L is for Lorne
(Cross posted - sorry for dupiness)
Title: L is for… Lorne?
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis - AU
Series: Magor 'verse - #1
Characters: Lorne, Parrish
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,313
Notes: For camshaft22, who read me podfic
Prompts: at the bottom (Spoilers!)
The house beside the road was a little run down. It was a big place, one level, spread out beneath the trees and going all the way to the hillside at the back. It looked to be built into the hillside, in fact. David shielded his eyes against the sun and stared a little while longer, gathering his courage.
He had no idea what he would find here. He knew he was not expected, he’d been warned the Master might not take kindly to interruptions of his schedule. But he had also been assured that the Master was a law-biding member of the Council and would stand by his oaths. David would have a roof over his head and an apprenticeship.
He had no choice, there was no going back. He opened the gate and walked up to the door and knocked. He had to knock several times before he heard a shout and footsteps from within.
The door opened and a disheveled, dark haired man of a middling age and height near David’s own stood there. He stared at David, waiting for an explanation.
“I’m looking for Magor Lorne? Is this the home of First Rank Magor Lorne?”
Leaning on the doorframe and looking very annoyed, the man huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. “Just Lorne, I hate all that Council manure. I’m guessing it was the Council that sent you?”
David nodded, taken aback slightly by the fact that a magic wielder of Lorne’s level answered his own front door. And dressed like a ragged charlatan from a traveling show. The robes he wore were patched, ragged at the edges and very worn. “I’m David Parrish; I’m your new apprentice.”
A glimpse of inked markings showed on Lorne’s forearm as he shoved the heavy oak door open and waved David in. “Well, unexpected. I suppose it was only a matter of time before they got around to me again. Come in then, I guess I’m stuck with you.”
“Sir?” David jumped as the door was slammed, setting the hardware clanking.
Lorne stuck a finger out, jabbed the air in front of David’s nose, and pursed his lips tightly. “No, no, no. None of that. Just Lorne. Not Sir. Not Magor. Not Master. Just Lorne, are we clear?”
This was not at all what Parrish had expected. He nodded stupidly and followed his new Master further into the warren of rooms that made up the house. The place was a mess, a dusty, dirty mess. Didn’t Magors have scullery maids to do for them? It seemed this one did not. His impression of high-rank magic users being wealthy was apparently completely wrong. David hugged his satchel to his chest and tried not to let his good robes touch anything as he walked past; so much for changing out of his traveling clothes to impress his new Master.
Stopping at a door, Lorne pushed it open, looked inside, peered over at Parrish and then shook his head. “Nope, too tall.” He closed the door again and continued on. He crossed the hallway and opened another door. “Ah, this one should be fine. You sleep here, if you like. No food, potions, or familiars in your room, casting only in sanctioned areas of the house. Leave your bag there and come along to the workroom.”
The bed chamber was small, containing a bed, a stool beside the bed with a candle on it, a coal stove and a trunk. A shelf ran along one wall with hooks attached beneath the shelf to hang cloaks and other clothing on. There was no window, nor were there any other furnishings. It was a room meant for sleeping, dressing and little else.
From the doorway, Lorne watched David drop his bag and look around. “No mirrors outside the workroom either. You’re a little old to be an apprentice, what are you thirty?”
“Thirty four, si… Lorne.”
The Magor nodded and crossed his arms, revealing more skin, more marks. David tried not to stare. He knew Magors and witches were often marked, but he had never seen the marks up close, not even when he was at the Council. “Stormborn magic?”
Going to the door, David nodded. “The Council Healer thought it probably happened during the last Winter Storm, nothing emerged until spring though, at least I didn’t notice anything odd until spring.”
The look Lorne gave him was sympathetic. “It’s got to be hard to have it come on you as an adult, with no time to grow with it.” Having nothing to say to that truth, David said nothing.
Unlike the rest of the house, the workroom was immaculate. There was not a pot, a book, or a tool out of place. Even the candle wax drippings were tidy. The painted floor shined. David surmised that Lorne must spend the majority of his time here in this room.
There was a fireplace, two in fact, on either side of the chamber. One had a pair of comfortable looking chairs and a table set before it, the other was a bare stone hearth set in a circle on the floor. A working fire pit. There was a large table beside the fire pit, books strewn open along it, the only sign that the room was currently being used. In the corner, there was a window and a lot of filled shelves. A basin, pump, and work table stood along the wall.
Everywhere David looked there were books and scrolls. More books than he had seen in his entire life, all here in this one room. He saw that there were also the supplies for making books. He saw quills, and ink and binding cord and paper on the table at the center of the room. His new Master apparently wrote books.
“Do you read?” Lorne asked as he went to a bookcase and began running his finger along the spines of various tomes there.
“Yes.” Grateful he had the skill, and more grateful that he now had the opportunity to read, surrounded by all this knowledge, David smiled.
“Thank the goddess for a small favor. Good, that’s really good. Time we don’t have to waste.” He pulled two books out and set them aside. “Your strength: Air, Water, Fire…?”
“Earth Forces.”
“That’s a rarity.” Lorne looked at him with mild puzzlement. “Why’d they send you to me, I wonder? I’m Air Forces.” Lorne wandered around the room, seemingly searching for something. “Ah, here!” He pulled out a third book and set it with the others, he indicated the stool. “Come, sit. Do you prefer David, Parrish, Dave, Davie?”
Taking the stool he was pointed towards, he made a face at the last. “Oh, please, never Davie. David is fine.”
Lorne put the three books in front of him. “These are to get you started.” David checked the titles: Basics of Earth Forces, Ethics of Magic Use, Warding.
“Warding, s… Lorne?”
“Dangerous things, there are a lot of dangerous things that come up and around when you work with magic, David. You have to learn to protect yourself. Don’t rely on others to protect you, always protect yourself.”
Lorne shoved the sleeve of his robe up, revealing his left arm. Amidst the curling vines and swirling marks, David could clearly see an old, wide, jagged scar running from Lorne’s wrist, along the length of his arm, to disappear up his sleeve. He let the sleeve drop down again after David had seen it.
“When I was just out of apprenticeship, I took part in a group working, an attempt to stop the Winter Storms. My Master did not teach me to ward myself very well. During the working, my Master was the first to fall when the spell broke. He did not live to protect me, and I was left to fend for myself as best I could. I panicked during the chaos. I nearly bled to death before a hedge witch got to me and sewed me back together.” Lorne shook his head, as if clearing away the memory. He finished gruffly, “The first spell I teach is a Ward.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Always. That is why you are here. I’d think you dense and un-trainable if you didn’t. You may always ask questions.”
“Has anyone ever been able to do anything to mitigate the storms?”
Lorne pulled a stool over and reached for the book on ethics. He flipped through a few pages and opened it to a map of the world. He jabbed a finger at the map, at a place in the center of the land where David had come from, “Some Weather Magors, here, started the whole mess. This is the Center of All Storms. The problem is that all weather is connected; we all share the same winds. When they did their working, they changed the way of the winds and it caused problems everywhere. Unfortunately, each spell cast in response to try to fix it only added to the problem. The best that could be done was to change the pattern of the winds, so that the magic born storms come seasonally now.”
“And the working when you were hurt?” David glanced towards Lorne’s arm.
“One of the last attempted; I believe the spectacular failure of that particular working caused the shift in the severity from Spring Storm to Winter Storm for our region. Now, tell me, what do you want to learn, David, what do you want me to teach you? How can I best help you?”
No one had asked him that, since he had manifested. Terrified and confused, grieving over the damage he had caused, he had been whisked from the ruins of his home to the Council and eventually sent from there to Lorne’s door. “Control. I need to learn control. This frightens me. I want to be able to control it, so I don’t hurt anyone else.”
“Who got hurt?” Lorne asked, not unkindly, as he closed the book and set it back on the pile.
Looking down at his hands, the hands that had done so much damage, David whispered, “My family. The barn was destroyed. My sister may never walk again. My parents will never forgive me. I don’t blame them. I frightened them, frightened everyone. They sent me away.”
“We’ll teach you control. Take those books, read for a few hours while I finish the projects I was tending when you arrived. It will be easier to show you and teach you the basics if you have a familiarity with the words and phrases we’ll be using. Make yourself comfortable, David, you’re going to be here for a while.”
“Thank you.”
~*~
Parrish settled into the routine of the house. He learned quickly. Lorne was not an easy teacher; he gave a lot of reading assignments, he expected full attention and retention, but he was fair with his lessons and he always made sure that David understood everything before moving on to the next. Not once had he ever made David feel inadequate or belittled him for coming into this, Lorne’s world, as a grown man rather than a prepubescent child, as was the norm. Nor was he treated as a poor relation, he was simply another person living under the roof, with the freedom to do as he chose, for the most part.
Unable to live with the complete mess the rest of the house was in, David set himself to cleaning it, little by little. In the process, he found a lot of stuff that had ‘gone missing’- much to Lorne’s delight. The rare expressions of emotion from his Master were a treat, and encouraged David to continue surprising him. Sometimes the most innocent things David found, for instance, a half-knitted scarf - still on the needle - made his Master practically giddy. As a reward for finding that, Lorne presented David with a different scarf. As usual, Lorne didn’t explain anything about the scarves. Knowing there was probably something behind it, the scarf had the slight tingle of magic about it, David folded the gift and placed it in the trunk in his room to save for the coming winter.
The summer passed quickly, and by the time the Autumn Storm was nearly upon them, David was adept enough to reinforce the trees around the house, strengthening the branches to withstand the worst of the winds. Using his newfound magic, he coaxed a late crop of summer squash to bloom, providing them with an abundant stock of food for the winter. David had a good hand in the kitchen, and was able to put up preserves enough to last a long time, without using magic. He had, unfortunately, tasted some of Lorne’s magically preserved foodstuffs; and he had no intention of surviving on the Master’s cooking all winter.
With regular, decent meals, Lorne’s face began to lose some of the gauntness David had noticed when he first arrived. His skin was less sallow, his eyes less sunken, he seemed healthier. David suspected that Lorne had spent many, many nights working away without stopping for food or sleep. Having David in the house forced the Magor to stop periodically and teach him, and since he had stopped, he also ate, bathed and slept with a new regularity.
Lorne put up with him, for the most part. Knowing he was a burden and a distraction from the Magor’s paying workings, David tried to keep to the shadows as often as possible. He read, voraciously, and brought his questions from the readings to the table each evening to discuss as they ate.
Every once in a while, Lorne would get in a dark mood and ban David from the workroom while he hid within. On those occasions, David always made sure to grab an armload of books to take to his bed chamber or to the kitchen, which he had appropriated as his own space. He left trays for Lorne at the door, and eventually, Lorne took them in and ate whatever David brought him.
The arrangement worked for the two men. Slowly, David learned control, casting and warding. With all the reading he was doing, he learned a lot of history too, things he had never been taught in the conservative schoolroom back in his village. He learned about the Chappa’ai; the source the Magors had worked with to start the Storms. Before it had been destroyed, many had believed that the Chappa’aimight have been used as a gateway to other realms. But no one could go near the Springs where the Chappa’ai had once stood. Death waited there for any foolish enough to try.
He learned a lot about mirrors too, a subject Lorne adamantly refused to discuss. There were no mirrors in the house. There was one on the wall in the workroom, but it was always covered by a heavy black cloth. Not once had David even seen the surface of it. David read that mirrors could be used like miniature Chappa’ai, if a proper working could be done upon them. A passage from one place to another could be made from a mirror. Not knowing why the topic was forbidden, David was nevertheless fascinated by it and tried to find everything he could in Lorne’s vast library on the subject. Lorne didn’t forbid him the study; he merely refused to discuss it.
~*~
“Stance, David.”
Looking over his shoulder, David asked, “Is it so important? Is it part of the casting?”
Chuckling as he rubbed his chin, Lorne replied, “No. It doesn’t really matter where your hips are in relation to the spell.” He walked over and kicked David’s foot in; putting him back in the pose he had been in before Lorne’s reminder caused him to move. Lorne stood in front of him, between David and the fire pit. “Move your arm, as if you’re throwing the alsweed into the fire.”
Doing as he was told, and feeling a little silly, David swept his arm around. With a mischievous grin and a roar, Lorne hurled himself forward, catching David around the waist and rolling him backwards. “I’m the critter that got through the spell and broke the ring. Knocked you right over, didn’t I?”
“I was hardly expecting to be tackled.” David flopped down in defeat as Lorne smirked at him.
“One never expects their callings to go wrong. But it pays to be on guard. If I was a real critter, you’d be my midday meal by now.” Lorne picked up David’s bare arm and bit him. He pulled a face and dropped the arm and spit. “Bleh! You need salt. Now, stance!” He jumped up and offered a hand to David, yanking him to his feet.
~*~
David knew that Lorne was heavily marked. He’d seen the left arm, the day he arrived, when Lorne had shown it to him. He had glimpsed the other, Lorne’s forearm, at least was marked on the right side. Now that he had a few months of study under his belt, David knew that at least some of those markings were wards. Wards and protection were Lorne’s primary focus, his specialty, his area of expertise.
He understood now why the Council had sent him, an Earth Forces potential, here to study with an Air Forces adept. At this stage of his life, David needed to learn how to protect himself and others from what he was capable of wielding. He wasn’t looking to make his fortune or even his living at magic. For him it was about control and safety.
Lorne was the best person in the region to teach that to him.
~*~
Flipping through the pages of a kitchen spells book, David found one that seemed like it might work to preserve fresh meat without giving it a charred, sulfuric taste. Bored of a steady diet of smoked meat, and dreading a menu of more of the same through the winter, David thought to try the working.
He brought the book to the workroom and asked Lorne if he might give it a try. Distracted with his writing, Lorne had barely looked up from his paper, waving an ink-stained hand over his shoulder in tacit approval. It warmed David to know that he had earned his Master’s trust in such a relatively short time.
David collected the ingredients he would need. He fetched a cleaned hen, as well as the fresh herbs listed in the book from the kitchen. He wandered around the shelves in the corner of the workroom, carefully gathering each of the other ingredients and lining them up on the table where he was preparing to do the casting. He double and triple checked the names of the ingredients, just as he double and triple check the measures of each one. Needing a vessel to mix into, he spied a large, heavy glass jug in the basin, gave it a quick rinse with water and took it over to his pile.
Humming to himself, he measured out and tossed the components into the jug. Then he mixed the ingredients with a wooden spoon, stirring in the prescribed manner; shins and then widdershins. He glanced over at Lorne, hunched painfully over the tome he was writing. He’d learned a lot from the Magor since coming here, more than he could repay with a little housekeeping and cooking. He wondered if he would ever be able to find a way to show his gratitude, not that Lorne ever asked him for anything. It sometimes seemed that he was satisfied that David was soaking up everything he taught him, taking pleasure in getting ideas and skills across to his apprentice.
The concoction had to heat up to boiling before he could pour it over the hen. The small burner on the table wouldn’t heat a vessel as large as the one he was using. He would have to work very near to where Lorne was sitting. He didn’t want to irritate him and be a bother while Lorne was writing, but the other fireplace wouldn’t do to heat this, and he wasn’t allowed to cast on the kitchen stove. “Lorne, may I use the stand over the pit for a short while?”
“Yeah, sure,” Lorne grumbled, rubbing his eyes. He’d been writing equations for hours; David didn’t know how he did it sometimes.
He set up quickly, and soon his mixture was steaming. He leaned over, stirring, keeping a careful eye to see that it didn’t boil over. That was a big no-no in potions. No bubbling over, bad for everyone and everything, it made a lot of work and clean up and unexpected consequences which required work and cleanup. It was better just to watch the pot.
Lorne turned slightly on the stool and asked, “What is that you’re humming?”
He hadn’t realized he’d been noisy. Feeling guilty, he fell silent and apologized quickly. “Sorry.”
Smirking, Lorne said, “I didn’t say you had to stop; I just wondered what the tune was. I’ve heard it before.”
“Oh. Something my mother used to sing. I knew it when I was a boy. I’ve forgotten the words since then, I only remember the melody.”
Setting his quill aside and circling his hand around, Lorne urged him to continue. David hummed a little subconsciously now that Lorne was paying such close attention. Eventually, after nodding, Lorne closed his eyes and then began to sing quietly in a language David didn’t recognize. “Dashnir cletentos, morgoso fizente. Amil logetli, hensh nenente.”
Completely entranced by Lorne’s singing voice, which he had never heard, David forgot to continue stirring the glass jug. He heard a quiet crack an instant before the jar exploded, showering David and Lorne in glass and the remnants of the heated potion. David yelped and jumped back, holding his hand where it had been cut and burned. Lorne was more protected by one of the heavy robes David had never seen him without. The Master jumped up, hurled a protective ward around the fire and went to where David was huddled in a crouch, cradling his injured hand.
“Come over to the pump, we need to rinse that with cold water quickly,” Lorne’s arm was strong around David’s shoulder as he helped him up and walked him to the corner. David held his violently shaking hand under the stream as Lorne pumped the water. He bit his lip to keep from crying out against the pain. After the majority of the potion, blood and glass had been rinsed off, and the worst of the pain had subsided, Lorne held David’s hand up to the light coming from the window. “Not too bad. A little scalded but I don’t think it will blister. Lucky it hadn’t reached a full boil. I have some salve. Let’s get the glass out and wrap it up.”
He gently pushed David over into the window’s light near the end of the worktable and went to fetch a stool, a tiny metal tong and a jar of salve. He dampened a clean washrag, dropped it over his shoulder and came back to David. He put the stool behind David, pushed him onto it, sat on a second stool and held a hand out. “Let me see.”
It hurt, but David put up with it as Lorne bent over his hand to se the damage. Using the metal tongs, Lorne got a number of small shards out. David gasped as Lorne pocked and squeezed at the cuts to clean them out.
Staring at the top of Lorne’s head as he worked, David didn’t notice that Lorne was hurt until he sat up and David looked at his face for the first time since the jug had exploded. “You got cut too, Lorne.”
“Huh?”
With his uninjured hand, David gently tugged the edge of a shard of glass that was embedded in Lorne’s cheek. He held up the bloody piece. “Didn’t you feel that? It’s huge.”
Apparently he hadn’t. Lorne shrugged. David grabbed the washrag from Lorne’s hand and pressed it to the cut, which was now bleeding profusely. Pursing his lips and frowning when it looked like Lorne was going to protest, he snapped, “Just let me clean it.”
With a heavy, put-upon sigh, Lorne let him press the wet rag to his face to soak up the blood. His eyes shifted over to the fire, back to David, and then to the book that was standing open on the worktable beside him. He tilted his head to read the spell. “Did you use fresh tava root?”
“There was some in the kitchen; I picked it last week when I made the spicy stew.”
Distracted, Lorne mumbled, “Fresh tava root, there’s something about fresh tava root.” David dropped the blood soaked rag into his lap and scooped a bit of the salve onto his finger, smoothing it over the slice in Lorne’s cheek, the same way Lorne had covered the four cuts on David’s hand after cleaning the glass out.
“What were you making?”
“Simple kitchen spell, a meat preservative.”
Lorne looked over at the sink basin and his eyes widened slightly in alarm. “David, did you take the glass jug from the sink?”
“Yes, it was thick, I thought it could stand the heat, I’m sorry, I was wrong, apparently. I didn’t expect it to shatter like that. I’ll go to town and get a replacement on market day.”
Lorne began to shake his head. “That wasn’t properly cleaned. I used that last night. I meant to get to it today, but I got involved…” He ran a hand through his hair, which immediately fell back into place when he stopped, as tousled and messy as it always was.
Leaning away on silent refusal when David started to fuss over a second, smaller cut, Lorne pulled the book David had been working from closer to him, running a finger down the list of ingredients. He occasionally looked up at the ceiling, his lips working as he recited something silently. “Bat nuts!” Lorne exclaimed, looking over at the fire, then back at David. His eyes were a little wild. “It should be all right. I was singing, you were just humming, right?”
“Right. Just humming. What were you singing?”
“Amrol Gestin, it’s a shepherd’s love song. But I wasn’t casting, you were casting.” Lorne made a stirring motion with his hand, miming David stirring the potion. “And it wasn’t like there was any blood involved in the working at all.”
David spotted it at the same time Lorne did; the bloody rag in David’s lap. Lorne touched his fingers to the slice on his cheek, where David had thoughtlessly pressed the damp rag soaked with his own blood.
Lorne breathed out, “Your blood, mingled with mine.”
David stroked a finger along the back of Lorne’s hand, coming away with the herb-encrusted remnants of the potion. “It was on us both, the potion was on both of us, it was on the glass that cut us, it got in both of us on the glass.”
“Co-cast and blood sealed! Oma’s eyes, we’re in a bind.” Lorne blurted, tangling his hands in his hair.
In all the months David had been here, he had never seen his Master so upset. Lorne went out of his way to hide his emotions from David, taking it as far as locking himself in the work room when he was angry. Lorne threw himself off the stool and began pacing around in circles, muttering and waving his hands when he wasn’t yanking on the ends of his collar-length hair.
“I don’t understand, Magor. Please, explain to me what has happened,” he deliberately used Lorne’s rank, which he had not done since the first day here. He needed to catch Lorne’s attention, distract him from the panic he thought he saw rising in his Master.
Lorne looked at him, a flash of anger briefly crossing his face. “It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing.” He laughed hoarsely. “Just elements, pieces and parts, none a whole, nothing with intent. An accident. It can’t possibly hold. It wasn’t deliberate enough. Magic is deliberate!” He had walked over to stand in front of David, his eyes now looking a little desperate as he repeated, “Magic is deliberate!”
“Lorne?” David reached up with his good hand, needing to sooth the trouble he saw. He touched his palm to the uninjured side of Lorne’s face and made a hushing sound. “What have I done? Tell me what I’ve done.”
“We! It’s what we did! Both of us together,” Lorne waved a hand between them. “Separately, portions and elements of a spell, a major working, a banned spell,” he was breathing heavily as he looked into David’s face, his eyes wide, the pupils very dark.
David was finding it hard to concentrate. But he was starting to catch on to what might have happened. He stared at Lorne, clapped his hands onto his arms and coaxed, “Breathe, Lorne. Take a moment, gather your thoughts. What kind of spell?”
After he took David’s advice, Lorne spoke slowly. “The jug had everleaf in it from last night. It’s a binding agent; it has to be cleaned with a special mixture to remove all traces of it. So, that means there were traces of everleaf in your mixture from the vessel. Fresh tava root is potent. Hedge witches use it in love potions. But they don’t chant, they don’t use words. It isn’t dangerous when they use it, because hedge witches never do blood magic.”
David touched his fingers to Lorne’s face, tracing the red, salve-smeared line of the cut. “I added blood.”
“And I added the words, while you stirred, I sang lyrics. Lyrics charged with emotion from both of us, me from a memory the song brought back, you no doubt remembering your mother singing it to you.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” David said, his fingers moving across Lorne’s cheek, over his eyebrow.
“No, not at all.” Lorne shook his head as he stared down at David. “Magic is deliberate.”
Relieved, David smiled. “I read it over and over and over in the books, Lorne. Love spells aren’t real. You cannot make someone love someone else with a spell.”
“Exactly.” Lorne breathed out a slight sigh of relief and gave him a tremulous smile. “You cannot manufacture an emotion that wasn’t there at the start.”
David stood up, the motion bringing him even closer to Lorne, his clothing brushing against Lorne’s. He was close enough that he could feel Lorne’s breath on his cheek. He could feel each heavy breath, warm on his skin. Lorne’s hair had fallen down over his face; casually, naturally, as if he did it all the time, David reached up and tucked it behind his ear. “And you cannot bind someone to another with an emotion that doesn’t exist,” David concluded.
Shifting closer, Lorne nodded, but said nothing as he looked at David.
“What if it was there?” David whispered raggedly as it came to the surface, the feelings that had been growing for weeks, had been growing for months, deep inside him. “What of if the emotion was there, could it be bound? Can one be bound to another if the emotion were strong enough?”
The noise Lorne made was halfway between a groan and a whimper. He bit his lip and nodded and stared straight into David’s eyes.
“Well, then one of us might be in trouble,” David whispered. Unable to stop himself, he leaned down and pressed his lips to Lorne’s. The noise Lorne made was a full groan as he leaned into it, opening his mouth and kissing David ardently in return.
When Lorne pulled back, he breathed out shakily, “I think we’re both in deep trouble."
Not Exactly The End
Prompts: Hurt Comfort Bingo Fill: “Accidental Mating for Life” and “Love Spell/Potion Gone Wrong”
Alternate Universe Bingo Fill: Apprenticeship
Title: L is for… Lorne?
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis - AU
Series: Magor 'verse - #1
Characters: Lorne, Parrish
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,313
Notes: For camshaft22, who read me podfic
Prompts: at the bottom (Spoilers!)
The house beside the road was a little run down. It was a big place, one level, spread out beneath the trees and going all the way to the hillside at the back. It looked to be built into the hillside, in fact. David shielded his eyes against the sun and stared a little while longer, gathering his courage.
He had no idea what he would find here. He knew he was not expected, he’d been warned the Master might not take kindly to interruptions of his schedule. But he had also been assured that the Master was a law-biding member of the Council and would stand by his oaths. David would have a roof over his head and an apprenticeship.
He had no choice, there was no going back. He opened the gate and walked up to the door and knocked. He had to knock several times before he heard a shout and footsteps from within.
The door opened and a disheveled, dark haired man of a middling age and height near David’s own stood there. He stared at David, waiting for an explanation.
“I’m looking for Magor Lorne? Is this the home of First Rank Magor Lorne?”
Leaning on the doorframe and looking very annoyed, the man huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. “Just Lorne, I hate all that Council manure. I’m guessing it was the Council that sent you?”
David nodded, taken aback slightly by the fact that a magic wielder of Lorne’s level answered his own front door. And dressed like a ragged charlatan from a traveling show. The robes he wore were patched, ragged at the edges and very worn. “I’m David Parrish; I’m your new apprentice.”
A glimpse of inked markings showed on Lorne’s forearm as he shoved the heavy oak door open and waved David in. “Well, unexpected. I suppose it was only a matter of time before they got around to me again. Come in then, I guess I’m stuck with you.”
“Sir?” David jumped as the door was slammed, setting the hardware clanking.
Lorne stuck a finger out, jabbed the air in front of David’s nose, and pursed his lips tightly. “No, no, no. None of that. Just Lorne. Not Sir. Not Magor. Not Master. Just Lorne, are we clear?”
This was not at all what Parrish had expected. He nodded stupidly and followed his new Master further into the warren of rooms that made up the house. The place was a mess, a dusty, dirty mess. Didn’t Magors have scullery maids to do for them? It seemed this one did not. His impression of high-rank magic users being wealthy was apparently completely wrong. David hugged his satchel to his chest and tried not to let his good robes touch anything as he walked past; so much for changing out of his traveling clothes to impress his new Master.
Stopping at a door, Lorne pushed it open, looked inside, peered over at Parrish and then shook his head. “Nope, too tall.” He closed the door again and continued on. He crossed the hallway and opened another door. “Ah, this one should be fine. You sleep here, if you like. No food, potions, or familiars in your room, casting only in sanctioned areas of the house. Leave your bag there and come along to the workroom.”
The bed chamber was small, containing a bed, a stool beside the bed with a candle on it, a coal stove and a trunk. A shelf ran along one wall with hooks attached beneath the shelf to hang cloaks and other clothing on. There was no window, nor were there any other furnishings. It was a room meant for sleeping, dressing and little else.
From the doorway, Lorne watched David drop his bag and look around. “No mirrors outside the workroom either. You’re a little old to be an apprentice, what are you thirty?”
“Thirty four, si… Lorne.”
The Magor nodded and crossed his arms, revealing more skin, more marks. David tried not to stare. He knew Magors and witches were often marked, but he had never seen the marks up close, not even when he was at the Council. “Stormborn magic?”
Going to the door, David nodded. “The Council Healer thought it probably happened during the last Winter Storm, nothing emerged until spring though, at least I didn’t notice anything odd until spring.”
The look Lorne gave him was sympathetic. “It’s got to be hard to have it come on you as an adult, with no time to grow with it.” Having nothing to say to that truth, David said nothing.
Unlike the rest of the house, the workroom was immaculate. There was not a pot, a book, or a tool out of place. Even the candle wax drippings were tidy. The painted floor shined. David surmised that Lorne must spend the majority of his time here in this room.
There was a fireplace, two in fact, on either side of the chamber. One had a pair of comfortable looking chairs and a table set before it, the other was a bare stone hearth set in a circle on the floor. A working fire pit. There was a large table beside the fire pit, books strewn open along it, the only sign that the room was currently being used. In the corner, there was a window and a lot of filled shelves. A basin, pump, and work table stood along the wall.
Everywhere David looked there were books and scrolls. More books than he had seen in his entire life, all here in this one room. He saw that there were also the supplies for making books. He saw quills, and ink and binding cord and paper on the table at the center of the room. His new Master apparently wrote books.
“Do you read?” Lorne asked as he went to a bookcase and began running his finger along the spines of various tomes there.
“Yes.” Grateful he had the skill, and more grateful that he now had the opportunity to read, surrounded by all this knowledge, David smiled.
“Thank the goddess for a small favor. Good, that’s really good. Time we don’t have to waste.” He pulled two books out and set them aside. “Your strength: Air, Water, Fire…?”
“Earth Forces.”
“That’s a rarity.” Lorne looked at him with mild puzzlement. “Why’d they send you to me, I wonder? I’m Air Forces.” Lorne wandered around the room, seemingly searching for something. “Ah, here!” He pulled out a third book and set it with the others, he indicated the stool. “Come, sit. Do you prefer David, Parrish, Dave, Davie?”
Taking the stool he was pointed towards, he made a face at the last. “Oh, please, never Davie. David is fine.”
Lorne put the three books in front of him. “These are to get you started.” David checked the titles: Basics of Earth Forces, Ethics of Magic Use, Warding.
“Warding, s… Lorne?”
“Dangerous things, there are a lot of dangerous things that come up and around when you work with magic, David. You have to learn to protect yourself. Don’t rely on others to protect you, always protect yourself.”
Lorne shoved the sleeve of his robe up, revealing his left arm. Amidst the curling vines and swirling marks, David could clearly see an old, wide, jagged scar running from Lorne’s wrist, along the length of his arm, to disappear up his sleeve. He let the sleeve drop down again after David had seen it.
“When I was just out of apprenticeship, I took part in a group working, an attempt to stop the Winter Storms. My Master did not teach me to ward myself very well. During the working, my Master was the first to fall when the spell broke. He did not live to protect me, and I was left to fend for myself as best I could. I panicked during the chaos. I nearly bled to death before a hedge witch got to me and sewed me back together.” Lorne shook his head, as if clearing away the memory. He finished gruffly, “The first spell I teach is a Ward.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Always. That is why you are here. I’d think you dense and un-trainable if you didn’t. You may always ask questions.”
“Has anyone ever been able to do anything to mitigate the storms?”
Lorne pulled a stool over and reached for the book on ethics. He flipped through a few pages and opened it to a map of the world. He jabbed a finger at the map, at a place in the center of the land where David had come from, “Some Weather Magors, here, started the whole mess. This is the Center of All Storms. The problem is that all weather is connected; we all share the same winds. When they did their working, they changed the way of the winds and it caused problems everywhere. Unfortunately, each spell cast in response to try to fix it only added to the problem. The best that could be done was to change the pattern of the winds, so that the magic born storms come seasonally now.”
“And the working when you were hurt?” David glanced towards Lorne’s arm.
“One of the last attempted; I believe the spectacular failure of that particular working caused the shift in the severity from Spring Storm to Winter Storm for our region. Now, tell me, what do you want to learn, David, what do you want me to teach you? How can I best help you?”
No one had asked him that, since he had manifested. Terrified and confused, grieving over the damage he had caused, he had been whisked from the ruins of his home to the Council and eventually sent from there to Lorne’s door. “Control. I need to learn control. This frightens me. I want to be able to control it, so I don’t hurt anyone else.”
“Who got hurt?” Lorne asked, not unkindly, as he closed the book and set it back on the pile.
Looking down at his hands, the hands that had done so much damage, David whispered, “My family. The barn was destroyed. My sister may never walk again. My parents will never forgive me. I don’t blame them. I frightened them, frightened everyone. They sent me away.”
“We’ll teach you control. Take those books, read for a few hours while I finish the projects I was tending when you arrived. It will be easier to show you and teach you the basics if you have a familiarity with the words and phrases we’ll be using. Make yourself comfortable, David, you’re going to be here for a while.”
“Thank you.”
~*~
Parrish settled into the routine of the house. He learned quickly. Lorne was not an easy teacher; he gave a lot of reading assignments, he expected full attention and retention, but he was fair with his lessons and he always made sure that David understood everything before moving on to the next. Not once had he ever made David feel inadequate or belittled him for coming into this, Lorne’s world, as a grown man rather than a prepubescent child, as was the norm. Nor was he treated as a poor relation, he was simply another person living under the roof, with the freedom to do as he chose, for the most part.
Unable to live with the complete mess the rest of the house was in, David set himself to cleaning it, little by little. In the process, he found a lot of stuff that had ‘gone missing’- much to Lorne’s delight. The rare expressions of emotion from his Master were a treat, and encouraged David to continue surprising him. Sometimes the most innocent things David found, for instance, a half-knitted scarf - still on the needle - made his Master practically giddy. As a reward for finding that, Lorne presented David with a different scarf. As usual, Lorne didn’t explain anything about the scarves. Knowing there was probably something behind it, the scarf had the slight tingle of magic about it, David folded the gift and placed it in the trunk in his room to save for the coming winter.
The summer passed quickly, and by the time the Autumn Storm was nearly upon them, David was adept enough to reinforce the trees around the house, strengthening the branches to withstand the worst of the winds. Using his newfound magic, he coaxed a late crop of summer squash to bloom, providing them with an abundant stock of food for the winter. David had a good hand in the kitchen, and was able to put up preserves enough to last a long time, without using magic. He had, unfortunately, tasted some of Lorne’s magically preserved foodstuffs; and he had no intention of surviving on the Master’s cooking all winter.
With regular, decent meals, Lorne’s face began to lose some of the gauntness David had noticed when he first arrived. His skin was less sallow, his eyes less sunken, he seemed healthier. David suspected that Lorne had spent many, many nights working away without stopping for food or sleep. Having David in the house forced the Magor to stop periodically and teach him, and since he had stopped, he also ate, bathed and slept with a new regularity.
Lorne put up with him, for the most part. Knowing he was a burden and a distraction from the Magor’s paying workings, David tried to keep to the shadows as often as possible. He read, voraciously, and brought his questions from the readings to the table each evening to discuss as they ate.
Every once in a while, Lorne would get in a dark mood and ban David from the workroom while he hid within. On those occasions, David always made sure to grab an armload of books to take to his bed chamber or to the kitchen, which he had appropriated as his own space. He left trays for Lorne at the door, and eventually, Lorne took them in and ate whatever David brought him.
The arrangement worked for the two men. Slowly, David learned control, casting and warding. With all the reading he was doing, he learned a lot of history too, things he had never been taught in the conservative schoolroom back in his village. He learned about the Chappa’ai; the source the Magors had worked with to start the Storms. Before it had been destroyed, many had believed that the Chappa’aimight have been used as a gateway to other realms. But no one could go near the Springs where the Chappa’ai had once stood. Death waited there for any foolish enough to try.
He learned a lot about mirrors too, a subject Lorne adamantly refused to discuss. There were no mirrors in the house. There was one on the wall in the workroom, but it was always covered by a heavy black cloth. Not once had David even seen the surface of it. David read that mirrors could be used like miniature Chappa’ai, if a proper working could be done upon them. A passage from one place to another could be made from a mirror. Not knowing why the topic was forbidden, David was nevertheless fascinated by it and tried to find everything he could in Lorne’s vast library on the subject. Lorne didn’t forbid him the study; he merely refused to discuss it.
~*~
“Stance, David.”
Looking over his shoulder, David asked, “Is it so important? Is it part of the casting?”
Chuckling as he rubbed his chin, Lorne replied, “No. It doesn’t really matter where your hips are in relation to the spell.” He walked over and kicked David’s foot in; putting him back in the pose he had been in before Lorne’s reminder caused him to move. Lorne stood in front of him, between David and the fire pit. “Move your arm, as if you’re throwing the alsweed into the fire.”
Doing as he was told, and feeling a little silly, David swept his arm around. With a mischievous grin and a roar, Lorne hurled himself forward, catching David around the waist and rolling him backwards. “I’m the critter that got through the spell and broke the ring. Knocked you right over, didn’t I?”
“I was hardly expecting to be tackled.” David flopped down in defeat as Lorne smirked at him.
“One never expects their callings to go wrong. But it pays to be on guard. If I was a real critter, you’d be my midday meal by now.” Lorne picked up David’s bare arm and bit him. He pulled a face and dropped the arm and spit. “Bleh! You need salt. Now, stance!” He jumped up and offered a hand to David, yanking him to his feet.
~*~
David knew that Lorne was heavily marked. He’d seen the left arm, the day he arrived, when Lorne had shown it to him. He had glimpsed the other, Lorne’s forearm, at least was marked on the right side. Now that he had a few months of study under his belt, David knew that at least some of those markings were wards. Wards and protection were Lorne’s primary focus, his specialty, his area of expertise.
He understood now why the Council had sent him, an Earth Forces potential, here to study with an Air Forces adept. At this stage of his life, David needed to learn how to protect himself and others from what he was capable of wielding. He wasn’t looking to make his fortune or even his living at magic. For him it was about control and safety.
Lorne was the best person in the region to teach that to him.
~*~
Flipping through the pages of a kitchen spells book, David found one that seemed like it might work to preserve fresh meat without giving it a charred, sulfuric taste. Bored of a steady diet of smoked meat, and dreading a menu of more of the same through the winter, David thought to try the working.
He brought the book to the workroom and asked Lorne if he might give it a try. Distracted with his writing, Lorne had barely looked up from his paper, waving an ink-stained hand over his shoulder in tacit approval. It warmed David to know that he had earned his Master’s trust in such a relatively short time.
David collected the ingredients he would need. He fetched a cleaned hen, as well as the fresh herbs listed in the book from the kitchen. He wandered around the shelves in the corner of the workroom, carefully gathering each of the other ingredients and lining them up on the table where he was preparing to do the casting. He double and triple checked the names of the ingredients, just as he double and triple check the measures of each one. Needing a vessel to mix into, he spied a large, heavy glass jug in the basin, gave it a quick rinse with water and took it over to his pile.
Humming to himself, he measured out and tossed the components into the jug. Then he mixed the ingredients with a wooden spoon, stirring in the prescribed manner; shins and then widdershins. He glanced over at Lorne, hunched painfully over the tome he was writing. He’d learned a lot from the Magor since coming here, more than he could repay with a little housekeeping and cooking. He wondered if he would ever be able to find a way to show his gratitude, not that Lorne ever asked him for anything. It sometimes seemed that he was satisfied that David was soaking up everything he taught him, taking pleasure in getting ideas and skills across to his apprentice.
The concoction had to heat up to boiling before he could pour it over the hen. The small burner on the table wouldn’t heat a vessel as large as the one he was using. He would have to work very near to where Lorne was sitting. He didn’t want to irritate him and be a bother while Lorne was writing, but the other fireplace wouldn’t do to heat this, and he wasn’t allowed to cast on the kitchen stove. “Lorne, may I use the stand over the pit for a short while?”
“Yeah, sure,” Lorne grumbled, rubbing his eyes. He’d been writing equations for hours; David didn’t know how he did it sometimes.
He set up quickly, and soon his mixture was steaming. He leaned over, stirring, keeping a careful eye to see that it didn’t boil over. That was a big no-no in potions. No bubbling over, bad for everyone and everything, it made a lot of work and clean up and unexpected consequences which required work and cleanup. It was better just to watch the pot.
Lorne turned slightly on the stool and asked, “What is that you’re humming?”
He hadn’t realized he’d been noisy. Feeling guilty, he fell silent and apologized quickly. “Sorry.”
Smirking, Lorne said, “I didn’t say you had to stop; I just wondered what the tune was. I’ve heard it before.”
“Oh. Something my mother used to sing. I knew it when I was a boy. I’ve forgotten the words since then, I only remember the melody.”
Setting his quill aside and circling his hand around, Lorne urged him to continue. David hummed a little subconsciously now that Lorne was paying such close attention. Eventually, after nodding, Lorne closed his eyes and then began to sing quietly in a language David didn’t recognize. “Dashnir cletentos, morgoso fizente. Amil logetli, hensh nenente.”
Completely entranced by Lorne’s singing voice, which he had never heard, David forgot to continue stirring the glass jug. He heard a quiet crack an instant before the jar exploded, showering David and Lorne in glass and the remnants of the heated potion. David yelped and jumped back, holding his hand where it had been cut and burned. Lorne was more protected by one of the heavy robes David had never seen him without. The Master jumped up, hurled a protective ward around the fire and went to where David was huddled in a crouch, cradling his injured hand.
“Come over to the pump, we need to rinse that with cold water quickly,” Lorne’s arm was strong around David’s shoulder as he helped him up and walked him to the corner. David held his violently shaking hand under the stream as Lorne pumped the water. He bit his lip to keep from crying out against the pain. After the majority of the potion, blood and glass had been rinsed off, and the worst of the pain had subsided, Lorne held David’s hand up to the light coming from the window. “Not too bad. A little scalded but I don’t think it will blister. Lucky it hadn’t reached a full boil. I have some salve. Let’s get the glass out and wrap it up.”
He gently pushed David over into the window’s light near the end of the worktable and went to fetch a stool, a tiny metal tong and a jar of salve. He dampened a clean washrag, dropped it over his shoulder and came back to David. He put the stool behind David, pushed him onto it, sat on a second stool and held a hand out. “Let me see.”
It hurt, but David put up with it as Lorne bent over his hand to se the damage. Using the metal tongs, Lorne got a number of small shards out. David gasped as Lorne pocked and squeezed at the cuts to clean them out.
Staring at the top of Lorne’s head as he worked, David didn’t notice that Lorne was hurt until he sat up and David looked at his face for the first time since the jug had exploded. “You got cut too, Lorne.”
“Huh?”
With his uninjured hand, David gently tugged the edge of a shard of glass that was embedded in Lorne’s cheek. He held up the bloody piece. “Didn’t you feel that? It’s huge.”
Apparently he hadn’t. Lorne shrugged. David grabbed the washrag from Lorne’s hand and pressed it to the cut, which was now bleeding profusely. Pursing his lips and frowning when it looked like Lorne was going to protest, he snapped, “Just let me clean it.”
With a heavy, put-upon sigh, Lorne let him press the wet rag to his face to soak up the blood. His eyes shifted over to the fire, back to David, and then to the book that was standing open on the worktable beside him. He tilted his head to read the spell. “Did you use fresh tava root?”
“There was some in the kitchen; I picked it last week when I made the spicy stew.”
Distracted, Lorne mumbled, “Fresh tava root, there’s something about fresh tava root.” David dropped the blood soaked rag into his lap and scooped a bit of the salve onto his finger, smoothing it over the slice in Lorne’s cheek, the same way Lorne had covered the four cuts on David’s hand after cleaning the glass out.
“What were you making?”
“Simple kitchen spell, a meat preservative.”
Lorne looked over at the sink basin and his eyes widened slightly in alarm. “David, did you take the glass jug from the sink?”
“Yes, it was thick, I thought it could stand the heat, I’m sorry, I was wrong, apparently. I didn’t expect it to shatter like that. I’ll go to town and get a replacement on market day.”
Lorne began to shake his head. “That wasn’t properly cleaned. I used that last night. I meant to get to it today, but I got involved…” He ran a hand through his hair, which immediately fell back into place when he stopped, as tousled and messy as it always was.
Leaning away on silent refusal when David started to fuss over a second, smaller cut, Lorne pulled the book David had been working from closer to him, running a finger down the list of ingredients. He occasionally looked up at the ceiling, his lips working as he recited something silently. “Bat nuts!” Lorne exclaimed, looking over at the fire, then back at David. His eyes were a little wild. “It should be all right. I was singing, you were just humming, right?”
“Right. Just humming. What were you singing?”
“Amrol Gestin, it’s a shepherd’s love song. But I wasn’t casting, you were casting.” Lorne made a stirring motion with his hand, miming David stirring the potion. “And it wasn’t like there was any blood involved in the working at all.”
David spotted it at the same time Lorne did; the bloody rag in David’s lap. Lorne touched his fingers to the slice on his cheek, where David had thoughtlessly pressed the damp rag soaked with his own blood.
Lorne breathed out, “Your blood, mingled with mine.”
David stroked a finger along the back of Lorne’s hand, coming away with the herb-encrusted remnants of the potion. “It was on us both, the potion was on both of us, it was on the glass that cut us, it got in both of us on the glass.”
“Co-cast and blood sealed! Oma’s eyes, we’re in a bind.” Lorne blurted, tangling his hands in his hair.
In all the months David had been here, he had never seen his Master so upset. Lorne went out of his way to hide his emotions from David, taking it as far as locking himself in the work room when he was angry. Lorne threw himself off the stool and began pacing around in circles, muttering and waving his hands when he wasn’t yanking on the ends of his collar-length hair.
“I don’t understand, Magor. Please, explain to me what has happened,” he deliberately used Lorne’s rank, which he had not done since the first day here. He needed to catch Lorne’s attention, distract him from the panic he thought he saw rising in his Master.
Lorne looked at him, a flash of anger briefly crossing his face. “It might be nothing. It’s probably nothing.” He laughed hoarsely. “Just elements, pieces and parts, none a whole, nothing with intent. An accident. It can’t possibly hold. It wasn’t deliberate enough. Magic is deliberate!” He had walked over to stand in front of David, his eyes now looking a little desperate as he repeated, “Magic is deliberate!”
“Lorne?” David reached up with his good hand, needing to sooth the trouble he saw. He touched his palm to the uninjured side of Lorne’s face and made a hushing sound. “What have I done? Tell me what I’ve done.”
“We! It’s what we did! Both of us together,” Lorne waved a hand between them. “Separately, portions and elements of a spell, a major working, a banned spell,” he was breathing heavily as he looked into David’s face, his eyes wide, the pupils very dark.
David was finding it hard to concentrate. But he was starting to catch on to what might have happened. He stared at Lorne, clapped his hands onto his arms and coaxed, “Breathe, Lorne. Take a moment, gather your thoughts. What kind of spell?”
After he took David’s advice, Lorne spoke slowly. “The jug had everleaf in it from last night. It’s a binding agent; it has to be cleaned with a special mixture to remove all traces of it. So, that means there were traces of everleaf in your mixture from the vessel. Fresh tava root is potent. Hedge witches use it in love potions. But they don’t chant, they don’t use words. It isn’t dangerous when they use it, because hedge witches never do blood magic.”
David touched his fingers to Lorne’s face, tracing the red, salve-smeared line of the cut. “I added blood.”
“And I added the words, while you stirred, I sang lyrics. Lyrics charged with emotion from both of us, me from a memory the song brought back, you no doubt remembering your mother singing it to you.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” David said, his fingers moving across Lorne’s cheek, over his eyebrow.
“No, not at all.” Lorne shook his head as he stared down at David. “Magic is deliberate.”
Relieved, David smiled. “I read it over and over and over in the books, Lorne. Love spells aren’t real. You cannot make someone love someone else with a spell.”
“Exactly.” Lorne breathed out a slight sigh of relief and gave him a tremulous smile. “You cannot manufacture an emotion that wasn’t there at the start.”
David stood up, the motion bringing him even closer to Lorne, his clothing brushing against Lorne’s. He was close enough that he could feel Lorne’s breath on his cheek. He could feel each heavy breath, warm on his skin. Lorne’s hair had fallen down over his face; casually, naturally, as if he did it all the time, David reached up and tucked it behind his ear. “And you cannot bind someone to another with an emotion that doesn’t exist,” David concluded.
Shifting closer, Lorne nodded, but said nothing as he looked at David.
“What if it was there?” David whispered raggedly as it came to the surface, the feelings that had been growing for weeks, had been growing for months, deep inside him. “What of if the emotion was there, could it be bound? Can one be bound to another if the emotion were strong enough?”
The noise Lorne made was halfway between a groan and a whimper. He bit his lip and nodded and stared straight into David’s eyes.
“Well, then one of us might be in trouble,” David whispered. Unable to stop himself, he leaned down and pressed his lips to Lorne’s. The noise Lorne made was a full groan as he leaned into it, opening his mouth and kissing David ardently in return.
When Lorne pulled back, he breathed out shakily, “I think we’re both in deep trouble."
Not Exactly The End
Prompts: Hurt Comfort Bingo Fill: “Accidental Mating for Life” and “Love Spell/Potion Gone Wrong”
Alternate Universe Bingo Fill: Apprenticeship