Alastair Archibald - A mage in the making

The boy was about to ask how one obtained food in this deserted place, when the large door opened and a boy of maybe fifteen years of age emerged. He was clad in a starched white kitchen suit, and he wore a clean apron and a white cap that struggled with only partial success to retain a mass of unruly, greasy black locks. He sauntered across the floor with no apparent urgency, his head bowed.

Then, he noticed Doorkeeper and hurried across the room to arrive at the table, almost breathless. Bowing his head, he brought a card from his uniform pocket and smartly presented it to the mage. "Lord Mage, what is your pleasure?" he recited in a singsong manner, as if parroting a rote phrase.

Doorkeeper examined the card at some length, yawned and stretched luxuriantly. "I think the roast pheasant stuffed with truffles would be rather nice with wild mushrooms, new potatoes and asparagus spears."

He handed the card back to the boy, who performed an obsequious bow and made to leave. Doorkeeper caught him by the sleeve. "Where are you going, boy?" He spoke with a commanding tone that surprised Grimm with its power. "My companion is also hungry."

The boy stammered, "But Lord Mage, he is just a charity boy, by the look. I assumed that he would be having the standard fare."

"A charity boy he is but, for today only, he dines with me as my guest."

The boy bowed clumsily, handed the menu to Grimm with a perfunctory gesture, and stood before him, arms akimbo… a picture of contempt. Grimm scanned the card with nervousness that approached panic. Turning to Doorkeeper, the boy whispered urgently in the old man's ear, "Doorkeeper, I can't read this; not any of it!"

Doorkeeper nodded, and whispered, "Goodness me; of course! I'm sorry, yes indeed. The menu is written in High Darian, which you will learn soon enough. The rich boys are taught it almost from the time they leave their mothers' knees, as soon as they learn to talk their own languages. It is the tongue of the educated, and I have been familiar with it for so long that I can't remember when I couldn't speak it. As a charity boy, you will have no menu to consult, as there is usually only a single choice."

He turned to the serving boy, who snapped smartly to a stance of attention from his earlier pose of studied, slovenly disdain.

"For my young friend," drawled the major-domo, "how does a dish of roast beef with wild leeks, yams and dumplings sound to you? Good. We'll put some flesh on those skinny bones yet, eh, Grimm?" This last was greeted by Grimm with a nervous smile as he saw the serving boy roll his eyes in a theatrical manner, his face bearing an exaggerated expression of disgust at the old man's charity.

Doorkeeper turned with surprising speed for one so old and bent, and he snapped, "I may not be a bloody Weatherworker or a Shapeshifter, but I am a mage, for all that! I'm not in my dotage yet, young man! Your name is Dortel, isn't it? Have you forgotten that mages all have ten eyes in the backs of their heads?

"While Grimm is with me, you are to treat him with the respect due to the guest of an Acclaimed Mage, or Master Threavel, whom I seem to remember is your supervisor, will hear of my displeasure, and you won't be able to sit for a month! Is that clear to you? Or would you rather feel the sting of my Mage Staff on your backside?"

The boy swallowed, and his face paled. It was plain from his fearful expression that he knew better than to raise the ire of a Mage, even one as lowly as Doorkeeper, especially when that mage knew his identity. Grimm guessed that the serving lad knew Master Threavel's temper only too well, and that the prospect of being submitted to the chef's tender mercies scared him far more than the prospect of being walloped with a mage's Staff.

"It will… it will be as you desire, Lord Mage," the boy stammered. "I had no wish to offend either you or your guest."

As the boy scuttled off to the kitchen, Doorkeeper bellowed, "A goblet of your best Torian Red for me, and a glass of iced lemonade for my companion! You'll know that I'll know if you spit in it or otherwise spoil it, and I'll make you rue the day you were born!"

When the servant had disappeared, Grimm said, "You didn't have to do that for me, Doorkeeper, I'm sure I would have been happy with the ordinary food."

"That wasn't just for your benefit, Grimm. Certainly, I wanted you to have at least one fine meal here. You may not be lucky enough to eat as well again for a long, long time and, in truth, you are a skinny lad; but that wasn't my only reason. That little tyke thinks he's a cut above you charity boys; if there's one thing I can't abide, it's bigotry." He noted Grimm's puzzlement at the last word and added, "Snobbery, that is."

Snobbery was a concept Grimm knew well; he remembered the way rich men often looked at his grandfather when he was shoeing their horses, as if it irked them to have to come into contact with a lowly blacksmith.

The serving boy appeared after a brief interlude, an array of trays and plates balanced in an artful array across his arms. He sped to the table in a graceful glide and laid steaming meals out before Doorkeeper and Grimm, his manners and bearing impeccable. He bowed and rushed away, to return with a silver tray bearing a green bottle, a full goblet of ruby wine and a carafe of iced lemonade with slices of lemon and cracked ice floating on the top.

"That was well done, boy," said Doorkeeper. "You do have talent after all. Remember your manners and you will make more friends and fewer enemies here. You may go." He took a hearty draught from his glass.

With a respectful bow, the boy took his leave with evident relief, as a group of six brown-robed figures rushed in, just before the bell ceased its strange, inaudible tolling. There was a gaggle of boys, presumably charity Students, a tall, skinny, dark-skinned man of maybe forty, whose robes hung slack around his skeletal frame, and two older men, both of whom sported long, grey hair and white beards.

These last two must be mages, or nearly mages, Grimm thought. A long beard seemed an obligatory badge of rank, since all the mages he had met in the House wore one.

One of the grey-haired men had a mottled, discoloured face and scabbed, stained hands. His face, combined with his black, wrinkled robe made him look to Grimm like a prune with legs. The other was ashen, bald and sunken-eyed, his face almost resembling a skull.

Doorkeeper raised his glass to the group and took another long swallow from his goblet.

"Gentlemen, won't you join us in here in the cheap seats," he crowed, "just for a change?"

The older men acquiesced with slightly nervous nods, planting themselves with evident reluctance on the stone benches. The young Students went to a corner table, their continual, impenetrable, loud babble suggesting that they were engaged in some sort of bizarre shouting competition.

"Keep it down, will you, lads? There are civilised people trying to eat in peace here, you know!"

Doorkeeper's stentorian bawl overpowered the din by a considerable margin and hurt Grimm's ears. The boyish racket diminished by the very slightest level, but did not stop.

"Only just in time, eh, Funval?" called Doorkeeper to the brown-skinned man over the boys' clamour, heedless of the fact that his voice was louder than any of theirs. It seemed as if Doorkeeper liked to unwind a little over lunch; Grimm had seen the same effect when Granfer Loras had been sampling the first cider of summer.

"Funval, allow me to introduce our newest Student, Grimm Afelnor. Grimm, this is Funval, an Adept of Herbalism. He is so dedicated to his craft that he often neglects his nutrition in the pursuit of his staff and ring. He's expected to be Acclaimed very soon, after years of diligent study and service, aren't you, Adept Funval?"