One morning I woke up and there was a strange peasant sitting in my room in the chair I’d put by the window in which I liked to read. He looked like an old boot, so patched, rugged, and wrinkled by the elements and hard living.

“Who are you?” I said.

The man said nothing, just relaxed into my chair as if he owned the place. I wanted to say more, but what was the point? Either he was supposed to be here, or he wasn’t. In either case, my screaming and yelling would do absolutely nothing. My father had made it clear I was on my own. The guards — two years ago after the execution incident — had stopped even trying to provide any camaraderie; I was treated by them with some deference due to being the son of their lord, but even that was limited since they sensed how little my father seemed to care, and they imitated that sentiment.

Instead, I got up, keeping my eye on him, and began to do what I normally did to get ready to begin the day.

I had limited success casting magic and had managed to crudely weave together a few spells on my own. One of those spells I had ready to cast. I wasn’t sure how well it would work, and to be honest, it might even affect me too, but right now, any offense, even a bad one, was better than nothing.

From what I could tell, spell casting was saying exactly what you wanted, like writing a story or an essay, but in a language not constructed in 26 letters, but hundreds of thousands of ever-changing symbols and then putting your will into that. From my daily lessons with the Vulture, I knew maybe 2,500 of these symbols. From my self-study and experimentation, I could add another 8,500 or so.

8,500 sounds impressive, but it isn't. After a while, you start to get a knack for the common shifting words for familiar everyday things. For instance one of those obscure words that I was so proud of was the word for the small pebble that I had found in the hallway the other day. Another was the arcane word for the squeak the third plank under my bed made. I should stress that these words were not all squeaking third planks and not all pebbles, just the particular ones that I had bothered to study enough to understand and gain their arcane significance.

Added to that certain arcane words or ideas required affinities to use, and others required a certain amount of strength in a particular affinity or even strengths in groups of affinities to be able to visualize or cast the symbol, and the whole thing became rather complex. For example, the pebble required earth affinity to control when it was on the ground acting like a pebble, but the time that I had thrown it through the window at the back of the Vulture's head, had required an understanding of the pebble's nature in regards to air affinity as well as. The creaking wooden plank was even more complex. Sonic affinity, nature affinity, death affinity, even earth affinity in different measures.

Right now my spells casting was like speaking in sentence fragments, whereas an Archmage with a good set of affinities would presumably be the equivalent of a master poet, and the title of Archmage should really be arcane wordsmith except that I was sure that most spellcasters simply memorized sentences or paragraphs with the bare minimum of understanding of what they were casting. The reason for this was simple, beyond the first thousand or so characters that were fixed, and the next 1200 or so symbols that would change and shift but only to a limited and known extent, the rest of the language was in constant flux.

The difference between a master mage and about 95% of spellcasters was the ability to see and predict the shifts in the language and to divine the symbols as they occurred. I’d discovered that I had this knack and I made sure nobody, and I mean nobody found out. Like the rest of the world, I was pretending to be a fellow plagiarizing semi-literate.

There were 300 or words and symbols that the Vulture tried to teach me. But I faked ignorance. As time went on, I spent more and more time faking ignorance and stupidity with the Vulture. She would have a guard and eventually, my father came in to beat when she thought I was purposefully dense. But it had gotten to the point where I had numbed myself to the pain.

On a shelf in the library, tucked behind some books and covered in dust and spider webs was a mouse gnawed beginner’s guide to mage theory. I had found it in my search for books on magic. More specifically on my search for anything with a hint of the secret of Status page magic. The writer of this introductory text was long-winded and pompous. Every word made him seem like some pretentious twat who hated students and was punishing them for being forced to write a school book. I suspect that some long dead and forgotten student had hidden the book rather than be forced to read the lessons inside of it, but for me, it proved to be a godsend.

From the moment I found that book, the limits of my magical learning expanded away from the Vulture Lady to understanding precisely why she was teaching me what she was. For example:

…Though it bores me spend my words on those of you with such obviously plebeian intellects, the following pages may, and I stress may, be worthwhile to the few of you who come up to my minimum standard of intellectual capacity. I do not say equals, since I sincerely doubt that there are any minds capable of ascending to the apex of my accomplishments reading this, but if even one of you accomplishes even 1% of what I have done, I will have judged my time spent well.

The following three hundred symbols are the most simplistic of the non-fixed greater arcana. Up until this point we have focused mostly on the lesser fixed arcana and joining symbols. If this were a language, and only the most feeble minded and simplistic of mage considered this to be a simple language — as fashionable it is in the society of the unlearned to call it this — what you have learned up until now would be considered to be prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, most of the suffixes and prefixes in additions to a few utterly simplistic verbs and a handful of nouns.

Today is the day we learn if you are one of the few who can leave baby talk behind. Learning, from this point on, is about aquiring language.

Do not worry, if you cannot get beyond this point the only shame is in the incompetence of your birth. Only one magically endowed student in one thousand will be able to read all 300 of these symbols. Only five or ten people in one hundred will be able to read more than 150 and might manage over the course of their lifetime manage, if they struggle for the rest of their days, to overcome their own ignorance. The rest, of you can count yourselves lucky if you can see five or ten, and should worship those of us with more intellect and skills. We are to you, as gods are among men, or at the very least, as adults are among children…

As far as the Vulture Lady and my father were concerned I had mastered 47 of the 300 non-fixed greater arcana rather than the few thousand I now actually knew. They were disappointed. The force and fineness I could put behind those few words I pretended to only know had few equals. And if I showed more NFL Quarterback in my potential talents than I was outwardly showing the skills to be this world’s equivalent of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist… well if my father was mentally capable of showing emotions, I think he would be happy. Or at least satisfied. Or at least not homicidal.

I would take “not homicidal” any day of the week.

The old man was still there when I finished dressing. I then went into my study and sat down to wait for Embra of the Vultures and her daily reading lessons, though truth be told there wasn’t anything she could teach me anymore. We both knew it. These days’ I just tried to be as insulting as possible to her by over-emphasizing and stressing the love and respect I held for her. Which I suppose was a form of politics. In truth, I would probably celebrate if she was eaten by sharks.

The old man followed me into the study, and he sat down.

“By all means, sit down,” I said.

He looked at me quizzically but said nothing.

I pulled a book detailing the strange customs of a demi-human race of gnomes that tended to live near dungeons on this world. They were like Earth’s pearl divers, but instead of swimming deep into the sea for oysters to harvest or seed, for or with pearls, these demi-humans almost religiously would carry whatever small treasures, plants, or foreign animals, they could steal, trade, or buy deep into the dungeons, in hopes to appease whatever spirit lived inside. The author of the book claimed it was a symbiotic relationship, though he could only speculate on what the creatures got in return from the dungeon.

It was interesting, especially since up until only a few days ago I hadn’t known that this world had dungeons and adventurers. Dungeons were fewer in this empire, or at least the adventurer’s guild was more regulated, and most of the nation’s dungeons were owned and kept secret or private by the nobility or specific orders. But reading about them was exciting, and I could sometimes daydream about soloing some imaginary Inquisitor’s dungeon in secret and destroying the Core, ultimately undermining the entire power structure backing up my father and his Order and friends.

My father came into the room.

“I see that you’ve met Wilmette Bear Trillium. Good. For the next two years, he will be your instructor.” My father turned to the man, who I now knew to be Wilmette and said something in a language I did not recognize… or rather I wasn’t sure I recognized. There was some familiarity there. But I couldn’t quite place it. Unfortunately, I had learned to read eight other languages from books, six of which were still in use, and only two considered historically important. But had never been allowed to meet anyone who spoke any of the languages I learned, so I had no idea what they sounded like.

The man responded in the same language my father spoke, and I just looked blankly, not following at all.

My father said, “Well what are you waiting for. Get out of my sight.”

The man walked out of my study, into my bedroom. Then out into the hall. Leaning up against one of the walls was a well-made compound bow, a long sword, a quiver of arrows, and a knife so long it almost seemed like a dagger. He strapped these on and motioned me to follow him.

We walked through the courtyard where the soldiers were training. The old man I was following pointed at the rack of weapons that the soldiers would take from if there was an emergency or if it was their turn to be on guard. And motioned that I take one, then without waiting for me, continued to walk, heading towards the main gate out of the manor and into the city.

I managed to dash off and grab myself a knife and a short sword. A long sword would be too big for my eleven-year-old body. I’d never held an actual bladed weapon except to sharpen it. I also grabbed a short bow and some arrows, then ran to catch up with the man.

We walked through the town away from the manor. The smell of the feces and urine that was dumped into the streets from second-floor windows mixed with the salty air and the smell of baking bread and foreign spices. We were two people in the crowd; me in clothing that was much too rich and pampered because I was provided with nothing else, and the old man in weather-beaten and much-mended leathers, half cured furs, and whatever threadbare fabrics he probably once scrounged from a garbage dump somewhere.

We walked, and we walked until we walked out of the city. Then we continued to walk until the sun tripped and stumbled drunken and tired and wary into its bed behind the horizon and set to snoring the violent cacophony of orange purple and blue twilight. He stopped beside the road, made a little fire, pulled out some dried meat, handed me some. And after a while lay down and fell asleep.