I lay on the soft bed and stared at the ceiling. I tried not to think about Nadua. Before her, I had been thinking about trying to escape. Now, I knew that even if I escaped, I would never be the same person I had been. I felt tired, and my stomach hurt. I wondered if I would ever stop feeling this way.

The room had no windows. It wasn't lit with candles or anything else. There was no darkness in Hy Brasil. Nothing cast a shadow. Even when I lay face down on the bed and closed my eyes, my vision turned red instead of black.

After a while, I heard a gentle tap at the door. I didn't get up to answer it. After being watched every hour of every day for weeks, I was reveling in finally having some privacy.

The knock repeated. I realized that it might be dinner. That thought reminded me that I was very, very hungry. I opened the door.

Outside, I was surprised to see someone who at least appeared to be human. She was a very thin woman of about fifty with faded blonde hair. She was carrying a tray.

“Its your dinner, sir. Would you like to take it in your room?” she spoke Light Fae, although her pronunciation was halting and uncertain.

I stood aside wordlessly and let her come inside. She placed the tray on a small table beside the bed. Sir? What kind of slave is called “Sir”?

“I shall be down the hall, sir. Just call for if you want the room cleaned or the chamberpot emptied or anything. My name is Doris.”

“Th..thanks. Are a you, uh, a human?”

“Yes, sir.” she answered simply.

“How you did get here? To Hy Brasil, I mean.”

“I don't recall, sir. I was brought here when I was little. I serve the Seelie Fae.”

“Oh.” that meant she had probably been kidnapped too. I guessed that if you aren't a budding dark wizard, they just make you do the laundry and stuff.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

It felt really weird to having someone her age talking to me like I was some kind of authority figure.

“No, that's fine.” I said finally.

“Very good, sir.” She left.

The tray had a cup of tea with cream and sugar, a loaf of brown bread with a pad of butter, a piece of roasted meat from an animal I couldn't identify, a salad, and two little cookies. It was more food than I had eaten in the previous week. I ate everything, even the salad, and all of it was absolutely delicious. I literally licked the plate clean, trying to get every bit of dressing and gravy. The cookies were...well I would say “out of this world”, but this world was Hy Brasil. I couldn't remember or even imagine having anything better.

What was the Queen up to? First I'm starved and whipped, then I murder my teacher and I get a hotel room with free room service? It didn't really make sense. Why was she playing nice all the sudden?

Doris served breakfast the next morning. I mean, any meal can be considered breakfast in a world with no night, but I had slept and Doris woke me up with eggs, bacon, and coffee, so I see no reason to get hung up on technicalities. I'm not proud to say I felt better than I had in a long time the day after the first time I killed someone. Once I had eaten, Doris told me that Fanquee was waiting for me in the third garden. I had no idea where that was, but I was happy for the opportunity to move around the palace without anyone dragging me or looking over my shoulder. I left.

The palace was practically a maze. I could tell that no human had designed it. Humans understood that a house should have a main passage leading in and out. Instead, hallways lead into rooms which lead into more rooms and more hallways. Everything wound up and down, twisting around like rope. I knew that the ice mountain was on the inner side of the palace and the gardens would probably be outside, but I soon got tired of apologizing to the various bizarre creatures I ran into and just asked a sylph to guide me. Sylphs seemed to do most of the messenger-type duties in Hy Brasil, and there were always a few around. The third garden turned out to be outside the main gate and a short distance around the base of the mountain. The air was cold, but I was wearing a set of clothes that had been waiting for me in my dresser, which included a warm fur coat.

Fanquee was waiting for me beside a table with a set of boxes arranged at one end. He bowed to me as I approached.

“Welcome, Kyle Porter. Are you ready to begin your studies?” he asked in a gruff, formal voice.

“Uhh, am I allowed to ask questions?” I asked. As soon as I said it, I kicked myself for asking such a dumb question.

“That is an essential part of your role as my student. Ask away.”

“What are you, exactly? Sorry if its a rude question, but you don't really seem like a Seelie.”

“I am not. I am a gnome, a Wild Fae. I merely belong to Her Majesty, as you and a great number and variety of other beings do.”

“So, you're a slave too?” I asked.

“That was rather implied, yes. The term “thrall” is generally preferred for my particular situation. I made a pact with Her Majesty and found myself unable to perform the conditions of that pact. I was forced to beg mercy for my violation, and the queen offered me enthrallment in lieu of payment. I have been at her disposal ever since. You, of course, were brought here by force and compelled to work under threat of physical punishment, so your condition can be described, unequivocally, as enslavement.”

“Well, don't you want to escape?” I asked. This guy was talking about the fact that we were both slaves as though he were talking about the weather.

“What I desire is irrelevant. I am sworn to obey Her Majesty's commands, therefore I do.”

“You...don't think it's like...wrong for the Queen to enslave people?”

“Wrong in what sense? Strategically? Ethically? Factually? Aesthetically, perhaps?”

“The second one.”

“I have read quite extensively the philosophical literature produced by the human race. Ethics is a curious concept for your human brethren to produce, given their propensity to ignore it in their actual decision-making. Fae, you realize, have a dramatically different set of ideas of what forms of behavior are ideal.”

“Sooo, Fae don't have a concept of right and wrong.” I had been hoping that not all these creatures would be as bad as Blugnegal and Kumakros, but it sounded like I was out of luck there.

“Not as such, no. Fae existence does not revolve around ideas of free will, as we do not possess free will. For us, an action is either possible or impossible, desirable or undesirable. For instance, escape from this island may be desirable, but it is also impossible. Laboring in service to Her Majesty is undesirable, but as we have both failed to take the course of action that might have allowed us to avoid this fate, that is only course that is possible.”

“So...you don't like working for the Queen.”

“Naturally. Like humans, Fae wish to avoid pain and boredom, and seek pleasure and fun. My work here is often quite boring and occasionally painful. I would prefer a different mode of existence, as I'm sure you would.”

“Fun? You have fun?” Fanquee was the very picture of a dry, serious scholar. I hadn't expect fun to be high on his list of priorities.

“Not in the recent past, nor in the future, but yes. All Fae, including gnomes, seek enjoyment in our daily lives. When I was a younger gnome, I often participated in the social distractions that were available in my community. These included the creation of beautiful things, the production of music and song, imbibing alcohol and other lascivious substances, hunting, feasting, traveling, and engaging in sexual congress with other living beings, most commonly other gnomes.”

Again, this was rattled off in the most bored monotone I could imagine.

“So, once you have made a deal, you can never break it, right?”

“Indeed.”

“Could you make a deal with me?”

“I could, but I wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Fae do occasionally make pacts with humans, but the human is not bound by the pact. Let us say, for example, that I offered you some sort of boon, in exchange for your solemn oath not to kill me, as you did your previous instructor. This would be desirable to me, as I do not wish to die, particular in such a painful manner. However, as you are mortal and possess free will, you could simply choose to accept my boon and then horribly murder me when it suited your purpose. On my end, there would not appear to be any benefit.”

I was surprised by this. He was talking about me like I was some kind of...psycho. “Are you really worried that I'll just kill you? I mean...I wouldn't do that!”

He made a barely-visible shrug. “You do not know if that is true. A curious consequence of free will is that you cannot truly predict what you might choose to do. So yes, I do fear you. Being feared by those around you is something you will have to become accustomed to. It is likely to be a central feature of your existence going forward.”

I didn't know what to say to that. It made me feel powerful and proud, but also really uncomfortable. I mean, when I selected Thaumaturgy as my magical axiom and was shown the list of the different magical Arts, I had picked Curses as my specialty. It seemed like a reasonable choice considering that I knew I would be dealing with monsters and would need to defend myself. But after watching Nadua's body be twisted and mutilated by a curse I had placed on her, I wondered if I hadn't made the wrong choice. Was I just saddled with a power that was only good for creating suffering and death? And what did the fact that I had chosen that say about me?

Fanquee interrupted my thoughts. “Let us shift our attention to today's exercises. I thought you might appreciate a break from your reading, so I have prepared a practical test of your skills.”

Fanquee picked a long wooden box off the table and opened it. Inside were a selection of chalks, candles, incenses, paper scrolls, a ball of modeling clay, samples of various minerals and fungi, and a dagger.

“Here you see a variety of basic tools of your trade. I don't doubt that you could generate a variety of effects with only what you see here. In the future, I will challenge you to accomplish specific magical feats and solve specific problems with your powers. Today, however, I will permit you a bit of free-form thaumaturgy. I will show you an item or component with certain magical properties or potential, and you must simply show me what you would use it for. This will allow me to ascertain where you are in your studies and in what areas you require instruction. You shall have fifteen minutes to prepare each spell. Do you understand?”

I nodded. It was basically the same format as “Iron Chef”.

In a flash, Fanquee had another box open on the table, and with the same motion, he sat a small hourglass next to it. The guy was quick. I had barely even seen him move.

“The sand is falling.” he said. I looked into the box. Inside was a wire cage containing three large, live rats.

My mind sped up under pressure. Living creatures always had plenty of components with magical potential. Eyes, hearts, blood, bones, tongues...practically everything was laden with symbolism, and where there is the symbol of a thing, there is the essence of a thing. Still, there was a big difference between reading about it and actually cutting apart a living thing to collect all its useful parts. Especially when they are actively struggling for freedom and survival in front of you. I wanted to spare them somehow. I wanted to tell Fanquee to pick something else. But I knew he wouldn't understand. Feeling sorry for someone else was outside his nature. This was a hard and ruthless place, and I would need to be hard and ruthless to deal with it. With my mind made up, I took a deep breath and got to work.

I had been curious about the possibility of making some kind of golem for some time. My first magical creation, Shroomknocker, had been a dud, but at least I had some good ideas about what I could do to improved my technique. I decided to give golem-making another try.

Killing the rats was the hard part. I managed to kill one of them while still in the cage, but another forced its way out, and while I tried to recapture that one, the last one escaped. Fanquee ran after it and killed with a swift kick, but told me that I would not be allowed to use that one. I complained that killing rats wasn't really a part of being a wizard, but he gently informed me that I was mistaken. With time running out, I squeezed the blood from the two rats into the modeling clay and mixed them together until the clay was sticky and running. I decided that it needed a bit more solid material, so I took a sample of fool's gold and ground it into powder to mix with the clay. I molded the clay into the shape of a rat. I placed both hearts in the rat-golem's chest, and stuck two sets of eyes into its little eye-marks.

With less than two minutes to go, I needed to do the actual magical part. I held the hideous mess in my hands and began chanting over it, willing life and motion to take root in it. The trouble was, I wasn't entirely sure what I actually wanted it to do. As disappointing as Shroomknocker had been, it had been able to move because I had instilled it with a simple, singular purpose. What did I want this thing to do? Impress Fanquee, sure, but I didn't have time to try to introduce a lot of complex behaviors. I decided to try and make it dance. I imagined my little blood-clay monster doing a little dance, which was more disturbing than I had expected. I think I could have done better if I weren't being timed.

The clay began boiling and writhing as it had last time, and I quickly set it down on the snow. After a few seconds, it began moving like a living rat. It began running around in a tight circle, then it suddenly jumped up and started biting me on the leg. Fanquee tried to grab it as I jumped back, but it spun around and began biting at him instead. We were both bleeding by the time we managed to stomp the stupid thing into a pile of red clay.

“I am so sorry! I didn't think it was going to do that!”

Despite bleeding from his leg, Fanquee was as unflappable as ever. “What exactly did you expect it to do?” he asked.

“...do a little dance.” I admitted, a little embarrassed.

“I see. Do you understand why it did not do so?” he asked.

“I...kinda rushed that last part.” I said.

“That is true. Part of the purpose of giving you a time limit is to see how how you perform under pressure. You will often have to get results even in less-than-ideal circumstances. You cannot assume that you will always have even fifteen minutes in which to work. However, you made other mistakes in your preparations as well. Giving your creation the hearts and blood of two rats made it too much like a living creature to serve well as a golem. What you made had more in common with an undead abomination. It still had the instincts of a rat, but attempting to combine two creatures together created a confused, schizoid result. That is part of the reason that it attacked you. You also introduced Fool's Gold into its make-up, which introduced an element of falsehood and treachery into its nature. Hence, it was more likely to attack its creator.”

“I'm sorry.” I really felt like I had let the little gnome down.

“There is nothing to apologize for. Attempting to improvise a ritual on the fly is always more risky. That is why successful configurations are recorded in grimours, treasured, and reproduced with precision. Improvisation is also a useful skill, however. You cannot always assume that you will have the materials and instructions you need either. This was a respectable attempt. I can see that there are several areas in which training could be useful to you.”

Fanquee then proceeded to go over several dozen techniques I could use to improve my golem-creation skills. As much as I was annoyed at having my mistakes thrown in my face like this, Fanquee was so calm and reasonable that it was hard to get angry at him. For once, I felt like I was actually learning instead of just trying to choke information down and regurgitate it. We discussed and experimented for hours, and I found that I completely lost track of time. For the first time since arriving at Hy Brasil, I was actually enjoying myself.