Exchange Magic

Some character studies, since these characters are so roughly sketched right now. This is the first of a few studies I'll need to do to get them more solid in my poor lil' brain.

Sonja

When Sonja came to Strand she was already an apprentice wizard. She had studied for years with an academy in her home country (she may or may not have actually been born to poor fisher folk...it doesn't entirely make sense). Her apprenticeship at the academy was more rigorously academic, but the academics recognized the need for hands-on training instead of pure theory. Her assignment in Strand was to Magister Sylvia, who was an alumna of the same academy and had spent decades teaching.

Sylvia treated Sonja no better or worse than other apprentices, but when Sonja came to her with news of anomalous energy coming from somewhere east of the town it was impressive. Sylvia had no preconceptions about the “impossibility” of demon magic; laws in her life had come and gone, but people were always people. And would always seek power when they felt they had none.

Demonology was never a course of study in her program, of course, but they knew how to identify it. Indeed, most arts did, except for certain branches of the priesthood. It has never been popular, but it does crop up from time to time, regardless of prohibitions.

Sonja was told to follow her leads, to figure out the source of the anomalous energy. She was freed from more normal apprentice work for a while to do so.

During her time in Strand Sonja had befriended a young healer named Colm, himself an apprentice at the time. Colm often sought Magister Sylvia's advice or even direct help in work he was doing, and after a time Sylvia redirected Colm to work with Sonja, because Sonja could use the experience. They had worked together on many projects, but mostly Sonja found a kindred spirit in Colm. Through Colm she met Marion, who was Colm's lifelong friend and kinda-sorta girlfriend, although Marion was as social as Colm was quiet, and got on well with everyone in town. She was fond of Colm but had told Sonja in private that she wasn't sure she wanted to live a healer's lifestyle.

Sonja spent a lot of time with her new friends, indeed more than she spent with the other wizard apprentices. The three other apprentices were not exactly thrilled, but Sonja was foreign and a little intimidating (she had never really gotten the hang of passive voice or “I” statements) and they also liked Colm and Marion, so things seemed to work out all right.

Until one of the other wizard's apprentices left suddenly. It was remarkable, in that remarks were made about it, but it was also not that remarkable. Apprentices leave sometimes.

And then, there days later, Marion disappeared as well. Things got serious-er. Because Marion had never been that kind of person, the kind to just up and leave.

Colm and Sonja at the Fountain

Colm was sitting at the Fountain after a long day, idly tying some knots in a string, practicing, practicing. Knots were an important part of healing magic, if you wanted them to be. A knot could make a string into a tool, really into anything you needed it to be.

He saw the new wizard's apprentice and waved politely to her. She came and sat down at his table.

“Hello. You are the apprentice healer?” Sonja said. Colm nodded.

“It is nice of you to call to me. I think people here do not entirely understand me.”

Colm thought about the fact act she had more or less missed the point of his wave, but let it slide. It wasn't important.

“Colm is an interesting name. Does it have a meaning?”

“Oh, well, yes, actually. In the language my mother speaks it means 'Dove.'”

“Dove, the bird?” Colm nodded. “Why are you named after a bird?”

“Well, doves are considered to be a signal of peace. They are quite harmless, and pretty enough, I guess.”

“Colm...dove... I like it. I am named Sonja, but you knew that.”

“Yes.”

“Sonja means 'wisdom' in my language. My mother wanted me to be wise, and I try.”

“Wisdom is an important quality for wizards, and healers,” Colm said. Sonja considered.

“Yes, I think we must both be wise if we are to do our jobs. Are doves wise?”

Colm laughed. “No, sadly they're one of the dumbest birds you could ever find. They're a prey species, mostly destined to be eaten.”

Again Sonja seemed to consider his words for a while. She put her head to one side and looked at the ceiling when she did this.

“A wise dove would come as a surprise to a predator, would it not?”

“Ha, yes, I suppose it would.”

Sonja nodded curtly. “Then you should become a wise dove. There are bad things and bad people in the world, and it would be good for them to underestimate you, Dove.”

“Ah, I don't really like being called 'Dove',” Colm said quietly.

Sonja smiled just a little. “But it's so fun to watch you not like to be called Dove!”

Marion

Marion had grown up near Colm physically, but their childhoods were as different as possible. Colm's parents were both from shepherding families, albeit from different parts of the world. Marion's parents were a shepherd—she and Colm were probably cousins, many times removed—and a Druid.

Marion's druidic mother had some definite opinions about the world, and they were built into her psyche so deeply that even years of living among the people in her new home couldn't entirely change them, or she didn't want to.

In some ways this made Marion the luckiest girl in the valley, because her mother wasn't big on chores for children. The house needed tending, but she had left the Enclave to be a housewife, and she took delight in the mundanity. She would sweep and wash and cook with a look on her face that said she was experiencing a kind of magic that came from routine. A look that fully left her when they went to visit Marion's grandparents.

There was a lunar holiday that moved on the solar calendar used by the shepherds and indeed the rest of the world. And though Marion's mother was largely against celebrating any of the druidic holidays, she went home for this one every year. Because it wasn't tied to a specific day, Marion wasn't sure when it was going to happen, but she started to recognize the signs that it was coming. When the spring had started, when the snow was melting, her mother would watch the moon. As it rounded the full moon she would start to grow pensive. When it got to a waning half-moon her mother would get very quiet indeed. When it got down to a quarter moon she would announce that it was time to go.

Marion's father seemed to enjoy trips to the Enclave, and Marion loved her grandparents, their strange, round tent-house, and the eternal excitement of the Enclave. Her mother went quietly, spoke kindly with people she knew from the past, dressed in her white robe for the evening vigil at the Stone that marked the high point of the holiday, the vigil held with slim white candles under a new moon. And then she would pack up and Marion's small family would leave early the next morning, to head home.

But as much as her mother tried to avoid her druidic heritage, she passed much of it down to her daughter. Marion was exposed from an early age to Druidic magic and thought. She played with druid children who knew charms and spells to make simple things happen, things like making a ball move unexpectedly, or make a fire dance, not the way a fire normally dances, but to dance like a small person, sometimes a person with antlers, sometimes a woman with a face like a fox. The druid children taught Marion these spells in the odd half-belligerent, half-gracious way that children taught anything. But Marion was a quick study, if study was the right word. It seemed to be intuitive to the druid children, and Marion watched closely, and felt what they were doing in her heart, seemed to understand it implicitly. So when Marion was exposed to the magic of the healers and wizards and priests, it seemed odd to her that they were so tightly affixed to rules and study.

Marion and Sonja

Marion sat next to Sonja in the warm and bustling wizard's workshop. Colm was working with his Master this morning and Sonja had followed them into town, but wasn't allowed to follow them into people's houses. So she had gone to the wizard's glade and was reading one of Sonja's books.

Sonja watched Marion. The way Marion read was slow, deliberate, quiet, and often she would stop and trace the shapes of the letters with a fingertip. She didn't seem to much care what she was reading, either.

“Marion, please pass the—” Sonja began and Marion handed her a small vial of iron shavings, without looking up from the book.

Right, this took a little getting used to each time. Marion just handed you things, and they were the right ones. This time Sonja thought she'd try an experiment.

“I actually meant the—”

“No you didn't,” Marion said. “You needed that one.”

“And how did you know that?”

Marion shrugged, eyes still absorbed in the illuminated first capital letter on the page she had been studying for twenty minutes. “It's how your spell feels. It needed that, it's like, there was a draw between them.”

“But what about—”

“That would ruin it.” Marion said, then smiled slyly. “Okay, that time I didn't know what you were going to ask you about. I just wanted to sound mysterious.”

Marion looked up from the book. “Do you know, I think the writer of this book put an entire spell into this letter 'A'? I think if you drew the important parts out on a piece of iron, it would seek other iron, like a lodestone.”

Sonja looked at the letter. It was an overly-fancy capital letter, the kind you found in books where the scribes had a lot of free time when they were writing them down. There were whorls of color in the left-hand vertical of the letter, and a fancy dragon wrapped around the thinner right hand vertical. You got pictures like this in books sometimes, just like you got an inexplicably large number of pictures showing knights fighting snails (Author's Note: this is actually a feature of books from our world back then. Nobody is quite sure why, but it seemed to catch on for a while back in the day.)

“Which lines are the important ones?” Sonja asked. Marion looked around for a paper and pen. Sonja supplied both quickly, she knew from experience that if you didn't Marion would start writing with whatever was handy on anything that was flat.

Moving the book to the side, Marion stared at the drawing and copied out a complicated line, one that was looped several times, and ended up looking like two sets of complicated circles, each enfolding and encompassing a smaller set of circles.

After a few minutes of refining, and starting over from scratch once, Marion said, “There. That's it.”

Sonja took the page and examined it closely. “Shall we try it.”

“Why? Do you need a lodestone?” Marion asked. She had turned the page and was now looking at the next very-fancy capital letter.

Sonja found two pieces of iron, in fact a cast-iron pan and it's lid. Turning the lid upside down, she carefully traced Marion's lines out onto the iron, starting over when Marion told her it had to be white if the metal was so dark. Using a thin line of water and lime, she traced out the pattern again.

Then set the lid on the pan.

It took three apprentices —with levers— to get it back off.