Ascent: Day 10

Word Count: 60,008

Summary of Events:

Ilyé continued to work on an ice wall to help trap his family and get revenge on them and ended up using his magical skill to control the mind of a questioning local, which greatly impressed Master Lyarí, who decided that Ilyé should start going on rounds with him. Master Lyarí then told Ilyé of the hierarchy of the magicians and some of the more intellectual things Ilyé would need to know to be the Lemyazhmok before taking him on his first set of rounds . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

""As I think should be plainly obvious, I have chosen an apprentice," Master Lyarí said quietly. "The youngling Ilyé Nikadenaer."

"He doesn't look much like a youngling," one of the magicians said doubtfully. "He looks more fully grown."

"One more year and he will no longer be a youngling," Master Lyarí said. "But for now a youngling he remains."

The magician who'd spoken nodded, although he seemed rather doubtful still.

"Can we be sure that he's still a true one of our people, and not some sort of a halfbreed?" another magician asked.

"Yes, you can be sure," Master Lyarí replied. "He is the way he is because of a curse that I put upon his parents."

"But you should know better than to choose the firstborn of a curse to be your apprentice," a magician who sounded and looked old — at least by his hands — said scoldingly.

"I am the Lemyazhmok!" Master Lyarí snapped. "I know what is best. I have made my choice, and it isn't like you'll be alive long enough to suffer should there have been any folly on my part, which I doubt!"

"But he is the firstborn of a curse!" the old magician protested.

"The waters foretell of incredible greatness which he will possess," Master Lyarí said sharply. "And already I have proof that he is destined for greatness because he has outdone my own skill with greater rapidity than I outdid my own master. Already he has mastered the ability to control not only the minds of others, but his own, magically, and I had not even brought up the topic in training."

"The firstborn of a curse will bring doom upon us all," the old magician said. "That is how we got the Lemyafiok in the first place! Their founders' parents had been cursed by the first Lemyazhmok, and then came the origination of the Lemyafiok! Surely he will cause the Lemyafiok to become the supreme magicians and destroy us!"

"His father was a Lemyafiok," Master Lyarí said.

"So?" the old magician challenged.

"I will not tolerate the presence of the Lemyafiok," Ilyé snapped. "I should like it to be that the position and the practise of the Lemyafiok be completely eradicated from this land."

"You're just saying that, boy," the old magician said.

Ilyé felt a rush of overwhelming rage within himself and before even he had realised what he was doing the old magician lay on the ground, blood spurting from his neck, his body twitching, underneath Ilyé's legs.

All of the other magicians were standing well back of Ilyé, who casually glanced at his bloody hands, then looked up at the rest of them.

Out the corner of his eye he spied Master Lyarí, his arms crossed over his chest, his face turned to Ilyé in a severe glare.

"Control is one thing you've yet to learn, Apprentice Nikadenaer," Master Lyarí said cooly."

Lemyafiok: lehmyahfeeock