Chapter 10
Anders woke to a growling stomach. His body was stiff from sleeping in a chair. Lifting his head, he peeled off the paper that stuck to his face and looked around. His desk was littered with notes and he smiled remembering his newfound motivation. He yawned, stretched, and looked out his door to see late afternoon sun glowing orange through the windows.
"Food then." He closed his door and gave it a good jolt of power, then made his way downstairs. As he entered the dining hall hushed murmurs drew his attention, bringing him fully awake.
Normally the hall was crowded at this time, there was a window of time in which you could be served food after all. It was crowded now, but there were no mages quietly reading books while trying to eat. None of the very young mages were eating in groups while showing off what tricks they learned. In fact, there was no casual discussion going on at all. Everyone in the hall was hunched over tables, talking in hushed tones and barely touching the food. Anders had never seen anything like it in the seven years he had been at Whitethorn.
He waited in the small line to the kitchen window that handed out food. He was given a bowl of soup and a piece of bread, which he took to an empty seat in the middle of the room. For all he didn't like to talk to the other mages, it was the best place to listen.
"Heard it wasn't really him." Anders heard the whispers from the table to his left.
"Then who would do it? You can't make anything out of powdered components and stones, they don't mix!" Hissed a young woman in yellow.
"Surely the council knows what they are doing." A man to the table in front of Anders scoffed at his companions.
"Hello there, may I take a seat?" A short woman with frizzy red hair set her soup bowl across from Anders.
"Oh, yes." Anders scooted his bowl back to make room. He recognized her as a fairly eccentric orange robed mage that was always causing clouds of smoke or eruptions of lights from her room. More often than not she was seen alone.
"I'm Deidre. You're the boy who saw the thief right?" Her eyes bulged wide as she waited for an answer.
"Yes, I guess. Not well though, he wore a hood." Anders was now very uncomfortably trying to eat his meal so he could leave.
"So do you believe what they say? About Bo?" She tore her bread into tiny pieces and dropped them into her soup.
"I'm not sure. What are they saying?" Anders had never felt more aware of his choice to be fairly solitary. He didn't' know who Bo was, and he certainly was never in the loop on Whitethorn gossip unless he ran into Ghilda.
"Bo! The kitchen boy who stole all those things. Only some are saying he didn't." She stirred her crumbled bread into a soggy mush. "They say he was seen in town that night so he couldn't have taken anything. But it's his word against all those soldiers. So what do you think of it?"
"I don't know." This was certainly news to Anders. "What do you think?"
"Of course the boy didn't do it. He's always been the sweetest if you talk to him." She tipped her bowl back and swallowed the whole thing in one impressive try. "I'm going to get to the bottom of it!"
Anders watched her stomp out of the hall, dropping her bowl off to the kitchen window. He wasn't really sure what to think of her, but she did raise a lot of questions. At least he knew what the commotion was, this would be the best gossip Whitethorn had to mull over in some time. He quietly finished his own food and returned to his work upstairs.
There was a lot to consider. If it wasn't Bo, who did it? And who would frame a kitchen boy? His thoughts carried him to the top floor before he noticed. The usually empty hallway however, was not empty today. A figure in brown robes was sprawled across the floor in front of his door.
Jak woke on Anders's bed. His first thought, was a pain on the back of his head. The second thought, was how he might have gotten there. He looked around the room. Candlelight showed the young mage at his desk writing something. Jak let out a small groan, which got Anders's attention.
"You're awake." He got up and walked over to Jak with a pitcher of water. The thief drank deeply before answering.
"I hurt too much to be dead lad. What in Spirit's hells happened?" The last think Jak remembered was walking down Anders's hallway.
"If I had to venture a guess, you touched my door. I leave a little piece of my power in it when I'm out." Anders offered Jak a hand to sit up, which he took.
"Bloody sin, yer damn right that's what happened. I remember now. I told you I'd be back why did you do that to your door without telling me?" Jak growled.
"It's not like you gave me a chance to tell you!" Anders said. "How was I to know you'd even be back? You took your book and left."
"I left you a note didn't I?" Jak rubbed his head where it hit the stone floor.
"Yes,.. well." Anders sat back down at his desk but still faced Jak.
"Can't trust my word. I get it." Jak pulled the scrap of paper with mage names on it. "I checked out these six which are your age and red. No notes." Anders stared at the note for a long time.
"Thank you." He said. "I'm sorry, I wasn't sure of you."
"Well could you blame me if I did run?" Jak sat on the edge of the bed. "You've blasted my arm, threatened me in my own stomping grounds, and knocked me out when you weren't even here. How much can a man take?"
"Sorry about that." Anders scratched his head.
"I'm not in the business of holding a grudge, but we are in an agreement right now, and I would like to get on with it. Any news about the journal?" Jak leaned forward.
"Yes actually. Your mage was researching something that most scholars would call fairy tales. But I suppose after the fall of Grishmir we've had to embrace a lot of things we once thought fairy tales. Magic itself is one of those things, and here stands a keep of mages that seems to have been here forever. It's interesting how quickly man adapts and forgets." Anders stared blankly in thought for a moment.
"So do you have an actual answer to my question?" Jak asked flatly.
"Oh, yes. Your mage was researching sustaining life, potions of youth, doors to the spirit world, that sort of thing. This wouldn't be too out of the ordinary, it's been two decades since the fall of Grishmir and we are still trying to piece together what our ancestors knew of magic from the time before it was lost. But everything was written not for research, but practical applications of ancient spells. There were notes from actual experiments that he had done on himself. By all rights we should have a mage walking around this building that reeks of the dead, but we don't."
"That you know of." Jak added. "That doesn't sound like anything to get mixed up in."
"We have another problem on our hands though, I think your mage and my thief are one in the same." Anders stood and paced the room. "I don't know what you've heard, but there were a series of thefts that night." When he saw Jak nod he continued. "Well many of the things taken were components in some of the spells. I couldn't read all of it of course, not enough time. But I saw enough to put it together. There were also notes in the back of ideas for finding and holding mass quantities of power for something. I think that is where my notes came in."
"So it's the same person?" Jak watched the young man pace for a moment. "You look like the dead lad, what is it?"
"Jak, I think someone is trying to raise the dead." Anders stopped pacing. "I also really want to know how someone else knew about the book."
"Yeah. I'm not one to give out a client's information but I can tell you its some old scholar form the university. Not a drop of his own magic." Jak stood now, rubbing his arm.
"I'm not sure what to do about this." Anders said.
"Yer askin' the wrong person." Jak said flatly.
"Well did you get the name of who you stole from?" Anders asked.
"No. It was part of the deal actually. Nothing unusual in my line of work." Jak answered.
"Well isn't that splendid! A mage of unknown power, motive and resource is trying to raise the dead, which will have unknown consequences, and we don't know who it is! Anders began to pace again.
"Workin' yourself up isn't' going to solve a thing. The map was a bit hard to read but I think I could get back to that room and poke around. Shouldn't be too hard to find who it was." Jak thought for a moment. "Who else knows yer makin' this contraption? Are you even allowed to make something with so much, I don't know, power?"
"The council of mages approves projects jointly with a royal ambassador." Anders thought for a moment. "They approved me because of the trouble I used to have keeping my power under control and it could be a good place to let off my extra buildup. Plus I'm the only one who lives up in this old hallway, I'm only a danger to myself. Here by the way, this is what I could translate from your book."
"Thanks. Now, aren't all mages out of control at first?" Jak took a fistful of papers Anders handed him.
"Well, yes. It's a big problem for me though, because I have a hard time containing my power before a storm. The electrical charge in the air builds up and I attract it. You can keep a learning water mage from too much water and a new fire mage away from wood and burnable things, but you can't keep the weather from happening near a lightning mage."
"I"ll pretend that made sense." Jak tucked the papers in his belt. "So can you find out who would know about your project beyond this council? Do they keep records? Are they public?"
"It may take a couple days to find out anything." Anders said.
"I may take that long or longer to find out what I'm after. I'll meet you here when I can, or at least I'll slide you a note under the door. I'm not repeating today's incident." Jak said solemnly.
"Alright." Said Anders. "Good luck."
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