Alastair Archibald - A mage in the making

Dalquist's brow furrowed and Grimm could tell that his friend was struggling to find the right words. "Grimm, I… I do think I comprehend your Magemaster's… ill humour towards you. I will tell you that I do not believe that you have committed any grave offence. However, I can and must say no more.

"Since these… penances are evidently your tutor's will, it would seem best if I we do not converse again for some time. I cannot tell you the reasons for this, but suffice it to say that you will understand in time. Work hard and do as you are bidden. Goodbye, Grimm Afelnor, and be of good heart."

Dalquist turned on his heel and rushed off. "Dalquist, wait!" cried Grimm in anguish, but the mage was already out of sight. He had counted on his oldest friend in the Scholasticate but, now, even Dalquist had deserted him. He had not failed to notice that the Questor had even switched into the starchy, formal Mage Speech, as if to exclude him from any kind of intimacy.

Fighting black despair, Grimm heard a mutter of "Traitor's bastard!" as a missile struck him on the shoulder from behind. He whirled to see a group of sneering younger boys, their faces contorted in hateful sneers. He advanced towards them with menace in his eyes, but they ran away.

"Just leave me alone, or you'll regret it!" Grimm yelled to an empty corridor. He felt a great weight on his shoulders as he trudged disconsolately to his monotonous afternoon session with Crohn.

Fighting to keep his voice clear and level, Grimm ran through the spell of Mage Light for the hundredth time that afternoon but, this time, he found it hard to concentrate. The light flickered, but it died rather than bursting into the luminous globe he had produced in his earlier efforts. Once, Crohn would have expressed solicitous concern for Grimm's health, but, this time, the Magemaster slapped him around the face, hard, and he raged at the Neophyte. Grimm was too stunned to speak. Crohn had never raised a hand to him before.

"Is there any point in teaching you anything, you useless ingrate?" the Magemaster screamed. "Did I spend decades mastering a noble art in order to waste my efforts on an untalented, indolent pauper? You can't get the simplest spell right! Doubtless you find these minor incantations beneath the dignity of such a high and mighty magic-user?"

Grimm began to stammer an apology, astonished at the heat of Crohn's ire, but the tirade continued heedlessly for another ten minutes, brutal and unremitting.

"Get out!" Crohn spat at last, "and do not bother to come back until you have some control over yourself! Look at you now, like a dying duck in a thunderstorm! Pull yourself together and apply yourself, or you will find yourself back in the gutter from which you came! Get out of my sight, you pathetic excuse for a Neophyte, and do not even think of returning until you have improved your attitude!"

A few short weeks before, Crohn had encouraged Grimm's least success. Now, the Magemaster jumped on his slightest error with furious zeal. Time and again, Crohn forced the Neophyte to carry out a simple chant, over and over again, until fatigue or hoarseness prompted a mistake, and then he exploded in a towering rage, which often involved physical violence from his hand, his Mage Staff, or from any other convenient nearby object.

The training sessions now became longer and longer, usually ending only after Grimm had finally made a mistake. It seemed to Grimm that Crohn was deliberately trying to force him into error, so he could load yet further toil onto his pupil's shoulders. Grimm now had almost no spare time, due to all the punishments and extra studies Crohn had imposed on him, and he began to dread the start of each new day.

Shumal and his ilk seemed to revel in finding new ways to humiliate and hurt him, and he slunk through the corridors, trying to cling to the shadows.

Months of pain and anguish passed with dreadful lethargy. Now, Grimm could feel his misery pouring out of him like a thick, black, oily smoke that oozed from his every pore and rolled across the floor in all directions. Could nobody else see this? Why couldn't they leave him alone?

Grimm desired nothing more than to be left in peace in his black cloud, but the animosity and abuse continued unabated and, if anything, increased. The young Neophyte often cried himself quietly to sleep at night and then had dreams in which he was possessed by intense, hysterical, racking jags of tears for no apparent reason. His other dreams were strange and unnerving, involving violence against gangs of faceless mannequins, or where he found himself naked in front of a cackling multitude of mocking children.

Grimm turned fourteen but, instead of the occasion being a day of celebration, it merely blurred into the featureless mass of roiling black smoke, his one constant companion. The daily torrent of depredation continued apace.

Always slender, he had now become emaciated and gaunt, and he flitted like a shadow through the corridors, trying not to be noticed. He often skipped meals, so as to avoid the cruel taunts of the others. In itself, this was an infraction of the Rules, and it often earned him severe punishment from Magemaster Crohn for his transgression. Nonetheless, tempting as it was to surrender to the darkness, Grimm soldiered on for the sake of his sullied family name. Eventually, even that solace was lost to him; he no longer knew what he was doing, or why. He simply was.

The end of a typical day for Grimm:

"Why do I bother with you, idiot? I should be retired by now, living in the comfort that decades of service to my House have justly earned. Instead, I am given the tutelage of a lazy brat who throws my solicitude back into my face!"

"I… I tried, Lord Mage…"

"Look at you now, blubbing like a baby at my great kindness in trying to correct your bumbling errors! My patience is not inexhaustible, Afelnor. If you do not apply yourself more than you have, the scullery awaits you.

"I advise you to think clearly as to where your true vocation lies. Oh, go on, go back to your cell and wallow in self-pity, you useless object. Go away! I have had enough of you for one day."

So it went on.

Crohn sat in the presence of Lord Thorn, disconsolate and tired. Despite his proud boast to the Prelate all those months before, he knew he was getting too old for his role as the enforcer of Grimm's cruel Ordeal.

"How is the boy, Afelnor, coping with his Ordeal?" Thorn asked without the slightest trace of compassion on his face.

"It has been nearly six months now, Lord Prelate. It cannot last for much longer. I have no idea what it is that keeps the boy going."

"Well, let us hope for all our sakes that Afelnor breaks soon," the Prelate said, as if expressing a hope that a period of rainy weather might end soon.

"Not the least for my sake, Guildmaster. I lack the taste for this scientific sadism, applied to a blameless and intelligent youth. Another month of this, and I shall have to stop before I lose my own mind. I cannot bear to visit this treatment on the boy for much longer, whatever the justification for his treatment."

Crohn wiped his brow, his hand trembling. "I cannot find it in my heart to approve of this treatment, whatever the justification. He works so hard, and so well, to gain my least compliment but, instead of praise, I continue to push him until he makes the tiniest mistake, at which point I excoriate him without mercy. This, I must remind you, has been your counsel, Lord Prelate."

"None of us likes this," Thorn said, waving a hand as if shooing away an irritating fly. "Remember that I went through much the same experience many years ago, but it made a Questor of me. Most Readers take decades to reach their full potential, and old men are in no condition to undertake arduous Quests for the House. A Questor is a rare bird, and he can mature in a matter of years. That makes him valuable to the House and the Guild."