbot. Liv read the other three first, because even looking at the delivery from Bradon Bridge put butterflies in her stomach.

Sidonie wrote of her winter in the capital, and complained a bit about how almost everyone she'd met was at Coral Bay, leaving her with little to do but focus on her studies. The best part of the letter, in Liv's opinion, was the younger girl's musings on creative ways to employ her family's word, which apparently functioned by propelling objects away from her with great force. Liv had an idea or two herself, and resolved to send them back in her return letter.

Triss and Matthew both wrote about what life was like at the college, though Triss also took time to assure Liv that Matthew had recovered well. He'd have a scar in his back for the rest of his life, and Triss' chief complaint about that was that it was placed so that hardly anyone would ever see it. "He would have looked nicely dangerous if it was on his cheek," Liv read aloud to Thora, giggling. "I can't believe she actually wrote that down."

"The two of them sound made for each other," Liv's maid remarked. Thora was hanging up freshly laundered skirts, while Liv read letters while sprawled across her bed.

"They do, don't they?" Liv agreed. She was surprised to find it didn't upset her anymore. Triss already felt like a good friend, and if she made Matthew happy, that made Liv happy too. "His letter is all complaining about remedial grammar classes. It sounds like they both did well in their combat examinations, however."

"Are you finally going to open that package, then?" Thora asked, having finished with the last skirt. "I'll do it for you, if you're too anxious."

Liv sighed. "Hand me a pen-knife, then." The box was small, easily held in one hand, and made of finely finished cherry wood. There was a metal latch, which had been covered over with wax pressed with the seal of the Talbot arms: a bridge over a river. The wax was undisturbed, which Liv assumed meant that the messenger hadn't opened the box up and stolen what was within. Using the small knife Thora handed her, she pried the wax off and swung the lid back on the hinges. Thora gasped.

"Oh my," Liv said, lifting a carcanet of silver, sapphires and pearls up in her hands.

"I think you have your answer, then, m'lady," Thora told her.