“No - it doesn’t work like that,” the professor answered. “Just make sure that when you’re casting your enchantment that you are imagining the draw, and the enchantment will follow your leading.”
Professor Worrick must have spotted Gaspi’s uncertainty. “You’ll be fine, Gaspi,” he said with confidence. “Some of your recent spell work has been as sophisticated as it is powerful, and adding a draw is well within your abilities.”
“Thanks sir!” Gaspi said, sure now that he knew what he needed to do a good job of it.
“You’re welcome,” the professor answered. “Just promise me you’ll show me the staff once you’re done.”
“I promise,” Gaspi said cheerfully, and with that he took his leave.
Gaspi met with Jonn that night at the barracks to tell him about his plan for Taurnil’s Nameday. Jonn wasn’t on duty, so they went to a café near the city gate, and sat in the warm spring sunshine. Winter had been well and truly pushed out the back door now, and they were able to sit outside on the street and watch the passers by. Over a cup of bitter coffee, Gaspi explained what he had in mind for Taurnil’s present.
“That’s a great idea Gasp,” Jonn said, clearly approving. “I’ve never seen anyone work so hard in training, and Taurn still prefers the staff over other weapons.” Jonn scratched his chin. “In fact, that helps me with my own present.”
“Really?” Gaspi asked.
“Well, you won’t be able to use his weapons as they are city property, and you definitely can’t afford a new one. If I buy him a decent staff from a weaponsmith you can do…whatever you do to it, and we’ll give it to him together. What do you think?”
Gaspi grinned. “Sounds good,” he said.
“So, if you magic up this staff,” Jonn asked, “will it really hit more forcefully than a normal weapon?” Jonn seemed intrigued by the possibility.
“It’s called ‘enchanting’. And yeah, that’s the idea,” Gaspi said. “I don’t know how well it will work out, though. It could go horribly wrong, and Professor Worrick says I will be exhausted for days afterwards.”
“Is that dangerous?” Jonn asked quickly.
Gaspi knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t that long ago when casting a spell had drained Gaspi so badly he’d nearly died in Jonn‘s arms. “Professor Worrick would have said if there was any danger. But I’ll check, if you like?”
“Please do, Gaspi,” Jonn said, then sat back again, allowing himself to relax. He took a deep breath, and let it out in a contented sigh.
“You seem happy, Jonn,” Gaspi said. In all the time he’d known Jonn, his guardian had been a bit of a loner. Oh he cared about Gaspi, for sure, but Jonn kept a lot of private pain to himself, and preferred to be alone most of the time. Gaspi knew it was to do with the loss of his wife and Gaspi’s parents, both killed in the same tragic attack by thieves in the forest, and had often thought that maybe Jonn blamed himself for not being able to protect them. But since coming to Helioport, Jonn seemed like a different man.
Gaspi saw him a couple of times a week, usually with Emmy and their friends, but occasionally they caught up like this – just the two of them – and Gaspi loved those times especially.
“Happy?” Jonn mused. “Yes, I suppose you can say that I am.” Gaspi sat attentively, hoping Jonn might say more.
“I’ve been thinking,” Jonn continued after a minute’s pause, “that living in the village wasn’t doing me any good. Too many memories,” he said quietly, falling back into his old brooding manner. He caught himself and snapped his attention back to Gaspi. “I’ll never forget your Da, nor your Ma. And most of all I’ll never forget Rhetta,” he added emphatically. “But being here has shown me that I still have a life to live. Being a guard is a good thing for me, Gasp. I’m part of something, doing something really useful. And besides, I need to be here for you lot.”
It was unlike Jonn to reveal so much of himself, and Gaspi could tell the revelation was at an end. Jonn took a sip of his drink, and resettled himself in his seat. “Now about that staff…”
Chapter 29
Gaspi opened his eyes, focussed and restful after a particularly deep meditation. He sat alone in Voltan’s office, which his mentor had loaned to him for the afternoon, and the object of his attention lay on the desk before him. It was a sturdy length of polished ash wood, its naturally light shade deepened by layer upon layer of resin, rubbed into the wood to treat it and make it both stronger and more flexible. Its golden colour was made even more attractive by the appealing grain of the wood; sinuous lines of deeper colouration snaking along the length of the staff. It was thick enough to be sturdy and slender enough to be light, and each end was capped by finely wrought metal fastenings. Jonn had explained that ash was a hardwood, providing natural force, but was more supple than oak, and would not break easily. Gaspi thought it was perfect.
Before attempting the enchantment, Gaspi spent a few minutes in a restful state, and, coming out of his meditation, he felt ready to give it a try. Magic was gently flowing through his body, tingling at the fingertips he reached out to take hold of the staff. He placed it on his lap, curling his hands round the smooth wood, and let himself imagine. He imagined it striking an enemy, drawing power from the very earth beneath the wielder, from soil and stone, enhancing its force and impact and making it hard to break. He released magic into both his fantasy and into the staff, tying the two together and forging the ordinary wood into something else altogether, infusing it with the mandate of his vision. Gaspi spoke to the staff to trigger the release of magic – “Be strong!”
Gaspi knew he was in some way successful as he felt power pour from him into the staff, leaving him weakened, but nowhere near incapacitated. Gaspi thrilled in the moment, letting the magic continue to fill him as he imagined Taurnil using the now enchanted staff against an enemy. Without consciously doing so he called to mind the demon that had attacked him on the journey to Helioport, his imagination placing Taurnil in combat with such a creature, defeating it with raw power.
Suddenly, Gaspi was channelling a riotous flood of energy, coursing violently through his fingers into the wood. The staff flared with a bright, almost blinding, blue light, as Gaspi felt his strength drain to dangerously low levels. He tried to let go but the spell had him in its grasp, taking his energy with it. Just as spots began to dance in front of his eyes, the light emanating from the staff flared even more brightly for a final moment, then winked out as if it had never been, leaving Gaspi holding an ordinary-looking piece of wood. His breathing was ragged, his heart labouring in his chest for a moment, before stuttering and resuming a normal rhythm.
The door burst open, and Voltan ran into the room. He looked round hurriedly and, seeing Gaspi, strode over to him and picked up the staff. “What on earth did you do?” he asked. Gaspi shrugged weakly. Voltan looked at him anxiously. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I felt a deep surge of power.”
Gaspi croaked as he tried to speak, forced himself into a more upright position, and tried again. “Something unexpected happened,” he said. “I was enchanting it to hit harder, and then I imagined Taurnil fighting with it, and something else happened.”
“Something else?” Voltan asked, the sharpness of worry replaced by a kind of intense focus, a professional interest.
“The staff glowed brightly. Really brightly. I could barely look at it.”
“Mmm,” Voltan murmured to himself, lifting the staff up to his eyes and turning it around, looking at it from every angle. “Well, whatever you did, this staff is now holding some kind of powerful enchantment.” He handed it back to Gaspi. “Your friend is lucky indeed to have a Nature Mage for a friend.” Sensing dismissal, Gaspi tried to push himself out of the chair, but fell back on the first attempt. “You really put everything into it, didn’t you?” Voltan asked rhetorically, as he helped Gaspi out of the chair.
“It looks that way,” Gaspi said wearily. Voltan insisted on taking him to the infirmary just to have the Healers check him over, leaving Gaspi there to rest up. Despite his exhaustion, Gaspi couldn’t help feeling pleased with himself. He was surprised he felt so drained, but also very pleased he’d done what he set out to do. The staff was almost certainly going to hit hard, but then there was the second part of the enchantment too. It would hopefully be something even better than adding force to the strike. One thing was for certain: Taurnil was going to love it!
It turned out that Gaspi had weakened himself much more than he’d expected. Five days later he was still weak as a kitten, and had to spend most of the day lying down. Since the day Voltan had moved him to the infirmary, Gaspi had only been out for meals and classes. In class, Gaspi felt like a prize idiot. Emelda had found a special chair for him that was somewhere between an armchair and a bed, and although anything was better than staring at the ceiling in the infirmary, the sniggers of the other students, and especially Ferast and Everand, occasionally provoked him to anger. Every time they started he thought about the staff he’d enchanted and how much Taurnil would love it, and sometimes that helped calm him down. When that didn’t work he thought about what Hephistole had said about being a peacemaker, and when that didn’t work he just lay there, quietly seething. After class and in the evening he’d take a brief walk to the refectory where he sat upright just long enough to get some food down, before his friends helped him back to his bed.
It could have been worse, he supposed, as he lay once more in his infirmary bed. Emmy and Lydia had practically moved into the infirmary, and Taurnil came when he could - this night was no exception. Taurnil had brought some painted squares of card from the barracks, and was teaching them a game the soldiers played when they were off duty. The aim of the game was to swap the cards dealt to you with others from the deck to make combinations of colours and shapes that were worth different numbers of points. It was a game of luck but the rules made it fairly complicated, and Gaspi found he really enjoyed it. Of course he’d much rather be kicking a football, or whacking a Koshta seed. Koshta! Gaspi hadn’t thought of it in some time, and found himself longing wistfully for a set of skates and an icy pond, and for legs that would hold him upright for more than a few minutes as well!
Taurnil interrupted his musings. “So, for the last time, Gasp, are you going to tell me how you got like this?”
“Nope,” Gaspi said with a grin. It was something Taurnil had asked him every day since the enchantment, and winding his friend up was one of the few compensations for being so incapacitated. “If you just wait till Feast-Day, it’ll all be made clear.”
Taurnil screwed his face up in thought. Gaspi didn’t think that Taurn would assume it had anything to do with his Nameday, even though it fell on this coming Feast-Day. “Why Feast-Day?” Taurnil asked. “Bah!” he said in disgust when he got no answer. “You’re not going to tell me, so why bother? I give up!”
Lydia let out a rich laugh, and smoothed the hair back from Taurnil’s forehead. “Now, now, Taurnil dearest,” she said teasingly. “Don’t be so demanding.”
Taurnil immediately lost his frustrated expression, driven to a kind of slavish distraction by Lydia’s touch. Gaspi wanted to laugh at the asinine look on his friend’s face, but he held back. He and Emea had been together longer than Taurnil and Lydia, but he still managed to look pretty stupid often enough. Emea, on the other hand, was less restrained and laughed her tinkling laugh, a sound that Gaspi adored. He caught himself staring at her and, realising he must look something like Taurnil had a moment ago, let out a barking a laugh of his own.
“What’s funny, Gasp?” Taurnil asked, his guileless face framed by freshly tousled hair.
“Dunno mate,” Gaspi answered, breaking into an extended fit of giggles. Emea started giggling too when Gaspi kept chortling to himself, and even Lydia seemed to catch the bug. It wasn’t long before they were falling about laughing for no apparent reason, until tears were streaming down Gaspi’s face. It took a while to stop, but eventually they’d calmed down to the point where a snigger would get them all going again.
Taurnil wiped the tears away from his face with the back of his hand. “Dunno what that was all about,” he said.
“Me neither,” Gaspi said, “but we should do it more often.”
Feast-Day came around, and although Gaspi was feeling a bit stronger, he wasn’t well enough to walk through the city to the barracks. They’d planned to meet Taurnil and Jonn there and spring Taurnil’s Nameday surprise on him, and knowing Gaspi couldn’t make it down in his condition, Jonn had organised for a land-dhow to come and pick them up. A land-dhow was basically a colourful wooden box on three wheels pulled by donkeys. Helioport sat in the middle of the broad flood plain of the river Helia, which meandered in huge lazy swoops across the wide-open stretch of fields that supplied the city’s many inhabitants. In history class they had learned that in ancient times Helioport used to sit right on the ocean, giving it the suffix “port,” but some catastrophic event way in the unrecorded past had caused the sea to retreat and the great city to be landlocked. The river, red with the rich clay of the plain, snaked around the outer curve of the west side of the city, and was its last remaining link to the sea that once surrounded it. Historically there would have been lots of the small sea craft known as dhows plying their trade in Helioport’s waters, but now traffic along the river was vastly reduced, and there were many more land-dhows than their seagoing cousins.
The dhow drew up outside the infirmary, its arrival announced by the loud braying of the donkey pulling it. Gaspi refused to lean on Emea, and walked himself out to the dhow unsupported, lowering himself into its waiting seat with his dignity intact. The young boy who led the donkey flashed a gap-toothed grin at Gaspi, a shining contrast to his well-tanned skin and dark curly hair.
“Huy!” he cried loudly, rapping the donkey smartly on the rear. It brayed and started forward, dragging the dhow into motion with a lurch. Lydia and Emea kept pace with it, chattering excitedly as they walked.