Guild Mage: Apprentice

Liv was so cold that she couldn’t even shiver. Her eyes, half-lidded, were frozen in place, showing her only the blue of the mountain sky refracted into dozens of sparkling shards, and the brightness of the ring overhead. Ice crusted her eyebrows, heavy against her face, and the slightest shift of her head brushed frosted tendrils of hair against her skin.

A heavy crack sounded, and her arm shook. Something around her loosened. Murmurs and whispers surrounded her, more voices than she could count. Her left hand was encased in heat, so painful that she screamed.

"I’ve got you, dove," Mama said, close to her ear as another crack sounded, and then a third. Was something hitting her?

"Out of the way," Aldo Cushing barked. Good, Liv thought. The Master Chirurgeon will take care of me. He wasn’t nice, and she didn’t like him, but she did trust him. There was a murmur of conversation that Liv couldn’t quite track, men’s voices, and then the chirurgeon spoke clearly again: "Lukewarm water, mind you, and heat it slowly. She was only in the water a few moments; she will recover."

The cracks and impacts had never stopped, and now Liv felt her body eased down onto the ice. But she had fallen onto the frozen river before, hadn’t she? What had been holding her up just now?

"Master Cushing is here," Mama said. Liv realized her mother was grasping her hand. She wished she could talk; she didn’t want her mother to worry. "He’ll take care of you, Livy."

Two fingers touched her neck, hot as coals from the hearth.

"She lives," Cushing said. Of course I do, Liv thought. I just passed out, I didn’t die. "Bring her along," the chirurgeon ordered someone, and Liv felt herself scooped up into strong arms. "I need a carriage! Now!"

Being carried hurt. Every inch of her skin cracked and stabbed with the movement, and Liv couldn’t help but cry out from the pain. Ice fell off her body in chunks, but her skirts and bodice were frozen solid. She couldn’t focus on the voices around her until she was put down again, onto a cushioned bench. People were moving around her, and then the carriage lurched into motion, rattling over the cobblestone streets.

"We need to get these clothes off," Master Cushing muttered. "Before they kill her. Use your dagger. I’ll start on this side." There was the sound of tearing cloth, and then more pain. Liv felt as if she was being skinned alive with each piece of fabric yanked from her, and her eyes hurt from being unable to blink. Finally, she was pulled into someone’s lap, and then wrapped in fur.

"She’s so cold," Mama gasped.

"That is why she needs the heat of your body," Cushing explained. "Keep her hands against your skin. You there-"

"Wren."

"Wren, take her feet in your hands. Try to warm her toes. It may be we can still save them." None of it made sense, but then the world darkened, and Liv felt heat over her eyes. A moment later, her face was wet, as if she’d been weeping, and she could blink again. The ice on her brows was gone.

"What happened?" Liv mumbled. Her lips cracked when she moved them, and she tasted cold water in her mouth.

"Hush, darling," Mama said, holding her tight. Everything still hurt, and whatever had prevented Liv from shivering had gone away, because she began to shake uncontrollably, her teeth chattering, and nearly bit her tongue. She was very tired, and now that she could close her eyes, she did.

A hand slapped her cheek, and Liv cried out, her eyes snapping back open. Master Chirurgeon Cushing’s lined face was close in front of her, and his breath stank of garlic. "You mustn’t fall asleep, Liv," he chided her. "Keep your eyes open. We are nearly back at the castle."

"Everything hurts," she whined.

"That means you’re still alive," a woman’s voice came from beneath her, near the floor of the carriage. Liv found enough strength to look down, and saw the hunter, Wren, rubbing her bare feet with her hands. The carriage rolled to a halt, and then the door was open, letting in the winter wind.

"Guards!" Cushing shouted. "I need hands! Help me carry this girl in. And fetch Master Grenfell."

Men dressed in the Baron’s green and white lifted Liv out of her mother’s lap, still wrapped in the fur cloak. "Mama!" she cried.

"Start water for a bath," the chirurgeon said, catching her mother by the shoulder. "Find anyone you can to help you, and bring it up to my chambers. I will treat her there."

"What about the hot springs?" her mother’s voice protested.

"She needs to be warmed slowly," Cushing replied.

"Will she live?" Liv heard her mother ask, as the men carried her into the castle, and then they were heading up the stairs to the second floor, and she couldn’t hear what was said next. Everything was so confused, and hurt so much, and she just wanted to go to sleep, but Master Cushing had told her not to close her eyes.

The men carrying her shoved open a door, and laid Liv down on a table. She recognized Master Cushing’s chambers, and a moment later he was there, standing over her. "I didn’t close my eyes," she told him.

"Good girl," the old chirurgeon said. "You men, light the fire and stoke it high," he ordered. "Then one of you pull the tub over, and the other fetch water."

"Yes, m’lord," one of the guards said.

"Is that little girl safe?" Liv asked, when Cushing turned back to her. He was poking and prodding at her skin, especially her nose and around her ears.

"Emma Forester will be fine," Cushing said, "thanks to you. She was hardly in that cold water for a moment. Her father’s already taken her home to get her warmed up, and I will be certain to visit them tonight to check in."

"But I didn’t do anything," Liv protested. "I couldn’t get there. I wasn’t fast enough."

"I want to check your bones, now," the chirurgeon told her. "While these men draw a bath and your mother boils water. I am going to feel along your arms and legs, dear. It will only take a moment."

"I fell!" Liv realized, trying to sit up in panic. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Tell my mother I didn’t mean to, I wasn’t being foolish-"

"Hush, child. Be still." The chirurgeon’s warm hands moved beneath the cloak she was wrapped in, pressing against her arms, searching for breaks. By the time the guards had carried over a large wooden tub, lined in cloth, Master Cushing had checked all of her limbs to his satisfaction. Liv had only cried out once, when he gripped her left ankle and a spike of pain shot through her. The door swung open again, and Mama rushed in with the cloth-wrapped handle of an iron kettle gripped in each hand.

"Miss Brodbeck, good," the chirurgeon said, stepping away from his table. "I want you to put your daughter in the bath, and mind her ankle - it’s broken. No hot water, yet. When she feels as if the water in the tub is cool, instead of hot - what she feels, mind, not you - add a single one of those kettles. A few moments later you can add the other." The guards rushed back into the room with four more buckets for the bath. "Thank you, men," Cushing said. "That should be enough from you. One of you wait by the door for Master Mage Grenfell, and tell him I will return presently. Miss Brodbeck, I am going to step out and let you get to work. If I go down to your rooms, I expect I shall find clean clothes for the girl?" Though the instructions seemed to fly from the old man as fast as a team of horses, his stern tone actually made Liv feel better.

Liv’s mother nodded and set the two kettles down by the bath. "Take the good wool hose," she said.

"I shall." Cushing and the guards left the room, and closed the door behind them.

"Come along then, dove," Mama told her, reaching under Liv and the fur cloak. With a grunt, Liv found herself scooped up off the table and carried over to the tub. She knew the water hadn’t been heated - the kettles were still resting beside the tub, unused. Once she was lowered in, however, she gasped out in pain. It felt like she was being burned alive.

"Too hot, Mama," she cried.

Margaret Brodbeck dipped her fingers into the water, and frowned. "It’s cool water, my love," she said. "Your lips are practically white."

Liv couldn’t have said how long it took before the water was cool enough not to hurt her; then, when her mother stirred in the first kettle of hot water, she suffered through the pain all over again. Sometime just before the second kettle went in, she realized that she was no longer shivering, at last. At a knock from the door, Mama stood up and left her for a moment.

"-if we had the new heated baths from the Pipers Guild this would be much easier," Liv heard Cushing complain through the open door.

"I told the Baron that, but-" the voice was Master Grenfell’s, quiet and tremulous, and cut off when Liv’s mother closed the door. She returned carrying a bundle of fresh clothes, and set them down on the table.

Finally, long after the horologe standing against the wall struck the second hour of the afternoon, Liv sat on the table again, dressed and warm, with her mother next to her and both Master Cushing and Master Grenfell examining her.

"I can’t believe it," Cushing muttered, examining her hands. "These fingers were black. I saw them. Now it is as if nothing happened at all. She seems fully recovered, aside from the ankle."

"That’s a good thing, isn’t it?" Liv’s mother asked, but Cushing’s face only looked more concerned.

"I can set the ankle easily enough," he said. "I will wrap it in strips of plastered linen. But I am more concerned about mana sickness. Kazamir?"

Master Grenfell stepped forward, and raised a hand. Eyes half-lidded, he moved it over her, never touching Liv’s body, but staying a finger’s width away at all times. "You were right to call me," he said, finally. The mage walked over to his bag, which he’d set down next to the table, crouched, and began rooting through it.

"My daughter’s no mage, Masters," Mama protested.

"Your daughter, Miss Brodbeck, had to be chipped out of ice with the hilt of a dagger," Master Cushing pointed out. He glanced over to Grenfell. "That’s no word I’ve ever heard of."

Grenfell grunted, and Liv couldn’t tell whether it was a yes or a no. "The Merciful Society of Butchers and Drovers uses sigils to preserve meat for shipping," the mage said. "In cold-chests." He rose and returned to the table, carrying a gray hunk of stone that reminded Liv of something. It took her a moment to remember what, and then she spoke before she could stop herself.

"Did you take that out of the bat?" she asked. She noticed that Master Cushing had walked over to his desk, where he was arranging a set of implements she recognized from the last time she’d broken a bone: a bowl, a sack of dry plaster, clean strips of linen.

"The bat?" Grenfell blinked.

"The big one, in the Room of Curiosities," Liv explained. "It had gray stones like that, didn’t it? Coming out of the skin?"

"So it did," Grenfell said, and when she saw him smile, she grinned in return. Liv wasn’t cold any longer, after the bath and getting into dry clothes, but her hair was still wet. Except for her ankle, which throbbed painfully, she was feeling much better. "That bat came from the rift at Bald Peak Quarry," he explained. "As does this stone. Do you know what it is, girl?"

Liv shook her head.

"It is called Aluthet’Staia, in the old tongue," Master Grenfell explained. "And it is empty, drained of its power - as were the stones in the preserved corpse you saw. A stone that is full, looks like this." He extended his hand, showing Liv a silver ring on his finger, set with a polished stone that looked nothing like the others.

There was a gray color, certainly, but there seemed to be something beneath it, as if the stone itself was merely a scrap of linen held up in front of a fire, so that the light shone through. Beneath the surface, veins of bright blue and gold softly glowed. Liv gasped at how pretty it was.

"It’s nothing like those ugly rocks," she said.

"Watch what happens to this one, then," Grenfell said. He grasped the dead rock - Liv couldn’t quite recall the exact name he’d said, which was rather long. "Miss Brodbeck, I am going to invoke a word of power," he explained. "Once I do that, you are likely going to see some light coming out of your daughter. I would like you to hold her so that she doesn’t move. This should not take long, and it shouldn’t hurt."

Mama nodded, came up behind Liv, and wrapped her arms around her. Master Cushing, on the other hand, took several steps back away from them.

Master Mage Grenfell drew in a deep breath, and Liv opened her eyes as wide as she could so that she wouldn’t miss a thing. Magic! Not low magic, the kind anyone could use, but high magic!

"Aluthos’o’Ea," Grenfell sang. It wasn’t like normal talking at all: it came up low, from his stomach, like Mama had taught her to sing, in a rich voice she would never have expected from the man who always spoke so quietly. The sounds were long, drawn out and slow, and seemed to settle around the room and sink into everything: the table, the wall and floors, and Liv herself. Once again, like on the ice, she found her body pulsing in time with something she could not put a name to.

Her skin tingled, and Liv looked down. Like the stone set in Master Grenfell’s ring, her own skin lit up. It was faint at first, and then the colors became clear: blue as bright as the winter sky, gold like the sun. Wisps of it leaked out of her arms, her hands, and drifted over to the dull gray rock that the mage held in front of her. Something flashed just beneath Liv’s vision, and she gasped. A blob of golden-veined blue drifted out from her cheek, across the intervening space, and into the rock.

More and more light streamed across the gap between Liv and the stone, and with every breath, that dull gray rock grew brighter. By the time the process was over, and no more light shone from Liv’s body, the stone looked just like the one in Master Grenfell’s ring - if not brighter.

"That is all of it," the mage said, in the tone of voice Mama had at the end of a hard day’s work, when she just wanted to climb into bed and sleep. Liv, in the meantime, ached as if she’d run from one end of the castle to the other twice.

"Did you get it out in time?" Cushing asked.

"In time for what?" Mama broke in.

"Hard to say," Grenfell responded. "You will have to check her regularly for at least a season, Aldo. Miss Brodbeck, why don’t I explain to you out in the hall. Master Cushing needs to set that ankle."

"Did you see that?" Liv asked, unable to keep from grinning. An aching ankle was nothing compared to getting the chance to watch a true mage use a spell. And she’d been right at the center of it! Her mother and the mage closed the door behind them, leaving Liv alone in the room with Master Cushing.

"I did," the chirurgeon said, with a smile, bringing his bowl and strips of linen over to the table. "Quite astonishing to watch Master Grenfell work, is it not? I trust you remember this from last time, Liv?" Carefully, he began to pull her wool hose off the injured leg.

She nodded. "You’re going to wrap it up, and it’s going to get hard."

"That’s right," Cushing said. "And we are going to give you a crutch to help you walk, because it is very important that you not put your weight on this ankle until the bone is healed. And you will need to come see me regularly to be checked." The chirurgeon frowned. "Or perhaps I will come to you. It will save you a trip up and down the stairs, and they will be difficult to manage in the cast."

It hurt when he took her ankle in hand, and the linen was gooey and warm when the chirurgeon wound it tight about her bare skin. Liv didn’t like the feeling at all, so she closed her eyes and tried to remember how beautiful the magic had looked when it came out of her body. By the time he was finished, Liv’s mother had returned, without Master Grenfell.

"She will need to sit here until the plaster is hardened," the old chirurgeon explained. "I’ll go fetch you a crutch, Liv."

Once Master Cushing had left the room, Liv turned to her mother. "What did Master Grenfell want to talk about, Mama?" she asked, as much because she was bored waiting as for any other reason.

Margaret Brodbeck frowned. "Nothing for you to worry about, dove," she said. "Nothing for you to worry about. I’ll deal with it, and the chirurgeon will take good care of you."

Liv nodded, but her stomach roiled. She knew her mother better than anyone else in the castle, in the entire town of Whitehill. And she was certain those words were a lie.