“Listen to your mother, son. Willots are an overly sensitive race.”
Quint spent the morning controlling his tendril intensity. He tried to energize a finger at a time, which was much easier than he had thought.
When he walked across the village to Pogi’s hut, he could extend his tendrils independently, make them bright, and then recede like the waves in the wheat fields.
Pogi was shocked Quint could learn that on his own and went right to teaching Quint a simple string.
“The process is simple,” the wizard said. “You extend a tendril with the proper power and roll your hands until the tendrils wrap around each other into a string and then send a pulse of power into the string. However, getting everything aligned is not easy. I have mastered six strings I can consistently weave in all my years. I’m lucky that one of them is a water-dividing string. That makes me the most money. Everyone wants to know where to dig their wells. That divining weave is almost a psychic string. I can disinfect wounds, which is my only healing string. The rest are physical.”
“So, psychic strings are the most lucrative?” Quint asked. “Should I be thinking about becoming a hedge wizard?”
Pogi laughed. “I believe you can do much better than that, but you need more training than I can give.”
“How can I get that?”
Pogi smiled. “You can always try to get admitted to a cloister. It is a place where wizards live to improve their magic.” The wizard shivered. “I spent six months in a cloister near the border with Vinellia, and that was six months too many. However, that was where I learned the divination spell. Few in the cloister could do that.”
“What can my father do?”
Pogi sighed. “Everyone with magical talent can do some kind of fire. You ball everything together and give it a pulse. You don’t need to create much of a thread since the disorganization of the magic creates the heat. Zeppo, your father, is so weak in magic that it is one of only two strings he can weave. The organization of the string gives magic a purpose.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Quint asked.
“It can be, but failed strings generally fall apart before they organize because part of your will binds the tendrils and without a focused intent, a proper job of thread organization, nothing happens. Most wizards create their strings step-by-step to take much of the guesswork out of their castings. That kind of approach creates milder magic, and that is a good thing.”
“So magic is safe?”
“Safer than swimming a mile in the ocean. Safer than jumping off a fifty-foot cliff. Strings have been known to snap back on the caster. Shall we start with fire?”
Quint didn’t get very far. He could manage his tendrils, but he didn’t have the knack for the weave. Pogi said a few times during Quin’s failed attempts that it was the most challenging part of wizardry.
A patient showed up, and Quint left the wizard’s hut, returning home in time to help Zeppo assemble a few wheels before dinner.
After dinner, father and son returned to the wheel workshop and assembled a few more before dark.
Zeppo sighed as they finished their last wheel for the night.
“I think we have saturated my region for a while,” Quin’s father said. “We must wait for our customers to break more wheels before life is good again.”
“Why don’t you apply for another region or work with another wheelwright whose territory needs more replacement wheels?” Quint asked.
“The government in Bocarre won’t permit it. Although a bribe might do something, your father doesn’t have that kind of money. We will do as we always have: tighten our belts until the wheels age. I must be satisfied with my forest to cut, and my other woodworking to sell before life will be good again. Show me what you’ve learned,” Zeppo said, leaning against a workbench, wiping his hands with a damp towel.
Quint thrust out his fingers and initiated tendrils that lit up the space. He tried to weave a string, but just as he was going to give it a pulse of power, another thing he had yet to learn, the tendril unwound, and Quint was back to where he started.
Zeppo laughed. “Practice with a single tendril twisted into a string. Don’t bother managing ten; you’ll only fail, fail, and fail again. Move on from there. Use the tendril from your right middle finger. On most wizards, that will get you enough flame to light a candle.”
“What if I have more power than you?” Quint asked.
“Then don’t point your power at anything flammable!” Zeppo laughed.
Twisting a single tendril into a string was something he could do. His father was right. He willed a modest pulse of power, and a flame bright enough for a torch burned three inches in front of his palms, shaped as if they were holding a ball. It was much like his father had done countless times, but Quint felt he had more power.
Quint willed his power off, and the flame popped as it went out.
“I just said, don’t point your string at anything flammable,” Zeppo said. “Let’s go outside where you won’t burn anything.”
Quint duplicated the first string. He barely applied power to his string and was able to make a two-inch flame. Quint hadn’t expected to go to bed that night knowing a magic string, but his father was the better teacher.
“Now a big flame,” Quint said. He took a deep breath, willed a strong tendril followed by as powerful a pulse as possible, and pointed his string across the bare dirt yard.
The flame was almost a foot in diameter and flamed out ten yards before him. Quint was gasping for breath after the demonstration.
“Why am I so weak?”
“There is a price for power. You save it up, and as you use magic, your strength goes into the magic.”
“Do I have to eat more?”
“Food helps a little, but sunlight gives you real power. My magic capacity is so meager that my daily outside activities are enough for me. I imagine it won’t be enough for you. Rated wizards will have tanned skin from exposure to the sun. Heat helps a bit, but sunlight is best,” Zeppo said. “Pogi didn’t tell you about this?” Zeppo asked.
Quint shook his head. “He is bringing me on slowly on purpose,” he said. “Why?”
Zeppo shrugged. “We don’t have many wizards discovered in our little village,” Quint’s father said, “but it happens occasionally. Sometimes, a newly discovered wizard will vanish.” Zeppo shrugged as he locked the workshop doors. “It’s better not to be curious about that, but with you, I suppose my interest has picked up a bit.”
Ricco, the village headman’s son, a willot, walked into the yard. He was an on-again, off-again friend of Quint’s.
