ID10T Errors

In which Donnal the apprentice wizard helps with tech support

Most shops in a village are rather dim affairs on the lowest floor of a building, open to the street only by a door and perhaps a display window, backed by the tradesman’s workshop and crowned by his house on the floor above. There isn’t much light; there’s always a dark corner to conceal oneself in, and if that fails, a canny tradesman will install a little peephole or tiny window on the back wall. All in all, it’s very easy to spy on the customers as they examine the products on offer.

A wizard’s shop is rather different. There’s always a chance of something exploding, so they tend to be a little way away from the rest of the village, and next to the house rather than under it. And it’s a rare wizard who falls low enough- or is stupid enough- to put out pre-made wares for the customer’s perusal. Anyone who thinks an ordinary shopfront will do the trick for a wizard should recall the tale of Obin the Arcane, who laid out a spread of wonders, to the delight of his customers, who happily poked and prodded at lighting spells, potions to make one’s hair grow- or not- and crystals and bowls for scrying, until some idiot picked up a lightball and a seeing crystal at the same time, and the resulting magical explosion sent the whole enterprise up in a cloud of flame and smoke.

No, wizards take orders by special request only, and therefore a sensible wizard will adapt his premises accordingly. The workshop of Liudolf the Enchanter therefore has a small office just inside the door, where he can meet with customers and discover what sort of magical assistance they wish to purchase. The peephole in the back wall remains, however. One never knows when one might want a witness.

Donnal was putting up supplies in the workshop when the customer arrived. He heard the knock but since he was up to his elbows in a dragon’s liver, Liudolf answered the door and returned trailed by a stooping and limping person shrouded in a black cloak. Donnal wiped his hands carefully and went to the back wall of the office. Anyone who turned up in a hooded black cloak, seeking a wizard’s advice, was worth watching. Liudolf had said so.

He got to the peephole in time to see the customer- it was almost certainly a man- lower himself onto a chair with a grunt, then reach up to his neck and unclasp a silver pendant necklace. He moved very carefully, keeping his face in shadow, and there was an air of menace about him.

“This locket is very precious to me.” He had a strange voice, like a foreigner, only Donnal had spoken with a few foreigners and none of them sounded quite like this. Perhaps he was a true foreigner, not merely from a few villages over.

“Very precious,” the customer repeated darkly. “And it’s stuck fast and won’t open. I think one of the locking spells has gone wrong, and I don’t have the skill to force it.”

“Very well,” Liudolf said. “Let me see it.”

The locket was duly passed across the writing table. Donnal had never seen a locket like this- it was spherical, more like a pomander, and about the size of a walnut.

Liudolf prodded it with one finger. “Has it been exposed to any outside magic recently?”

“None that I know of.”

“How long since it was last opened?”

“A fortnight. I don’t open it unless I have a good reason, but I want it to work when I need it to.”

Liudolf nodded and they began to haggle over the price. Clearly a deposit was required, for this kind of unknown work on an unknown object, brought in by an unknown customer, and just as clearly, the man didn’t want to say or do anything that might hint at his identity, like giving Liudolf coins from a particular village or mentioning the name of a friend who could vouch for his honesty.

Eventually, they came to an agreement, and the man promised to return in two days to pick up the pendant. He departed soon after, and Donnal came out of his hiding place.

Liudolf greeted him with a brisk, “How much of that little performance did you see?”

“Everything after he sat down, master.”

“Good.”

Donnal had been Liudolf’s apprentice for over a year, and knew his master well enough to speak up. “He seemed rather… villainous- is it safe to work for him?”

Liudolf scoffed. “That bag of wind? You’re right to be cautious, but not because he’s a villain. I’m more worried that he’s tried to fix the damned thing himself, and made it worse. Never underestimate the stupidity of the average person- and that includes you and me. Real menace doesn’t need to make a show of itself.”

Donnal nodded. “Like when Red Serlon fought Odger Cartwright in the alehouse last week. Serlon was the loud one, then Odger knocked him out with one punch!” he said, smiling at the memory- it had been quite a sight, to see Serlon, who was a bully and disliked by nearly everyone, meet his comeuppance at the hands of Odger, who kept to himself.

“I don’t know what a boy your age is doing in alehouses,” Liudolf said sternly. “I’m sure you had an excellent reason.”

Sarcasm from Liudolf could mean he was angry, or merely curious. “Goody Matilda sent me for a jug of ale,” Donnal said, all wide-eyed innocence. “Hers had turned before the new batch was ready.”

Liudolf harrumphed and turned his attention back to more important matters. “In any case, Sir What’s-his-name’s money is as good as anyone else’s- I checked. Besides that-” Liudolf drew him over to the seeing crystal- “Look.”

Donnal looked at the flat expanse of crystal, which showed views of the front and back door of the workshop. ‘It doesn’t stop thieves,’ Liudolf had said, when he first taught Donnal how to use it, ‘but at least you know which of the local miscreants needs a visit from the constables.’

A bit of magic was needed to show what had happened outside the door a few minutes previous, rather than what was happening now. The image grew foggy, then cleared, and Donnal watched as a surprisingly young man unknown to him strode confidently up to the door, his black cloak swishing behind him. The man paused, adopted a stooping posture, and pulled the hood up over a head of flaming red hair, then knocked. A pause, then Liudolf must’ve opened the door, and the man went in, disappearing from the crystal’s view.

Master and apprentice watched in thoughtful silence for a moment, then Liudolf gave Donnal an expectant look.

He blew out a breath, to give himself time to marshal a few coherent ideas. “He was trying to hide his face, so we wouldn’t recognize him, but he’s not very good at it,” he thought out loud. “A bit of charcoal in the right spots would’ve made his face look older and thinner, and a hat would’ve covered his hair without drawing notice. No one wears a hooded full-length cloak unless they’re traveling or rich enough to have it washed whenever the hem gets muddy.”

“Well reasoned,” Liudolf said.

“But I don’t recognize him.”

“Nor do I. Probably came from the next village; didn’t want to talk to the local wizard. Sensible, if he has something to hide- or thinks he does.” Liudolf shrugged. “If we find anything interesting in the pendant, maybe we’ll set a few spells to identify him when he comes back. It’s not really our business unless he’s going to use it to harm someone.”

It was the right thing to say, but Donnal suspected Liudolf would put up spells to discover their mysterious customer, regardless of what they found in the pendant. One doesn’t become a wizard unless one is rather more curious and nosy than the average person.

Liudolf gestured that Donnal should join him at the work table in the middle of the room. The silver pendant lay upon the heavy wooden surface, gleaming but otherwise innocent in appearance. “You’ve been handed a magical object,” Liudolf lectured. “You don’t know anything about it except that it’s not doing what it’s supposed to. What do you do?”

“Scry for the root spells?”

Liudolf eyed him. “Impatient to get killed, are we?” he said dryly. “What do you do first?”

To give himself time to think, Donnal looked down at the pendant, and the penny dropped. “Look at it, listen to it, notice if it’s doing anything obviously unusual,” he recited.

“Much safer,” Liudolf agreed.

***

So they did, examining it from all angles, listening, carefully holding it in one hand then the other, even putting it into a bowl of water to see if it floated- ‘it’s jewelry; it’s meant to get dirty and sweaty and occasionally rained on,” Liudolf had said when Donnal wondered if that was wise.

To all human senses, the pendant appeared completely innocuous- a ball of silver hung on a chain, with a series of tiny hinges at various points around its smooth edges. Donnal counted them, and if they could get the pendant open, it would have seven separate compartments.

“Seven chances for something to kill us,” he remarked.

“Precisely. So we go carefully, until we know what we’re looking at.” Liudolf lifted the pendant, allowing it to swing slightly on its chain. “Now we scry. Tell me how to do the simplest scrying spell you know.”

Donnal told him. It was, indeed, simple, a matter of licking one’s forefinger and thumb, then holding the two fingertips together in a circle and looking at the object through the circle. Spells, invisible ink, hidden runes- most became visible through the spell, unless the person who’d cast them was very clever indeed.

Their anonymous customer must not have been particularly clever, because Donnal and Liudolf each cast the spell, and instantly there was a mass of whirling colors and shapes in the circle formed by his fingers. Donnal had seen the effects of scrying before, and managed not to drop the spell out of sheer surprise.

But it was a strange image, not like the neat geometric patterns he’d seen when Liudolf taught him this way of examining spells. Some remark was called for, but the only thing he could think of was, “What a mess.”

Liudolf nodded, intent on his own scrying spell. “Can you recognize anything?”

“No... wait!- that web that looks like a ladle might be something to do with a location spell?” he said uncertainly. “And that skinny diamond shape with the three dots across the middle might be something defensive?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re all messed up.”

“Hmm. So they are.” Liudolf studied the pendant and the scrying spell for a moment. “Let me check something. Drop your spell.” Donnal opened the circle his fingers had made, and the swirling lights vanished. Liudolf did the same, and set the pendant on the table, then fished around in a few drawers and came up with a length of plain dark cord.

Donnal watched curiously as his master looped the cord around his fingers in what was obviously a very specific pattern, though Donnal couldn’t say what it was meant to accomplish.

“Ligature magic,” Liudolf explained when he asked. “Often used by witches, because they’re more likely to have spare cordage around the place, but there’s nothing saying a wizard can’t use it, too. And you can do a lot of different things with it; I’m only trying to identify whatever’s making all these other spells so volatile.”

“It looks complicated,” Donnal ventured.

“It is. Quiet, now, so I can concentrate.”

Donnal obediently fell silent, watching, as light shimmered in the holes made by the string. A triangle of blue light merged with a diamond of red light to make purple; a tiny sparkle of white light overcame a large green blob to make a larger white triangle; and sparks danced along the cords as they moved over each other. It was like watching fireworks in miniature.

Then, one jerk of the hands, and the strings pulled together and the light winked out. Liudolf nodded, satisfied. “Pebcak malfunction. I thought so.”

“What’s that?” Donnal asked.

“Means that Sir What’s-his-name tried to make this-” Liudolf swung the pendant on its chain- “do something it’s not meant to do, and broke it.”

“How do you fix it?”

“Well, sometimes you can sacrifice a chicken and that’ll do the job, but before we go raiding Goody Matilda’s henhouse, let’s try something a little less dangerous,” Liudolf said, and whirled the pendant in a circle over his head and smashed it onto the tabletop.

Donnal knew that tone of voice, and quickly took cover behind a large storage cabinet as soon as Liudolf had raised his arm. When the workshop didn’t go up in flames, he poked his head around the corner of the cabinet.

Liudolf was standing before the table, holding the still-intact pendant by its chain and looking completely normal, albeit surprised at his apprentice’s sudden disappearance. “What are you doing over there, boy?”

“Getting out of the way, master,” Donnal said, as dryly as he dared, and extricated himself from the corner.

The pendant threw out a couple of sparks, and Liudolf held it away from his plaited beard. “Sensible of you. Now come over here and look at this.”

Donnal approached, wary at first, then a little more willing when the pendant stopped sparking. They used the same scrying spell as before, and like magic, all the spells had stopped whirling and were lined up in neat patterns.

There was, as he’d thought, a location spell, but as Liudolf pointed out, it was concentrated on one of the compartments, not the whole pendant. The defensive spell Donnal had noticed was similarly focused. In fact, most of the spells had been laid on one specific part of the pendant, including one that Liudolf, looking puzzled, said was something to do with cooking. “And if you can explain why a silver necklace needs a cooking spell, my boy, you’re smarter than I am,” he said, frowning.

The mention of food made them both realize it was time for dinner, and they took a break, carefully boxing up the pendant in a chest made for the purpose before going into the house.

Donnal was starving, and dug into bread and pottage with all the enthusiasm of a thirteen year old boy who hasn’t eaten in a whole four hours. Goody Matilda’s cooking was rarely extravagant, but always tasted wonderful- sometimes he wondered if she had some magic of her own. Or perhaps it was an effect of the latent magic that hovered around the shop and house. Making ordinary food excellent was certainly a much more pleasant use of background magic than whatever caused socks to vanish and reappear as jar lids.

Dinner never lasted very long, and Donnal and Liudolf returned to the workshop half an hour later, to puzzle over the recalcitrant locket. It was exactly the same as they’d left it- which was a good thing, Liudolf pointed out, because it meant the spells had remained stable, not degraded to their previous volatility.

Donnal decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. “Should we try opening it?” he suggested. It was stupidly simple, but Liudolf wouldn’t mind, he thought.

And his master nodded. “I don’t see any reason why not. All the spells are back in order, and there wasn’t anything terribly dangerous cast over the latch.”

Donnal half-expected Liudolf to beat the pendant on the table again, but his master merely stuck a fingernail into the middle crevice, gave a slight twist, and the pendant popped open.

It was, in fact, a locket, cleverly shaped and hinged so it opened into seven tiny frames. But instead of a series of painted portraits, each frame contained a tiny, moving image. Impossible to make out the details until Donnal very tentatively touched the frame with one finger, and a ghostly facsimile of of memory rose above them, superimposed on real life like the foreground of a painting.

They watched, wary and curious, as a semi-transparent young woman came into focus. She appeared in great distress, and a tinny voice burst out tearfully, “Oh, my love- we can’t- my mother would never let us marry!”

That was odd enough, then they examined the other images, and discovered a sack of silver coins buried in a cave Donnal had never seen before, a fight that appeared to end in death by stabbing, and for some reason, a woman making cakes. They looked like very good cakes, but still. Very odd.

But it was none of their business, and the pendant appeared to be working again. Liudolf closed and opened it again with no problems, and all the spells appeared stable and correct.

“Idiots,” Liudolf groused as they returned the pendant to its box and Donnal put it on the shelf for finished commissions. “When will people learn not to mess with things they don’t understand?”

“You’d lose half your business if they did,” Donnal pointed out, since he didn’t think Liudolf would appreciate a joke about how he, like all people had once, ‘messed with things he didn’t understand’- how else was anyone to learn anything new?

Liudolf harrumphed.

***

The pendant’s owner returned two days later, as expected, which gave Liudolf plenty of time to set up a few identification spells. As soon as the man came within a hundred yards of the shop, a bell rang, and a writing-covered scroll materialized out of the air in front of Liudolf. Since he and Donnal were resetting a lightball for Goody Anne the dressmaker at the time, they could set aside their work and read it before Liudolf’s attention was required elsewhere.

“Mud on his boots is from Grenhall, ate his last meal at the Salamander Inn,” Liudolf murmured as he read. “Someday, I’ll figure out how to make these stupid spells put his name first- ah!- Wigulf son of Gervase. That might not be his true name, but that’s what he’s calling himself,” he said aside to Donnal.

“The spell won’t tell you his real name?” Donnal said curiously.

“Not this one. Give me a month and I could set one up to do that for you,” Liudolf said, as a knock sounded at the door. He went to answer it, and Donnal went back to his post at the peephole.

Wigulf was swathed in the same black cloak as before, and walked with the same stoop and limp, but now that Donnal knew it was fake, it looked incredibly, absurdly fake, and he wondered why Wigulf was so keen to pretend he was someone else.

All became clear soon after, when Liudolf, unintimidated by Wigulf’s attempts to appear mysteriously threatening, calmly set the locket on his writing table and deemed it fixed and in good working order.

“Oh, thank the gods!- I thought that recipe was lost forever,” Wigulf burst out, then shut his mouth abruptly. “You didn’t watch that memory, did you?” he asked after an anxious pause.

“I don’t make a habit of closely inquiring into whatever my customers are doing,” Liudolf said loftily. “Unless they’re planning to kill me, of course.”

“No, no, of course not.”

“I did see a rather odd looking corpse among the other memories,” Liudolf said, very calmly. His fingers twitched. Donnal, recognizing the signs of a wizard preparing to throw a fireball at an attacker, drew back from the peephole.

But Wigulf waved that away. “A highwayman who tried to rob me on the Kenningfell road a few years back. Herbert Wood, was his name. I reported it to the authorities- you can check, if you like. No, I only store that memory because the smell of it-” he made a face- “well, would you want that lurking in your memory if you had a way to get rid of it?”

“Fair enough,” Liudolf said, and the magic he’d been calling up slowly dissipated into the usual background magic that hovered around the workshop.

The rest of the business was conducted on the most amicable lines possible. The pendant was handed over, along with some extremely polite instructions about how not to break it again, and money was duly handed over in the other direction- rather more than Donnal had expected. Liudolf had probably charged an idiot tax, as he called it.

Master and apprentice bowed the man out of the shop, and stood in the doorway, watching him go.

“Those must’ve been some amazing cakes,” Liudolf remarked after a moment, and looked sly. “How well do you remember that recipe?”

Donnal grinned up at his master. “Maybe well enough to ask Goody Matilda if she can recreate it?”

“You get the paper and I’ll get the quill and ink.”

Donnal hurried to obey. He was hungry, and cakes sounded excellent right about now.

The End.