When I first moved from Mercinae to Parrius, joining the enchanters guild, Firentz introduced me to Zersiax, our guild tutor. Zersiax is a scary-looking fellow with a strange hat. I introduced myself and Zersiax said nothing. Firentz left us alone for a while to get acquainted and maybe do some lessons.

Zersiax just looked at me, studying me, and didn't say a word even when I addressed him. "Hello there." "Um. My name is Bodhin." "I hear you knew Padraigh! Do you have any stories about him? Why did he break with the mages, anyway?" "Um. It is an honor to meet you." Nothing but attentive silence. Finally, I grew impatient and said, "Gods! You remind me of Nexus. Can't get a word out of you."

Zersiax laughed and said, "Nexus? Ha. I used to get drunk with Laertes once in a while and he would make fun of Nexus's singing voice. He's a strong bard, but he can't even carry a tune on his horse."

Happy at getting some conversation out of him at last, I pressed him, "Do you sing?"

Zersiax shook his head. "I listen."

"Do you listen in order to learn, or in order to hide?" (I thought I would impress him with a profound question!)

Zersiax said, "If you become listening, you become time and space. Everything has already been learned." All of a sudden, like the period at the end of his sentence, a burst of heat hit me like a warhorse, drying and cracking my skin while shocking the blood inside my body. Handburn.

Zersiax said, "I chanted handburn while you were talking. The most basic attack in the book and you failed to prepare because your mouth is stronger than your ears. I don't know why FIrentz brought you here, but I will do my best to teach you."

And aside from lessons, that's all I heard from him for the first year.

Zersiax was teaching me ritual abilities and after much effort I was able to dance the stormcloud ritual properly. My first attempt targeted me, and I watched my mana and my state of mind disappear in rough blotches. Soon I became nervous and undanced the ritual.

Zersiax sighed at me with grudging patience. "Put it up again, and don't flip out."

So I danced the stormcloud ritual anew, but this time I directed it at Zersiax. He sat staring at me impassively in the stormcloud rit until his face went pale and his eyes became dull. They shut, and he leaned to one side, as if about to lose consciousness.

Scared now, I undanced and began slapping his face to wake him up. "Zersiax? Sir? I am so sorry!"

With no warning, a blow from his left arm shattered my nose and sent me flying against the wall. The entire guildhouse shook (from upstairs, Firentz yelled, "What the hell??") and an ancient coocoo clock came crashing down my head as I lay there stunned and bleeding.

Zersiax clucked his tongue at me disapprovingly. "You let your guard down and missed hammerfist. Don't let your best instincts get the jump on you."

A probate named Carys recently joined the guild, a pleasant woman in a velvet dress she picked out for herself after she graduated from the Parrius school. I was teaching her first lessons in rituals and charming, while Zersiax sat on the couch and watched with an impassive expression on his face.

We were working on the spell of levitation when Carys exclaimed, "I got it! I can do it!" Quickly, she chanted the levitation spell and before I could point out she was standing near the stairs leading up from the entrance hall, she had already cast the spell.

Up she went, at a speed that surprised her, straight up the stairwell and out of view. One second later I winced when I heard the thump of her head against the second-floor ceiling. "Ow!" she said.

A silent moment passed. Then, from the stairwell: "Um. Bodhin...?"

How could I help it? I looked at Zersiax. He had one hand covering his face, and he was shaking his head.

Recently, Zersiax and I were talking about something related to training apprentices, and we were quibbling over some minor point. I respect him very much as a teacher and fear him a bit, and yet I still want him to explain things to me in a way I can understand. So we were debating some trivial point.

Jokingly, I said, "Well, I AM your Guildmaster now..."

Several things happened in the next three seconds. I was feebled and dropped the potion I was holding, and felt faint. (Zersiax, by the way, doesn't use any charmed items. He chants the spells very quickly, and inaudibly.) Then I was pounded down into the ground on top of my potion bottle, shattering it and sending shards of glass into my chest. Before I could even exclaim, my body was violently thrown from the floor up onto the ceiling, as if gravity had reversed, and I hit the ceiling so hard that plaster dust rained down over the sitting room. I then fell to the ground again, this time falling on my dagger, which plunged into my thigh and poisoned me with grimleaf I had rubbed on it earlier. My stomach immediately began to churn and I lay there gagging.

Zersiax shrugged and said, "You're a Guildmaster. But I am Parrian."

The apprentice Solorence had just left the guildhouse to go and get his feet wet in quests. Zersiax said very little in all of the year 1040, but as Solorence walked through the open doorway onto Leaf Lane, Zersiax tugged my sleeve and smiled like someone who just solved a difficult puzzle.

"Sorcerer," he said.

No! That kid?? I told Zersiax he was flat out wrong, and he insisted that I was the one who was flat-out wrong. "He'll be a sorcerer before the end of the year, and probably change his name, too."

Months later, Solorence changed his name to Arcadius and moved to Thakria. Soon enough, he was indeed a sorcerer, walking around with an entourage of demons gallumphing around him.

"How did you spot it?" I wondered.

Zersiax shrugged. "I watched him eat a plum and I knew. You need to see things."

*Giggle* A PLUM!!!!!
Fantastic.

Some time after our Head Tutor left to join the Seers in Thakria, he developed enough confidence in his skills to walk straight into the guild and attack us by surprise. In the midst of the fracas, Palim ran in and out of the guild many times to regroup and attack again.

It was quite a fight, magic crackling in the air and bodies colliding and falling, making the rickety old guildhouse shake and groan.

At one point, in the entrance way after Palim had ducked out, young Remus the enchanter (whom Palim had once tutored) cried out, "What is his problem??"

From the other room, Zersiax, in a calm voice, called out to him: "He doesn't have a problem. He's learning. So should you, little one."

I'm not even sure Remus heard him, but the words reached me.

Enjoyed your stories. nadine

Zersiax wrote this poem to inspire young enchanters:


With your staff, you strike Sapience.
The whole universe is inside that blow. POW!
The wielder of light cannot be extinguished;
Your wisdom is like a sword in a bag.