Another Stupid Spell

Chapter 8

My little apartment was right on the waterfront. I had asked Rick if that increased the rental price, but he assured me that it actually brought the weekly rent down! Apparently the nearby fish processing warehouse bothered some tenants. I honestly took very little notice of the smell; it was still better than the fetid rotting of the swamp back home.

I had a view of the ships coming in. Fishing vessels of all sizes regularly visited the docks, of course. But all manner of shipping and pleasure boats made their way through the harbor as well. When I wasn't deep in study or resting, I would absently count the sails or the oars used to drive these naval beasts through the relatively calm waters close to shore. Oftentimes a ship would come in with incredible battle scars. These would sometimes come in the form of broken planks and burnt sails, in the case of piracy. Other times, a ship with a broken mast would limp in, having barely won an encounter with nature itself. Just about every one of them had losses of some sort. And yet, every one of them was beautiful.

Resting and recovering was the plan, at least for my first two weeks back in town. Not only did I need to recover bodily, I needed to recover mentally. The pain took me out of my normal routine. Only in the second week could I really build my mind back up to full potential. Rick and Will were instrumental in helping me to find the road back to full health. Their companionship, their tutelage, and even their cooking contributed to my being made whole.

When I wasn't with my new friends, I was building a foundation in the mystical arts. I wanted to be ready to attend the Arcane University should they accept my application. However there were things that children with magical aptitude learned in their early years. These things... theory, history, ritual... these were gaps in my magical foundation. In order to fill these gaps, I needed books.

But the books I would need were not the same books one would give a human or elven apprentice. I was versed in a different breed of magic. My magic juggled the permanent resources of power and memory with the spendable resource of raw intellect. Humans and elves did not need to worry about their intelligence draining away, nor did their allies nor did their kin. So some of the books that I needed would have to focus on the era when the orcish curse was first weaved. There might even be tomes that tell of the times before the curse, when orc mages walked the land freely and practiced some of the most advanced magic on Panos.

These books could get expensive, even though they didn't contain a single spell. From what Will and Rick told me, they were not in high demand. But in some ways that could be more expensive: Getting these obscure texts shipped or transcribed had a significant price tag. Some of them were even in Orcish, and human scribes who spoke and wrote the language were specialists. Again, not cheap.

We would be leaving on our expedition in the second week of Mid Fall, and I really wanted to place the most important transcription and purchase orders prior to leaving. Luckily, Will had a couple of tasks in mind that would allow me to pay for my small library. A young lord, quite magically advanced for his age, was interested in the Augmented Intelligence spell. However the human lad wished to learn from the person who created the spell. His family was willing to pay for the privilege, and my share would cover almost two thirds of the fees that I would need to pay for my new library.

I had conditions, and if the family didn't agree to all of them, I wouldn't take the job. There was to be no outside observation. My identity was not to be researched or divulged once discovered. The spell was not to be shared with others without a representative of The Magic Shop screening their suitability. And a Bonding Curse would be cast by Rick upon the student to assure that the terms were kept.

I thought that the family would reject those terms outright, or perhaps come back with a counter offer that I would likely refuse.

Instead, they simply agreed.