Guild Mage: Apprentice [Stubbing August 15th] 260. Red Cliffs

The red cliff looming over their heads cast Liv, her grandmother, and Elder Aira in shade. As the hours went by, and the day progressed, the arc of the rising sun would shorten the shadow until eventually it disappeared, leaving the half-exposed rock on which they sat burning hot. But for now, just after dawn, morning in the high desert was shockingly cool.

The last ti she’d co to Feic Seria, Liv had huddled tight against Rose for warmth all through the night. Being given one more reminder of how alone she was had not improved her mood.

Of course, ‘alone’ was only the case in terms of intimacy. Physically, Liv hadn’t been given much in the way of solitude since Kaija had assembled her new personal guard. At least two of them remained on duty at all tis: one pair stood outside the entrance to her cavern when she retired for the night, and another pair was waiting for her to erge in the morning.

Half a dozen had accompanied her, and the two elders, on their hike up to the base of these red cliffs. Two had gone ahead to scout out a path through the boulders, scrub, cacti, and occasional scampering lizards. Two more remained at the base of the rise that led up to the cliffs, to turn away anyone who might approach; and the final pair shadowed Liv and the two old won as they navigated the ascent.

The shade was neither the only reason this spot had been chosen, nor perhaps even the most important.

“There!” Aira lifted a cane of twisted wood, which she’d grown herself on the second day since Liv’s arrival, and pointed at the lower third of the cliff. The rock was blackened, as if by fire, save for where the patina seed to have been scraped away, leaving lines and shapes in a lighter shade. It was difficult to see from a distance, but up close, Liv could clearly make out stick-figures representing people and animals.

“And these are thousands of years old?” LIv asked, her boots grinding on the sand and sending pebbles tumbling away as she walked right up and placed her hand on the rock.

“They were here when the Vædim first ca to this world,” Aira confird. “Created by our ancestors, before the old gods found them and changed them.”

“Eld, or human?” Liv asked.

“Hard to say.” Her grandmother walked over to one of the boulders and took a seat. “I’ve heard two different stories. One, that the Vædim found a single group of people, and separated them, crafting one group into the Eld, and the other into humans. If you believe that, we’re all tied together, long ago, by the sa ancestors.”

Aira shuffled over to find her own seat, right up against the base of the cliff, where she rested her back. “That isn’t the way my mother told it,” she said. “Of course, I can’t very well ask her now, and this is just my mory. But the way I always understood it, there were two different groups of primitive people, in two different parts of the world. The Eld in the north, in the colder climates, and the humans in the south. Supposedly we couldn’t even interbreed before the Vædim started tinkering with us. It wasn’t even the point - they wanted us to be fertile with them!”

“And by making both groups able to have children with Vædim, Eld and human are able to breed as a byproduct,” Liv concluded. “But either way, these were made by my ancestors.”

Aira nodded. “You have the blood of Eld, human, and Vædim in you, all three combined.”

“Anyway,” her grandmother said. “Have a seat. Have you given any further thought to which two words you want to work with?”

Liv almost conjured herself a chair to sit in, but decided not to make her spellwork for the day any more complicated than it was already going to be. Instead, she picked her own boulder, which was decidedly uncomfortable. After failing to find a way to perch that wouldn’t leave her sore, she gave up and sat down in the sand, crossing her legs.

“My strongest word of power has always been Cel,” she began, talking through her reasoning. “That’s obvious right from the start. I’ve been using it the longest, and its the word that manifests when I use my authority - which is actually sothing I’ve been wondering about.”

“Stay on topic!” Aira scolded her, smacking her cane against the ground to make the point.

“It gets more difficult to choose after that,” Liv admitted. “I learned Luc as my second word, but I wasn’t actually able to practice it openly for the entire ti I was at Coral Bay. Other than sneaking away up the beach during a thunderstorm -” Accompanied by Wren. Always accompanied by Wren, who’d kept watch for her the entire ti. Liv thrust that thought aside.

“Which ans I’m actually much more practiced with Aluth. That was what the guild focused on teaching , and I got pretty good with it,” Liv said. “The word of dreams I’ve only experinted with. Dā, I learned the most recently, and I’ve had the least ti to practice. But for all that, it almost seems easier to learn.”

“That’s likely because you’re my grandaughter,” Eila tär Väinis said. She’d brought a shawl of light linen to shield her face during the walk, and now she unwound it, shaking out a fall of dark blue hair.

Liv shrugged. “So there’s a part of that wonders if it might actually end up being easier to use Cel and Dā. Not to ntion the spell you showed .”

“Ah yes, House Syvä’s spell of hibernation,” Aira said. “It’s certainly served your family well - clever to create demand for that sort of enchantnt. When you live so far north you’ve got no natural trading goods to speak of, I suppose you need to get creative. There's no doubt that the spell is useful, and it may well be a good second choice for you to learn, but in my honest opinion you aren’t skilled enough with the word of ti to go down that path yet. Do you disagree?” she asked Liv’s grandmother.

Rather than answer, Eila addressed Liv. “Can you silent cast a spell using Dā?”

“No.” Liv shook her head. “At least, I don’t think I ever have.”

“You don’t think?”

Liv chewed her lip. “Sotis - in the Well of Bones, for example, when there was so much mana I was just trying to get rid of it - sotis I just do things.”

“We’re not talking about happy accidents, blind fumbling, or instinct,” the elder of house Keria interrupted. “I want to know which words you’ve practiced enough to silent cast reliably.”

“Cel and Aluth, then,” Liv said.

“Those are the two words you’ll be combining, then,” Aira declared. “Not a combination I’m aware of any pre-existing spells for - no surprise, as the two groups most skilled with those words have had approximately no crossover, at all, before you, personally. Have you given any thought to how they might work together?”

“I don’t see any natural fits.” Liv shook her head. “I know that Edythe Blackstone, the first Lucanian Archmage, created a spell that let her cut mana. But I’m not aware of anyone else who’s cast it since she died. Jurian’s spell used mana constructs to manifest nightmares, and Julianne called down lightning and converted it into mana.” Her teacher had been dead long enough that the pain of his absence was like an old wound, only occasionally painful: but the loss of her adopted mother was fresh and raw, and she had to wrest her mind away from dwelling on what had happened.

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“What about a spell that put magic into hibernation?” her grandmother mused. “It would be useful to preserve another magical working for weeks, months, even years, and activate it at need. It might take three words, though,” she admitted.

“No more than two, right now,” Elder Aira said. “Anyway. We don’t need a goal in mind to begin. You’re going to practice using both words simultaneously, Livara.”

“But I already do that, don’t I?” Liv said. “My wings and swords, for instance. Aluth for the winds, Cel for the blades.” But she saw that both of the older won were already shaking their heads.

“Persistent spell effects don’t require the kind of focus and concentration we’re talking about,” her grandmother explained. “You create the wings and swords one after the other, and then you simply maintain them, and control them using your Authority. It’s still an impressive display of skill, especially for soone so young, but it's not going to get you any closer to a two-word spell.”

“What you’re going to do,” Aira said, “is awaken both words of power. And then you are going to silent cast with both words simultaneously.”

“Silent cast?” Liv repeated, wincing. “It’s hard enough to silent cast a single spell, never mind two at once.”

“Unless you think you can speak two different incantations, one out of each side of your mouth!” Aira gave a sharp bark of laughter. “What was the first spell you silent cast with Cel? Show it to .”

Liv extended her left hand, as if to parry an incoming attack, and ford a sword of adamant ice in the sa motion.

“Good,” her grandmother said. “And Aluth?”

“Jurian had practicing silent mana shields,” Liv explained, and with her right hand generated a pane of blue mana, striated with gold. The sight reminded her of Genevieve Arundell’s trick, the one that made the dead woman’s mana gold instead of blue. She wondered whether Caspian Loredan knew how it worked. It would have been nice to have soone to speak about it with.

“Well, I know what form this training session is going to take,” Aira said. Her voice was filled with a glee that stopped just short of cackling, and her eyes twinkled in a way that told Liv she was not going to enjoy her morning.

☙

By the ti the two older won finally relented and allowed Liv to descend back down to the ruins, she was covered in leaves, had vines wrapped through her hair, was picking thorns out of her linen shirt, and was drenched in water from spikes of ice which had lted in the desert heat, but not yet evaporated.

Of course, Aira and her grandmother hadn’t called a halt out of sympathy for Liv’s misery, nor even because she’d achieved so notable success. No, they’d simply agreed that the heat of the day was finally too much for them, and it was ti to make for the shade.

“I see you’ve been practicing,” Liv’s father observed, eyebrows raised, when she finally found him.

Valtteri was standing at the shore of the lake in the center of the rift, with the great bowl of the Vædic ruins rising up to every side. Silica, coiled about herself, lay basking in the sun with her head only about ten feet from where the Elden commander stood. The great wyrm’s eyes flicked over to Liv, and from her to the guards that followed her.

“Three bells of being pelted by every obnoxious spell the two of them could dream up,” Liv grumbled. “Always from two directions at once, and I wasn’t allowed to move from where I was sitting. Good morning, Silica. How are your wounds?”

Those enormous, amber eyes focused on Liv, and it almost made her stumble back a pace. Silica was as much larger than the wyrms that served House Iravata as they were bigger than a common garden snake.

“Healed, now,” the enormous wyrm answered. “I have even been flying about my territory for a few days now.”

“Silica was just letting know that all of our scouts have reached the hills,” Liv’s father explained. “All of them made the trek through the desert successfully.”

“I would have brought them back here if there had been a problem,” the wyrm assured them.

Liv nodded. “Have you been able to see what they’re doing in the mountains? Get sight of any fortifications?”

A hissing sound ca from Silica’s open mouth, and drew Liv’s eyes to the wyrm’s teeth. The smallest of them were as large as axe-blades. “If I go to the mountains, our enemies will know it,” she said, and Liv realized that the enormous creature was actually laughing. “I am not precisely subtle. That was always more Umbris’s talent.”

“Umbris?” Liv repeated the na.

“Another of the first clutch,” Silica explained. “A brother I have not seen in many, many years. Suffice it to say that, unless you wish to reveal myself, your scouts will be on their own until they return to the desert.”

“That’s fine,” Valtteri said, with a nod. “I’ve heard good things about the Whitehill hunters, I know the capabilities of my own soldiers, and Wren’s proved her capabilities in the past. They all have my confidence.”

The ntion of Wren turned Liv’s stomach. A month ago, she would have agreed with her father. Even the first night they’d arrived at the painted desert rift, she’d told everyone gathered at the command table that Wren had her complete trust. But that wasn’t really true anymore, was it? Her friend had lied to her.

“Is there any way to get a few ssages east?” she asked her father.

“How far east?” Valtteri asked her.

“The Red Shield Tribe, and Calder’s Landing,” Liv told him. “I’m supposed to send a ssage from Taavetti ka Eliel kæn Asuris, and I want to talk to the Red Shield about Godsgrave.”

“Not a place you should be going,” Silica cautioned her. “Four Vædim died there, even if one has arisen since. It is a place of blood, darkness, and above all death.”

“You’ve been there?” Liv asked.

“Of course.” The great wyrm nodded her enormous head. “How could I not? It is the place where my mother died, along with what remained of the first clutch. When the sky fell on Corsteris, the earth shook, the wind howled, and the sky filled with dust.”

“You actually saw it?” Liv murmured. It was still sotis so easy to forget that people - or, in the case of Silica, creatures - with firsthand mories of the war against the old gods yet remained. People like her grandfather, before he’d passed, or Elder Aira.

“If I had seen it, I would be dead,” Silica answered. For a mont, she closed her eyes, and the tone of her voice hushed, until it seed almost a funeral prayer. “There was a shooting star, burning red, that streaked down through the sky until it reached the horizon in the east. Then a light, so bright that I had to close my eyes, and hide them beneath my wing. The sound ca next, and then the wind and the heat. When I could see again, a great cloud rose, blotting out the sky.”

“My father said that the dust and debris was flung so high in the sky, that when it ca down again, it burned,” Valtteri said, and the wyrm nodded.

“When it hit the jungle, it started fires,” she explained. “I was already flying east by that point, trying to get close enough to see what had happened. The earth was still shaking, and I could see the burning jungle collapsing beneath , opening up sinkholes, even as the sky filled with smoke.”

“The Cenotes,” Liv’s father said. “I’ve seen them.”

“It was not until years later I actually went close enough to see the crater,” Silica admitted. “Everything was much too hot, right after it happened. Steam and burning ash that I could not fly through. I could only turn around, back to my desert, where at least the fires did not co. But here, too, there was so much death. The sun could not touch us through the dark clouds, and it grew so cold…” The enormous creature shivered at the mory.

“My teacher went there.” Before even considering what she was doing, Liv reached out to place her hand on the wyrm’s cheek out of sympathy, as she might do for one of her friends. She was surprised at how smooth and warm the scales were. “He showed in a dream. Half of his party died there - by the ti he went, there were wyrms living in the ruins.”

“Yes,” Silica agreed. “Our mother died there, and traces of the Vædim linger about their corpses. My lesser cousins would have been drawn there, perhaps to honor her, or hoping the ghost of her power might bless their clutches.”

“The Red Shield tribe has been trading with our people at the bridge,” Valtteri said, after a mont of silence. “If you write two ssages, Liv, we can send them through the waystone. I can’t tell you how long it will take before Soaring Eagle or his people visit next, but they will eventually receive your letter. And they can bring sothing back to Calder’s Landing for you, I’m certain.”

“Good. I need to do sothing with myself besides get pelted with spells by two elders all day,” Liv grumbled. She let her hand fall from Silica’s face. “Is this how they taught you?”

Valtteri shook his head. “No. My first two-word spell was the hibernation spell – not precisely useful in combat. But you only have yourself to bla, there. If you practiced more magic of convenience, and less magic devoted to the purpose of causing widespread destruction, they’d be teaching you differently.

“Soday,” Liv promised him – and promised herself. “When we’re not scrambling to fight off enemies in every direction. After this is all over, and we have ti to build sothing. There are so many things I want to do…”

“Let tell you a secret, little one,” Silica said. “The ti you are waiting for will never co. There is always trouble, always so crisis. You must find ti for the things you dream of, even so, or they will never happen.”