The next day I checked the sphere again. I wasn’t going to try to recharge it without having people around, after what had happened last time, but I thought I could check in on it, at least.

It was at 14.2 percent. It was about 48 hours since I’d checked it before, and it had lost one percent. In less than a month, if I neglected it, it would reach zero. Further, that implied that it was losing charge faster now than it had earlier in the two years since Dumbledalf’s demise, which means the whole thing might be an accelerating process, or there could be some other reason. I’d need to know more to know exactly how much time I had, and a 1.1 percent loss could mean anywhere between 1.01 and 1.19 – that could make a difference, too. I resolved to take readings every day to see if I could get a better handle on it.

Vixie had a lot of work to do at the smithy, so I was on my own. Continuing to work through the elements, I found a book called Geomancie, and set about learning a spell without a teacher for the first time.

“The practise of geomancie is amongst the most puissant of the arts, and thou wouldst be wise to learn its secrets if thou wishest to be reckoned as wise. First thou must learn to holde the symbol in thy mindes eye…”

It was slow going. I almost wanted to skip the text and get straight to the “code” as it were, which was in symbols that were becoming increasingly familiar to me. I got an insight into the way most magic was learned and practiced. A series of formulas were handed down from generation to generation, either by books or by looking into the eyes of a fellow caster. The books didn’t talk about the syntax, or the way the symbols worked together.

Basically, mages weren’t programmers, or hackers. They were mostly the equivalent of script kiddies. Someone had understood all this, at some point, or there wouldn’t be any spells, but that information hadn’t been passed on widely as far as I could tell.

I wanted to reverse engineer it. But the way to get there was first to do a lot by rote while keeping my eyes open for patterns.

The first spell was to conjure a rock and send it flying through the air. Probably a part of the spell conjured the rock, gathering it out of local materials, and the second part caused it to move with “lordly force.” I had an idea of which part was which, but I wasn’t sure. When I’d been looking around before I’d found a bag of dirt in one of the cabinets, probably because Dumbledalf did some earth magic himself and he didn’t want the materials to be taken from the walls or the pottery. There were all sorts of things in there, little doodads that I had no idea what they were for, but I didn’t reorganize and I certainly wasn’t going to throw anything away, as I didn’t know what would be important for spells. I poured a bunch of dirt into a large, round bowl that reminded me of the one my mother used to make bread dough in. I had been a late baby, and my parents had been in their forties. Neither of them were around anymore.

Casting the spell was harder than it had been with Vixie. I went back and forth, memorizing symbols, trying to send them spinning in a spiral in my mind, and then going back and seeing what I’d gotten wrong. At one point, I managed to create a dirt clod, reaffirming my notion that the “spell” I was learning was really multiple spells turned into one sequence. But a clod wasn’t a rock. I kept trying, but there seemed to be something mystical about learning from another person, as if watching the spiral in Vixie’s eyes directly transferred things into my brain.

Around noon, I made it all work. A pebble a third of an inch in diameter appeared in my hand, and then shot out across the room. I couldn’t measure the velocity, but my guess was that it moved faster than I could throw it, and a lot slower than a bullet from a rifle. It narrowly missed some glassware, and dinged off one of the glass windows, leaving a dent but not cracking the thick glass before rebounding and bouncing across the floor, most of its energy spent.

It was the closest I had to a combat spell, and I suspected it was about as effective as a major league baseball pitcher throwing a rock. Nothing to sneeze at, especially if you got the target in the head, but not the sort of thing you wanted to rely on to take down an enemy. I didn’t have anyone I intended to fight, but I’d played enough games where combat magic was important that it was in the back of my mind. Also, I didn’t know what else the spell would be good for. Military applications often were a priority in the development of technology, which I supposed also explained why this spell was the first spell one was supposed to learn in “geomancie.”

Gerald Kenner, Mage

Mana: 18/23

Spells known: Tiny Flame (3), Water Globe (4), Sling Bullet (5), Reinforce Greater Shield (X)

My mana had gone up. Awesome! That gave me hope. I wanted to improve my aim, and commit the spell to memory, so I set up the bag of dirt across the room to use as a target and then cast the spell again.

The trap door was in between me and the target, and just at that moment, it opened. My aim was good, which was fortunate, because it meant that the pebble went whizzing through the air a couple of feet above Laurel’s head rather than plonking her. Still, it was way too close.

“Fuck!” I said.

“What in the world?” she exclaimed, as the pebble struck the dirt bag with a thump. I saw that she was holding another wax paper package, and a bottle of water.

“Oh,” I said. “Lunchtime.”

She frowned, still standing on one of the steps. “Why did you throw a rock at me?”

“I didn’t,” I said, and explained as best I could. “Didn’t know you would pop up right then,” I finished lamely.

“I should have knocked, I guess. Is it safe to come in?”

“Yes, yes, I won’t do that again.”

“Me, neither.” She climbed the rest of the way up and put the package, which I could see contained another thick sandwich, on the table. She set the water beside it, and then a sheet of paper. “A few people came by asking after you. I’ve been taking messages. I didn’t want them disturbing your work, and that was before I knew it was dangerous to come up here.”

I nodded. “I … will be experimenting. So yes, definitely better to knock, and I’d rather not see any strangers up here. Just you, Vixie, and, um, Bran I guess for now. Are they interrupting your work, Laurel?”

Laurel shrugged. “My work is not as important as yours,” she said.

“I’m not so sure about that. Healing people is pretty important.”

“You think so?”

I smiled. “I do.”

“I just mix the preparations. The preparations do the healing.”

I shrugged. “Same difference.” I picked up the paper.

A Mr. Hendrick wanted me to fix the enchantment on his plow.

Three people wanted their hot water fixed. One of them hadn’t had hot water for over a year.

Alyssa Tyndale had a ‘personal item’ she wanted re-enchanted, and offered ‘payment in kind.’

I didn’t know what the personal item was, although I had a wild guess, and if I was right the payment in kind might be interesting, but it also seemed lower priority than the hot water or the plow. “I don’t know how to do any of this,” I said.

Laurel nodded. “I told them you were very busy. I’m afraid they just assume a mage can do these things.”

I was going to be letting down people a lot. “I’ll make a priority of the hot water enchantment,” I said. “If I can find it in all of this.” I gestured around to the library. “Although I think I saw a book that might help with the plow thing, so I should start with that. How big is the plow?”

“Big enough that it needs a horse to pull it,” Laurel said.

“So I’d have to go there, rather than have him bring it here.”

Laurel nodded. “Probably. Mrs. Tyndale indicated that she’d like you to go to her place, too. She’s a widow. And the hot water pipes have to be enchanted in place, obviously.”

“Ah.”

“I could help you find the enchantments in the books, maybe,” Laurel offered. “I’m really done for the day, unless someone gets sick.”

“Would you?” I asked.

“I will. Let me go back downstairs and make sure the front door is unlocked and leave a sign telling people to yell up. That way I won’t miss it if there’s an emergency. I’ll be right back up.”

She hurried down without waiting for an answer. Nine flights down, nine flights back up. But what was there to do about it? Levitation, obviously. I appreciated the fact that she felt safe leaving the door open. Small town values. I wondered if people in Scarletdale could really be trusted like that, because crime happened in small towns, too.

I had much to learn. But the single point of mana I’d gained had been encouraging. That had happened in basically two days. In a month, maybe I’d have a mana pool approaching forty, and could start pumping up that shield faster than it was going down, and maybe still have a little left over to keep experimenting with. It was tight, but it was possible – based on my current assumptions, anyway.

I ate the sandwich, which was delicious, and drank the water. I didn’t drink coffee, but I craved a Coke. I tried to reserve caffeine for days when I really needed to focus, but it was beginning to look like that was going to be every day for a while.

Maybe they had tea in Scarletdale. I would ask. I didn’t love it, but I needed something. If I ever became a great and powerful mage, making my own spells from the language of magic, I was going to learn to carbonate drinks.

I looked at the book I’d found earlier, entitled Agricultural Enchantments, which seemed like the obvious place to find something that would work on a plow, while Laurel looked through the library trying to find the hot water enchantment. At my suggestion, she wrote down a short description of what was in each book she looked at and stuck it in like a bookmark, and then piled them on a table. She was careful and methodical, which I appreciated.

I found two enchantments for plows, one which kept the blade sharper, the other which made the plow lighter so a human could pull a plow meant for an ox. Given that Laurel said a horse pulled this one, I suspect it was the sharp blade enchantment, which would make the plow do its work faster. From what Laurel told me, Mr. Hendrick used his plow to help other farmers as well, so it was important for food production for the whole village. Without the enchantment, the blades got dull over time, becoming less effective.

By the end of the day, I thought I understood the enchantment well enough that I was confident I could figure it out, but I needed a plow to find out for sure.