Dirge for a Necromancer - By Ash Stinson Page 0,21

and a tiny fire appeared over his fingers.

“How do you do that?” asked Dohrleht. “I want to learn that. We’re wasting our time with all these languages you’ve been teaching us.”

“What I mean,” said Maeleht. “I mean—I was told all magic comes from the Elemental Pillars, so it’s all either light magic, shadow magic, fire magic—”

“I told you—I have fire magic covered.”

“—wind magic, or rock magic. Or it can be the low elements, but I don’t remember those ones.”

“Chaos,” Dohrleht said. “Chaos was definitely one of them. And water.”

Raettonus sighed and snuffed out the flame in his hand. “Look,” he said. “Magic is a complicated thing, and there are no set rules that apply universally. In different realms, magic takes different forms. Zylxian magic is based on ten elements. That’s well enough. But I’m not Zylxian. I’m not bound by your realm’s rules.”

“We’re Zylxian though,” Dohrleht said. “Does that mean we’re bound by the rules of this realm?”

“No, not really,” Raettonus said dismissively. “Once you learn one system of magic, if you have the means to understand others then it’s not too difficult to learn those sorts of magic. That’s if you can do any magic at all. Some people can’t. Hell, some people can do some types of magic, but are unable to do others no matter how hard they study. I guess I’m saying that magic is mostly luck.”

“That’s not very encouraging,” Dohrleht said with a frown.

“Well, I’m not a very encouraging type of person.”

For a few months, Raettonus taught them no magic. He was barely able to do any himself after the exertion involved in the spell of hiding he had conducted. Instead of magic, he taught them to read Taurkyna and a little bit of English. He tried to teach them some math as well, but they knew all the simple stuff, and the harder math served mostly to throw him through a loop. Finally, he decided they probably wouldn’t need to know any more math anyway and gave up on it. He taught them some of the more important points of Zylekkhan history, but he didn’t know too much about it, and found himself instead usually matched in knowledge by the brothers. He usually spent their lessons explaining different magic or—usually at Maeleht’s request—telling them about other realms.

“What about the realm you came from?” Dohrleht asked one day after Raettonus had just finished telling them about the realm of Cordichad, which was almost completely engulfed by oceans. “What was your realm like?”

Raettonus thought for a moment. “It wasn’t anything special,” he said. “It was just a place. Nothing I could say about it would be of any interest to you.”

“I think we could decide what’s of interest to us,” muttered Dohrleht, crossing his arms and readjusting his crippled leg.

“Please?” asked Maeleht. “I really want to know.”

Raettonus sighed and brushed some stray strands of hair out his face. “Fine, fine,” he said. “It was a very wet place, when I was a child. So wet that, for a while, crops wouldn’t grow. They just drowned in the fields, and it wouldn’t stop raining. That was just for a few years though. Other than that the land was…mostly fields and forests and orchards and some hills. I couldn’t say much more. I didn’t travel a lot when I lived there.”

“Why’d you leave?” asked Maeleht.

He shrugged. “Because there was no reason for me to stay there,” he responded. It was an empty answer. “Let’s get back to language, hm? Which would you rather do today? Taurkyna?”

“English,” said Maeleht, flicking his tail.

“We’re never going to use English,” said Dohrleht disagreeably.

“We’re never going to use Taurkyna either,” Maeleht said. “What are we ever going to have to do with elves?”

Dohrleht turned to Raettonus. “Couldn’t you teach us Zykyna?” he asked. “I mean, that’s something you know, right?”

“Not well enough to teach it,” Raettonus said. “We’ll study English today.”

“What?” asked Dohrleht. “Why English? My vote was for Taurkyna.”

“Maybe I like Maeleht better,” Raettonus said with a shrug. The younger brother beamed until Dohrleht punched him in the arm.

* * *

The sun was beginning to set when they finished their lesson for the day. As Raettonus walked the halls of the citadel, rusty orange light filtered in through the arrow slits in the outward-facing walls. He paused beside one to look out on the mountaintops below, bathed in dusky sunlight. Slade used to tell him that dusk was the time when magic was strongest; it was the time when faeries came out