Components of a caster, p.3
Components of a Caster, page 3
The trio walked out of the manor and into the bricked streets of the Old District. Pace waved down a passing Brix, asked where the closest winehouse was, and they proceeded in the general direction the man had pointed.
The walk seemed to take an eternity. Laysa wasn’t sure how to broach any of the topics closest to her heart, and Zizy was being uncharacteristically quiet. Laysa glanced down at her, hair uncovered with her cloak’s hood pulled back. Worry gnawed at her. What was next?
They found the winehouse and made their way in. The main room, with its scuffed wooden floors and thick polished wooden bar, was fairly empty. Laysa guessed that it must be before supper, or maybe it was after lunch? Time had sort of ceased to be a thought to her until now, and she took in the quiet atmosphere, the lingering smells of food, and tried to reassert herself in the moment.
They settled on a table out on the patio, away from the stifling smells inside, and sank into deep wooden chairs. They looked at each other in silence and after a brief moment began to all talk at once.
“I’m glad you’re okay. I didn’t know what would happen,” Laysa started.
“Whatever the old witch did to the Sandtimer, it took Emba and all her belongings too,” said Zizy.
“I think we should eat,” said Pace.
They stopped and looked at each other as if unsure of who should go first. Pace cleared his throat and rose from the table to get them food and drink. He gave a short, small nod to Zizy that Laysa wouldn’t have noticed if Zizy hadn’t nodded back. Laysa looked at Zizy expectantly.
“I held it. The Sandtimer,” Zizy started slowly, her eyes downcast to the scarred wooden table. She took a deep breath, shoring up for the words that rushed out of her. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Emba was going to destroy Carmela, or try, and I couldn’t think of anything else. It started this teleportation spell and I think it was going to take us home, but I don’t know. And then Pace grabbed me and Emba was gone and I wasn’t and I’m sorry.” She took a breath and looked up at Laysa with one eye, squinting as if bracing herself for being told off. Her ruby eyes shimmered with wetness, and whatever Laysa had been planning to say flew out of her mind.
She grabbed Zizy’s hand and squeezed it twice. “It’s okay. You did what you thought was best. I’m not mad at you. About anything. Nothing at all, I promise.”
Zizy smiled, her grin brightening Laysa’s mood and warming her. It was hard to keep Zizy down for long, that she knew. But the volley of words, the openness in which she shared with Laysa, it was like watching dough rise just right. It was comforting.
Laysa scooted her chair closer to Zizy and leaned into her, shoulders and arms touching and then intertwining together. They looked so different she often wondered if Zizy thought them a mismatched pair. A ruby-red gnome with small stature and wavy red locks. Always covered up in her brown hood while they traveled, she was completely uncloaked now, as if she no longer wanted to hide from the world.
And herself, pebbly deep-brown skin, taller than Zizy by a foot and that didn’t account for the thick curls and coils of brown hair she piled on her head. Where Zizy was nimble and light footed, Laysa was heavy and clumsy. It had never been a conscious thought before; most Brix were the same way. She dropped the inspection when Pace returned juggling plates of cut meat, fruits, and sticks of honeycomb and mugs of wine.
After sliding them onto the table, he sat down and began chowing down in earnest. He glanced from Zizy to Laysa and back to Zizy, grinning. Laysa didn’t know what was going on with those two but felt that perhaps Zizy’s newfound vulnerability was not shared with her alone. She’ll be the better for it.
Tucking in to the food, she bought herself a few quick moments to push her feelings and thoughts together. Carmela had told her to not mention her involvement in Laysa’s mission, but these were her friends. For better or worse, she wanted to be honest with them and understand their thoughts. She was torn in her excitement and felt odd that with everything she had learned, and what Carmela had done to her and Zizy, she could look forward to working with her anyways.
She took a deep breath and said, “The Holy Speaker gave me some information, along with a request. She wants me to look into retrieving some items. Things she think may have belonged to the Divine Consul pre-Shattering. I’m—” She looked around the mostly empty patio and then to Pace and Zizy, who had stopped eating and were staring at her as if she had suddenly gained multiple heads. She faltered but carried on. “If I take this job, then she’ll teach me spellwork.” She watched for Zizy’s reaction. “You said so yourself, I need a teacher to learn it well, and from what Carmela can do… I didn’t see her use any components in my time with her and when she did what she did…” Laysa adjusted her glasses. “Well, she’s clearly powerful.”
“Yeah, too powerful,” said Zizy. “For someone running a whole ‘Praise to the Farmer. Believe in the Farmer.’ operation, she’s pretty masterful with spellwork. Sounds like she’s got a crystal like Emba had too. And, I know that your kind and mine, Brix and gnomes, were created at the same time. It seems crazy to think of now, but there’s plenty of evidence to show its truth. But her knowing Emba? Growing up with Emba? It’s suspicious.” Zizy balled up a cloth napkin in her hands. “Although, Emba did say she took everything from her. I don’t know. It’s confusing. I’ve never heard about this so-called other family before. I know I don’t trust Emba and I don’t trust Carmela either.”
Trying to not be frustrated, Laysa said as evenly as she could, “There’s clearly more there than we know, but if she thinks I’m capable of learning and is willing to teach me, then it’s a better chance than I’m likely to run into out here.” She sighed. “You only know of the gnome academies where you’re from, Zizy, and I doubt you want to go back there. At least this way I have a shot at learning spellwork, being useful, doing something. You don’t know what it’s like to be useless. You both have things you’re good at. I mean, Pace is even a Speaker.” She motioned to Pace, who choked a little in his cup. “I’m good at baking bread and reading books. That’s nothing.”
“I’m sorry, Laysa. I didn’t mean you shouldn’t… I know this stuff is important to you. If you want to do it, I’m with you. The whole way. I would just keep an eye on her. That’s all. Someone with that many secrets and the double life, they’d do just about anything to keep it all hidden.” She shoved a hunk of cheese in her mouth and followed it with wine.
Scratching his neck, Pace piped up in a low voice, “So the Holy Speaker knows the same type of magic that Zizy can do? That seems…unusual, right? I don’t really understand the intricacies of the way it all works. I’ve always left the Orisons to their own unless it was a matter of arbitrating between people who just happened to be Orisons.”
“It’s not completely unusual to me,” said Zizy, her face puckered in thought. “There’s plenty of people on the other side of the Dragons Roost mountains who can cast spellwork. Across the Shattered Sea and beyond too. It’s not like gnomes came up with it first. But a few of them have also been Orisons. At least, on a small level. Some things you can only do through a deity, I’ve heard. Spellwork can’t accomplish everything and it’s highly complex to use. Y’all being so sequestered here just means you don’t see it much. And when you do, you shut it out.”
Laysa thought back to Carmela’s earlier comments. No one was looking to leave or learn anything different in Shawia than what was right under their noses. Laysa had never been that way—complacent—and all the books she could get her hands on added kindle to her inner fire. She wouldn’t turn down an opportunity like this now. Especially when someone as talented as the Holy Speaker was doing the teaching.
“I’m taking the job,” she said, looking at the group in determination.
“I’m with you, Laysa. Like I said. All the way,” said Zizy, raising her mug.
“I’m glad to keep the company on the way to meet up with my sister,” Pace said. “Truth be told I’ve enjoyed you both, if not the mishaps, and I’m thankful we met. Praise to the Farmer for that one.” He raised his mug and winked at Zizy.
Laysa nodded and held up her mug of wine. “To the road ahead then.”
They clinked them together and drank. Laysa felt a weight shift off her for the moment and warmth covered her.
“Plus,” Laysa said, digging into the rest of the food, “she paid enough kings for us to be settled fairly well on the journey.”
“Why didn’t you start with that!” exclaimed Zizy, throwing up her hands.
Pace snorted in his food. Laysa laughed and kissed her. Getting to travel with their little party outside of Shawia would be interesting indeed.
After securing a couple of rooms at the inn, Laysa and Zizy made their way upstairs, assuring Pace they’d be up early to gather supplies for leaving town. Zizy scoured the room, checking for hidden objects and contraptions, while Laysa watched, partly amused and partly thankful. She could always count on Zizy to make sure nothing was amiss. Laysa didn’t realize how often she’d moved blindly through the world before she met Zizy.
“Do you think there’s ever going to be a time where you won’t be worried about a trap in our room?” Laysa said, standing by the door until Zizy finished.
“Sure. When we get our own rooms,” Zizy said, running her hands around the windowsill.
“You mean like…our own place?”
Zizy stopped but kept looking out the window. “Kinda…yeah. I guess that is what I meant. But really that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh?” said Laysa, walking to Zizy and placing her hands around her shoulders. She leaned in. “So you just meant a place we owned but that was not our own place.” She laughed softly and kissed the side of Zizy’s neck. “Got it.”
Zizy turned not unkindly toward Laysa and ran her hands through her red curls haphazardly. “I just mean I’d love to show you Zumi someday. My favorite places, my old haunts. Maybe even my home, if I can kick the people out. It’s safe as still water because all the traps are my own.”
Laysa grinned and clasped Zizy’s warm hand in her own. “I’d like that very much.”
They kissed, a slow melting kiss. Zizy pulled back. “It’s been a very, very long day. Do you mind if I just…sleep a little? If Pace expects me to be up by the sun, I think maybe I should sleep now.”
Laysa nodded, a bit confused but holding on to her feelings of trust from earlier. She let her hands drop from Zizy’s. “I’ll just pop downstairs for a bit of a walk and then join you.”
“Sounds good,” a yawning Zizy said, climbing into the small bed that seemed to swallow her in covers. She was out the moment her head hit the pillow.
Laysa watched her and realized she had never seen Zizy sleep so quickly or so openly before. She hadn’t realized how keyed up she must’ve been and admonished herself for not looking out for the signs earlier or asking how she felt about Emba after seeing her. She would do better tomorrow.
Grabbing her new backpack and slipping out of the room, Laysa walked out of the inn and into a side street. She had never been to Olafstrey before, but she easily recognized signs directing her to the nearest green space and headed there.
The cool, brisk wind of the evening, its fresh scent calming, swept Laysa’s cloak open. She pulled it around her tighter, shivering. She smiled politely at a few people heading to and fro but kept her head down, pressing her lips together repeatedly, unthinkingly. How early is too early? Perhaps tomorrow would be soon enough.
Finding herself on the outskirts of the green, Laysa picked the closest bench in the medley of benches circling the area, plopped down, and dumped the bag’s contents on the bench. Pawing through, she separated the items into two camps: items she knew what to do with and items she didn’t. The metal box she put in between.
On the questionable side sat chalk but no tablet, a couple of empty glass vials, and a small pearlescent ear cuff with a wing of tawny feathers. They felt almost like duck to her but softer. It all made her giddy in a way she hadn’t been since she was a child watching her mother practice her Orison rituals.
I wish she had given me a journal or a workbook though. Anything she could study on her own. I reach out. You answer. Those had been Carmela’s words, but… She shrugged grabbing the small ear cuff and affixing it to her ear. “How do I make this thing work?” she murmured, rubbing her fingers over it trying to get it to open. “Surly Carmela should’ve told me that in case of emergencies.” What if I say her name? “Aynisa Carmela”
The air shifted in sound, and a small tremble passed through from her head to her toes. She clapped a hand to her ear, the cuff shaking in her hand. The wing on the cuff spread its feathers, wafting sweet smells as it created a small shell around Laysa’s ear.
“I reach out. You answer, Laysa. Not the other way around,” said Carmela, her formal tone resonating musically out of the metal wing. Laysa could feel the thrum of Hylo energy around the messenger cuff and faintly smell saltwater. Odd, she hadn’t expected that.
Laysa whipped her head around to see if anyone was watching her, but she was alone. She smiled large and choked back a giddy laugh. Amazing. Gripping the cuff tightly, she tried to keep her voice light and professional. “Understood. However, if I am to learn spellwork, I don’t see a need to waste time. I have a few hours to train, and I set out on the road tomorrow.”
There was a brief moment of acute silence, and Laysa adjusted her glasses and winced. Scared to touch the messenger cuff or be the first one to speak again, she waited and then let out a deep whoosh of air as Carmela spoke.
“I can’t say I don’t understand your eagerness. I have been there myself. Very well. Let’s start with the beginning then. Spellwork is based on the essence of three things: access to the Hylo, components for the spell, and the sigils that bind the two. I do hope you are writing this down. I won’t repeat myself.”
“Of course, Holy Speaker,” Laysa said, keeping her voice level as she hurriedly grabbed her notebook and quill pen, opened them up, and began making notes. Having the foresight to have taken this call at a table would’ve been better, she thought, but the world didn’t wait for the hesitant. “I tried…once before to access the Hylo, but I couldn’t.”
“How strongly do you want this power, Laysa?” came Carmela’s impatient disembodied voice once again.
“More than anything else in the world.”
“Then act like it. Give in to your hunger and put all else aside. The Hylo isn’t there to be stroked and requested on a whim. It will only respond to those who wish to command it and who do so with absolute strength.”
“Yes, Holy Speaker,” she said contritely.
“Now, there are two basic spells, Sleep and Break, that are versatile enough to protect yourself, but you must ration your components and use them wisely. For Sleep, you have to keep yourself out of the way of the spellwork, making sure to only target those you wish to fall. Once the spellwork clicks, they’ll be asleep for a short time, enough for you to take what you need and get away. Am I making myself clear?”
“Of course, Holy Speaker.” If she wanted to be a caster soon, she’d need to put in the work fast. Where they were going, she’d need to do something more valuable than hiding behind Zizy and Pace. Months and years to learn the basics did not appeal to her. She wondered if now would be a good time to ask about using a crystal instead of components. She stifled a yawn and wrote as quickly as she could, as if to cement her path ahead with the newfound words Carmela whispered in her ear.
Chapter four
They entered the Stolen Lands after a week of travel on the well-worn trade way that nestled in between the trees. It was a vibrant scene, Laysa thought. The trees differed from the ones in and around her home. Tall evergreen trees that stood high and majestic. Their scent cleansing and heady to Laysa. This was as far away from home as she had ever been in her life, and now she supposed it was not as far as she would ever go. The world seemed open to her in a new way, and she felt invigorated by the prospects.
She had filled Pace and Zizy in on the creatures and the remnant their first day out. Carmela’s report cases had an abundance of notes in her elegant script. They placed the creatures and activity happening farther north within the Stolen Lands. If Carmela was right and someone was using a piece of the now-sealed deity, a remnant, to create creatures, then she would need to locate them.
If she was to recover the remnant, she’d need all the help they could get making their way there. With the kings supplied to them, they had enough money to hire a guide from one of the roaming camps the farther they got up the trade way. Hopefully then they could navigate and investigate.
The Stolen Lands were a pre-Shattering mystery that still remained unsolved. Craters dusted the landscape between the Dragon’s Roost Mountains near Zizy’s home and the Bellows at the edge of the continent. Like sugar on a cookie. The trade way made a secure and direct route through the craters, which were half-hidden in the trees surrounding them. It was often said that they were bombarded by large molten rocks of lava when the volcano that once sat as the centerpiece to the Bellowing Mountains, pre-Shattering, erupted. A fine theory that many wanted to believe in, if it weren’t for the craters’ unusually smooth edges and precise path.
The Celestial Laysa worked with at the library had told her that a simple answer was much closer to the truth: earth elementals roamed the land before the Shattering, and they simply stole it when they left.
Laysa was distracted by the half-cut trees that lined the first crater. It was an oddity and interesting, to be sure, but the trees were still growing, still living, as if they weren’t missing an entire half. She tried to investigate further, but Pace and Zizy drew her back, for a fall into a crater in the Stolen Lands wasn’t something you easily returned from.
They stopped for rest and some food, Zizy and Pace arguing over sandwiches next to her. Laysa turned her full attention to learning how to fix a broken stick with her head buried in her notes from her first lesson with Carmela. A few lists of words she didn’t quite understand but could now pronounce and their descriptions. A handful of spells with their summaries and necessary components to cast. It was a precise set of notes with little fluff.
