AUTHORS NOTES:

Archer1eye: Sharein hasn't deemed the lessons pointless as such, but she is recognising that there are certain things that she thinks about in a different way to the vast majority in town…. There is generally a consensus of thinking in Easthaven about a great many things and Shar is recognising that this thinking is obviously taught from father to son or mother to daughter... A thinking that Sharein is missing. Obviously it's not so much that she simply forgot to teach Sharein, but we'll learn more of the reasons for it all later. Hahaha…

Thanks for the review!

Chapter 32

20th Day of Late Winter 768 n.c

Mari and I were joined by Brahdi out in front of the Church waiting for the service to begin.

"Is it true?" Brahdi asked enthusiastically as soon as she joined us, "Did you really slay an entire tribe of kobolds?"

Everyone nearby turned around to look at us and tried to hide my face in my hands in embarrassment.

"Only seven or eight," Mari whispered and I silently thanked her for her discretion in the face of overwhelming attention.

"Did you summon lightning from the skies or a cloud of fire?" Brahdi continued.

"Neither," I whispered, giving her a little glare.

Thankfully, in an amazingly rare occurrence, Brahdi did actually stop talking. I looked over my shoulder to where she was looking to see Beka walking out of the church.

"Good morning!" she greeted us then continued quietly, "Father is busy organising a meeting for after Church, so I took the opportunity to have a word with Father Mattias."

"How did it go?" Mari asked.

"Well, I hope," she replied, "he was very understanding and has promised to speak to Father on my behalf. There may be a solution to the problem."

"That's wonderful news!" I exclaimed and engulfed her in a hug, which she returned happily.

"It really is," said Mari, who gave her a hug as well and was quickly followed by Brahdi.

Mayor Crownever walked up from the direction of Malkarov's tower and went into the Church, after a short moment Father Mattias came out to call everyone inside.

The whole building echoed with chattering and talking as the story of last night's events was shared around the room (and likely grew more and more outlandish). Father Mattias coughed lightly, but the talking continued.

He coughed louder and most of the room looked up at him, "I can tell that Celestine won't be given her due attention unless something is cleared up first."

The room quieted instantly, "A town meeting shall be held at the Pig and Whistle directly after today's service, those living out on the farms are especially encouraged to attend. There was a kobold raid on the Askilain's farm last night, the family is all okay and the kobolds are dead but we will discuss this and what should be done at the meeting. For the moment, please remember that these beasts came out of the darkness and were a'feared of the light! All hail the light!"

"All hail the light!" Everyone repeated. Almost everyone at least. I for one couldn't bring myself to, all I was thinking what 'What would Father Mattias say if he found out that my negative seeming, my seeming of darkness was what was actually responsible?'

I stopped paying attention to Father Mattias' sermon, not repeating the chant even once. Mother looked at me in concern once it was over, resting a hand onto my leg.

She leant in to me and whispered, "If you decide that you don't want to come here every tenday, I can tell everyone that it's a wizard thing."

I looked at her in shock. She let out a little laugh, that disappeared in the noise around us as everyone was getting ready to leave "You're not a very good actor, it's very obvious."

We walked out of the church and I walked with Mother down to the farmer's common, where I left my bag. Father and Jocam were going to the meeting with Master Meadowbroek and would be heading back home together, while everyone else would go home earlier.

As my siblings got up into the cart, Mother gave me a hug, "It's hard to attend service with what we know, with the rituals that were passed down to me that I've passed down to you. Knowing that the things Father Mattias speaks about aren't necessarily true, that there are more things out there than just his word. I just hope that Illith and Kara will turn out to be better actors than you as we will likely not have such a ready excuse for them."

I understood what acting was, I thought. Over the years we had seen visiting troupes of actors passing through town. It was often a reason to gather everyone in to watch their performance in the city square. I loved that one actor could in the first scene be a wizened old lady and in the next be a convincing young man. I always held them in awe and often wondered about the skills they must have learned in their apprenticeships. For Mother to suggest that anybody could be an actor, that my younger sisters could be actors, was a strange concept to me.

"You wouldn't mind?" I asked, shocked and confused a little at her words.

"Mind?" Mother replied, giving me a little hug, "I'm jealous, my Shar, if I had such a good excuse I wouldn't be coming here every tenday. The people of Easthaven know little of the outside world and the more you learn the less you will be able to reconcile. They don't even know that other people have other deities like Adara or Tarma. I wonder if this may be why Malkarov doesn't attend at all?"

"What about Father?" I asked.

"I'll point out to him that Malkarov doesn't attend and he will assume that it has something to do with that," Mother explained.

I gave her and my siblings a hug and kiss, shouldered my bag and made my way up to Malkarov's tower.

When I reached the tower, I rang the knocker to let him know that I was back. The door did not open. I waited for a few moments in case he was busy and knocked again. Still there was nothing.

'He must be at the council meeting," I thought with consternation. I sat down on the doorstep, intending to wait for his return, but I realised that I needed to use an outhouse. I could go back to the church and use the one near there or…

I considered the problem for a moment, 'How does Malkarov get in when he returns?'

I tried to visualise where latch was on the inside of the door and cast Mage Hand. I couldn't see the spectral hand through the door, but I mentally directed it into the picture I held in my mind of what the door looked like on the inside.

*click*, the door opened. I let out a little cheer and made my way inside.

I went straight up to my room to put my pack down and use the in-house then decided to make use of the bath while I waited for Malkarov to return.

"Hot water, how I missed you!" I exclaimed once I had lowered myself into its relaxing embrace.

I read a little bit of The Illsara, an elvish book that gave me an interesting perspective on… myself. Among other things. Once I had cast Comprehend Languages, the title read "Not People". Illsara seemed to be the elvish word for everyone that wasn't an elf. Their summary of orcs, dwarves and halflings all matched what I knew about them, but their descriptions of humans were not at all flattering. I got quite annoyed with the book in fact, quite angry at the author for spreading such hurtful things about humans. I was about to put the book down and refuse to even look at it again when I realised something. If this book was so wrong about humans, what else was it wrong about? In the end it made me question whether the things that I thought I knew about orcs, dwarves and halflings were true. I continued reading, but instead of just taking everything in, I questioned it as I read.

I had well and truly calmed down and was on my way to almost falling asleep when Malkarov called out from the other side of the door "Sharein! Are you home?"

I almost dropped the book into the bath with the surprise, but managed to put it down carefully before I called out "Yes, I'm just in the bath, I'll be out in a moment!"

"No hurry!" he called back, but I did get out and got dressed into my comfortable trousers and tunic.

I brought my book with me when I headed downstairs. Malkarov was already there and he cocked his head immediately to see what I was reading, I held it up so that he could see more easily.

"Ah! What an absolutely terrible book that is!" He pronounced, "Do you agree?"

I sat and got myself comfortable before replying, to give myself a moment to think, "Yes and no."

"How do you mean?" He asked.

"It is extremely terrible in the way the author writes down such prejudiced views," I expanded, "but in the same way it has made me question my own views of other races as to whether or not they are prejudiced also. I doubt it was the author's intention to do so, but I wonder whether it might have been your intention when placing the book there."

Malkarov beamed and clapped loudly, "Sharein, you are a delight!"

I blushed a lot and ducked my head to let my hair fall down over my face.

"Now, you have had a very interesting day away, so I hear," he said, "I've just been at the town council meeting, hearing from your father the events that transpired yestereve. How exactly did you kill the kobolds?"

"Manipulate Elements," I said hesitantly, ashamedly.

"Well," Malkarov said, drawing out the word, "at least your father had enough sense not to go into specifics with the entire council. For him to tell everyone that his daughter 'called down great magics to kill the kobolds' shows a level of duplicity I didn't think he had in him."

I opened my mouth to object, but Malkarov held up a finger, "Perhaps the wrong words. Your father always struck me as honest to a fault and keeping the truth from the Council was honestly the best thing he could have done. I don't know why he told them that you killed them all though."

"I did," I said, then corrected myself, "well, except for the one that we let run away."

Malkarov looked confused, "What did you cast Manipulate Elements on then?"

"The cow," I answered, "the one that they were eating. Oh, and then one of the dead kobolds that the cow threw into a fence."

Malkarov just stared for a moment and then burst out with laughter.

"A zombie cow?" he giggled out once he had calmed down a little, then burst out into a whole new round of seizure like convulsions of laughter.

I couldn't help but chuckle a little along with him. The stories always mentioned skeletal soldiers or zombie warriors, but never zombie cows.

Once he had calmed down again (it took him three tries), he asked me, "So… how many spells did you cast while you were away?"

I had to think for a bit and tally it in my head, "Uh…. I cast Mending about fifteen times, Manipulate Elements twice, Minor Illusion three times and Light six times."

"Yesterday and today?" he asked with a frown.

"Oh no, that was just yesterday," I replied. "I've only cast Mage Hand and Comprehend Languages today."

"How did you..." He began, "Did you cast Mage Hand to get into the tower?"

"Yes," I replied, "I was going to just sit down and wait for you, but I really needed to use an out-house. So I wondered how you got in when you left and I thought about what I could do with each spell I knew. Mage Hands was really the only one that made sense to me."

"Well now," he replied, smiling and shaking his head, "come on out."

We both stood up and left the tower, Malkarov closing the door behind us.

He gestured to a small hole less than half an inch across in the wall, next to the door and down low, about knee height, "See that hole there?"

"Yes," I answered, wondering at it.

"If I cast Manipulate Elements into the hole, it pushes up the bit the door latches onto and the door will open," he said, casting the spell to prove his words. The door opened up.

"But what is to stop somebody from poking a stick in the hole?" I asked, curious.

"Ah!" He exclaimed, "That's the genius thing about it. The hole goes in, but then turns directly up. Any stick poked it will just hit the wall without tripping the lock."

He drew an 'L' shape on the inside of the door frame to show me.

"So I suppose only a wind or water seeming would be able to open it that way?" I asked.

"Well, yes. I suppose water seeming of Manipulate Elements could open the door. Of course, I never even considered a simple Mage Hand to unlock from the inside." He said with a rueful smile.

"Oh!" he added, "Did you try the Teleport spell yourself?"

"I could feel the magic inside of me, but there was something stopping me from letting it out," I told him.

He nodded, "We can rank spells in the amount of energy they take to cast. The teleport spell takes a lot of energy, normally I'd say that I wasn't surprised that you couldn't cast it."

"Why only normally?" I asked.

He hmmm'd for a moment, "As we have already deduced, you aren't exactly a normal student of magic Sharein. Your average Journeyman wizard would be able to cast seven cantrips before they felt too exhausted to cast another."

"In a row?" I asked, thinking back on all the Mending spells I cast, one after another.

"In a day, Sharein." Malkarov corrected, "The only thing that fixes magically exhaustion is a good night's rest."

"But I…" I said, mentally adding up how many spells I'd cast yesterday.

"You cast enough cantrips yesterday to indicate that you have the same level of power as the average wizard returning to the Guild to sit their mastery," Malkarov stated, "you don't have enough knowledge to sit your mastery and some wizards do take longer than others to return, but simply comparing your… amount of magical power, you have a lot. Maybe one of these days we should sit down and cast a cantrip over and over each to see how many you can cast before you exhaust yourself? It's been a long time since I did it, but from memory I think I reached fifty two."

We returned to our seats and sat in silence for a few moments, until I remembered something I wanted to ask him about.

"Malkarov?" I asked.

He replied, "Yes?"

"Have you ever heard of Adara or Tarma?" I asked.

"The Allarthian Gods?" he replied, "From memory Adara is the God of Thieves and Tarma is the God of Warriors and Soldiers. Did your mother tell you about them?"

This shocked me a little, there weren't many other sources, "How did you know Mother told me about them?"

"Just a guess," he replied, "your Mother is very intelligent and has a surprising and varied breadth of knowledge. Not many natives of Carn even know of the existence of the other Gods, except those who live close to the Allarthian border of course. Do you remember the ritual your mother and I went through when she first brought you to me last tenday?"

I nodded in reply, I couldn't remember the words exactly, but I knew what he was referring to.

"That's an old Allarthian apprenticeship rite. She surprised me greatly when she began it. Why was she telling you about them, Adara and Tarma I mean?" he asked.

"Mother has given me permission not to go to Church service every tenday, If I do not wish to do so. She said that people who know more than what is taught there might find it difficult to sit through and suggested that might be the reason you've never attended," I answered.

"Interesting," Malkarov mused, "partially that is the reason and partially the Church's stance on my… our lifestyle. Father Mattias and I have debated hotly over the issue, I still can't understand how he can be a priest. He… I shouldn't really speak for him, but he has explained it to me time and time again, he overlooks that part of the book because he has always desired to be a parent, to be a father. He felt that he could never marry a woman, but that desire was still there when it was time to take up an apprenticeship. Being a Father in the Church is the next best thing to him, he is Father to the entire town. The biggest concession he makes is that he absolutely refuses to read in his sermons from that part of the book."

I nodded in understanding and decided that I should have to visit with Father Mattias at least, to explain to him that I would no longer be attending.

"I should tell you what was decided at the Council Meeting I suppose," Malkarov said, but before he could say anymore I heard a knock at the front door and the single chime went off through the tower.

"That must be Missus Rose with our lunch!" Malkarov said as he jumped up to answer the door.

Missus Rose was indeed on the other side, bringing us fried and battered fish and fried potato fingers as well as four extremely cold bottles of ale.

"Four?" I whispered, once he had thanked Missus Rose and closed the door.

"Well," he began a bit guiltily, "we have no lessons today that require a clear head and it is starting to warm up a little."

I couldn't help but giggle a little to myself as we headed up the stairs. He almost sounded like me explaining myself to Mother for a moment there.