The rock began to glow, its colour ranging through dull red, scarlet, orange and finally straw-yellow.
'Shakh J'haggagh l'yet'yeh!'
The rock flew into a million glowing fragments, only to be collected in an invisible net.
'Ghagh'et!'
The fragments coalesced again into a cooling rock.
Grimm sighed, and the smoking rock dropped back to the table.
'Aghheye!'
From mid-air came a stream of water, which doused the rock, swathing it in steam as it cracked in half. Muttering inaudibly in his private language, Grimm picked up one fist-sized fragment in his slender hand and crushed it to powder.
'That was excellent, Afelnor!' Crohn crowed. 'Superb! I am finished with you now. The rest is up to you alone. You only need to master one more skill and you will be an Acclaimed Questor, the first in this house for nearly ten years. Wait one moment.'
Crohn left the room, returned after a few minutes with a rough tree branch, perhaps seven feet in length and as thick as Grimm's arm. 'You must form this into a true Mage Staff,' he said.
Grimm looked blank, but Crohn waved his hands. 'I cannot teach you how to do this. It is your own journey of discovery.'
Grimm looked at the stout, misshapen lump of lifeless wood, feeling utterly lost. The branch looked nothing like a slender, perdurable Mage Staff, such as the one Crohn carried.
'Adept Grimm, you already know more than most Acclaimed Mages who have ever left this Scholasticate. You have mastered Elemental, Destructive, Additive and Self-Acting powers; my education of you is at an end. Education, as you know, merely means a 'leading out'. I have taught you nothing, but have led out what is within you, and given you the scope to direct it and control it.
'When you have made the staff with your own hands and imbued it with your essence, you will be a mage. A Mage Staff is a deeply personal item, and you must give it a name. My staff is called Mist, after a favourite pony I rode as a child. You must choose a name for your own, but you must not tell it to anybody until it has survived three full-blooded strikes on the Breaking Stone.
'A Mage Staff is a Guild Mage's faithful and constant companion; should it ever be lost, a mage can bring it to hand by an effort of will.
'An uninvited touch by another on a Mage Staff, even with a gloved hand, brings an avid bite; a blow will cause far more injury than any plain wooden rod.
'It cannot break or splinter as long as the mage is alive. It can ward off certain kinds of malevolence, and it can be made to bear passive spells cast on it by the mage who owns it. Thus, for example, it can be left as a ward to alert the mage of approaching danger as he sleeps.'
'But how can I make this staff, Magemaster Crohn?' Grimm pleaded. 'I cannot see in my mind how to make these powers manifest themselves in a dumb lump of wood.'
'I made my staff in seven months,' declared Crohn, displaying his own, gleaming staff with apparent pride, 'forming it through the use of spells that I had memorised, and keeping it by my side at all times. I talked to it and put what I could of myself into it. I finally managed to seal the staff with a spell of Keeping. I did not imbue the staff with all its attributes, but somehow I knew what to do. It is the true bonding of the mage with his staff that makes it what it is; no man can perform the bonding for you. I have borne my staff with me for many years now, and, when I die, my essence will live on in it after me. I was told no more than you by my own, long-dead Magemaster, but I succeeded with far less power at my disposal than you have.'
He ran his hand lovingly over the silk-smooth, yet unworn wood of his black staff. 'If there is one thing in this world I can truly call my own, it is this.'
Grimm nodded, eyeing the gleaming black rod and its seven gold rings with a little envy.
'When your Mage Staff is complete,' Crohn said, 'you will know. On that day, you will leave the Scholasticate and strike the staff three times across the Breaking Stone in the main hall in the presence of your peers and elders. The Breaking Stone is preternaturally hard and sharp-edged; no ordinary piece of wood could remain unbroken after such treatment. You should be aware that the least weakness in the bond between you and your staff will cause it to break on the Stone; you must be more focused and diligent in this last task than in any other you have ever undertaken.'
Grimm had not the least idea of what might be required of him, but he asked, 'And if I am successful at the Stone?'
Crohn shrugged. 'Should you and the staff prevail, you will be Acclaimed as a Guild Mage and given the Guild Ring, which only you can remove from your finger.
'Go now and start work on your own staff, and come to see me when you are ready. You may use any of the grimoires in the Library, and you may use any spells that you have memorised, or any that you can formulate with your spell-language; the results will be the same, whatever spells you choose. Only complete dedication to your task will bring the desired result.
'I will await your return with eagerness. Certainly, you may see Questor Dalquist or me at any other time, but ask nothing of creating the staff, for none of us can tell you what to do. This will be your own work, and only yours. I wish you clarity in your thoughts, Grimm Afelnor. This is your room now, and no other may enter, upon my order.'
Crohn gave a hesitant half-bow and left Grimm with the piece of wood.
Grimm ran his hands along the rough wood and gauged how it would cleave, trying to ascertain the form of the staff beneath the bark. He sat in silence for perhaps an hour; probing, feeling, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the material.
'I dub you Redeemer,' Grimm muttered. 'Together, we will work to redeem my family name.'
Then, in a single, decisive motion, he drew his penknife, one of his few personal possessions, and began to carve. He was careful to remove the minimum amount of material at each stroke and, after each, he re-assessed the wood. He began to feel the grain structure, where the knots might be, the shape of the supple, strong heartwood.
The rumbling of his stomach awakened him to the fact that several hours had passed. He looked down at his feet and saw a pile of small shavings that would have to be cleaned up, and he felt a little surprised at his progress. However, the staff remained just a rough piece of wood, and no magic resonated within it. How was he to imbue it with all the powers it was meant to attain? The completion of Crohn's staff, Mist, had taken seven months, but Grimm had consistently outperformed Crohn's expectations before; he hoped that he would continue to do so.
He realised he was very tired and hungry, and he shuffled off to the Refectory with the rough, fledgling staff, vowing that Redeemer would never leave his side for a moment until his Acclamation, no matter when that might be. He sat alone as he ate, but he felt no loneliness. Soon, he would be leaving the Scholasticate and venturing into the wide world outside. With a start, he realised that he could remember next to nothing of the regions outside these walls, of which he had seen nothing for nine years. Was it really that long? The concept seemed to mock him, and he shivered, realising that the Scholasticate was his home and his whole world. He slept fitfully that night, the staff at his side. In his dreams, he stood, teetering, on the brink of a vertiginous cliff.
For the next month, Grimm flitted like a brown bat around the Scholasticate with his dormant staff. Some days, he spent hours shaping and whittling, or even just softly taking to the dead piece of wood. He forged the staff's brass shoes on his own, annealing copper and zinc ingots with his magic and allowing them to shrink onto the gleaming wood as they cooled. To his immense pleasure, they were a perfect fit.
At other times, he spent his time in the library, steeping himself in the grimoires and librams once denied him, but which were now his friends. On occasion, he would talk to his human friends, Madar, Argand and Dalquist, but his mind was elsewhere, reaching forward in time to his Acclamation and freedom.
