Journeyman (A Wizard's Life) (13 page)

“I do and I did.” Benen said it with confidence and pride. Everyone in the room seemed to think what he’d done was either impressive or impossible.

“That is a claim that will require proof, Benen. You are a mere journeyman and what you are describing is unheard of. Are you sure you wish to continue with this claim or would you rather admit that you made an animate gold creature — a golem — that you call Timmon and that it killed Master Elladora to defend you?”

Benen saw then that this was why he was accused of the murder. If Timmon was a creature he had made and could control, then the death was Benen’s fault. But if it was a free-willed individual, as Timmon was, then Benen was innocent.

“I created a body for the ghost Timmon to inhabit. Timmon killed Master Elladora. I am innocent of the crime you claim I have committed.”

“Then you will have to prove it.” Benen saw an eagerness in the accuser as he stated this.

Is he excited because he thinks I can’t prove what I claim or is there something else going on here?
Benen wondered.

“What would you accept as proof of this?” Benen asked. “I’m not going to turn Timmon over to you for examination; you might take the opportunity to harm him, or worse.”

“I understand.” The accuser smiled again. “I think it would suffice if you could show to the satisfaction of the court the method through which you created the body and explained the magic involved.”

This was what they had wanted all along, Benen realized. They weren’t looking for justice for the fallen Elladora, they wanted the secret of how he had created the ghost’s body!

“If I show you, to your satisfaction, how I made Timmon’s body, you will believe me that Timmon is an incarnate ghost and that I am not responsible for Master Elladora’s death?”

“Correct,” the accuser agreed. Benen looked to the justices, they nodded.

Benen did not care for this one bit. What sort of people were his fellow wizards that they thought this an acceptable way to extract secrets from one another? Still, he had little choice.

“Very well, I will show you how it was done.”

Before they let him proceed, they cleared the room. They evidently wanted to keep the secret to themselves. In this, at least, Benen could foil them. He intended to make sure all who wanted to know how to make bodies for ghosts had access to the information.

Maybe I’ll write a book
, he thought.

It took six hours for Edim and the justices to be satisfied with his explanation of the process. Once this was accomplished, the justices declared Benen innocent and he was released.

Mellen was waiting for him outside the hall.

“Benen, I am glad everything turned out for the best.” The wizard looked genuinely worried.

“No thanks to you,” Benen retorted. “They had testimony from you about all the details.”

“Of course,” Mellen said. “I had to give a report on the death of Elladora or an investigation would have been launched into her disappearance once her associates noticed it.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Benen wasn’t sure he really had any cause to be angry with Mellen, but he was angry at the whole situation and Mellen was part of it. “It stunk.”

“It could have been worse,” the old wizard assured Benen. “They could have been much more obstinate. It is a good thing their greed for novel and interesting magic was stronger than any need for revenge they might have felt.”

“I guess so.”

“Come Benen, it was not so bad.”

“Why was Elladora coming into my domain to look for an apprentice to begin with?”

If someone had alerted him to the presence of a gifted child in his domain, Benen could have seen to it that a master was found for the child. A master
he
would have chosen.

“Benen, be reasonable. Did you even know there was a potential wizard in your domain? You are no master yet, and lack training in the things a master must know. Why have you not sought out Oster and started yourself on the way to your master piece yet? You certainly have the talent — that ghost’s body you created is proof of that — and you are more than old enough.”

“I just haven’t cared to go through that, I guess. Being a master didn’t matter to me to until not being one caused me such problems.”

“So you will speak with Oster and start on the path to becoming a master?”

“I think so. Is he here?”

Mellen laughed at this. “No. Oster rarely comes to these. For all I know he has passed on, but I doubt he has. He is old, but he is also stubborn. He will pass when he chooses and not before.”

“Passed on? You mean, you think he might be dead?”

“Wizards don’t usually die, Benen. The means we use to extend our lives simply reach a point where we have become more magic than human. When that imbalance grows too great, the human part of us unravels and is no more. Is the wizard dead then? Or has the wizard moved on to a new state of being that we do not understand? Only those who have been through the process could tell us and they are silent.”

Benen had not known any of this. He was surprised, but also excited by the mystery.

“What is the longest a wizard has ever lived before, er, passing on?” Benen asked.

Mellen considered this for a second. “I don’t think any wizard has made it to a full millennium of life. They’ve come close, though. I think the oldest on record lived to be nine-hundred and ninety-seven years old.”

“Oster claimed to be eight-hundred years old when I was his apprentice.”

“He probably claimed to be
older
than eight-hundred. I think he is closer to nine-hundred years old now.”

“So I have limited time to do my master piece.”

“Yes and no. It is preferable for your master to judge your master piece, but any master can do so.”

Benen accepted this answer, but he knew in his heart that he
needed
Oster to name him worthy of elevation. He had to show his former master that he was now his equal, that he had not turned out to be as
useless
as Oster might have thought.

“I will seek out Oster soon,” Benen reassured Mellen.

“Good.”

“But I need to know the magic we use to extend our lives and start using it before long.”

“Normally, it is taught to a new master by the one who elevates him to that rank, along with other magic usually restricted to masters. Of course, most do not wait so long as you have before seeking advancement.” The old wizard considered for a moment before coming to a decision. “I do not think the life-extension magic is specifically restricted to masters. I will gladly share with you the basics.”

Mellen did so then, explaining the technique to Benen in one of many small chambers near the great hall. Benen had seen wizards go into such rooms in pairs, spending an hour or two in privacy there before re-emerging, separating, and mingling in the great hall once more.

While he was alone with Mellen, Benen asked the old wizard about his title and the castle.

“Ah, yes. I am indeed Baron Estermont and this is my castle. I was given the title by the king for my years of service. I have no heir, of course, so the castle will revert to the crown unless I choose a successor. I will possibly track down the descendants of my own family and gift the title onto one of them, I do not know. For now, the castle is a convenient venue for the moots.”

The two parted soon after and Benen experienced the moot proper for a while.

It took him some time to even understand how the moot worked. For the most part it consisted of mingling with other wizards until you found one who knew a trick you wanted to learn and who wanted a trick from you in return. Then the two wizards went into one of the side chambers — like the one Benen and Mellen had used — and exchanged knowledge. In this place, nothing was free. No wizard would show another how to do any spell without some sort of compensation.

Benen joined in. He wanted to spread the knowledge he had shared with the court as widely as he could and did not mind benefiting from the exchange.

Wizards sought him out specifically for the technique he had used to incarnate Timmon and Benen traded it for any spell the other knew that was unknown to him, no matter how trivial.

They would react in one of two ways when he agreed to trade his knowledge for less than its true worth. The most common reaction was to try to give Benen something more in exchange. This was awkward for Benen since few of the wizards knew more than one spell of interest to him.

This exchange with Master Coll was typical of this kind of reaction:

“Surely you will want more than my scrying technique in exchange for your ghost embodiment directions . . . let me teach you a brilliant spell using the Cleaver, I call it —” Benen had interrupted the man, he knew more about using the Cleaver than any two masters.

“There is no need, Master Coll. Scrying is more valuable to me than you suspect. It is I who is getting the better deal.” Benen had found that this sort of answer was the most effective. Wizards he told such lies to thought that Benen was either a fool or that he had some special use for the spell they were trading.

The less common reaction to his underpricing of the ghost incarnation technique was suspicion. The wizard would doubt Benen was teaching him the whole procedure or that it worked at all.

Master Bolger was the worst such case.

“What do you mean you accept?” Bolger asked incredulously.

Benen had not been sure how to deal with the wizard. He tried: “I mean that the deal is acceptable to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I
really
want to learn your technique for magically creating fireworks.”

“But that makes no sense. It’s a lark, that effect. Surely you would want more if your technique worked.”

“I assure you it works.”

“The word of a journeyman? Worthless.”

“But the court accepted the technique as valid proof that I had managed to incarnate a ghost.”

“But is what you’ll teach me the same thing you taught them? Or will you only give me a part, reserving the rest for when I have another spell to trade to make up the difference?”

“Even if that were the case, the amount you will have learnt will be worth the trade, will it not? You have nothing to lose.”

“So you admit it! You
are
only teaching me a part of the technique!”

Benen had to abandon his attempts to convince Master Bolger, but others of his ilk eventually accepted the trade despite their suspicions.

These difficulties aside, Benen managed to share the technique with most who attended the conference. By the end of the first day of the moot, Benen had learnt more novel magical effects than he had in years of working under Oster.

The moot was to go on for another three days, with lectures, more trading, and more cases being tried by the justices, but after his own trial and one day of mercantile trading for magical knowledge, Benen had had enough. He bid farewell to the many new acquaintances he had made and flew back to his own territory.

One of these new acquaintances, Brooke, a former apprentice of Mellen, would be coming to his domain after the moot to find the gifted child and apprentice them. Benen had liked the easy-going Brooke and her connection to Mellen recommended her to him.

Upon his return home, Benen felt reinvigorated. He had found out so much in trading at the moot that he felt he needed to digest what he had learnt, but already he could see how he could combine some of this new knowledge with what he had known before to create other new and interesting effects.

It is a shame that we do not cooperate more,
Benen thought.
We could have unravelled the secrets of the universe by now if we shared everything freely with one another.

CHAPTER 6: BROTHER

Benen began testing the spells and techniques he had picked up at the moot shortly after his return home.

One of the spells he was most eager to try out was
scrying
. This form of magical spying was of great interest to Benen for its potential as a means to observe his family and their descendants from time to time. He wanted to keep some modicum of a connection to that long ago world of his childhood and hoped this would serve.

The wizard who had traded the technique to Benen at the moot had explained that scrying did not work on fellow wizards without fulfilling additional requirements. Among these extras were such things as blood and hair of the wizard targeted by the scrying. This was of no interest to Benen: his intended targets would be of the mundane persuasion.

He found that scrying on an individual person was difficult. The two constellations used for the spell when the target was a human being — the Parallels and the Builder — were only in the sky together for a small window of time each day. This was the variation of the spell that had been taught to Benen and he spent some effort trying different possible combinations to find a means of scrying on a
location
instead of a person to remove this problem. In the end, he found that using the Parallels in combination with the moon did the trick; it was much more convenient.