“I hope you actually have something for me.” Iria said as Berered her office. “My receptionist seems to think you’re just trying to go over his head.”

  Bernt shifted unfortably. “Uh. no. I mean, It's not just that, I do have something for you.”

  The archmage raised an eyebrow at him mildly, but Bernt suddenly felt as though he were in danger and he rushed to tinue.

  “I was on defey with Josie today and I learned something that seemed… relevant, at least. About the Solicitors, I mean... not all of them, but Josie in particur. She see the maworks of mages. Iail. She noticed some spiritual damage in my arm – I thought it was mostly healed already, but it might be worse than I thought… anyway, don’t you think that might be the reason the Solicitors pced her in the Underkeepers?”

  Iria’s face grew thoughtful, but eventually she shook it. “They probably just did it because she’d be the most useful – I expect that she also find invisible creatures and sense demons. It's not unheard of. Being able to see a mage’s mawork wouldn’t be very useful for a warlock, except maybe to see how many iures they have. Was there anything else?”

  “Ah.” Bernt said. He already khat it wasn't much – Josie had said as much, but he’d needed a reason to talk to Iria, and this was new information – to him at least. “I also wa by this spell that I developed – I call it Banefire. It ters hellfire to aent, and it kills demons. Or, at least, they really don’t like it.”

  Iria sat up straight. “Really? It sounds... relevant to our current situation, though I'm not sure about the 's your spell, I guess.” She held out a hand. “Give it here, I'll get it looked at.”

  Bernt swallowed. “Uh… your receptionist has it. He said he would send it to Magister Pollod he didn't give it back when I asked. I was hoping to sell it to the guild and maybe use that to finance my guild membership.”

  Iria snorted. "Let's take a look before we start talking price." Light swirled in one lens of her gsses, flig from one image to the oo quickly for Bernt to catch what she was looking at. She rose and strode toward the door. “I guess I spare a few minutes. e along!”

  The archmage walked down the hall so quickly that Bernt had to jog to catch up. Instead of going to the entrahough, she led him down another hall and up a flight of stairs to a door beled “Wizard’s Society and Research Division”. Without knog, she flung the door open and marched through into a corridor lined with doors, practically draggi in her wake.

  “Pollock! Get in here!” She called as she pulled him into one of the rooms on the right. “I need you to take a look at this.”

  The room was bigger than it looked oside, but still ne. It tained a writing desk, a small, mostly empty shelf where someone had fotten a haphazard stack of loose papers, and a retively rge bit of clear floorspace, where a circle of runes had been carved directly into the stone.

  Bernt reized it immediately and realized what they were about to do. Without prompting, he began casting, visualizing the spellform in the air in front of him. It was still a new spell to him, so it took him nearly fifteen seds to get the job done. Once he did, he carefully stripped out the effects of his iure – he wasn’t trying to sell that – and released the spell into the circle.

  When he looked up, he found that they weren’t alone anymore. Iria and a stooped elderly man were standing just oher side of the circle, both watg with i as the gray fire unraveled into the spellform that defi. The man was a, with just a few tufts of fine white hair poking outward from his otherwise bald head, pensated by a long bushy beard that pletely hid his mouth.

  “It’s...” The old man adjusted a pair of spectacles and moved to the side to view it from anle. “Well, it’s modeled on a standard fireball, clearly. But it’s using a different basis for the fire itself – very unusual and plex, too. Very fun! I’ve never seen it before. What does it do?”

  “He says it burns demons.” Iria said and looked over at Bernt. “The fire-demons, tht?”

  Bernt nodded. “Yes, it sort of cels out hellfire, or it weakens it. I’m irely sure, but I think it saved my arm from getting burnt off a few weeks ago.”

  “I see, I see.” The old man, presumably Magister Pollock, said distractedly and pointed. “And what made you decide to orient the ignition rune like that?”

  Bernt shrugged. “I didn’t – it was that way in the inal cold fire scroll that I based this on. If I had to guess, though, it’s because a normal fire spell burns mana for fuel and uses the heat that gees to burn things, just like regur fire does. The heat is what does the damage. Cold fire isn’t hot, at least not very. The rune in this spell is orieo ignite whatever that bit of the spellform is describing there instead of just mana.” Bernt poio the cluster of runes iion. “This has some overp with the spellform for hellfire, though I couldn’t find any part that was a match. It’s not the same, but I’m guessing that’s why the spells i.”

  Magister Pollock peered at Bernt curiously. “You tried to work it out on your own? And you have access to the spellform for hellfire?” He turo Iria and spped her on the shoulder lightly, chiding her. “He tried to work it out on his own! And he’s not even very wrong! Why didn’t you send him to me sooner?”

  “He’s not a guild member, Pollock.” Iria said with exaggerated patience. “What do you think it’s worth? He was saying that he wao try to trade it for membership.” She looked at Bernt with a raised eyebrow. “You were, weren’t you?”

  Bernt cleared his throat. “I was hoping that it was worth enough gold to buy my membership, yes.” He didn’t want to just trade it directly… not if it might be worth more than the priembership.

  Pollock cackled, revealing a gap-toothed grin. “Then I’ll say fifty gold pieces, or a direct trade for membership plus access to the wizard’s society. Simple enough.”

  Bernt frowned. Clearly, he shouldn’t have said anything. Guild membership cost exactly fifty gold marks. Now the old man was trying to steer him.

  Then again, spell research was something he was very ied in. If Pollock was a wizard as well as a specialized pyromahen he would probably prove even more useful than the guild library. In fact…

  “Uh. Do you know anything about hellfire? Or about fire that damage the spirit in general? That fight I mentioned, where I avoided losing an arm? I have some lingering issues from that.”

  Magister Pollock squi him through his gsses. “Really? Well… I don’t know for certain, but I think you’re in the right pce. We take a look when you’re a proper member and everything. I don’t work with any old riffraff off the street, you know. I’m a guild resource!”

  Bernt looked over at Iria, atg the proceedings with a pleased expression. She him, urging him to accept.

  “Oh just take the deal, boy. He’s a little etric, but he’ll get you a lot further than a bag of gold. Besides, it’s access to the wizard’s society, not a job. He ’t make you work for him or even show up when you don’t want to.” She emphasized the st bit, staring pointedly at the old man, who s her.

  “Silly girl. He’ll be knog down my door at all hours if he knows what’s good for him!”

  –------

  Bernt sighe short, one-page tract at the front desk and slid it over to the dour-lookiionist. Without looking, the man duplicated the thick paper ond hahe copy to his monkey, who went to file it away. Bernt pocketed the inal wordlessly and turned baagister Pollock, who watched the proceedings with the impatience of a child waiting for dinner.

  “Wonderful. Wele to the Mages’ Guild, boy. e along, now, I want to see what you’ve doo your arm.” Without waiting for a respohe old man turned and started hiking back up the stairs at a geriatric pace. Berated for a sed, but then followed a his arm to the man.

  Somehow, Berhat Pollock was too excited. About his spell, about him, about the damage to his arm. No one had shown this kind of i in him before, and it made him suspicious.

  Then again, he’d paid for it, hadn’t he? He was sure that a lot of mages were about to learn his spell, and not just in Halfbridge. The scryers would dissemi to every es’ Guild bran the try. Cold fire was already proving to be very valuable against the duergar – how much better would it be when every pyromancer in the guild, not to mention Arice’s army had it?

  “So, then.” Pollock said as they walked. “Tell me exactly what happened. We’ll take a closer look back at my office, but we’re going to be walking a while. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know?”

  Trying to remember exactly what he saw, Bered what had happened in the fight against the warlock at the Uy Gates, from the initial burn to Syrah’s healing.

  “Hmmm. And that was everything?” Pollock asked, taking a breather on the nding.

  “Well. In that fight, yes. But I’m worried that there might be more to it. The same arm was exposed to an alchemical poison about two months ago and I also strained my mawork during the kobold invasion around that time – though it was fine again before that.”

  The old man frowned, sidering. “We’ll have to take a closer look at it. I doubt the strain did anything perma in a single day of overuse. Mages who burn themselves out usually do so over months or years – it’s on with soldiers, people who cast a lot of spells under pressure. Better to take a risk tha killed, right? Alchemical poisons be tricky, though. They’re magical, so sometimes you get uable spell iions if the residues aren’t pletely elimiell me about this poison. What happehere?”

  By the time Bernt finished reting his experieh the Alchemists’ Guild, they’d finally made it back to Pollock’s office. The room was much rger than the small boratory that they’d been in earlier, with shelves of a-looking books, stacks of hat covered nearly every avaible surface, and twe ets that stood behind a massive desk that was also nearly buried underh stacks of loose papers.

  The old man bustled over to one of the ets and rummaged around in it for a few moments before withdrawing a broken piece of chalk. Then, taking a seat in his rge chair, he moved a few of the smaller stacks of papers onto some of the rger stacks and began to draw directly onto the desk.

  Bernt watched curiously, realizing a few seds ter that he was creating a rune circle. It wasn’t like any that he’d seen before, though it didn’t look plicated at all. Simpler, even, than the one used for iments or spell analyses that was carved into the floor of the other room.

  “Alright,” Pollock said. “Just hold your arm up over the circle there and run a little mana through it. A little lower. Yes, just like that.”

  As Bernt eled mana, a small group of glowing blue lines appeared in the air right above his arm. They didn’t form any definitive pattern, they just ran alongside each other at a slight curve, with owisting slightly around two others. Over the few seds, though, the image grew clearer. The lines weren’t quite straight, wobbling bad forth at very slight angles and they were oddly textured – a little knobby and sort h-looking oside.

  “Hmm,” the old man said, moving from side to side as if to get a better look. “That’s pretty unusual, yes. I’ve never seen an odd texture like this.”

  Bernt swallowed. “Do you think it’s going to get in the way of my development? I was hoping to get my sed iure soon – the archmage promised me access to your perpetual fme.”

  “Really?” Pollock said, eyebrows going up in surprise. “Pretty daring architecture, that one. Dangerous.” He looked back at the proje thoughtfully. “I don’t really know. If I were you, I would at least try to uand your ditioer before proceeding. It shouldn’t really take long, though. We do a few more tests here, and we might be able to get an alchemist to take a look as well. They don’t know anything useful about maworks, mind you, but it might help you figure out whether any alchemical iions are involved.”

  Bernt grimaced. “I’ve had some bad experiences with the alchemists. I don’t know that I want to ask them for help.”

  The old man ughed. “Alchemists are just people, boy. When you don’t trust an anization, you turn to individuals." He waved dismissively. "I’ll hahat part. Just be here tomorrow, same time.”