“Sir?”

 

It had felt best to wait until the day was done to broach the subject so she wouldn’t interrupt Urag’s work, but now that they were alone in his quarters, Aithne wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he wouldn’t want to discuss it now. She cringed inwardly but held her ground – there was no going back now.

 

Urag didn’t look up from his stew. “Hm?”

 

“I…um…I have finished the book. You said to tell you when I was done.”

 

That did bring his attention away from his food. “What? It has only been a week.”

 

Aithne nodded. “Yes, sir.”

 

He frowned. “I didn’t mean to skim it. You have to really know what it’s saying.”

 

Aithne bowed her head – this was the closest so far he had come to being upset with her. She regretted bringing the subject up but there was nowhere to go but forward. “Yes, sir. I didn’t skim it. I understand it.”

 

A long silence, then. He didn’t believe her. Which, of course he didn’t. Maybe she had been wrong, maybe she didn’t understand it after all. She should have read it again before telling him, just to be sure. She braced herself for the inevitable blow.

 

“What does the book say about the Arboral Continuum and the three rings of Sainde?”

 

Aithne blinked, yet again caught off guard. No matter what she did, she was never able to predict how he would respond. She took a deep breath as she fought to reorient her mind from her upcoming punishment to the contents of the book.

 

Her pause proved too long; she heard him sigh. “Read it. And I mean really…”

 

“The Arboral continuum was designed to demonstrate that the natural flow of magika is a consistent flow from pole to pole along permanent axes, which was held to be the reason that some places in the world proved to be consistently well-supplied with mana while others were not. The places lacking in mana, the so-called Dead Zones, were postulated to be the points at the center of the area between two of these axes. Attempts to map these axes proved to be difficult since they appeared to meander a great deal, leading to the theory of the three rings of Sainde, which were purported to explain the perambulations by positing three counter currents of mana, at the equator and the northern and southern waypoints, that moved horizontally instead of vertically, acting much as wind might to a long line of smoke. The book says both of these were proved to be false by the discovery of the Phovian Leyline, which paved the way for our modern understanding of the flow of mana.”

 

Aithne stopped and took a breath, then realized with a flash of panic that she had dared to interrupt her master! She froze, breath still held, and tried to control the tremors that began to twitch at her limbs but she resisted the urge to sink to her knees and bow her head. Her master had seemed impatient every time she had done that, so she inferred that he wanted her to stand still for his beatings. That, at least, was her theory based on what she had observed so far. Now it would be tested. She blinked to keep tears from spilling. She would not show weakn…

 

“Impressive. Perhaps you did read it after all. But that was only page twenty-six. Tell me about Around’s Flame.”

 

Once again, Aithne was forced to switch from preparing for punishment to answering an unexpected question. This time, however, she was ready. Well, readier. She still needed to take a couple breaths as her fear resolved into relief and swept through her shaking body.

 

“Ar…Around’s Flame was the first recognized spell in the field of Destruction Magic, although it was called the School of Immolation at that time because it focused solely on…”

 

“All right, good enough. Tell me about Lyilniik’s Law.”

 

“Ly…um…” Aithne’s brain raced, but the name did not sound familiar. Had she missed something? No, wait…she had seen that name. “Um…Lyilniik’s Law says that the order of operations needs to be followed, but I did not understand the actual operations. It…um…I don’t think it was in this book. Sir.”

 

Her master squinted at her and spoke slowly, in a musing tone. “It’s not in this book. That was meant to be a trick question. How did you know that?”

 

“I…um…it was in a book I helped Eleanor put away.”

 

“Don’t tell me you read that entire book as well.”

 

“No, Sir. Just the one page, while she was deciding what to put away first.”

 

“I see. Well.” He stood and moved toward the door. “Impressive work. I’ll get you the next book.”

 

“Now?” The word slipped out before she could stop it, and Aithne covered her mouth. How dare she question…

 

“Yes, now. No time like the present. Besides, I want to do some reading tonight, so the light will be on. This will give you something to read as well, if you are so inclined.”

 

Aithne nodded, hand still over her mouth, as her Master turned and left the room. Her mind wheeled. It was strange - her expectations continued to be subverted, yet she was somehow still caught off guard. She should surely start to expect her expectations to be wrong. But, of course, then they wouldn’t be her expectations, she would have…

 

Her train of thought was interrupted by the familiar tingle of magic behind her, and she turned just in time to witness a boy, maybe twelve years old, appear out of nowhere. They looked at each other in mutual surprise.

 

“Oh, sorry,” the boy said, looking nervous. “The old or…er, I mean Master Urag is usually done by now.”

 

Aithne blinked. “Done?”

 

The boy nodded. “Done. Eating.” He pointed at the table. “I came to take the dishes back to the kitchen.”

 

“Oh!” She had wondered how the food appeared and the dishes disappeared each day. “Um…” She glanced back and saw the still mostly full bowl of stew. “I think he’s still eating. Can you come back later?”

 

The boy looked annoyed. He sighed and grumped, “I guess. I was going to meet Bertle tonight, but maybe…”

 

“I could bring them back for you.”

 

His eyes lit up. “Could you? That would be great! Just leave them on the sink in the kitchen. Yr will get to them later.” He started to make a motion, but Aithne held out a forestalling hand.

 

“Wait! How do I get to the kitchen?”

 

“Oh! You don’t know? I guess I’ve never seen you before, so guess you’re new? Well, the easiest way is to just teleport. Here, I’ll draw the sigil for you.”

 

“Teleport? I don’t know how to do that.”

 

“You don’t? Well, that’s okay. I’ll teach you. It’s really simple. Just concentrate on this picture,” he finished drawing a circle with an intricate design in the middle, “then move your hands like this…no, with the thumb out, yes, like that…and say ‘deṭ r̀ab freph krì.’”

 

“Debt…rob…”

 

“No, not that. It’s in the weird magika language, so you have to pronounce it that way. Just…cut all the vowels short. It’s really weird. Deṭ…r̀ab…freph…krì.”

 

Aithne repeated the words until the boy seemed satisfied, then he grinned, said, “Thanks again!”, motioned and said the words exactly as he had described, and disappeared in a blink. It was only after he was gone that Aithne realized she had forgotten to ask his name.

 

“Deṭ r̀ab freph krì. Deṭ r̀ab freph krì.” Aithne repeated the words, trying to get her tongue to feel comfortable with the odd pronunciation. She picked up the drawing and looked at it, still mumbling, “Deṭ r̀ab freph krì.”

 

A surge of energy swept over her. It was unlike the other times she had felt magic – there was no gathering, no way to sense any kind of pattern. It seemed to pour out of the ceiling like the deluge from a sudden squall and was gone just as quickly. She blinked, trying to find orientation, only to discover she was no longer in her Master’s suite.

 

She was in a large alcove facing the largest kitchen she had ever seen. It stretched for dozens of feet in all directions. Several banked hearths and stoves glowed with dim embers, laid to rest for the night but ready to be reborn in the morning.

 

Aithne moved from the alcove with ginger steps and peered around.  Along the wall to her immediate left was a long row of basins. A pile of dirty dishes sat on a table beside the nearest basin. She peered into it and saw a steady stream of water running along the bottom, disappearing into a pipe that connected it to the next. It was something akin to the magical indoor toilet. She surmised, mostly from the stack of dishes, that this must be the sink the boy had mentioned.

 

The thought of the boy brought her mind back to all that had happened and made her realize, with growing horror, that she had left her Master’s suites without permission! She ran back to the alcove and stared at the paper as she said the words and made the motions with frantic haste. She felt the magic rush over her again and managed a moment of relief before she blinked and discovered she was still in the alcove – the magic had worked, but she hadn’t gone anywhere.

 

Panic gripped her and she tried again. Again, the rush, and again, she stood in the kitchen. She cast her eye around in desperation until it caught what she had not noticed before: the alcove was circular and had the shape on the paper inscribed into the floor. Realization clicked – the spell moved you to the wherever the pattern lay. She had been concentrating on the pattern of the alcove, so to the alcove she had gone.

 

Then how had the boy entered her Master’s chambers? She did not remember seeing a pattern on that floor.

 

She shook her head. That was a question for another time. She had to get back to her Master’s chambers before he discovered her absence or, at least, before he alerted…whoever he would alert that he had a runaway slave. Aithne had seen what happened to slaves who ran away and, frankly, she would rather go back to Borkul than face that kind of punishment.

 

Not Sutfu, though. He had been worse still.

 

Having no idea how to return to Urag’s chambers magically, Aithne set off on foot, running along the kitchen until she reached a door. She opened it and sprinted through the hallway that lay on the other side without thinking much about where it might lead.

 

Several doorways and hallways later, Aithne stopped in the middle of a room filled with instruments she did not recognize, panting and hopelessly lost. She knew she would not even be able to make her way back to where she started. Well, she could magically, but there was no point in going back to the kitchen – she was just as lost there as she was here, at least in terms of reaching the library.

 

The library. A thought tickled the back of her mind. She might not be able to get to her Master’s chambers, but she might be able to get to the library. Was there something magical about the patterns, something imbued in them when they were created, or would any unique pattern do?

 

She closed her eye and pictured the design on the floor behind Urag’s desk, the lines she had traced over and over through the long hours of standing behind him. Once she had the pattern firmly established in her head, she motioned and said the words. The now familiar deluge swept over her and, a moment later, she almost cried in relief as the empty dark library stood before her.

 

She made her shaky way to the door of her Master’s chambers, but hesitated a moment before entering.

 

Surely this would warrant punishment. If disappearing for Divines knew how long without permission did not bring about her Master’s wrath, she could not imagine what might. She took a deep breath, straightened, and prepared herself for his fury, then opened the door.

 

Urag lay in his bed reading a book. He glanced up as she entered.

 

“Ah,” he said. “There you are.” He motioned toward her blankets. “I left the next book for you. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts on it when you’re done.”

 

Aithne stood, frozen in disbelief. How could he not be angry? He should be raging! It made no sense. She must have stood for longer than she thought, because after a moment he looked up again and said, “What are you doing? Close the door.”

 

“Yes, Sir.” She closed it, walked to her blankets, and sat down, then picked up the book. It was smaller, with a blue cover, but she discovered the title was too blurry to read. It took her a few heartbeats to realize that the words on the cover were not the issue – the issue was from the flood of tears that streamed steadily down her cheeks.

 

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