First Apprentice

Chapter 20 Part 1

Terry tapped a seal painted on a teapot. Within seconds, steam curled out the spout. He cut off the magic, opened the lid, and dropped a muslin bag inside. He flipped a sand timer over and replaced the lid. "See one," he ordered. "Transcripts are good, but hearing it with your own ears is better."

Spearing a bite of meat with his fork, Joel shook his head. "It's mixed technology, Terry."

Terry froze, bread halfway to his mouth. "What?"

"The receiver's a seal played on a," he hesitated, glancing at me.

"Gramophone," I supplied.

"One of those," Joel said with a grimace. "It's a horn bigger around than this plate with a needle on one end. Worked great. It sounded like I was in the room with you, but the clans," he trailed off.

"It's mechanical without a drop of magic and therefore deemed inferior by some and taboo by others." Stupid traditions propagated by the clans to make them feel superior because they lived on worlds with high levels of ambient magic, unlike Vinetta. "Have you tried using pure seals?" Terry asked me.

I popped a bite of meat in my mouth and chewed while I pondered my answer. Tender, the flavors melded over my tongue. Mustard, sage, garlic, onion, and a foreign spice I couldn't identify. "Have you ever held your hand to your throat and talked at the same time? It vibrates, which is how my seal works. The receiver actually vibrates, which vibrates the needle on the gramophone, which vibrates a diaphragm. The sound is projected through the horn. I'm not explaining this very well."

"I get it," Terry said. "The current communication seals are all telepathic. Adding a telepathic component means somehow translating the vibrations and then transmitting them. All are magic intensive, making the seal highly noticeable. The few sound projection seals are even worse."

"True, but it's a two-part seal. As long as the transmitter remains the same, it doesn't matter what happens on the other end," Joel mused between bites.

"By sound projection seal are you referring to the one Endellion used on Kirnus during the First War?" I asked.

"It and its variations," Terry replied.

Judging by how reasonably he made the suggestion, Terry had read about the seal but never seen in it action. "The finished seals are the size of this building. The one Endellion cobbled together took all the magic she, Donovan, and Sumati could scrape together to operate the thing." Which explained why she showed me the seal after making me swear a magical oath I would never try it without her permission. That seal was dangerous.

The timer glowed blue when the last grain of sand fell. Terry lifted the lid off the pot, speared the muslin bag on a claw, and deposited it on a saucer. Then he poured three servings and returned the lid to the pot. "Not an option then. Ideally, the transcript would use the modern alphabet, not guardian script."

Slave language. Terry didn't say it. He didn't need to. I was raised by Grandfather and his illegal mate – Uncle Manfred. As Endellion said the one time I asked her about guardian rights, the bitterness seeping into her voice like month old coffee grinds, legal mating requires personhood. As far as the courts are concerned, guardians aren't people. They're things.

"Not possible," I said. "Guardian script's phonetic, which means the seal works without swallowing a dictionary. He," I jerked my thumb at Joel, "was on the right track with his transcription seal experiments. All I did was change the power array to a keyed ambient array and swap the word matching to sound matching."

Joel's fork slipped from his fingers and clattered against the plate. "It worked? Why didn't you say something last night?"

"You were too busy taking my waterfall apart." For some inexplicable reason, I indulged him, granting him privileges I never allowed anyone else. I let Joel troll through my journals and charts, showed him a few early experiments, and even let him examine​ the seals on my working version. I hesitated to call anything a final version.

Seals should evolve and either improve or fall out of use, but most were stagnant. Many of the seals used today were the same ones Endellion learned as a child. The clans viewed them as magic blended with artistry. Why change what worked? Why risk life and limb experimenting?

I considered them part art, part science. I acknowledged the components involved: magic, blood, intent, runes, song, and soul. Some used all components; some a few. I wanted to understand them, quantify them because as Martha's husband Tobias – a noted chemist – once told me if you can't repeat it, it's useless. Having armored scales, access to Endellion's famed wards, and the magic to power said wards certainly helped.

"Waterfall?"

"The study Mitchel told us about. The one we thought was a travel desk, trunk load of books, and a few ward stones she carts around in that bracelet of hers is a subplane, Terry. It's a bloody cavern surrounded by lethal wards."

Terry licked his lips. "How big?"

"The size of your quarters with a water cistern she claims lasts two years between refills."

"To be fair," I cut, "the cistern is actually another subplane. There's also not much difference between my bracelet and my study. They're all the same seals. The only differences are the size of the subplane and air exchange and gravity seals. He's making it sound more amazing than it is."

"How many original seals do you have?" Terry asked in disbelief.

"Just two. The transmission seal and my keyed ambient power array. I tweaked the rest."

"Tweaked," Terry said faintly, shaking his head.

Author's Note: After the last two weeks, I was so excited when I pasted this in and the autosave worked! Fingers crossed all goes well!

The song has zero relation to the chapter. I just found an old playlist the other day and was listening to it.