There were mages that could shake the world.
Salazar was not one of them.
His mother had been a hedge-witch, whose talents largely consisted of talking to snakes and understanding herb-lore and anatomy enough to serve the village as a midwife and healer. Most of the time her skills were merely used to tend well to their small herd of sheep. If asked about his father, Salazar would claim to have none.
Then his mother ended ill business with a man who was a much better witch than she ever could hope to be, and Salazar couldn’t claim to have either parent.
———
He’d been there when the man had killed her. He wasn’t local, from Barcelona maybe or even further—Salazar didn’t know—and he had a large ruby ring as a focus that gleamed malevolently when he spoke the word that killed her.
It only took one. Offoco, and then her breath was gone, bruises quickly developing on her throat without anything touching it as she struggled.
Salazar had tried to attack the man. The man laughed, and pushed him to the ground with a thought. “What are you going to do?” he asked, “Stab me? You’ve hardly enough magic to try anything else.”
His ineffective binding curse--the one that was mostly useful on particularly recalcitrant sheep that needed shearing--had done nothing to the man, and in that moment Salazar thought that yes, he would.
He knew three spells that weren’t minor healing cantrips: the binding one, a spell to make candlelight without a candle, and another for shepherding—this one to calm the herd.
This mage was the sort that could ask hedge-witches to assist in foul magics and then kill them with a word when they refused. There was no magic that Salazar could know that would ever do well against him.
He did have a boot knife though, and the man wasn’t expecting it, especially not after the second of confusion caused by Salazar’s calming spell.
It was a remarkably effective strategy. Even the greatest mages still bleed.
———
For two years after his mother’s death, Salazar wandered. He’d learned that he was powerless, and he learned even more that he didn’t want to be.
He had very little success.
A not-quite-grown shepherd from a nameless Basque town was not the sort that entered magicians apprenticeships, especially the sort of shepherd who was both illiterate and near-powerless.
He didn’t let that stop him. He’d learned, through trial and error, that he was quite a good fighter, and cleverer than most while traveling. He’d learned also that being near-powerless didn’t necessarily mean that one had to be without control.
By the time he reached eighteen, he’d ended up with a band of mercenaries fighting pointless little squabbles for any little lord with too much coin and not enough land, sometimes even attacking trade on the roads for extra money, and those sorts of skills came in useful.
Maybe he couldn’t shake the earth, but sometimes shifting pebbles under the feet of an enemy worked just as well.
Mostly that wasn’t what he did, his role in the band was initially more concerned with healing (no one would have actually hired him as a soldier), but it did happen, and then it happened more and more because they realized he was quite good at it.
Then he met the mage Ulric, and everything changed for him.
———
Ulric was an unpleasant man who until recently had been occupied in the court of el Gotoso, until scandal and unpleasantness had driven him out penniless. Really, they ought to have killed him, but his magic let him escape with his life and enough coin to pretend at mercantilism while traveling.
Eventually, Salazar imagined, some other great court would take him in, but until then he was going to smaller patrons—there were plenty of people who would put him up in fine houses as long as he healed their children and told them fortunes they liked.
Later Salazar would discover that Leon was the third such court he’d scandalized—he’d previously been in West Francia before Louis Do-Nothing had died and left behind people who were willing to do something, and before that he’d once been in the court of the late King Edgar who ruled over the angelcynn.
Salazar’s band happened across him in an antagonistic mode, but harassing rich old men on the road sometimes didn’t pay if you happened to antagonize a wizard.
The band fled quickly. Salazar stayed behind.
The old mage flicked a spell at him, the sort that was meant to encourage a person to suddenly have business in another direction. Salazar stood firm because if nothing else he knew his own mind.
“What have we here? A little hedgewitch with delusions of grandeur?” he asked.
Salazar glared. “I’m seeking an apprenticeship. In return, I’ll act as a guard for you so you no longer run into incidents like this on the road.”
The man looked in the direction Salazar’s compatriots had fled. “I can handle myself.” he said.
Salazar raised an eyebrow. “The appearance of strength often makes the application of it unnecessary.”
The man stared at him for several seconds. “I’m traveling south to Granada. If you prove yourself useful by then, I may keep you on.”
———
Salazar stayed under Ulric for five years.
Eventually he learned to read, and a good portion of latin as well as Ulric’s native tongue, and a non-trivial amount of magic.
Very little of this was due to the teachings of his master.
Ulric didn’t like copying sections of text for later perusal, and he didn’t like preparing the unguents and tinctures he made his living on, and he especially didn’t like inscribing wards and enchantments. Salazar did most of this, and through it he learned—some from experience, and some from his master's harsh critiques.
When traveling, Ulric had the option of laying wards over his camp and never risking any danger. He rarely did this, because he didn’t like kneeling on the ground. It was madness, and Salazar wondered that such a lazy man would have such privilege as his great magical power.
Eventually, Salazar learned to lay the wards, though Ulric had to be the one to activate them if they were to be of any significant strength.
Ulric knew the wardmaking of his people—runes and mutterings mostly. Salazar learned from the books they saw in their travels (they joined and were forcibly removed from two courts during this time). Because of where they traveled, his wards were based on the sacred geometries. Interlaced circles and squares layered in delicate lines of paint over the top of smooth polished stones he collected as they walked—this was better than carving, as they could be scrubbed clean and reused. He dug shallow channels around their camp every night, a larger geometry to reflect the small, and then Ulric would spend about fifteen seconds channeling magic into it, a process he complained bitterly about.
And Salazar rolled his eyes because it was all so stupid.
———
Eventually, they wandered back into Ulric’s homeland, and there came a point where Salazar knew his apprenticeship was coming to an end.
It wasn't that he knew all the magic his master did, merely that he’d discovered something his master did not know, and he didn’t want to share the credit.
You could make wards without active channeling.
You could make wards without active channeling—and even more importantly, they never ran out of magic, and you could make them so they didn’t break when a person passed through them.
The secret, oddly, was dowsing.
Dowsing for magic was a reality of the area. Much of their practice was propagated off the utility of large scale rituals, which worked best in places of magic—sacred groves and places where the ambient energy of the world knotted.
Finding these places was one of the first things any mage learned how to do. You simply carved dagaz into something (literally anything, Salazar had once succeeded at this with a turnip), and then hung it off a long enough string that it could start swinging towards the nearest place of power.
And if you were in a place of power, it would spin, and sometimes glow slightly. Salazar was pretty sure it worked because the rune of awakening called towards the magic of the world (the thing that awakens). It didn’t represent that power, but it did seek it.
His education on the topic was spotty however, and also he didn’t care because it wasn’t like he was getting invited to any of those rituals one might dowse for.
What Salazar did know quite a bit about though was triangles.
Dagaz was two triangles if you thought about it in just the wrong way, and triangles were a component of the sacred geometry. The rest followed along with only a few explosions.
Patterns with Dagaz as a component called to the magic of the world, and then awakened the ward.
It was very tidy, Salazar was quite smug about it.
———
After splitting up with Ulric, Salazar continued wandering around, selling unguents and tinctures and always warding his camp at night. He didn’t get access to anyones books, but he learned an eclectic bit of hedge-witchcraft and got quite good at doing fascinating things with what he did know.
His feet were never wet due to the carvings on the bottom, and his cloak could be relied upon to stop arrows in their tracks.
One day, he was in Alba in the north trying to track down a particular mage who was quite good at enchanting. Completely by accident (due largely to paying more attention to his dowsing turnip than his feet), he wandered into someone's circle of standing stones, which was unfortunately in use.
He immediately stumbled back out, but it was too late—he’d broken the delicate tracery of magic that someone was casting at that moment.
“WHO GOES THERE!” shouted the user of the circle. They’d been limned in light too bright to see, but now the man in question (large, tall, excessively well armed) was clearly visible.
“Sorry! I promise it was an accident!”
The man did not listen to him. Instead, he drew a large sword, and cast something that had Salazar stumbling into the circle, pulled as if by a rope.
Uncaring of the fact that Salazar was only armed with a turnip, the man charged.
Salazar dropped his turnip, which spun and glowed happily on the ground, and ducked under the first swing, frantically trying to grab his own sword from where it had ended up stuffed into his pack (the enchantments he’d placed on it messed with the dowsing, which in retrospect was a design flaw).
He did not succeed, and had to drop his bag as he rolled out of the way of the next blow.
He had a moment to look up, and saw that there was still lingering magic from the ritual—a crown of not-fire over his opponent, echoed in the brilliant glow of his eyes.
Ah.
It wasn’t that the man was randomly attacking him, it was that he’d not actually managed to end the ritual and instead had somehow convinced it that he was the enemy.
How inconvenient.
Mustering as much of his native magic as his skills would allow, Salazar dug a knuckle into the ground. A few feet away, the footing under his opponent abruptly decided to slip a foot to the left, ruining his balance. Salazar leapt to his feet, and jumped forward, pushing the man to the ground and kicking his blade away.
The man first tried bucking up, but Salazar held him down with every scrap of muscle and magic he had, casting the oldest spells he knew (bind and calm and bind and calm). As he did so, he began tracing in the mud with his other hand.
A circle, enclosing, a line directed from the outside in, and in the center, nauthiz.
Halfway through, the man summoned his sword to his hand, and Salazar had to shift until half his bodyweight was on that arm.
It didn’t help overmuch, and the man heaved with massive strength, throwing Salazar off of him. Luckily, this happened after Salazar had finished drawing, and he managed to get a streak of the mud onto the mans face, linking the enchantment.
The man rushed towards him, but stumbled quickly as all the excess magic of the ritual drained from his body, through the directing line into the circle, where nauthiz—the rune of need—sat, calling all the magic to its hold.
It actually worked a little too well, as it continued on for an extra couple of seconds before snapping out from overload, making him look wan and pale.
“What… What just happened? Why…”
Salazar stumbled away, just in case the man felt like going another round.
“I accidentally broke your ritual, sorry, and I think it decided I needed to be destroyed.” he said.
The man stared at him in mute horror. “Do you have any idea how stupid it is to go wandering into an active circle?”
“Not really, people just said not to and left it at that. And really, I didn’t mean to.”
“How did you survive?”
Salazar shrugged. “Magic?” he asked.
———
As it turned out, the man had been using that ritual as a way to bring the spirit of wrath upon him that he might lay waste to his enemies. Enemies that were rapidly approaching, because it had really been the last ditch effort of an already injured man who’d been separated from his companions.
Salazar felt sort of terrible about that, but not enough to explain what he was doing.
He had a set of wardstones he’d been placing around his camp the last few weeks, conveniently six which was the same as the number of standing stones in the circle.
So he placed them at the bases, and then drew up a little ways onto each standing stone, a pattern terminating in dagaz. Given where they were, it was about to be the strongest set of wards he’d ever created.
They didn’t glow or change or otherwise indicate they were there, but when a group of six men on horseback with a rather large number of weapons came looking, they passed by them instantly, though they remained in the area for several minutes since it seemed like it was the end of the trail.
Salazar grinned from where he had been sitting on the ground faux-casually rearranging his belongings which had scattered on the ground during the fight.
Above him, the man had the most poleaxed expression. He’d been grimly preparing for something of a last stand, but now there was no stand to be had.
“We probably shouldn’t move until they’re well past us,” said Salazar.
“Ssh!” said the man, “What if they hear?”
“Trust me, they will not. Do you want some of this turnip? It's a bit too smashed to use for dowsing any longer so I was thinking about just boiling it up for dinner.”
“How?” asked the man, sitting across from him. “I have made a study of magic for over a decade, and I know truly that there is no ward strong enough to hide a place this completely.”
Salazar sighed, “Normally it wouldn’t, I haven’t gotten that good, but we’re in the middle of this convenient ritual circle so there’s plenty of extra magic to go around.”
Clearly the man knew enough about magic to grasp the implications of that statement, so he stared at Salazar in incomprehension as he attempted to light a fire—he was rather overtaxed at the moment so it was going badly.
After a few moments, the man noticed him struggling and casually waved his hand in the vaguely correct direction, causing a fire to spring up with immediate brilliance.
———
It was awkward at first, but eventually they managed to introduce themselves, and the man—whose name was Godric—began asking questions.
“So what brings you here to Alba? I couldn’t help but notice that your accent was… from quite far afield.”
Salazar, who was still quite terrible at the language, laughed a little. “That’s a polite way of saying it, I know what I sound like.”
He sat back, looking at the fire. “These last few years I’ve been wandering mostly without an aim, though a few weeks ago I happened upon a man with a fascinating bag—it had more space within than without. He claimed it had been enchanted by someone hereabouts—an enchanter at Raven’s Claw?”
“Ah, Rowena, I know her. Quite clever how she managed that, isn’t it.”
“It’s more than clever. I very much would like to meet her and ask how it was done.”
Godric laughed. “After seeing what you have worked, I think she might like to meet you in return.”
“Well that’s good to know. I’d hate to come all this way only to find some elderly miser who refused to share his secrets.”
“If there was a person who represented the opposite, it would be her,” said Godric. “I cannot wait to introduce you.”
“Uh, what?” asked Salazar.
Godric shrugged. “I was on my way to her when I was accosted. And now we are going the same way, so I am fortunate in being able to keep you from wandering into any more circles.”
Salazar would have thanked him if he weren’t so busy being offended.
———
He never did get to be introduced to Rowena of Raven’s Claw, because as soon as she saw him, her wide grey eyes went right to his shoes, and she fell to the ground with a cry of delight.
“What have you done to these? The field of magic around them is all turned inside out, and everything seems to slip off of them!”
Salazar failed to jump back in time, and ended up falling over. This did not deter her, instead it gave her an excellent angle to see the geometries carved into the soles.
“Er, I could draw it somewhere else? Or explain it-”
“Hush, I’m trying to work out the trick of it”
Salazar looked up for aid, but Godric had decided that apparently this state of affairs might as well be normal because he took a seat on the ground next to them.
With a pointed glare, Salazar gestured at the woman who was holding his foot captive. Godric simply laughed at his plight.
Another woman came out of the house, who then paused upon seeing them. She sighed, and casually warped the earth such that they had benches to sit on. This still did not deter Rowena’s grip on Salazar’s footwear.
“Good morning.” said the newcomer.
“Good morning.” said Salazar.
Rowena switched to the other boot.
“I recommend taking them off if you want your feet back any time soon.”
———
Rowena was completely insane. Godric had a self appointed quest to track down and master every form of magic there was. Helga warped reality with a cheerful casualness that defied description.
Salazar never wanted to leave.
———
A year on, they were sparring in the side yard—Godric and him.
This was Godric's idea of showing affection. He applied it to everyone around him except Rowena who was liable to get distracted and then hurt.
Salazar pretended to hate it—Godric was a powerhouse, and could beat most non-Helga people in a straight fight with ease. Luckily, Salazar had never fought fairly in his life, so he enjoyed the exercise.
He activated traps he’d planted beforehand, carried caustic mists in bottles for easy deployment, and cast all his spells in that rough-hissed way he’d learned from his mother. Even when Godric won, he came out of it looking like he’d been dragged through a swamp backwards, and that was something Salazar was proud of.
“I was thinking,” said Godric afterward as they laid back on the grass, side by side as they always were these days, “It’s a crying shame that we’ve got one of the largest libraries of magic in the isles, and no one to share it with.”
The collection had indeed expanded beyond reason. Godric and Helga kept going off and being heroic, and then various personages of importance kept granting them boons, which they took in the form of any scrap of magical information they possessed.
And that wasn’t counting the things that Rowena had written.
“People do seek us out.” pointed out Salazar.
“Tch, trained mages, some of great renown. No, I want to give our knowledge to a wider audience.”
“Even more mages of great renown?”
Godric glared at him, and changed tack. “How many spells did you know, when you were, say, the age of Carter’s boy.”
The boy in question was at the awkward stage of life where he was covered in pimples and his voice couldn’t yet decide whether he was a boy or a man.
“Mmm. Maybe three.” admitted Salazar.
“And yet you are one of the most brilliant wizards I have ever encountered.”
Salazar scoffed. “And yet those same three spells are still the only ones I can reliably cast without significant effort.”
“That is entirely besides the point.”
“There was a point?”
Godric rolled his eyes. “What would have happened,” he wondered, “If you had stayed home and only ever knew those same three spells.”
“Mostly sheep herding,” said Salazar.
“We would have lost so much.” said Godric. “All of the incredible things you can do, all of the works you’ve wrought.”
He paused for a long time, but Salazar didn’t break the silence.
“There are a lot of people out there who know three spells,” said Godric.
“I very much want to know what magics they could create if we gave them more.”
Salazar’s eyes widened and he took a moment to process that. “You want to create a school.” he said.
Godric rolled over to stare at him with fervor. “Imagine it!”
Salazar closed his eyes, unable to meet that gaze. He thought about the burning thirst he’d felt every day of his adolescence, and imagined what it would have felt like for it to be quenched. He imagined his mother too—at the mercy of those more powerful than her—and wondered what she would have done if she could have stood on equal footing with them.
“I am.” he whispered.
“Yes. You see it.” said Godric. “Helga is not averse to the idea, and you know Rowena would talk anyones ear off about her work. But… we could not do it without you.”
Salazar scoffed. “I would make a terrible teacher. I couldn’t do half the things I was trying to teach.”
Godric swatted him on the shoulder in punishment for that. “At what point,” he asked, “Have you ever needed power when you had cunning to fall back on?”