The moment felt right.  Everyone’s eyes were on the stonelayer’s wife and the dead apprentice.  At moments like these, the right words, the perfect combination of sentiment and reason (false or otherwise), could turn a spark into an ember, the ember to an inferno.  Words were to Orus as tools to a craftsman.  With a better gift for singing, he would have been a court bard of renown; instead, he was itinerant, lucky to obtain grudging patronage from lesser nobility, occasionally and humiliatingly used as little more than a herald.  His nimble and crafty mind was used for little else besides finagling a free mug from a reluctant innkeeper.

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The tavern was still as she entered.  The faces of the men who a scant hour ago had been contorted in fury and aggression were now sullen and downcast.  Most of them were studying their boots or frowning into half-drunk mugs.  No one spared more than a glance at the far end of the room, where a row of six blanket-covered bodies lay in neglectful honor.  Her own gaze fixed on the largest of the six, and she moved stiffly towards them, as if the muscles of her legs were wooden.  She knelt gracelessly beside the body of her husband.  One of the men at the bar hurried over, placing a hand on her shoulder.  In low words he begged the woman not to pull back the blanket, that it would be for the best.  Her head slowly turned to look at the man and he shrank back, flinching at the cold grey of her eyes and the unmoving mask of her face.

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The gout of flame that shot from Loccan’s upraised hand obscured the entire top half of the bear-man.  The flame-shrouded figure bellowed as he staggered backwards in a stunning reversal of the prior minute.  The searing fire lasted just a handful of seconds before vanishing.  The big man’s screams lasted longer.  Flames flickered and died on the scant remains of his shirt, exposing the blackened flesh that was already splitting with crimson fissures as the man’s arms moved to cover his face.  Derud was assaulted by the combined smells of rank burnt hair and cloth with the sweet smell of cooked fat and flesh.

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The shouts and clanging mugs around him could not penetrate the grinding mind of Brusen.  The men around him, neighbors and workmates, were pleased by their actions and celebrating as if they’d won a victory.  Ale flowed as deeds were recounted, particularly choice blows re-enacted, and the students’ ignominious retreat rehashed.  Spirits high all around him, the stonelayer kept his fists at his side as his brow furrowed.  In his mind he could feel the blow crunching into the green-eyed wizardling, his rage and grief pouring onto the head of the one who had cursed him.  Brusen couldn’t understand how the man had gotten up and managed to avoid him thereafter, when the blow should have scrambled his brain and left him unconscious or dead.  In the confusion after the table was flipped, his quarry had already fled by the time he pushed past the men in his way.  After that, calls for drinks and cheers had stopped the momentum that had carried the group to the tavern in the first place.

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Derud laughed along with his fellow students, although he hadn’t understood the joke.  His reaction was automatic, a reflex born of a life where he never felt like he truly fit in.  Although he was the same age as his fellows, he didn’t have their experience with women, wasn’t privy to the gossip they heard, and couldn’t match their ability to spin a tale.  His modest upbringing didn’t help, as most of the better-born students looked askance at those who grew up with dirt on their hands.  He was sure that his presence was tolerated only because of his ability to study and help those who hadn’t, and his willingness to laugh at the most stale jest. 

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Elder Patrician Merrus, head of the Circle of Magi of the Dreaming Tower, sighed and pressed the fingers of his right hand against the short grey hairs at his temple.  This man, who could engulf an entire village in fiery ruin, summon and bind the Demonlords of the Void, or raise a tower of stone from bare dirt at a gesture, could do nothing to quell the rising rage of pain in his own head.  He briefly considered turning to Nicoreus for succor, but allowed the notion to disappear.  As the first Elder Patrician in a century to head a Trial of Expulsion, Merrus could not afford to appear weak.  Even if the trial itself was threatening to turn into sham, as Elder Patrician he had the dignity of the last Arcane Academy to maintain. Read the rest of this entry →