His Sacred Incantations, page 6
“Let’s just call it killing,” Glory cuts in. “Otherwise every conversation about this is going to be ridiculous.”
“Motion carried,” the Hammer says, rapping her knuckles on the table. “How long is holy water effective for, and how much can you make in a day?”
“It should be effective nearly indefinitely,” Lucían says slowly, realizing he doesn’t actually know. “It’s just magic and water, there’s nothing in it to spoil the way you have in a potion so I don’t think it would become... less holy, as it were. I can’t say for certain, unfortunately.” He spreads his hands with a shrug. “It’s not like we needed to store it for long periods of time, we usually just blessed it as it was needed for rituals.” Lucían chews his lower lip thoughtfully, doing some mental calculations. “I’ve only ever done this for potions, but I think I should be able to bless a big vat of water all at once, rather than a bunch of small bottles? It would be more efficient.”
“It’s worth a shot,” the Hammer says, sitting back in her chair. “Conscript anyone you need to help, I’d like to have a good amount of holy water on hand before the end of the day today. When you’re done with that, we could stand to get our stock of healing potions built up as well. Any supplies you need will be purchased for you, for as many as you can make.”
Lucían nods and starts to open his mouth, but Glory cuts in. “I respect your priorities, Hammer, and we should definitely lay in holy water, but Lucían has prior obligations with the Sisters for his upcoming afternoons that, if they go well, will increase the Guild’s potion stores more than he can alone.”
The Hammer’s slate gray eyes narrow. “Explain.”
“Yesterday, Lucían discovered that he can pass his magic on to others, and successfully trained Sister Abigail in how to make holy water and heal wounds. We’ve arranged with Mother Geraldine for him to start training the nuns in what he knows, which means—”
“With more than one person around who can make healing potions, we’ll no longer have to hoard ours like they’re worth more than gold.” The Hammer leans forward, elbows and forearms on the table, and tilts her head at Lucían. “In that case, kid, spend your afternoons with the nuns, just have something to show for it. Dismissed.”
“I could make potions here, too, you know,” Lucían tells Glory as they head down to the kitchen, aka the likeliest place to find a large, clean, watertight vat of some kind. “It’s not difficult.”
“Yes, I know, but I also know you’re going to destroy yourself trying to teach the Sisters twenty years of knowledge in two weeks, and I don’t want to have to pour you into bed every night.” Her arm sweeps out and pulls him in to her side so she can drop a kiss on the top of his head. “Someone has to look after you, since you won’t look after yourself.”
“People need my help,” he protests weakly, knowing as he says it that it’s foolish. Glory doesn’t answer, just gives him another squeeze and releases him with a fond smile as they enter the dining hall. It’s empty, now, breakfast having come and gone, and Glory strides across it confidently and sticks her head through the doorway into the kitchen.
“Can we come bother you?” she asks cheerfully, and then heads in, Lucían trailing after and feeling significantly less sure of their welcome.
The cook is stocky, a layer of fat over burly muscle, and introduces themself as Mel. “I have a few empty wine barrels,” they offer, running a hand back over their short brown hair and jerking their chin at a door that, presumably, hides the storerooms. “Should be clean enough, as long as it doesn’t matter if your holy water tastes a little bit like old grapes.”
“I don’t think that will change the efficacy,” Lucían says as Glory enters the storerooms and exits with a barrel under each arm, sidling awkwardly and hilariously so she doesn’t smash into anything. “I guess we’ll find out, though.”
“Best of luck to you,” Mel says, handing him a couple of taps for the barrels. “Water pump is in the corner, try and stay out of my way because I need to get started on lunch.” They head off across the kitchen in the opposite direction, and Lucían blinks after them for a bit before he shakes himself and follows Glory to the water pump. One of the barrels is already under the spigot and she’s watching it fill, green eyes glancing at him when he sets the taps down on a nearby work bench.
“You want to work your way up to this, or just go for it?” she asks, turning off the spigot and leaning forward to eye the water level inside through the previously corked hole. It’s... a lot of water, but if he does the mental math he’s probably brewed and enchanted the same volume of potions in one day back at the monastery. Granted, potionmaking was all he was doing in those days, but still. Lucían reaches out to settle his hands on the side of the barrel and closes his eyes. Inhale, exhale, reach deep inside for the magic that lives there, pull it up out of the core, push it out into the water, all the motions are the same, it’s just a slightly larger amount of water, but that doesn’t matter, it’s still water, and if he tells himself that it might become true.
Lucían opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, and steps away from the barrel, his hands a little bit shaky. “I think that worked,” he says, peering into the barrel. There’s a slight glow, a hint of iridescence where light falls in to reflect on the surface of the water, and Lucían’s sigh of relief is audible. “Not much harder than enchanting a smaller amount, actually,” he says thoughtfully, “which makes sense, they always had us do potions in bulk. I just haven’t had the equipment to do large amounts of anything since I left.”
“Great,” Glory says, corking the barrel and rolling it away from the spigot so she can shuffle the other one underneath. “I’m still only letting you do four this morning, though. Save it for the Sisters.” Lucían privately thinks he could do more than that, but after the fourth barrel he goes a bit lightheaded and has to sit down while Glory begs some cheese and sliced fruit from Mel. She politely doesn’t say, “I told you so,” even though she totally told him so, and he’s a little frustrated when he finishes eating and sets the plate aside. The frustration is tempered with accomplishment, which helps his mood, but he still finds himself fluctuating between annoyance that he can’t do more and pride at what he’s done so far.
“Stop beating yourself up,” Glory says, making him wonder (and not for the first time) if she can read his mind. “You’re only one man, Lucían, you can’t do everything.” Her arm wraps around him and he sighs and collapses against her, head pillowed on her shoulder.
“What if I could, though?” he asks quietly. “Someone has to try.” What if he’d left the monastery earlier? What if he’d realized the Abbot was lying when he was younger? What if he’d figured out how to pass on the Blessing sooner? There are so many people he could have helped and he hadn’t even known.
“Well,” Glory says thoughtfully, “if you did do everything yourself, there wouldn’t be anything left for me to do, and I’d get bored.” Lucían snorts, and she continues blithely, “I mean, I’m really good at lifting heavy things and doing stuff with swords, it would be rude of you to take that from me. All I’d have left is looking really good all the time, but how good can I look if I don’t have excuses to flex?” He giggles, batting at her arm to try and get her to stop, but she blocks his blows easily and continues her monologue, “But if I mean, if you’re doing everything then you’ll also be looking good and flexing! You have to leave something for the rest of us to do, Lucían, don’t be greedy.”
“Okay, okay, I take your point,” Lucían says, trying and failing to clamp a hand over Glory’s mouth while she fends him off with a grin. She catches both his hands so, after he briefly considers his options, he leans in and kisses her. “I just wish,” he says against her mouth, pulling back to lean their foreheads together, “that things were—had been—different.”
Glory looks at him with those bright green eyes, brushes his hair back with one hand, and says simply, “The path you walked brought you to me.” It’s so straightforward and honest that Lucían feels himself start to tear up, so he pulls her into a hug, burying his face into the crook of her neck and breathing there for a long moment. One large, warm hand cradles his head while the other rubs circles on his upper back, and Lucían still can’t believe this is his life, that he just gets to have this now.
“So,” he says in a surprisingly steady voice, pushing back out of her embrace and wiping his eyes, “Let’s get these barrels out of the kitchen?” It takes some wrangling, mostly on Glory’s part, but they find a cart and get two of the barrels to the infirmary and then two to the armory. If the holy water is going to be used as a weapon they’re going to need some way to actually, you know, use it, and Lucían makes a note to try and figure something out later. Maybe a waterskin of some kind, but with a small nozzle, so if you squeeze it you get a good stream? Glass is expensive and it would be wasteful and dangerous to just throw bottles at the undead. He supposes there’s always just using a bucket, but that’s not terribly practical, either... It’s a riddle that he ponders all through lunch, and the ride over to the hospital, and it’s only when they’re waiting outside Mother Geraldine’s office that he suddenly realizes he’s going to have to tell the senior nun about yesterday’s rash actions. Hopefully she’s not angry? But she might be? Lucían worries at his lower lip and taps his fingers on his thighs nervously. Maybe he should have started by talking to the Mother, instead of impulsively trying unknown magic on a random nun who happened to be there. Shit, what if he’s messed this up entirely?
“Mother Geraldine will see you now,” says Sister Abigail, snapping him out of his anxiety spiral. When he glances up at her she grins, white teeth flashing in her dark face, and summons a tidy little magelight. He can’t help but smile at how proud she looks, and manages to think about that instead of his own worries as he takes a seat across the desk from Senior Mother Geraldine.
“So you’re going to teach us magic?” she asks, voice blunt and eyebrows raised. “How long will it take you to pass on what you know?” Lucían blinks. This is not how he thought this conversation was going to go.
He clears his throat and answers, “That... honestly depends, holy Mother. I’m sure you understand that students progress at their own pace.”
“Yes, yes,” Mother Geraldine says, smiling fondly. She stands and turns to a nearby table with a teapot and three cups and pours as she continues, “Also, you need to actually pass on the Blessing first in order to be able to teach anyone. Let’s assume you spend the rest of this week awakening magic in, say, fifty of my nuns. How long before they know what you know?”
Lucían pulls his lower lip between his teeth and rolls it there for a moment, thinking. “Sister Evelyn is more than capable of teaching the potionmaking magics, so she can handle getting them up to speed on the basics. If she works with them in the morning, and I take the afternoons for four hours a day I could pass along most of it in a month. That’s assuming this is all they do. I learned rather more slowly, but I also had other chores.” A lot of other chores, he doesn’t clarify, trusting that the Mother understands the kind of monastery he was raised in. Mother Geraldine hands him a cup of tea and he accepts it automatically.
“Just a month?” the Mother asks, handing a cup of tea over to Glory before sitting down. “That seems like a rather short period of time in which to teach a lifetime’s worth of skills.” The steam from her tea obscures her eyes for a moment as she takes a sip, but Lucían knows they’re still appraising and trained on him.
“If I may be blunt, they won’t be as good as I am at the end of that month,” Lucían says, and feels a hot bloom of color high in his cheeks as he comes very close to actually bragging. “Precision and creativity come with time and practice and there’s no substitute for that. What they will have is the ability to practice and refine their magics without needing me for guidance, especially since Sister Evelyn will be around.” He sips his tea thoughtfully and adds, “Though if they’re working on the fire spells unattended it’s a good idea to do that outside, well away from anything flammable. Brother Carnahan never did get the hang of summoning a flame with any precision.”
Mother Geraldine blinks. “I see.” Her eyes go distant and thoughtful as she drinks from her cup, clearly doing some mental calculations, and she sets it back down on the saucer with a clink of ceramic. “How many of my nuns can you pass the Blessing to today? Follow-up question: Can one of them be me?” Her grin is sudden and impish. “If I can possibly learn magic I’m not going to miss the opportunity, Sister Abigail has shown me what she can do so far and, frankly, it looks delightful.”
Lucían bites his lower lip again, knowing he’s going to have to deliver some potentially bad news and he hopes, hopes she understands. “I don’t know how many I can bless today,” he starts, leaning forward and setting down his teacup, “because before yesterday I didn’t know I could do it. We’ll have to wait and see. The other thing... um.” He takes a deep breath and spits out, quickly, “It doesn’t always work for everyone, some people can’t take the Blessing and there’s no way to know before you try it.” There it is, out in the open, it’s been said and he can’t take it back now. Lucían stares determinedly at the wall to the left of Mother Geraldine’s ear, not wanting to make eye contact but acutely aware that it would be rude to look at the floor.
“Try it on me, then, my boy,” Mother Geraldine says firmly. “I’m not getting any younger and it’s best to know now whether I have the capacity.” Lucían’s eyes flick to hers, startled, and she shrugs. “If everyone could do magic the monastery wouldn’t have a monopoly. Not everyone can be six and a half feet tall and have tree-trunks for legs, either.” The latter is said with a jerk of her head at Glory, who grins and takes a dainty sip of her tea. Lucían blinks at her, bewildered by the direction this conversation has gone, and the nun huffs impatiently. “Come on, young man, I’m getting older by the minute and I still don’t have magic.”
Lucían shakes himself, takes a moment to find his own brain, and stands up sharply. With a deep breath he walks around the table and kneels on the floor in front of Mother Geraldine. “I’m going to need to put my hands on you,” he says, waits for her nod, and takes one of her hands in his, carefully settling the fingertips of his other hand over her heart. “Close your eyes and match my breathing,” he says, closing his eyes, and he holds himself there until he feels the Mother’s heartbeat in time with his own.
“Good,” he says quietly when they’ve breathed in sync for several near-silent moments. “Senior Mother Geraldine, why did you become a nun?”
“The Lady came to me as a child and called me to her service,” Mother Geraldine says, voice steady and calm. “I’ve never wanted to do anything else.”
Lucían nods, though he knows she can’t see him. “And do you swear that you will serve the will of the Lady, to help others and spread Her love?”
“I swear.” There it is, under his fingers again, just the barest tingle. Lucían works very hard to stay calm, to channel the Lord, but there’s a thrill of excitement deep in his belly because maybe this is going to work again.
“And do you desire the ability to be able to help others the way She helped us?” He keeps his voice calm and soothing, keeps to the cadence of the ritual he half-invented, half-remembered. There’s no telling what part of what he did was the important part, so he’s not going to vary a thing.
“I do desire that.” Mother Geraldine’s voice has just the slightest quaver of hope in it.
“Then may you receive Her Blessing,” Lucían says, reaches down inside himself for the power that lives there, and calls it to his will, brings it up into his hands and sends it into Mother Geraldine. Please work, please work, he begs, feeling the threads of white hot light questing about inside of her, and then, faster this time, he finds a grain of Mother Geraldine’s power that sparks, kindles, and bursts into a joyous flame. It flashes all the way through her, down to the tips of her toes and out to the ends of her fingers, and Lucían flows back into his own body and opens his eyes to find the nun beaming down at him with tears on her face.
“Oh, my boy,” she whispers, cupping his face in her hands. “You did it. I feel Her Blessing in my heart.” Mother Geraldine leans forward so she can press a kiss to his forehead, pulls away so she can pinch his cheek. “Thank you, Lucían. You and Sister Evelyn are both proof that the Abbot can’t actually crush the souls of the worthy, no matter how much he tries.” She pulls him into a hug and Lucían lets her, closes his eyes and wonders if this is what it feels like to have an actual mother. He must have been held like this at some point before the monastery took him, but it was so long ago and he can’t remember. Mother Geraldine holds him for what seems like a long time, and he feels her shoulders hitch once in a silent sob, but when she finally releases him her eyes are dry.
“Well, young man,” she says firmly, gripping his shoulder and giving it a squeeze, “I look forward to your lessons in how to use this power you’ve given me. Thank you.” Lucían nods, swallows against the tightness in his throat, and climbs back to his feet. By the time he’s back in his chair Mother Geraldine has poured him another cup of tea, which he sips gratefully.
“How do you feel?” Glory asks, and he waggles his hand in the air.
“A little woozy,” he admits, “but I think if I take breaks and make sure I eat enough I can bless ten, maybe fifteen people today?”
“That’s a solid start,” Mother Geraldine says. “Sister Abigail has rounded up some of our best healers and Sister Evelyn would like to have as many of her potionmaking apprentices blessed as possible. We can start with five of each and reassess your capacity as we go.”
“Please,” Lucían says urgently, “Please let them know I can’t control if it works or not.” He shuts his mouth with a click, remembering the look on Brother Taylor’s face when the Blessing hadn’t taken and the monk had realized he was going to be relegated to a life of ingredient preparation and illumination. “I don’t want to make promises to anyone that I can’t keep.”
