The Last Orellen - Chapter 41: Startled Bird

Yarda’s health was being as well taken care of as it could in this place, and no messages from Arlade Glimont or Zevnie had arrived at the Office of the Post. So Kalen had nothing left to do but settle in.

City life was utterly foreign. He hated almost everything about it except for the bookstore, which he was now hesitant to visit due to the fact that it was run by Acresses. But over the course of the next few weeks, he came to discover that at least one of the things he hated had unexpected benefits.

Nobody cared very much about their neighbors here. There were sometimes folk raving in the street or left to lie in their own filth in the dark, stinking places between the buildings. Kalen had never encountered this before in his village. The few people he’d known in his life who were unable to care for themselves due to some misfortune had all been watched over by others. He was shocked and disgusted by it. And also confused about what he was supposed to do about the situation.

He couldn’t take such people back to the inn with him. He couldn’t feed them all. He didn’t know where their families and friends lived so that he could go and ask them why they weren’t ashamed of themselves.

On their first few days in town, Kalen had slunk around feeling guilty about it. Then he’d lost track of his guilt thanks to his own fear about the leather name bands and his paranoid certainty that everyone in Granslip Port was staring at him. Until, gradually, it had dawned on him that nobody was staring at him.

Because nobody cared about him, either.

In the same way that city people walked right past a sick person begging them for coin, they walked past everyone whose lives didn’t directly intersect with their own. As long as you didn’t deliberately call someone’s attention to you, then it was rarely on you.

This, too, was somewhat baffling. Kalen was used to being watched by any adult in his immediate vicinity—all of them willing to share unsolicited advice if he looked like he needed it, or to report any misbehavior to his mother and father.

Here, in Granslip Port, he was usually invisible.

And upon noticing that, he could finally relax a little.

First thing every morning, often even before the sun rose, he set out to find a new hiding spot for his Ears of the East spying board. Sometimes he used the flags with it, if it was in a place where one wouldn’t be noticed, and other times he just trusted to chance and his own senses for the wind’s direction.

After he’d selected the wonderful magical tool’s new home for the day, he would take a long walk in one of two directions. Either to the main harbor then south, toward a fishing village that had been swallowed by the city years ago to become its own outlying neighborhood. Or east, to a large graveyard for rich people, who seemed to all want to be buried aboveground in little buildings made of the same red stone that had been used for the churches of Clywing and Yoat.

Both of these locations had their advantages and their drawbacks.

The fishing neighborhood was by the sea, with some good shallow places Kalen could use for the new meditation method he’d discovered for himself on Elder Twin island. He would use his thrawning, hold something heavy, sink down below the waves, and there—in the quiet and the darkness—he could finally be alone with just himself and his magic. He would ponder whatever he’d just read in his book, come up for air, and go back down again when he was no longer gasping for breath.

The downsides of the spot were that the wind was almost always wrong for him to pick up voices with Ears of the East. And that he had to get his clothes wet. The area wasn’t crowded, but there were usually people within sight, and apparently boys in Granslip Port didn’t swim naked.

It was absolute nonsense. Men and boys on Hemarland almost always swam naked. Girls Kalen’s age did, too. Older girls and grown women didn’t swim very much, and when they did, they wore underclothes.

Now, having been told-off for offending local sensibilities, it occurred to him that every opinion but his own on this matter was stupid. All people should swim whenever they pleased. And they should be nude for it if they pleased. And they should not be shouted at by prudes.

It was the only fair and convenient way to go about things.

But he was trying not to draw attention to himself, so he just had to put up with shivering around in his cold, wet clothes after his meditation sessions were complete.

The graveyard was more comfortable and usually more private, and it was an excellent place to spy from as far as the wind went. But it was a graveyard, and when people were around, Kalen had to be cautious and avoid them. He didn’t think the dead cared that he hid among them practicing spells, but their living relatives might take exception to it.

All in all, as his first month in the city came to a close, he was satisfied with the routine he’d found. And with his worst fears having ebbed, his focus increased, and he began to advance through Swift Wind Magery at a pace that, while slower than he wished, was not at all disappointing.

In the graveyard one morning, tucked between two of the fancy tombs, Kalen finished mastering his newest spell from the book. He held the internal pathway pattern together, focusing hard on it so that he didn’t lose any of its peculiar little whirling threads, and stood. He peeked around the tombs, making sure he was still alone, and when he’d decided that he was, he stepped out into the weedy corridor between the lines of red stone boxes.

Exactly sixteen paces away, Kalen had made a pile of dirt and grass to serve as his target for this spell.

He was excited to have a target. Casting a spell at something not in his immediate vicinity was new and very magiciany. And he got to draw a pair of runes in the air. Which…reminded him a little too much of that thing he’d done that had blown up the forest, but it was a completely different set of runes. Written in a book. It would be fine.

Pathways flooded, pattern nearly complete, dirt piled nice and high.

Kalen pointed at the dirt pile with the three middle fingers of his left hand, and with his right, he drew the runes in the air as he finished the final intersections of the internal pattern. Magic gushed through his pathways into the pattern. Kalen had the startling impression that his whole mana structure blazed brightly for an instant. He gasped at the intensity of it, and for a split second, in the weeds several paces beyond his dirt pile, he saw a faint flare of prismatic light.

The long grass in that spot whipped around wildly. Many blades tore free and shot up and off in different directions. Some of them even corkscrewed drunkenly through the sky.

Kalen fell back on his butt. Half out of sheer surprise, half because the sudden rush of so much magic from his pathways when he was paying such close attention to them made him a little dizzy.

“Oh, I missed,” he said, blinking.

His target was completely untouched. Mage Batto must have had much longer strides when he was pacing off the distance for the Startled Bird spell than Kalen did. That was an obvious thing to overlook, but Kalen had been so focused on all of the hard, magical parts of his work this morning that he’d just forgotten about the short length of his own legs compared to the average adult’s.

Kalen stood and went to examine the spot he’d hit.

The dry grass and weeds were scrambled. In a couple of places, a tuft had been gouged up, and the matted roots of the grass stuck up in the air. The area he’d hit was around a pace and a half—of his own steps—wide.

Kalen brushed off his pants and considered the spell. Mage Batto hadn’t said what it was for. Only what it did. It made the air move rapidly and chaotically in the targeted area.

That was a lot of magic just for that effect, Kalen thought. I’m not sure why I’d want to use it if I were being practical instead of studying.

Ears of the East was a channeled spell. He could hold the pattern and cast through it for as long as he could keep supplying it with power.

Startled Bird was for single casting. The pattern sort of blew apart when it was finished. The pathways were closer to the right position than usual when it was done, so he could pull it back together again more quickly. But it would still take a couple of minutes. And building it the first time around had taken him three times that long.

I wonder how fast it’s supposed to be, for normal practitioners who don’t have as much trouble with patterns as I do.

The breeze ruffled his hair, and Kalen smiled at it. It was nice and steady today. He climbed on top of the nearest tomb to check one more time that he was all alone, and when he found that he was, he settled in a comfortable position on the ground and checked on his pathways, drawing mana into them until they were full again.

He rewarded himself for his first mostly-successful cast of the new spell by pulling together the pattern for Ears of the East and blowing on his cupped palms lightly. He waited expectantly, and a moment later, the clopping of hooves on cobble-paved streets filled his ears.

In a fit of what he thought was great inspiration, Kalen had wedged his spying board under the driver’s seat of a wagon that spent its days hauling things from the docks to other parts of the city. It would travel around a lot, allowing him to spy on multiple places without moving the board.

The wagon had distinctive flaking red paint, so he thought he could probably find it again in a day or two to reclaim the board. And if not, he could just carve another. It was starting to need a new coat of magepaint anyway.

At the moment, the wagon seemed to be traveling through a busy place. Kalen heard multiple voices talking about the things people commonly talked about. Their ailments, the prices of things, the weather.

Everyone seemed to think it was growing quite cold for this time of year.

Kalen didn’t see what they all had against a nice brisk day.

The horse stopped and Kalen heard the creak of the seat as the driver left the wagon.

“Acresses didn’t think about that happening when they started bribing the little gutter devils with coin, did they?” said a man’s voice.

“I think it’s sad. I think it’s so sad,” said a woman. “Clywing should take pity on them for it. It’s not like they knew. And the solstice choir will be ruined because of it.”

“Ruined? Bah! It will just be children of quality instead. Quite a bit better for it, I think.”

“I feel sorry for them. Look at them all lined up there, and every one of them wearing that bracelet that will have them turned away. For the sake of just those few Orellens the church is keeping out of sight.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” the man said. “The damn practitioners in this country are cozying up to the Leflayn clan like they think Circon’s going to fall to them before the winter’s out. They think we’re as weak to a few magic-flinging warmongers as those lazy asses to the south. The church has the right of it for a change! It’s patriotism!”

“I still feel sorry—”

Their conversation cut off abruptly as they walked out of the board’s range.

The familiar flop Kalen felt in his gut every time the unwanted name was mentioned was almost ignorable compared to his confusion over this conversation. What did the Orellens have to do with a choir?

That was a thing they had at the churches here. A group of people singing to a god. Kalen had gone to services one week because he was wondering if they might be doing the kind of sacred magic Nanu had once told him existed, where a special kind of church practitioner requested things directly from their god with a ritual.

They were not. It was just a bunch of people singing.

Maybe solstice choir is special, and there is magic involved there?

It was just under a month away. There would be a festival for it here. Not like the winter ceremony at home, but it was nice to know they marked the shortest day of the year, too.

And Kalen would finally be twelve.

He dropped his hands and let the graveyard fall back into silence before he could get pulled too deeply into his worries.

Next, he practiced the one other spell he’d mastered from the book so far. Magnify Breath. It was the easiest one he’d learned, and it was satisfying.

You built the pattern, channeled your magic through it, and blew slowly through your pursed lips. And it magnified the breath into a proper wind. An isolated breeze just a couple of feet wide. It was strong enough to blow sand across the floor but not much else. Kalen had used it to sweep the inn’s porch once.

He had the feeling from his reading that there were some nuances he was missing, and the spell was meant as a base for something more. But for now it was just fun to make his exhaled breaths last as long he could so he could watch all of the grass immediately in front of him bend away at his command.He spent the rest of the day alternating between his three new spells. Startled Bird was difficult. To prepare of course, but more than that, it was difficult to aim. It happened a very specific distance away from the caster, with only the directional control provided by the pointed fingers.

One of the parts of the pattern was designated for adjusting the distance, but Kalen didn’t understand how it worked. The author was uncharacteristically uninformative in his explanations there, like it should have been obvious to the reader how you did that to begin with.

When he finally managed to hit his dirt pile with it, though, he did come to a somewhat disturbing conclusion about what it was the spell would actually be good for. Assuming you really were a mage and capable of the quick casting that the book purported to be ideal for.

Kalen walked over to what was left of the mound and examined it. Some of it was unharmed, but part had been blown away, and the top had been knocked off. He had seen it happen. Very strange looking. Like someone had taken a large cleaver, hacked the clod at the top free, and flung it skyward.

“I think,” he said slowly to the empty graveyard, “that this might be a spell for hurting people.”

He looked up at the darkening sky.

There wasn’t much practice time left in the day, and Yarda would worry if he didn’t return to the inn. They always spent the time after dinner composing letters and listening to whatever sounds the spying board was still picking up if it had enough magic left in it.

Pensive, Kalen packed up his bag. He kept glancing over at the pile of dirt.

The shape of the spell effect is a cylinder. Around seven feet tall. A whole person fits inside it.

He did not know what to do with the thought.

#

The next day, Kalen bought a burlap sack full of slightly bruised apples and hauled it all the way to the graveyard. He spent quite a while digging and mounding the grass and dirt up with his hands and the broken board he’d been using as a spade. He piled it against the back of one of the tombs, then set his bag of apples on top until it was just a little shorter than he was himself.

No need to go to all the bother of making it as tall as an adult. But for impact, he did want it to be a bigger target than he’d used yesterday.

He hadn’t found the place within his pathways where Startled Bird fit—that natural home that the two channeled spells, especially Ears of the East, had made for themselves as he poured magic through them. So he built it where he could, drew the runes with his right hand and aimed with his left.

He missed.

He saw the prismatic flash of the gathered magic just infront of his target and heard a couple of strange whistling noises. He thought those might have been part of how the spell got its name.

He strode a single step forward, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, drawing the magic in again.

Remember to enjoy it.

He’d always loved the feel of drawing in more power when he was on Hemarland and it was such a rare opportunity. He didn’t want to lose track of that here and start taking it for granted.

When he was ready, he rebuilt the spell—a hair faster since his pathways seemed to remember the way. Then he cast it again.

The flash, a whistle, the thu-thump-thump-thump of apples spilling onto the ground from a sudden rip in the bag.

One of them flew into the neighboring tomb. Another flew towards Kalen with enough force that he barely dodged in time.

Heart pounding with an energy that came from both his success and the feeling that he might have just done something wrong, he spent a long time analyzing what the spell had accomplished.

Apart from the clean tear in the bag, there were also the apples themselves to consider. Many were completely undamaged. The one that had hit the neighboring tomb had partially burst. A couple were missing pieces, and Kalen had to wander around trying to figure out where they’d flown off to in the grass.

One was cut neatly in half. Another was embedded part way in the dirt mound.

Little streams of wind whistling madly past each other. Hard. Some like fists flying. Some of them like knives.

Kalen crouched down and picked up a large apple cheek that had sailed twenty paces away from his target area. He bit into it while he thought and thought.

It’s a combat spell, but I am not going to win a fight with it. Unless the person is already so badly injured they have to crawl toward me on their belly.

Due to the complexity of his mana structure and the difficulty he had placing his pathways where they belonged without tugging on unnecessary parts of the snarl, the initial cast time was around six minutes. Then he had to draw in more magic.

It took half as much time the second time around, but still…

Kalen finished his apple slice and wiped juice from his chin with the back of a hand.

The wind streams in the spell also seemed to be random. Or at least so complicated that Kalen wouldn’t be able to catalog and predict them without slicing up a lot more targets.

There’s nothing I’m ever likely to do with this, he concluded. Unless I become ten times as fast as I am now.

He knew that in his head. And Kalen liked to think he was mature enough now at almost twelve to listen to his head instead of the sillier parts of himself.

But for some reason, casting Startled Bird made him feel like he wasn’t so helpless before the dark strangeness going on in this place.

So he gave in to the part of himself that wanted to not feel so small, and he stacked his apples up again.

And again.

And again.

Another week passed. Yarda made her third visit to the Acress Enclave, and when she returned, she reported that she had finally gotten to see the sorcerer.

“He says we will be doing some work to strengthen my heart,” she said, beaming at Kalen. “Come next month. He seems a smart wizarn. I do think staying here was the right decision after all.”

She did not ask why Kalen was sitting in the floor of their room eating hunks of smashed, chopped, and slightly dirty bread. It was a regular enough occurrence. One couldn’t just buy food and let it go to waste, after all, and if you added meat drippings and honey to the bread, the dirt was mostly unnoticeable.

“I’m really glad, Yarda,” he said.

“You’re sure you don’t want to try coming to the Enclave again for a look through their books?”

Kalen blinked and looked up from the recording jar he was preparing for them to use for a message home.

“Um…” he said. “I’m really busy with the one I’ve got. And when I’m not, I’m going to be doing something at the churches for the next few weeks. A job.”

Yarda looked startled. Then she let out a hearty laugh. “You’re a priest now!”

Kalen blushed. “No. I heard some people talking about a thing the Church of Clywing was doing, so I went by today to figure out what it was. And when I did, I realized it would be a very good way for me to spend my time. And make some money to replace part of what I spent on the books.”

“You’re one of those people who waves the burning smelly stuff around.”

“The holy perfumers,” said Kalen.

He’d gone this morning merely to satisfy his curiosity. And then he’d gone a little further than he meant to, driven by the appeal of the church’s current political position in opposition to the Acress family and the enthusiasm of a junior priestess who thought he looked “like one of Clywing’s favored waifs.” She’d led him all around the main chapel, explaining religious rituals and pointing out various relics of interest. Including the burners that spread the perfume.

“I’m not one of those either,” he said. He felt his cheeks heat even more. He cleared his throat. “I am the third best singer in this year’s solstice children’s choir.”

Yarda’s eyebrows lifted as high as they would go. The expression on her face was pure delighted shock.

“They said I’d be first,” said Kalen. “And get the boy’s solo parts. But apparently my accent doesn’t quite disappear when I sing. And they want people to know it’s a pair of nice Circonian children leading.”

He was afraid if he dropped the Tiriswaithan rhythm completely to hit the notes they’d asked for, the Hemarland lilt would come out.

“Lander did say I had a nice voice once,” Kalen admitted. “I thought he was teasing me.”

He supposed he had spent quite a lot of time practicing accuracy with his singing. For his cantrips. But it wasn’t like he’d ever had an audience or wanted one.

“What do they pay for you to do a job like that?” Yarda asked in an excited voice.

“They give you a half-silver coin for every third day you go to morning practice,” said Kalen. “And then five on the solstice, when you sing in the chapel all night for the people waiting there for the new day to come.”

It was very good money for a child, and according to the junior priestess, it was meant to be charitable, since in previous years many of the children in the choir had been chosen from the poorer folk in the city. But this year, the Acresses and Clywing were fighting. About the leather bracelets.

So if you were wearing one, you were not allowed to sing.

And because of that, most of the poor children who needed the coin had been left out.

Kalen felt bad for them. But nobody was trying to find and kill them. So it didn’t seem like the right moment to stand for his principles.

“After they listened to me sing, they gave me this,” he told Yarda, holding up his left wrist. A band of smooth white braided string was there, with a silver-painted Clywing charm hanging from it, like the one the postal worker wore on his cap. “They give them to all the members of the choir.”

If you were wearing the nice white braid of Clywing, nobody would ever think it strange that you didn’t have the other bracelet.

Kalen glanced down at it and shoved another piece of bread into his mouth.

“Do you want to listen to Ears of the East with me?” he asked Yarda. “I didn’t use the board much today, so it should still be working.”

She was still grinning like the news of him joining a children’s choir for a god he new almost nothing about was the finest thing she’d ever heard. But at the offer, she nodded and headed over to unlatch their window so Kalen could catch the breeze.

“Where have you hidden it today?” she asked. “Someplace interesting, I hope!”

“I put it under the lip of the porch at that bar where all the sailors go to get drunk.”

“Ah! That’s my favorite!”

“I know.”

Kalen had thought it would be nice since she’d spent the whole day at the hospital. He set aside his dinner and his recording jar, held out his hands, and cast the spell.

The sound of people laughing much too loudly and telling bawdy jokes filled the room.

“Don’t you ever tell your mother we listened to these together,” Yarda said, roaring with mirth and wiping tears from her eyes.

“I’m a good boy,” said Kalen piously. “I go to church now.”