The Hammer Unfalls

4.55 Watering the Chickens

⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅ॱ˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅

Glim walked into the cold light of morning and headed for the stairway. He encountered some of the boys who had teased him before, but did not shy away from them. Instead they shied away from him, yielding to his path and he descended the stairs.

At breakfast, he had a table to himself, as usual. Not because he slunk in and tried not to be noticed. Rather, he was noticed by all, and they maintained a respectful distance. The talk in the room seemed subdued.

Glim sensed movement. He looked up to see a worried face framed by light brown braids. Gyda started to say something, until her eyes found his. Her words faltered, and she turned away.

After he’d eaten, Glim felt restless. Wohn-Grab seemed strange to him. Somehow plainer. A smaller corner of the world rather than all of it. At midmorning, Glim tried to enter Master Willow's tower, but smooth stones had replaced the door. A pair of potted vines flanked the spot in the wall where the door had been. He stared at the wall in irritation and tugged the bell pull.

As he watched, the reddish vines writhed up the wall. The stones twisted outward, creating a portal through the wall. Master Willow walked out, obviously pleased with himself.

“Pretty impressive, isn't it!”

He waved a cold mist over the plants and they writhed back into their pots, shrinking away from the cold, knitting the stones back together.

Glim watched with impatience. Master Willow had been playing with plants while Ryn had been dying. Glim’s all-comsuming need to vengeance surged. As soon as his tutor looked up, he spoke. “I need to know the quickest way to kill,” he said.

Master Willow drew up in surprise. “That’s not—”

“—the quickest way,” Glim said.

“There is no one quickest way. It depends on the situation. There could be—”

“—then show me.”

“Pardon?”

“Show me.”

Master Willow tried to hide his irritation. “There is no one quickest way. I can give you advice that will help. If you unclog your mind and pay attention.”

“I can promise you one thing, Master Willow. You have my full attention.”

“I see.” The Mage-at-Arms leaned back, lips pursed in thought. “Perhaps it is time to discuss parsimony.”

“Describe it.”

Master Willow scowled. “The simplest way to phrase it is: do as little as possible. Use the minimum essentiæ you can get away with. Huge gestures can generally be done with far less effort.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say you need to get past a wall. So you decide to freeze it, and crack the bricks apart. Instead of freezing the wall, freeze the lowest brick. Once it cracks, freeze the next lowest, and so on, until the wall falls.”

“Doesn’t that take more time?”

“No. Target the weakest spot and the whole will follow. You waste so much effort by casting huge forms. Instead of making a snowstorm, make a snowdot.”

“I see. Let’s put it to the test.”

“Fine. Pick those up.” Master Willow gestured to a pair of water buckets joined by a span of wood. Glim shouldered the buckets, frosting them over to keep the water in. He followed his tutor, with the growing feeling the man already had a plan. Master Willow loathed following others’ demands. He’d given in way too easily.

That wasn’t the only warning in his mind, either. Something about the new portal bothered Glim as he followed Master Willow through the town, but he couldn't articulate it. Something about the vines shrinking from the cold. Plants could not feel. Right?

His mind worried at the problem. He thought about the pea plants Ryn had given him, and how it took them a week or two to grow, according to the cycle. The natural order. At once, Glim’s discomfort found a focus.

“Doesn't that ruin the vines?”

“What?”

“Your new portal. You've enspelled those vines. Fundamentally broken living things for your own convenience.”

Master Willow stopped walking and turned. Unconsciously, Glim's hand found its way to the hilt of his short sword. But Master Willow laughed.

“Fundamentally broken living things for my own convenience? Are you putting me on, or are you that dull?”

Master Willow strode to a nearby garden bed, where a yellowed mass of leaves choked a bed of rubble. He plucked out a white carrot and waved it in Glim's face.

“Have you ever eaten one of these?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think the Elderkin planted normal carrots in there?” Master Willow pointed along the ramparts. “Do you think these walls have stood for thousands of years because of superior craftsmanship?”

“I don't—”

“From now on, keep your scintillating insights to yourself. We who ply essentiæ manipulate things. That's what we do. That is what we are. Every person in Æronthrall would be dead were it not for us and the reconfigurations we have wrought upon the world.”

They kept walking. Master Willow fumed beside him, though he faked some smiles at passerby and waved to the shopkeep. They walked to an expanse of barren ground which smelled like rotting garbage. The soil had been scratched to bits. Even the weeds were gone.

Master Willow pointed to a spot on the ground. Glim set the buckets down.

“When fighting creatures, you have to pay attention to their movements. When facing off against one who plies algidon, you have to defend against your environment too. We algists can warp the logic of things. I will show you. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Master Willow.”

“Good. Water the hens.”

Glim walked up the path towards a wooden coop. His heart beat quickened. The tingles inside him swirled, anticipating a threat.

Brown blades of grass along the path grew as he walked, slithering and wrapping around Glim’s feet. Thorns sprouted from the ground and clutched at him, gouging his legs and ripping his breeches. Glim pulled a short sword from his belt and hacked the thorny grass away. He drew a shuddering breath and continued down the path.

A trio of boys tended sheep nearby. One prodded the others and pointed. They laughed and sat down to watch. Master Willow sat next to them. He whispered to them and raised his staff into the air.

Butterflies swarmed from the bushes. They grew large and leathery. Glim watched as mouths with sharp teeth emerged from their heads. Their wing beats quickened and they dove at his face, ripping out chunks of flesh. He swatted at the butterflies helplessly with his sword, which they dodged through their haphazard flight.

Glim fell to the ground under their onslaught. Unlike the hinterjack, or the hyaenas, these creatures assaulted him with an unnatural fervor.

“Oh, toughen up. What weapons do you have?” Master Willow called out at last.

“Only my short sword, master!”

“Look around you. What weapons do you have?”

Glim glanced over at the water bucket. He calmed his mind and ignored his beating heart, and focused only on the tingles. A cloud of icicles erupted from the bucket, shredding the butterflies and pinning their twitching bodies to the ground.

Glim felt pain in every limb. His legs had gouges and scrapes. His face bled. He entered the coop, where chickens clucked happily.

When they smelled his blood, their feathers swelled and their features sharpened into grotesque masks of fury as they morphed into ravenous predators. The hens shrieked and pecked at Glim, raking his already bleeding legs with their claws. He cast his eyes about the coop in a panic, settling upon the water trough. Blue swirls flashed in his mind. Dual guillotines of ice erupted from the water to decapitate the hens. Their bodies drained onto the ground as Glim reeled in pain.

The door to the coop opened. Master Willow turned up his nose.

“I watered the chickens, Master Willow.”

“Algists can warp even sentient creatures as well. Never forget it. Now dress these chickens for the pot. I am hungry.”

Glim took the limp birds outside the coop and hung them on a post. He started ripping out wing feathers. He imagined each feather was Master Willow's neck.

By the time he’d finished, Glim had settled his anger. He’d fallen for it. The trap seemed so obvious once he’d thought about it logically. He hadn’t asked Master Willow how mages fight. He’d asked the quickest way to kill. A question Master Willow had avoided entirely.

The man had only one goal: to reclaim control. This entire lesson had been about one thing and one thing only: asserting dominance.

With butterflies and chickens? Please.

Glim would not cave so easily. The man could play games until he was blue in the face. Glim now knew true danger, and he’d overcome it with or without his tutor’s mind games.

He walked back to the tower and rang the doorpull, waiting for the stones to tumble apart.

When the Mage-at-Arms appeared, Glim handed him the pair of dressed chickens with exaggerated politeness.

When his tutor tried to take them, Glim locked eyes with the man.

“Enjoy your dinner.”