Chapter 9 – The Librarian
Sweat trickled down my brow and into my eyes. I blinked and refocused, but I could barely concentrate. A fire burned between my forehead and my skull was in flames. Any minute now, my brain was going to implode.
At this point, whoever’s reading this is going to wonder what’s going on. Am I battling a dragon? Trying to move a mountain? Fighting off a horde of wizards?
No, actually. I was trying to move more than one leaf at once with my mind.
I relaxed and watched the leaves drift back onto the desk. I’d managed to move them an inch but beyond that felt like trying to pick up Aubrey’s castle. Exhausted, I turned back to a pile of books at my elbow. Flipping through the page of a dusty scarlet volume, I searched for spells, tips, anything to help me get past this little obstacle. Sighing in annoyance, I set the book down with a thump and stood up, feeling my spine crack back into places from its hunched-over pose.
Stomach growl. I was starving. It was surprising how much energy it took just to move a simple leaf. Of course, I could have just lifted the leaves with my fingers, but this was once step in the way of gaining control over magic. But enough for right now. I wouldn’t have gone back to work even if I could have…not without calories at least. Just as the thoughts of dinner with Aubrey crept into my head, Redmond came darting into the library, nearly knocking the librarian guy over (I think the only thing that stopped murder right then was the knowledge that Redmond was the jester).
“Working, I see?” the jester asked.
“You think?” I replied sardonically, trying to stifle the incredibly loud “FEED ME!!!” sounds from my stomach.
“Lord Aubrey,” Redmond continued as if I’d said nothing, “is currently overseeing some personal projects so he wants you to know that the kitchen is all yours. He said it in more flowery language but those are the essentials.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Massive headache the next morning. As I stumbled out of my overly-plushy bed, a stab of pain caught me right between the eyes. This had to stop. Without my glasses, I was getting headaches all the time. Surely there was some kind of spell that would fix my eyes. I had to find out.
The kitchen was buzzing with activity when I entered, and seated at the table were Philipia, Redmond, and Alye. I grinned as I noted Philipia’s tousled hair and the distinct smell of horse. Thankfully, sweet buttery odors soon overrode that and I sat down at the table with a sigh.
Silence for several minutes as we tore into our food. Finally, Alye sat back and laughed.
“I had the most amazing day yesterday!”
“Really?” I muttered through my toast. “Tell us all about it.”
“I was fencing…all day…and with Aubrey. Glorious.”
“Oh god,” Philipia groaned. “More pointy objects.”
“Keep it up and I may test one out on you!” Alye retorted. Her face then slipped back into a grin. “I’m getting two swords made!”
“NO!!!!” I half-shouted, startling the cooks. Redmond blinked and Philipia lapsed into a giggle. Alye’s mouth thinned into a hard line and her eyes glinted like gemstones. Been there, done that, saw the movie.
“So if you two are done panicking,” the midget announced, “I’m going to go back to the blacksmith and check on his progress.” She stood up and dashed out of the kitchen, nearly knocking over some elaborate meal-in-progress. I was sure I heard the chief cook hiss at her retreating figure.
Redmond turned back to us with a smirk. “You three are a very nice trio.”
“Don’t mind us; we can’t function if we aren’t biting each other’s heads off every other minute,” I replied, my headache stabbing its way into my forehead with a vengeance. Philipia too looked like she had something pounding in her skull.
“Why don’t the Middle Ages have glasses?” she grumbled as we finished our meal.
“Glasses?” cut in Redmond, puzzled. “You just drank out of one. And what are the Middle Ages?”
“Never mind, Redmond,” I sighed, running a hand down my face. I turned to Philipia. “Let’s go and look through the magic books. I have a bunch in my bedroom.”
“You managed to take the books out without that old guy having your head?” my friend quipped.
“I was sure I saw him wielding an axe. Best tread carefully.”
Flip. Flip. Flip. Sigh. Flip. Flip. “GOT IT!!”
If we’d been in the library, I doubt Philipia and I would still be alive. But since it was in the quiet of my bedroom, we could yell all we liked…within reason of course.
I glanced over the spell Philipia was pointing to. It didn’t look particularly complicated. In fact, it appeared to be one of the most basic spells in the book (as opposed to changing a pillow into a turtle). I guess rotten eyesight was a common complaint among magic users. Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath to steady myself. If we did this wrong, Philipia and I could go blind. No pressure, of course. None at all! At least if we did go blind, we would be sitting on the bed and wouldn’t have to go bouncing off the walls.
“I’m starting to think this is a bad idea,” I said faintly, my voice quavering in nervousness.
“Cheer up,” Philipia remonstrated. “If you mess up, your death won’t be particularly painful. I’ll just have Alye skewer you or something.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” I growled, opening my eyes again to look at the instructions one last time. It was now or never.
I closed my eyes a second time and concentrated, feeling my forehead pucker. After about half a minute of focus, I felt energy flowing out of my fingertips. Something cold and wispy drifted across my eyes and I opened them carefully. A blue mist swirled around, obscuring my vision. Philipia started as the vapor touched her eyes but managed to keep still. Now I had to say the words.
“Volo videre,” I whispered (the spell said you had to say the words quietly unless you wanted to bust your eyes). Without warning, everything went black.
“Oh crud oh crud!” Philipia hissed. “Tanya, you made us go blind!”
“I did everything the instructions said to do!” I retorted, trying to stay calm. And then my vision returned. This time, however, everything was clear and I could see just as well as I used to with my glasses. Oh bliss. My first serious magic attempt on people had worked!
“Excellent, I don’t have to get furious at you!” Philipia crowed, reveling in her improved vision. Suddenly, she turned her head, practically pricking her ear. I heard nothing but the chime of a distant clock.
“Heck, I need to get back to the forest,” she exclaimed and stood up. “Lunae’s expecting me for the noonday meditation or something.” She fled from the room and I walked over to the bedroom window (which looked out into the courtyard) to see her gallop out of the castle on her blood bay horse. I’d never seen her so happy before.
“Lucky me, more studying.” I grabbed my pile of books and headed off to the library.
“Concentrate, you idiot, concentrate!” I whispered under my breath, glaring at the empty ink bottle that floated about three inches in the air. An azure swirl surrounded it and turned it over and over (not my intention). Of course, just as I tried to refocus, the swirl faded…
…and the ink bottle went flying.
A crash, crackle, and ping later, I stared in embarrassment at the broken fragments lying at the corner of a bookcase. The stupid bottle had decided to take a crash course, literally, in flying and had collided with the wooden bookshelf. The librarian twitched in fury as I sheepishly gathered up the pieces and returned to my desk. I honestly wondered if he’d assault me next time I made a loud noise.
Why could I perform a spell on myself and Philipia, but I couldn’t even get a freaking ink bottle to do as I told? I turned back to my books.
Magic is one of the most finicky phenomena that humans have had contact with. At times, the student may be able to perform relatively complex pieces of magic and yet stumble at more basic tasks. The reason for this is that while performing more complicated magic, the student is usually under more stress, which produces additional energy needed to channel the magic. On the other hand, when performing comparatively mundane tasks, the mind is unable to focus appropriately due to the lack of such “stress energy.” This can only be overcome with practice.
Great. I just had to send MORE objects flying around until I could get the hang of it. Maybe the library wasn’t the best place to practice. On the other hand, it was a perfect working environment with no distractions and a peaceful atmosphere, not to mention the fact that I was surrounded by books I needed to use. Still, I wanted to avoid ticking off the old guy as much as possible.
Oh well. It couldn’t be helped and he would just have to deal with the chaos.
Crash.
Oops. Lost another ink bottle.
Finally, after two hours of practice and about a dozen ink bottles, I’d managed to get the whole process under control. Now my lovely little bottles floated, turned, and twisted as I demanded instead of going suicidal on the shelves. Of course, that meant stepping up the difficulty level, for in order to control my magic, I would have to increase the complexity of the objects I was manipulating. I’d started with leaves and gotten those to listen to me after a couple hours. Then I’d moved on to the aforementioned ink bottles.
Now came the books. I had a stack of about twenty sitting at my elbow. I seized one (a particularly large, heavy volume) and gazed at it, directing my magic to move it a couple inches. After several minutes of straining and feeling like an explosion in the brain department was imminent, it moved.
But not as I intended.
Whooshing past my head, it crashed into a shelf just like the renegade ink bottles. However, unlike ink bottles, books don’t shatter. They have mass. And they can cause bookcases to come tumbling down.
Like this one.
“Oh shoot,” I groaned as the bookcase leaned forward, falling against the wall with an enormous crack. Books freely tumbled out like mutant hamsters fleeing a cage. Dust swirled through the air and I coughed frantically, trying to breathe through the cloud of book powder.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the librarian walking slowly towards me, murder on his face. I stood up and fell backwards, frantically backing away from his furious gaze. He stood for a minute and gave me an I-would-kill-you-in-many-painful-ways-if-I-was-allowed look and then stooped over, struggling to push the bookcase back to its upright position. I decided to help him (if only to lessen the pain of my demise) and together we managed to restore the bookshelf to its usual spot. The man fixed me with a glare of doom.
And then it changed to a tired half-smile.
“You need a staff.”
“A wha?”
“A magic staff. If you’re going to learn magic, you need to have something with which to channel it. A staff will allow you to do so.”
Gasp. He could speak more than one sentence at a time? “But where am I going to get something like that?” I protested.
“I will make you one.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes. I have several skills besides cleaning up after careless magicians.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
“It will be ready in three days.”
“Thanks.”
“In the meantime, practice in your room.” His face shifted back into something resembling a glare. “I have work to do.”
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