Sometimes you have a great session of writing and then realize that what you came up with just doesn’t belong in the story. It might be the best thing you ever created, but if it doesn’t fit, it has to go. The following scene is just one of those kind – I liked it very much but it didn’t have any real place in the story, so I took it out.
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Tongues of flame leaped in their iron sconces, creating huge shadow monsters crawling across the wooden walls. A boy dressed in a rusty black robe walked the perimeter of the room, stopping at each sconce to toss a handful of crushed herbs into the fire. Hazy smoke filled the air, thick and sweet as honey dust.
A ticklish bead of sweat rolled from under his hair, stinging his eyes. The boy tossed his last handful of herbs and brushed his hands on his robe, then wiped the sweat from his face. He glanced around the stuffy room. Everything had to be exactly right, or his master’s undertaking would fail, and the subsequent frustration would be directed to the boy. As it had done many times in the past. A tremor of memory snaked across his back.
Dust motes danced along a faint beam of light coming from one of the heavy velvet curtains covering the windows. The boy leaped to reposition the fabric, and snuck a peek beyond. Outside the sun was casting a golden autumn glimmer. The sort of afternoon best spent lazing under a tree, the juice of a fresh apple sweet on your lips.
Not that he’d be doing anything like that. He lifted a tray from the floor and moved carefully through the clouds of smoke. His arms ached from the weight of the tray and its contents.
The doorway curtain flashed aside. Brother Tho entered the room. The black hood of his robe was drawn over his face, making him look like some faceless demon out of a nightmare. His generous sleeves were pushed past his elbows, revealing pasty white skin and silver bracers around his wrists.
“Zheffrey,” he barked, his voice oddly muffled from within the hood. “Is all prepared?”
The boy bobbed his head. The one day out of every week that apprentices were free to do as they wished, yet here he was, stuck inside. All because Tho didn’t want his own superiors to get a hint of what he was trying to do.
Tho stepped forward, stopping in front of a carved, white marble bowl big enough for the boy to hide inside. It was filled with water, the surface so still it could have served as a mirror. As smoothly as a gliding snake, the Brother slid the tips of his fingers into the water, so slowly that no ripples marred its diamond stillness. Eerie singing resonated from within the depths of the hood.
“Luf mothaffir yethfa.” The words hung in the smoky darkness, taking invisible form and crowding against one another in eager anticipation. The boy imagined he could see the curtains belling outward, with the strain of holding all the fluttering words inside the room. It used to bother him, when he was younger, the way the chanted words came to life like bats at sunset. Now it was almost like calling geese, the way he did before he came to the Brotherhood.
“Ellimifarr yaneff blethera meffa.” The boy listened, silently mouthing the words while waiting for Tho to sing the word of blending. If he missed by even a second, he chanced ruining the spell. Tho moved his gnarled hands, swirling the water in silken ripples. “Hethren aliff uron keshfa,” he sang, drawing his fingers away and letting the excess drip into the slowing swirls. The boy balanced the tray on one hand. With the other, he tilted a vial over the water, pouring a thin stream of white powder into the center of the bowl.
Blue sparks twinkled from within the depths of the water, bubbling up like sparkling wine. The boy didn’t stop to wonder at the prettiness of it. He waited exactly fifteen heartbeats, then added a liquid to the bowl as well. Green, with a fishy smell, and thick as syrup, it coiled in silken patterns before sinking.
The last item on the tray was a fabric bag. The boy placed the tray on the floor at his feet and lifted the bag in both hands. The water was now moving on its own, spinning in a lazy whirlpool. Soft white light rose from the vortex, growing in intensity as the Brother’s singing also grew, faster and louder.
He stopped short, and raised his hands high, tilting his head until his hood fell back and revealed an ancient clean-shaven face, cheeks sunken and skin as white as salt. Snatching the fabric bag from the waiting boy, Tho lifted it over his head.
“Heshferranfa!” he bellowed, then yanked open the bag’s neck and dumped the contents.
The light vanished. The words, once flapping against his face like moths after a flame, dissipated. The boy held his breath, eager in spite of himself to know what his master had accomplished. He eased forward a hairs-breadth to see into the bowl.
Crushed flower petals and leaves covered the surface of the water, turning it from mirror to forest floor. The popping bubbles stilled, the swirling slowed.
But nothing was happening. No bright light, no sound, nothing at all but a marble bowl full of wet gunk. Thunderclouds rolled behind Tho’s eyes. He leaned down to the gooey mess, close enough to touch it with the tip of his nose, as if he’d be able to see what he was looking for if only he put himself near enough. Finally, the old man stepped back, slapping the marble bowl angrily. “Get rid of this, Zheffrey,” he snarled. He spat into the bowl, and slapped it again. “Pig slop is all it’s good for.”
The boy wanted to ask what his master had been hoping to bring through, but the beating he might be asking for wasn’t worth the asking. Of all the Danisobans he could have been apprenticed to, he had to wind up with old Brother Tho. The one magus whose spells never turned out properly. There were tales that Tho had only ever managed one impressive working, and that the Brotherhood kept him on out of pity. Zheffrey sighed, and bent to pick up the nearly empty tray. How was he supposed to learn to do magic himself if all his master could manage was a mess for him clean up afterward? Balancing the tray on his hip, he walked to the door and retrieved the snuffer from its hanger on the wall, using it to douse each of the torches. When he reached the last one, Tho spoke.
“Leave it. I want to be alone for a bit.”
The boy replaced the heavy snuffer and ducked past the curtain. The warm light beckoned to him. Maybe if he hurried, he could still have some leisure time before the sun set. He licked his lips, thinking of the apples that waited for him out in the courtyard.
A hollow thump echoed from behind. Had his master overturned the bowl? Damn him. Mopping was not high on the boy’s list of ways to spend an afternoon, but if Tho had dumped the bowl, it would take a very long time to clean up. The boy listened, but heard no sounds of water. He breathed a sigh of relief, and turned, intent on hurrying through his remaining tasks.
Hot air pounded him, like a sudden, giant fist slamming his back. He flew forward, the breath ripped from his lungs, and hit the floor. Spatters of wetness needled into his exposed skin, as cold as the air had been hot. Wind rushed in his ears. Somewhere a creature screamed, a shriek of such pain and fear the boy wanted to climb out of his own body. Burying his head in his elbow, he curled into a tight ball. “Please, not me not me not me,” he begged.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, but after some time the silence worked its way into his awareness. Blessed, soothing silence. He raised his head. Bits of shattered wood and crockery shards were scattered down the hall. Boards had been torn loose, wide open spaces with beams of sunlight streaming in to break the shadows. Water ran in rivulets from every crevice and crack, and dripped from the ceiling. He hadn’t seen so much water since the last spinstorm season, but even then it had taken hours, not minutes, to make a mess like this.
He put his hands out, palms down, to push himself from the muck. The dirt floor was sodden mud, with a fishy reek that forced him to his feet. He wiped his filthy hands on his equally filthy trousers, and looked around.
The silence that had calmed him only moments before was suddenly stifling. Where were the other Brothers, the acolytes and servants? Had it been a freak storm? Was he the only person left alive? Gooseflesh sprang up on his arms. What if the whole compound had been swept into the sea? He drew a deep breath. “Master?”
There was no response.
He took a hesitant step toward the ruined door, and peeked inside, not sure whether he wanted to see someone or not.
The smell hit him first – the heavy reek of stagnant water and rotten fish. He knew it well. It wafted over the compound twice a day, when the tide was low and turning, and the wind shifted to blow inland again. This was as pungent as if he was standing hip-deep in the mud under the docks. He pinched his nose against the reek.
The far wall was completely gone, letting the pleasant afternoon sunlight filter into the ruined chamber. The huge marble bowl was broken, evenly-shaped pieces lying in an ordered radius away from the center of the floor. As if something much too big to fit had been forced inside the bowl, only to break free again. And on the ground, shoved against the missing wall, was a lump. A large and suspicious lump.
The boy grimaced, his innards twisting in sick knots, and slipped across the threshold. His foot sank into mud up to his ankles, sucking at him when he tried to pull it loose. He slogged over to the lump. Fabric, like the stuff his own robe was made of. Soaked heavy with mud. At least, he hoped it was mud. Stretching out a toe, he nudged a section of it away, cringing in sudden horror.
Bones. Some sticking out of the mud like reaching fingers, others scattered and broken. A few had been snapped, still held to each other by strips of red-stained tendon, their jagged ends poking through the rough-woven fabric. So many bones. Enough to make up a whole man.
The boy stumbled through the mud, and threw himself out through the missing wall. He fell to the blessedly dry grass on his hands and knees, and retched, his gut working as if to empty his body of food and memories at the same time. When there was nothing left to bring up, he sat back on his haunches. The sun was warm, peeking through the leaves above him. The trees were serene, rustling in the gentle breeze off the water. Cries of seabirds carried inland from the docks.
The sweetness of the air was relaxing. His head had finally stopped spinning. Everything made a sort of sense – the storm had been Tho’s doing, and his mistake, whatever it was, cost him his life. A tragedy, to be sure, what happened to Brother Tho, but experiments went wrong now and then. The boy struggled to his feet. He would seek an audience with the Precept, explain what little he knew. Surely the others would understand. Maybe he’d even be assigned a more interesting teacher.
He turned toward the complex, ready to give his account of Tho’s failure, but stopped short. Cradled in the green grass next to the wall, was Tho’s head. Torn free of his unfortunate body. The face was locked in a rictus of horror, the eyes glaring out. And leading away toward the dock road was a rambling track of muddy footprints.