Valquiss' Memory Crystal

[Noa]

Valquiss Silverpalm
Guest
Posts: 12
(2/26/02 2:25 pm)
Valquiss' Memory Crystal
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Hail

I don't have much from my family to call my own. My father left me nothing but a sullied reputation and my mother left me little more than a fear of ever needing anyone else, lest they desert you in the moment you need them most. My grandfather, on my mother's side, disowned both me and her the moment he could honorably get away with it, but before he did he left me with one interesting little bauble. It's called a memory crystal.

I don't keep a journal in the literal sense, I've too little time to study as it is, but this crystal, which I have carried since my youth, records my experiences in far more detail than I could ever hope to record on parchment. What's more, it contains my memories from my own perspective, untainted by time or shifts in perception. It's a powerful, and sometimes frightening, little toy. Sometimes I wonder if my grandfather didn't give it to me out of maliciousness rather than generosity. No matter, I have turned it to my use.

It's clear by now I don't know the members of my new guild as well as I would hope, and most of you don't know me at all. I've been accused in the past of being a hard person to know and sometimes even harder to get along with. Well, it is ignorance that divides us, if we allow it, and it is understanding that can bring us together. So as a gesture of trust I leave this crystal for the guild to consider. Be forewarned, however. Knowing the inside of another's mind isn't always the most comfortable of experiences. Trust an enchanter to know that for certain.

Valquiss


Valquiss Silverpalm
Guest
Posts: 13
(2/26/02 2:33 pm)
Apprenticeship
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You are a young boy, walking from the wizard's guild with a hurried stride. You sense your mother's shame, which you don't understand, but you begin to feel it also, a nameless sense that you are somehow not good enough. It's a new feeling. Always before you were good at everything, kicking a ball, inventing games with your friends, even fighting in the streets in those small battles between children that seem titanic at the time and are forgotten by the next day. But these streets are wider, the buildings grander and the people better dressed than those you know best. Here you don't belong, and you knew it from the first.

"Mother, are you angry with me?" you ask.

She stops. "No, of course not," she answers with a weak smile.

"I failed again, didn't I?"

"Oh, no honey, you didn't fail, I swear you didn't."

"The man in the robe said I failed. I heard him."

"He was lying!" The venom in your mother's voice startles and scares you.

"Why would he lie?" you ask.

"Because he thinks you aren't good enough. He thinks I'm not good enough. He thinks your father...." Her voice trails off. "You passed every test brilliantly. I could see it in his eyes. Even if the magic isn't in my blood I know. I can feel it in yours. A mother knows."

And so it was, with every guild of magic in the city. Wizards, magicians, enchanters, all took their turns refusing you. And so you were not admitted to the study of magic at the proper age. You studied tailoring instead, and learned to scribe painfully under the inferior instruction of your mother who could afford no proper teacher. And you grew.

**

You are older now, and larger, a grown youth with your own skills and resources, and your own sense of who you will be. And you hate the highborn elves you see passing you in the streets, wearing the robes of the magically trained elite. You hate them with a passion.

You knock on the door of the small, run down home you have come to find. A weak voice calls from within and bids you enter; at least you think so. You enter regardless.

An old and worn elf sits at his table, peering over scattered and rumpled parchments and the remains of his last meal. His inkwell is dry and he doesn't seem to have noticed. An empty bottle of wine has rolled under the stool he sits upon. His robe, at least, is frayed and patched, like your own clothes. That makes it easier to tolerate.

"Master Tolenis?" you inquire.

"Eh? Yes. What do you want?" he demands. At least his voice isn't slurred.

"Instruction," you declare, and drop a purse on his table.

"What? Are you daft? I haven't taught in decades, and even before I wasn't...well, find someone else," he says simply, and pushes the pouch back across the table.

"There is no one else, old man. I know quite well I am in the presence of a broken down old enchanter who even in his day was considered a second-rate teacher. There, I know what you are. And I am the bastard son of a disgraced woman of high birth who was seduced and abandoned by a half-elven rogue who didn't stay long enough to even witness my birth. Now you know what I am. We are well matched. No one else will teach me. No one else dares. But I know you need the money. And someone in your condition can't be too worried what your peers think anymore anyway, right?" You push the purse back at him. "Teach me."

He picks up the purse, weighing it in his hand. "Gold?" he asks, finally.

"Platinum."

"And where would a street rat like you find platinum? Taken to stealing like your father?"

You slam a dagger down into his table and send the dry inkwell over the edge where it shatters on the floor. "I am not my father. I sew, I work, I hunt small game with my knife and my few skills, I scribe for those who can't afford the outrageous fees of guild scribes. Yes, I can read and write. I am my own man and I owe no one."

The old man considers the purse, shrugs slightly, and finally tucks it away in his robe. "I'll give you three nights a week. This fee will cover one turning of the moon. Learn whatever you can, if you are determined, but I'm not optimistic. If you had any talent they should have taken you, parentage be damned, but who knows?"

"Who knows?" you repeat softly. "I know. Don't tell me I don't know the magic in my own blood. I'll be back tomorrow night," you declare.

"Wait," he calls. You turn back. "Your name?"

"Valquiss. Only Valquiss. I carry no family name."

"And why enchanting? Or was I all you could find?"

You laugh. "I'm sure there's a broken down wizard somewhere I could have found, Master Tolenis. But my reasons will remain my own." Because I owe nothing to no one, and that's the way it is going to stay. But if he could read your mind then he never showed it.

**

Three years and more has passed, desperate times of hard struggle to meet the cost of your instruction, but you know it has been worth it. You know you won't need Tolenis much longer. You are thinking that the very night he admits it himself.

"I'm done," he declares suddenly, "and you are done too. I will teach you no more."

"Find another way to keep yourself supplied with wine?" you ask, but without bitterness. You still don't respect the broken down old fool, but you can't help liking him after so long.

"No, idiot," he returns, probably with much the same sentiment, "but I managed before you and I will manage afterward. I'm done and you're done. You know as much as any certified apprentice of the enchanter's guild, likely more. You were right, years ago, when you said you had talent. Don't ever make me admit it again, but you were right. You aren't even many years behind enchanters who began training in early childhood now." They are the first words of praise he's ever offered. Deep inside you know they mean something to you and you have always longed to hear them, but it's not the time to dwell on that. Something to think about later.

"Fine, I will take me leave of you then," you state simply, and begin to gather your things.

"Wait," he says, and from within his stack of papers he produces an ornate scroll. He gives it to you. You unroll it and note his handwriting upon it, in painstaking calligraphy. You didn't realize his hand was even steady enough anymore to manage such careful strokes.

"What is this?" you ask, though you have some idea.

"It's an official record of your training. My status as a master of the enchanters guild never lapsed. Take that to the guild leader and he'll be forced to admit you. He may never like it, but within the guild you'll have a chance to prove yourself. Some have slipped in the back door before, and a few have gone far."

You consider the scroll in your hands, the symbol of all you once wanted, but now that you know the arts of enchantment better you understand the roots of true power. You tear it in half and drop the pieces on the table, over the mark your dagger once left in the wood where you slammed it years ago, making an entirely different point.

"I will not join the guild. I will not wear the green robes of slavery. I need nothing from the enchanters of Felwithe."

"What?" Tonenis stands up, clearly shocked. Even after all these years you can still surprise him. You are glad. "After all you've been through you are content with what you know now? You are still nothing, and you could go far."

"Perhaps," you say with a smile, "but not here. Other races practice the arts of enchantment, other races that know and care nothing for my parentage or the source of my knowledge. I will learn from the human guildmasters in Freeport, I will learn from the Erudites upon Odus, perhaps in time I will even penetrate into Neriak and learn there. Yes, I would learn from the Teir'dal! I owe you nothing, for I have paid well for all I have. And I owe the spell-casting hypocrites of Felwithe even less. And now I will go." And you walk out. And you do not look back.

For weeks in the wilderness you wear a yellowed old shirt still smelling of orc, but it provides some protection, at least. You never don the green robe. Your first robe is of silk, a yellow-brown color, and sewn by your guildmate Juliana. It feels odd, to wear what you once despised, but none can deny your right to it, and none can claim a debt for it. Your first robe of power was stripped off the still form of a Shadow Man by Taygar of Starspun, before you joined the guild. It was blood red. And you smiled.