Beryl Flintson
BANG!
The sound echoed through the streets. The neighbours heard it, the strays heard it, and Nigel Nettlehand heard it. An Academic Mage by profession, and curious by nature, Nigel investigated. In a small cul-de-sac, surrounded by stone fragments, a young teen sat. Curious, Nigel took out his monocle.
"Beryl!" came an exasperated shout, "What have we told you about playing with the cobbles – especially at the expense of your chores!"
Master Nettlehand turned to glance at the shouter, an exasperated woman in a simple cotton dress. She stared at the teen as if hoping to cheat fate. In his monocle, magic glowed with a bitter silver light. He recognised the few simple charms placed about the area, deterrents to common hazards, but the strongest glow came from the stone shards surrounding Beryl.
"Did you do that?" he asked her.
"Shatter the cobbles?" replied the woman, "Of course she did! No one else round here seems able to do it, but the landlord is getting impatient."
"He will get over it," Beryl replied, gazing at the shards she had created. Strangely enough, she did not seem at all disturbed by the explosion she had witnessed. Looking closer, Nigel thought he saw something within her, but it was impossible to focus on. Focusing on his power, he drew a little into his finger tips.
"There is magic here." he declared. The woman looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but Nigel focused on the girl before him.
"And it wasn't done by me,"
"She's hasn't any magic. Our landlord had us all tested, but the magic-sniffers found nothing on any of us,"
"Magic is strange, and most magic sniffers can only identify 4 out of 5 potential mages. Academic mages, such as myself, are relatively easy to spot. But there are stranger magics..."
"Sir, forgive me, I did not know."
"Know what?"
"That you spoke with authority."
Nigel looked up, smiling.
"And how could you, when I rudely forgot to introduce myself? Allow me to correct that error, I am Nigel Nettlehand, Graduate mage of Lightsbridge."
"Freewoman Sumalee, Master Nettlehand, and this is my daughter,"
"Beryl." Nigel turned back to the younger woman, "hold still,"
Reaching out, he released his power, tracing an esoteric sigil on Beryl's forehead. The view through his monocle disappeared as the sigil was flooded with magic. Instead, a series of distant visions flashed across the lens, of stone crashing against stone, of pebbles being ponded by bone, of rocks flaking under pressure. Images of Beryl's power.
"Curious," he murmured, as the images began to fade, "most curious."
"What did you do?" Beryl asked him.
"A relatively simple spell," he replied, "You do have magic, Beryl, but it is of a rather different sort than mine."
"What does that mean for my daughter?" Sumalee asked.
"That she must learn to master her power, lest it master her."
"I cannot afford lessons, Master Nettlehand," Sumalee's embarrassment was evident in her face, but Nigel smiled at her statement.
"As the mage who discovered her power, I am bound by oath to teach her myself, until such time as she has mastered her magic, or I hand her over to a more able tutor. I am also bound to ask no payment for this service, save requiring that Beryl completes her lessons as I require." He turned to Beryl, "you can do that, can't you?"
"Yes, sir,"
"If you are being formal, Beryl, you call me Master Nettlehand,"
"Yes, Master Nettlehand," she replied, not looking up from her stone shards.
"I will return tomorrow, Freewoman," Nigel told Sumalee, "I'll need to prepare her first lessons. Would an hour past dawn be too early for you?"
Freewoman Sumalee snorted, "I could have her ready an hour before dawn, if you wished, Master Nettlehand."
"No need to start too early, Freewoman, and Beryl will need her sleep when she starts working. Magic is rather like pushing boulders uphill – it exhausts those who don't do so regularly."
"As you wish, Master Nettlehand,"
"Please call me Nigel, Freewoman." Nigel asked, "We will likely be seeing a lot of each other, and 'Master Nettlehand' gets overly cumbersome after a few days."
"As you wish," she repeated.
Nigel departed with a smile.
Nigel was still smiling when he arrived at his lodgings. He had rented a small apartment between the river and the market, cheap enough for a much poorer man, but perfectly suited to his needs. The three rooms where not large, but they served him well. Entering the kitchen, Nigel boiled himself a mug of nettle tea, before retiring to the room that doubled as a study and sleeping chamber. He kept many of his books here, core ingredients of Academic magic. Selecting a suitable volume, he settled down to read.
Ambient Magic was rare, he knew: though many Ambient Mages remain undiscovered for extended periods, so it is possible that is far more common than anyone realised. They posses little power in the beginning as, unlike Academic Mages, they serve more as a conduit for the power than a source. This also means that, whereas Academic Mages have difficulty in building up their strength and are often tired by their later works, Ambient Mages have the opposite problem. Unfortunately, he knew little more than that, save that each Ambient Mage drew power from a particular craft, natural substance or elemental force. Unless he could determine the source of Beryl power, there was little he could teach her.
Nigel spent the evening in the library of the local Mages guild, trying to make sense of the images Beryl's power had produced. Though they had an entire section dedicated to Ambient Magic, none of it seemed to fit.
"Excuse me, sir, can I help you?"
Nigel turned to face the Librarian, a short, white-haired woman who bore her aura of power like a cloak. She claimed to know every book on her shelves, and most believed her, but Nigel had already been through every book in the Ambient section.
"I found a young Ambient Mage this morning, and I am trying to identify the source of her power. It's not one I've encountered before, so I wanted to pin it down before I proceeded any further."
"Did you test her power?"
"Not extensively," he replied, "She had shattered some cobbles with it, so I tried to induce a vision of her power. It's not one I recognise."
"What did it look like?"
"Stones crashing on stones, Boulders cracking under blows, Pebbles crumbling under pressure."
"Sounds like a stone Mage" She mused.
"Not quite" he sighed, "Stone does seem to be central to her power, but the visions were all about things happening to stones, not the stones themselves."
"Things happening to stones" she asked.
"Quite deliberate things, they felt like."
"Masonry, perhaps," the Librarian suggested, but Nigel Nettlehand shook his head.
"I did not see the stones get built with."
"They where being shaped, perhaps?"
"Most likely," he agreed, "But it was far more than simple carving. There seemed to be a practical edge to work, as well."
"So, a craft that shapes stone to a practical purpose," the Librarian was thinking aloud now, her voice soft and her eyes distant. Then a flicker of realisation focused her gaze.
"Knapping," she said.
"No," Nigel disagreed, "Sleep was not an issue,"
"Not sleeping, Master Nettlehand," she replied, "Knapping, the craft of shaping stone to a particular purpose. Historians believe it to be one of our oldest crafts."
"That sounds more reasonable," he allowed.
"It survives to modern times, in masonry and stone carving, but most of the craft has fallen out of use. One of our members has been making a study of craft, would you like to see him?"
"Definitely." Nigel replied without hesitation, "My task will be hard enough, misunderstanding her power could be Fatal. And thank you, Librarian."
"It is no bother, Master Nettlehand." she smiled upon him, "I took this job because I like to help."
The following day, Nigel returned to the abode of Freewoman Sumalee bearing two stones. One, a round hammer-stone. The other, a small flint nodule. Loremaster Flintstone had outlined a small spear blade on the latter, advising that Beryl should be able to extract the blade in a single stroke if their suspicions were correct.
Five minutes after arriving, he looked down on the perfectly formed blade. It's edges glimmered with faint traces of Beryl's magic, which lined up with the magic he'd seen flare into the flint when she struck it. There could be no doubt.
"What does this mean, Master Nettlehand?" Beryl asked, her eyes on the flint.
"It means, Beryl," he replied, "That you are an Ambient Knapper."