Dawn of Dusk

Marshal sat facing east. The clouds and horizon work colored in crimson orange and yellow. The Sun would be rising above the horizon shortly. As he meditated, he felt a stirring in the magical framework he had built around him.

He was tall; nigh on two meters with blonde hair and fair skin his eyes were a light blue or gray depending on his attire. He looked well enough, at least the maids in the neighboring town seemed to enjoy looking at him a lot when he went there on purchase day. One or two always came over to talk about the weather.

Without breaking his concentration he sent out feelers to the source of the magical disturbance. He saw Koripak in his study enchanting a spell.

It was a spell he had never seen before and he knew it was directed at him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.

He watched with fascination as the tendrils of magic began to form around him. Marshal had never seen any visible magical evidences before. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to see what he was seeing. He pulled back and set up a barrier to keep Koripak’s magic away from him.

The last few days Koripak had been attacking him when ever he was not expecting it. He had noticed a slight disturbance each time and had been prepared. None of the attacks were lethal of course; they were to prepare him for the test that was coming up in a few days.

His consciousness was still detached from his body. He watched as the magic moved toward him. His senses were heightened and time seemed to slow down.

He realized that what was traveling toward him at the speed of magic was poison. One touch of it would blister his skin and burn his lungs.

He called upon his spirit and transported his body. Instantly the magical poison changed directions and started toward his body again. He made his body invisible and the gas continued to approach him. He placed his body right behind that of Koripak and waited.

Koripak’s eyes opened. He looked all around but he could not see anyone. He again closed his eyes Marshal could see that he was examining the spell to see if anyone had tampered with it.

“There is no way it could be coming after me!” Koripak said. “The spell was a target spell directed at Marshal.”

Marshal decided not to use magic because Koripak would sense it. He reached into his boot and took out his stiletto and held it in his hand as the poison struck Koripak, he canceled his spell. During the second or two that Koripak was canceling his spell, he was vulnerable.

Marshal moved back behind Koripak and placed the knife blade in his back by his ribs. Koripak was caught completely by surprise. “I order you to surrender!” Marshal said.

“I do surrender; that was a wonderful tactic. I am impressed with your ingenuity.”

Marshal kept his guard up and removed the knife from Koripak’s back. He removed his invisibility, stepped back three steps and waited.

Koripak turned around and bowed low. “Let me see if I can guess how you did it. First you saw the spell coming in plenty of time. You moved and found that it was a seek spell. You made yourself invisible and transported yourself behind me. You pulled out the blade and when I busied myself with canceling the spell that was about ready to strike me with a great deal of unpleasantness, you stepped in, and got me from behind.

I only have one question. How did you know I was attacking you? How did you know it was coming?”

“I was meditating, waiting for the sun to rise; I felt a disturbance in the forces of magic. So I sent my spirit looking for the source...”

“You mean you could feel magic being woven?”

“Yes, when I found you I saw the poison forming around you. I followed it because I wasn’t sure until it was almost upon me, exactly what it was.”

Koripak turned and started walking away. “Follow me.”

Marshal followed and they came to Koripak’s room. Koripak found a large horn and handed it to Marshal.

“Blow it.”

Marshal did and Koripak demanded that he do it louder. Marshal blew the horn as loud as he could.

“That will do. Go over to the other side of the Stream and when you can detect magic being affected, blow the horn as loud as you can.”

Marshal walked across the stream began to meditate and waited. In just a few moments, he was blowing the horn. A few minutes went by and he blew the horn again. This time he waited longer but he blew for the third time.

In a moment he saw Koripak waving to him to come.

“You have more of a gift than I thought,” Koripak said, “I barely begin before I hear your horn blow. You are especially sensitive to magical forces. You can also detect Elven magic. I know one spell of Elven magic, I can call fire. Before I could even complete the preparations for the casting, you had blown the horn.”

“Koripak, would you teach me to call fire?”

“I’ll teach you the spell boy, but it won’t do you any good. You see Elves control elemental magic; the magic of earth, air, fire, and water. Men never had a very close relationship with the earth. When mankind almost destroyed the world long ago, certain people who loved the earth disappeared into the woods and the mountains. These were the humans that mutated into the Elves.

Today, Men and Elves can intermarry and have children but the children are always Men. On rare Occasions a child from a Men-Elven marriage can do the most simple of Elf spells, I am such a child. My mother was an Elf. She was cast out because my father did not marry her. She could not care for me and so I was turned over to a magician named Carmak. She was his housekeeper and servant until she died.

Carmak made her teach him all the Elven Magic she knew. I learned them too, even wrote them down in a little spell book. This is the only one I could make work, and it is only a flame the size a candle has.”

Koripak showed Marshal how to call fire. Marshal went through the casting process which was quite different from what he was used to in spiritual magic. He concentrated on a candle in front of him and thought of fire.

The candle flared into a blazing torch. Marshal pulled his thoughts back from the fire and it went out. The candle was almost totally gone, in a matter of seconds.

Koripak walked over to the candle and put his hand into the melted wax lying there. He looked at Marshal then back at the remnants of the candle.

“Where do you come from, boy? I have never seen an Elf call such powerful fire. My mother was good for an Elf woman, but I never saw such power from her. She never did anything so outrageous; of course, she was trained when I knew her.”

“I, I’m sorry, I just thought of fire after I worked the magic the way you showed me.”

“What kind of fire were you thinking of? Were you visualizing a candle flame or something else?”

“I don’t know, I just thought of fire. I guess my thoughts of a fire are in a fireplace.”

“Marvelous, come outside,” Koripak said as he grabbed another candle. He set the candle on a stump outside and said, “This time do it again, but, think of a candle burning by your bedside.”

Marshal worked the magic and thought of a candle burning by his bed. The candle disappeared.

“Where did it go?” he asked. He looked around for the candle or signs of burning but found nothing.

Koripak sat there looking at the ground. After a few minutes he said, “Go look by your bedside and see if you have a lighted candle there.”

Marshal looked at the castle as if there were a dragon inside. He slowly walked forward, contemplating what would happen to him if others found out he indeed could ignite fire and transport it spiritually to another location.

As he approached the door he had a deep sense of anxiety, his breathing became shallow and rapid. He felt dizzy and his palms were sweaty. He pushed the door open. There on the table next to his bed was the candle burning as if it had been lit there.

Marshal took the candle, put his hand in front of the flame to protect it and went back down to where Koripak was waiting. He put the candle back in its original location.

“How did you know it was in my room?”

“I told you to picture a candle by your bed. When it disappeared, I used my sight to seek it out. The first place I looked was beside your bed. I knew it was there when I sent you to look for it.

Try this spell of wind, it is similar in effect to our wind of destruction except the spell of wind actually controls the air and the wind of destruction uses a friendly spirit to stir up the wind for us. The wind of destruction can only destroy; the spell of wind can be used for good or for destruction.

Marshal intoned the spell and thought of a cool summer breeze, the breeze began. Marshal felt a distant control center in his mind.

He formed the air into a whirlwind just large enough to pick up an ax that had been left out when he was chopping wood. Another wind picked up a piece of wood and set it on the chopping block. The ax not only split the piece of wood, but, it also split the chopping block, and shattered the handle of the ax.

Marshal used his control to pull the ax head out of the ground. It drifted unbidden by him to the nearest oak tree and floated onto a branch.

Marshal began to sing in a language that seemed familiar to him but strange at the same time. As he sang the bark on the branch separated and wood flowed out of the branch like water. The water flowed into the ax handle and solidified into a perfectly shaped ax handle.

Marshal suddenly stopped singing, the bark knit itself back together and the ax fell softly to the ground next to the ruined chopping block. Marshal walked over to the chopping block. He placed his hands on it and began to sing again the wood from the chopping block flowed back together so that even the top which had countless strikes from splitting wood had not a scratch.

Koripak walked over and lifted the ax. It looked like the old ax handle except the wood had no grain. It was if the wood was made from brown steel.

Marshal had gotten more from a tree to make an ax handle than Koripak had seen any Elf get for important purposes although he knew there were chairs and beds of trained wood. Koripak looked over at Marshal and for just an instant, saw him speaking with the spirit of the tree. It was not a familiar sight to Koripak, as he watched; the spirit went into the tree that had yielded up the wood.

Koripak suddenly realized that Marshal had spoken to the spirit of the tree and the tree had given him that which he needed. The spirit had then entered into the stump, enlivened the wood and made it flow into a solid block of trained wood. After it was done Marshal appeared to have been thanking the spirit.

Koripak spoke. “Marshal, come here.”

Marshal obeyed him and then he continued, “Do you know what you have just done?”

Marshal hung his head in shame, “yes sir,” he replied. The tree told me.

“What did the tree tell you?”

“It told me that I took too much trained wood from a branch. I should have taken what I needed from the trunk of the tree where it could spare the lost wood.”

“That’s not what I mean; do you know what you have just done?”

“I sang to produce trained wood. I haven’t done that for quite a long time.”

“When was the last time you sang to train wood Marshal?”

“I’m not sure, but it has to have been before I came to live here.”

Koripak had found the boy on a tree stump near the edge of the woods by his house; he had assumed that some young woman had gotten herself into trouble and after having the child for a while found him to be something of a bother. He had guessed that Marshal was about three or four when he found him because he could speak and read. He had the pleasure of Marshal’s companionship now for sixteen years.

He had never given the origin of the boy any further thought before now. He had named him after his first magic teacher, Marshak. Koripak knew that if Marshal showed an aptitude for magic, that it would be his name someday as well.

“Koripak?”

“Yes, Marshal, what is it?”

I know lots of spells that I have never been taught. They keep flooding through my head, and they work. Look!”

Marshal intoned a spell and water rose out of the puddle nearby. The ground where the mud puddle had been was now completely dry. The water danced on the sunlight and separated into small animal shapes. Marshal held out a cup and the water flowed into it and Marshal took a drink. He handed the cup to Koripak and indicated he take a drink.

Koripak thought about where the water had been a few seconds before and drank hesitantly. The water was the freshest, clearest, and cleanest he had ever drunk. He gulped down the last of it and looked to Marshal.

“That was Elven magic. You did not use a spirit to do that. You controlled the water yourself. Are all the spells you can remember Elven spells?”

“Yes, most of them appear to be simple spells with subtle changes that can make them very formidable. I can’t imagine where they came from.”

“I have never seen abilities like these before. Your magic is as strong as mine ever was, and you have more potent Elven magic than I have ever seen. Those spells were all warded and apparently something you just did opened your memory to the time when you first practiced Elven magic, this is a special gift to develop.

You will go to your test at the guild headquarters in Karrondor and then you will get in to see Thorak as soon as you can. Show him what you can do. Tell him and him only that I gave you your basic training. I will send a letter with you for him.

He is as good a magician as I am, maybe better. He can appreciate your talents and can get you some release time to study with the Elves in Arborlea. You must learn both kinds of magic if you are able. Maybe you can start a new order of magic, we will just let things go for a little while and see what develops.

Come, I have much to tell you about Thorak and me. He may not be very happy to see you if he knows you came to him from me. I would have preferred to have had you go to him for training with out him having knowledge that I trained you because of our past differences.

He listened to Koripak tell his story. This was an old man, he was very fair and now that his hair was white, it was hard to know that it had once been flaxen yellow. He had put on weight and had a beard and mustache.

Later that night when Marshal was asleep Koripak cast a searching spell and flung it out upon the night. He waited to see if there would be a response, and if so, what that response it would be. It didn’t take long before he got his response.

“You are the last person I ever expected to send a searching spell for me, Koripak. What do you want?”

“I have some information that is important to you, the kingdom and the world.”

“Some trick no doubt, to make me look like a fool, or worse.”

“Thorak, it is time that we leave the past in the past. We both loved her. I didn’t teach her enough about my magic. Believe me, I have had to live with that knowledge every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every, day of my life since then. I lived without her because I didn’t take care of her the way I should have.

I would never admit this to you if I didn’t have some important knowledge that you as Sorcerer of the Realm needed to know. I submit to the Remembering if you so wish it.”

The Remembering was a spell that could pull the memories out of a magician’s head. Usually this was done with an apprentice just before a master died so at the last moment of life, all his memories could be passed on to the guild.

As the memories go from one to another, the receiver sees everything. Spells that were newly invented, and research into new ideas were passed on, and those working in other areas often found solutions to there problems in the information transferred from one to another.

The problem was that when the transfer takes place, it is at the command and control of the receiver, not the sender. If an apprentice decided to not wait for the Day of Passing, they could usurp the knowledge, leaving the benefactor with no knowledge and no memories. They usually died of dehydration three or four days later, because they didn’t know to take a drink when they were thirsty.

There never had been a time when a Master offered the remembering this early in his life, and especially never to a long time enemy. Thorak was well aware of the magnitude of the offer Koripak was making.

“You really would submit yourself to me?”

“If that is what it takes for you to listen to me, yes! I would rather not, but, if that is what you want from me, I will submit.”

“That will not be necessary, I will hear you out.”

“I have had a boy living with me for the last sixteen years; he has been until recently an unremarkable young man. I found him abandoned near my house years ago. I never knew where he came from or what his origins were. I got him when he was about three or four. I have trained him for the last three years and he has never forgotten a spell that I have shown him. He memorizes it the first time.

He is ready to be tested by the guild. His power is potentially greater that either yours or mine. He can also practice elemental magic. Not only can he do it, he can do it with more power than any Elf that I have ever known, he can also combine it with spiritual magic. Once he had performed a spell in elemental magic, he could remember numerous spells that had been blocked from his memory when he was young.”

Thorak thought for a minute and said, “Maybe you had better tell me the whole story from the beginning.”