Stel Comes Home

 To know Stel is to know the overworked human expected to handle god-like responsibilities, and to accept very little in return.  In essence, a disaster waiting....


Stel turned round from the oven.  A blast of warm air fell through the doorway to meet the smells of bread surrounding and accompanying him.  Stel stood in the doorway now, leaning heavily against the frame, and the two met glances briefly.

Stel staggered into the room and fell into the old chair at the table.

Stel turned back to the oven and removed a loaf of bread from within on a paddle.  He lay this newborn upon the ancient oak before Stel, who tore into it like a deranged vor.  Then, the host went back to fetch the teapot from the fire place.  He set out the chipped bonia cups without ceremony, one for each of them, and poured.

"What was it today?" he asked himself, setting down the teapot and taking up his cup.  Without waiting for it to cool, he drank, changing his throat to be far more tolerant of the hot liquid, so it didn't burn him.  Seated Stel's hands were occupied pinching off pieces of bread and for a while he didn't seem to notice his beverage.  He stopped chewing for a moment, swallowed, also changing his throat for the hot bread.  He looked up.  A blackening patch was already forming under his eye.  New scars across his face.  His tunic had a large dark patch of blood surrounding a hole.  He'd been stabbed, but had healed himself.

"Fighting Leor.  Training him, Lord Willeonis calls it.  He stabbed me.  I was to attempt to use aavemancy on him, while he used a sword against me.  I tried to convince him I was Lord Willeonis, but he knew me for what I was."

"Leor has no magic.  He is not traited," said the healthier Stel.  "Or is that not still so?"

"That is so.  No trait."  Stel picked up his cup and drank.  He waited for the tea within to cool.  He grimaced at the earthy taste, but it warmed his insides and made him feel slightly better.

"What is the point of training a null?"  Stel said, preparing supper.  He set a bowl of soup in front of Stel, then another in front of himself and sat down.

"It is for training me, I think," Stel said.  "I must know how to deal with nulls, like anyone else.  I am the Hand of the Eight."

"Yes, and we live here like paupers.  Why do you make such a place for yourself here?  We could live in palaces, at least at the end of the day, couldn't we?"

"We don't need palaces.  I have a bed.  I have warmth here.  It is a good enough place.  I must learn contentment, Willeonis says."

"Willeonis was a pauper before he got the Trait.  He doesn't know any better.  You've stood before kings, and you live in this...hovel."

Stel looked around.  It was a house common to Frosomia, a Drodsod house somewhere in the middle of the Sea of Grass.  Around him were pots and pans hanging from sticks driven into the walls, along with the various other cooking implements.  A shelf held various small tomes, a few rolled scrolls, quills and ink: his notes and journals, his work learning seven different languages of humans and other races.  His clothes, what few clothes he had, remained in a box near the cot.  Mostly the trousers and tunics of a peasant farmer, a single unsoilable ceremonial robe, enchanted artifactic overcoat and breeches.  Two sets of regrowing boots.  Willeonis insisted he lived this way.  'To have little is to be able to lose little; to gain the trust and kindness of a host is to gain all one's needs.'

Not even Stel knew exactly where this house was, just how to find it when he needed it.  All wizards had nests.  A place no one looked for, a place all by itself in the middle of nowhere, built by hand with friends.  And thanks to the magecrafting surrounding the area, it was never disturbed by storms or intruders.  Like Willeonis' home cottage far away in the north, in Allorinia, no one but Stel could come here unless Stel brought them.  Not even Willeonis.

"If Leor is a null, how is that magecraft hides this place from him," the other Stel asked, knowing Stel's thoughts.

"To my knowledge, he's never come out this far into the sea.  There's nothing here but hials and gremlins.  Every so often, I've even seen wild mefs and vors, but no civilized person comes out here.  As I'm aware, magecraft doesn't 'fool' him as much as it should, though it still works a little."

"In what way?" Stel asked.

"In the way it fools anyone with eyes or ears.  Magecraft sometimes doesn't directly affect the mind.  With a null, it's impossible.  However, bending light and sounds can confuse anyone.  Channeling air, moving smells and preserving images of people...the way the elves guard their cities, still affect even the dimmest null."

"I would not call Leor dim.  He knows our world quite well.  He is well-trained to know the limits of magic.  To call anything dim is to dismiss it Stel, to underestimate.  A dangerous habit to develop."

"I don't care about Leor.  Why do you?"

"Nulls...disturb me.  You know why Willeonis trains him, why he keeps up with him and makes him part of our society, a part of the Eight."

"He's not a member of the Eight."

"You know why you have to do anything with him.  We both know why."

"Willeonis wishes to see our limits."

"Yes, our limits.  He's honing a weapon against aethren, something to use to keep aethren in line."

Stel dismissed this with a wave.

"The Aethren counsel is beginning to panic.  Willeonis has stopped Lord Xenoreth from engaging in the rebellions in the west, in Morrigar.  The Morrigari have all but separated themselves from Xomir, and the emperor completely unable to stop them.  The Xomirian Senate does not wish to have another Drod, and they fear a loss, in direct conflict, to Morrigar will only encourage more rebellion.  The Emperor cannot convince them to raise more troops, and...Willeonis will not either."

"What does letting them rebel openly without response do for Xomirian strength."

"It is the senate's belief the rebels will, having gotten little response from Xomir, fear their response.  Perhaps, the people will choose to stay with Xomir against them.  The fact remains, the empire is crumbling."

Stel smirked.  It served them right.

"What do I care about the empire?" Stel said, taking another sip of tea.  "Once, they were my enemies.  My people rebelled against them."

"And then the kunjels overthrew them?  Perhaps it would have been better had Drod never rebelled."

Stel shrugged.

"It is what happened, which is why Willeonis says we are not to intervene.  The empire must live its life and die accordingly, if it is to die."

"You want to help the Morrigari, don't you?"

"The Morrigari?  What do I care about the Morrigari?"  Stel said.  He drank his soup.  He dipped bread in it.

He was a good cook.  He knew all the old recipes, the brief experiments of the Drod culture cut short, harvested before the first blooms.

"Well, do you want to help the empire?"

"Willeonis says I do not have to choose between these things.  He has something else for me to do.  He's managing the Morrigari rebellion."

"Ah, so he is managing it, then.  And you?  You are fighting, and losing to, a null kunjel, orphan bastard from the land your people lost.  What are you to this Willeonis?  Are you his student, his friend, or his gremlin?"

Stel stood.

"Just where did you come from?" he asked.  "Willeonis Treborrin is the First Blessed.  He was given magic from the Highest.  It is the Purpose of the Eight to use our abilities to bless the world."

"I am you, Stel.  You created me.  I say nothing you cannot say.  I do nothing you cannot do.  It is not me who argues these things, but you.  You are not convinced Willeonis knows what he is doing, what he must do."

"Of course I am."

"You would have an answer for me, then?"

"An answer for what?"

"Why do you train Leor?  What is his purpose?  You are Stellix GaSaadran.  You are capable of all perspectives.  You could train any Aethren to do any magic, and yet you are here, in a broken land, training a...creature...one of the very people who destroyed your people's kingdom and empire.  You do not think him a betrayer of your race, just like all of his kind, all the kunjels?"

"He was not among the Drod rebels.  He grew up in Allorinia.  He was a mef wrangler before the Highest contacted him."

"The Highest?  What does that even mean?"

Stel considered this question.  What exactly was the Highest.  It was not the first time he'd asked himself this.  It would likely not be the last.  His journals were full of his scribblings about the nature of the Highest.  What did Willeonis Treborrin know about governments, about ruling, about living in well-deserved luxury?  He was a farmer, a nobody, before he allegedly met the Highest at that well.  The proof of his meeting is only his ability to do magic, and yet Lord Xenoreth knows things not even Willeonis knew.

"Why do I train Leor?  What is his purpose?"

"Of course, you already know his purpose," Stel said, smiling at himself over his steaming tea.  "You know exactly why Willeonis adopted him.  He is to be the assassin, the one none of the Eight can control."

"Other ways exist to deal with problems.  They don't have to use magic.  He couldn't possibly...."

"You cannot detect him.  You cannot read his thoughts.  You cannot stop him with magic.  You cannot fight him with magic.  He is a weapon, a sword, among the brethren.  No, he is a sword for the brethren, for their hearts."

Stel shook his head.

"Can I have a meal without these thoughts," he said out loud.  No one was with him now.  He was alone.