John Dalmas - The Lion of Farside

He laughed out loud. "But you're not sure I will, because I sent you to the militia. Well. I'll be happy to. But first, tell me what magicks you've demonstrated since I saw you last."

I did, not leaving out about my new teeth, though I could hardly take credit for them. It'd been Varia's spells, and from there, my jaws had taken over. I told him the luck I'd had with the healing he'd taught me, him and Omara, and about learning to keep myself warm. And about looking into the eye holes in that skull on the headwaters of the Tuliptree; to me that was bigger magic than the way I'd killed Quaie. "I guess when I was here before," I said, "I wasn't really ready to learn much."

Arbel laughed, then we sat around and talked about different things. He'd found an apprentice he liked-a twelve-year-old girl with a lot of talent, who went home before supper. That was the disadvantage of having a young girl as an apprentice, he said; you couldn't very well keep them around in the evening. Folks might get the wrong idea.

Ozians are pretty free and easy, but they don't put up with a man humping children. The punishment is, they tie you up, set you astraddle of a log, nail your cod to it, stack wood around you, and put a dull knife in your free hand. Then they light the wood. If you saw off your cod, you're a castrate, and a slave into the bargain. If you don't, you won't suffer very long, but it might seem like it.

Hauser wasn't talking, just listening, and anyway, his face, and the way he sat, and his aura all told me he was looking in, not out. It came to me that what I'd said about going back to Farside must have hit him hard. I could go because I had ylvin blood, and talent, and some training, while he didn't and couldn't.

While I was at it, I told them about other magicks I'd seen, like Kittul Kendersson "blessing" my sword, and weaving a spell so the dead dwarves wouldn't swell and stink. And about the Sisters that went with the army to heal wounds, and Quaie's shock fingers he'd used on me.

I also told him what Omara said about keeping warm by drawing heat from what she called the "Web of the World," and the dangers in learning it. That really got Arbel's interest. He said he was going to try working it out for himself.

He also told me that magic misused, even accidentally, kicked back on the magician sooner or later, and that big magic was at least as dangerous to the user as to anyone else. There'd been folks who'd set out to develop really big powers, but they died in the process.

After a while it got late, and Arbel put me up in a small guest room with a clean straw sack on the bed. I stripped, put on my nightshirt and lay down, wishing Omara would come through the door like she had at the palace. How I felt about her wasn't anything like I'd felt about Varia or Melody, but I liked her a lot. She was a good person, and just then I was lonesome, in spite of being in the same house with two old friends, and another probably perched on the roof beside a chimney.

I thought about Hauser, too. I could stay in Yuulith and be a bigshot if I wanted, in Tekalos or at the Cloister, and probably in Oz or other places. Or be Wollerda's ambassador at Duinarog. But instead I was going back to Farside, to the farm. While Hauser could probably be a professor on Farside, but in Oz he was a slave. Couldn't go back, even if they'd let him.

Then I got thinking about the dangers Arbel had mentioned in big powerful magicks, and told myself I better be careful with fireballs. Sarkia was supposed to have practiced magic for two hundred years and stayed young and healthy. And was only now declining; something I wouldn't mention to Arbel. But from what I'd heard about Ferny Cove, from some Kormehri and from Sarkia herself, she hadn't used magicks for weapons, only for protection-confusion spells, invisibility spells, spells to raise fogs and mists. And tracking magic. Things like that. Maybe magicks like those didn't kick back on a person.

What with all the thoughts running through my head, I must have laid there an hour before I got to sleep.

The next day my lessons started. Like before, Arbel said I should do other stuff too, to keep grounded, and offered to get a slave girl sent in for me once a week, like he did for himself. I was tempted, but instead, for a few mornings, I saddled up Hog and rode around the countryside a couple hours. Then I took a notion to train with Isherhohm's militia veterans on Six-Day afternoons, for the exercise and to keep my hand in. They'd nearly all of them been in the war, and I'd been the commander, but Isherhohm treated me like just another veteran.

The morning after the first workout, I was sore all over, really sore! I'd gone soft! Never thought that could happen to me. So I started taking an ax and trotting out to the woods in the morning, where I'd cut logs and firewood for a couple hours.

I'd figured Blue Wing had come along mainly to see someone go through a gate, but he told me it was because Melody and I had gotten to be his best friends, and now she was gone, and pretty soon I'd be. Whatever. In Oz he didn't hang around close all that much, any more than he had on the farm. He even flew west once to visit Maikel. Anyway I set it up with the local butcher to keep him supplied with cutting scraps that otherwise would have gone to the hogs or the dogs. Most of our talking got done in the woods, where he'd drop in on me pretty often. But he'd be gone days at a time.

Cutting wood, I'd take a few minutes every day to practice throwing the ax at a tree. And the knife Arbel gave me when I went off to the Heroes. Stuck them better than ever, which made me wonder if magic played any part in it.

Whatever. Trotting and chopping every day made me feel good; toughened me and gave me more energy. And the lessons went really well, a lot better and faster than when Arbel had tried teaching me before. My very first day back, he'd said I was already better than lots of shamans-a late starter but fast learner. Kerin, his real apprentice, was bright and sharp, and already getting tall, but kid-skinny. And dark, with big, bright, dark eyes, a sharp curved nose like an Aye-rab, and a little narrow mouth. Lots of times he'd just give her something to do and leave her to do it, while he worked with me. I felt a little awkward about that, but he said he had years to work with her, while I wanted to be on my way. No later than Four-Month, I'd told him. Part of what he had Kerin doing was preparing dried herbs for him; and practicing to read and write, which lots of Ozians could barely do; and practicing ceremonial magic that could be used to bring rain or cancel curses-things like that. I didn't figure to learn either one; I didn't much believe in curses or rain spells. Arbel didn't seem to make much of them either, but if Ozians did, I suppose he had to go through the motions.

He took a different approach with me than before. I'd told him how Varia had taught me meditation, which she'd set me up for early on by spelling me. So he tried teaching me stuff when I was in a meditation trance, and liked how it worked. Better than just spelling me, he said, because under a spell you're less doing than being done to, while in a meditation trance you did it yourself. A matter of self-responsibility, he said.

Right from the start I did a fair job of healing injuries. Arbel was famous for his healing, and folks came or got brought to him from miles around. One guy he worked with me on had split his foot with an ax, and another'd got slashed in a knife fight, and a little girl had fallen in her ma's cookfire. Mostly what he did was refine, and strengthen quite a bit, what I could already do for wounds like those. Taught me to focus better.

Except for the little girl that fell in the fire: I didn't know anything about healing burns; all I could have done was use a sort of general spell that would give relief from the pain, and speed the healing some. He showed me things just for burns.