‹ Prequel: Ninety Days of Water
Status: Active.
Tundra
Chapter III – Ill Tides – Part II
The night air evoked recollections around the Tower, whose windows were dark or blinded by ivy even though it was cold. We lit few candles, to conserve the precious whale fat we had to bargain with the Seafarers for. Mages of all kinds bustled around the few burning lights, threadbare and fraying like dusky moths. They dressed in all colours. There were some who wore academic black, apprentice brown or the various graduate colours. Others donned the liquid blue of Lightshale, uncharacteristically trimmed with grey wolf pelts or silver seal fur. Still more wore the bright reds and ochres of Firepeak in the Ecru mountains, or robes adorned with moons, stars and symbols of their own creation. On a night like that night, all remembered where they had come from before they had travelled to the far north, to take up the blank banner.
I sat alone by a windowsill, friendless as most were in their pupillage. I was dressed in my usual dark raiment, but no handprint of the Blackmouth Order clasped my skin. Beside me was a long-haired mage whom I recognised by the burns and callouses on his huge, careworn hands as an Ecru Geomancer. Balancing a pencil with surprising precision, he was drawing a chart, mapping the site of an earthquake that had just rippled through the tundra, in the direction the mammoth riders were headed. Disposing of the book I had been handling –in vain search of some commentary on fungus giants, for I was certain that that was what I had seen– I interrupted him.
‘Have you been out there?’ I asked.
He only laughed. ‘A mage leave the Tower of the Art?’ No doubt he took me by my garments, as many do, for a Blackmouth scholar hell-bent on book learning and uninitiated in wider worldliness. He could not have known how early I left that place, for my sleeves were down over my forearms where a brand might be.
‘I went out last night,’ I told him, ‘on a mammoth caravan, headed north.’
He looked surprised, ‘Well, maybe it is not so impossible,’ he confessed. ‘I plan to head out tomorrow morning, to investigate the site of the quake. Perhaps some rarer rocks have been unearthed. It is crucial that we get to them before the pillagers, those scum among Seafarers. The site is near the shore, after all, and they will be hungry for gold.’
I ignored this racist assumption, not least because there was some truth in it. ‘Would you mind if I came with you?’ I asked.
The robust mage guffawed again. ‘A Runecaster like you?’ he posed. ‘What could you possibly offer me? You’d best stick to your grimoires, and find your own studies to do.’
I leaped in with a retort. ‘What harm could I possibly do?’
But the mage was unfriendly, turning his back to me as he hunched back over his precious chart. ‘That’s for you to figure out.’
I turned back to my books, carrying them far away from the niches occupied by my peers. Climbing the library stairs, I made my way to the very top of the tower, where I could be alone with the gargoyles. There, I propped my beastiary up on a wooden lectern, one of the ancient ones with a single, gnarled foot in place of a pedestal and scaly wings for holding pages. A Firepeak dragon breeder’s motto was carved across its centre– Let your mind soar.
I sat alone by a windowsill, friendless as most were in their pupillage. I was dressed in my usual dark raiment, but no handprint of the Blackmouth Order clasped my skin. Beside me was a long-haired mage whom I recognised by the burns and callouses on his huge, careworn hands as an Ecru Geomancer. Balancing a pencil with surprising precision, he was drawing a chart, mapping the site of an earthquake that had just rippled through the tundra, in the direction the mammoth riders were headed. Disposing of the book I had been handling –in vain search of some commentary on fungus giants, for I was certain that that was what I had seen– I interrupted him.
‘Have you been out there?’ I asked.
He only laughed. ‘A mage leave the Tower of the Art?’ No doubt he took me by my garments, as many do, for a Blackmouth scholar hell-bent on book learning and uninitiated in wider worldliness. He could not have known how early I left that place, for my sleeves were down over my forearms where a brand might be.
‘I went out last night,’ I told him, ‘on a mammoth caravan, headed north.’
He looked surprised, ‘Well, maybe it is not so impossible,’ he confessed. ‘I plan to head out tomorrow morning, to investigate the site of the quake. Perhaps some rarer rocks have been unearthed. It is crucial that we get to them before the pillagers, those scum among Seafarers. The site is near the shore, after all, and they will be hungry for gold.’
I ignored this racist assumption, not least because there was some truth in it. ‘Would you mind if I came with you?’ I asked.
The robust mage guffawed again. ‘A Runecaster like you?’ he posed. ‘What could you possibly offer me? You’d best stick to your grimoires, and find your own studies to do.’
I leaped in with a retort. ‘What harm could I possibly do?’
But the mage was unfriendly, turning his back to me as he hunched back over his precious chart. ‘That’s for you to figure out.’
I turned back to my books, carrying them far away from the niches occupied by my peers. Climbing the library stairs, I made my way to the very top of the tower, where I could be alone with the gargoyles. There, I propped my beastiary up on a wooden lectern, one of the ancient ones with a single, gnarled foot in place of a pedestal and scaly wings for holding pages. A Firepeak dragon breeder’s motto was carved across its centre– Let your mind soar.