When Galar Kayle awoke, he thought that he was dead.

He had trouble seeing at first -- everything seemed hazy, bright, and suffused with a nacreous luminescence. He seemed to float, suspended, in a cloud of white light; his body felt airy and boneless, and he felt no pain -- only a sublime, calm joy. Surely this was Santorana's Elyseia, where lovers and families were reunited after death? After a moment, though, he realized that he was, in fact, alive; shapes began to slowly resolve in his vision as sensation returned to his body. Everything looked hazy to him because he'd lost his glasses; he felt like he was floating because he was in a large, fluffy bed with a feather mattress and pillows; and his body and mind felt blissful and rapturous because he was very, very full of painkilling drugs.

By degrees, he began to return to himself. The familiar aches and pains of middle age began to reassert themselves as the medication cleared his system; he managed to get a hand free of the thick blankets, fumbled around on a nearby table for his glasses, and put them on with some effort before falling back to the bed and resting for a while longer. Wherever he was, it was obviously not Saurgar Bridge or anywhere near it. Was this a field hospital?

He drifted briefly, then rallied; when he woke up again, he was dimly aware that he was not alone. A young woman, clad all in white, seemed to be sitting by his bedside. "Mel..." he mumbled, reaching out for her hand. The woman made a small sound of surprise and shock, and he came back to himself. He jerked his hand away, then winced as the pain made itself known in full. A buzzing, high-pitched whine filled his ears; eventually, he realized that the young woman was speaking.

"...ry... ...ain? Ca... ...me?" she was saying. Galar shook his head and pointed to his ear, then let his hand drop; the effort was shocking. The woman seemed to understand, withdrew for a moment, then returned with a glass of water. He sipped it gratefully, then fell back against the pillows once more.

"Can you hear me now?" she asked. Her voice was very quiet, with a high pitch but a slightly throaty timbre, and her elocution was very precise; he guessed she'd been formally educated. Galar tried to nod, found he couldn't quite manage it, and managed to croak something affirmative-sounding instead. Gods, his body was a mess.

He could look at her, though. She was very young; probably Linduin's age. At first, he had thought her to be wearing a nurse's outfit of white cotton, but now he could see that she was clad in a light gown of taffeta and chiffon; a noble, he guessed. He attempted to ask where he was, but all that came out was a wheeze.

"Lie still," said the young woman, pressing a cool cloth to his brow. "You're quite lucky to be alive, Sir Knight. I'm told your injuries were quite gruesome." Galar tried to correct her regarding his station, but she continued on without pause. "I've been asked to tell you that you need to rest and regain your strength. You're to sleep, take food and drink when it is given, and make no attempt to bestir thyself." He added weight to his hypothesis that she was a noble; he hadn't heard "thyself" used in actual conversation since his childhood. Before he could ask her who she was, she made him drink another glass of water, then got up and walked away. Galar tried to sit up, regretted the action, and passed out again.

Over the next few days, he gained strength; by the next day he could sit up, and by the third he could consume the solid food that robed, silent attendants brought. A chirurgeon came in to remove bandages; he'd been almost completely covered with them, but he seemed to be mostly whole. All his limbs were accounted for, and although he felt thoroughly wretched (particularly when they stopped giving him opium), he was able to stand with a cane by the end of the first week and walk with one a day after that. He was bored most of the time; he exercised in bed four times a day, prayed to Santorana at every opportunity, and walked back and forth across his room as soon as he was capable. By the time the young woman returned, nearly two weeks after her first appearance, he was fit enough to do a single push-up, which he was rather proud of.

"My lady", he greeted her upon her return. "You honor me with your attendance."

She curtsied (extremely well, he noted) and lowered her eyes demurely. "It is my duty and pleasure, Sir Knight. We all wish only for your health and recovery."

Galar blinked. "That's the second time you've called me that. I wonder if there's been some manner of mistake; I'm merely a pikeman."

The young woman laughed; not a polite giggle, but a full-throated chuckle that sounded a bit like chiming bells to him. "I'm afraid you're the one who's mistaken. Your valor in battle against the demons has gone neither unnoticed nor unrewarded; His Majesty the King has seen fit to bestow a station upon you. Thou art a knight banneret, now; Sir Kayle of Temurin." He noted that she seemed to slip back into archaic speech unconsciously; maybe she'd been trying to speak more plainly to put him at ease.

Galar bowed his head. "If, as you say, the King has seen fit to honor me in such a way, I am grateful. But I desire no titles or accolades; merely the chance to return to the field."

She nodded. "And return to the field you shall, Sir Knight; but you have much to do here first. Recuperation and ceremony, I am informed... as well as some training." She glided to a table near his bed and placed a great gilded tome upon it, bound in thick leather and brass. Strange runes adorned its cover, as well as a large iron lock and a silver key.

Galar eyed it suspiciously. "And what, pray tell, is that? And, for that matter, who are you, my lady?"

The young woman dipped another curtsey and brought her hands together piously at her breast. "I am Princess Orána di Bizoura, and it is my honor to be the eldest daughter of King Atrís di Bizoura, Fifth of our House. And that, Sir Knight, is the collected works of Falshawn Ivorious, the last to bear the White Gift before you. It is my hope, and the hope of the kingdom, that you will find his knowledge and teachings instructive. The salvation of all our peoples, and perhaps all of humanity, rests upon you and your blessed endowment."

Galar Kayle blinked. Either he'd been given too many drugs, or not nearly enough.

***

The journey to Vortsmir was mostly silent and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Linduin struggled early on with his tasks, but it eventually dawned on him that Cheis had, in fact, taught him a great wealth of knowledge and techniques with the intent that he might actually apply them to his training. Once he began using his new expertise at contemplative and mental tactics, he shocked himself a great deal less. Pellamin, for his part, was mostly content to look out the window at the landscape and sigh wistfully; he'd done his part, and the rest was mostly up to Cheis at this point. Occasionally, he too read from a book (a large, ponderous historical tome) but kept having to stop due to motion sickness. They exchanged horses at Kinbanza, slept under the stars, then resumed their travels. Cheis, who spent almost the entire ride ignoring everyone bitterly, forgot to check on Linduin until they were nearly arrived; when she finally remembered to gauge his progress, she was surprised to find that his top score for both objectives was nearly three hours, well beyond what she had asked (although it should be noted that Linduin cheated outrageously by turning on both modes simultaneously and then meditating on the desired target image, which automatically earned him credit for not thinking of the undesired image at the same time). Without a word of praise, she showed him another keyword to cause the stock to display his thoughts as glowing words in his field of vision, which horrified him and kept him very occupied indeed for the remainder of the journey. The first task she set him was to go five minutes without having any words appear; his high score was currently nine seconds.

When the coach finally arrived in Vortsmir, the driver took them straight to the docks and unloaded everyone, then departed without a word to drink heavily. Pellamin led them to the trabaccalo ship Eudanza, which had been waiting for them with no small amount of impatience. The ship cast off almost before they were aboard; Cheis had to catch Linduin to stop him from falling off when the gangplank was rather unceremoniously retracted while he was still gawking his way up it.

There was some disagreement regarding their accommodations onboard; a cabin had originally been reserved for Cheis, with Pellamin sharing a berth with another guest. But the inclusion of Linduin caused some logistical difficulties, and Cheis's suggestion that Pellamin take the cabin and that she bunk in the public accommodations was met with distaste and horror by the captain, who feared the public relations debacle of a woman being left unprotected amongst the crew's living spaces. Cheis assured him that any crewman who messed with her would cause no further problems, but the captain was equally unwilling to have any of his crewmembers turned into smoking craters. Eventually, to Pellamin's extreme displeasure, it was agreed that Cheis and Linduin would share the cabin. Linduin, totally oblivious to the subtext of all of this, was merely excited to get a cabin on a ship; Cheis, who simultaneously relished the opportunity to make Pellamin uncomfortable and hated herself for it, was no help either. Affronted, Pellamin retired to belowdecks, while Linduin and Cheis watched the waves as the ship sailed eastward to Ciel-Upon-The-Sea.

Linduin, who was watching sea birds with the timeless and universal awe of the first-time tourist, was abruptly struck by a thought. He turned to Cheis, concerned. "Before that guy showed up, you were about to tell me something about 'basic fundamental principle of magic', or something. I thought you were going to tell me in the coach, but you just gave me this thing." He tugged at the cloth around his neck in irritation.

"Oh, right." Cheis scoured her memory, trying to pull herself out of the funk she was in. "To be honest, you really need to get good at the practical side of things in a hurry, now; it'd be very inconvenient for me if one of the sailors threw you overboard, or something. But I guess I can straighten you out on that one first." She walked over to a large bucket full of soapy water, retrieved it, and brought it back.

"Magic is all about one thing," she began, "but that one thing is actually a bunch of things, because everything is complicated and nothing is ever easy, as you've probably begun to figure out." Linduin sighed and nodded. "The first part, which you probably figured out when you passed your test, is that using magic always has a cost. Sometimes you pay the cost; sometimes you can make something else pay it for you; but the cost to change something something always has to come from somewhere."

Linduin blinked. "Cost? Like, when the gods make you immortal, but you still get old, so you end up an eternally-tormented skull or something?"

Cheis rolled her eyes. "No. I mean cost like paying money for an apple. Except when you use magic, you don't pay with coins, you pay with mana." She pulled a splinter out of the bucket, flicked her finger at it, and the tip of the splinter burst into flame. "Fire's a good example; the wood burns, which makes heat and light. But the wood gets used up; that's the cost of the fire. When you cast spells, the spell is like the fire, and your mana is like the wood."

"I... think I get it." Linduin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "So this mana is like... the effort you expend when you lift something?"

"You need to think a little more abstractly than that." Cheis gestured at the bucket; a spout of soapy water leapt up and fell back down, pushing the bubbles away from the point of impact. "The water is like mana; it's the thing doing the pushing. But you can get water from lots of places; your sweat, the sea, a puddle, and so on." She pointed at Linduin. "Your own life force is the easiest source of mana; that's what most mages cast from. But there's a problem with that approach; the amount of life force you can afford to expend has a maximum upper bound, has unpleasant side effects on your body, and it's very easy to use up more than you can safely spare. Put a little too much juice into a spell, and you can pass out or even fall over dead." She dumped the bucket onto the deck and kicked it over onto its side in an attempt to drive the point home; Linduin gulped and paled slightly.

"Okay. So, if you don't want to use your own life force as mana... where do you get mana from? The air, or something?"

Cheis shook her head. "Most of the world's ambient mana is already in use, actively being things. If you want to access that energy, you need to unbind whatever's currently using it." She stared at him, her eyes a little sad and a little proud, waiting for him to get it.

Linduin was bright, but not particularly quick; it took him a few seconds. But when the realization reached him, a horrible feeling crawled up and down his spine, and his eyes opened wide. "Merciful gods... that's why you're a necromancer. You use the life energy of the things and people you kill for power."

Cheis nodded. "And, if you have two licks of sense, you'll learn to do it too. Living beings are full of vital energy that's very close to mana in its natural form; you can do things like convert heat to mana if you work very hard at it, but the efficiency rate is really poor and you have lots of unpleasant side effects, like starting forest fires and melting things with the runoff heat." She sighed. "It's unpleasant, but that's just how it is. And trust me, you'll probably have to kill people from time to time anyway; you might as well put the raw materials to good use instead of letting them go to waste."

"But what about their souls? Is it true that necromancers can bind the spirits of their victims too?" Linduin was a little horrified, a little excited, and a lot curious. He hadn't planned for a career in necromancy, but he certainly liked having options.

"Souls are complicated, actually. Here." Cheis gestured at the soaked deck; the water, completely defying gravity and entropy, un-spilled out of the bucket and refilled it, then levitated into the air as an aqueous orb with several tiny trickling streams cascading back down into the bucket. "Think of it like this; the bucket is your body, and the orb of water is your brain; the water itself is your life force. The pattern that the falling water makes, in the air, with all those spirals and droplets and stuff, is your soul." As they watched, the orb dwindled as all of the water comprising it ran into the bucket, then vanished entirely. "The water can be reused, and the bucket can be repurposed. But once the pattern's gone, it's gone."

Linduin frowned. "But you could preserve the pattern, couldn't you? Like, by drawing it, or..." he stopped, understanding.

Cheis nodded. "You can copy it, with enough work. But it's not the original. You can also figure out the rules by which the pattern is generated, and copy those; that's how you get bound spirits and similar things. The skeletons you saw me boss around work on a similar principle." Cheis did not say that the skeletons were more properly thought of as programmed automata, because Linduin lacked both the cultural and academic background to make sense of such an idea. "Your brain is basically a machine for generating your soul on a continuous basis; if your brain gets destroyed, it can't make your soul anymore. So it's fairly important to take care of your brain. The body can be repaired, although that's certainly not easy; the brain is a bit more precious. So try to avoid getting hit in the head."

Linduin chewed on his lower lip. "I think I get it; bodies make life force, life force powers the brain, the brain produces the soul. And you can turn life force -- yours or someone else's -- into mana. But how does mana make the spell work? And what's with the runes and the gestures and the chanting? You seem to use all three, but sometimes you only gesture, other times you only speak, and you almost never draw runes."

Cheis shook her head. "That conversation is far, far above your pay grade at this point, kid. For now, just understand that in order to do magic, you need a structure to channel the mana around; similar to how you need a trench or a tube to control the flow of water." She gestured at the bucket again, and levitated some of the water into her hand. "If I shoot a jet of this water at something, I can move it around." She demonstrated by shooting a tight, powerful stream of water at the bucket, pushing it back slightly. "But launching mana directly at objects is pretty crap, and mostly only good for doing things like starting fires or electrocuting your apprentice."

Linduin scowled, then frowned in thought. "Wait... when this thing zaps me, where's the mana coming from? My own life force?"

"Yeah. You probably got tired after shocking yourself a lot of the last few days, right?"

Linduin's eyes grew wide. "Did I use up my life energy?! Am I going to die sooner now?"

"No, no," Cheis laughed. "It doesn't work like that. Vital mana comes from the same source as the energy you use to lift things or run. You get tired the same, and you recuperate the same. This is also why you don't generally see mages fighting physically; it burns the candle at both ends. You do, however, need to eat and rest regularly, and a little exercise makes a big difference too." She tossed the orb of water back into the bucket. "We're just scratching the surface here; the actual mechanisms by which a mana circuit creates an effect are complicated as heck and, as you should be able to guess by this point, involve a lot of--"

"--math." Linduin was starting to get the picture.

Cheis nodded approvingly. "And physics, and philosophy, and all the other stuff I've been cramming between your wax-filled ears. But that will all come later. For now, you get to learn something truly awesome." She unfolded the corner of the cloth around his neck again and roughly forced his hand to touch the silver rune, as before. "You've been watching me levitate stuff around for the last fifteen minutes; the magic word poma-kina will let you do the same if you're touching the rune. Try moving that bucket around."

Linduin froze, then began to vibrate slightly. It was happening. He was actually going to do something magical. Pinching the rune tightly, he stretched his other hand out towards the bucket and obediently intoned "Poma-kina", although his voice cracked a little. It took him a few moments of fumbling, but then, in a rush, it all worked. The bucket, which had been jittering around on the deck shakily, moved smoothly into the air and floated over to his hand. An exuberant shout of "I DID IT!" burst from him unbidden, earning him a smack from Cheis.

"Keep your voice down," Cheis growled, rolling her eyes. "And try not to think about the bucket flipping over and dropping onto your head."

"What?" said Linduin, abruptly followed by "Augh!" as the bucket did exactly that. He sputtered and reflexively threw his hands up towards his face, lost contact with the rune, and was slammed to the deck by the abrupt weight of the bucket. "Pfah... glah!"

"The fact that you are currently being hit by a wave of exhaustion," continued Cheis, as Linduin experienced it, "combined with the obvious ease of accidentally injuring or killing yourself with an errant impulse, should be instructive; but just in case it's not, fucking listen for once. Magic is dangerous. Telekinesis is expensive, inefficient, and unwieldy; applying any kind of meaningful force will enervate you to the point of immobility, unconsciousness, or death nearly every time, so you can forget about any dreams of shooting knives at people or anything cool like that. Your control degenerates quickly, and the fact that you have to spend almost all your effort just opposing gravity means that for the vast majority of cases it's easier just to go pick things up with your damn hands; you'll notice I didn't levitate things around at home. About the only thing it's good for is impressing stupid people." Linduin winced. "Let's get the stupid questions out of the way."

Linduin picked himself up slowly from the deck, breathing heavily and using the railing for support as much as possible; he felt like he'd just run a mile. "Okay. So... mana, a channel, an effect happens, it's complicated. But why didn't you get tired? I know you're tough, but..." his eyes narrowed. "You've got some... storage space, for extra energy. An enchanted item, or spell, or something. That's how you can do so many things."

"Ding ding ding." Cheis yawned. "Don't try that, by the way; a previous apprentice thought she would be clever and develop her own version on the sly, and she exploded. Like, literally exploded. I had to clean bits of her off the ceiling." Linduin blanched and looked ill. "In fact, until you have a lot more theoretical grounding, don't try anything unless I explicitly tell you to do so. And even then, think twice, then think two more times, and then decide if it's worth risking your life on."

Linduin sighed. "Was your teacher as much of a slave-driver as you?" He froze abruptly, post-traumatic stress from the last time he had uttered the word "slave" seizing control of his nervous system, but Cheis didn't seem offended. In fact, she seemed melancholy and bitter.

"I had to figure all this out for myself, Linduin. It was awful, I was very lonely, and I made a lot of costly mistakes that ended up hurting or killing other people." She stared out at the ocean, which was beginning to turn dark as the setting sun completed its descent. "I won't pretend this is all for your benefit; I've got to watch out for myself too. But I'm doing my best." She turned away, heading for their shared cabin.

Linduin stayed out for a while longer, watching the waves and the motion of the ship. Despite the warm spring air, he felt cold.