The Patient Mage (143)
A few days later Chris went out to wash the cauldron, and when he came back he found Grain turning a communication orb over in his hands, his face dark with anger.
Chris set the pot back in its place.
"Sounds like you heard some bad news."
"Serious news."
"What kind?"
"The Empire's too far off, so they send the Motaro through a teleportation array."
"Yes."
A thought struck him, and Chris raised his voice.
"Don't tell me it got stolen."
"The man managing the array snatched it on the way through."
"How many?"
"Three."
"Well, damn."
Chris clicked his tongue.
"That's what you get for leaving the fish with the cat."
Grain's eyebrows shot up.
"You're saying this is my fault?"
"No. It's the fault of the magic tower that mismanaged the array. Which tower does it belong to?"
"Laphunian. You're going to have to put in some work."
Chris jabbed a thumb at his own chest.
"Me?"
"Someone has to catch the thief."
"The Laphunian Magic Tower is the one that failed to watch it, and the Empire's the victim. They should be catching him. Why would I?"
"Because I made that Motaro. You're my disciple. You're the one who has to get it back."
"Get it back? He's probably already swallowed it."
"Then we rip out the thief's Klpandi and use it as material for a new Motaro."
"There's no guarantee I'll catch him even if I go. Why should I bother?"
"Get a feel for the atmosphere."
"What atmosphere? Is there a suspect?"
"I suspect the Laphunian Magic Tower swallowed it themselves and pinned the blame on some innocent array keeper."
"Ah. That could be."
When a man's lifespan was hanging by a thread and Motaro was wandering right in front of him, it was entirely possible.
"Master, I'll look into it carefully."
"Disciple. I'm counting on you."
With Grain's leave, Chris strode out of Mickclonia Magic Tower with his head high, and for the first time in a very long while he went down into Stratton Village.
He sat on the mermaid fountain at the heart of Mermaid Square and looked from Stan General Store to Brian Magic Store and back again. Both shops were shut tight, their doors boarded over with nailed planks.
Donna had told him that once he became a mage, he would be able to read the shop's sign. A lie. He had become a 2-Ring mage, and still the letters would not show themselves.
Chris turned the memories clinging to both shops over in his mind, then brushed off his backside and stood. He walked slowly, crossing streets steeped in the dreams, hopes, joys, pleasures, frustrations, and despair of his boyhood, and slipped out beyond the village. He kept on for a long while after that, and then he drew up every scrap of strength he had owned since he was nursing and broke into a dead sprint.
As he ran he carved the ground open ahead of him with magic, dumped his clothes and every last possession into the hole, and buried them. Aside from the mask on his face, he was as bare as the day he was born.
After he had crossed three mountains he stopped, set one leg up on a flat rock, and stared at the three dots stamped across the back of his foot. He formed a wind blade, closed his hand around it, and struck his ankle.
Thwack.
He had swung with everything a 2-Ring mage possessed, and still the ankle would not sever. Only a hairline mark remained. Iron Skin and Iron Body together had produced a monstrous effect. Any other day he would have been delighted, but not this one. He had to cut the ankle and sever the curse broadcasting that ill-omened signal. Otherwise he would never slip Grain's grasp.
An aura blade would take it off.
He was no knight. He could not use aura.
Chris squatted and set his hand to the soil. Centering metal-attribute mana, he formed magical power and drew the metal buried in the earth toward him. This was no mine, so there was little metal in the ground, but there was enough to shape an awl.
He wrapped magical power around the outside of the awl and compressed it, and compressed it, and compressed it again. Then he flooded his arm with power as well, drove his strength as high as it would go, and rammed the mana awl into his ankle. If once was not enough, then twice. If twice was not enough, then three times. As the attempts went on, the ankle began to bore through.
He punched five holes along its circumference, seated a miniature mana bomb in each, clenched his teeth, and set them off.
Pop-pop-pop-boom.
The ankle was left in shreds. It still had not come off.
Damn it. This hurts bad enough to kill me.
Chris screamed it inwardly and planted fresh mana bombs in the holes, which had widened considerably. Bigger holes meant bigger bombs, and of course a greater blast.
Crack-crack-crack-BOOM.
A detonation loud enough to split eardrums erupted, and the ankle flew free. As a stopgap he staunched the bleeding and knit the flesh, then poured flame over the severed foot. Iron Skin and Iron Body had reinforced each other and raised his resistance to fire, so it refused to burn.
He poured in magical power and kept driving the temperature higher. Only when the fire-attribute power stored in his Thought Space was nearly spent did the foot finally catch. He gathered the ash, let a stream carry it away, and spat with a light heart.
Grain. Let's never meet again.
Whistling, Chris took to the sky.
Once a mage reached the Ring Binding Realm, restoring a damaged body was no great difficulty. Chris, however, met the ironic fate of a body so tough that restoration became harder instead. It took him twenty times as long as an ordinary Ring Binder to regrow the severed foot.
When his body was whole again, he changed his face and set out. He dug up the black crystal imbued with Acrian magic that he had buried long ago, the hide of the giant worm that had spewed fire and poison, and an empty spatial pouch, and took them with him. Then he made for the capital of the Grant Kingdom. He rented a room at a shabby inn on the outskirts, stayed a single night, and at dawn headed for the largest square in the city.
Ten years ago, on the day he had climbed the stairs of Mick Magic Tower, he had made a promise with Alice. Ten years later, they would meet in the capital's greatest square.
Chris sat on the fountain and watched the sun come up. Warm light washed over heaven and earth. As the dark receded, people began to emerge one by one. The sun climbed higher, and the square filled with those passing through. Some sat on the fountain soaking up the light, just as he did. Others sat on the steps with books open in their laps.
Children ran and played. Vendors sold food from their stalls. Couples strolled on dates, and old folk took the air. Countless people lingered there. But until the sun went down, Alice never appeared.
She wouldn't have forgotten the promise.
He began to worry that something had happened to her. Then, at last, Alice came. She must have run; she was gasping for breath. Her eyes slid across his face and moved on. His face had changed, and she did not know him.
I'll have to be the one to speak first.
Chris started toward her, then stopped, seized by a chill he could not name. A shiver climbed his spine from the tailbone all the way up his back. At the ominous feeling, the fine hairs on his nape stood rigid.
—Your instincts are sharp.
Thought Language struck his ears like a blow.
Grain!
Chris spun at once and ran. In that instant a mana bomb detonated at his back.
Boom.
People were still in the square. Iron Body and Iron Skin kept Chris from so much as a scratch, but the others were caught in the blast and torn to pieces. Gobbets of flesh and blood rained down.
"Aaaagh!"
Those with holes punched through their bodies, those whose arms and legs had been blown away, screamed.
—Run, and everyone here dies.
Chris flinched. He squeezed his eyes shut.
These people have nothing to do with me.
He meant to start running again, but one decisive sentence caught him by the ankle.
—How shall I torture Alice, I wonder.
Chris stopped and turned. He scanned every direction, searching for Grain. The man was nowhere to be seen. Only Alice was there, helping the wounded.
—Kind-hearted, isn't she. Too good a girl to die struck by lightning just for standing next to the wrong bastard.
Chris let out a long breath. Then he walked, slowly, out of the capital of the Grant Kingdom. Once he reached the quiet outskirts, the empty air split, and Grain stepped out of it as if the air itself were spitting him forth.
Grain pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and played at being wounded.
"I trusted you, and you betrayed me."
"Spare me the nonsense. Trusted me? Since when?"
"I gave you free rein to come and go, and I never asked about your past. That's a great deal of trust. And you went to Perez, collected your foot, cut my curse away, and even prepared a transit pass. You planned the escape in advance. This is a truly serious betrayal."
Chris looked himself over.
"How did you find me? Did you plant a spell on me in secret?"
"I followed Alice."
"Why?"
"Because I knew you were Chris."
Chris's voice shook.
"How?"
"Tom recognized you."
"Damn it."
He had hidden his face in a rush, but Tom must have seen it before he could.
Tom. That bastard has never done a thing for my life.
"I looked into this Chris. I checked who he was close to, and there were only two. Alice and Catherine. I watched every day, and Alice left the tower. I followed her, and ta-da! Out you came."
Grain pulled him into an embrace.
"Disciple. Your master is disappointed."
Chris shoved him in the chest. Grain spoke with a hurt look.
"Even so, I won't give up on you."
He dropped a clenched fist, as if driving the resolve home.
"You are still my disciple."
In prison Chris had honored Tom as his master, only to take a vicious blow to the back of the head for it. He could not help being guarded against the very idea of a master. And yet, when Grain had taken him as a disciple, he had declined to make an issue of the past.
A mage choosing the disciple who would inherit his magic was a different order of thing from a tower recruiting hundreds of applicants at a stroke. You did not lightly take on the one person who would receive everything you had researched and mastered across hundreds of years. You examined ability, character, and background with meticulous care. You verified the past down to the bone. Grain had skipped every one of those steps. Suspicious corners had been everywhere, and he had closed his eyes.
Then he had used that very omission as proof that he was a wonderful master, and praised himself for it. The more he did, the deeper Chris's suspicions ran. Worse, the man's conduct was much the same as Tom's. He had forced Iron Skin on him with no explanation before or after, and after that he had taught nothing at all.
He had tossed over one strange circulation method and left it at that. All the rest had been sweet talk about passing on ascension magic once they rose to the Middle Realm.
Chris thought it through with care, and reached a conclusion.
From the start, Grain never meant to take me as a disciple. He just found a tool to use up and throw away, the same as Tom.
Being betrayed by your master is not the disciple's fault. It means the master is a son of a bitch, and the fault is entirely his. But being betrayed by a master a second time—that one is on you. Tom was the precedent. Stand there blankly and take another knife in the back, and the one who gets stabbed is the fool.
So Chris had made a plan to escape. By good fortune, Grain had given him a mission that required him to leave the tower and see it done. He had cheered inwardly and bolted at once. He had thought he'd played it cleverly and slipped that grasping hand, and in the end he had been caught anyway.
It left a bitter burn in his gut.
"Was this a test?"
Grain's eyes went round.
"A test?"
"You gave me a mission and deliberately turned me loose, didn't you? To see whether I'd run or not."
"Why would I test you?"
"To see whether you could trust me."
"No. I cherish you. I love you. There's no reason to put you to the test."
Chris was certain of it now.
This bastard did test me.
"Thorough of you."
"I told you, I didn't."
"Fine. We'll say you didn't."
"Yes. You have to live by trust."
Grain patted his shoulder, then turned and walked away. Chris spoke, startled.
"You're leaving me here and going on alone?"
"Yes."
"Why...?"
"You have a mission to carry out."
"What mission?"
"Catching the Motaro thief. What's a young man doing getting so forgetful already?"
"And if I simply disappear like this?"
"The check is already done. You can never leave me."
"That's not true. I am leaving."
"Alice, you see, is deeply attached to her family. After she reached Jenyeom, she clawed money together with everything she had, borrowed what she lacked from Catherine, and bought her mother, her younger sibling and their spouse, and her nephew—every one of them—and freed them from slavery. She even set them up with a house in the city. Their life isn't exactly plentiful, but it's far better than being ground down as slaves, wouldn't you say?"
Chris clenched his teeth.
"Are you threatening me?"
"It isn't a threat. I'm simply letting you know what will happen if you leave me. I'll round up Alice's entire family. And I'll torture them to death, one by one, right in front of her eyes."
Chris ground his teeth.
"I just have to go to the Laphunian Magic Tower, is that it?"
"Yes. Work hard."
Grain drifted farther and farther off, then seeped into the air. He dissolved the way sugar dissolves in water.