“Monsters?” I asked. Orcs were one thing, but what other creatures was I going to have to face here?
“Oh, yes,” Tolin grinned. “There are so very many monsters.”
Chapter Four
For the next month, my life was divided between training and maintaining the temple.
Tolin seemed to fit the all-knowing sensei type, and I was his pupil. There were no cars to constantly wax, but there was a temple.
Half my time was spent on the duties of a caretaker’s assistant. There was a lot that needed doing around the place to make it more than a dilapidated ruin. There was woodwork to be stripped, sanded down, and repainted. Walls to be rebuilt, using a crude cement of ash, rock, and lime. Tiles to be nailed back into place as I balanced precariously on rooftops, a hammer in one hand and a bunch of nails held between my teeth. Even when it rained outside, Tolin found uses for me, dusting out neglected rooms, repairing broken furniture, and patching together worn and faded rugs.
But the most important part of my days, the part for which I eagerly got out of bed each morning, was the training.
We started with theory.
“The process of harnessing magic is called Augmentation,” Tolin explained as we sat on the veranda, Master Softpaw begging us for attention. “It is expressed in two forms—the arcane arts and the martial techniques. Every group of Augmenters works with a specific element, which determines the arts and techniques available to its practitioners. But whatever element you work with, you will have access to both the martial and the arcane.”
“Can someone wield multiple elements?” I asked.
Tolin nodded. “They are called elementalists. Those who can use two elements are rare, but those who can master three are exceedingly rare.”
“Can anyone master them all?”
“Those number so few, that I could name them.”
I waited for Tolin to start listing the people who’d mastered all elements, but he stayed silent. He had a habit of answering my questions only when he wanted, and he’d often give insufficient explanations.
“You might be one of them,” Tolin said with a conspiratorial smile. “It will be difficult, but the Immortal Swordslinger can manage.”
He called me by that title quite frequently, and I was starting to wonder whether it was some kind of wish-fulfilment on his part. I still didn’t know what it entailed, but I was happy to go along with it while he fed me both food and knowledge.
“Where does the magic come from?” I asked on another occasion. “Surely, the energy doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.”
Even as I said it, I started to doubt myself. Conservation of energy was an important rule in my world. I remembered that much from high school science. But my world didn’t have guilds of Augmenters or forests full of orcs. For all I knew, the laws of physics didn’t apply here.
“The energy expended in magic comes from vigor,” Tolin said. “It is the vital force that exists in all things, the living thread that runs through the whole of creation.”
“You’re saying that there’s already Vigor in you and me?” I asked. I recalled the talking sword, Nydarth, and how she’d said my Vigor was low. I didn’t know where she was now, but, at least, the old man could provide me with a little education.
“That’s right.”
“And even in Master Softpaw?” I shot a skeptical look at the cat perched over the caretaker’s shoulder.
“Of course, in Master Softpaw. But also in the wood of these steps, the stones of the temple, the dirt of the yard. Even in the air around us.”
“I thought you said it was a living force.”
“And it is. In some ways, the whole world is living. Some of it just lives more brightly than the rest.”
At times like that, I started to wonder if this would ever entirely make sense to me. But I wasn’t going to give up. I didn’t need to believe in Tolin’s philosophy, didn’t even need to get all the rules of how it was meant to work. As long as I could master the techniques, that would do.
Though the theory came first, it was practice that filled most of the time. Every day, I practiced channeling Vigor.As I had done with the pebble on the first day, I opened up pathways within myself and let the energy flow through. By the end of a month, I felt like I knew what I was doing. I had felt the flow of Vigor through me hundreds of times, the dizzying rush as it energized my body. But I hadn’t yet cast a single spell.
“When will you show me how to use my Augmenting?” I asked Tolin as we sat beneath a tree outside the temple one sunny afternoon. “To actually use the arcane arts and martial techniques?”
Tolin poured two cups of rice wine, handed one to me and took a sip from the other. A smile spread across his face.
“Soon enough,” he said. “These things can only be rushed so much. The children of this world practice for years, and you hope to accomplish it in a month!”
“But you said we had to do it quickly—that the world needs the Swordslinger!” I tried to appeal to the caretaker’s need, if only so I could increase my power. Sure, it was a little selfish, but I wanted to wield more magic, like I’d done with the talking sword.
“And it does,” he replied. “But the Swordslinger must be ready to face the world.”
Someone emerged from the rock-lined path up the hillside and walked toward us. It was a slender woman in flowing robes that swept back to reveal shapely legs. She walked barefoot across the rough ground. Brown hair that flowed down to her waist was held back from her face by an intricate circlet of twining gold threads, revealing pointed ears. A large satchel hung from her shoulder, and she carried a carved staff as tall as she was.
“Is that an elf?”
