Nature's Servant (4 page)

Emmy should perhaps have had the same problem, as she was a magician too, but the villagers had always had a healer, which to their minds was something distinct from other forms of magic, and Emmy
’s gift had been accepted without any trouble. Lydia had escaped scrutiny by being Taurnil’s girlfriend, and as Taurnil didn’t have a magical gift, the villagers had assumed that she wasn’t a magician either. The self-possessed gypsy girl had felt no need to clarify and had enjoyed the villagers’ unconditional welcome. Gaspi was glad the girls had managed to avoid any kind of trouble, but he’d also felt a bit isolated because of it. He felt the most comfortable hanging out with Jonn, who seemed to understand some of what he was feeling.

For all of these reasons, Gaspi had been relieved when the time came for them to travel back to the city. Now that they were back in Helioport, he felt no need to hide his feelings anymore, and explained some of what the last few months had been like for him.

“Sorry Gasp,” Taurnil said sadly when he’d finished. “I was too busy showing Lydia around to notice.”

“
It’s not a problem mate,” Gaspi said. “It was only a couple of months and it wasn’t
that
bad. It doesn’t really matter anyway,” he continued. “We’re back now and I won’t be going back to Aemon’s Reach for a long time. Besides, Helioport is like home to me now.”

“
You like it here that much?” Taurnil asked.

“
Sure. What’s not to like?” he said, gesturing out of the window at the passers-by with an open hand.

Partly because of its magical community and partly because of its river trade, Helioport drew people from all over the continent and beyond. Looking through the grimy window, Gaspi could see a fascinating variety of passers-by: A colourfully robed man with skin as black as charcoal was negotiating with one of Helioport
’s apothecaries; a pair of old magicians sat outside a café smoking tabac and watching the world go by, chuckling and commenting to each other all the while; an off duty guard strolled past with a girl on his arm. Seeing the way she leaned into him, and the way he solicitously supported her, Gaspi assumed she was his girlfriend.

“
I s’pose,” Taurnil said, watching the guard walk by. “It’s exciting and all that, but it’s not home to me. I’ll always be a village boy.”

Gaspi looked away from the window and gave his friend a mock frown. This was one way in which he and Taurnil were very different, but he supposed it didn
’t make any real difference. Whether Taurnil thought of Helioport as home or not, he was living here in the city, working as a guard, and he was in love with an exotic gypsy girl who had travel running through her veins. And then there was Martha’s prophetic vision, given before they ever left Aemon’s Reach, which showed that Taurnil was destined to be Gaspi’s protector. This vision had already proven itself to be true last year when Taurnil saved Gaspi’s life from demonic attackers during Shirukai Sestin’s invasion of the city. They were both caught up in momentous events that largely dictated the course of their lives, and he didn’t think that Taurnil was going to get the chance to return to village life anytime soon.

“
So when do you start training again?” Gaspi asked, changing the subject.

“
Tomorrow,” Taurnil said with a glint in his eye. Martha’s vision had caught his imagination more than it had Gaspi’s, and his friend took his role as his protector very seriously. Not that he objected to Taurnil’s commitment to the task! His friend’s belief had motivated him to master the staff as well as he had the previous year, which in turn had saved his life. With his enchanted weapon, Taurnil was already a force to be reckoned with, but Gaspi knew that he wouldn’t ever give up improving his skills until he became a weapons-master like Sabu.

“Itching to get on with it
, eh?” he asked.

“
You know it,” Taurnil said determinedly.

Gaspi could understand how Taurnil felt. He was similarly passionate about magic. With his rare gift, he already commanded more raw power than any magician in the college, but it wasn
’t just power that interested him. He liked the fact that his spells were potent, but what bewitched him most was magic’s subtlety. He loved creating enchanted objects, like the compass that always pointed in Emmy’s direction, or the cloak that was either warming or cooling depending on the weather. He was wearing it at that very moment in fact. It looked ordinary enough, made of regular cloth and died a deep shade of green - a colour that Emmy said went well with his brown eyes - but despite its ordinary appearance, he was always perfectly comfortable whenever he wore it. He wondered how well it would work in the depths of winter. Could he sleep out in the snow?

“
What about you?” Taurnil asked, interrupting his thoughts. “When do you start back at the college?”

“
Next week,” Gaspi answered, “but it’ll be different this year. After the first year, you study on your own and have tutorials with your mentor. What I study is mostly down to me.”

“
Yeah Lydia said that,” Taurnil responded. “So what are you gonna study?”

“
Mmm,” Gaspi mused. “I need to speak to Voltan about it, but probably botany, and enchanting for sure. I like making weird stuff that no-one else has.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Demonology too, I guess, after what happened last year. We need to understand what we’re facing.”

“
Too right!” Taurnil agreed fervently. “We don’t want to get taken by surprise again!”

Only three months previously, the college had been attacked by a force of demons and magically altered wolf-like creatures called wargs. Both Gaspi and Taurnil had played an important part in repelling the attack, but the city had been devastated none
theless. Many guards and several magicians had been killed, and the magical wall surrounding the college had been drained of its protective enchantment. Since the attack, the city had lost much of its innocence, and nobody was naïve enough to think they’d seen the last of their attackers. This was a war, and though many of Helioport’s citizens didn’t know what it was about, the magicians certainly did.

A reprobate mage, once the chancellor of the college and long thought dead by those who had known him, had been behind the devastating attack. Cast out from the magical community after being caught torturing an innocent citizen, Shirukai Sestin had spent the intervening years learning to summon and control demons. He
’d also experimented on living creatures, warping them into aggressive, hateful perversions of what nature intended, lending them a kind of brute intelligence. It was these creatures that had terrorised the citizenry of Helioport before the summer, and though Sestin’s forces had been defeated, nobody knew what the renegade was planning next, or even what his ultimate aim was.

By tacit agreement, Gaspi and his friends hadn
’t spoken about it over the summer, but now they were back, and there was serious business to attend to. He’d already received an invite to meet up with Hephistole, the chancellor of the college, and he intended to take that opportunity to find out what had been happening over the summer.

At that moment, the door to the snug flew open explosively. Gaspi instinctively reached for his power and Taurnil for a non-existent weapon. Emea and Lydia came barrelling in and stopped in their tracks, staring at a battle-ready Gaspi, balls of swirling power surrounding both fists and Taurnil half out of his seat, alert and ready for trouble.

Lydia raised an eyebrow and Emea burst into a tinkling laugh. “Is that any way to greet your girlfriends?” she asked. A red-faced Gaspi released his power and Taurnil sat back down with a loud thump. Lydia laughed richly and slid into the seat next to him, kissing him on the cheek. Emea gave Gaspi a hug and sat down, placing a small hessian sack on the bench between them.

“
What’s got you two so tense?” she asked.

“
Nothing, you just surprised us, that’s all,” Gaspi said. He and Taurnil had probably reacted the way they did because they’d been talking about the recent demonic attack, but he didn’t really want to carry on talking about that. “What’s in the bag?” he asked, changing the subject.

Flushed with excitement, Emea opened the sack and pulled out a creamy silk scarf, embroidered with intricate whorls of
golden thread. She pulled it out and arranged it round her neck. “What do you think?” she asked, her eyes alight with pleasure.

Gaspi was mesmerized by how it brought out the
hazel flecks in her light brown eyes, and the golden fall of her hair. “It’s great!” he said, staring stupidly at his beautiful girlfriend.

Emmy
’s eyes crinkled appreciatively. “Sweet,” she said with quiet satisfaction, and kissed him.

Gaspi mumbled something incomprehensible and glanced at Taurnil self-consciously, but he needn
’t have worried. Lydia was showing him her own scarf, a blend of yellows and oranges with red embroidery, and Taurnil was responding attentively, intoxicated by the presence of his exotic, gypsy girlfriend. Gaspi figured he was in no position to give him a hard time.

“
You girls like to buy things eh?” he teased, trying to get the conversation back on safe ground. Emmy and Lydia had practically run out to the shops that morning, having been deprived of such pleasures for the summer. Taurnil grunted in amusement.

“
And what’s wrong with buying things?” Lydia asked archly.

“
Nothing, I was just observing,” Gaspi said with his most mischievous smile.

“
Mmm,” Lydia mused suspiciously.

“
Gaspi,” Emea started enthusiastically. “Are you gonna do that enchantment today in the quad?” she asked.

“
What’s that?” Taurnil asked.

“
Why not!” Gaspi said, grinning. “You’ll see Taurn,” he added, finishing his beer in one long swallow. “You ready?”

“
Sure. If you’re not going to tell me you may as well get on with it,” Taurnil answered, following Lydia as she slid off the bench and stood up.

They ambled back towards the college and passed through the gateway. Gaspi grimaced when he saw the once-glowing wall of the campus, now bereft of its protective enchantment. The fractured stone of the fallen archway had been cleared away, but the archway itself hadn
’t been repaired, and all that was left of it were two broken spars of stone, jutting uselessly into the air. The unwelcome sight reminded him of the traumatic battle they’d fought here just a few months previously.

They walked past an area of charred ground, covered in the scars of magical battle. The potent demon-bane enchantment of Taurnil
’s fiery blue staff drew its power from the earth beneath his feet, and wherever he had fought, the ground had been left blackened and cracked, drained of its life-giving energies.

It was in this very spot that Gaspi had fought for his life against four demons, and had been saved by Taurnil and his enchanted staff in a fierce battle to the death. Gaspi
’s eyes ran over the blackened sections of ground, reliving the battle again in his mind’s eye. He shared a telling look with Taurnil, but neither of them said anything. Emmy was bubbling over with excitement about the enchantment he was going to cast, and there was no reason to spoil the day.

When they reached the quad there were a few students hanging around the edges, but no-one was actually using it.
“Go on Gasp!” Emmy urged.

“
Your wish is my command,” he said, turning to face the quad, arms lifted. Responding to his call, power rushed up from deep within, filling him with sparkling, life-giving energy. Gaspi laughed joyously, languishing in magic’s embrace for a moment before casting his spell.

Reaching out with his senses, he attuned himself to the tiny particles of moisture suspended in the air. Some simple experiments over the summer had taught him that all air contained moisture, and he
’d already been practicing how to manipulate it. This would be his grandest experiment yet, but he couldn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work. He drew on the moisture, gathering and compressing it until a thin layer of water hung suspended over the quad. He cooled it down until it froze, and then lowered it gently to the ground. He heard Taurnil’s intake of breath as the first layer came to rest on the rectangular stretch of ground. He summoned skin after skin of ice, layering them on top of each other until there was a thick sheet of it covering the quad from corner to corner. When he was done, he released his hold on the magic and lowered his arms. The spell-work had been surprisingly tiring. The few students standing round the edges of the quad were staring open mouthed at their ice-capped football pitch, and a couple of them ran off, presumably to tell other people what they’d seen.

“
That’s brilliant! Taurnil said in amazement. “I knew you could freeze water that was already there, but I didn’t know you could make ice out of nothing.” He stepped out onto the ice, sliding from one foot to the other as if to check it was the real thing.

Gaspi laughed.
“I didn’t make it out of nothing,” he said. “The water was there all along in the air.”

Taurnil stopped sliding around and looked back at him.
“Eh?” he said, puzzled. “No never mind,” he said when Gaspi opened his mouth to explain. “I don’t care how you did it. That’s one of the best tricks you’ve ever done,” he finished with a grin.