After speaking with my father, I was shepherded into the fidgety presence of an elderly woman I called the Vulture lady but whose dignified name was Embra Stork Thista for instruction in reading. A Thista was a mildly magical plant which indicated that Embra the Vulture lady had incredibly distant ties to the royal family. In reality, she was simply a very weak magic user and was often hired by the families of nobility to instruct very young children.

“Elm, concentration is key.” Said the Vulture Lady as she smacked me with the stick she carried for staring out the window at a bird. “This is the symbol in Lanta for “Privy” it will be very important if you are out in the city and you don’t want to shit in the street like a filthy commoner.”

Lanta was the easiest of the three written languages I was learning. In truth, I had already mastered it. It wasn’t that hard. There was, only about 500 or so simple images for me to memorize.

Things like Market, Food, Lodging, Beer, Men, Women, Name. I probably hadn’t even had to learn how to write them — the Vulture Lady hadn’t bothered teaching me but I’d practiced on my own and learned anyway. The symbols were more like pictographs, they required a trained hand, and a bit of artistic flair.

It was the language for the common folks. Lanta was painted on buildings and doors. It signified where things were, or gave rough directions. The Embra once told me that Lanta was the nearest thing this world had to a common language since it was used everywhere by everyone. Even some monsters understood a varying amount of the simple pictographs.

Fortunately, the Vulture Lady didn’t force me to spend a long time studying Lanta. They really were easy to pick up and self-explanatory, however, Lanta lessons were always just a warm-up for Magirth, which was the written language of the Kingdom. Those lessons took considerably longer.

I was also given some bread and a small amount of roasted meat to nibble on during these early morning Lanta lessons. They did not feed me a lot, and I actually looked forward to this simple food far more than I did the Vulture’s presence.

“No, no. You are getting it all wrong,” yelled the Vulture Lady. “You spelled my name as Buzzard not Stork, the accent on the ’te phoneme goes under the letter not above.” Part of the reason I called her the Vulture lady was of course how easy it was to misspell her name in this language. Just a minor character misplacement. Of course, it didn’t help that she was older than the sky, and waited all hunched over to wack me for making even the smallest mistake.

As nobility, I was expected to be proficient in the language. Being able to read and write was one of the major differences between having an herbivore for my 12-year-old name and an omnivore. Besides, all of the legal contracts, histories, fiction, and memoirs, poetry, guidebooks, and the like were written in educated Magrith.

Lessons in Magrith went on for three hours. An earth analogy would be from about 6 a.m. in the morning to 9 a.m. Lanta took either a half an hour of lessons and sometimes a full hour of lessons starting at 5 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. in the morning depending on whether or not my father decided to visit me, to tell me scary stories.

The final two hours before noon were a bit of a shock. When I had been three years old, my first tutor — patient man I’d actually liked who’d told me funny stories to help me pick up some simple Lanta and how to see marvels in the world — had opened up a large book in front of me and told me to tell him what I saw.

“Tell me what you see, Elm. Don’t worry if you don’t see anything. Most people don’t and even people who can’t sometimes can’t until much later in their lives.”

“Yes, Uncle Terces Panda Willow.”

“Elm, how often have I told you. I am not your Uncle, and you can just call me Terces.”

“But I like you, and you should be my Uncle. I don’t like my uncle, he smells like rotting meat and touches me places he shouldn’t.”

“Be that as it may, he is your blood and should be respected. Now quit stalling and look at the book.”

The book was a thin hardcover volume. Something, I assume more for children than as a serious lesson planner. I wasn’t sure what Uncle Terces meant by ‘most people don’t see what's in this book…” but I had my suspicions.

Still, I opened the front cover and nearly fell off my chair the light from the page was so blinding.

“Uncle,” I yelled. “That hurts. The light is so bright. That is a mean trick.”

Terces simply closed the book, and the light went away. Then he looked at me for a little while. Thinking. And left me, without saying anything. That was the last I saw of the Uncle Terces, a few days later the Vulture Lady began teaching me in his stead, and my lessons now included three hours a day in learning to read them, at first, blinding, but slowly manageably bright lettering that made up written magic.

Afternoon, my duties switched and I was led out to help the guards. You might think that as an eight-year-old of nobility that my duties would involve learning swordcraft and siege warfare, and you would be completely wrong. Instead, I was given two buckets, one for water and one for shit. As the guards trained, if they needed to drink between training sessions, I had to carry the water bucket over to them to drink out of. If a guard had to defecate, I was to carry the shit bucket over to them, and afterward, I was to empty it and clean it.

The guards were allowed to beat me if I mixed up and brought the wrong bucket. This was something I learned the first time I brought the shit bucket over when they wanted the drinking bucket.

When I wasn’t running back and forth, I was expected to watch the guards train and make simple repairs to broken equipment. Fix wooden practice swords, do simple stitches to padded armor, clean scabbards, wash saddles, oil mail, grind out nicks in daggers, sweep the stables, rub down and feed the horses, wash uniforms and do whatever other physical yet menial grunt work they could chase a servant away from doing.

At around five I would go with the guards to the barracks for a meal. Usually, this was something simple made from rice or beans with some vegetables, and occasionally a bit of meat.

“Poo boy eats last,” said the Cook. “When the poo boy, not a poo boy and become a cook, he can eat first, but until then, he eats last.”

“I think I hate it here,” I muttered under my voice.

“What’s that poo boy,” said one of the guards.

“Just making a comment about your fat ass Temkin.” I said and ran off with my bowl of indeterminate who knows what.

The other guards laughed, and Temkin laughed too, which was good since he had a temper and I’m not sure how much my being the son of his Lord would have meant to him if I’d got him really wound up.

“If I’d known you were into asses poo boy, I’d have let you cuddle with mine.” Yelled Temkin at my retreating head.

“I’m not into asses, except that yours makes so much poo, that I might need to get two or three more buckets.”

I was expected to be waiting by the front gate of our manor by 6:00 p.m. which since I was fed last, usually meant I had to eat quickly and then run to make it on time.

The last lesson of the day was usually my favorite. One of my father’s advisors Crestor Otter Mahogany would take me to visit one of the homes of the people out in the nearby city. He would introduce me, and then the person I was visiting would tell me about themselves. This way I met laborers, merchants, innkeepers, and scribes. Afterward, Crestor would walk back to the manor with me and explain what that person did and their importance to the commerce, culture, and health of the city, county, and nation.

“Elm, I would like to introduce you to Tabor Raccoon Bean. Tabor is a Master potter. Would you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do, Master potter?”

“Of course, my lord."

“Elm, at my most basic I work with clay that I get from the river. I have laborers bring the clay to me, I then shape it into plates, vases, and cups. When the clay is still wet, I apply an enamel and then carefully put the vessel into an oven to heat it. We call this firing. The heat makes the clay hard and the enamel shines like glass and it also brings out the colors.”

Looking at a box of minerals that was glowing with light “So you only use clay?”

Tabor laughed, “of course not. I see the young Lord has mage’s sight. That is a special material that earth mages make, it works like clay but it is infused with magic. I can fire it, and enamel it, just like I would a normal vase or plate, but the power stays in it after it has been fired. There is also another process that uses bone ash to make a fine white type of material after it has been fired.”

The big man pointed over to a tiny willowy blond girl, maybe fourteen years old, who was sitting at a pottery wheel, making busy imitating Demi Moore from Ghost. She was focused and very intent on her work.

“These days, my daughter who is my apprentice, does most of the clay work, unless there is a very big order. I concentrate on the porcelain, the bone white pottery, and the creiter the magic pottery. The price of the materials for both of those processes are too much for a beginner, even one as talented as my daughter. And they sell for the most money so our clients demand perfection.

I was still watching the girl at the pottery wheel and when she made a small mistake and the shape almost got out of her control she mouthed an almost inaudible “Fuck” that was definitely in English.