Chapter 15 Training
Summer stretched on, and Rolan trained with dagger and sword, bow and fists.
Every morning while Luc tended the garden and cleaned the barn, Rolan balanced atop the wobbly pole and imagined himself sinking into a black pit.
And every morning he ended up on his butt in the mud, punching the earth in frustration at yet another failure.
What waits at the center of the world? It was probably some sort of trick answer, like nothing or everything or love.
Eugh. The senseless question ate at him, keeping him up at night.
It whispered in his ear as he practiced his other lessons.
And when it came to his other lessons, Luc was ruthless in his routine.
Hot, violent storms swept in from the west, lashing the Arcanist’s house with rain and thunder, and Rolan learned how to write his name.
The sun crisped the grass and apples ripened in the Arcanist’s small orchard, and Rolan began to add double-digit numbers, then triple-digit.
He learned how to subtract and multiply, divide and compare.
The numbers didn’t come as easily as the letters did, but he applied himself eagerly, because whenever he got a lesson right, Luc would tell him another story of a Cryptic he’d defeated.
The Arcanist still went hunting at night, alone, but his trips grew less frequent.
Rolan had asked him if he’d hunted down the big Cryptic they’d seen off in the distant forest, but Luc had only shaken his head and changed the subject.
More and more he opted to stay in, pacing the length of the house and listening as Rolan stumbled through the first pages of the Arcane Histories.
These were a set of books so massive, Rolan had nearly wept when the Arcanist first pulled them down from the loft.
When he’d opened them, dust had fallen out.
But despite their intimidating size, they were interesting, which was a thing Rolan hadn’t known a book could be.
Begrudgingly, he’d fallen under their spell.
He had been desperate for Arcane knowledge all these weeks, and who knew that the whole time, everything he could have ever wanted to know had been tucked inside these books, ten feet over his head?
Now their secrets opened to him like locks, his mind working to pick apart the letters and connect the sounds and discover the treasure of information they hid.
Unfortunately, none of them told him the answer to Luc’s riddle—what waits at the center of the world?—but what they did tell was even better.
Their pages held story after story of Arcanists battling Cryptics.
The Arcanists stretched back for centuries, men and women with names that felt mythical on Rolan’s lips.
They came in all shapes and sizes, with different sets of skills, and each one had something to teach him about the Arcane arts.
He learned that while Cryptics shunned the light, light couldn’t actually hurt them, which was something nearly everyone he knew back in Crisanth believed.
If angered enough, a Cryptic would attack in broad daylight.
If big enough, it would leave the shadows of the forest and march on a village or even a city, driven by its primal urge to kill.
“In the days before Cryptics…,” Rolan sounded out one night. He paused at that, his finger pressed to the page. “Wait. There was a time before? You mean Cryptics haven’t always been around?”
Luc, sitting with one leg slung over the side of his chair, slowly peeled an apple with a dagger that glowed blue every time he moved it. “That was thousands of years ago. We’ve few accounts of that time.”
“Well, what happened? Where did Cryptics come from?”
“The legend is well known, boy. They preach it every ninth day in the Confessories. Have you never visited a…? Luc raised a hand. “Never mind. I should know better than to even ask.”
“I ain’t—I’m not confessing all my doings to some stodgy Listener,” Rolan retorted. “I don’t care if they took vows of silence. They could all be snitches for all I know. So what about it, then? Where did Cryptics come from?”
Luc gestured at the book in Rolan’s hands. “You tell me.”
With a sigh, Rolan haltingly read his way through the legend. “In the days before Cryptics, gods walked the earth, gifting all manner of wisdom and magic to hum—humma—”
“Humanity,” finished Luc.
Rolan blew out a breath and let the heavy book fall to the floor. “Can’t you just tell me what happened?”
To his surprise, for once, Luc relented.
He spoke in an easy, low cadence, as if reciting the tale from memory.
“One of these gods, they say, was Alethine, the embodiment of truth. She visited the world in the form of a little girl, usually appearing where children had gathered to play. Alethine would join their games, and wherever she went, people would speak truth to one another, for her power would allow no lie to be told in her presence.”
“She sounds like a snitch too,” Rolan scoffed. No wonder her childlike image carved over the Confessory doors had always given him a shiver.
But the story, told in Luc’s deep, calm tones, drew him in.
“It’s said that one day, Alethine visited a castle to play with a young prince and princess.
During her visit, one of their father’s advisors confessed his plan to murder the king, his truth pulled from him by the little goddess’s influence.
” Luc paused to hand the apple peel to an eagerly waiting Supper.
The goat chewed it noisily, then bleated for more.
“The king put his advisor to the sword, of course, but after that, he became paranoid. He feared that every person in his court was plotting against him too, and the desire to know their secrets consumed him. So he hatched a plan.”
“Let me guess. It was a stupid plan.”
Luc nodded. “Stupid and doomed. He believed that by taking Alethine’s power for his own, he could finally root out the traitors in his court.
Some scholars believe he worked in coordination with some malevolent god, using dark power to lay his trap.
We cannot know for sure, but there was much strange magic in the world in those days.
Regardless of what magic he used, the king gathered all the children of his kingdom into his castle and ordered them to play, knowing Alethine would not resist the temptation to join them.
And after seven days and nights of forcing the children to carry on with their games, the goddess finally appeared. ”
Rolan, sensing no good ending to the story, shivered and wrapped his arms around his knees. There was an illustration in the book of a little girl surrounded by a ring of happy children. A corona of light shone around her hair, but her expression was one of fear.
“The prince and princess, upon their father’s orders, invited Alethine to play with them, but of course she saw through their lie at once.
This was no game, but a trap. Only it was too late.
No one knows what happened next—whether the king killed the goddess or trapped her, or if she escaped.
But in the chaos that followed, Alethine’s divine power burst from her in a mighty wave, washing over the world.
She cursed all humanity with the words: ‘Your secrets will destroy you.’ After that day, the gods appeared among us no more, and they took all their magic with them.
Only Alethine’s curse remained, and ever since, our secrets have turned into Cryptics, and Arcanists have risen to face them. ”
“What a scab!” Rolan burst out. “He had to go and ruin everything for the rest of us, all because he couldn’t trust his own people!
And what about this goddess? Cursing the whole world just because of one bad king?
Seems a bit—” What was that word Anaya was so fond of? “Melodramatic,” he concluded at last.
Luc shrugged one shoulder. “We’re all guilty of the same, in a way. Blaming everyone else for the actions of one bad person. A dog need only be kicked once to believe all men will kick him.”
He stared at Rolan intently as he said this, in a way that made Rolan itch uncomfortably. It was as if the Arcanist were waiting for him to agree or something, though Rolan could not guess why.
He turned back to the book, shutting it with a thump. “Well, it’s a bad story. It doesn’t even have a happy ending. The Listeners can keep their dumb legends to themselves, is what I think.”
But one unsatisfying legend, true or not, could not ruin the grip the rest of the books had on Rolan’s imagination.
They told of cities and kingdoms Rolan had never heard of before.
He’d known Crisanth was part of the kingdom of Anoranth, and that they were ruled by a man named King Malkos who lived in a huge city on a northern fjord.
But there were other lands totally foreign to his ear, all enclosed on a massive continent called Lyras, with Anoranth a small vague triangle in its high north.
To the south were places he could barely even imagine: deserts and grasslands, jungles and archipelagos and vast seas.
Many of those places had Arcanists too. He liked it best when there was a map or an illustration with the story.
Frustrated that his reading was so slow, he would beg and beg Luc until the man relented and pulled the book into his own hands.
Then he’d read in his great, rumbling voice while Rolan sprawled on the bearskin rug by the fire.
This became his favorite way of falling asleep, snoring on the rug while Luc snored in his chair, with Supper curled up between them.
But even more than reading, Rolan loved fighting.
Most days, anyway.
Weeks after the Cryptic encounter in the woods, he stood shirtless in the afternoon sun, holding a practice sword Luc had carved for him. He circled the Arcanist, who held a whip in each hand.
“This isn’t fair!” Rolan complained. “You’ve got two weapons and I’ve got one!”