From: hutch@agora.rdrop.com (Steve Hutchison)
Date: 6 Oct 1995 10:17:24 -0000
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [AI] Apprentice Inept 5: Consecration and Transubstantiation

It was safe and quiet in the Dragon's Inn.

A'arden was grateful for that -- buying stories was one thing,
but getting drawn into them, that was quite another thing.

He sighed, and leaned back into his seat, pleasantly drowsy.
A few strangers wandered in and out, but only one stopped to
talk, and that was some time back.

He let his fingers wander over the books resting on the bench
beside him.  Earlier, just after sunset, he had gone (brashly)
to a celebration.  And, thanks to a careless accident on the
part of one of the guests, he had nearly been sucked into one
of the stories.  He had barely escaped, when the otter Lutra
had given him the two books and ordered him out.

But now they were just temptation.  The creature had only meant
for him to take the next story, and certainly intended to be
paid.  But... surely, there was nothing wrong in paying the
fellow more for two additional stories?
He lifted the books up to the table, and set his pen and paper.
With a slightly damp and shaking hand, he opened the top book,
and began to transcribe.

                            Apprentice Inept
                 Consecration and Transubstantiation

                                  By:

                               Fox Cutter
                            Steve Hutchison

Foxeris Journal.

'95 june 22st

Morning. The sun has finally come on for the first time in a
week. Finally drying my fur, thank god!

I'm still sitting on the river bank, where I was when I did my
entry last night. I'm going to be heading down the river some
more, but first I think I should tell you the rest that
happened that night.

Wait, who's you? I guess I mean Frinklan, or someone he shows
this too.

* * *

'95 may 16th

I fell into sleep like a stone into a river. I started
dreaming. I was standing on a large square, about 500 feet by
500 feet. Moving a few feet I reached the edge, and looked
down.

I quickly moved back, from the edge was a LONG drop! I appeared
to standing on top of a large building, over the edge I could
see many others. Some in good repair, and others falling apart.

"Where I am." I said.

"Nork." A voice said behind me.

I turned, standing a few feet in front of me as someone in a
white robe, very thick. It drug on the ground, and left a black
space where the head should be seen at.

"Who are you?"

The person didn't respond, just reached up, and grabbed the side
of the hood. Then in one quick movement pulled it back, and
uncovered the head.

"FRINKLAN!" I said, running to him, and hugging him. "What's
going on, I saw you die!"

He broke the hug, and said, "Yes, you did.  I'm dead and I'll
be dead until sunrise."

I blinked a few times, "What?"

"Ritual magic.  Wheel of life.  Life, death, rebirth.  It's
part of the reshaping ritual.  If you break the circle, Faith
would die, I would probably die, and the backlash would tear
your magic out.  That was why Jinx stopped you.  She brought
you here to the Dream Lands so we can talk."

I shook my head, "I guess I understand. I think."

He grinned, "Good.  We're doing as well as usual.  Listen to
me, Foxeris.  You aren't used to this, but I want you to remember
what I'm telling you.  The dead are not just echoes of the living.
We know things that the living cannot.  You must ask me five
questions, and choose carefully.  That's all you get."

I sat down, "So where are we here, this Nork of yours?"

He sat down in front of me, "Nork is a city on the east cost of
NorAmac.  It was one of the hearts of the old America.  We're
here because a part of your destiny is here.  More than that
I will not say."

I put my head in my paws, "You won't tell me anything else."

"About Nork, no. About many other things." He paused for
dramatic effect, "Ask."

I looked up, "Spill it."

He sighed, "You have to ask the questions.  It's a rule."

I looked at my paws.  "Will I ever be a magician?"

He laughed, a gleam in his eyes.  "No.  You have the will,
the world responds to your intent, but you have a sort of
injury that was born into you.  You will never do well
with spells, with the formal rituals.  Your stutter will
improve but not enough for you to be a word-wielder.  You
even stutter when you sing, so you'll not be a spell-singer.
Your hand is steady but you have a trick in your eye, so
that you will never be able to write out the more complex
magics.  The best that you'll do in those areas is journeyman,
and that only after years of hard work."

He must have seen my shoulders slump down.  He touched
me on the head.  His paw was cold.

"Foxeris, you are a wizard.  That was what drew you to me.
That was why my talents didn't protect me from a simple
curse.  Wizards can only be trained by wizards.  You need
training.  What shape your powers will take, I may not tell
you.  They will not be the same as mine.  It will be some
years before they are completely formed, before you have,"
he searched for a word, "finished maturing.  But, they have
begin to show themselves already.  And wizards are far more
powerful than magicians, but we have a greater responsibility
to the World because of it."

"Well that's helpful."

He just blinked at me with those purple eyes.  Finally I
asked him "What would you tell me if I asked the right
question?"

He nodded again, "Tell me in the morning that Alex won't get to
Dales until the autumn equinox, so we may have to wait for him
first."

I nodded, "Got it."

"Now I can answer one more question for you."  He folded his
arms and waited while I thought.

"How can we get the geas removed?"

He pulled the hood back up over his head.  "The geas is
not the nuisance that you, or even I, think.  It came
about thru the spell of those weasels, but it was not their
spell and it does not serve their intentions, nor ever did.
It will finish in its due course.  Its purpose has not yet
been compassed."

"That doesn't help.  What you mean is, no we can't."

He shook his head.  "Correct."

I nodded, "Nice simple one word answer." I was about to ask
another question, when my vision rippled. Then my vision
was filled with light, then everything went black.

'95 may 17th

I blinked, slowly opening my eyes.  To the east the sun grew
from the hill, near me Faith was sleeping in the circle, with
the boss's body next to her.

I stood, went over to the pack, and grabbed some food.  That was
when I noticed that one of the pockets had came open, the main
journal had been blown out, some pages ripped from it.

I groaned, sticking them back into the journal from
where then ripped, and put it back into its pocket.

"Jinx." I called.

She poked her head up from behind a rock and said, "Yes?"

"Thanks for knocking me out there. If I had entered the
circle--"

She cut me off, "I know. Then you talked to Frinklan, yes?"

"Yes."

"You did?" Frinklan said next to me. I looked up and grinned,
"Yes, also, Alex is out of town until after equinox."

He nodded, "Ok."  Then he fainted.

* * *

Journal of Foxeris the Apprentice Inept

I should write here that during the dream I was told
something that I did not tell Frinklan about, with good
reason.

After I asked the last question, before the dream ended this
happened:

He showed his teeth, "When Brad Majors took your two whiskers
for that spell, he also took a bit of your soul.  That's black
magic."

I gulped, "How did you know about Brad?"

Frinklan looked at me with that pay-attention look again.
"I'm DEAD! I know all sorts of stuff that I won't know when
I come back to life.  This is deep magic, kid, not some fantasy.
Oh, and in the morning, DON'T tell me about Brad!  If I find out
I will have to hunt him down and kill him, or worse."

I chuckled, "No problem with that!"

That was when then dream really ended

* * *

Journal of Frinklan the Obscure

'95 june 22st

It was bad enough that I had to die for the Shaping ritual.
I didn't expect to lose the best parts of the spring.  As far
as I can tell, the ritual did work, but (without a whole Dance
Circle to channel power) we couldn't shortcut ...

Foxeris isn't going to understand this at all.  Start over.

OK.  When we are children, we bond with our Animal Spirit and
begin to Change.  Initially our children are somewhat like us
in shape and size, but the Change can make drastic alterations
that vary from child to child.  I have a younger brother, who
is a ferret.  He changed less than me, and is much more humanlike
in his face and hands.  Yet, for some reason, he has retractile
claws while I do not, even though my Sea Otter templates do, and
his Ferret templates don't.

The reason we can change without enduring great pain is that we
are children, and our growth hasn't finished.  When I was in
my own apprentice years, I was drafted, along with my Teacher,
and stuck in the Lone Star Army.  Tejico was being attacked by
a Dead Army from the old Aztec lands, accidentally awakened when
a Jaguar there murdered his brother on top of one of the old
pyramids.  He never meant to repeat the old sacrifice, but he
did it anyway.  The war that followed took six years to finish.

The army did three things for me.  Or to me, if you want to look
at it that way.  They taught me to control my magic, even given
the way my Wizard talent worked.  That was because General Kasim
is a Wizard herself, and she recognized what Teacher hadn't, and
made me her apprentice.  Her Wizardry was in War -- she's dragged
by her talent all over the world wherever a conflict gets to the
point where blood will be shed en masse.  She tries to end the
conflict, but this time her negotiation skills didn't do anything
at all.  How do you reason with a ghost who thinks that he's
Quetzalcoatl, returned from across the Eastern Seas?  Especially
when he's channeled thru the mind of a mad jaguar.

What little real, direct magic they taught me was mostly how to
control weather.  That's because weather is unpredictable, chaotic,
made by the action of a thousand thousand influences, small and
large.  That is what my Wizard talent worked into, though it wasn't
until later that I discovered all the implications.  Anyway, I'm
pretty much certain that Foxeris is a wizard-fledge.  If he survives
the onset of his Wizard power, it'll be more obvious what that
power wants to become, and I can pick the style of magic to teach
him so he can learn control.  I think he's passed the first of the
five crises, but I'm not sure --  wizard power is subtle and hard
to see unless you know what you're looking at.

The second thing they taught me in the army was how to use my
latent teke and esper.  I'm still only a touch-telepath, and
I don't expect to ever be more than that, but combat training
did give me some useful tricks.  My teke is good for controlling
lightning, for instance -- a very useful skill when messing with
storms.  It also messes up electrical machines I'm too close to,
but that's not really a problem with so few of them left.  I can
do other things with it, but it's an awful lot of work, so why
bother -- I do 'em by hand.

The third thing, though, Foxeris didn't know about until yesterday.

General Kasim has a very high standard for all her soldiers,
and that goes double for her special forces teams, and as her
personal apprentice, I was assigned to one of those teams.  Wizards,
real wizards, tend to hide their nature, and nobody was supposed
to know that she was teaching me anything special. 

She wanted us Special Forcers to be the model soldier, and if that
took magic as well as hard work, she found it.  I only THOUGHT I
was in good shape when I came out of Basic.  This war lasted seven
long years, and I went in early.  I'll get into the details sometime,
but right now, the important part was the General's special program
for making Real Men out of her soldiers.  Or Real Women; she wasn't
one of those Restore the World fanatics who thinks women should
sit home and whelp children as fast as they can.

Anyway.  She wanted soldiers who could go mano-a-mano with the
zombies and not be shredded.  She hired this crazy healer-mage
who claimed he was the one who created the Ritual that lets us
have children.  I knew better at the time, but now I'm not all
that sure he wasn't -- at least, I think he was in on it, after
all.  A lot of the folks from the Turn are secretive, and a lot
of them have just forgotten what happened that long ago.  Folks
who live that long, some of 'em more than two centuries, tend
to forget things.  That's another reason for these Journals.

This healer wasn't human, so by all rights he couldn't have been
the one who created the Ritual.  He was a mole.  Friendly sorta
fellow, except that he couldn't see past the end of his nose,
and he had poison-spurs on his thumbs and big toes.

Four of us "first volunteers" died from his experiment.  Two
of 'em were rabbits, one dog, one avian, a hawk I think, and
then there was me.  I figured out the problem.  His intention
was to blend in additional animal-spirits, to bond us with
more "warrior" type animals, and he'd use his healing magic
to help us survive the accelerated change.  The rabbits were
twins, a fem and a mel.  I never knew their names.  He did the
two of them at once, because of their being twins, and tried
to bind in Coyote spirit.  That didn't work.  I never did hear
what exactly happened except that they took two carcasses out
under sheets that were the wrong size and shape.

The hawk -- I was part of the support team, lending power.  All
I had to do was dance, which at the time was a real pain, and
sing, which I did somewhat better then.  There were seven of
us, and the healer and the hawk inside the main circle.

I was most junior magician -- the only reason I was part of it
at all, was because I had this wizard talent that seemed to
make things come out the way I wanted them to do.

Hawk, that was his name (creative, huh?), took an active part in
the ritual -- and when it came time for his death-and-rebirth,
well, he died, but he had no rebirth.  His body changed into a
human, then fell into ashes.  His ghost stayed around just long
enough for me to talk to him, then left for wherever ghosts wind up.

That was the first time I saw a Reaper.  Most people, it turns
out, can't see them.  Only healers of great power, and spirit
mages who are out of their bodies, and me, as far as I can tell.
The Reaper was just this guy, sort of skinny and with lanky red
hair, but when Hawk cut his throat, the Reaper was there and he
cut along with him.

I stopped him, and Hawk, and asked them what went wrong.  The
Reaper told me about substitutiary spiritual inflection, and
I had no idea what the hell he meant, then Hawk told me to say
goodbye to his mom for him, and then they weren't there.

So, when the Healer came out of his trance, I told him what the
Reaper had said.  He was a little cheezed off by this, because,
it seems that the Reaper was the one who told him about the
whole dying-and-being-reborn thing in the first place.  Anyway,
when my turn came three nights later, they had a new ritual with
a few changes.  I insisted, and got them.  First, no new animal
bonds.  Sea Otter is enough for me.  Instead, they came up with
a template for "Soldier" that was this over-muscled warrior icon
with long legs and lots of claws and sharp teeth, spikes on his
tail, etc.  I'm ashamed to admit that I thought it was "cool",
but then, I was in the army at the time.

My second change, was that someone besides me had to die in the
ritual -- I'd be too busy changing to endure the death at the
same time.  Ritually, I had to be connected to the person.  So
they used the quickest, easiest method -- a young feline I knew
whose name was Faith, who had been interested in me as mating
material, was drafted into service in the first position in
the circle.  The healer took second, and I took third, of course.

I remember a blinding pain when she drove the blade into her
heart, and a sensation as though my every limb was being filled
with hot boiling water.  The healer began his work, and I found
myself no longer screaming from the agony, but my whole being
was bound up in trying to cope with this new imperative, this
soldier-image.  Eventually we came to an accommodation, and at
dawn, Faith woke to life again, and we fell from the Real World
to the Mundane.  

I had grown from a normal height to something over two meters, and
grown much stronger, with my legs and arms modified closer to a
human design.  I didn't grow the claws of steel nor spikes in my
tail, and I wasn't quite the herculean image that the General
wanted.  I'm very strong, but that degree of muscle bulk would have
made me sink like a rock.  Still, I was deemed a success.  A few
others were likewise changed, and we were able to fight closer to
the enemy, enough that the tide of the war changed.  The healer
was killed, not long after, by a spy sent by the Jaguar Priest-King,
and the spell rendered essentially useless.  Without a healer of
his power, nobody would even try it, and the General classified it
a military secret.

In the last year of the war, I befriended a faerie of dream and
had it bind to me an illusion that hid my unusual size and other
attributes behind a seeming of normalcy.  For spy work going into
Aztexa, originally, but then I discovered afterward that people
were unnerved by my "real" appearance.  I'm not sure if it was the
size or the fact that my eyes changed to an unusual color, but
people had begun to avoid me.  So I keep the illusion in place,
most of the time.

But it broke when I died performing the Change ritual for Faith,
and Foxeris was a little stunned when I woke up from my faint.

He was stunned, also, when Faith stood up.

Her equine form wasn't completely gone.  The horse-spirit had
gone free when I was dead, and that was one of the things we
had expected.  The Reaper who came for the horse wasn't one of
the talkative ones.  Still, the Change had begun.  Without a
Healer of great power, and so that Faith wouldn't die of the
stress of Changing again, the spell had demanded time as its
recompense.  During the night, the horse body had changed.
The tail was no longer a horse-tail, it was a cat's tail, and
her hair was now fur, with the siamese-burmese coloration that
had made Faith so striking during her prior life.

The horse-head had shortened, with more feline ears.  Hooves
had made way for great broad cat-pads.  Her eyes had slitted
pupils, like a cat.  She still spoke with a telepathic whisper,
though -- her mouth and throat weren't constructed for speech.

We decided to continue downriver, slowly.  I wanted Foxeris
to discover for himself that we had been held in OtherTime for
a bit over a month.

But then, of course, that night, things went wrong again.

* * *

Foxeris Journal.

'95 june 22st

It's nearing the end of the day, and I've decided that I should
at least write down what happened on may 17th, as it is of
interest to who ever may read this, be it Frinklan or someone
else.

'95 may 17th -- ?

We had moved down the river during the day, pulling of a few
minutes before to camp the night here on this bank.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the boss. I still couldn't get
over his size. He did tell me what exactly happened to him in the
army (during which he magically fixed the torn pages in the
journal).

Faith was with him as well, they where both talking about
something which I couldn't hear. It was probably about when
he would finish the changes on Faith.

I sighed in the twilight, gently petting Jinx, who was sitting in
my lap.

"Relax Fox." She said noticing the look on my face. "He could
have been wrong."

I sighed again, "You agree that in the dream he would know that
information, how could he be wrong?"

She looked up, the light from the newly started camp fire
reflecting in her eyes. "You never know."

I tweak her nose, she playfully snapped at my finger a bit before
curling back up. I continued to pet her as I looked over the
emerging starts in the sky.

It didn't take me long to decided something was wrong with there
positions, and only a few more minutes to understand what it was.
They had moved, and I was so out of practice I almost missed it.

I did some quick adding in my head, "Jinx could you get off for a
second I need to talk to the boss."

Jinx crawled off, and walked over to Frinklan and Faith. The
weight of my pack, which I had not bother to take of yet, pulling
on my shoulders.

The two had stopped talking and where sitting around the camp
fire one on each side. I crouched down next to Frinklan and said,
"What happened?"

He looked up at me, grinning. "What do you mean?"

"Today is june 19th, 33 days have pasted sense last night."

"And you came to that conclusion how?"

"I had an uncle who was an astronomer, he taught me how to
navigate by the stars, and tell the day by the starts at sunrise
and sunset. I can place it so exactly though by the length of the
day. The solstice is in two days."

His grin grew larger, "Very good. The spell held us in other time
for those 33 days."

I stood, "I see, thanks." Then grabbed a bit of food and headed
back down the beach to where I was before.

Behind me I heard Frinklan yell out my name, I started to turn
when I felt something hit me, and suddenly I was in water. Then
the sudden shock to my system made me pass out.

----

The night staff consisted of an old man, who came sometimes,
and a trainee waitress.  The old man sat down across from the
story buyer.  Nobody else was in the common dining hall, at least,
nobody was visible.  There might well be armies lurking in the
dark booths and corners.

A'arden returned his quill to its holder, and looked patiently
at the old fellow.

"You ever let anyone read them stories?"  the geezer cackled.

"My company sells them back in my world," A'arden replied, with
a guarded tone of voice.

"Mind if I read one or two?"

"Only if you pay me," the short grey man sighed.

"Oh, well, never mind."   The wizened fellow returned to his
fairly casual attempts to clean tables.

A'arden started to return to the task -- but when he looked
down, the books were gone, and all that he saw on the table
was a bit of damp seaweed.

------

This story is posted to rec.arts.comics.creative, alt.fan.furry,
alt.pub.dragons-inn, and spk.literary.  It is copyrighted 1995
by Stephen Hutchison and Fox Cutter.  Permission is granted for
archive with rec.arts.comics.creative and alt.pub.dragons-inn, and
spk.literary.  All other rights, including repost, are reserved
to the authors.  This story may not be distributed for a fee except by
permission of the authors, and this copyright notice may not be
removed.