Understanding Death
Chris had fallen asleep face-down, and the groan of the prison's iron door dragged him awake. Screeech. That sound crawled up his spine no matter how many times he heard it.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Jake, the jailer, was tossing bread. Thud. A loaf dropped into Chris's cell as well. His legs were so numb he couldn't stand. He rolled onto his side, turned himself over, and stretched them out. They prickled as if they had cramped.
"Something hurt?" Jake asked.
"I slept in an awkward position. I'm all stiff."
"Ought to be more careful."
Jake finished the rations and went back out.
Chris was tearing the bread into small bites when Joe spoke.
"Why didn't you tell Jake?"
"Tell him what?"
"You've reached Spirit Awakening. Say you can feel mana, and they'll let you out on the spot."
Chris's face brightened.
"Truly?"
"Let's be plain. It's not as if you committed some great crime."
"You won't even grant that it was self-defense. You called it murder."
"I still think that. Murder is murder, and you're a murderer. But the situation has changed."
"The situation?"
"What matters is who died. Some dormitory servant, wasn't it? When the killer is a laborer, it's a felony. When he's a Spirit Awakener, it's a misdemeanor. A fine would have been plenty, and you've already served five or six years. That's more than enough."
"So the victim's station matters, and the killer's station matters too."
"Obviously."
"Yes. I understand."
He said as much, yet the next day, and the day after that, Chris still said nothing to Jake.
Joe narrowed his eyes.
"Kid. What are you scheming?"
"The way Mickclonia Magic Tower teaches... it doesn't suit me."
"And what's wrong with our tower?"
"It's far too unkind."
"That changes once you reach Thought Formulation. You choose a master who suits you."
"Getting from Spirit Awakening to Thought Formulation isn't easy."
"True enough."
Chris fixed Tom with a burning look.
"I want to learn here. From kind Tom."
Joe clicked his tongue.
"Would you look at this traitorous little bastard."
"You said you were a mage too, Joe. Would you teach me?"
"Do I look insane? Taking a fool like you for a disciple."
He shook his head and went on.
"I can barely look after my own hide."
Chris turned to Tom and pleaded.
"Please."
Tom only stared at the bread in his hands.
"I won't tell anyone."
Tom let out a sigh.
"I can't betray the tower that raised me and taught me."
Chris lingered in the prison a few days more, begging. Tom would not be moved. In the end Chris threw up his hands.
"Thank you for everything you've taught me so far."
At that, Joe brightened.
"Finally gave up. Smart of you. Learning another tower's magic is betrayal. Betrayal."
"Go out there and live hard," Tom said.
"Yes."
Chris answered with due courtesy and lay down where he was.
Speak to Jake tomorrow, and he would be free within a few days. The thought of the outside cheered him. It was a shame he could learn nothing more from Tom, but the man had refused him. There was nothing to be done.
He was deep in a sweet sleep when disaster struck.
"Aaaagh!"
Joe's scream shot Chris to his feet.
"Joe! What's wrong?"
Joe was rolling across the cell floor.
"Jake! Jake!"
The call for the jailer tore out of him like another scream.
Chris pounded the bars and shouted with him.
"Jake, Joe's in pain! Joe is hurting!"
"I have to get out! I have to get out! It's time, isn't it? I did what I was told!"
"Yes. You can get out. Hold on."
Chris tried to soothe him, then shouted again.
"Jake, Joe's sick! Help us!"
Their cries never made it through the prison's solid walls and thick iron door. Or perhaps the sound passed through, and Jake, his mind elsewhere, simply missed it. He might have been away from his post. He might have heard and ignored them because it was a bother. Whatever the truth, Jake never appeared, and Joe screamed until his breath ran out.
"Joe?"
Chris called to him.
"Are you dead?"
Joe had been an irritating man, in the same way Alex was. Even so, he had been a cellmate through long years. The thought that he was dead left Chris bleak.
"Tom. Joe is dead."
"You're lucky."
"Joe just died. How am I lucky?"
"I like you. Enough that I even thought of breaking our tower's rules to teach you."
"Didn't you decide not to?"
"Because of Joe."
"Why Joe?"
"When you said you wanted to learn magic from me, what did Joe call it?"
"Betrayal."
"Right. A mage of Mickclonia Magic Tower taking a mage of Laphunian Tower as his master is betrayal. Perfect betrayal. Not a shred of excuse."
"I see."
"So what would Joe have done?"
"I don't know."
"Think it through. Slowly."
"He's irritating, I'll grant that, but considering the bond we've had all this time..."
"Live as a mage on thoughts that naive, and you won't die of old age. You'll take a knife in the back and die a miserable death."
Chris swallowed.
"What would have happened?"
"While I taught you, Joe would have been stealing the lessons from the side. The moment he judged the time ripe, he'd have gone to Jake and informed on you. He'd report that Chris learned magic from a rival tower's mage, and as a bonus he'd offer up Laphunian Tower's secret training method. For that merit, Joe walks free. You get branded a traitor, and off comes your head."
Tom was right. Chris had been naive.
"Ah. I see."
The belated understanding struck him in the chest. He swept a palm down over a heart gone cold.
"I nearly died."
"That you did."
Now he understood what Tom had meant by luck.
"Joe is dead, so you can teach me now."
"That's right. Still of a mind to learn?"
Chris bowed low before him, forehead toward the floor.
"Of course I am."
"If this comes to light, you'll suffer for it."
"They're the ones who went to such trouble to pluck me out, then never properly taught me, left me to rot, and threw me in a cell. I have no affection for Mickclonia Magic Tower."
The Three Great Elders of Mickclonia Magic Tower gathered on the summit of the highest mountain in the tower's domain. Richard arrived first. Long white hair streamed behind him in an airy drift as he descended onto the peak, and the sight brought a crane to mind.
Next came Perez, gaunt to the bone, his face so sallow that it would not have seemed strange if he dropped dead where he stood. Draw near him, and one half expected the stench of a rotting corpse.
Last was Elder Daryl, a woman of advancing years to whom the words aged gracefully seemed to belong. She looked about fifty, yet of the three she was the oldest.
Daryl was the one to break the silence.
"Tom took the bait."
"Joe finally succeeded," Perez said.
"No. It wasn't Joe."
In that instant Richard struck his own thigh.
"The one I put in there did it."
Daryl smiled.
"That's right. Tom has taken Chris as his disciple."
"You gave a mission to some mere laborer?" Perez said.
"No. Chris has no idea what he's doing. That's why he succeeded."
"He succeeded because he knows nothing?"
"Tom is a cautious bastard. If Chris had been carrying a mission, Tom would have smelled it and never let him close. He was fooled because the boy is guileless."
"Hah."
Perez laughed, hollow with disbelief.
"The man we sifted and sifted and finally sent in—who even turned cannibal and spent every last ounce of himself—fails. And the fool who knows nothing succeeds right in front of us. What a madhouse of a world."
"That's only proof of how keen Tom's senses are."
"What's Joe doing?"
At Perez's question, Daryl answered as if it hardly mattered.
"He's dead."
"If he's dead, we've no way to know what goes on inside the prison. How did you learn Tom took Chris as a disciple?"
A meaningful look crossed Daryl's face.
"Joe's death told us."
"What do you mean?"
"Joe died because Tom had resolved to take Chris as his disciple."
Understanding lit Perez's face.
"So Tom killed Joe in order to make Chris his disciple."
A brief silence followed.
"What now? Do we send someone new?"
At Perez's question, Richard answered, flat and firm.
"No. A fox like him would catch on at once."
Daryl agreed.
"Yes. And then Chris would fall under suspicion as well. Leaving things as they are is best."
Perez hesitated.
"But then we won't know what's happening inside the prison."
"We don't need to know."
Richard seconded her.
"In the end, this will unfold as we wish. Don't trouble yourself."
Over the course of a month, Chris learned and drilled the rest of the breathing method Tom had withheld: how to circulate the mana once it was drawn in, and where to send it flowing.
He was fixed on the handling of that mana when Tom offered a piece of advice.
"The heart of the Laphunian breathing method doesn't lie in how you use it."
"Then it's absorption?"
The more I take in, the faster my realm will rise. That was what Chris believed.
"No. The heart of it lies in discarding."
"You mean you have to empty well before you can fill well? Something like that?"
"No. I mean it literally. I told you that for knights and the old mages, the mental image is bound to the flesh, didn't I?"
"Yes."
Tom set a finger just below his navel.
"A knight opens the mouth of a mana storehouse here and packs the mana into it, building his mental image as he goes. Because that image has sunk its roots into the flesh, stepping on to the next stage is comparatively easy."
He shifted the finger to his chest and went on.
"The old mages who never managed to shed their obsolete ways circulate mana around the heart and forge a ring of reality. After that, they link that flesh-bound ring to the mental image."
The finger dropped and came to rest at the pit of his stomach.
"We don't found the mental image on the body. We make it with the mind, and only later join it to the soul."
"This is difficult."
"Of course it is. Let the mana flow."
Chris did as he was told. Following the Laphunian breathing method, the mana that had circulated out through his limbs gathered inside the pit of his stomach, then spread and poured out across his entire back.
"Think of it as rain upon your mind. The way you'd sprinkle water over a field."
Chris tried for a long while. By the end he was groaning aloud with the strain. There was still no result.
A day passed, then two, then three… and another month slipped by. The training had still gone nowhere.
"The mana in this cell is thin, so progress comes slow. Don't be disappointed."
"If it were only slow, I could endure it. This is closer to nothing at all."
"If we knew your seed's affinity, the work would be easier. There's no mana stone here, so it's difficult."
A new idea had entered the conversation. Chris's eyes glittered.
"What is a seed?"
"Everyone who has felt mana has one. We believe the seed is what lets you feel mana."
"You're saying the seed makes the mage?"
"That's right. But seeds differ in affinity. In most cases, one of six: water, fire, earth, wind, metal, wood..."
When he let the words trail off, Chris asked, "So a fire mage who wears a red robe has a fire-attribute seed?"
"Yes. People like that grow faster if they concentrate on fire magic. Through the Thought Formulation realm, that's certain."
"How do I identify mine?"
"Usually with an Evaluation Paper made from elemental mana stones..."
"Impossible in here."
Tom brooded, then blinked hard, as if the matter were settled.
"All things considered, you'd better leave this cell."