Secrets and Spellcraft Page 15

  “The deeper cause can be traced back almost a hundred years before that, to the beginnings of demon worship in what we now call Shimera, though at the time it was considered part of Barsta. By the time the Prophet emerged, the cult of Madrok had pushed the barbarians out of Shimera to where they now reside, in modern Barsta. The cult had begun to move outward, and since they found the lands of Faresh to be inhospitable, they were starting to make inroads into Greater Darrow.

  “While the wizards of that time had convinced the masses that they were powerful and near-immortal, they were in fact quite weak. No lone mage could hope to stand against a demon whose slightest touch was fatal,” explained the professor.

  Bullshit, thought Will, wishing he could argue openly.

  “When Valemon first discovered the elementals and created the heart-stone enchantment, Greater Darrow was already in a state of crisis. While none of us would wish to be subject to his aberrant religious doctrines, the fact remains that without his discovery we would all likely be serving as slaves to Madrok by now, whether as adherents or as sacrifices.”

  Will couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t know how it was done, but from what Arrogan and Aislinn had both told him, elementals hadn’t been discovered, they were created. He raised his hand.

  Professor Fontenot glanced at him and then started to move on, but he was too stubborn to be ignored. “I have a question,” he announced loudly.

  She gave him a look of long suffering. “Yes, Mister Cartwright?”

  “You said Valemon discovered elementals. Where did he find them? Are there congruence points that lead to elemental planes?”

  The teacher gave him an angry glare. “No one knows. After Arrogan murdered the Prophet, the War for Independence began, and once that was over, he made a very determined effort to eliminate every one of his former friends and allies in this country who might have preserved that knowledge. Some have even suggested that the Betrayer was in fact an agent of Madrok and that by eliminating sorcery he hoped to strip our nations of their protection against the demon worshippers.”

  “My point,” said Will, “is that we don’t know where the elementals come from. You’re making a leap of faith in assuming they came from elsewhere and weren’t simply created in some fashion. If they came from another plane, surely we would have found evidence of it by now.”

  Professor Fontenot closed her eyes and took a deep breath before responding. “I can’t fault your logic, but the same applies to the idea that they were created whole cloth from nothing.”

  “Not from nothing,” argued Will. “According to the records of the time, wizards traveled through congruences and had a less antagonistic relationship with the fae. That’s no longer true. Isn’t it possible that Valemon was stealing the materials he used to create elementals? Or that perhaps he was using spirits or creatures from Faerie to produce them? That would explain both the current antagonism between us and the fae as well as provide a motive for Arrogan’s actions.”

  The professor’s face reddened. “What could possibly justify his murder of both his monarch and his fellow colleagues, the wizards and sorcerers of the time? Do you think such violence can be excused?”

  Will was on his feet now. “Speaking from personal experience, I believe that there are absolutely circumstances that might force someone to violent action. Whether such is justified or not is a matter for laws and courts to decide.”

  “And yet Arrogan was never caught and judged,” said the professor. “Those with power must be doubly wary, for it is harder for them to be brought before the courts.” Her eyes were piercing as she stared at Will. “Indeed, some killers are never brought before a judge.”

  “Not if they haven’t broken any laws,” answered Will, acid in his voice. “Especially not when my supposed victim was the one who was abusing his power and the law to avoid justice.”

  “Get out,” snapped Melinda Fontenot.

  Will left, and the class released a collective sigh of relief as the tension in the room finally began to dissipate.

  He was angry, with himself, with the teacher, with the world. I shouldn’t have spoken up in class, he told himself. I knew no good would come of it. He went back to his room and worked on the climbing spell until it was time for lunch.

  After that he forced himself to go to his Math and Spell Theory classes. The thought of skipping was attractive, but he knew if he started, he wouldn’t be likely to stop. The only way to deal with the negative pressure bearing down on him was to keep showing up.

  He spent more time on his spellcraft after his classes were done, feeling a sense of pride in the fact that he was already able to reliably put the climbing spell together. He hadn’t actually released it and tested it out yet, nor could he remember it completely without referring to the book, but he was definitely improving.

  After supper he headed to the Alchemy building for his evening’s work with Professor Karlovic. The work was still new, but it was only mildly interesting. Some of it was manual labor, and the rest was planning the next stages of whatever project the professor wanted to pursue, as well as double-checking his math. It was thoroughly practical, and good experience, but he wasn’t learning anything new.

  The Alchemy professor was one of the few teachers who didn’t seem to care about what he had done. Or perhaps he was simply too pragmatic to bother thinking about it.

  “Our numbers don’t agree,” said Karlovic as Will showed him his check result. “Do it again.”

  “I don’t think I made a mistake,” said Will. “Maybe you should redo yours.”

  The professor tsked at him. “That’s why I’m paying you. If you get the same answer a second time then I’ll redo mine, but only then.”

  Will couldn’t argue with that logic. Especially when he spotted his mistake a few minutes later. Their answers matched after that.

  “That’s a relief,” said Karlovic. “I really didn’t want to do it all over again.”

  Feeling almost relaxed in the presence of another human being, Will let down his guard and began to talk. “Professor?”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “They tell me that I’ll probably have to pay a blood-price for Dennis Spry’s death, a thousand crowns.”

  “It’s a safe bet,” agreed his teacher.

  “And I don’t have that sort of coin,” added Will.

  “Then you’ll need a rich patron if you want to stay out of prison,” observed the professor dryly. “I heard Princess Selene visited you.”

  “I can’t ask her,” said Will. “I can’t even see her.” He didn’t want to explain the complicated relationship he had with King Lognion’s daughter. “Is there anyone in the college who might help? Professor Courtney seemed interested in getting my help for his research.”

  “Very few at Wurthaven could afford that kind of outlay without bankrupting themselves, and those that could—won’t. And Alfie, for all his success, certainly doesn’t have that sort of money,” Karlovic informed him.

  “Isn’t there a way I could earn the money?”

  The professor’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

  “You told me before that there are potions we don’t make because there’s no way to produce them just by concentrating natural essences, old-fashioned recipes. Some of those must be pretty valuable.”

  His teacher sighed. “You’re asking me to help you burn some of your life in exchange for money.”

  Will couldn’t tell the man it wouldn’t be dangerous for him, but then he didn’t need to. “It’s either that or live a very short life in Count Spry’s prison.”

  “Even if you are a natural transducer, as Professor Dulaney has been telling me, you’ll still pay a significant price. If a normal person was lucky enough to have a fifty-percent efficiency from their affinity, some of those potions can cost a person the equivalent of a week or two of their life. If you really can manage it with nearly a hundred-percent efficiency, you’d still be using up half that much of yo
urself.”

  “What’s the most valuable potion that people still make and sell?” asked Will.

  “I don’t know what other people are willing to sacrifice in their own labs—”

  Will shook his head. “I mean a potion that still has a market. One that’s common enough that there’s regular buyers.”

  His teacher rubbed his chin. “I guess that would be either a potion of blood cleansing, or a universal antidote.”

  “What are those?”

  “A blood cleanse is used when a patient has a septic wound or a serious infection. The universal antidote is a potion that nullifies the effects of most poisons and drugs. There’s not as much of a market for the antidote, however. It’s mainly bought by wealthy merchants or rich nobility.”

  “Do the healers here buy the blood-cleanse potion?”

  Karlovic nodded. “They do. Every year there’s a few Alchemy students who are desperate enough to make them to pay their tuition. Just one dose costs a person roughly two weeks of their life, though, or one week for you, assuming Dulaney is right.”

  Correction, none, thought Will. “How much do they pay for it?” asked Will.

  “Usually about nine gold crowns.”

  Will did the math. He’d need to make a hundred and twelve potions to earn a thousand gold. “Will you give me the formula for it?”

  His teacher had done his own math. “Will, you’re talking about using up two to four years of healthy life for this.”

  “You said other students do it sometimes,” Will countered.

  “Two or three times,” said Karlovic in exasperation. “I’m not even comfortable with that. Using students to produce such things is an abuse of power. Even if they want to do it. As a teacher, I’m against leveraging the alchemists of the future to satisfy the demands of the wealthy in the present. That’s the whole point of my effort here. Producing potions that don’t cost young men and women their life’s blood to create.”

  Will returned his teacher’s gaze evenly. “I’m against people abusing their power too. That’s how I wound up in this situation. If I don’t do something soon, I won’t have much of a life left to waste.”

  “And what about the next time?” challenged Karlovic. “Sure. Let’s say you solve your problem this way once. What happens later when you need money again? And trust me, it will happen. You’ll do the same thing. Then, before you know it, you’re twenty-five in a body that feels sixty.”

  “That’s my choice,” said Will. “At least I’ll have made something that helps people.”

  His teacher rubbed his face, then got up and left the room. He returned five minutes later with three pages in his hands. The ink was still drying. “Here. I copied them out for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “One is for the blood-cleanse, the second is the antidote potion, and the third is just for men.”

  “For men?” Will was confused.

  Karlovic nodded. “For men who have trouble in bed. It’s quite popular. I’m fairly sure it could be adapted to take advantage of my methods, but I haven’t done so yet, so the demand is still fairly high. It also takes less of your own turyn to produce.”

  “Trouble in bed?” asked Will. “You mean…” He made a rude gesture with his arm and fist.

  “Exactly,” chuckled Karlovic. “It’s a more common problem than you probably realize at your age.”

  “How much does it sell for?”

  “A gold crown each.”

  He whistled, trying to imagine who would pay so much money for a single night of—he stopped there. He already knew the sort of people who were willing to pay that and more. People like Chris Burnham. His classmate hadn’t had a physical problem—that he knew of, anyway—but he’d been willing to pay much more for access to sex. He hoped the men buying the potion were using it with their wives, or at least with someone willing. Will decided he would save that one for last, if he couldn’t sell enough of the others.

  “How much will you charge me to use the equipment in one of the smaller workshops?” asked Will.

  “Nothing,” said his teacher.

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “You’ve already paid a fee to use the lab here, and what you’re doing will help others. I won’t be a party to exploiting you by increasing your cost. You will have to pay for materials and ingredients, however, or any glassware if you break it.”

  “I’ll make sure you don’t regret this, sir,” said Will gratefully.

  Karlovic sighed. “Just don’t kill anyone else.”

  Will smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” But I won’t promise it. Thus far, life had put him in violent situations too often to believe it wouldn’t happen again eventually.

  Chapter 18

  Will returned that evening with both the formulas and several lists of materials and their respective prices. He spent a little over two hours calculating his costs and what his profit would be on each potion if he was able to sell them at the expected price.

  The blood-cleansing potion seemed to be the most reliable source of income. The materials would cost roughly a gold crown for each potion, which meant his initial estimate had been slightly optimistic. He would actually need to make around a hundred and twenty-five of them to pay the blood-price, and that was assuming that the price didn’t drop when he tried to sell so many potions.

  The excitement of having found a solution to his problem made it impossible for him to sleep, however. So, he spent a half an hour practicing his spellcraft, then went downstairs. It was still an hour before Dianne would lock the doors—enough time for a walk.

  A stroll along the wall that the entrance was in would fill the time nicely. He wanted to see if there were other guards or watchers, and the easiest time to do that without being seen was at night. His visual advantage made the task almost trivial.

  Will returned to the dorm just in time. He hadn’t found any guards, patrols, or watchers. Aside from the guard at the gate, Wurthaven’s perimeter was completely unguarded. Will guessed he should have expected as much though, it was a school after all, not a military camp or a lord’s fortress. A thirty-foot wall was enough to discourage all but the most reckless of souls.

  Back in his room, he decided to test the climbing spell. With the book open, he managed to construct the spell in under half a minute, and when he released it, he felt the turyn sweep over him, causing his hands, knees, and feet to tingle.

  He put both hands against the wall where they stuck with incredible force. Try as he might, he couldn’t pull them free. In the end he was forced to dismiss the spell so he could consult the description in the book, where he quickly discovered his mistake.

  In order to facilitate climbing and simultaneously prevent falls, the spell required three points of contact at all times, two hands plus a knee or foot, or two knees and one hand, etc.… There were multiple possible combinations. As soon as a fourth contact point was achieved, one of the others would be released according to a given order. If the climber had two hands and one of the lower contact points attached, as soon as the other leg was brought into contact one of the hands would be released, according to whichever had been in contact with the climbing surface longest.

  It wasn’t the most elegant way to implement such a spell, but Will could understand that trying to create a spell that relied on a more complicated system would likewise have been much more difficult to cast. Selene’s cleaning spell was a perfect example—the more intelligent a spell was in its behavior, the more its complexity increased.

  He cast the spell again and put his hands on the wall of his room. Then he brought his leg up and felt his knee stick. It wasn’t until he had brought his other leg up and it had made contact that one of his hands came free, enabling him to reach upward. Once it was in place, his first knee came loose. Once he had gotten the knack of it, he could ascend fairly quickly, and even if he went too fast and tried to move the wrong limb, he couldn’t fall. He had to move the correct body part to
continue.

  Working his way upward, he reached the ceiling and kept going. Will grinned as he looked down. He was hanging upside down now. Moving on, he reached the opposite wall and started down headfirst. Things didn’t get awkward until he reached the floor. At that point his options were to continue climbing or to reposition himself until his feet were beneath him. He chose the latter and then dismissed the spell.

  “Not bad,” he told himself, feeling a sense of pride.

  He practiced constructing the spell several more times, then went to bed.

  The next morning, he went to Fencing practice, and feeling positive, he managed to convince one of his classmates, Matthew Holmgren, to spar with him. His leg was stiff, which cost him most of the points, but he still felt good about it.

  Composition class went horribly, as usual, and History was an exercise in frustration. Once it was over, though, he left the building and set out for his adventure. Skipping lunch, he would have three hours to get to the armor smith’s shop and return. Will kept an eye out for observers as he passed the dorms and headed on to the place he planned to cross the wall.

  There were several hundred yards between him and the nearest building, as well as numerous trees and bushes, so being seen wasn’t a concern, so long as he wasn’t followed and no one else happened to be walking nearby. He cast the climbing spell without having to resort to double-checking the book, then made his way to the top of the wall.

  One the other side was the lane that would eventually pass the college gate before continuing on toward the royal palace. Beyond it were more buildings. Will waited until the road was clear before descending the other side of the wall. Whistling a merry tune, he began heading for his destination.

  He was almost to the city market when he felt something that made him stop. Will studied the people around him but saw nothing unusual. He was surrounded by the usual townsfolk, a mixture of citizens, merchants, sellers, buyers, men, and women. They all seemed ordinary, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness. Squinting, he looked again, paying close attention to the turyn in the air.