The Hammer Unfalls

“You’re late,” the Mage-at-Arms said, glowering.

“I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Well, you did have quite a day yesterday. I suppose a lapse such as this is to be expected.”

As Master Willow led him to the garden, something troubled Glim. Neither a thought in his mind, nor a tremor in his body, but a disquiet born from that third aspect. A part of himself that had only found voice last night.

Something bothered him about the statement his tutor had just made. Was it the dig about the lapse?

No. That’s classic Master Willow.

That left only the first part. You did have quite a day yesterday, he’d said.

Why were those words bothering Glim? Master Willow had been right there with him. The man had seen it first hand. Glim had accomplished quite a lot. It had made his tutor envious.

But that did not explain the feeling that plagued him now. Neither warning nor observation, but something more. Something he felt compelled to figure out. But why?

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But Glim felt far from normal. Heightened. Wary.

His tutor stopped at the same place he’d attacked Glim, with the same pail of water nearby. Did the man have no tact at all?

“Now then. Pay attention. Freezing water in a pail is easy.”

“Perhaps for you, Master.” Glim stared at the pail in revulsion.

“For anyone. The source of water is right there in a container. That usually won’t happen. There aren’t usually buckets of water handy.”

Glim pondered that for a moment. It made sense. Which meant that plying no longer did.

“I can see you are starting to understand.” Master Willow kicked the bucket, so its water spilled over the ground, seeping into the gravel of the path. “So what is your source of water now?”

Glim looked around for a fountain, or a pond, both of which he knew were somewhere nearby. But he saw neither.

“I don’t know,” Glim admitted.

“Water is everywhere. Though it seems to be nowhere. You must always be sensing it. Seeking it. Water falls. Mist rises. Shadows have more than sunny spots do.”

“Sense it? What do you mean?”

“I mean sense it, you clod! Look for it. Listen for it. Smell it. But also…”

Master Willow trailed off. He closed his eyes, holding a small silver baton.

Silver light, very faint, shimmered around them. The gravel of the path most of all. But also, the underside of the leaves in the garden beds nearby. The trees pulsed with channels of light. Then the light shimmered so bright in Glim’s face that he had to blink.

Master Willow straightened himself.

“When I cast ice on you, where did I draw the heat from? And the water?”

Glim looked around, remembering the pain of his limbs starting to freeze. Master Willow had not used water from the bucket. From where, then?

“I don’t know.”

“From you. Humans are mostly water. And draining your heat left you freezing.”

Glim stared at his tutor in horror. The blinding light in his own eye suddenly made sense. He and Master Willow were the two largest sources of water nearby.

“This is the absolute simplest, crudest, and least elegant source of both heat and water. It is a last resort for many reasons. I waited years before using it on you. Yet its undeniably the most obvious way to get the point across. You literally felt it within yourself. I learned the same way.”

Master Willow pressed the silver baton into Glim’s hands.

“This device is priceless. Not particularly fragile, though. I’m trusting it to you for a while. Don’t misplace it. Your lesson is to seek water. Sense it as best you can, then confirm it with this.”

Glim studied the sleek silver wand. It had no openings or dials or obvious buttons. Merely a thin silver cylinder with a half-orb at one end.

“How do I use it?”

“Hold this in your hand and summon your essentiæ to ply algidon. This baton is attuned to it. It will show you the paths of essentiæ.”

Glim could not help but feel a thrill of anticipation. Not about finding water, which didn’t interest him much. But for the first time, he’d been given a fully functional tool of the Elderkin.

He walked around the fortress, suddenly fascinated by every nook and corner. Every overturned crate. Every sliver of stone.

Whenever he found a moment of privacy, free from other’s eyes, Glim concentrated on his own essentiæ. Unexpected sources of water became more and more obvious to him. Shadows, as his tutor had mentioned. Plants. Cracks in the pathway. The underside of stones.

So caught up was he that night had nearly fallen before his rumbling stomach complained.

The dining hall had already closed. Glim headed for the Guard’s quarters. As he’d hoped, the table there still had crusts of bread and a mugful of stew left in the pot. Glim helped himself, gulping the food down.

“Here you are!” his father called from the doorway. He strode across the room and set his hand on Glim’s shoulder. “I wanted to show you something earlier during the evening training, but I couldn’t find you.”

“I’m here now,” Glim said around a mouthful of bread, showering the table with dry crumbs.

“I suppose I could repeat myself just this once,” his father said, laughing. “Come with me.”

After strapping on thick gloves and arm braces, the pair headed for a rampart well-lit by torches. A guard or two walked along it, watching the mountains.

“Carry on,” his father said. “Now then, Glim. I want you to get some more experience with moving into and out of the bind. It’s the heart of swordplay. Hold out your sword.”

Glim did so. His father pressed his own sword into Glim’s.

“Each part of the blade has unique characteristics. The weak, near the tip, holds considerable momentum and reach, but offers little leverage. The strong, closer to the hilt, allows you to assert power and change the pace of the bind. But you don’t typically strike with it.”

With a scrape of steel against steel, his father repositioned his blade along Glim’s.

“Feel the pressure just here, Glim,” he encouraged. “Being strong in the bind allows you to control the flow of the battle. By applying force strategically, you can determine the pace and direction of your foe’s movements.”

His father drew his sword away until the weak of Glim’s blade snugged up against the strength of his own. “Being weak in the bind grants us maneuverability and flexibility. By compromising our resistance, we can swiftly change positions, deceive our opponents, and deliver unexpected strikes.”

Glim remembered the tree limbs in the compost bin. He yielded slightly then whipped his blade around, coming inside his father’s guard.

“Just like that, son. Now let’s practice moving into and out of aeolia.”

The two engaged, clashing swords at different places and different speeds. His father pointed out various cues to feel for, and Glim listened. But part of himself went deeper than listening. Like he had done all day with the baton, Glim imagined shimmers of essentiæ between their blades. Not just father’s, but where the other guards stood in relation to Glim. Where an arrow might appear from, or a sneak attack might originate. His focus split between the blade in his hand and everything else around him.

“That’s excellent, Glim! I didn’t expect you to pick this up so quickly. You’ve had quite a day.”

Quite a day. Master Willow’s precise words. In an instant, Glim’s earlier disquiet came rushing back.

“What is it, son?”

“Nothing. I’m just done for now.”

As he removed his gloves and helped his father store the weapons, Glim’s senses pulsed in agitation. No. Not senses. Neither thought, nor sensation. Not even emotion. Something deeper, and unidentifiable, had bubbled to the surface. A question Glim didn’t know he had, clamoring to be answered.

Quite a day. Quite a day.

His days had become a rhythm of exhaustion. Glim spent those days engaged in the mental torture of learning to ply essentiæ. Summoning warmth. Finding water. Learning to aim ice was like trying to paint a portrait with a dustbroom. Each movement he’d made fell orders of magnitude off the mark. But he’d gotten the hang of it quickly, to Master Willow’s surprise. As if it should have come harder. Taken longer.

In the evenings, often well into the night, Glim’s father would catch him up on the techniques he’d missed during the day. Just as he had this very evening. The other children taunted Glim for missing half the training to “play with ice.” But in truth, Glim’s routine worked well for both his swordplay and his plying. His evening sessions were spent in individual training with seasoned soldiers instead of mass training against other children.

But that alone did not explain Glim’s progress with the sword. He recalled the satisfaction of landing a blow against Garrick’s breastplate. Snippets of recollection flitted through his mind. A low whistle. You’ve got a fighter on your hands. The envious looks of the young guards at the compost bins.

Plying had somehow accentuated Glim’s skill with the sword. He didn’t know how, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

As for plying, the physical exertion of sword training helped to clear Glim’s mind and burn off frustration. Glim was starting to find that challenges of the previous day disappeared overnight when he tried again the next day. Master Willow assumed that Glim was practicing far more often than he actually did. Glim never told him otherwise.

Algidon. Æolia. Phyr. The needle theorem. The trine, falling off its stand.

Glim felt he shouldn’t be excelling at plying and swordplay both. The shortcuts didn’t make sense. He was practicing less in each discipline, but gaining more. As if balance meant overloading both sides of the needle at once, somehow lightening the overall burden.

It seemed too easy to be real. Too quick. Master Willow had cautioned him against something similar.

You have to decide, his tutor had told him, because it takes many years of study to perfect either central or fringe essentiæ. There isn’t room in one lifetime for both.

Father would be quick to agree that the same caution applied to swordplay. The men shared maddening similarities.

But Glim found his mental exhaustion cured most quickly through the physical demands of swordplay. His physical exhaustion somehow reset his mind for the next day’s lessons.

Only his spirit seemed dismayed by the arrangement. But Glim didn’t see a way to appease that.

Another piece of advice came into Glim’s mind: if a path feels as easy to you as breathing? Run down it, and don’t look back. There is little to be gained by striving against our own natures.

He wouldn’t call it easy, that’s for sure. Yet somehow, overloading his body and mind seemed to be working, even if he didn’t know why.

If a cost loomed on the horizon, he didn’t see a way to avoid it.