Brevon cleared his throat to release some of his nerves. The old man was alone and far away, and there seemed to be no natural explanation as to who—or what—opened the doors. That, like the blue torches, made the hairs stand on the back of his neck, festering in him a paranoia: that they weren’t alone, that the tower itself was alive, that an invisible force was haunting their every step.
“Yes, the doors opened on their own. No, you are not crazy. Now, could you hurry it up?” The old man dipped his quill in an inkwell. “I am not getting any younger,” his hand moved over the parchment, writing with precise, practiced movements. “My… time… is… rather… precious.” He said absently, his attention divided.
Brevon shook his head, clicked his tongue, and forced himself forward. Theryn followed him in, and both of them startled as the doors began creaking shut behind them. The old man smiled to himself. It was the little things in life.
Brevon let out a nervous chuckle, tipped his flat cap to hide his uneasiness, then rubbed his hands together before clearing his throat. “I’ve heard you are looking for an apprentice, Master Wizard,” he said, barely managing to don his characteristic wolfish grin. Wizard or not, a trade was a trade.
“You have heard correctly,” the wizard’s voice echoed down the hall, his words pronounced slowly, sharply, clearly, and with a dramatic rhythm—as if reciting from a practiced play. “And though I am never one to discourage another’s ambitions—‘it is never too late to learn’, as they say—I think you are a bit older than what I had imagined for my apprentice, Mr. Fendrick.”
“Why, I—” Brevon let out another chuckle. He didn’t recall telling the wizard his name. “Um, well… of course I don’t mean me,” he and Theryn passed the archway at the end of the hall, and entered the study. There were two chairs on their side of the desk, and, without looking up from his scroll, the wizard gestured for them to sit. “I meant my son.”
“Aha!” The wizard exclaimed, as if an important point had been clarified. He took a few long moments to finish writing his script, then put his quill to rest in the inkwell, before looking up at the two. He examined Brevon first, and the man became alert as he noticed the wizard’s intrusive piercing gaze, his irises as blue as the torches in the stairwell. “Umph…” the wizard grunted, then turned his gaze on Thyren. The boy met his eyes with curiosity and wonder, and the wizard smiled. Then, he noticed the book. “Ah…” he leaned back in his chair.
“What do you have there, boy?” The wizard asked.
“A book,” Theryn answered defensively, and his father sent him a displeased glare.
“A book, you say?” The wizard lifted a quizzical brow and reached an empty hand forward. “May I see it?”
Theryn had seen this trick before. It starts with ‘may I see it,’ becomes ‘let me hold it, I just want to check something,’ and ends with ‘oh, you want it back? Too bad, it is mine now.’ The old man would have to do better than that.
“No!” Theryn pulled the tome to the side, away from the wizard and his father. “It’s mine, and you can’t have it!”
“Theryn!” Brevon yelled, “I am truly sorry, Master Wizard. He can be a bit stubborn sometimes, but I am sure—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fendrick, I was under the impression you did not wish to be my apprentice.”
“I, ah—” Brevon stammered. “I do not.”
“Then, would you please refrain from interrupting me? I am in the midst of conducting an interview with a potential apprentice, and I am afraid that if you continue to interrupt, I might have to… remove you.”
Brevon’s jaw dropped, his imagination running wild with what ‘remove you’ might mean practically, or, more likely, magically. “I-I-I— Ah— A thousand apologies, Master Wizard, but… he is my son, I just thought… I was trying to…”
“There’ll be time for us to talk, but for now, don’t.”
Brevon pursed his lips shut, and Theryn blinked in disbelief. He had never seen his father so… compliant.
“Is the book important to you?” The wizard directed his attention back to Theryn.
“Um… yes.”
“Why?”
Theryn knew the answer, but didn’t know how to communicate it, or how to explain it; he wasn’t sure it was even possible.
“I-I don’t… I can’t…” he searched for the right words, tried to grasp them, desperately, but they all seemed to slip right through his fingers. He felt his father’s judging eyes on him and lowered his head. “I like books…” he said eventually. “Books are never disappointed in you.”
Both men opened their mouths to speak, but were at a loss for words, and a few long moments passed in silence.
“Have you read that book, cover to cover?” The wizard pointed to the tome.
“Yes, a number of times, but it’s missing some pages, so… I couldn’t read everything.”
“You read through it more than once?”
“Yes, but… It’s hard to say how many times exactly, sometimes I’d read a chapter, and it would remind me of something written in another chapter, so I’d jump around, and… then it would happen again with that chapter, and… then I’d have to go to sleep, so…” The boy trailed off.
“Do you understand what the book is about?”
“Yes, a little bit, but there are some parts that are… confusing.”
“Like what? If you can think of an example…”
“Well…” Theryn had spent weeks lost in thought over all the questions he had, all the little bits and pieces he hadn’t fully been able to understand. Never in his life did he imagine he would have someone to share those thoughts with. His parents, his brother, his brother’s friends, none of them found any interest in those things. And now, when it was finally happening, he was struggling to think of even a single thing. Damn it all! Why now of all times—
“Alright! Here’s something!” He said as the thought finally popped into his head. “In Chapter II, the book talks about the Second Precept,” he rose to stand on his chair and laid the book on the desk, opening it and flipping to the right chapter. “Everything that is, has an exact opposite,” he trailed the quote with his finger as he read. “That’s the Precept of Polarity, right? And the rest of the chapter talks about all sorts of things that have an opposite. Like the Five Realms, which… are really six realms when you think about it.”
“It is a little strange, isn’t it?” The wizard agreed.
“Yes, well, there are six realms, and each of them is a… sort of contradiction of the other: Heaven and Hell, Faenir and Felhein, Astral and Mortal. But, because the Mortal Realm is… well, mortal, while the other five are immortal, we don’t count it—which is why we call them the ‘Five Immortal Realms’.”
“Right.”
“Well, then there is Chapter IV, that says…” he flipped the pages over, some of which were completely torn from the spine, and were kept inside the book just by the friction applied by their neighboring pages. “This one was difficult to understand, and there are plenty of pages missing, so I’m still not sure I got it, but… Every pattern is repeated and reflected, above and below, within and without,” he trailed the words again.
“And what does that tell you?”
“At first, I thought it was just like the Polarity thing, but then I thought… If Polarity itself is a pattern, wouldn’t it repeat within itself? And if that is true, then that would apply to the Five Realms as well. So, Heaven, within itself, would have two opposing forces, and so would Hell, and Faenir, and Felhein, and Astral and—”
The wizard squinted at the boy. “And you got that from what you read in Chapter IV?”