Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 19

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Divination was a challenging field of magic. It wasn’t just about casting the spell. There was also the result to consider. Good divination spells parsed the information in a way that allowed a mage to experience it the same way we did everything else, with our senses. But sometimes what we saw wasn’t something that could be described using those senses, and that was when things got tricky.

Fortunately for me, in this moment, all I wanted to do was see and hear some place that I wasn’t. That didn’t mean things were easy. I still had to translate the information my mana was sending directly into my mind, but I was more than up to the task. If Father ever truly became my apprentice though, we would not be starting with a spell anywhere near as demanding as this one.

The vision took shape in my mind, one that I shared to Mother. Father stood in a room looking at a glass window at the mountains east of the village. There was a long wooden table behind him, the kind that could hold ten people at a time with plenty of elbow room, and the walls had wood paneling. There was even a door barring the exit. Considering that all of the huts in the village were made primarily of some sort of clay block that had been fired like pottery and sealed together with a type of mud-based mortar, the presence of so much wood in one place seemed like an obscene display to me.

Two other people were there, both in Garrison uniforms. Neither was speaking, but I thought I recognized Tsurai and Nianta. What I didn’t see was the man who’d dragged Father out of town to question him. Typical nobility tactic, keeping someone waiting after summoning them. I recalled a few nobles trying to pull that on me early on in my career as a mage. I’d quickly developed a reputation for breaking things if I got bored. After the third noble tried to take me to task for that, the rest got the message, in smoke signals, if nothing else.

Good times.

Father wasn’t quite to the point in his own magical career where he could commit arson to teach someone a lesson, so he occupied his time taking in the view. They were pretty enough mountains, I supposed, but I’d seen them literally every single day of my new life, and they’d lost a lot of their punch to me. Maybe that was just my fault. Compared to the vistas I was used to, the mountain range my village was tucked into just felt rather brown and plain.

Of more interest to me was the room Father was in, but since the man of the hour hadn’t arrived yet, I decided to cut the spell short. It was too mana hungry to just look over Father’s shoulders while he stared out the window. I’d check back in every few minutes and hope that when Noctra did show up, I hadn’t missed anything important.

“What happened?” Mother asked.

“The spell costs a lot of mana to maintain. I’ll check again in a few minutes to see if anything is happening. We’ll probably miss a bit of the conversation, but it’s better than burning through all of my mana while Father stares out a window. Then we’d miss everything.”

That explanation must have satisfied her, because all she said was, “At least we know he’s still alright.” Then she sunk back into silence while still holding my hand.

I gave it five minutes to regenerate what little mana I could and told her, “I’m going to check again.”

This time, Father had moved from the window to the table, though he hadn’t sat down. Instead, he was examining the chairs. We had wooden chairs too, but ours were plain, rough-hewn things that had been sanded more by countless butts rubbed across them than by any carpenter’s tools. The abode of Lord Noctra could abide no such crudeness. His chairs were finished, smooth and richly stained, though unless I missed my guess, also quite old and beginning to show signs of wear.

Even being rich was relative, and while I couldn’t think of a single nobleman who would proudly display a seat that looked quite so old and shabby, it was still a dazzling display of wealth here. Father didn’t look impressed though. If anything, he looked a little bit sad.

“I don’t suppose you know how much longer Lord Noctra will be,” Father said with a sigh.

“Sorry,” The Garrison guard said. I recognized the voice as Nianta. That would make the other one Tsurai, both faces I’d seen but never been introduced to.

“No need to worry,” a new voice said as the door opened between the two guards. A tall man strode through, dressed in what I assumed passed for finery around here. He had long, wavy hair streaked with gray and tied back behind his head to keep it off his face, which was clean-shaven. My scrying spell wasn’t powerful enough to report back on mana emanations, but I’d be willing to bet at least one of the three rings he wore was enchanted, and there was no mistaking the wand on a leg holster as anything else.

Idly, I wondered if I’d given his fire blast too much credit. If that had been done with the aid of a wand, Noctra was even weaker than I’d thought. Objectively speaking, that was a good thing for me at least, if not the rest of the village. As the only mage around these parts, he was undoubtedly my biggest threat. He was the reason I was considering making my mana crystal portable, after all. I would have to do it eventually anyway, but ideally, I’d reach stage two before I invested the mana into that project. But with Noctra walking around, having full access to my stored mana at all times became a lot more important.

Of course, if he was really that weak… Well, I’d have a better idea once I was able to get a full measure of the man. That wouldn’t happen until I saw him in person, which couldn’t happen until I’d grown enough to be able to shield my mana core from casual inspection. It was more important to hide my presence than it was to gauge his abilities right now. Weak he might be, but he was still a fully grown adult, which meant his core by default was many times larger than mine. Somehow, I doubted he was giving all of his mana to a draw stone each evening. Or any of it.

“Lord Noctra,” Father said, just as polite as he could be.

“Sellis,” Noctra said, perhaps a bit more warmly than the situation warranted.

“Oh, he wants something,” Mother murmured next to me.

“Mmhmm.”

“Come, join me,” Noctra told my father as he pulled out a chair and gestured to the one just opposite of it. As he sat down, he said to the two Garrison members at the door, “You’re dismissed, thank you.”

“Yes, my lord,” both said in unison before leaving the room.

Father sat down and said, “Thank you, my lord.”

Noctra laughed, not that anyone had said or done anything to laugh at. “You can let your guard down. I’m not going to attack you. I just wanted to get a chance to talk to you.”

“What are we talking about?” Father asked.

“Specifically, I wanted to talk about your relationship with Lord Emeto.”

“Ah, that. That ended a long time ago.”

“Yes, I’m sure the old man’s death put a bit of a damper on the whole thing,” Noctra agreed.

Father winced, and I couldn’t help but agree. I didn’t know much about Lord Emeto, but even I could tell the tactless comment had struck a nerve. Mother let out a low, wordless growl next to me, one that I didn’t think she was even aware of.

“Something like that,” Father said. “Is there something you wanted to know?”

“He was teaching you magic,” Noctra said. “Most anyone over the age of thirty in the village knows that. The details of your, ah, shall we say your accident, are well-known. What I do not know is what exactly my predecessor was teaching you, and how much you still retain.”

“Not much, I’m sorry to say. You know that I can sense mana, yes? It was common knowledge then, and I was so stupidly, foolishly proud of it. I’m afraid I bragged quite shamelessly as a boy. But I was never blessed by the spirits, so you can see it never went anywhere.”

“I would say that’s more because Emeto died first. Otherwise you would likely have become an adept,” Noctra said.

He was watching Father carefully for a reaction, but whatever he hoped to see, it wasn’t there. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that is. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but if that was Lord Emeto’s intention, he never shared it with me,” Father said. “Perhaps he would have, one day, had things been different.”

“What’s an adept?” Mother asked me.

“Person who knows how to cast spells but doesn’t have an ignited core,” I said absently while I studied the scene my scry beacon was relaying to me. Noctra wanted something from Father, and I wasn’t sure what. Maybe I was missing some context, but it seemed like the governor was taking his time leading up to something.

“You currently work in the fields,” Noctra said. “Your talents with mana are being wasted. And I have the results of your family’s Testing written down right here.”

Noctra brandished a slip of parchment he pulled from a pocket. He unfolded it and slid it over for Father to see. He read it with a blank look on his face, then glanced up at the governor. “Again, I don’t know what these numbers mean.”

This time, I was with Father. I didn’t know what kind of scale they were using, but it wasn’t one I was familiar with. I could extrapolate based on my own score, a mere three. Father had scored a twenty-seven, Mother a twenty, and Senica a one. We could thank Cherok for that particular number.

“The average adult in Alkerist scores a twenty,” Noctra explained. “Your wife, for example, hits that mark perfectly. You, however, are seven points higher.”

That surprised me a bit, considering I’d also doctored Mother’s test. She should have scored a bit higher than average, but when I thought about how much effort she put into the garden, maybe I should have expected it. Even knowing we had a Testing that night, Mother didn’t have it in her to take it easy.

“I don’t know what to say, Lord Noctra,” Father said.

“You don’t have to say anything yet. I’m not finished.” Noctra pulled out another sheet of paper. “These are the results of the Testings of everyone else you share a draw stone with. Now, I know that people take it easy on Testing day and that their scores are always a bit inflated. But I’ve been here for over a decade, and I also know what the margins look like.”

Oh no. I did not like where this was going. Judging by how hard Mother was squeezing my hand now, she’d figured it out too.

“More importantly, I have the results of every previous Testing you’ve done. You understand what that means, Sellis?” Noctra asked.

Father wasn’t stupid. He knew our tampering had been noticed. I couldn’t imagine Noctra had correctly deduced what was going on, but more than a few people had been executed by government officials who knew they’d done something wrong, even if they didn’t have the specifics of it. I started doing the math in my head for how long it would take to completely fill my core and how much mana I would need to break Father out of a prison.

“What are you implying, sir?”

“You, my friend, have been deliberately underperforming all this time,” Noctra said. “I had your group’s draw stone brought to me and personally analyzed how much mana was in it. Something has changed. I suspect Cherok’s interference caused you to miscalculate.”

The governor leaned forward and reached into his pocket again. He pulled out a familiar little device, now dull and empty, and placed it between the two of them. “You’re already an adept. You always have been,” the governor accused my father. “That’s how you knew how to shave off some of the mana built up in this Testing implement to fluff your own results.”

Share