The next morning was dreadful. With clothes still sodden from the night before, Vidar shuddered as he hurried down the streets to find the chapter house of the thieves’ guild. The sowilo runes in his pockets eased the worst of it, but the cold was getting on his nerves at this point. Tonight, he decided, he’d create more of them and line his coat, shoes, and even a hat, if he could find one. Warmth. He’d do anything for warmth.

  Yallander waited outside the building, a torch hoisted above his head as he peered through the dark of the morning.

  “Vidar!” he yelled. “Our teacher arrives!”

  This time, the brown-robed man gave off an air of friendliness right away.

  “Yallander,” Vidar said in greeting.

  “We have you situated in a nearby building. There is no stove for heating, but we thought you and your new students could take care of that yourselves?”

  He tried wrapping his arms around Vidar to steer him, but Vidar stepped away. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “What’s that?” Yallander asked.

  “Payment.”

  He raised an eyebrow, the cheery facade dropping for the briefest of moments before he restored it. “Of course I haven’t forgotten. Services rendered to us are generally paid out weekly.”

  “I need the silver now,” Vidar said. “Unless you’ve got someone else to teach you since last we met?”

  It was true too. The coins he did have wouldn’t last long, definitely not a week. Thieves’ guild or no, they needed him more than he needed them. That fact would remain, at least until some students showed enough aptitude to take over, at least. After that, things might get a little tense, but that was a problem for later. Still, he could be tactful when necessary.

  He straightened his back and tried to pull back his sour expression into something resembling a polite smile. “At least in the beginning, I’d like to be paid daily.”

  Yallander waved it away. “Of course, of course. For you, Vidar, we’ll be able to stretch the rules a little. Just do your best in teaching your eager students.”

  “Of course,” Vidar agreed, holding out his hand.

  Yallander looked at it a moment, then sighed, rummaging through one of the large pockets of his brown robe. “Twelve, was it?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Coins fell into Vidar’s palm. He inspected them before squirreling the wealth into an inner pocket.

  “Let’s go meet these bright students,” Vidar said.

  The house was decrepit. Heavy snow threatened to make the roof fall in, and the wooden walls looked thin and worn. Several of the glass windows were broken, with bits of wood covering the holes. Even the stone steps up to the door crumbled under Vidar’s feet.

  He turned back to look down at Yallander, who waited at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re not coming in?”

  “No. They are waiting for you inside. Please give them your full attention until sunup.”

  Vidar looked from the door to Yallander, then nodded. “Rune craft has some inherent dangers to it, I’ve been told. Can you promise you won’t hurt me if the students…” He paused for a moment, looking for the right way to put it. “… fail?”

  Yallander grinned. It looked evil in the darkness, his face only lit by the torch in his hand. “The individuals are of no concern to the thieves’ guild. If they don’t work out, we have more eager students to take their place. We ask that you push them hard. If they fail, and if it comes to it, someone will come collect their remains after class is concluded that day.”

  He turned and walked away without another word. Vidar shivered and turned back to the door. A ruthless man, that. Best not get on his bad side if he could avoid it.

  A scuffle sounded from inside the small house, so Vidar pushed in through the door. Once, there’d been a kitchen near the entrance, but that was demolished beyond repair. The rest of the house was just one big, empty room without a single piece of furniture. A single lantern flickered in the middle of the room and all but one of the students huddled around it for some semblance of warmth. The last one stood in a dark corner, leaning against the wall where Vidar couldn’t make out his features. There was no sign of what’d made the scuffling sound.

  He cleared his throat and all those seated got to their feet and turned in his direction, like they’d been waiting for quite some time.

  “You the students?” Vidar asked.

  A murmur of agreement rose to the surprisingly tall ceiling. Seven students stood arrayed before him. Not the best and brightest, he decided. Three of the seven were missing a hand, all of them younger than himself. Two wore the years like ancient beggars, their faces a mess of wrinkles and liver spots. One of the remaining two was a sullen, feminine-looking young man a few years younger than himself, who stood with his cap pulled forward hiding much of his face. The last man up front appeared reasonably normal. He wore worker’s clothes and was in his middle years, still without gray in his beard.

  Then the man from the shadows sauntered up to stand next to Vidar.

  “Lytir? What’re you doing here?” Vidar asked. “You’re not here to learn about runes, I’m guessing?”

  The vagrant bowed and lifted a nonexistent hat in greeting. “Little scribe. You should not burn your time with frivolities, not when the hour approaches.”

  “He’s crazy, that one,” one of the young men with a missing hand said.

  One of the old men cackled with laughter. “Crazy!”

  Vidar ignored them both. “Most of us have to work for our bread, Lytir.”

  “My position requires keeping a constant guard,” Lytir said, a small smirk in the corner of his mouth. “Your health is of great concern.”

  “My health?”

  “Do not enter your home once darkness falls this night. The thief cries out for help and the one who does not speak beseeches. A friend helps a friend, but you must not return. Do not let them keep you. Do you understand, little scribe?”

  “Look, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Vidar said, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket, ignoring the mad ramblings. “Do you recognize this symbol?”

  The paper, a cheap, thin thing, crackled as he unfolded it to show the thrust rune they’d discovered the day before.

  Lytir took the parchment straight out of Vidar’s hands, accidentally ripping half of it. “Look at this, I call this progress,” he said, jumping up into the air with both feet to land in a bowed position, handing it back. “Dare we hope, us fallen? Perhaps we shall reach a peace. A small hope, but a flame always starts small, does it not? We are far too late to prevent, too late by far, but perhaps we may yet still see a way through.”

  “Have you seen it before?” Vidar repeated.

  Lytir thrust his left palm forward, bending his front knee into a strange sort of blow that stopped mere inches from Vidar’s face. Displaced air wafted against Vidar’s skin.

  “To thrust!”

  Vidar nodded eagerly. “That’s right!”

  “STAKRA!” Lytir yelled, thrusting his other palm forward, this time up into the air.

  “Stakra?” Vidar asked.

  Lytir’s eyes widened, and he charged to the door to fling it open. “I must prepare!”

  With that, the crazy bastard was gone.

  “Stakra,” Vidar said to himself. “Stakra it is, then.”

  “You shouldn’t trust that crazy bastard,” someone said, prompting Vidar to turn back to face the students. He ignored the comment.

  “Do we have any materials to work with?” Vidar asked.

  Several hands and a few stumps pointed to a corner where Vidar did find supplies. Paper and pieces of charcoal, along with pens and ink. This would work just fine, he figured.

  “Let’s get started. We’ll do introductions tomorrow with those of you who are still alive.”

  He’d intended it as a joke, but no one so much as chuckled. Surly bastards. Vidar looked around the poorly lit room and saw fearful expressions on most faces. No wonder they hadn’t laughed. He was about to tell them no one would die but stopped himself. Like he’d told Yallander, this wasn’t safe. Alvarn impressed that much on him, at least.

  Instead, he penned a kenaz rune on one paper. After examining his work and deciding the lines were correct enough to be useful, he affixed the rune to the wall.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Kenaz,” he said. “Light.”

  Vidar touched the circled symbol and fed essence into it before triggering the rune. Everyone blinked and held up arms to shield themselves from the sudden burst of light. He swore, narrowing the opening. There. Light enough to see and paint, but not enough to blind them.

  They all stared in disbelief.

  “Magic,” someone muttered.

  “There is no such thing as magic,” Vidar said, raising a finger. “This is rune craft. It is what I will be teaching you all starting today.”

  “What if we don’t want to?” the old geezer who hadn’t laughed before said.

  Vidar frowned. “I don’t care. Take it up with Yallander.”

  The old man paled but made no reply, so Vidar continued, painting a sowilo rune in ink on a second paper.

  “Sowilo. Heat,” he said, moving the lantern to set the heat rune in the middle of the floor. Sowilo runes required a lot of essence, but he didn’t want to teach in the cold. Several hours remained until the sun rose and he didn’t mean for all of them to freeze to death before then.

  Heat rose from the floor and Vidar stood and held out his right arm over the heat, marveling at how far he’d come in just a few short days. The others gathered around him, letting out small sounds of amazement and appreciation.

  “You’re going to teach us that?” the feminine young man said, his voice just as girly as his appearance.

  Vidar narrowed his eyes, wondering if it, in fact, was a girl hidden under those baggy clothes and under all that hair.

  “No, not today. First, you learn the light rune. We’ll see how that goes before we try anything more difficult.”

  He handed out paper and thin sticks of charcoal to everyone before ordering them to sit. With the kenaz rune shining brightly on the wall, the lines were easy enough to see.

  “Draw that,” he said, pointing to the rune. “Make the lines as precise as you can and make them small so you don’t use up the entire paper right away.”

  One of the three students missing a hand raised the one still attached.

  Vidar sighed inwardly and walked over. “What is it?”

  “Well, I can’t write, can I?”

  “This isn’t writing. It’s drawing lines. It’s not the same.”

  “Well, that don’t matter, do it?”

  The student held out his hand to show his fingers twitching inwardly, as if trying and failing to make a fist. “It don’t go much further than this. How am I supposed to hold that tiny thing?”

  They’d sent Vidar someone who couldn’t craft runes at all. Someone who couldn’t even hold the instrument needed to make marks. Useless. No, he realized, not useless. Just because you couldn’t craft runes didn’t mean you couldn’t work with them at all. Still, it bristled a little, having been given broken students. He masked his disappointment.

  He put on a smile he’d seen on his own teachers many times and radiating that same kind of patient encouragement. Vidar hoped his wasn’t as transparent as the ones that’d been directed at him so many times.

  “We’ll move you on to this next part, then.”

  “What’s that?” the student asked.

  While the others sat on the floor doing their best to copy the light rune, he brought the one without even one functioning hand to the side to explain.

  “Once the lines are drawn, you have to make the rune work. So, the thing you need the most is your mind,” he said, pointing at his skull. “And some imagination.”

  The student listened intently.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lymmel.”

  “Well, Lymmel,” Vidar said. “Take this.”

  He handed over a spent light rune that he hadn’t gotten around to rejuvenating yet. One of Alvarn’s wooden discs.

  Lymmel’s eyes widened, and he pulled his hand back. “I can’t take that. It’s witchcraft.”

  “Just take it,” Vidar said, shoving the rune into his open hand. “It isn’t witchcraft. Witches aren’t real. This is rune crafting. It’s why you’re here. Remember? You wanted to learn, didn’t you?”

  Lymmel shook his head violently, but he kept hold of the rune. “No one asked me. Dinky just dumped me here. Said I was useless as a thief.”

  “What good is a thief with no hands?” Vidar asked, speaking without thinking.

  Lymmel’s face fell, but he didn’t comment. Rather than apologizing, Vidar pushed on.

  “I want you to touch the symbol on here. Anywhere within the ring of wood will do. Then I want you to close your eyes and imagine a circle. That’s the round shape of this disc of wood here.”

  “I know what a circle is,” Lymmel grumbled.

  “Once you have that firmly in your mind, you have to imagine the lines here, the ones making up the runic symbol. Understand?”

  Lymmel nodded.

  “Good. The lines in your mind have to match the ones printed on the rune. See?”

  Lymmel opened his eyes to watch Vidar’s finger as he traced the lines. “Sure.”

  “If the lines aren’t perfect, the ones in your mind shouldn’t be either.”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s it for now,” Vidar said. “For today, we won’t move beyond imagination.”

  “That’s it?” Lymmel asked.

  “For now,” Vidar repeated.

  He might have attempted to sound callous when speaking with Yallander, but he didn’t want these people to end up injured, or worse. Being a student was a terrible thing, full of anxious learning and testing. Humiliation and frustration. He would not see these already-broken people put down further if he could prevent it. That was the least he could do, Vidar figured, because of how well he was being paid for it. After all, even he never promised any results.

  He wondered how much his own tutors had taken out of his father’s pockets after he himself had tired of trying to teach his oldest son. Rage suddenly swelled in his chest. Vidar, shocked by the sudden emotion, gritted his teeth and slapped Lymmel’s back.

  “There you go, get to it.”

  Joining the others, he saw several styles in practice. One of the geezers had already filled his entire paper with trembling lines. Not a single one of them was straight, but they all fell in roughly the right angles. He watched the old man fill in the last blank spot. He made the marks in a slow, unsteady hand.

  “Go faster,” Vidar said. “See if that will help with the shaking. You’re drawing from your wrist. Try holding it still. Instead, move your elbow or shoulder.”

  It was a common technique among scribes when writing in large letters or a flowing style. The wrist was only able to make small marks with accuracy. But the elbow and the shoulder could move much more freely. The old man’s troubled look eased a little, and he turned the paper over.

  Vidar didn’t stay to see him apply the new knowledge. The two others missing a hand looked like they still had full use of their remaining one. They were both terrible.

  One just made runes haphazardly. The lines made no sense despite the simpleness of the symbol. When he looked up at the wall to the rune he was supposed to copy, his eyes narrowed and his face turned into a mask of frustration.

  “Keep trying,” Vidar said. The man obviously needed glasses.

  The other of the pair was doing a better job of it. None of his runes were correct, though, with lines slanted too far or not enough. His control of the charcoal was terrible, and Vidar showed him how to hold it.

  He hadn’t realized before how much help his training as a scribe had been for this new part of his life. Without it, his own symbols might have looked something like this man’s. Instead, he’d been able to grasp it and copy a symbol in a matter of a few attempts. The life before his exile hadn’t been a complete waste, then. All those hours sweating in the workshop. He shuddered at the recollection.

  The other old man was sleeping soundly, not having made a single mark. Vidar decided not to wake him. By the look of him, he wasn’t long for this world. Let him have his sleep in the presence of a sowilo rune. He wasn’t hurting anyone.

  That left two students.

  The feminine boy, or girl in boy’s clothing, sat by himself by the edge of the group. Vidar got to his knees to inspect the kenaz symbols and found himself impressed.

  “These are very well made.”

  “Thank you,” he replied in a soft, low voice without looking up from the paper.

  Long, slender fingers held the piece of charcoal in an unconventional way, grasping it with all fingers, like one might hold a lighting stick. Vidar saw no reason to correct him on the grip, not when he was getting results like that.

  “What is your name?”

  “Frinn.”

  A boy’s name.

  “Are you sure?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Frinn looked up then, glaring straight into Vidar’s eyes. Some of the hair over his face shifted, revealing a wicked-looking scar going from his forehead, down his cheek, and down to his jaw.

  “Nothing. I’d like you to start drawing circles around the kenaz symbols. If possible, don’t make them overlap. You may use ink, if you want.”

  Frinn nodded without looking back up, and he gave no verbal reply.

  That left the bearded man. He sat near the wall, staring up at the light rune without blinking.

  “It’s not wise to stare right at the light for too long,” Vidar said, approaching.

  The man jumped in startlement while sitting and spun his head to look up over his shoulder. “Sorry, lad, didn’t hear you coming. Sneaking like a thief about to rob a pretty lass of her undergarments, aren’t you?”

  Vidar blinked. “I…”

  “Never mind me,” he said, reaching out with his right hand. “Harald.”

  Vidar took it. “Vidar.”

  “Of course, of course. Our esteemed tutor,” Harald said, looking back up at the rune. “Ain’t it beautiful?”

  “You’re sitting too close to it.”

  Harald turned again. “What’s that?”

  “Look at this,” Vidar said, pulling out another kenaz rune from his pocket and placing it on Harald’s paper. “When you sit at this angle, it gets all distorted. See the differences?”

  The symbols on the paper were decent enough, but the lines were all too short and pushed together, because he’d been looking at the rune from almost right beneath it.

  Harald slapped his knee and let out a booming laugh. “Right you are, lad! Right you are! I’ll do ’em over and do ’em right, I promise.”

  With that promise made, he stared back up at the rune without moving back. “Look at it, though. It’s a beaut. Damn me if it isn’t a beaut.”

  “What do you mean?”

  It was a decent enough rune, but it was just a couple of lines.

  “Old. Ancient. Isn’t it? Left behind by our ancestors’ ancestors. Written in a language no one speaks no more. A few lines to give us light in the dark winter. Beautiful.”

  Vidar thought he saw Harald wipe away a tear.

  “You’re in the thieves’ guild?”

  “Aye, but I’m not a thief.”

  “How does that work?” Vidar asked.

  “Chopping wood is my business… Was my business. The guild kept me and mine fed and warm when an injury put me on my back for a good long while. In exchange, I keep my ears and eyes open.”

  “An informant.”

  Harald winced, but gave a small nod as he hunched his shoulders forward. “Aye.”

  “How come you’re with this bunch, then?”

  That question made the bulky man break out with a sunny smile. “Volunteered! Rune craft, can you imagine it, lad?”

  Vidar chuckled. “Well, keep it up, Harald. Copy the symbol on that disc instead, so you get the angle right.”

  “Don’t worry your little self, I’ll get it right.”

  By the time the sun was about to rise, Vidar instructed everyone on how to imagine the circle in their minds and the symbol within the bounds of that circle.

  “What comes next?” the old man who hadn’t been sleeping asked. His lines had improved quite a bit once he adopted Vidar’s advice. Some of those runes he’d put to paper might even be usable.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll talk about your body’s essence and how we use it to power the runes. Don’t do anything on your own until then, or you might accidentally kill yourself.”

  A quiet murmur broke out, but that was all. None looked discouraged.

  Dawn finally broke then, the sky turning purple and orange. Vidar collected the two kenaz runes on the wooden discs and then rendered the one rune on the wall inactive. By that time, the sowilo rune on the floor no longer provided warmth, having run out of essence.

  “Tomorrow, then,” Vidar said.

  The students shuffled out past him while giving small thanks or muttering “tomorrow” as they went. Once they were all gone, including the sleeping geezer, Vidar took stock of the room. A sensation filled him when he collected the used sheets of paper strewn about, a sensation he wasn’t familiar with. It took him a few moments to place it. Accomplishment. He’d done a decent enough job of teaching these people, he thought, allowing himself a sprinkling of pride.