AUTHORS NOTES

Archer1eye: Andrian will likely not be the only such person. Unfortunately, we will likely see more of Andrian in the future :( Thankfully, many aren't exactly like Andrian… but there is a lot of toxic masculinity in the institution. I wasn't going to, but I might just plan for an encounter with Andrian's current apprentices… Hmmmm… Tenebrae definitely has influenced both Sharein and Shard, but neither of them exactly embody the 'secret' aspect of Tenebrae as a power.

Slyksylva: 3 That's the idea. Hopefully Sharein will have time to experience more of it than just the mages guild ;-)

Chapter 65

22nd Day of Middle Spring 768 n.c

Shard and I embraced the moment the door was closed and fell onto the comfortable bed together. Once we were able to greet each other properly and were lying down facing each other I informed her of the day's events.

I had never seen Shard look as angry as she did at that moment, her eyes hardened and she frowned.

"I cursed him," I admitted, "with Bane."

"Better to have prayed for a Storm of Vengeance," she said savagely.

I reached up to cup her cheek and stretched to kiss her.

"It's okay love," I whispered, "I'm okay."

When I laid back, I saw that she had visibly relaxed and calmed. We lay there together for a little while, it felt good to relax a bit after days of riding.

The room we had been given was a bit larger than the Inn room we had the night before yestereve and decorated a bit more nicely. The bed was a bit larger, with a chamber pot in the corner behind a divider. Near the chamber pot was a small bowl of water on a stand with mirrored glass above it. That was an impressive thing, for I expected polished metal. This mirrored glass appeared to have a thin layer of metal on the reverse side and I made note to ask Malkarov about it at a later time. A dresser rested against another wall with a large bookshelf and a desk sat underneath the window opposite the door. We were given rooms on the side looking out over the garden, which I was thankful for; the rooms on the other side probably looked straight at the compound's wall. I left my bag packed, as we probably wouldn't be staying long enough to warrant sorting everything, but I had taken off my sword and other pouches.

I freshened my face and hands in the water, noting with distaste the dirt and grime that then contaminated the water.

"I wonder if they have baths available?" I pondered, "I'd give anything for one of Malkarov's endless baths right now."

Shard seemed ready to agree with me when a knock came at the door, opening it revealed Malkarov who had apparently freshened up as well.

"I was just wondering if there are baths available?" I asked him.

"Not individual baths, but the lower level of this building does have a bath house built into it," he explained, "the guildhall was built on natural hot water pools, in fact so was the castle, fighters guild and college. There are some smaller pools in the middle and outer ring as well that have been turned into public bath-houses."

"Could we pay this bath house a visit before bed?" I asked hopefully, Shard nodded enthusiastically next to me.

"Of course!" Malkarov declared, "you've read my mind. Firstly, however, we need to introduce you to the Grand-Master. Not your presentation, although that probably won't be far off."

Shard pointed to herself questioningly and Malkarov smiled, "you may come or stay as you wish, while I wouldn't take you in to meet the High Priest, the Grand-Master is another matter."

She nodded and smiled at him.

"Should I take my sword, or is it safe and appropriate to leave it here?" I asked.

"It will be safe enough here," Malkarov said, "and although you would normally bring your staff, I'd suggest leaving that here as well. We don't want him to notice any anomalies and would not be uncommon for such a new apprentice to have not made one yet."

The three of us left the accommodation building and walked leisurely through the gardens towards the guildhall tower. Malkarov passed wizards he was acquainted with all of the way there and we stopped to talk to them briefly, one after the other. Every one of them had heard about me, which made me feel a little bit self conscious. I didn't really like the attention and the fact made me wonder what was being said about me. Was I considered to be an apprentice in the way Andrian's female apprentices were? Just kept to be… used? Some wizards seemed a little surprised that Malkarov had taken on a female apprentice, did they secretly suspect him of being attracted to other men and saw my presence as disconfirmation of that suspicion? Nobody commented on my trousers, vest and shirt but several wizards did look me up and down and displayed an odd 'knowing' smile. Maybe I was just reading too much into it, but I couldn't shake the feelings.

We walked into the large building that extended out from the base of the tower. These were the administrative areas of the guild. Malkarov described everything to us as we went. There were offices and the rooms that belonged to different affinities. Malkarov would be most at home in the Enchanter's rooms, but would be welcomed in the others. He himself would refuse to enter the Elementalist's rooms, but nothing would be said if he did. A large chamber took up most of the building, "The Grand Hall," Malkarov explained. We didn't enter the Grand Hall, but Malkarov spoke of it with such reverence and awe that I asked him if we could.

"It's magically locked," he explained, "and only opened when the Grand-Master makes a request to the Keeper of the Chamber."

Whenever anything came up that would affect the guild as a whole, the whole guild were invited to meet. Beyond The Grand Hall was The Tower of the Grand-Master. The first level held the office of the Grand-Master's scribe, who used a magical bell system similar to Malkarov's to let the Grand-Master know that a visitor had arrived. Two bells rang out to let us know to proceed upwards.

The Grand-Master's office was panelled in dark polished wood and his large desk matched the panelling. Lights similar to Malkarov's dotted the roof and bookshelves were spaced equally around the walls. Every second bookshelf was full of books, while the intermediate ones contained various curiosities. The Grand-Master was possibly the oldest man I had ever seen, his white beard stretched all the way to his feet and his white hair was braided down his back and reached halfway to the floor. He moved forward on unsteady feet, but his voice was clear and strong.

"Malkarov!" The Grand-Master greeted, "and you must be Sharein! What a pleasure it is to see you again, and you my dear for the first time."

He shuffled forward to shake Malkarov's hand and then extended it towards me. I shook it and marvelled at the smoothness of his palm, despite the wrinkled dry skin on the back of his hand.

"But you, my dear," he said to Shard, "I do not know."

"This is Shard," Malkarov introduced her, "Sharein's companion on this visit."

"Good good," the old wizard said jovially, "please do make yourselves at home while you are here in the Guildhall. You are guests here Sharein and Shard; and once you have been presented Sharein, I hope it will be your home. But of course, that will be a long way off."

"Not that long Grand-Master," Malkarov spoke up proudly, "Sharein is a prodigy. She may be finished her apprenticeship in record time."

"Really?" He queried, peering at me a bit closer, "well, that will still be three years away, just make sure to pay attention to everything Malkarov teaches you."

Malkarov coughed politely and the Grand-Master looked over at him questioningly, "no more than two years," Malkarov said, "if not one year Grand-Master."

"Is that so?" The Grand-Master said then as he turned his attention back to me. It felt like he was looking right through me, or at least into me. I blushed a bit and was a little shocked, it was one thing for Malkarov to say so to Alladrial (in a way that he was possibly exaggerating) but another thing entirely to say so to the Grand-Master of the Mages Guild.

"Well well," the Grand-Master continued, "I shall look forward to seeing you on what will likely be your next visit then Sharein."

"Thank you Grand-Master," I replied, "I shall look forward to my next opportunity to return the moment I step outside of Castlemere on the way home."

The Grand-Master laughed and shuffled back to his chair, behind his desk.

"I've been called, Grand-Master," Malkarov said, "to brief the Chief War-Wizard about something, but he didn't mention what. Have you heard anything?"

"We expected the Orcs to begin preparations for another attack about now, they had already begun probing our defences," The older wizard informed us, "but rumours from our spies are suggesting that they may be searching for something, an ancient artifact that could turn the tide. The curious thing is, however, that the orcs massing on their side of the pass are much fewer than expected. The rest of the orc army is nowhere near the pass. Are they looking for this artifact or are they off on some other dark purpose?"

"This artifact?" Malkarov asked.

"The Banner of Gruumsh," The Grand-Master stated plainly. Malkarov went white and even Shard sucked in her breath in surprise. I looked between all three, but remained silent; not wishing to speak out of place. The Grand-Master smiled at me and continued, "the Banner of Gruumsh is an artifact made by the Orc War God Gruumsh himself and has the power to cause fear in any enemy that lays sight upon it. If they marched forward into the pass, carrying the banner in front of them, our soldiers defending the walls, towers and castles would drop down their arms and flee. It is such a powerful artifact that they will not stop running for an entire day and for the rest of their lives will refuse to go back to the area where they saw it."

"Do you," Malkarov asked shakily, "know what it looks like?"

The older wizard nodded sadly, "when it was captured, it was found that it could not be destroyed. No method was successful. However, it could be separated. When together the banner was a purple triangle of iron, point downwards with a black chevron downward pointing. Three bones attached together behind the iron pennant, pointing out from each side of the triangle. Any wooden post could be fitted into the back of it. Thus it was split into four different pieces; three bones and the iron pennant. Each of the three bones were given to others who had no love of the orcs: The Kingdom of Allarth, the Irongap Dwarves and the Elves of Kaz Sarion. The pennant was kept here, in Castlemere. Hidden in such a way that not even I know of its location."

"The bone," Malkarov whispered and the Grand-Master nodded, Malkarov took this as an indication to continue, "if I had known what it was, we could have followed them."

"You can't know everything my boy," The Grand-Master said in a comforting tone, "and wondering about 'if only's never does one any good. This is likely what young Nardok will be asking you about, although personally I'm more concerned about what other reasons may account for the small size of their massing army."

We bid our leave of the Grand-Master and made our way back down to the main grounds of the guild compound. Malkarov took us to the library and laughed at the shocked look on my face when we first entered. Other wizards, sitting down at the desks near the door looked up in anger at first then smiled when they saw me and went back to their reading. The library was indeed three stories from the outside but the main hall we had entered was two stories high, the third story was a wide balcony that left a square in the middle that went up to the roof (which was actually windowed in a pyramid of thick glass.) All wall surfaces were covered with bookshelves and bookshelves stretched out between each one perpendicular to the walls. The area in the middle of the library hall was taken up by a square shaped counter with servants sorting books. As we watched, wizards would take a book back to the counter and leave it there to be returned by one of the servants or walk up with a small piece of parchment, which the servant would collect and then go running off to a shelf to search for a book. Books! So many books! I thought Malkarov's library was large until I saw the Grand-Master's shelves, but upon seeing the guild library I had a new standard to measure by. Shard marvelled as well, we had spent many evenings reading together and while she primarily liked to read treatise on the nature of magic and laugh at the mistakes, she also appreciated more social, historical or geographical contents. To have so many books available to be read? I may have squealed in an entirely embarrassing manner and looked at Malkarov with as much pleading as I could manage. I absently noted the wizards at the desks chuckling to themselves as Malkarov nodded his consent. I took Shard's hand in mine and dragged her towards the nearest bookshelf.

When I let go of her hand to examine the bookshelf, she remained there just staring, "If only I had a library like this," she whispered, "it would have filled in a couple of hundred years."

"Maybe we could both come here to study," I suggested with a smile and a brief hug, "in the future?"

She smiled in return and returned the hug, as one we turned to examine the shelf.

The entire bookshelf contained nothing but books on herbs! All of it! Twice as high as me and wider than I could stretch my arms. I checked the shelf next to it against the wall and it was the same, two entire shelves of books on herbs! I could spend a year entire here learning everything I could about herbs and their uses and still not finish all of the books! The shelves had a small plaque on the top of them that read 'Herbology', I spun around to look at the shelf to the left of me. It's plaque read 'Astronomy'. I didn't recognise the word, but the book's titles showed me that it had something to do with Luna, Celestine and the stars.

"I can't believe it Shard!" I exclaimed excitedly and was rewarded with shushing sounds coming from the desks.

Malkarov hurried over and whispered to me, "there's no talking or loud noises in the library, as it distracts from reading."

"Ooops," I whispered, "sorry."

"We will be here for at least one day after my meeting on the 'morrow with the Chief War-Wizard, so there will be plenty of time to explore the library here," Malkarov explained, "Each of the shelves have plaques on them to show what topic they contain, some topics take up only one shelf and some; like ritual magic, take up about five shelves."

"Have a look around, perhaps pick out one book to read before sleep tonight," Malkarov instructed, "and then we can head off to have a bath before dinner."

I chose Seemings in Variation of Elementalism while Shard picked out The Varied Theories of Magic and Malkarov immediately went to a very specific shelf and withdrew one of five copies (Five copies of the same book!) of Rune Schemes and Enchanting Discoveries of the Mages Guildhall 767 N.C.

On the way back to the accommodation building he explained that the Enchanters compiled those rune schemes that they wanted to be made public to the guild (and not keep to themselves) and other runic and enchanting discoveries and published them into a book every year. There were editions of 'Rune Schemes and Enchanting Discoveries of the Mages Guildhall' going back to 612 N.C.

We put our books away in our rooms and Malkarov led us down stairs to a level below ground. The stairs opened up into a small room with two doors. Malkarov instructed us to head into the left hand room (which had a downward pointing triangle emblazoned on the door) where we could get undressed, leave our clothes in one of the boxes and then head through the other door into the pool room.

"There is a women's pool and a men's pool separated by another pool for both," he explained, "there are walls separating each pool, but at this end of the men's pool there is an arch into the combined pool and at the other end of the women's pool is a similar arch. Those who head into the combined pool should not use that place as an opportunity to peek through into the other pool."

We both nodded in understanding.

"I'll just be staying in the men's pool and I'd suggest that you may wish to just stay in the women's," he added.

We went into the empty changing room and I got undressed, storing my clothes into one of the twenty or so boxes that were built into the wall. I noticed that there were a few other boxes already occupied. Shard just vanished her clothes, instantly appearing naked before me. I resisted temptation due to the likelihood of others coming in, but couldn't help giving her a quick peck and a pat on her bottom.

We opened the door at the other end of the room and walked into a fairly large hall. The walls that separated the baths weren't all the way up to the roof, but at a sufficient distance to prevent anybody from looking over them. The whole thing was tiled with small ceramic tiles in gorgeous patterns reminiscent of the gardens in the compound. Flowers and green vines wound around on a white background. Small buckets rested in front of small pools with raised edges built into the walls and blocks of soap sat above those pools on small shelves. Beyond this area was the women's pool. It was huge, easily large enough to cater for twenty people to sit inside it. I could see the arch in the wall at the far end leading into the combined pool. Three other women were relaxing in the pool, talking to each other until the moment we opened the door. One other woman was crouched down in front of one of the pools in front of us, lathering herself up with soap.

We stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do.

"Come in, come in!" One of the women encouraged, "first time?" She didn't wait for a reply continuing straight away, "wash yourselves down with the cold water and soap there like Arin is doing, then rinse off before you jump into here.

We both nodded our understanding and followed the instructions, glancing at 'Arin' to copy what she was doing. The water in the pools was cold and made our skin prickle. The soap was scented with rose petals and smelled amazing. We rinsed ourselves off with another bucket once we had soaped ourselves up and watched the dirty water drain into small gaps underneath the pools. The floor was sloped in such a way that the water didn't pool. Once we had rinsed off we made our way to the hot pool. The other women all watched us eagerly as we tested the water. It was perfect! We eased ourselves into the water and felt the warmth of it work it's way into our bones.

"It's fabulous isn't it?" The woman who instructed us asked.

"It's just like the bath back home," I replied, "and it never gets cold?"

She shook her head, "the end where you are at is the coldest and it gets steadily warmer the farther you head towards the back."

She cocked her head at me, "where's home?"

"Oh," I exclaimed, realising that I had forgotten my manners entirely, "Easthaven in Eastholm. My name's Sharein, by the way, and this is Shard."

"You're Malkarov's new apprentice!" She exclaimed and the woman next to her hit her gently on the arm, "ow! Taura, what did you do that for?"

'Taura' said, "rude?" Then turned towards us, "it's a pleasure to meet you Sharein and Shard. I'm Taura, obviously, from here in Castlemere. The rude woman is Jossa but she's from Dargha in Oscura so she doesn't know any better."

The final woman spoke up for herself, "I'm Venn, from a little village called Isk in Iskar."

"We stopped in Isk!" I told her, "the miners had dug into a large goblin cave and Malkarov and I had to go in to investigate. When we left Isk, soldiers and the wizard of Iskar had just arrived to take care of the goblin town."

Venn shuddered visibly and seemed to recede in upon herself.

"I'm sorry," I said, confused about what I may have said wrong.

Taura leaned across to take her into a hug, unmindful of their nudity.

Jossa looked questioningly at Venn who glanced at us and nodded. She gestured for us to come closer, which we did. I noted absently that the water did indeed get warmer. Arin merely sat nearby glancing between us.

When we got closer, Jossa whispered to us, "Venn is now the apprentice of the Wizardess Yorsha, but before Yorsha she apprenticed under Andrian the Wizard of Iskar."

She paused for a moment before sighing, and asking very pointedly, "has Malkarov tried to have sex with you?"

I frowned and shook my head, "no, he'd never…"

"Don't be so quick," she said, cutting me off, "most will try, but some… like Andrian, won't take no for an answer. Venn realised very quickly that he wasn't teaching her as much as he was teaching his other apprentice and actually left on her own. She travelled all the way here to Castlemere on her own and found a new master. Andrian followed her as soon as he realised she had escaped, but thankfully Andrian will not cross Yorsha. She holds something over him. As soon as Yorsha heard that Venn had escaped from Andrian, she took her as her own apprentice and has kept her safe since."

I felt horrible, knowing that the poor woman in front of us had gone through what Malkarov had described. Despite hearing it from him, hearing it again from Yorsha was much worse.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered to Venn, who merely nodded and gave me a tight smile.

Yorsha waded past me to sit next to Shard, "so... Sharein is Malkarov's apprentice, who do you belong to?"

"Oh!" Shard said, "I belong to Sharein."

My eyes went wide and I felt like sinking down under the water… and possibly never resurfacing.