Copperthrow

Rsforin saw her almost immediately. He had been waiting all day with an urgent expectancy; now he discerned the reason for that nameless suspense. Something like a sigh was granted inner expression as he regarded the girl – she could not have been more than ten or eleven – on the arm of her father, all dressed in white. Her red hair cascaded over the shoulders of her simple toga. A blue wildflower was tucked into the hair above her ear, and freckles danced along the bridge of her nose.

Her father was a hulk of a brute with a simian slope to his shoulders but clear, perceptive eyes. His dress was as simple as his daughter's and gave no hint as to his trade: loose linen breeches and a roughly-formed tunic, both the color of summer earth. As the two drew closer Rsforin gauged the large, rough hands. They were not raw with fieldwork, not cracked and blistered with the firing of metal. A merchant, perhaps ?

Rsforin smiled his most pleasant smile, an action rendered almost automatic in the course of his duties as proctor of this [ed.: ward ?]. The machinations which had brought him from the tradesman's hut to the proctor's office had been powered by ambition, but ever lubricated by his subtle talents of ingratiation. The smile was returned, the hulk's clear eyes met his.

Introductions were made, brief pleasantries exchanged. He finally let his eyes move to the girl, lingering no longer than would be deemed appropriate. He hardly needed to see her; he could feel her. Her spirit exerted a powerful presence outside her tiny frame, but what was more, what was extraordinary, was that her spirit was largely in control of her conscious will. At this young age her spirit and physical being were in harmony to a degree sought fervently by many adept magi. What a treasure ! What a find !

Immediately forgotten was the sudden and implacable anticipation he had suffered all day, an anticipation that were he to be absolutely honest with himself, indicated she had been sent to him, not drawn to him. He'd had nothing to do with her unheralded appearance, but gods be damned if he would not now set in motion the gears of a machine that could take him to the very seat of Pryaen power.

These marsh-dwelling unregenerates who feared and ridiculed magic might merely tolerate his administration today, but they would see him differently when he returned bearing power forged in Pyrae itself. When they saw what magic – what magi – had wrought, they'd be lining up to send their boys and girls to the jyoro !

He rose now from behind the stone desk. Not too rapidly, as to denote haste, yet not slowly, as to imply indecision. His grey robes billowed briefly, ensuring that their first impression of him standing upright would be an inflated one. He repeated this ritual daily with every new supplicant, every villager who came to request a dam be built or a bridge repaired.

It was unusual for a magi to be appointed proctor; some whispered under ale-laden breath that sorcery had bought Rsforin favor in the capital. In fact, the reverse was true: he sought to curry favor in Pyrae through cunning administration of this minor fiefdom. His rise had been due more to natural political skill than to his magic arts (though of late it was becoming more difficult to determine the boundary between the two). He was adept at both, and made no effort to remove the mistaken notion from the heads of the villagers whose small lives he governed.

The father was entreating him now, in a deliberate and reasoned manner that spoke to his intelligence. But the father of such a girl would naturally not be a dullard, it was clear.

He represented their village's council, the easternmost under Rsforin's jurisdiction, and their requests were several. They were being taxed disproportionately in comparison to neighbouring villages, he said, and receiving too little grain from the storehouses in return. They were resourceful, he said, and not prone to frivolous complaint, and so would consider as fair recompense the construction of a new pier at the edge of the marshlands and the addition of an additional barge to the river fleet for their fish catches. His salesmanship was even and unemotional, the subtle language of government.

Rsforin replied in the same deliberate, measured tones and turned from his slow pacing every so often to hold his supplicant's gaze. They were equals, he seemed to say beneath the words. We are men of reason, and you can trust me, he seemed to say. What he did say was that the proposed solution was reasonable, but clearly impracticable under the ward's current financial constraints.

He also said that he agreed with the basic argument of overtaxation, but that to acquiesce to both those compensatory requests would not only endanger the proctor's budget, it would certainly cause him to expend valuable political capital. Why ? Well, he said, the other villages would certainly resent any such concessions given that they were all competitors in supplying fresh fish to the capital. He made sure to interject a soft smile and reflect a growing optimism. "I'm on your side !" he seemed to say.

Now, there was one personal circumstance which might lead him to risk such an expenditure of capital, he thought aloud. You see, in addition to holding the office of proctor, he was also magi, -anen. And, you see, he was currently without a pupil. A dark hood had dropped over his supplicant's face, but Rsforin's back was now turned, all the better not to see it.

Indeed, this young girl is magi, as you must know, and there is no greater master with whom to apprentice with for miles around. Were I to gain such a student, I could more easily countenance the damage to my budget and my political leverage. You see, don't you, how reasonable this would be ?

Rsforin was reluctant to probe the man's spirit as he normally could, surely the girl would sense it. He was not sure how she might react if he did, but he meant to discover her basic nature when she was his, and she was not yet. Turned to face them both again, he noticed that her green eyes were as clear as her father's.

No answer was immediately forthcoming. The father stood silent and so did she, her hand still in his. By the time the two had left twenty minutes later, an agreement in principle had been agreed and the fates of a young girl and a cunning mage had been intertwined like the threads at the edge of a lacquered tapestry.

-----

She was bent over the parchment when Rsforin entered the room, holding her sides and rocking backwards and forwards with her eyes closed. He'd felt the spiritual energy emanating from the room grow in intensity and it had drawn him like a whirlpool's vortex. The energy had grown in small spurts at first, interrupting his quiet contemplation in the way that the flares of sunspots disturbed Earth's magnetic field with distant radiation. Then the spurts had merged into a constant, surging stream and grown in intensity like labor that brings forth a new life.

She was whispering musically, in a language neither of them knew. A shiny patina of perspiration crowned her forehead. She was beautiful this way, he thought, beautiful and powerful. She was a hyssop sponge dipped into his well of knowledge, but she had somehow taught him – was teaching him – unexpected things, too.

He watched her with a queer mixture of satisfaction and disquiet. Satisfaction that she was progressing so rapidly – she was close to mastering the throwing of Fire. Disquiet because she relied so much on one guiding spirit instead of the pantheon available to her. Was this really all ? Perhaps he was more perplexed at her attraction to this Ixcthu, because he knew of Ixcthu only by reputation. A god of chance, his own master had said dismissively. Unreliable. Not easily manipulated to the ends of man through the usual means of ritual, sacrifice, and works commanded from on high.

He was inscrutable, with a peculiar code. None of his previous students nor any of his colleagues had to his knowledge depended on Ixcthu to any large degree.

Amasa was rocking faster and faster now. The expression on her face approached childlike rapture. The room began to feel damp and warm, as if an incipient rainstorm hovered above. Her whispers began to fade away, and without warning a tongue of blue flame exploded into being atop her head, audibly. As it burned it made a rolling sound like subdued thunder.

Amasa unclasped her hands from her sides and began to sit upright. The tongue of flame continued to grow, spreading into a transparent diadem and enveloping her upraised hands.

"Shape the fire !" Rsforin cried hoarsely. "Shape it and throw it !".

Her eyes still closed, that part of her mind which was still conscious of her surroundings must have heard him. She made her palms touch in front of her forehead, wreathed as they were with blue fire.

"Manna mae tollamae, chtoi illama sithcthim – durae !"

At that last word the crown of blue flame left her head, sucked into the instantly magnetic vicinity of her already-flaming palms. Without pause the fireball that was her hands erupted into a stream of flame painful to look upon directly. The stream lapped greedily against the wall facing her and blackened the massive timbers. As evidence of intelligent control of this primal element, the stream presently narrowed to a tightly focused beam and the ragged edges of the leaping fire were trimmed.

Amasa began to breathe heavily with psychic exertion. The beam retreated from the wall, flew back, retreated. She began to pant. The flames died to a flicker at her palms, and her eyes opened. She slumped backward from her cross-legged position to half-lie, half-slouch on an embroidered cushion. Rsforin stood over her with a benevolent smile, nodding.

"Very good, Amasa. Very good. We must work on your physical stamina, but your control was pure, not forced. Very good."

"I don't control it, anen. I let Him do it for me. I always do. You know that."

Rsforin frowned, and benevolence began to drain from his countenance. "Young woman, power without control is useless. You call forth the flame, you control it, you do. We sacrifice to give the gods their due, and this power is what we receive in return, but we never forget our responsibility to master it. Never allow it to master you."

Amasa shrugged slightly and smiled sweetly. There was magic in her smile too. Rsforin could summon forth no further ire.

"Very good. Tomorrow you will run with the men in training to build that stamina. And right now – dinner !"

Amasa followed him to the kitchen where she would roast the fish and boil the rice for the evening meal. During the week, this was her duty. On the weekend, when she returned home, she would do the same for her father. His love, however implicit, was far away, but she held it close to her heart.

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[ed.: and now write the scene wherein Kyle and Amasa are on the marsh, guarding the nets against marauders. This is the equivalent of a crane shot, starting with overhead view and proceeding to closeup (do we go all the way inside Amasa's head ? That would be good)]

Green water lapped at the gunwales with a hypnotic rhythm, in time with the gentle to-and-fro sway of the flat-bottomed craft. Shllllpt, shllllpt.

From the egret's vantage o'erhead the two bodies lying in the bottom of the reed boat, limbs intertwined, could have been those of familiars basking in the rays of an ascendant sun. They drank it in as they would libations to the god of wine. Their skins were browned to perfection, a contrast to the surrounding expanse of green water and head-high reeds. The call of the egret and the liquid splash of aquatic citizens mingled under the sky's blue canopy: a melody of the marsh.

A fly droned lazily as it detached itself from a black mass of its whirling brethren. As if exhausted in the travails of resisting gravity, it sought momentary rest on one of the veined brown arms slung over the rivercraft's gunwale.

Kyle absently slapped at his arm, briefly exaggerating the boat's natural sway. His eyelids were half-closed.

"We should check the nets on the south side," he murmured.

"Mmm. In five minutes. The sun is so warm and nice…" Amasa said.

She'd made a pillow of her luxurious tresses, and trailed her fingertips over the gunwale in the cooling marsh waters. Her facial freckles were darkened, deepened, along with her complexion, giving her the appearance of an exotic spotted feline at leisure. Tendrils of moss-like growth traced their tips in a subtle pattern below her fingers.

"There should be a big catch today. Thirty, forty dirak at market, if we're lucky," Kyle said.

"Father will be happy, then."

"What will you do with your money ?"

"Probably nothing. Save it until I get to the city, to buy a few new things ? What will you do with yours ?"

Kyle smiled, arching his neck to let his face more fully savor the sun's bounty.

"I'll probably leave some with father, and save the rest to have a sword made when I reach the city."

There was a brief pause, she fully opened her eyes.

"You're excited to go, I guess ?"

"Of course ! Who wouldn't be ! To train with the best, eat the food of gods… to rule, eventually. This – " he waved his hand to encompass the surrounding reeds, "cannot hold us."

"Not to mention the large numbers of primerannae who might make themselves available to a new warrior," Amasa said drily.

"Ah, none so beautiful as you, sister," Kyle laughed. His eyes too were open, as he added: "You will probably be one of the most beautiful in Pyrae. I may have to be a warrior sooner than I think, to keep the men off you."

"One of the most beautiful ?" Amasa cried in mock outrage, and flung her arms skyward.

"The most beautiful." It was truly not difficult for his voice to find the appropriate level of conviction.

"Don't worry about me, Kyle, I'm plenty capable of managing my own protection."

Kyle said nothing for many moments.

"What does it feel like ? When you call forth magic ?"

"I don't call it forth, as such. I ask, and as Ixcthu wills it, He allows me a measure of his power, and I shape it."

She closed her eyes again, and a sudden series of deepening ripples began to radiate from her half-submerged fingertips to the side of the boat and the reeds two armslengths beyond. Shllllpt, shllllpt, shllllpt. Boat and occupants swayed more pronouncedly.

Kyle's brow crinkled as he watched her bare forearm redden from the unseen exertion.

"But how do you know Ixcthu's will ? Do you talk to Him ? What if one day you are surrounded by a pack of angry wild buffalo and you can't work magic because it's not His will at that precise moment ?"

Amasa shrugged. "Then I die, if it's His will."

"I can't understand a god like that."

"Neither can Rsforin." Amasa chuckled, and the chuckles cascaded into a laugh, and the laugh became a mirth that shook her frame at some briefly-recalled look on Rsforin's face. "Yes, I know it's not the same as with the other gods. I'm not the one in control, He is. And yes, he does talk to me !"

"What does it sound like ? What does it feel like ?"

Amasa raised herself on one elbow then clambered from her end of the boat to his, draping herself across his bare chest. He cradled her head there.

"Like this," she whispered.

In this manner they fell asleep, and several hours passed before they awoke.

-------

[ed.: and now write the scene where Amasa's father knocks down her shrine]

She was the perfect image of her mother, and when he could no longer stand to look on her sublime beauty he would repair to the terrace, to mend the nets. Like the others dotting the edge of the marsh, their home was a bungalow perched on stilts driven deep into the marsh floor. The terrace stood guard above the life-giving green waters.

It was as though she carried with her, ghostlike, the ethereal essence of his former wife. It was there in the way she brushed her hair, stroked it absently when lost in thought; in the coy grace of her walk, in her smile of a hundred suns. But she was dead now, his wife, and he reminded himself of it with a never-fading bitterness every time he looked into Amasa's face. Whatever cruel irony there was in the death of one forever beloved to bring forth this tinier replica of herself slid off his shoulders and puddled around his feet, unexamined.

He was a man of action, given to prefer wordless expression over deep introspection (time-wasting, and of what lasting value ?). His actions, and the ghost of a dead woman, drove a space between the father and his very alive daughter. He might depart early in the morning to spread the nets with Kyle, the son of his second wife – spend all day with him, returning only in the evening after he had delivered the daily lesson on the martial art of the lokken. But he seldom could find more than a few scattered moments in the day for her, and these seemed to cluster around the evening meal and the mending of the nets.

To be sure, it was painful for him to be close to her, to be forever reminded; but what parent does not bear some measure of pain in rearing a child ?

Many times, as he worked the fine-pointed iron needle through the dried and twisted flax of the nets, she would sit soundlessly beside him to stare out into the torchlit night. They would listen together to the rush of river waters around the stilts of the this house. Of course, this was not the true river, only one distributary of many that snaked along the alluvial plain to terminate in damp marshland. Stilted houses on the banks of the true river could never survive the seasonal floods caused by melting snow in the highlands. In some similar way, Amasa was his kin, but, whether through his wilful distance or another irresistible reason, her stream and his were rapidly coursing to divergent ends.

While he knitted and wove, she would sit and drift into waking dreams woven through with the voices of neighbors carried on the water. It was a curious paradox that in this silence they grew a kind of closeness. She would bring the earthernware pot of water just when he was about to grow thirsty. She would leave a skin filled with his favorite palm wine in the same spot before she retired for the night. He would knit the tiny imperfections in the garments she left behind, leave bushels of morning-gathered herb and lyanyan bark shavings at the threshold of her room as she slept.

Despite this closeness, or maybe because of it, the destruction of her shrine threatened to irreparably fix a gulf between them. The violence of the act had surprised even him. He had left the net-mending to find her worshipping Ixcthu at the makeshift shrine below her window in her small room. Enraged beyond explanation, he'd flung the simple altar, with the herbs still burning their sweet incense, through the window and into the night. He hadn't raised his voice, or said anything at all, making his display all the more deeply affecting.

If he thought about it now, he was angry not at her, but at this god who was not content just to take his wife in childbirth, but who now wanted to steal the only thing he had left of her – his daughter. It had been too much, in that abrupt instance, to control. The rage had erupted before he could touch it or cajole it back into simmering submission.

[ed.: continue !]

[ed.: as a young girl, she encounters Archios, an angel who assumes human form. She does not realise he is not human, and he tests her with several questions. Later in life she meets him again (in a dream ?) and realises that he was assessing her allegiance (whether to the Kingdom of Heaven or that of the god of this world)]

"Ishmatharrin – durae !"

Nothing.

Amasa wrinkled her nose and prepared to try again, focusing more intently on the copper pail of water before her, undisturbed despite her best efforts. Her concentration wavered wildly and she could felt a psychic wall where there should have been warmth and welcome.

"Ishmatharrin – durae !"

Still nothing.

"Amasa."

She started at the sound of the voice behind her, turned to determine its source. Behind her stood a tall blond youth in a flowing white robe of impossibly white cotton. His face was impassive but he positively radiated goodwill.

"Y-yes ? Do I know you ?"

"My name is Archios. I can show you how to increase your focus, and thus, your range. Would you like me to ?"

Amasa paused to consider. Rsforin would frown upon instruction by another, but he was not here, and she had promised to master the heating of Water by his evening return.

"I don't know – my anen is Rsforin and he is not here… who are you ?"

Archios stretched a white-robed hand past her, toward the uncooperative copper pail.

"When you ask of Ixcthu, you must believe the request granted even as you ask," he said. Amasa's scalp burned with pinpricks of invisible electricity, her hair crackled and stiffened.

"You ask and await a result. Instead you must ask and know that what you have done is so."

From beyond his outstretched palm came the unmistakeable sizzle of water rising to a boil.

"Do you love Ixcthu ?"

Amasa's ten-year old brain raced to stay ahead of this curious set of events.

"I'm sorry ?"

"Do you love Ixcthu ?"

"Wellllllllll… of course I do, I guess – I mean, yes ! I sacrifice only to him."

"Many sacrifice to gods they do not love, but only fear. Do you love Ixcthu ?"

"Yes. He is my mother's god, my father's god. I've never needed another. Yes, I love Ixcthu !"

Archios seemed to smile, but didn't quite. At least, Amasa could not pinpoint on his face that particular upturning of the lips with which humans often denote good humor, or joy, or approval.

"Try again."

All thoughts of his identity momentarily cast aside, Amasa scrunched her tiny nose and furrowed her pretty forehead to focus on the pail. When she looked up again, Archios was no longer there.