Erisa chuckled, a soft and bitter sound. “I never gave her a chance. I was determined to keep Mark’s secret, both for his sake, and for yours. I worried that the new baroness might seek to get rid of you if she found out. Since I refused to tell her what happened, or who your father was—well, she was always quick to judge. She assumed the worst.”
It was unfair, unjust, and painful to think about. “But she was your mom,” said Will at last. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would make his own mother treat him so badly. “She should have trusted you.”
Erisa’s eyes were brimming even though her face was smooth. “And that’s why I will never do the same to you, Will. No matter what happens. I will always be on your side, no matter what anyone says.” She was on her feet and without thinking, Will stood and hugged her.
His eyes were burning as he told her, “I know, Mom. I’m almost grown now. I’ll always take care of you, no matter what.”
She cried some at that, and Will joined her, but their sadness was short lived. While it felt as though the foundation of the world had shifted beneath his feet now that he knew who his father was, nothing had really changed, and the events she had told him about were long ago. They moved on to simple talk after that.
When he left to go back to Arrogan’s home that evening, he walked slowly, taking his time so he could mull over what she had told him. A lot of things made more sense to him now, but in the end his life was still the same.
Chapter 21
“Today I’m putting the spell-cage back on,” Arrogan informed him. “You’ve had enough light duty. It’s time to get back to work.”
Will was relieved. No matter what the old man called it, his light duty had been a pain in the ass.
“Clamp down on your source,” ordered his grandfather.
He did, and he was surprised at how easy it was. He had been worried that the two-week break might have caused him to regress, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Will felt a wave of fatigue and light-headedness as his turyn shrank, but it passed after a few minutes. His body was already drawing in energy to replace the turyn that he was no longer producing.
His grandfather nodded, observing him closely. “That’s good. How do you feel?”
“It was easier than I expected,” admitted Will. “I felt tired for a minute, but it didn’t last long.”
Arrogan raised one brow. “Really?”
Will had the feeling the old man might be on the verge of giving him a compliment, so he seized the moment. “Did I surprise you?” he asked, grinning proudly.
The old man ‘harrumphed’ and his features turned sour. “In a way, I guess. You might not be as completely useless as I anticipated.”
He felt a warm glow. For Arrogan, ‘not completely useless’ was as close to praise as anyone could expect. “Be careful, old man,” warned Will. “If word gets out that you’ve gone soft, you’ll have people lining up outside to be your apprentice.”
Arrogan snorted. “If that happened, I could quit wasting food on the moron I’ve been training. I’m sure even a village idiot would be better than you,” said his grandfather. Without warning, he conjured a new spell-cage, and in the space of a few seconds, had reapplied it to Will.
“We’ll spar and work on your studies the rest of the day, to give you time to readjust. Tomorrow we’ll see if your explosive breakthrough taught you anything,” Arrogan informed him.
The next day found Will frustrated, but he did have some success. After an hour of false starts, he did manage to ‘express’ his turyn as Arrogan described it, but it was far from being what his teacher wanted. No sooner than he had pushed some of his turyn out, it faded, dissipating like steam on a cold day.
“The idea is to contain and control it,” repeated his grandfather for perhaps the tenth time. “Don’t just push it out and forget about it. Don’t try to do magic like you’re passing gas.”
It was a week before he managed to create a well-contained outer layer of turyn around what his grandfather described as his ‘personal’ layer. The terms confused Will a little at first, though. “Shouldn’t my personal turyn be the tiny amount trapped inside the spell-cage?” he asked. “The turyn outside it is what I’m absorbing from the environment.”
“You won’t have that spell-cage on you forever,” Arrogan reminded him. “In this case, I refer to personal turyn as the energy that your body needs and uses to function normally. The fact that you aren’t actually producing it yourself is beside the point. What you’re learning now is to create a larger supply that you can use to do things without affecting yourself physically. Functionally, however, it’s all the same once you’ve converted it into your own energy type.”
Will frowned. “What’s the difference between turyn that’s been converted and turyn that hasn’t? You’ve told me that my body is doing it automatically, but I still don’t understand what it means.”
“Hold out your arm,” said his grandfather. “I’ll show you.”
Suspicious, he hesitated. “Is this going to hurt?”
“All the best lessons do,” said Arrogan, grinning maliciously. “Do it.”
Squinting and gritting his teeth, Will held out his arm.
The old man picked up a long stick from the ground. He used it to point at Will’s sacrificial appendage. “For this example, think of your arm as your turyn. It represents the turyn you control, whether it’s the inner personal turyn that fuels your actions, or the larger outer layer you’ve just learned to create. It’s yours. You can make a fist with it, punch someone, pick things up. You can do whatever you want. It’s a part of you.” Then he lifted the stick and showed it to Will. “This stick represents turyn that isn’t yours. It’s external and beyond your immediate control. It isn’t part of you, and it can easily hurt you.”
Without warning, his grandfather whipped the stick across Will’s forearm. “Like this, for example,” finished Arrogan.
“Ow!” yelped Will, pulling his arm back and rubbing at the red welt that was rising on his skin. “You didn’t have to do that! I understood you perfectly.”
“Pain is an excellent teacher,” said his grandfather. “If you live to be older than me, you’ll still remember what I just did, even if it’s just to cuss me.
“Spells are like the stick,” continued Arrogan. “You create them from your turyn and you can use them to do all sorts of things, as long as you keep your hand on them. The bigger question is, what can you do the next time someone decides to whack you with a stick?”
Will looked around and picked another dead limb up from the ground. “Make my own stick.” He made a pretense of fencing with his grandfather’s smaller weapon.
His mentor nodded. “That’s one solution, and it’s often the best one, but not always. Sometimes the other person has a much better weapon than you do.” Arrogan tossed his branch at Will’s face, and when he flinched the old man stepped close and twisted the larger stick from his hand. “If your will is strong enough, and you have the skill, you can sometimes take the other person’s stick away from them.” Will’s grandfather took the opportunity to whip the branch across the back of Will’s legs.