Ascendant

The three of them were seated at a table in Cern’s kitchen. It was fascinating to see what his home looked like, if only because it was a bizarre mix of work and personal life. Intricate glassworks filled random counters and tables. Jars and vials were filled with liquids of different colors and thicknesses. There were drying racks for herbs and leather bags full of powders.

All of this shared space with cutlery and flatware. There was old, hard, brown bread on a plate on the table with a half-eaten wedge of cheese. Right next to it was a mortar and pestle full of sparkling green dust. A small wooden bowl of fruit shared counter space with a giant steel funnel that had dried gunk all over the inside.

“You need to hire someone to clean up after you,” Babkin said. “It cannot be sanitary living like this.”

“Bah. They’d just mix everything up and ruin my experiments.” Cern waved a hand at a table over by a window that had been given over to an elaborate contraption that seemed designed to produce a gently fizzing liquid one slow drop at a time.

Babkin grunted and reached up to light his pipe. “No smoking in here!” Cern snapped. The innkeeper just scowled.

“Fine. Now, tell me why you thought it was a good idea to pay a little boy to run errands for you in the forest.”

Cern shrugged. “He’s a mageling. A bit young, but competent. If he gets into trouble, he can just fly away. Plus he already had experience in the forest.”

“You can fly?” Babkin asked, turning in his seat to give Nym a surprised glance. Nym nodded, and he added, “How long? How fast?”

“Maybe twice as fast as I can walk, for about an hour. Or really fast for a few minutes.”

“See, he’s fine!” Cern said.

“Air and water,” Babkin said thoughtfully. “Have you mastered earth and fire too?”

“Not really. I’ve only been practicing for a few months. Not quite two.”

“Wait, what?”

Both men were staring at Nym now. Slowly, Babkin said, “You implied that you don’t have a teacher or master. No formal training. You are self-taught?”

Nym nodded.

“And that you have only been using magic for almost two months. And you are how old?”

“Ten, I think.”

“You don’t know how old you are?” Cern asked.

“I don’t remember anything before a few months ago,” Nym said. “Someone found me washed up on a beach on the coast and took care of me for a bit.”

Nym didn’t want to say more than that. He’d probably already said too much. No one needed to know he came from Palmara, and they especially didn’t need to know why he’d left. He liked Cern, who treated him like an adult, and Babkin was nice in his own way. Neither needed to know that Nym was a murderer fleeing his crime.

“The mystery gets deeper and deeper,” Cern said.

“Indeed. But regardless of his talents, the boy is still too young to go into the forest unsupervised.

“You’re not the boy’s father, Babkin. He can do what he wants, and I can pay him a fair wage if he brings me in things I can use.”

Babkin rose from the table to loom over Cern. “You are correct, of course,” he said. “And if you ever want to taste Shary’s cooking again, you will not buy any of the things Nym finds, and thus he will have no reason to go into the forest looking for them.”

“That’s playing dirty!” Cern cried out. He slammed a hand down on the table and shot to his feet to glare at Babkin, nose to nose.

The burly innkeeper was unmoved. “I am not playing with you.”

The argument devolved from there, but Babkin was unmoving despite Cern’s pleas, arguments, and threats. “Fine,” Cern finally said, “How about if Nym only goes out with my regular group? That way he won’t be out on his own, and he can still fly to get the harder to reach stuff for me.”

“Which group?” Babkin asked. “Therm’s or Risto’s?”

“Therm’s. Risto is completely irresponsible. I couldn’t trust him to look after anybody.”

“That… would be acceptable, I suppose.” Babkin gave Nym an appraising look. “Therm will watch out for you and keep you safe. You will be able to harvest the things Cern needs to run his business. And you will be able to afford food and shelter, and have extra money to expand your wardrobe.”

Cern just sighed. “Therm’s group only goes out twice a month. He’ll come by tomorrow afternoon to get a list of what I’m looking for. Come by then and I’ll introduce you to him. This whole arrangement depends on him agreeing to it. Don’t see why he wouldn’t. He’ll make more money with you along.”

Nym had kept quiet throughout the whole conversation. He wasn’t necessarily happy about the two adults deciding what he could and could not do, but he did want to keep staying at the inn and eating Shary’s cooking, and the work Cern wanted him to do seemed easy enough for the pay. There was just one problem though.

“If they only go out twice a month, and I earned four shims for a trip on my own, how am I supposed to make enough to afford to stay at the Trough and Saddle?” he asked.

The alchemist opened his mouth, thought for a second and closed it again. He turned to look at Babkin and said, “He’s got a good point. You’re the one who’s got a problem with this. How do you expect him to pay for room and board if you won’t let him work?”

“I didn’t say the boy couldn’t work. I said it was too dangerous for him to be roaming the woods all day long every day. I can find the occasional odd job for him and I’m sure a smart lad like him will find plenty of people who need an odd job done around town.”

It seemed the matter was settled between the two men, all without Nym’s input or his wishes considered. To say that he was not impressed with the whole thing would be a gross understatement.

* * *

Shary had a plate of food ready for Nym when they got back to the Trough and Saddle. Somehow, it didn’t taste as good as last night’s meal had. The more he thought about it, the more he was annoyed with Babkin. He hadn’t asked for the man’s help, and in fact the innkeeper had crippled his only source of income before he could even get started.

Worse, the man obviously thought he was doing Nym a favor. He’d spent the better part of a week living in that forest, and the worst of it was some cold weather and one run in with some spiders. Of course, just because Babkin had decreed what Nym could and could not do didn’t mean he had to listen to the old man. Cern would probably be willing to buy from him anyway, as long as Babkin never found out.

And if he wasn’t, there were probably other alchemist shops in town. And if none of that worked, well, he could do magic. That was a unique enough talent that somebody would pay for it. He probably needed to practice some more, since he really only had a handful of spells he could do reliably, and more than that, he needed some resources to learn from. A teacher would be ideal, but he’d settle for a few good books if that was all he could get.

He was busy planning out his next steps when a shadow fell over him. Babkin stood over him, watching him eat. “When you’re done, come back to my office. We had more to talk about before our detour.”

Nym grunted sourly around a mouthful of ham. That seemed to satisfy the wide innkeeper, since he just grunted back and walked away. Somehow, that made the rest of the meal taste even worse. He finished it anyway and left the plate at the sink, where the teenage boy from yesterday was working, then went to go see what Babkin wanted.

He found the man comparing a ledger book to some notes scribbled on a paper and shaking his head. Every few seconds he sighed and made another mark on the paper. When he was done, he put the book down. “I am trying to teach my son the numbers he needs to know to run a business,” he explained. “He needs more practice.”

Nym just stared at him, not feeling like talking. Babkin sighed and lit his pipe. “I’m sure you think I’m being unfair, and harsh, and interfering in your life. That’s fine. You are correct to think that. I am interfering. The forest is dangerous, and the fact that you survived a week is a testament to how lucky you got, not your skills. Cern should never have sent you back there. He knows better.

“But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about your magic. The more I learn, the more impressed I am, but also the more concerned I am. You are entirely self-taught?”

“I am,” Nym said.

Babkin nodded to himself. “That’s right. I think you might even have said that already. I also think it is probably reasonable to assume then that you have very little knowledge of the dangers inherent to magic. Now, I am no mage myself, so understand that what I tell you is second-hand knowledge. To start, there is a thing called arcana poisoning.”

“I know about arcana poisoning,” Nym cut him off. “Gave it to myself twice, once fighting off a shark that was trying to eat me and once when another boy hit me with an arcana disruption spell while I was casting.”

The innkeeper’s eyebrows shot up. “You have fought a mage duel at age ten?”

Nym regretted saying that immediately. He was giving away too many clues about where he was from. Now Babkin knew that wherever he’d been before, there had been another boy there who was talented enough to cast a second circle spell. He didn’t know how much that narrowed it down, but nothing good would come from giving anyone hints.

“Regardless,” Babkin continued, “Arcana poisoning is one possible danger, and it is comparatively benign. Conduit degradation backlash is another big one novice mages are warned to be careful of. That’s when you try to make a conduit with holes in it so that you can draw arcana from the first and second layer at the same time. It mixes in the conduit and can blow it out. That can permanently damage your soul well if it’s bad enough.”

For a man who claimed to be sharing second-hand knowledge, the innkeeper sure seemed to know quite a bit. He rambled on for a while, listing conditions like matrix destabilization, fused lung, temporal blindness, and something called phallic engorgement discombobulation. He refused to elaborate on what exactly that was or tell Nym what any of the symptoms were.

“Now, do you have a license?” Babkin asked him.

“A license for what?”

“That’s what I thought. The mage guild issues a license to any mages who want to perform magic inside the walls. They are expensive and you have to pass rigorous exams to get them. I don’t think you could pass them, given the obvious gaps in your knowledge, even if you could afford to take the exams. There are penalties for casting without a license, especially second circle spells. Don’t do any magic in town again.”

Nym groaned. It was just problem after problem cropping up. He couldn’t go to the forest. He couldn’t do magic in town. How was he supposed to survive like this?

“We’re not going to turn you in, of course. But for your own safety, be careful what you do. Even first circle spells can get you slapped with a fine that I doubt you can afford to pay.”

Nym sighed heavily. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Moving along,” Babkin said, “Let me tell you about what kind of creatures you need to be aware of when you do go out with Therm’s group.”

Nym had to suppress another groan. In the last few months, he’d almost been eaten by a shark and a man had tried to kill him. Somehow, this was still the worst day of his life.