I've kept promising updates on this and not following through, and I'm more than a little ashamed of it. I hope I've made up for it somewhat with this chapter.

Dreams & Books

- IV -

Iyce Rynk

Connor takes weeks to become comfortable in classes. Aside from Mattheu, he's the tallest in the room where he takes his lessons.

Also, he wishes that someone had told him that elemental magic is terrifying.

Half of him wants to cower behind one of the desks as he watches the ice spells flying around the room. One of the younger apprentices, Lorinne, only six, catches his hand with one, and he desperately shakes his wrist, staring at his hand in terror - it appears to have grown an ice cube round it, and the cold burns.

Enchanter Merris only makes matters worse by shouting at the little elven girl, the harsh words bouncing off the walls. She bursts into tears, leaving Connor feeling even worse as he tries to comfort her, patting her on the shoulder with his ice-free hand.

After a girl who says she's Lorrine's best friend leads her out of the classroom, Matt takes him aside and looks at his frozen hand, wincing a little before applying a gentle fire spell. Connor yelps at the sudden heat, but the ice dissolves, and it only takes a few minutes before he can flex his fingers again. He still doesn't dare try an ice spell himself, however, and he doesn't miss the glare Merris sends him.

He leaves the classroom with the others, hanging his head at being so useless, so frightened of his own magic; when he arrives at his dormitory, he spots Practical Healing lying by his bed, and feels angry at Morgana for giving him such a useless book. He wonders if one of the older apprentices would have more use for it, and decides to skim through it one more time before he gives it away.

He stops at two words, little stars - or, wait, are they snowflakes? - drawn round them: Iyce Rynk. Frowning, he begins to read the scribbled little notes under them, then looks up. "Lea!"

Morgana was still not comfortable in classes.

She hadn't been started with a staff yet, and working without one to channel your mana was harder, Jowan knew, but that wasn't the problem.

She was scared.

The burns on her arms are healed, but - Florean told him - the first time they started with fire magic, she kept backing away, shaking her head; unfortunately, they had Enchanter Merris, who everyone had a secret suspicion was immortal and possibly, even, possessed by a rage demon. Whatever he was, everyone hated him, and they had even more reason to when he bent down and shouted in the small, wide-eyed girl's face that she had no choice in the matter and that he would not allow her to grow up useless. Apparently, he was even spitting.

Morgana had taken a few steps backwards, listening to the shouting in silence, then said quietly, "Sorry, sir," and run out of the room.

He hadn't seen her all day, and it worried him.

That afternoon, ignoring the sounds of the others eating in the hall downstairs, Florean - not yet Finn - entered the abandoned dormitory, holding a book with one hand and hastily attempting to comb his hair with the other. He began to make his way to his bed, ready to slip the (stolen from the library) book into his bedside draw, but froze at a sound he hadn't heard in this dormitory for a long time.

Small, muffled snuffles and gasps pierced the silence, and he looked to the bed in the corner, spotting a small, curled-up figure with her face in a pillow, trying to be quiet.

The girl from Elemental. The one Merris hated. What was her name? It was on the tip of his tongue, he just couldn't quite... Malena? She had helped him, and after her stumbling in class, well... it was only fair to return the favour.

He placed the brush and book on his bed, then tentatively walked to her; he ended up standing over her bed in an awkward silence, not quite knowing what to say. He wasn't used to girls, and crying girls... well, they were just impossible.

He understood her fright well, of course. He knew how she'd entered the Tower, most of the dormitory did already - a burner, apparently, like him. Better than a freezer or a killer. He remembered the pain along his neck and shoulders, his parents' frightened eyes, and grimaced.

He cleared his throat. "Look, Marina - "

A pause, and, still gasping for breath, she mumbled something into her pillow. Oh. Her name. He paused, then tried again with what he thought he'd heard. "Look, Magrat - "

The first word she said properly to him was, "No."

"Meghren?"

She looked up at him. She seemed to have stopped crying now, though she still couldn't quite breathe properly, and looked up at him; shaking her head, she gingerly sat up.

"Mogwen?"

Another shake of her head, then she told him.

He took a deep breath, then said, "Morgana..." A cautious pause.

She nodded this time and smiled a little shakily at him.

"They won't let the magical fire hurt. They have shields, wards..." He sat down on the bed next to her and produced a small notebook from a specially sown pocket in his robes, flicking through it until he found the right page. "If you see here, the dimensional force produced by your mana - " He waved a finger at one of the lines, and she frowned at it, clearly uncomprehending.

He sighed. "See, if you learn the intermolecular movements - "

Jowan greeted Morgana as she came down to dinner, still with a frown line between her brows, and asked her what was wrong.

"Do you understand...?" she began, then tried to repeat some of Florean's theories.

Jowan sat there, confused and glazed-eyed, for five minutes before he said that maybe she should eat and... take her mind off things. When she opened her mouth, he hastily passed her a buttered bread roll and gave her a slightly pleading look. She shut it again, and began to wolf down the food she'd been missing.

Merris was surprised when the troublesome girl made her first fumbling attempts at fire - more smoke, really - and kept looking to the butterfingered boy at the back who couldn't hold a staff (the one with the girl's name, that was it), as if for reassurance. She began to produce flames shortly afterwards, and he thought he saw fear behind her eyes, but they... weren't bad.

He hated to admit it, but she had promise.

Her strength, however, was ice, and she seemed to enjoy using it. She was ahead of the others, and she smiled as the icicles appeared.

He had found himself smiling approvingly when she had been the first to freeze the bath full of water they were practising on, and she had looked up in surprise.

He had decided that a smile would breed complacency, however, and moved swiftly onwards.

Elemental still scared her in many ways, and it was Creation classes that seemed to enthral her. She still found it impossible to forget Enchanter Wynne's fingers ghosting over her hand, the wound fading...

She remembered her parents' frightened faces, the burns on her arms, and thought in wonder about what she had seen. If magic could take away pain, ease suffering...

She had gone to see the Enchanter, told her that she wanted to learn more about healing. Wynne had handed her a heavy, leather bound book, and told her to come back to her quarters after lessons.

That was how the healing lessons had begun.

Morgana found a better use for the ice spell, of course, in the end, as Feastday came.

Jowan looked at her in horror, and said, "The templars will kill us. They really will."

She shook her head. "They won't know we did it."

She had showed him the hastily scribbled ideas in Wynne's book - she had started to take healing notes in it, with Wynne's reluctant permission, and it had all spiralled a little out of control after that. Now the book was used for everything.

It took months of practice, and they'd kept writing long after lights-out in the dormitory. After a while, Neria and Samuel had asked what they were working on, complaining about the scratching and the wisps in the middle of the night, and they had grudgingly showed them.

Samuel's face lit up, and he pointed at the notes. "If you use cone of cold there..." Samuel was older, had been studying Elemental longer, and she trusted his advice. Together, the four of them began to scheme, and Morgana made two more friends in her dormitory.

Chaos in the halls, Wynne thought, having to stab her staff into the layer of ice covering the floor to make any progress along the corridor. She had already lost her footing several times on the wintery apprentices' floor, and she was beginning to lose her patience.

Feastday. The day of pranks. Once, she would perhaps have joined in a stunt like this, but that was a long time ago, before... She sighed, remembering the feel of the babe in her arms, years ago now, then shook the thoughts out of her head.

Irving. Yes, she would see if they could come up with a solution to this together.

There was a loud clatter as one of the templars lost his footing, followed by giggles from the apprentices, who were...

Wait.

They appeared to have some sort of strange contraption attached to their shoes, and were actually finding their way through this. They appeared to be made out of wood and - repulsion spells?

Surely Florean wasn't involved in this? She wouldn't think he had it in him.

She started to make to follow them, before there was a loud, excited squeal from the staircase to her left, now covered with a thick, sheer layer of ice. Young Surana came sliding down what were once used to be steps and barrelled into her, knocking her off her feet.

Once she managed to sit up, she glared at the apprentice and finally managed to voice her question. "What in the Maker's name is going on?"

Neria looked at her in terror for a moment, then let out a small, nervous giggle. "Ask Morgana."

Connor runs a finger down the notes, open-mouthed. The Warden everyone was talking about, asking him to be polite to, did things like this?

He smiles, and can't help thinking that it really sounds... quite fun.

He exchanges a smile with Lea.

His mother would never approve. He isn't supposed to break rules, he's a noble's son.

He pauses, the thought upsetting and freeing at the same time. Is he really, in here?