The Natural Order

Michael Tresca

The town had adopted a tense atmosphere of apprehension, a feeling Keldan couldn't quite trace to its source.  The overwhelming ambiance made him restless.  Despite the cold morning air and the dawning light, he trudged towards his destination with more than the usual enthusiasm reserved for his training sessions with his mentor. 

Keldan was unremarkable in most aspects.  Bookish and a social outcast, his father had sent him away to the town of Gydnia for academic studies.  His three-year tutelage under a master would provide him with the necessary skills to increase his family's already considerable wealth.  But things had changed since his father's days.  To have a fair stake in the family's fortune, a son needed marketable skills to lay claim to it.

You have to make money to keep money,his father would say.  Keldan thought the whole idea was rather silly.

His father's opinion of Keldan's master included less kind words than silly. Had it come to mind, his father would probably have shouted that insult at Keldan as well.  Fortunately for Keldan, they hadn't communicated face-to-face for months, so he took the harsh words and scribbled script in their correspondence as definitive proof of his father's wrath.

His father's anger was not invoked by concern for Keldan, nor was he concerned with the moral and ethical issues of his middle son wielding powers beyond mortal ken. Being a wizard was not a prosperous profession.  Wizards, he said, didn't make a lot of money. 

They didn't do much of anything, his father claimed, but hole themselves up in towers, study dusty old tomes, and occasionally cause massive magical disasters.  Expensive disasters.

Life was all about social standing and power.  Not actual power, but the power people believed you wielded it.  Wizards might be able to level mountains and change the course of rivers, but who cared?  In the social ladder wizards were just above flower peddlers and just below a manservant.  Keldan's father never let him forget that.

As he trudged along towards his destination, Keldan had to admit he wasn't so sure of himself, disapproving fathers notwithstanding.  Ymerek was a harsh, eccentric master whose discipline, or lack thereof, often made even Keldan reconsider the meandering path he had chosen.

It wasn't about money.  He had told his father that, but few really believed Keldan's studies were unselfishly motivated.  At least one of his relatives wrote asking if he studied magic because he couldn't get a woman pregnant.  At least four others had written asking to get their wives pregnant.

Keldan knew that magic wasn't about that sort of thing.  At least, not the magic Ymerek taught him.  Magic was elemental, it was primal, raw and untamed.  It was a power that was to be respected, to be channeled, and to be directed.  Mastery was impossible, because no wizard truly owned it.  Magic was not the power of belief; it was the belief in power.  Making crops fertile paled in comparison to the awesome power of what lay Beyond.

But what was Beyond?  That was another level.  If Keldan learned anything, it was that his training would be a long, agonizing process that would try his patience and test his mettle.  It was not something he could be exposed to quickly, lest the revealed truths tear his psyche apart. 

As a result, Keldan didn't have much to show for his monthly studies.  He couldn't even transport himself to Ymerek's tower, much as he would have liked to.  He was forced to vary his path to the tower to avoid the bandits who sought to rob him of his mostly empty purse.  Their first encounter was traumatic, but bandits liked their prey to generate income for future raids, so they only took his purse and his pride.

Keldan didn't intend to give them a second chance.  Rather than play the retiring academic, he made a big show of getting roaring drunk and expounding on the magical exploits of his master.  Word spread, and he never saw another highwayman again.

Thus it was with great surprise when Keldan stumbled over an ancient man, squirming in the muck.  Or, at least, he seemed to squirm in the muck.  He squirmed a little too much, and there really wasn't any muck to speak of, just clumped dirt driven into heaps by his squirming.  Keldan was cursed with a very sharp sense of perception, and his eyes told him the man had faked his fall.

Or rather, faked an accidental fall.  That he had fallen and was incapable of rising was clear.  His cane was far enough away that he couldn't grab it, but a bit too far away for it to have landed there by itself. 

"Not another beggar," Keldan muttered to himself.

While the thugs and murderers left him alone, Keldan was beset daily by people requesting favors.  They asked for miracles of all kinds.  Because Keldan's knowledge only extended to the things he didn't know about, he had to turn them down.

"Help me," croaked the man.

Keldan sighed and hunched down beside him, offering his hand.  "Come on, old father," he said in the kindest tone he could muster, "let's get you back on your feet."

The old man took the proffered hand with a surprisingly strong grip.  But as he took it, he looked deeply into Keldan's soft blue eyes with his own earthen gaze.  Their eyes locked and Keldan found himself incapable of tearing away from him.

"You are a good man," the elder wheezed.  Keldan detected a sigh of relief in his voice.

"And it's a good thing too," Keldan chided him, retrieving the man's cane, "there are bandits this way, and they would not be as kind."

The old man straightened, looking hardly as feeble as he first appeared.  As Keldan handed the cane back to him, he realized it was much less of a cane and much more of a walking stick.  The difference was significant.  This was not a man who tripped easily or often.

His brown, wrinkled skin spoke of an outdoor profession.  His hand had felt like rough leather. Keldan crinkled his nose at the man, who had a distinct earthen smell to him, the smell of a farmer.  It occurred to him that he could be falling into a trap by helping an old man whom bandits had waylaid only to attack any kind soul who stopped to help.  The old man caught his wandering graze.

"I'm alone.  My name is Atticus Dufrane."

"My name is-"

"Keldan, apprentice to Ymerek.  I know."

Keldan crossed his arms as the man stretched his back, to the tune of several popping sounds.  "You're not going to beg me for a miracle are you?  I've news for you – the only miracle you'll see today is that I found you when I did."

Atticus grinned, his bright, jagged teeth giving Keldan the impression of a shark.  Or a rat. "Perhaps I can help you then."

Keldan arched one eyebrow.  Not a beggar, he thought, merely insane.

"There's a storm coming.  My father passed this story on to me, and his father to him, and his father before him.  This story has been told for one hundred generations, and my family was given the burden of this knowledge."

Keldan couldn't keep from shaking his head in bemusement.  He had heard these kinds of prophecies before, often by hopeful apprentices.  Keldan was quite sure the reason Ymerek took him in was for the considerable bribe his family offered to take him in.  "A storm, hmm?  And what does this storm represent?"

The old man clucked his disapproval.  "It's just a storm.  But a storm the likes of which you have never seen.  It will wipe Gydnia off the map."

"If?"

"If you don't convince Ymerek to stop it."

Keldan rubbed his forehead.  It took the old man awhile to get around to his crackpot plea.  He had to admit it was a good delivery.

  "That's very nice, sir.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be on my way."

Atticus was already nodding through Keldan's response.  "Of course, of course.  Just remember, sometimes broken hearts can be very selfish.  Remember my words.  You won't have much time.  Not much at all."

Keldan smiled a restrained smile, thanked the old farmer, and went along his way.  The man's words disappeared from his mind by the time he was three steps away.

The lone tower that pointed like an accusing finger towards the heavens was a fitting locale for Ymerek's domicile.  Austere and unassuming on the outside, it was easy to miss amongst the several tall trees that wreathed it.  Like all things tied to Ymerek, the camouflage was planted there purposefully, for he brooked no intrusion.

Nevertheless, Keldan's drunken bar story had created enough of a ruckus that he had to be careful upon approaching his master's tower.  Only the most desperate and foolish would actually come within a few yards of the place, but Keldan learned quickly that Gydnia had no shortage of either. 

He crept up the steps in deference to the inevitable scolding for his late arrival. 

"You're late." Ymerek snapped with his back to him in the uppermost level of the tower.  He was cloaked in shadow as he poked at the fireplace.

"I apologize sir."

"You should have never made that drunken speech."  Ymerek had a way of scolding that was neither loud nor angry.  His thin, reedy voice was persistent and impossible to ignore.  When he spoke at length, his foreign accent was apparent, but Keldan had never been able to place it.

"I would have been a lot later if the bandits found me again."

Ymerek swung around to face him.  His features were not atypical of ancient wizards.  With no bushy eyebrows, no white hair, indeed little facial hair to speak of, Ymerek often posed as his own servant.  Nobody really knew what Ymerek looked like. Most assumed that the master of the tower was at least over seventy summers old, if not older. 

Ymerek was far, far older than that.  Age, Keldan decided, made wizards increasingly bitter by the year.

"They would have done me a favor.  I don't know why I bother to educate your lousy carcass when you abuse my reputation trying to impress the yokels."  He waggled a finger at Keldan's nose, his age apparent in his demeanor even if though he stood straight and tall.  "I'm surprised they're not knocking at my door with pitchforks."

Keldan decided to get on with the day's lesson and capitulate by removing his cloak. "I've a soft spot for feeble old men struggling on the ground."

Ymerek snorted, his delicate nostrils flaring.  His eyes were a piercing crystal blue, his arched eyebrows plucked precisely every day.  Ymerek insisted on powdering his face, although sometimes Keldan wondered if it really was powder or the nature of the magic that he dealt with.  His long, slicked-back raven-colored hair only enhanced his foppish image.  Of course, since Ymerek interacted with just his manservant and Keldan, only his vanity noticed his appearance.

"Charity will get you nowhere, boy.  Now, let's review."

Keldan sat in the uncomfortable chair, reserved just for him.  Ymerek flopped into a large, plush leather monstrosity of furniture that seemed to envelop him.  They performed the routine weekly, with Keldan reciting the nature of magic, how it worked, or more importantly, how it didn't work.  Each time the list grew longer and longer.

"Magic is made of five elements," he began. "Fire, water, earth, and air."

"That's only four." Ymerek said disapprovingly.

"I am the fifth."

Ymerek nodded.  Keldan tried to change his answers slightly each time, precisely because it bored him so much.

"Each element interacts with the other.  I am at the center.  Each element destroys its opposite as the body moves through them."

"List them."

"Water douses fire.  Fire burns air.  Air grinds earth to dust.  Earth displaces water."

"And the tools?"

"Fire is the rod.  It thrusts upward.  Air is the dagger.  It cuts downward.  Water is the chalice.  It holds liquid within.  Earth is the pentacle disc.  It is the center of all."

"Good. Now-"

"Speaking of the elements," Keldan interrupted, "does nature follow the same patterns?"

His question was rewarded with both of Ymerek's eyebrows rising at the question.  After a moment, he answered, "Of course, for we do not create energy, we channel it."

"No, that's not what I meant." Keldan scratched his cheek, noticing he hadn't shaved recently.  "Just as we channel Nature's energy to affects its processes, can not Nature channel our energy to affect us?"

Ymerek leaned back in his chair and peered down his slender nose at his apprentice.  "Most certainly."

"What happens then?"

The fireplace's crackling response made Keldan flinch.  Ymerek took a deep breath.  "Why are you asking me these questions?"

"Because," Keldan responded, "I'm curious as to who are the true manipulators.  Do we manipulate nature to our own ends, or does it manipulate us?"

Ymerek snapped his head forward, "Pray you never have to learn the answer to that question.  You may not live to pass it on to others."

Keldan drummed his fingers on the hardwood of the chair as he focused on Ymerek's quivering brow.  "You don't know, do you?  Have you ever faced Nature down?"

"I don't see how that's rel-"

"The old man I met today mentioned something very curious, very curious indeed."

"More village idiots rambling!" Ymerek pounded a delicate fist into the soft cushion of his chair, the effect completely lost.  "But go ahead, I won't hear the end of this until you've gotten it off your chest."

Keldan smiled.  "He told me a storm is coming.  And that only you could stop it."

Ymerek froze.  He steepled his fingers and tapped the fingertips against his upper lip. "A farmer?"

"Yes.  How did you know?"

Ymerek stood up, crossing his arms behind his back.  "You're very bright, I'll grant you that, that's why I chose you.  But you're also very naïve.  Let me tell you something about the world."

As he paced, his shadow danced across the many books on the shelves that blanketed the walls of the room. "People need to eat.  Because they need to eat, they need to farm.  Because they farm, sometimes they make more crops than they can eat.  So they sell it to their neighbor, who perhaps doesn't have as many vegetables that year because of a particularly bad drought.  The farmers who do this realize that they can make quite a bit of money off of their hard work with more abundant crops.  But there is a check against the farmers growing too fat.  Have you ever seen a fat farmer?"

Keldan admitted he had not.

"Farmers do not grow fat, because they are at the whim of Nature.  Because Nature tolerates no obesity, no sloth.  Nature is efficient.  Nature is unforgiving.  Nature does not care how much money a farmer is going to make that year.  We seek to emulate that power through magic.  But to unbalance it, to oppose it, is to court disaster.  The farmer who stopped you today wants you to stop it from snowing so he'll have better crops this year, and so he can grow fat.  A fat farmer is a merchant, apprentice.  And Gydnia has enough of those."

Keldan looked at him curiously.  There was a hurt tone that belied the venom in his voice.

"Now I will hear no more of this.  Back to your lessons, and the next time you see an old man bleeding in the road," Ymerek jabbed a finger in Keldan's face, "step over him!"

The lessons changed after that conversation.  Keldan was finally introduced to the magical tools that made a wizard a wizard: the robe, the sword, the ring, and the wand.  Each had deep significance on many levels, both physically and magically.  Keldan was so excited about his initiation into real magic, he completely forgot about Atticus' warning.

Finally, Ymerek decided it was time for Keldan's initiation. 

Keldan managed to be excited, nervous, and apprehensive at the same time.  He had no idea what the initiation involved.  Images of Keldan blasting fireballs at a horde of demons danced through his head.

Keldan arrived at Ymerek's doorway with more than his usual zeal.  Ymerek was obviously amused by his excitement.

After waiting what seemed like an eternity for Ymerek to say something, Keldan finally blurted out, "So what's next?"

"I have something for you." Ymerek said with a smirk.

Keldan practically pounced on him.  "Oh?" he asked with feigned disinterest.

Ymerek reached his hand out and dropped an object into Keldan's open palms.

It was a sponge.

"A sponge?"

Ymerek allowed himself a chuckle at his apprentice's eagerness.  "There's a bath in my private chambers.  You must be ritually purified before you are initiated.  So scrub good."

Keldan waited for the punch line.  When he realized it wasn't a joke, Keldan began to creep warily towards the doorway to the upper chambers. 

"Oh yes, one more thing."

Keldan spun on his heel.  "Yes?"

"Wash behind your ears."  Ymerek put one hand to his mouth in an effeminate gesture of amusement.  Keldan jutted out his chin and stomped up the steps.

Ymerek's chamber, as it turned out, was rather lavish for a hermit.  The bath was carved of ivory with giant fish for legs, spouting marble water and whipping up marble foam.  To Keldan's delight, Ymerek's servants (for most assuredly not Ymerek) had already warmed the tub.  Keldan disrobed and began scrubbing himself clean.

A lowly wizard.  Ha!  Keldan had images of performing for kings and queens, for bored princes and avaricious barons.  The power that lay before him seemed limitless, the potential of his future without obstacles.  He was sure to scrub himself clean, in part because he feared what would happen if he weren't purified.  Would a great beast swallow him up? 

Keldan didn't intend to find out. Clean wizards, he was sure, tasted terrible to demons.

When he was finished, Keldan reached for his clothes.  Then he paused as he noticed the white robe folded neatly on a chair next to the tub.  Of course!  His clothes surely contained more dirt than his body. 

He wrapped the robe around himself and padded downstairs.  The fire crackled softly, but Ymerek was not present.  Keldan edged warily over to his hard wooden stool and waited.

He was in the middle of wiggling his pinky in his ear when he heard Ymerek call to him from upstairs.  The stone steps of the tower were freezing cold, so Keldan ascended quickly.

Ymerek was standing at the roof of the tower.  The sunlight felt good on Keldan's face.  Despite the tower's height, little wind blew to disturb them.  When it did, the trees seemed to whisper in response, secrets Keldan was sure he would come to understand as his training progressed.

"Now," Ymerek said, pronouncing each word carefully to draw Keldan's overeager focus to him, "We will begin.  What is the first part of every ritual?"

"The circle!" Keldan nearly shouted.

"No," Ymerek crossed his arms, "it's purification.  You've already started magic once you chose to bathe for the purpose of casting.  But you are partially correct, the circle is the next step.  Here is your tool."

Ymerek reached behind him and lifted up a magnificent blade, long and thin, with a very small hilt and gold filigree.  He held it high overhead, the blade resting gingerly on each of his index fingers.  Then he lowered it and handed it hilt-first to Keldan.

"I will not cross the circle once you create it, for by doing so would ruin its purpose.  I've placed the rest of the tools on the altar there." He pointed at the small, squat altar that was in the center of the floor.  Let's begin.

Keldan nodded, his heart racing.  With arm extended, he traced a slow circle around himself and the altar, dragging the sword's tip across the stones of the tower.  The metal sparked and shrieked as it made its slow journey clockwise around him. When he had finished, Keldan placed the sword gently on the altar.

"Very good. Eventually, you will not need the sword and will be able to perform magic with just your fingertips.  Now, visualize the circle.  Visualize it extending upwards as a circle of flame, with you at its center."

Keldan closed his eyes and concentrated.  There was a fine line between his imagination and the concrete form of magic.  But was it even concrete?  What was the difference between magic and hopeful wishes?  Keldan couldn't tell, but when he felt he had a clear conceptualization of the flaming cone around him, he nevertheless opened his eyes with the hope that a blazing wall would greet his eyes.

Instead, he was greeted by Ymerek, leaning on one of the tower's parapets.  "Good.  Now, you must create a Focus.  Light the candle."

Keldan kneeled down before the altar on a rough cloth mat.  Carefully, he struck a match on the first try.  With the candle lit, he stared at the flame.

"Very good.  Your circle is powerful on the first try."

Keldan turned around, "Huh?"

"Focus on the light!" Ymerek snapped.  Keldan yanked his head back around to focus on the candle. "We're five stories up.  There's a breeze blowing.  You lit a candle on the first try, and look there, the candle's flame doesn't flicker.  Your circle is holding."

Keldan placed his hands on his knees to keep himself from trembling with excitement. He had to focus.  Focus.

"Focus," said Ymerek, seemingly far away.

Keldan concentrated his gaze at the very top of the candle's flame, becoming thinner and thinner, extending into infinity. 

"We have purified you externally, now we must purify you internally. The flame is your center.  Let it fill you up with light."

Keldan took a deep breath, and then another.  He imagined the flame burning deep within his core, its heat suffusing through his very being.  When he opened his eyes, he wasn't on fire, but he did feel more relaxed.

"Now that you have purified yourself, externally and internally, we must achieve an elemental balance.  You have fire, represented by the candle that burns before you, you have earth, represented by the stone tower beneath you.  What remains?"
     Keldan looked more carefully at the altar.  He reached for a vial and an incense stick.  "The vial represents water.  The incense represents air."

"Correct," Ymerek said, a hint of approval creeping into his voice.  "Light the incense, then sprinkle the water within the circle."

Keldan lit the incense and carefully lay it next to the burning candle.  The cloying scent of amber wafted lazily about him, completely unaffected by the breezes that swayed the trees.  Then he carefully splashed the vial of water in each direction, without spraying it beyond the confines of his scratched circle.

"Today," Ymerek continued, "your first spell will be to enhance your own awareness.  It is perhaps the most powerful spell you will ever cast, because it will permanently change your being.  Most spells never achieve this level of power.  Now concentrate as I taught you."

Keldan needed no further encouragement.  He concentrated on regulating his breathing.  This was the hardest part of the ritual, he was certain.  This was the moment where failure would mean he could never be a wizard.

He began to regulate his breathing.  He tried to become tangibly aware of his body and the light he envisioned within him.  He imagined himself engulfed in it.

He gradually let his breaths grow deeper and longer.  Keldan's focus never wavered from the top of the flame. Then he held his breath.

An infinity passed as his mind grappled with the concept of infinity.  It was impossible.  He couldn't do it.  Crushed, he took another breath and imagined traveling upwards through the flame into the ether.

Nothing.  No great insights, no flashes of blue magic sparkled before his eyes.

Keldan tried several more times, without success.  He opened his eyes, exasperated.  It was time to end the spell.

He rose, faced southwards, and chanted.

"Elements, four in number,

return now to your endless slumber."

His master was still there, waiting with that mysterious smirk.  Keldan shook his head in frustration.

"Close the circle," was all Ymerek said.

Keldan grabbed the sword roughly and scraped it counter-clockwise in a circle.  Although the etched circle was still there, in the wizard's world it was considered undone.

Tears stinging his eyes, Keldan was about to stomp down the tower steps without a word to his master when Ymerek said softly, "Blow out the candle."

Keldan bit his lip.  It wasn't Ymerek's fault, there was no reason to be angry with him.  He turned back, leaned down, and blew out the candle.

As he did so, a single, delicate snowflake floated gently to land on his nose. He hardly noticed.

He spun around on his heel and made for the trapdoor.

"Where are you going?"

Keldan straightened up and wiped a sleeve across his eyes.  "I'm leaving.  I failed."

Ymerek arched an eyebrow.  "Since when did you become the judge of success and failure?"

Keldan wrung his hands.  "I felt nothing.  Nothing!  This was a disaster, I failed you, I failed myself.  And to top it all off, it's snowing."

He was in the middle of lifting the ring on the trapdoor when Ymerek stomped it back down with his foot, tearing the ring out of Keldan's fingers.

"What?"

Keldan looked into Ymerek's powdered face and repeated, slowly, "It's snowing.  A snowflake fell on my nose.  Now I suggest we get inside before it really comes down."

Ymerek put both hands on Keldan's shoulders.  "Look."  He tilted Keldan's chin up at the sky. "It's a sunny day."

"So?"

"There are no clouds in the sky.  Not a single one."

It was then that Keldan noticed the warm breeze blowing around him.  "It's the beginning of summer.  There won't be snow for months."

Keldan blinked.

"Congratulations," Ymerek said as he clapped Keldan on the back, "you've just made it snow in the middle of summer."
     Keldan put up a finger.  "Just one snowflake?"

Ymerek chuckled.  "It's a start.  You've opened your awareness.  That snowflake means something.  You will need to mediate on its meaning.  Now lets go inside before you start conjuring storms."

Keldan nodded numbly as he allowed himself to be led downstairs.

"You've done well, very well," Ymerek said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.  "As a result, I will let you select one tome from my library.  It is yours to study, to read, to learn from."

Keldan's mind was far too busy to understand the value of the gift Ymerek offered him.  When he finally bothered to pay attention to where he was, the sight boggled him. 

They had entered a side room of the tower.  It was a small cylindrical tube with level after level of books blanketing every square inch.  Two wheeled ladders were attached to the shelves, with small platforms jutting out at odd angles, presumably for a browser to find purchase on his quest for knowledge. 

Finally, Ymerek's words sunk in.  Keldan could have any book.  But which one?

Someone, or someTHING spoke to him.  Keldan looked up involuntarily at Ymerek, who was staring down at him from the topmost ladder, arms crossed. 

Sometimes broken hearts can be very selfish.

"Did you say something?" Keldan shouted up.

Ymerek looked down at him with a quizzical expression.  "No.  Are you hearing voices?"

Keldan was concerned that Ymerek seemed so eager to put forth the theory that his apprentice was insane.  "Well.  One voice."

"Excellent!" Ymerek smiled broadly, a peculiar expression that Keldan wasn't used to, "you've bonded with a daemon.  Or rather, I should say a daemon's bonded with you."

Keldan felt queasy in his stomach.  The image of demons running amok suddenly loomed horribly over him.  He glanced around, eager to get out of what suddenly seemed like a literary coffin.

Sometimes broken hearts can be very selfish.

"It did it again!"

"Well, listen to it.  Daemons seek to guide you on your path to wizardry.  Don't ignore it."

Keldan felt a trickle of sweat drip down the side of his face.  He wasn't used to thoughts popping into his head without cause.  It wasn't a voice, really, but more akin to a half-forgotten thought that had just surfaced in his consciousness.  Keldan knew with absolute certainty that the thought did not belong to him. 

"Think," Keldan whispered to himself, "think.  Who could be the selfish person with the broken heart?"

"Stop talking to your daemon and grab a damn book!" Ymerek snapped.

Keldan had his answer.  He found it hard to believe his master had loved anybody.  But what book?

His eyes scanned row after row, when he came across a white gilded tome with faux pearls adorning its cover.  This, Keldan decided, was a book that screamed broken hearts.

Keldan hefted it off the shelf.  It was a massive tome, larger than he expected and deep enough that he nearly lost his balance.  After some fumbling, he managed top open it. 

Amanda, In Memoriam

Keldan gasped and slammed the book shut, puffing dust into his face.  His eyes watered as he retraced his steps back up the ladder to his impatient master.

"Took you long enough.  Which book did you choose?"

Keldan slowly offered the book up, looking like a penitent priest with a sacrifice.  As he did so, Ymerek's eyes widened.

"Where did you get that?"

The tension between them was almost palpable.  "You told me to choose a book-" Keldan began.

"I know what I told you.  But why did you pick that book?"

Keldan thought a moment.  "My daemon told me to."

He thought for a moment that Ymerek's head was going to explode.  Ymerek started to say something, stopped, started to say something else, stopped, and then threw up his hands in disgust and walked away.

Keldan made it a point of being as unobtrusive as possible as he changed his clothes and slipped out of Ymerek's tower with the book.

He had some serious reading to do.

Keldan was no stranger to dense reading material, and his prize was no exception.  His one regret was that he had not chosen, or rather his daemon had not chosen, a more magically insightful topic.

The book gave far more valuable insight into a woman whom the writer had clearly loved if not adored.  Poetry was interspersed throughout the text with varying degrees of success at conveying the author's undying devotion to his subject.

Her name was Amanda.  Amanda wasn't a particularly remarkable girl, despite the author's best efforts to make her appear otherwise.  The author took her unremarkable life and transformed the book into a paean to her pastoral innocence.  Enamored with the idyllic life of a farm girl, whoever had written the memoriam longed to be united with her.  That she had died before the consummation of their love ultimately soured the text in the final chapter.

"Amanda pled with her father to rescind his decision, but he refused.  Amanda was not to marry a man of lower social status.  Furious, she crept out of her homestead and begged a local priest to marry them.  Without any fanfare or a roof over their heads, they were married in a furious downpour."

The book's tone had switched from flowery to flat. Keldan surmised that the book's original purpose was a wedding present, from the author to his new bride.  But the very last page changed his mind.

"One week later, on the twenty-seventh day of the fourth month, Amanda DuFrane died of pneumonia."

As Keldan clapped the book closed with a dull thud.  So that was it.  She had died.  How, he wondered, did that affect a man?  She had died for their love, and worse, she had died because of a difference in social class.

Something else nagged at him.  Keldan tucked the book under his cot and lay down on the hard wood, staring up at the stars twinkling through the thatch roof.  It was the name.  DuFrane.  He had heard that before.

Atticus DuFrane he suddenly remembered.

"Damned daemon!" Keldan muttered.  Then it struck him.

"The farmer!" he shouted, grabbed the book, and rushed out the door to find him.

It only took a few queries before Keldan was given the whereabouts of Atticus' homestead.  Similarly isolated from Gydnia like Ymerek's tower, Keldan found himself once again trekking through wilderness and the unseen danger of bandits.  When he finally did come upon the house, he had increased his pace to a trot.

A young child, a boy, saw him running and fled into the house.  As Keldan skidded to a halt in front of the wooden doorway, he heard the rustle of footsteps.  Winded, Keldan put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath.  He was out of shape.

When he heard the door open, Keldan snapped to attention – and found a sickle at his throat.

"You leave us alone," came the icy tone of a sandy-haired, petite woman in a peasant's frock.  Her eyes were remarkable, however, as their earthen brown tone and the narrow brows that arched over them proved her kinship to Atticus.  She also looked remarkably like the drawing of Amanda in Keldan's book.

"I'm," Keldan gasped, "not…here…wait."  He put one finger up. "Just a second.  Catching breath."

She pressed the blade of the sickle closer against his throat.  Keldan found it considerably harder to catch his breath.

"Wait!  I'm here for your father."

Her lip twitched.  "I suggest you leave."

Keldan gave up and stepped away.  "I came to show you this."  He stepped out of reach of her sickle and withdrew the memoriam from his purse.  He held it out for a moment.  When she didn't take it, he dropped it on the ground and stepped away from it.

"That book.  I believe it belongs to your family. It's about Amanda."

The woman froze.  She glanced down at the book and up at him.  "Who are you?  What do you want?"

Keldan concentrated on his breathing so he could think straight.  "I came to speak to your father.  I think he knows something about that woman, and Ymerek, and the storm he tried to warn me about."

"My father is dead." She said flatly.

Keldan blinked.  "Oh." Was all he was able to muster. 

After a moment of staring awkwardly at the ground, he took a deep breath.  "I'm sorry.  This was a bad idea.  I'll go."

The woman had lowered her sickle, book in hand.  "I'm Atticus' eldest daughter, Seriphina.  I think we have a lot to talk about."

My daughter, was the thought that slipped through Keldan's consciousness as their gazes locked.

"Yes!" Keldan practically shouted.  "I think we do!"

     Keldan didn't wait for Ymerek to answer the door.  He stormed up the steps.  Ymerek's back was to him, the fireplace that never seemed to go out crackled cheerily before its master's solemn countenance.

     "Why didn't you tell me!"

     Ymerek crossed his arms.  "You didn't need to know."

     Keldan walked around to face Ymerek, who continued to gaze dreamily into the flames.  "Perhaps not.  But it explains a lot about your behavior and why you show this town so much disdain."

     "Yes," Ymerek said without emotion, "it does.  You have no need for the book anymore.  Give it back."

     "I gave it away."

     Ymerek spun around.  "You what?"

     "I gave it away to the family who should have it.  It belongs with them, where she can be grieved appropriately rather than be buried in a pile of books, forgotten."

     Ymerek seemed to grow in stature, towering over Keldan as he swooped closer.  "You know nothing about grieving! What loss have you suffered?  What experience in your short pathetic life could you possibly compare to what I have lost!"

     The blood drained out of Keldan's face, but he refused to back down.  "Coward."  He hissed.

     Ymerek's eyes widened.  "How dare you!"

     For a brief moment, Keldan feared Ymerek would strike him.  But he didn't.  Instead, Ymerek seemed to collapse inwardly, shrinking away from him and sitting in his chair with his face in his hands.

     "You turned your back on everyone in this town.  This town thrived because of you.  His daughter told me."  Keldan turned away and let the air out of his lungs, the tension giving way to emotional fatigue.  "Atticus is dead.  Your vendetta is over."  Keldan slumped onto his own stool.  "It's all over.  For everybody."

     Ymerek slid his hands down to cover only his nose.  His shoulders rocked with sobs, but his voice was steady. "There is a storm coming." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.  "I thought it was conjured by another wizard.  Or a demon.  But it isn't.  It's just…nature."

     "So there is a storm coming.  And you still will not help?"

     Finally, Ymerek turned to look at him through bloodshot eyes.  Keldan noticed he wasn't wearing any of his face makeup.  "I can't help.  It makes no difference.  There is a tornado the likes of which no one has ever seen.  It will tear everything apart.  But I can protect," he waved one hand over his shoulder, "this place.  We will be fine."

     The word "we" almost made Keldan smile.  Then he remembered Seriphina.  "I'm not going to stand by and let people die.  And I don't care if they're related to Atticus.  I'm sorry your heart died along with your bride.  But I'm not dead," Keldan beat his chest, "and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here when I could be fighting out there."

     A distant peal of thunder reverberated through the walls of Ymerek's tower.

     Ymerek shook his head slowly and turned away from him.  "It's too late. It's already here."

     Keldan sprinted up to the top level of the tower.  As he leaned hard against the trapdoor, the wind burst in angrily around him, tousling his hair.  He leaned down harder and shoved the door open.  The wind caught it and slammed it down against the tower roof with a note of finality.

     Keldan crawled up on his hands and knees and peeked out over the tower's parapet.

     The wind continued to blast around him, and the trees, formerly silent, static sentinels, danced and swayed in the wind, bending at angles he never dreamed possible.  Leaves and debris were everywhere.  The thunder echoed beyond the grove, sweeping across the rolling hills of farmland that stretched into the distance.  The sky had turned a sickly green and the clouds had become a turgid gray. 

Then he saw it.

     It licked out of the clouds, spiraling from the heavens, teasing the ground with its presence.  The lazy, slow-swirling cone drilled downwards, almost bouncing along the edge of the horizon.  It undulated and roiled with unrelenting aggression, finally tapping the earth and clinging by an invisible thread.  Its indomitable presence threatened to obliterate all that dared stand in its path, including a small matchstick house that looked like a tree stump from where Keldan sat.

     Then it began to move.

     "Oh my god," Keldan whispered as he dove for the trapdoor.

     It was heading for Atticus' farmhouse.

     Keldan emerged from Ymerek's tower with the tools of his craft.  With the sword across his back, the disk, candle and other implements clanked in his purse. The wind tore at his clothes and the willows between himself and the farmhouse.  The tornado had disappeared in a low hanging cloud, playing a sadistic cat and mouse game with the small wooden structure.

     It wasn't until Keldan was right in front of the house that he heard the cries of a child through the screaming of the wind. He whirled around, attempting to distinguish the cry's source from amongst the thousands of whirling, swinging, swaying foliage. 

     Then he found him.  "Get back in the house!" Keldan screamed, trying to run towards the boy but fumbling about awkwardly as the wind began to batter him about. 

He needed to do something about the wind.  And fast, before his ability to concentrate was utterly ruined.

     The child was hiding behind a low outcropping of rock.  The winds increased to the point where Keldan couldn't even hear the child's crying.  Concentrating was fast becoming impossible.  But he had to try.

     Unsheathing his sword, Keldan crouched low and patted the boy's head.  Words were useless.

     Even keeping the sword outstretched across the ground was too difficult, so Keldan crouched low and half-dragged the tip of the blade in a squat circle around himself, the rock, and the boy.

     Then, clutching the sword, Keldan did something no sane man would do in a storm.  He stood up.

     Placing one foot firmly on the rock, he leaned into the wind and lifted both arms up before him.  Dirt and pebbles stung his face, and his cloak snapped behind him forcefully.  Concentrate, Keldan thought.

     Concentrate.

     Breathe damn it!  Slowly.  Ignore the pain.  Ignore the sounds. Ignore the…

     Silence.  Keldan cracked open one eye.

     His hopes were dashed that he had managed to banish the storm entirely. The wind still swirled in an angry wall about him, but the debris flowed around his magic circle, its path diverted.  Keldan doubted the circle would be capable of withstanding the tornado itself.

     For a moment, he looked on, stunned that he had managed to conjure up a circle on his second try, until the boy's sobbing snapped him out of it.  He wasn't sure what to do next. 

Keldan had run to the defense of the farmhouse, but now that he stood with it to his back, the storm was all around him.  He didn't even know how to cast any spells.  Keldan rooted around in his purse for something, anything that would –

     THWAP!  A flash of light exploded and Keldan found himself laying flat in the center of the circle.  The boy was tugging at his shirt, crying "wake up, wake up!" over and over.

     Keldan blinked.  There was something moist along the side of his head.  When he lifted his hand to his head, it came away sticky and red.

     My blood…?  Keldan thought groggily.  He searched around for the villain.

     He found it in a dirty white sphere, reddened from its impact against Keldan's skull.  His head throbbed as he looked at it. 

He'd never seen anything like it before.  Certainly no one had thrown it.  Keldan clutched it hard in his hand and felt it moisten.  It was made of ice.

     He remembered the snowflake.  Another THUD landed outside the circle.  "So much for the circle," Keldan muttered to himself. 

"Cover your head and stay as close to that rock as you can."  The boy wiped tears from his eyes and sniffled once.  Then he complied.

     Keldan took in his surroundings again.  Livestock were stampeding in all directions.  One lone horse ran crazily in circles, maddened with fear.  A white streak later, it took two more steps and collapsed.

     Then another white streak fell.  And another.  And another.

     Keldan felt panic rise in his throat.  The destructive nature of hail of that size landing at that speed would bludgeon every living thing in its path.  The crackling thuds of ice balls on foliage began to echo around him.  One bounced off the rock at Keldan's foot. 

     "Think!" Keldan shouted to himself,  "It's ice, what defeats ice?"

     He yanked the candle out of his purse and placed it on the stone.  It would have to do for an altar.  Then he took out his tinderbox and attempted to light it. 

The first time he failed.  The second time a hail ball bounced off of his shoulder blade.  Crouched as he was, Keldan was able to shelter the boy and stand over the candle at the same time.  But the pain was unmistakable, he felt as if he had been punched.  Hard.

     An eternity later, the candle was lit.  Concentration was going to be difficult.  He tried to calm his rattled nerves and forget that somewhere beyond the swirling fog and plummeting balls of ice was a much more dangerous monster.

     A wall, the reassuring thought came unbidden, protect the farmhouse.

     Keldan forced his eyes shut and stretched his arms out, resisting the urge to cover his face. First, he had to regulate his breathing.

     In.  Out.  In.  Out.  In…

     He opened his eyes.  Something had brushed across his arm.  He pretended it was the wind. 

     Keldan focused his eyes on the tiny flame on the candle.  Where it met air was infinity, the secret gateway to magic in the universe.  He needed some of it, needed to mold it, to fashion it.  Keldan willed the flame into a brilliant blaze.

     The flame flared upwards, and grew brighter.  It danced and swayed with a life of its own.  The height of the flame stretched over Keldan's head.  He spread his arms out with a sweeping gesture, and the flames fanned upwards and outwards. 

The fire was a bright whitish red, bathing the already windswept ground in an unnatural light.  The heat was intense, even as it flew up and away from Keldan in a fan-shaped blaze.  Trickles of sweat began to drip down the sides of his face.

     But its effect was instantaneous, and none too soon, as a swarm of hailstones attempted to punch through the hemisphere that rose up and over Keldan, the boy, and the farmhouse.  Keldan's ears were greeted with the hisses of disappointed hailstones exploding into steam as the wall of fire thwarted their inevitable descents. 

It was holding!

     A thunderous explosion crackled overhead, as if Keldan had angered the weather gods in his attempts to thwart the hailstorm.  A flash of bright light lit up the entire sky beyond his wall of fire.  Keldan's heart skipped a beat.

     The time between the thunder and lightning was far too close for comfort.  Worse, they were the highest points standing in the plain, with sparse trees spread out around them.  The next largest object was the farmhouse.  Either being struck by lightning spelled disaster. 

Keldan glanced morosely down at the metal sword in his hand.  To throw it away would be certain death.  To hold it would be suicide.

     So make another sword.

     The thought came unbidden into Keldan's mind, but he didn't have time to be surprised by his guardian daemon's intervention.

     "The element of earth!" Keldan muttered, a nervous habit of his in times of crisis.  He grabbed the round clay disc from his purse.  To marshal that amount of metal from the ground, on farmland, would require a heroic effort.  Keldan's magic would have to dig down deep, deep into the bowels of the earth to drag something up powerful enough to deter the storm.

     KABOOM!  The thunder was so loud Keldan could feel its reverberations in his chest.  The boy wailed and clutched his ears.

     SNAP!  The flash was so bright Keldan thought he had been hit.  His concentration disrupted, the wall of fire dissipated in the wind and debris. 

     Ears still ringing, Keldan checked the boy.  He was fine.  Keldan spared a quick glance at the farmhouse.  It too was fine, although he could barely see it in the storm. 

     A lone flaming tree was testament to the lightning that struck in the blink of an eye.  Keldan felt a tingling along his arms and legs and the nape of his neck.  Every hair was standing on end.  His robe began to rise up, but there was no wind in his circle to lift it.  Keldan's throat went dry.

The next strike would be him.

     He took one deep breath to slow his heartbeat.  Then he dug out the clay disc from his purse and lifted it over his head.  With a powerful cry, Keldan snapped the disc over one knee as thunder crashed around him, knocking him over.

     Keldan blinked.  He wasn't dead.  He wasn't on fire.  The boy, his cries muffled by the ringing in Keldan's ears, was still alive.  Keldan struggled to his feet, awed by the sight before him.

     Looming like a dark sentinel behind him, a huge outcropping of smoking rock stood in silent testament to the lightning's strike.  It had rammed itself through layer upon layer of dirt and soil to catch the bolt.

     Keldan struggled to one knee.  The spellcasting was exhausting.  He didn't know how much longer he could keep this up.

     Then the skies opened up.  The candle sputtered and died.  Keldan took a deep breath and marshaled his strength during the brief reprieve.  He could handle rain.

     The boy had also recovered, warily peeking out from his shelter between the outcropping of earth and his protector.  The wind continued to howl, the rain continued to fall in great driving sheets that reduced visibility to within a few feet.  And somewhere, out there, the tornado continued to rage.

     As the boy scrabbled up a little higher on the outcropping, Keldan noticed the water pooling around his ankles.  He lifted one foot up, and was rewarded with a sucking sound.  The loose topsoil that made for a poor source of conductive metal was fast becoming a quagmire of mud.

     Keldan shook his head.  Water was the least of his problems.

     It's the worst of your problems.

     Keldan blinked.  He tried to look over the outcropping, but couldn't see anything.  Then he looked down again.  The water was no longer pooling around his feet.  It was flowing.

     Towards the farmhouse.

     Keldan began frantically digging through his purse.  The sound of rushing water finally reached his ears.

"Where is it!" he cried, his voice cracking in desperation. 

Keldan uncorked the bottle and sprayed its contents in a v-shaped pattern before him.  He prayed it would be enough.

Seconds later, a crashing wave of mud and muck undulated towards them, absorbing chunks of terrain and foliage with its passage.  As it reached the outcropping, it hissed and bubbled angrily, threatening to engulf them.  Keldan kept his eyes focused on where he had sprayed the water, his fingers steepled in a v-shape that matched the pattern he had splashed only moments before.  He had to hold the water at bay.  He had to!

The brunt of the mudslide veered off into two different directions and slowly merged again, mere feet behind the farmhouse. 

     Keldan kept his fingers steepled, brow furrowed in intense concentration.  He couldn't keep the water at bay forever, and the storm was shifting again.  It wasn't until he heard the low roar that he opened his eyes again.

     The water had stopped flowing past his ankles.  In fact, it had reversed direction.

     Keldan looked up to stare into the very beast itself.

     He could feel it as the wind suddenly and purposefully changed direction, blasting now this way, now that, tearing at his clothing and threatening to knock him off his feet.  It looked like billows of smoke on the ground, broad and wide at its top, with mud and dirt and debris spinning madly in its center.  It danced and gyrated slowly as it meandered towards Keldan. 

In the din of it all, Keldan couldn't help but think how beautiful it was.  It was only a few hundred yards away, perhaps only ten feet at its base.  Keldan knew it was in fact much larger, with a ring of invisible force blasting around its circumference.

It roared closer. Its booming presence transformed into a deafening scream that threatened to burst his eardrums. 

     Keldan crouched over and cupped his flint and steel.  It was the last component left, the incense.  Keldan's frail circle of protection only managed to soften the force of the wind, not halt it.

Once he struck the flint to the steel. 

Twice. 

Three times, with no result.

     Finally, he managed to set a spark onto the incense stick.  The boy's screams were drowned out in the fury of the tornado's wrath.  Keldan lifted the incense high over head, and its thin trail of smoke spun like a thread throughout the tornado's fury.  But, impossibly, magically, the incense did not go out. 

It spiraled like a strand of yarn, spinning into the tornado and zigzagging wildly within it.  Keldan watched in fascination as the true dimensions of the tornado became visible.  It was much larger than he realized, and the hair-thin white strands of incense spun a mad spider's web about the tornado as the roaring increased to a fever pitch. 

     Keldan knew he couldn't stop it.  All he could do was slow it down.  He crouched down over the boy and kept his hand held high overhead.

     The tornado's progress paused as the incense strands spun about its core and shot up through its center.  It was close enough that Keldan could see green flashes of light twinkling at its center. 

The wind increased, too strong even for his circle, and the full force of the tornado tore at him, threatening to rip the incense from his hand. 

The force of the wind has become so great, Keldan was no longer able to see.  He put his head down and closed his eyes.  The roaring transformed into a deafening symphony of steady explosions, relentlessly battering his body.

And then it stopped.  The wind, the rain, the sounds.  All of it ended as abruptly as it came.  Thunder continued to crackle in the distance, but for the moment, all was peaceful.

     Keldan cracked one mud-encrusted eye.  Then he stood up.

     The ground around them was bare.  The loose topsoil had been entirely removed.  No trace of foliage or fauna was visible for miles.  Thew few trees that remained standing were stripped of their bark. 

     A long furrow in the ground indicated where the tip of the tornado's tail had touched down.  It ended not more than thirty feet from Keldan's circle.  And around him, despite his belief that his circle had failed, was a small, perfectly round circle of grass, the only other living thing to have survived.

The boy didn't even thank him.  He sprinted off toward the farmhouse.  Keldan turned to survey it.

The farmhouse's roof had been completely removed, but that it was intact at all was a testament to its builder.  Seriphina ran out to meet the boy.

Keldan was too weak to run to them.  But as they embraced, he watched Seriphina's eyes grow wide.  She pointed off to Keldan's left.

He focused his gaze on the invisible path her finger pointed.

It was massive.  He had never seen anything so impossibly powerful, raw anger taken form in nature's fury.  It was a gigantic tornado, with smaller tornado wisps dancing around their master. 

Keldan had only defeated a very minor tornado, a small one that had branched off from its indomitable parent.  Great gouges of earth and rock fluttered amongst the tornado's coils.

And it was heading for Gydnia.

Keldan fell to his knees, hands clasped over his face.  "I'm sorry," he gasped, defeated, "I tried."

Something flashed brightly, so bright that it peeked even between Keldan's fingers.  He looked up again, to see a starburst flash from the top of Ymerek's tower.  The spiraling beam swung out towards the gigantic tornado. 

"Gods!" Keldan whispered, "He can't stop that!"

At first, Ymerek's efforts seemed to have no impact.  But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the tornado was lured away from its deadly path.  The gigantic tornado and its smaller vassals began to rotate towards the tower, tearing earth and ripping forests from their moorings.

The flash disappeared as the tornado barreled down upon its target.  Keldan suddenly realized the full extent of Ymerek's desperate plan.  The tornado could not be stopped, but it could be coaxed into the right direction.  It could not be ended, but it could be channeled into one location.

"Nooooo!" Keldan screamed, struggling to his feet, rising, stumbling, and running again. 

The tornado's invisible circumference hit the tower first, tearing anything that was not bolted down.  Stones flew out in a ballet-like leap, spiraling into the heavens.  Two of the smaller tornadoes wandered dangerously close, but then the massive tornado fell upon the structure.  Keldan watched as the tower buckled, tipped forward, began to collapse and then fell into the tornado's grasp, launching upwards into the heavens.  Lightning flashed repeatedly in the mother cloud that spawned the tornadoes, and thunder crackled once, twice. 

     Then, as abruptly as the tornado had landed, it withdrew into the skies, leaving a gaping hole where Ymerek's tower once stood.

     Keldan bowed his head for a moment in silence.  Then he took a deep breath.

"I guess Ymerek finally did forgive Gydnia.  Well," he turned to Seriphina, who continued to gaze in awe at the devastation around them.  "At least we saved the fa…"

     Keldan finally bothered to look around.  Farm?  The rain had swept all topsoil away, all crops, and any chance of growing crops this season or next.  The terrain was devastated.

     Seriphina fell to the ground sobbing, from relief or grief, he wasn't sure.  He put one hand on her shoulder as the boy looked up at him.  "When I grow up," the child said, "I want to be a wizard!"

     Keldan smiled a battle-weary smile.  "You don't want to take a step down in life, son."

     He reached out his hand to help Seriphina to her feet.  "Will you help us rebuild the farm?" she asked.

     The voice came unbidden in his mind for the last time. Take good care of my daughter.  Goodbye.

"I will," Keldan answered, "I will."