bookandnovel CHAPTER 146 – Un or Sur
CHAPTER 146 – Un or Sur
Outwitting Tolduin depended on understanding him. Simply misrepresenting herself as his obedient patient was not sufficient: Saphienne needed to weave a compelling lie that would allay his suspicions, transmuting his anxieties around her recovery into pride in her progress.
What would a priest believe?
“… And you always have the same nightmare?”
Saphienne nodded. She was seated across from Tolduin in Almon’s sitting room, the enchantment on the table between them glittering where the morning light caught its green and white gemstone.
The priest turned to Almon, who hovered over his shoulder. “Spiritual intrusion has been ruled out?”
“There were no signs of tampering.” Almon spread his hands. “None of the spirits watching her noticed an intruder, and neither Vestaele nor I found resonance suggesting possession.”
She’d taken care to hide Hyacinth’s involvement, surreptitiously sprinkling herself with salt before bathing — salt being one of the few useful resources to which she retained access. Had Saphienne been responsible for her own imprisonment, her food would have been much blander.
“Then the error must be mine.” Tolduin accepted his responsibility without self-recrimination or protest. “Sculpting the mind is both perilous and difficult. In sooth, I must have overlooked fragments that ought have been pruned.” He beckoned Saphienne as he activated the sculptor. “Let us see. Saphienne, please look here…”
* * *
She sat within a ring of Hyacinths, scrying upon the surface of her inner ocean, seeing Tolduin guide her false self through his authored narrative. He extended his tale to encompass her present; the priest reassured the girl that her dreams were meaningless, examining the faded traces of an angry dragon as he swept them from her.
That he couldn’t identify from whence they’d arisen didn’t disturb him, not then.
* * *
Two weeks passed without screams and tears. Vestaele lost interest, while Myrinel and Sundamar relaxed. Only Almon remained invested — he attended the studio daily to ask after her, his inquiries gradually growing less fraught, more social.
Gaeleath and Sundamar resented his presence. Their mutters to each other after his visits were their sole rapport.
Yet it was Almon who observed her next step. “…Do I misperceive, or is this frog much better than usual?”
“She does that.” Sundamar nodded to Gaeleath. “They’ll tell you: she shows improvement, and then regresses.”
Saphienne chose her moment carefully. “I’m trying to do better.”
Gaeleath’s chiselling halted with a dull clang, the astonished sculptor thrown off his swing. “…Did she just…”
Her former master in wizardry studied her face as she worked. “…Saphienne, were you talking to me?”
“Yes.” She continued to sand the skin.
His brow was furrowed; his gaze was sparkling. “What are you trying to improve?”
“The frog.” She stopped and pointed to the open book on the nearby bench. “I want to make it match. I want the details right.”
Now all three onlookers clustered around her. Sundamar was reserved in affect, confirming, “You understood we were talking about you?”
“Yes.”
Gaeleath stopped her wrist. They contemplated the frog, then noted, “She’s carving with the grain again…”
“You told me to do that.” Her consternation showed. “Didn’t you? It feels easier.”
Almon folded his arms. “Extraordinary.”
Hopeful as they were for Saphienne, Gaeleath was scathing toward the wizard. “You don’t seem happy.”
“I am.” Almon suppressed his smile. “This is good. But it also means we need to watch her closely, and should anything worrying present itself, Tolduin will need to be recalled to our vale.”
She nodded. “I like Tolduin. He’s gentle.”
As Gaeleath retreated in disgust, Sundamar joined Almon. “…She hasn’t shown any difference at home…”
“Art invokes our truth,” the wizard in blue murmured. “She was always most herself when she wrestled with her works.”
* * *
Four more days went by, her increasing curiosity evident in the questions she asked Gaeleath, her evening reading more confident as her mother listened and beamed.
Then another bad dream saw Tolduin return in haste.
* * *
His second scrutiny was not cursory.
Accompanied by the entranced facsimile of Saphienne, Tolduin dispensed with guiding her through implanted memories, wandering instead the village formed from the experiences he’d left intact. He was clothed in the sun, his radiance illuminating happy scenes wherever he went, and when he checked in the vacated library there was nothing to be found behind the door at the back of the lower collection, no stairs to inappropriate collections, neither ascending or descending.
Perched before the still sea in her hidden cavern, Saphienne grinned as she watched him checking her usual haunts. “Not finding much to explain me, are you? Which you wouldn’t: those were the parts of me you spent the most time levelling.”
His dithering as he thought it through was comical.
“Come on, you pompous fool! Logically, you should be looking where you wouldn’t expect to find my vestiges.”
He led her simpler self by the hand as he went out.
“No, not my family home…” She sarcastically applauded as he reached the same conclusion. “Very good! Back toward the village centre. If not where I had my first apprenticeship, then what about in the others? Did you miss something there?”
As expected, he tried Jorildyn first, watching a younger Saphienne mark and cut cloth as he rifled through the past he hadn’t altered. There were no dragons to be found, and so he moved on to her period with Ninleyn. His utter boredom was transparent as he sifted through endless hours of the shoemaker’s overwhelming chatter, and Saphienne giggled, deciding in retrospect that the tedium had been worth every minute.
Then he tried the handle to Eletha’s workshop, and the magician was just as surprised as the priest to discover it was locked.
“…Not good. He’ll only want to search–”
Yet the master jeweller answered her door.
* * *
“Alā.”
Suffused with his convictions and the transmutating power he wielded, Tolduin was nevertheless given pause by the apparition of the elder who greeted him.
“Saphienne may enter. No others are welcome.”
He steeled himself. “You are but an echo. Free and fair lay the path forward, and young Saphienne skipped merrily on in the bright day.”
Tolduin strolled after his patient through the dissipating ashes.
Another Eletha glowered at him through her veil where she pumped the bellows, fashioning a silver band. “I am well aware that you are an elder. I have no desire for such honours.”
He was ignoring her, for the wall beside her was painted with a mural, beautiful and vivid where it depicted Saphienne the child practicing under the supervision of the master jeweller. “…A sacred place…”
“Here, I conveyed to Saphienne my love of art.” The ancient elf quit her forge and raised up her hammer in threat. “There is no room here for anything other than respect for craft and reverence for what is revealed in it. You do not belong here.”
He touched the illustration, oblivious to the fear that transfixed the dragon who had secreted herself beyond and below it. “She saw us quarrel; she ascribes this hostility to her teacher. I never appreciated that Eletha was so important to who she became…”
“Leave.”
Tolduin stepped back and gestured in censure. “Bored by the toil she witnessed, young Saphienne–”
Ah, but his gaze fixed on the floral metal he habitually wore, so familiar now that it was reproduced on his hand even in his apotheosis.
“…No.” He dropped his arm. “A grave wrong it would be.” His searing sight turned to the Eletha who chastised him. “‘Tis not of consequence that I’m discomfited by the esteem she retains for her old master; no change is proper but that required for happiness.”
He took up position beside the anvil, there to review what had unfolded.
“Present your labours for judgement.”
* * *
Saphienne breathed out. She’d nearly been exposed.
Had she known? Had she intuited Tolduin’s appreciation for her jewellery would make him reluctant to meddle with those recollections? Unconsciously, perhaps. So long as he found nothing that touched on dragons or the Great Art, the small part of her that had been patterned after Eletha was sacrosanct. Thus the route to her true self remained concealed.
Nevertheless, she followed along with the priest as he scrutinised her memories, taking in months of secluded learning from a new vantage. All was quite ordinary…
But for the songs, which were not craft songs to shape metal.
Tolduin didn’t catch the discrepancy.
“…Eletha…” Saphienne crouched on the shore, hunched forward in awe and dread at what she tried and failed to decipher in the primeval Elfish. “…What were you really teaching me? And why did you hide it? Who are you?”
Yet there were no answers. Whatever the master jeweller and overlooked magician had shared with her apprentice, she’d obscured her tampering. Her interference was only visible because she’d wished to be found out, having later urged Saphienne:
“Remember the songs. Return to them. Everything else will change, but the songs remain the same.”
* * *
Left under the supervision of Almon and Vestaele, Saphienne brooded on the significance of her stirred reminiscence as Tolduin departed to pray.
Had she been fascinated? Had she been transmuted?
“Only what you would be willing and able to do: I cannot compel you.”
Had Eletha tried? Or did that imply Saphienne had consented to ensorcellment?
Why was an ancient, powerful magician living in obscurity on the edge of the woodlands? Why had she mentored Kythalaen — and then taught Saphienne? How had Tolduin recognised her?
“There was no hope you would be spared. What comes next, you will endure alone.”
She’d known Saphienne would recover. Was that because she’d known Kythalaen, and so was aware of the potent wyrd passed to her descendant?
Or was it possible that–
“I might have a theory about what’s to blame.”
Vestaele glanced to Almon from her place by the window. “Go on.”
“We’re beset by drakes,” the wizard noted. “Discounting your boisterous pet, the wardens have been rooting them out in record numbers.”
His conjecture won the sorcerer’s attention. “You suppose she glimpsed one, and the association roused her past?”
Almon hesitated. “…The alternative also crossed my mind.”
Vestaele smirked as she realised his meaning. “You’d better hope not.”
Eyes narrowing, the master of Hallucination approached the master of Fascination with distrust bordering on contempt. “Explain why.”
The sorcerer raised an eyebrow as her gaze flitted to Saphienne.
“She won’t comprehend us,” Almon assured Vestaele. “She’s always tranquilised after sessions with the sculptor.”
The woman in black and dark violet leant on the sill. “What we did was the kindest option. Tolduin may not have grasped the full import – he was preoccupied with treating her illness – but the message we received when we asked how to proceed was telling.”
“The High Masters wanted her to be treated quickly and quietly? What else?”
“Not what: or.” Vestaele threaded her gloved fingers together. “You haven’t given any thought to the instructions sent afterward, have you?”
Almon was puzzled. “I’m aware we’re to watch for similar presentations, and those of us who teach as wizards are to terminate apprenticeships where the potential for her arcana is identified.”
“We’re also to report individuals promptly.”
“I hardly see why–”
“There are to be no others like High Master Elduin.” Vestaele was certain. “Any who seem likely to emulate him will be refused education as wizards, but if that refusal does not suffice? If they progress to be anything other than ordinary? We’re to note them so they can be watched, and they’re to be watched for a reason.”
“I don’t follow.”
“This is her last chance. If Tolduin can’t keep her under control…”
And Almon recoiled. “They wouldn’t!”
Vestaele stood. “I would. We came very close to repeating our worst mistake. Imagine if she’d progressed to the higher degrees? We’re lucky that someone saw sense while we could still do something about her.”
Filaurel; Saphienne’s betrayal was confirmed.
“Vestaele, she’s a child.”
The fascinator was unmoved. “So are the half-elves, and we dispose of them.”
“We don’t– they’re sent away, not–”
“If they posed a greater danger to the woodlands, a more terminal solution would address the problem. The spirits have approved executions where necessary.”
Bereft of a response, Almon peered at Saphienne in abject horror.
“If we can’t guarantee that Tolduin’s methods will contain the danger, then we’re obliged to inform the vale.” She sighed. “I will admit: all of this is quite a tragic affair. I feel pity. I had such high hopes for her…”
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* * *
Unable to locate anything in Saphienne that explained her dreams, Tolduin elected to stay in the Eastern Vale for the immediate future. He monitored Saphienne closely, resuming the responsibilities he’d delegated to Almon, personally repeating the searches conducted by his peers and the wardens.
Ironically, though he was upset Lynnariel had withheld the book from him, he believed in her innocence when he uncovered her copy of the ‘The Girl and the Gulls.’ And when she wouldn’t surrender it – insisting that the matter go before Nelathiel and Gaelyn – he relented, accepting both that the decree Saphienne had won from the consensus was still in effect and that he was unlikely to persuade his juniors.
Meanwhile, Saphienne continued to heal. She now held conversations, asked after the people around herself. In every visible way she behaved as the sweet and guileless girl that Tolduin wished her to be.
* * *
Beneath her deception? She soured.
Her keepers were prepared to murder her if her magic returned — prepared to murder the confused and helpless version of herself that they believed Tolduin had hewn from her brilliance. The paranoia of the Luminary Vale couldn’t abide any possibility of defiance.
She was only alive because otherwise Taerelle, Almon, and Tolduin would have been forced to live with losing her. That was how elves thought: her death was averted to spare the ageless magicians from grief.
Not Vestaele. Saphienne was certain now: the sorcerer was devoid of a heart. Whether magically or through will alone, the master of Fascination had carved out inconvenient sentiment from her own chest, replacing what had beat there with unfettered ambition. Her former apprentice was no longer of use, and so discardable.
No wonder Calamity had chosen to slumber.
And Vestaele was far from unique. High Masters Elduin and Lenitha presided over this arrangement with dispassion — functionally the same, no matter how they felt. They’d tried to preserve Saphienne, to nurture her, but had ultimately abandoned her. Worse, they’d decreed that her semblance was not to be tolerated. Others like her were to be pre-emptively excluded, surveilled, and prevented.
Saphienne had become well-versed in the taxonomy of evil. There was the evil of ignorance, delivered without intent by Syndelle; there was the evil of an incomplete nature, broken since birth within Lensa; there was the evil of hate and sadism, enjoyed by Danyn; there was the evil of zealotry, fostered in Tolduin; there was the evil of ambition to power, pursued ruthlessly by Vestaele; there was the evil of obedience, exemplified by Sundamar; there was the evil of indifference, demanded of all wood elves; and there was the evil of cowardice, simple cowardice, as had ensnared Almon.
She’d been raised a peaceful elf of the woodlands, and she loved so many of the people around her who were complicit in evil. Her hunger for vengeance was not powerful enough to overcome how she’d been nurtured.
But her principles were.
Saphienne had been prevaricating to Hyacinth when she’d asked whether revenge was justified by preventing harm to others. Yet now, reminded of who Vestaele and Almon and the rest truly were, she saw the woodlands clearly, and saw that there was a last, most seductive form of evil:
There was the evil of forbearance.
“Society is founded upon that which proceeds from us that we each forbear to claim; wisdom is knowing what to forbear to claim.”
Should she forbear to claim vengeance, forbear to inflict violence, then in the absence of justice the mercy to which she inclined was meaningless: those who persisted in evil made a mockery of the mercies shown them. To slink away would be to claim safety for herself and withhold the chance of it from the innocents who came after.
She’d erred in trying to decide what would be just; she herself had admitted that justice didn’t belong to the individual, didn’t dwell within them, but was built through the labour of many hands. Saphienne couldn’t impose justice, not alone.
All she could do was offer her contribution to its foundations.
And all she had left to offer was vengeance. Not only for herself, nor Kylantha, but for everyone who the woodlands had wronged…
Including the eternally young families who haunted the clearings in which carefree children played, clearings into which they’d been herded to die for opposing the ancient ways.
* * *
Her nightmares grew more frequent as she was seen to grow more intelligent, elaborated with additional detail each time Tolduin wiped them away. Sessions under his care were now weekly, and they lengthened as his desperation deepened, the priest frantic beneath his millennium-honed cool.
This was perilous, Saphienne knew. She risked him taking drastic measures that would force her to reveal herself — together with the danger that the sorcerer and wizard might lose confidence in him and contact the Luminary Vale. Yet the magician persisted with her precisely choreographed ruse, intent on driving Tolduin to the edge of despair.
She had anticipated how he would compensate.
So, too, she counted on Almon. The wizard was sleeping poorly, his waking hours spent corresponding with colleagues who specialised in studies of the mind. Nothing she overheard him presenting to Tolduin came close to guessing at the eerie maze in which she was armoured, but he was guaranteed to hold Vestaele in check for as long as he tried.
Spring arrived. At a loss, Tolduin interrupted her routine.
* * *
“Where are we going?”
Tolduin held her hand as they walked ahead of Sundamar, travelling south along the Eastern Vale. “We go to visit the only one who can help you,” he answered.
Saphienne performed herself as observant, thoughtful, and completely credulous, above average in wits, quick to trust in authorities and slow to assume she understood. “…Are we going to visit a god?”
His smile for her was bittersweet. “However did you guess, child?”
“The gods can do anything.” He’d seen to her religious indoctrination as she’d revitalised, and the sermons he’d given her to read were definitive. “They are everywhere and all-powerful. If only one person can stop my bad dreams, He or She must be a god or goddess.” She studied his face with wide, hopeful eyes. “Will I be well again?”
“…Yes.” He spoke first as a comforting lie, but then placed his faith in that lie, making it the truth he cleaved to as he squeezed her hand. “Yes, you will be well. Our Lady will answer our prayers.”
“Tolduin, am I being punished? Are my bad dreams because I used to be bad?”
“You were never a bad girl.” He was firm as he shook his head. “Sickness is not wickedness. You never hurt anyone… not directly.”
She dropped her gaze to the wet grass, feigning that she mulled over his pronouncement. “I’m sorry I hurt anyone. I can’t imagine it. Did they get better?”
“Cease your questions for now, Saphienne.” He inhaled to quieten his trepidation. “The past is no longer; Our Lady is ahead.”
At the southernmost edge of the vale a glade adjoined the sharply rising land, and there was set a lonely shrine to Our Lady of the Basking Serpent. The circular ground of the altar had the peculiar distinction of being comprised of stone, glittering brown rock that was detailed with undulating channels from which rainwater swiftly drained, while the yellow fabric that usually sheltered icons was instead positioned behind the effigy – fanning out like the rising sun – so as not to shade it.
As for the goddess? Her upraised hands held a polished, brazen serpent that reflected the mild daylight, her gold-inlaid gaze sure, her motherly smile affirming.
Although Saphienne knew the reason, she asked, “Why isn’t another priest here?”
“Seldom is Our Lady worshipped by the hale and well.” Tolduin guided her to the foot of the statute. “She is attended by the faithful, among whom I am counted. Kneel with me, child. Let us pray to Her.”
She went through the motions convincingly. When Tolduin faltered during his invocation, she decided he was ready.
* * *
That night, she startled Myrinel when she silently descended the stairs and wandered through to the kitchen. The warden found her filling a cup with water, and inquired after her as she drank. “Another nightmare?”
“I’m not sure…” She wavered, seemingly perplexed. “…I don’t think so. The monster was there, but there was someone else with me. I can’t quite remember what happened.”
“You should go back to bed. Do you want me to wake your mother?”
Saphienne shook her head as she set the cup in the sink. “I’m fine. I’ll sleep.” Her smile for him was pleasant. “Thank you, Myrinel.”
Whether or not he would relay the incident, the spirit who stood guard after midnight was certain to.
* * *
“… You have to see it to believe it.” Sundamar was showing Almon into the studio, lifting the flap for the wizard. “She started work on it as soon as we arrived, and she hasn’t slowed down.”
Saphienne let her awareness of her audience drift, having been ignoring Gaeleath where they were standing behind her in apprehensive surmise. For once, she was fully invested in the piece to which she put her hand, applying every skill short of shaping song to bring alive what she had envisioned when she picked out the large section of felled trunk, her art unfettered and untameable as she rendered the figures with all her passion.
Her former master froze behind her as he took in the sculpture. “…This is…”
“A masterpiece in the rough,” Gaeleath agreed.
Sundamar’s intimidation was poorly concealed. “We went to the shrine yesterday, but the icon didn’t look anything like this. She hasn’t copied it.”
Would Almon connect it to the shattered tree? He wouldn’t understand if he did. No one but Saphienne had the necessary context to fully comprehend the significance of the embellishments she’d added to Our Lady of the Basking Serpent. The goddess was posed with left hand upraised, clasping her eponymous serpent in much the same victorious stance as Our Lady of the Proven Merit, her jubilant head haloed with jagged rays. Her right palm lay on the brow of the girl who sat reverently at her feet, small and slender yet with long, tousled hair that could only have been patterned after the work’s maker.
Closer examination revealed the serpent was not a snake at all, and was not rousing, but hung limp in defeat.
What no one else in the tent beheld was the likeness that the iconography clothed — the twining patterns of her gown received as mere superficial detail. The wide face that grinned at them in exultation was unfamiliar, tender and merciful despite a thousand years entombed in darkness, its subtly petal-like halo overlooked.
No, Saphienne didn’t expect even Tolduin would recognise Tyrnansunna.
Not consciously.
* * *
The priest had dismissed everyone else from the room. That act had told Saphienne she’d won; the rest was preordained. She’d subsequently denied any comprehension of what she’d made, pretending that she’d fashioned the statue because it felt true. In the ensuing interrogation by Vestaele her tears had moved Almon to end the questioning, satisfied that her profession of ignorance was honest.
Three days hence, Tolduin concluded that her recovery was divinely gifted. Her sculpture was authentic to his goddess in a way he couldn’t describe.
Vestaele was unconvinced… but Almon rationalised events. Clearly, what they’d been observing was a symbolic drama playing out, composed from the signs that suffused and surrounded Saphienne. As she’d been healing, she’d been forced to confront the destructive impulse that had once fed her madness, manifesting as a consuming behemoth; when Tolduin had provided her with a belief from which she could draw strength – made real by her visit to the shrine – her will to live had seized on it to overcome the dragon.
Almon insisted that Saphienne wasn’t becoming her old self: she was smothering her.
Of course, her minders would remain by her side. Saphienne needed to be safeguarded against the re-emergence of her magic. Perhaps, though, she might be encouraged to develop her other arts?
* * *
Alas, her manipulation was imperfect, for more than elves stood vigilant.
She woke in her cavern to the sensation of possession, drowsily assuming that Hyacinth was visiting — until a brisk autumnal chill made her sit up in alarm. This presence had entwined with her before, and was no bloomkith.
Mimicking the casting of a Divination spell, she set sight on what was transpiring within the lesser self above.
“Wretched girl!” A thin elf in priestly robes advanced on the library steps along with the gnarled limbs of the surrounding forest, her hair lichen, her gaze murderous. “You dared threaten him? You thought I would not come?”
Ansuz! Saphienne spied on Mother Oak as the woodkin confronted her facsimile, watching herself blink in confusion.
“Hello,” said her feeble self. “Do I know you?”
A snarl preceded whipping branches that snatched her up, Ansuz dragging her from the steps. “Wicked child! Do not profess innocence. I will not abide harm to Tolduin! Thou shalt not reveal unto him his wound!”
Vicariously experiencing the bewilderment and terror writ upon her own face, Saphienne ran through her options, establishing that any intercession would require she not just fight off the spirit, but capture Ansuz within her mind — to do anything less would expose herself.
“I don’t– I don’t under–”
Mother Oak was unrelenting, her roots burrowing into her host as she squeezed. “Be still thy liar’s tongue! Into the ground with thee!”
If the other Saphienne died, what would happen? The woodkin would see that she still breathed, that her blood still pulsed. Either way, she had to–
Saphienne stopped reacting.
Drawing on the lessons imparted by Taerelle, she blocked out her other self’s muffled screams as she scrutinised events with detachment, slowly smiling as the implications became apparent.
“Apostate! Admit thy guilt!”
No alarm had chimed when Mother Oak had entered; no permission had been granted for her presumed hold over Saphienne. The matron of the woodlands was violating the ancient ways, which meant she was acting in total stealth.
“Why dost thou persist in this charade? Die with dignity!”
But the woodkin didn’t realise what she was assaulting. She had no idea of the yawning, fanged maw into which she’d poured herself. All Saphienne had to do was swallow, and Mother Oak would vanish from the woodlands, tree felled by gnashing jaw.
“Even now? Even unto the end?”
The spirit was at the mercy of a dragon.
“Nay…” Ansuz diminished in fury. “…I shall first know thee in thy evils.”
Saphienne’s breath caught as the matriarch forced the defenceless elf to walk with her, wind and bone joined as one, sensing the absolute violation as the spirit probed every crevice in search of justification…
And then recoiled, distraught as she released her victim. “Gods… thou art…”
Snarling, Saphienne reached upward–
“Thou art not Saphienne.”
–And stayed her hand.
Ansuz stumbled from the steps. “Dwell not on this! ‘Twas dream. Nothing more.”
She opened her eyes as Mother Oak fled, finding herself alone and trembling in the still night air of her bedroom.
Her legs were unsteady as they carried her to the bathroom. She splashed her face with water from the sink, leant there heavily, steadying herself as she met her own, black, wild stare.
A heartbeat longer, and she would have been a killer.
* * *
“… This is a well-told story.” Tolduin placed the last sheet of paper down on the table beside the as-yet unused sculptor. “Simple though it be, you capture the essence of children’s wonderment with skill. And the moral lesson is no less laudable!”
Saphienne blushed and bowed her head. “Do you think so? I wasn’t trying to write it for anyone but myself.”
“Your deliberations shine through, as does your character.” His paternal smile betrayed she’d pleased him. “Does this presage an interest in the art of writing? Shall a new apprenticeship commence? Ought this be published in the library?”
“I– I like apprenticing with Gaeleath!”
Her pallor made the priest laugh.
“I was just trying to… Almon said that composition helps explain ourselves. I don’t want other people to read it.”
“Pay no heed to my idle jesting.” Charmed, the priest gathered up her small folio to hand it across. “‘Tis a pity that it will not be shared. Mayhap its substance would translate to another medium? One in which you were more secure in skill?”
Inwardly, she raised her fist in triumph; outwardly, she cradled the short story. “I suppose I could try that. Do you really think I should?”
“I do.” Tolduin settled back in the armchair. “Assuming you finish it. No tale is complete without a title.”
Pausing for dramatic effect, she made a point of flicking through the pages, skimming the childish prose as though she were rereading the fable of the pious girl who drove off a marauding beast. “…Would ‘The Girl and the Dragon’ fit?”
“‘Tis not evocative. I expect another will come to you in time.”
* * *
Commemorating her twenty-fourth birthday was happier, if not for Saphienne then certainly for Lynnariel, who requested all the chocolate and strawberries that the village would provision, along with mountains of paper for sketching and writing, lakes of ink, and a forest of calligraphic pens and brushes. These she gifted to her daughter with the assistance of Phelorna – who had received rare permission to attend – and Myrinel, the young warden yawning throughout the day to the amusement of Sundamar. Excited chatter soon turned to the upcoming festival of the summer solstice, and Phelorna joined her lover in entreating the Wardens of the Wilds to let Saphienne enjoy the festivities.
“We’ll talk to Almon,” was all Sundamar would promise.
Yet after the celebrations were concluded, and the sorcerer-warden Elowyn arrived to substitute for Myrinel as a favour to him, Saphienne was indeed sincerely cheerful, for she resumed the task to which her every effort was bent.
* * *
No one regarded her recreational use of the fascinator as unusual; nor were the sketches and fragments of prose that littered the floor and walls of her bedroom given more than passing scrutiny. Why would they be? These were merely explorations of her project, a sanctified elf and a vile dragon locked in a battle of virtue. Besides, Almon and Vestaele had examined them closely, and their content was utterly mundane, sketches too haphazard to conceal secrets, words too plain to hold higher meaning.
That was correct. There was nothing in the markings of magical import.
“This is clever,” the hallucinated, horned Saphienne remarked as she paced the room on clicking claws. “Developing a language to clothe your spellcraft would have been too obvious… but creating mnemonic prompts, facilitating the memorisation and recall of detailed information with the fascinator? Utterly impenetrable from without.”
Was it conceited to revel in her own praise?
“But whyever are you imagining me?” The dragon surveyed her corporeal self from amidst the pink glow. “Are you missing Hyacinth that badly?”
She was lonely…
Her illusory tail flicked. “I think not. You’ve assembled all of this from your recollections of the elven works you’ve read, but you’re no closer to apprehending the magic of dragons. Intuition says I might know where to start.”
Could her innermost self still express insights through the fascinator? Were there any to convey?
“I’ll humour you.” She pointed to a page depicting rough outlines of different dresses. “You were intrigued by Larimon’s ‘Sigil as Empty Vessel,’ positing that fire serves as the receptacle into which draconic spells are vested. Except that makes no sense: draconic spells take the form of flames when cast. Your own dragon’s fire is vested into a sigil depicted as a spiral.”
So Saphienne had reasoned.
“But there’s a hint of something, isn’t there?” Sticking out her forked tongue, the daydream paced the room. “My, whatever could it be? Was it the way you saw Parthenos’ fire by the lake? Her fire embodied her essence, was a vessel for it, and then you constituted your own vessel to contain your own nature. This done, you reified the result as the spiralling sigil. What does that imply?”
A deeper order. Calligraphy, or any other symbol, was not what held the magic.
“I’ll leave you to ponder it… though, you might need holy brew…”
* * *
Recalling the relevant passage took Saphienne an entire week.
“… The sigil is hollow. The aether fills the sigil, the vessel is immersed in the aether, and the aether is lost within itself. The magician must make a vessel of the aether to hold itself apart, that it might behold the magician who holds it …”
High Master Elduin had brushed up against the magic of dragons. Sigils weren’t vessels: sigils were mere proxies for the true vessels. They were symbols, and what they symbolised was the receptacle into which magic was poured to form the spell.
Fire was the vessel of dragons. Not the substance of flame, but the conceptualisation, the idea of fire. That, Saphienne felt sure, was why Parthenos’ conjured wing had been composed of flickering tongues, and why all their spellcasting assumed similar form.
Yet how could she create distinct vessels? She’d merely copied the one presented to her by the wyrm, then imbued herself into it.
“You’re seeing what an elf sees,” her spectre goaded her. “Why must you always understand before you do?”
She always tried to analyse–
“Must I roar in your face like Parthenos?”
Saphienne paused.
“Are you a dragon, or not?”
…What did elves use as their vessel?
“Finally, a useful question!”
* * *
Eight colours. Previously, fewer. Conjuration and Invocation had once been the same.
The white light of Divination could not be split by a prism.
Fledgling sorcerers fashioned sigils from symbols of significance only to themselves.
In her first casting, she had unmade her downward spiral by remaking herself.
She cast her spells by conforming to the shapes of the sigils she memorised.
She conformed.
* * *
Saphienne sat cross-legged on the floor before a stylised drawing of a dragon breathing curling tongues of flame.
She turned the gem within the fascinator, sank into its trance.
There was no path; no structure; no discipline.
She was the aether. She discarded the error of herself from it, and she saw…
Fire.
Expressing what she made of the world, and what the world made of her.
She let the world make her what she wanted the world to be.
The fire burned steady.
Now, to vest it.
* * *
When she finished, she dimmed the fascinator. The sigil she had made disappeared, become once more an ordinary drawing in the absence of the beguilement. Yet it persisted in potential, waiting.
She had them; she had the fundamentals.
And more… Saphienne was reasonably certain she’d attained the Fourth Degree.
All she needed was practice.
Come the height of summer, her prison would burn.
End of Chapter 146