Broken Rule | Chapter 27
This post is chapter twenty-seven of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on Steemit.
The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Master Wizard Jonas Terra was finding it easier and easier to be Master Sculptor Tymon Wallace. Duchess Suzana seemed to enjoy his company, and although the food and wine weren't as luxurious as he had enjoyed from his previous patrons he found that the pleasant company more than made up for it. He had never paid so much attention to people before, at least not this way. Jonas had always been focused on what people thought or what they would do, and never focused on people seen as things, as objects to be studied and copied. To see how a body moved, how a head held this way or that could convey a different mood, or an arm held this way or that could tell a story. To capture the likeness of a person with his spell he had to study every inch of her. It relaxed him in a way that few things had. It didn't hurt that the person he was studying was Suzana.
Jonas had worried that Benedek would send him away when he returned, dismiss a sculptor as a frivolity. But Benedek seemed far more tolerant than Jonas had expected, more willing to accept the idea that having an artist about to capture his wife's beauty was a sound idea. Indeed, Benedek now spent nearly as much time wandering about the growing sculpture garden as he did riding about inspecting his fruit trees. Sometimes he simply sat and watched Jonas work, admiring his wife and the twin that Jonas was coaxing from the stone. Jonas was puzzled at first, but then realized that the duke had simply accepted the notion of retirement. Accepted the idea that his work was done, and now was the time to enjoy the fruits of his labors.
Jonas was also worried that Benedek would detect the growing feelings he had for Suzana and accuse him of some lecherous intent, but nothing like that happened. Benedek seemed awkward around his wife and preferred to watch her from afar rather than talk to her. Jonas could feel the stress this put on Suzana. He could feel how hard she was struggling to be the woman the duke expected her to be, struggling for his approval. Jonas suspected that her struggles were unnecessary. Benedek had buried two wives before, and he was now too old and set in his ways to build a new relationship with Suzana. He could admire her, even want her to be happy, but Jonas was skeptical that Benedek would ever truly love her. He might even want someone else to give her the love that he couldn't. That was a dangerous theory to test, though. Benedek may have mellowed, but he was still a proud man and would not want to be shamed with rumors of an unfaithful wife. Besides, Jonas's reading of Benedek's demeanor might be more wishful thinking on his part.
In preparing for his role as a master sculptor, Jonas had realized that artists had a reputation for being moody. He cultivated this aspect of the character he created, so no one questioned it when Jonas would declare that he lacked inspiration on one day or complained about the weather on another. The duke and duchess were content to let him retire to his room on those days. Jonas would use this time to continue Rurik's training in magic. In some ways the lessons were even more invigorating than his sculpting or his interactions with Suzana. Every time he tried to start teaching one of the lessons his own master had used with him they seemed inadequate, so he improvised. He suspected he was learning nearly as much as the boy, learning new ways to think about what he was doing when he cast a spell, new ways to think about what a spell was doing to the world.
The lines of inquiry suggested by Jonas's new way of thinking didn't seem entirely practical. Rurik still seemed unable to comprehend some of the things that were becoming obvious to Jonas. Rurik wasn't able to tell which syllables spoke most strongly to the stone as it was, and which spoke to what the stone could be, or why some syllables could be used to form the words of a spell, and why others couldn't. Jonas wasn't able to reliably do it himself yet, either, but now he was confident that he would be able to do it. Confident that there was something there, some truth hidden away, something that he was brushing with his fingertips but couldn't quite yet grasp. Hard and soft, strong and weak. Were there other things he could do with stone? Had his own master thought about magic this way, or were these new inventions of Jonas's own?
"Today is too hot for sculpting," Jonas had said to the duchess at breakfast, but he was having second thoughts about teaching the day's lesson in magic. The room he and Rurik had taken over in the servants' quarters seemed to be doing double-duty as an oven in the late summer sun. Still, with all of the servants working and unlikely to overhear, it was an ideal setting for secretly teaching magic. Jonas hoped that the two of them would forget about the heat once they got going. Jonas had been contemplating some new ideas while he was crafting statues the past few days, and was eager to try them out.
Rurik was less eager. “Master, I don't understand these new spells. At least you've shown me that the hardness and softness spells work.”
“There was a time when you scoffed at my stone strengthening spell, and wanted something more impressive. Do you remember that?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, when we figure out these spells, it will be more impressive. More useful.”
“What do you mean when we figure out these spells? I thought you knew these spells already.”
“If I knew the spells already, I would show you the results. But isn't it more exciting to know that there's a spell there, if only you can figure it out?”
“No.”
Jonas laughed. “I guess it might not be for you, but it certainly is for me. Now, no more backtalk, try something new and see if it works.” He himself held two stones together. His inability to strengthen all of the walls back at Castle Thornwood had been nagging at his mind. Cracks and fissures in the rock had always been beyond him, but weren't cracks and fissures common features in stone? Why should they be beyond his power?
He wanted to fuse these two stones into a single stone, somehow knew that it could be done, but hadn't quite figured out the knack. The two stones had different pitches, for one thing. How should he account for that in his spell? Should he only try to enspell one stone at a time? And the edges of the stones were rough, they wouldn't form a smooth bond like two halves of a split stone, or like the dressed stones of a wall. Should that matter? In some ways it seemed very important, but in others it seemed like a trivial distinction.
He found the pitch for one stone, then the other. But neither seemed adequate. How could he cast a spell on two stones at once? They weren't even connected by the mortar and filler that a stone wall would have. But he didn't want two stones, did he? He wanted a single stone, of which these were just two halves. That stone was the one he must enspell, the one that didn't exist yet, except in his mind. Seen that way, this was no different from his other spells. The world believed that there were two stones, when really there should be only one. Was that so great a difference? He found the pitch of the stone, and began reciting the Minauran alphabet. He held in his mind the image of the stone as he wished it to be, smooth and whole, a fusion of the two halves. At the barest edge of his magical senses, he felt the tug of the syllables toward the image he had in his mind. He concentrated on those, going over them again and again. And between those, the pull was stronger among some than others. He began changing the order of his recitation, and sometimes the response seemed even more powerful. Before his eyes the stones began to change. The edges between the stones began to soften, like melted wax, but stayed cool to the touch. The stones in his hand, which had been resisting him as he squeezed them together began to yield. The rough gap between them shrank and then disappeared. Jonas stopped chanting and looked at his handiwork. Aside from the unusual shape, the new stone appeared solid, as if it had never been separate.
Rurik had been watching the entire time. “Master, that's amazing. Maybe we could gather up all the scraps from the statues and combine them together, so we don't need to go all the way to the quarry to get another block for the next one.”
The wizard smiled. “You see, I told you it would be more impressive. Now hand me that other rock, and let's see if I can do it again. And if it works, I'll try to teach you.” But Jonas was already thinking deeper thoughts, wondering about the implications of what he had done. Fusing the stones was indeed useful, but as they had been fusing, each of the stones had changed shape. Only slightly and only at the edges, but he had changed the shape of solid, unyielding stone with the power of his magic. Whole new avenues of experimentation seemed to be opening up in front of him.