“That makes sense,” admitted Will, beginning again.
Arrogan growled. “Everything I say makes sense. Eventually you’ll figure that out, although I despair of you doing it in my lifetime.”
Ignoring his grandfather’s dour remark, Will asked, “How many runes are there?”
His teacher replied without hesitation, “A hundred and twenty-three.”
“Ugh,” groaned Will. “It’s going to take forever to learn them all.”
The old man laughed. “You’ll have them down in a month.”
“Then you’ll teach me some real magic?” said Will hopefully.
“Hah!” said Arrogan. “You’ll know them in a month, but after that you have to learn to connect them and produce persistent spell structures. It will be at least a year or two before you’re ready to start practicing spells. Another ten or twenty years after that, I might even consider you proficient.”
“I’ll be old by then!” complained Will.
“Stop whining,” said his grandfather. “You’ve already gained an incredible boon. Ten years is a drop in the bucket for you now. You probably won’t even get grey hair until you’re over a hundred. Spells aside, you’ve built the foundation for true mastery by learning to control your own turyn before bothering with the more superficial stuff.”
Will’s mind went blank for a moment. Over a hundred? He had figured out that his grandfather’s training would make him live longer, but he hadn’t considered just how long that might be. “How long am I going to live?”
“Knowing you, you’ll trip over your own feet and break your neck, but barring accidents and your innate stupidity…” The old man looked off into the distance as he did a mental calculation. “Somewhere between five hundred and six hundred and fifty years; it’s hard to say for sure. Your turyn source is producing roughly one-eighth the normal amount, so you take the years you expect to live, subtract the years you lived before learning to control your source, and then multiply the result by eight to get an estimate.”
Stunned, he stumbled and almost fell down. To prevent a fall, he quickly sat on the ground. “By all the gods!”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” his teacher informed him. “It’s not as wonderful as it sounds. It’s as much a curse as a blessing, maybe more. You’ll watch all your friends and family grow old and die, including your future wife and children, unless you train them as well. In my day, wizards often taught their families for that reason, but it isn’t easy. Most fail to learn.
“Because of that, a lot of wizards committed suicide before getting past their second century, and some refused to teach anyone, which is partly how we wound up where we are today.”
Uncertain of his meaning, Will asked, “Where are we today?”
“You and I are the only ones left,” said Arrogan flatly. “As far as I know, anyway. Those two-bit dabblers at Wurthaven aren’t even worthy of wiping the asses of the wizards from my day.”
The more Will thought about it, the more it seemed that his grandfather’s bitterness and isolation were the real cause of the problem. “Why don’t you teach them?” he suggested. “If you’re so much better, do something about it.”
“Because I don’t give two shits for what happens in this world anymore,” said Arrogan. “Besides, they’re too old. Training to control your source needs to happen when you’re young, and most importantly, before you start expressing your turyn to perform magic. If you want to try and change the world, that’s your business. I’m done with it.”
“Then why did you decide to teach me?” asked Will pointedly.
His grandfather made a sour face. “Trust me, I ask myself that very question every day when you cook.” The old man looked past Will’s shoulder at the sky. “That’s not good.”
Turning around, Will saw a dark smudge rising above the trees. “Is that smoke?”
“Shit,” observed Arrogan.
The village is in that direction, thought Will. Did someone’s house catch fire? He started in that direction. “I should see if anyone needs help. Something must have happened.”
His grandfather put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go inside. You don’t want to see that.”
“See what? What happened?” asked Will. “Shouldn’t we be going to find out?”
“Think about it,” said his grandfather. “Rumors of war, press gangs, and there’s smoke over the village. The most likely possibility is that the Patriarch decided on a surprise attack in a season when no one expected it. You don’t want to see what’s down there. Believe me, Will. You can’t forget such things once you’ve seen them.”
His heart began to race when he understood. “My aunt is in the village. Sammy and Doug are still there!”
Arrogan’s face was dark. “By the time you see the smoke, it’s too late.”
“To hell with that!” yelled Will. His grandfather started to grab for him, but he ducked the old man’s hand and took off running. He knew the old man could outrun him, or paralyze him with a spell, but nothing happened. When he glanced over his shoulder, Arrogan was nowhere to be seen.
Putting those thoughts aside, Will focused on running. During their daily training sessions, he had started learning to increase his strength and speed, but only for brief periods. His grandfather insisted it was more important to learn to change the rhythm of his fighting than try to fight at top speed the entire time. Surprising an opponent with a sudden increase was often more useful than wasting resources trying to become a constantly furious fighting machine.
That wasn’t what he needed now, though. He needed to run faster than normal, and he needed to maintain it until he reached the village. I also need to avoid breaking my neck on the way, he thought ruefully as he narrowly avoided tripping over a heavy limb.
To that end, he expanded and increased his turyn, something he had gotten good at over the previous month, then he took the excess energy and tried to focus it on his legs, heart, and lungs. Rather than try to exceed his best pace, he strove to maintain it for the long haul. His breathing was deep and steady as his legs pounded out a powerful beat beneath him.
He reached the outskirts of Barrowden in half the time it should have taken, and what he saw was pure chaos. Nearly every building was on fire, and people were running in the streets. The only order to be found was in the armed soldiers that stood between the buildings. They moved in small groups of four and five, cutting down anyone that came close, which was often, since the smoke obscured much of the scene.
Will ran through the smoke, slowing his breathing to avoid being choked by the noxious air. The grey clouds obscured a lot, but he could see the turyn of the soldiers and villagers. Dodging around and past them all, he ran straight for his aunt and uncle’s home on the other side of town. Cries went up from some of the soldiers as he ran past, but none of them came close to catching him, and he was soon lost to them in the smoke.
The air cleared as he got closer to Eric’s house. That end of the village was apparently the last to be torched and the flames were just beginning to rise from the houses there. A group of four men stood outside the Cartwright house, laughing as it began to burn. Two of them stood by the door, and Will saw one go inside as he ran toward them. The other two were entertaining themselves by toying with little Doug, who had come out to face them. One kicked the boy’s feet from under him, and the other began mercilessly kicking the child as he lay on the ground.