Chapter Nine

One of the first things we each noticed as Winter dug her cold nails further into the Hog's Warts, was the decreasing quality of our meals. All our meat was salted and heavily spiced, having been boiled until near burning or smoked to keep for the winter without putrefying. We ate fewer and fewer fresh vegetables, everything having been pickled or dried to last. The only things in abundance - to my confusion - were filling breads (the monks called them 'cakes') stuffed with dried fruits, vegetables or spices, and soups.

In themselves, they weren't bad, though by the New Year, the meats were beginning to go slightly green underneath all the coating of spices and salt, but it was the repetition that made our meals less enjoyable. Eventually, one of the younger monks got fed up and threw away a large part of the meat, insisting that we managed with salted fish. "At least that doesn't make me go as green as it is," he retorted to an exasperated Brother Clement.

As predicted, we were kept busy enough as more and more sorcerors (or just wearied mundane travellers) pleaded for entrance at our gates. Lady Ravenclaw pushed our knowledge of healing to it's limits, and then some, as she set to work helping the badly wounded and the ill who came to our doors. In fact, there came a point when she and the monks began to make detailed plans for the school's infirmary and apothecary, to ensure that the sick would have a pleasant place to rest, instead of having to make do with mattresses of grass and straw.

Her own plans for the moving staircases were also under way. On the last and second days of the week, Lady Ravenclaw made sure that those who knew of woodwork were set to task, honing and hewing away. The monks carved away little decorations ("like the ones we have in our stalls in the old monastery," Clement told me) of hunters chasing deer, and strange male faces with leaves bursting out of their mouths, as well as scenes of my battles, the meetings between the swamp people and Salazar, and Lady Ravenclaw healing the village people. To my interest, they carved comparatively few of Lady Helga as they - like the rest of us - knew so little about her. What they did carve were images of her flying across the sea into Pictland, and occasional scenes of her first meeting with the three of us.

We, including Salazar who had returned from his travels for the specific occasion, spent several nights and several days, pooling our magics together and strengthening the joints between wood and stone, then imbuing the stairs with our own magic for them to have the power to move around of their own accord, much as we had done with the building of the Hog's Warts thus far. Salazar, as the spirit's favourite, channelled one of the lesser spirits into the heart of the School itself, after which the Abbess herself chose to bless our work and douse it with water.

"They are both of the same source," she had said in her serene voice, "the spirits and your magic. Though I do not understand your powers, I can see that they are as equal as that of a faithful saint's or a hard-voiced prophet's. This way, we will all remember that."

Thoroughly exhausted after so much magic-mongering, all of us who had been involved in the task rested for an entire week. After that, Salazar left us once again and we returned to our more important work.

Most of the young (and indeed adult) sorcerors who we began to teach already knew how to read and write to some extent. They would have known some Latin, less Greek and some other older languages, in order to have been able to say their spells. That made the monks' task a good deal easier for it meant that they could concentrate on broadening the range of languages spoken by the students.

Brother Clement, however, had to start from scratch with the vast majority of his students, who had never heard of Euclid or Pythagoras, nor read the ways of the Stoics or the Epicureans, though few more had heard of the teaching of Paul and other Christian apostles. Some of them latched onto this new knowledge eagerly, even going so far that he had to set up extra classes for the most promising of his students. Among such students were Fabia-Miriam (which somehow didn't surprise me) and her younger brother. Stanislaus was one of those baffled by mathematics, instead preferring to contemplate the riddles of philosopher and apostle alike, as I myself did.

It being winter, Brother Clement was unable to take his students out for the 'Natural' lessons, as he would have liked to do, but was nevertheless planning for outings once the last snows had melted, in order to help his students appreciate their geography lessons.

The sorcerous monks, too, had their work cut out for them. As Godric had told me before, the magic that the students were used to was a mixture of common sense herbal remedies, witchcraft, superstitions and pure sorcery and the monks' first task was to separate them from the other in order to educate the sorcerous students properly. I had never much understood the difference, but hearing the complaints and difficulties of the sorcerous monks made it all the more clearer.

Witchcraft was sorcery very much based on the world around the sorceror, rather than the sorceror himself. That was why things like the phase of the moon, or the time of day, or the season, or the hour mattered so much. It explained why only certain herbs and plants could be used for a particular spell and only particular stones for certain spells. It was the ritual of the thing: one needed coloured candles, bits of soil, blood, bone, hair... that was witchcraft. Indeed, that was what most of the 'sorcerors' who we received could do. It didn't require any source of magical power within the sorceror in question, simply that of the ingredients. The sorcerous monks became most frustrated to find that out of the sorcerous students, most were simply witches.

"But I think it best if we continue educating them as sorcerors, for clearly such witches are held in esteem among their people for a reason and must have some sort of talent, even if it is not sorcerous in origin," Brother Clement had said thoughtfully one evening. "Who knows what might come out of it? And besides, all knowledge is good knowledge, even of things that one cannot truly understand or put to use."

The ones who were sorcerors in the truest sense of the word, often had no knowledge of witchcraft as such and had to be educated as to the nature of their power. The monks and Lady Ravenclaw felt sorry for them: once their power was unleashed, they would often hurt themselves in the process of trying to master it. They often suffered from burned hands, and ferocious headaches, occasionally setting random objects on fire or they would attract lightening to themselves or causing things to explode.

None of us really had any idea what to do, including me. I had a nagging feeling that if I, the other three, the sorcerous monks and other sorcerors through the ages had managed it, why these students couldn't was a mystery indeed. Even more interesting, was that the many 'witches' that were also trained as sorcerors did not have such problems, but could achieve the basic and middle-level sorcery with less trouble. Lady Ravenclaw had surmised that this was because as witches, they had been in contact with magical sources for such a long time, the magical powers had in a sense 'rubbed off' on them. They wouldn't have as much sorcerous ability as those for whom it was innate, so it took less energy for them to focus their power. Still, that did not solve the problem of the sorcerors.

It was only two or three weeks (but felt like much longer) before something occurred to us. We each noticed, apparently at the same time, how we seemed to use a channel for our powers in order to get things to work. The sorcerous monks used their prayer beads, which they called rosaries and focused their spells using the correct words and the properties of their beads. For some, beads made of holly wood or ash worked best and for others, beads of lapis lazuli or some other semi-precious stone. I realised that I used my brother's rod in precisely the same way, to focus my sorcery. When we approached the Ladies Ravenclaw and Helga, they revealed that they too used a channel. For Lady Ravenclaw, it was either a similar rod to my brother's or, when she wished to be discreet, a rosary of spruce beads that she wore around her neck, each decade polished with a different oil; the lavender polished beads, for example, she would touch when calling on her healing powers.

Lady Helga, too had a focus, a silver cup. But such was it's nature that she could only use it for ceremonial magics, or else it would prove too awkward and ungainly to carry around with her all the time.

"Zat is vhy I specialize in ze vitch arrts," she informed us.

Perhaps, then, that was the answer.

Understanding the nature of the channels, we began to ask each of the sorcerors their day of birth, the moon phase, the season, the horoscope (if they knew it), any remarkable events that had happened at the time and how they came to be named (the Christians, for example, had chosen new names at their baptism), as well as their meanings. With all this information, we began to concentrate on making suitable channels for them.

I found it fascinating. The men - and this included me for even by this time, I had not found the courage, nor indeed the time, to tell them the truth of Godric, just as Eisla had predicted - spent our day teaching the sorcerors how to whittle away their own rods, using certain woods that we had felt was more suitable for them. We then taught them how to extract oils from herbs ("which'll be useful when I need them as healers," Lady Ravenclaw had said approvingly) and how to polish their rods frequently in order to get the most out of their channels.

And by and large it worked.

Infrequently, some of the rods would snap or the tip would burst, but as the students practised, such occurrences ceased. As if there had been no trouble at all, our sorcerors fled through the assigned books, and by Yuletide, many of them were conversing with either myself, Lady Ravenclaw, Lady Helga or Brother Clement as to their chosen areas of sorcery.

Each night, I would join Eisla in our chambers and tell her of everything that we had achieved. She was proud of me, and rightly so, I suppose, though at times I felt her pride a little overwhelming. I was just as proud of her, as well: during the day, she spent her time helping the monks to write a large missal on the strange lands she had visited and their customs and

gods. "Something to rival Herotodus," she had, and tweaked my nose. I blushed fiercely: during the day I forgot that I was still Gelda, Eisla's adopted little sister, Ahatti. I think that at times, the same was true of her. We had stopped talking about the right occasion to reveal my true person to the others. It was far too late now.

What was more, apart from those moments when she would tweak my nose and murmur my name, it was getting more and more difficult to separate the Godric from the Gelda. The magic had indeed been successful, and it didn't take much to make me wonder if it had been too successful.

Spring eventually came. After the initial shock of the Sun, it crept up on us who had grown so accustomed to Winter, slowly but surely. The snows melted and flowers bloomed. It dawned on me that Spring had truly arrived when Brother Clement announced (wrapped up in waxed woollen robes) that he was taking his class out for a walk through the nearby land. It felt strange to think of how much of an effect a change in season had on us. We kept the doors of the School wide open for most of the day and the spring air cleansed and refreshed us.

The winter snows being melted away, we were inundated by a wave of more seekers. Unlike the stragglers that we had received in the winter, these were often made up of large groups of already learned sorcerors and their folk. It was the first time that I was to come in contact with people who were truly sorcerous by culture, not just because of their talent. Lady Ravenclaw and I learned much from these old sorcerous clans. They advised us not to start the training of a sorcerous child, for example, and to wait until they were on the cusp of adulthood. Of course, that varied depending on the child in question, but thereafter, we each made sure that the younger ones were given other tasks to concentrate on apart from their magic until they had come of age.

When, as usually happens, our students would come of age, we were again warned to encourage them to love someone of opposite talents: "Just as the blood can become inbred," an old sorcerous Lady had informed me, "so can magic. Don't let the healers marry other healers. Let them marry seers. Let the seers marry the enchanters. Even better, let the sorcerous marry the mundane. Children born of such unions often end up stronger and wiser than their parents."

"I find that especially interesting," Lady Ravenclaw murmured to me on one occasion, "because there are certain sects of sorcerors who insist on keeping magics within a family..."

"And do they become as inbred as the Lady says?" I replied.

The Lady Ravenclaw looked thoughtful. "Stagnant is perhaps the better word," she said. "They are not so open to new ideas. They do not seem as open to the old ideas, for that matter. But what they gain is a depth of understanding of that which they do know, that cannot be rivalled."

Regardless of how many different ways of using the space we had built, we were always overcrowded. Some even took to sleeping in the barns or the infirmaries. As Spring progressed, we were a riot of ploughing fields and digging up new foundations. At least this time round, I thought to myself, with all our magic learnt over the winter, we would have an easier time of it.

We did, but only barely. For all our experience, we were building on a larger and grander scale than before. We had plans for libraries, larger cellars, dormitories and solaces, gardens, watchtowers, halls and classrooms. We began to learn to build ahead of ourselves. Whereas beforehand, we had built only when necessary, now we had planned large wings of the School with no one to use them. Of course, we would be proved right for our caution as a new influx of wanderers would come in through our doors.

What would have taken us several years to build by hand, took us only a few months with our magic. With the beginning of summer came the growing of the corn from the earth and fruits upon the trees, while the Hog's Warts doubled in size. We soon became more of a village than a School. We extended the stables to build a blacksmith's, for example, not as large as the one in the village, but enough for smaller works. A new kitchen was built nearer to the infirmaries, where the Lady Ravenclaw could make her medicines. Lastly, near to the rooms that had been designated as libraries (for all that we had so few books with us) was the copying room. As soon as it was finished and furnished, the monks, sorcerous and mundane, spent hours there, painstakingly making copies of the few tomes we had. A few of them worked on Chronicles, journals filled with our stories and sufferings, our dreams and visions. Every now and again, I would go and visit them, occasionally to answer some query of theirs, but usually just to sit and watch in awe, seeing history being written.

Around that time, Salazar returned to us. We did, of course, celebrate his arrival with a lot of good eating and dancing. He took the time to meet our new arrivals, listening to their stories by day. By night, as we sat around a table, huddled inwards, he told us what he had heard along his way.

"There's no news of them allyin' agains' us jus' ye'." he began wearily.

"By them, I take it you mean the various sorcerous tribes who are against our endeavours," Clement put in.

"Just how many of them are there?" Eisla asked.

"Well, around a dozen," I answered, noticing the strange look on Eisla's face as I did so. "But most are small, petty gangs, really; lucky enough to have employed a couple of mercenaries for their purpose. A few come from the old Roman-Angle families, still holding on to some old vision of power. They're the really dangerous ones, because they have the most powerful sorcerors and can easily sway the smaller gangs to join them..."

"I suppose zat it is only a matterr of time beforre they succeed in doing so," Helga murmured, then glanced up quickly, meeting Salazar's eyes. He nodded slowly.

"Yeh, I've convinced mysel' o' tha' as well. I's only a matter o' time before they who be the Old clans start waving coins in their faces."

"I would've thought the Old families would be behind our endeavour," Eisla said quietly.

"Oh, some are," the Lady Ravenclaw nodded. "But some... well, you have to understand that the old Roman families have been isolated from what used to be the Empire for a long time. Indeed, at one point, they were abandoned by it and yet, they were always expected to follow the edicts of Rome. This created a great deal of resentment that carried through the generations. Being on an island makes them naturally suspicious and alert to any foreigner who they see as trying to take their power from them. I think some see us as just yet another group of inquisitors on the lookout for some new heresy," she sighed. "Politics."

"We'll get them around to our side eventually," Clement reassured her. "It'll take a while, but eventually we will. Once they see we have no interest in taking what power they might have over their magics and learning."

"Is there news of any other travelling band?" the Lady Ravenclaw asked. "We have new halls in the mountain keeps."

"I have to admi', I'm almos' impressed by the work ye've managed to do," Salazar chuckled. "I've nothin' specific to tell yer, bu' I've heard rumours of a couple of sorcerous refugees makin' their way up north..."

"It's like a great pilgrimage!" The Abbess said faintly. We laughed.

"There's all sor's o' strange tales bein' tol' abou' yer, my Lady," Salazar rose an eyebrow at the Lady Ravenclaw. "Jus' what have you been spreadin', this time?"

"Nothing!" She raised her hands in defence as we laughed again. "I swear, I don't know how these stories get out!"

"So long as they're complementary..." Brother Clement murmured.

Salazar sighed and shifted in his seat. "That's jus' the problem - no' all o' them are. You're gettin' turned into a reg'lar Hypatia, you know."

"Oh dear," she replied, coyly lowering her eyes, but Eisla looked genuinely concerned.

"I've heard about what they did to her, those Alexandrians... it was the Christians and some Bishop of theirs... oh! Sorry, Brother Clement, Abbess," she suddenly stopped.

"No, no: the old Abbot once told us of it," Clement said. "The mob called it a purge."

"Some purge - she was only an old mathematician!" Eisla exclaimed.

"The 'she' bein' the importan' par' of i', I reckon," Salazar added grimly. "Suffice to say, m'Lady - be careful. You don' wan' these ol' families settin' their pries's on you. Nothin's worse than a prayin' sorceror..."

"Salazar, I am always careful," the Lady Ravenclaw replied softly and held Salazar's gaze for a beat too long. I sighed.

"I picked up a new sword as well, Godric," he turned to me and grinned. "We'll have to ge' started tryin' i' ou'."

"Ah!" I groaned, miming an old man rubbing his back. "Give me a day or two - you'll be all fresh from your leisurely wanderings!"

"Oh yes?" He cried as the others laughed, getting up one by one just as we did. "I think someone's claiming an unjus' advantage!"

"Please, my Lords," Ravenclaw waved a hand at us, the other covering up her yawn. "You can keep your proud rutting for tomorrow when we have all been rested." We bade goodnight to each other and made our way down the halls to our allotted solaces. I slept near the stables, where it was warmest from the horses and the smithy. On my way there, I was surprised by a gentle touch on the crook of my arm.

"Who--?"

"Ssh! Inside," said the hoarse whisper and the hands guided me into my room. As I lit a candle, the person turned round to close the door before turning back to face me.

"G-Eisla? What is it?" I asked.

"That!" She pointed at me and approached me with an intense look in her eyes. "How did you know so much about our foe, hm? I don't remember Godric ever telling you anything about that..."

"Godric?" I barked. "I am--"

"Gelda!" She hissed. "You're Gelda, not Godric! Gelda!" She sighed. "Oh, what has this magic done? We were supposed to tell them about the truth, but we have been so busy, so caught up with all of this... and you looked so much like him already and this magic must have fooled even his blood brother... even you: you're actually becoming your brother..."

"Don't be rid--"

"No, no! Not like that, but in here," she tapped on her head. "You're all Godric in here and it's affecting you. Even your voice seems deeper sometimes."

"Do you think we should tell them now, then, before this carries on?" I asked after a long pause, during which I could feel myself somehow getting smaller, as Gelda took over and I was left feeling slightly deflated. Being Godric felt so wonderful, so powerful, that it was no wonder I had been so willing to cast Gelda aside.