Thread: The Will of Fire: Island of the Old Kings: Chapters 1 & 2 (Novel)

Hello everybody. I started on a fantasy novel the other day and thought I'd post a bit of it here for critique. This is the first in a possible series of stories I've been planning out for awhile now called The Will of Fire. I'm going for a full length 100,000+ word novel with this one. I'll be posting the first drafts of chapters as they are finished. Let me know what you think.

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The Will of Fire: Book 1: Island of the Old Kings
by M Reichardt

Chapter One

From across the sea they came, from islands far to the north. Tall, pale, otherworldly beings. They called themselves the Syl, meaning “The First” in their tongue. They fled here, from what they would not say. With open arms we welcomed them to our lands, a decision that we quickly came to regret, for it was they that brought the Mist. It was they that put our Kings in chains.
-Scribe Orvrin Martel, 1106 L.A.

All was quiet in the walled city of Dolemn. The distant white sickle of the crescent moon was long past its peak in the cloudless night sky. A chill late-autumn wind blew through the city streets, empty save the handful of Syl guards that stood watch in the utter darkness of the Slave District, some watching the gates that sectioned off the district from the rest of the citywhile others patrolled the streets both within and beyond.

A hundred or so slaves worked in Dolemn. When their daily work was done they would be escorted by the Collectors to their hovels in the Slave District. Here they got what rest they could before the Collectors returned in the morning to take them back to work. This had been the way of things for centuries, ever since the arrival of the Syl from overseas and their defeat of the Old Kings.

They were clad in ash black chain armor, curved blades worn at their sides, the symbol of the Red Star emblazoned on their chests. None of them carried torches, for they could see as well by night as they could by day. The light would serve only to alertthose breaking the curfew to their watchers’ presence. Not thatthey expected to find anyone. The slaves knew that there were eyes in the dark, and the penalty for being found.

Unbeknownst to the guards, not all was silent in the District. In his quarters, a young boy slept uneasily, tossing and turning in tattered sheets in a room shared by numerous other sleeping slaves. His name was Roh, and he worked as a servant in the Dolemn Archive. He was slightly shorter and smaller than most his age, black of hair with light blue eyes. Tonight, as he had for many nights in recent times, he heard a voice in his dreams.

Can you hear me? It was a man’s voice.Roh felt the familiar sensation of invisible eyes upon him. His presence was powerful and ancient. Images flashed by his eyes as the voice called to him. Roads, a forest, a lake, statues, an island. He was sure that he had never seen these places in his waking hours, but he felt sure that they were real places. The images were glimpses at unknown places, far place beyond the walls of the city, walls that had kept him imprisoned for the past fifteen years of his life.

For weeks you have shown me these things, but I do not understand why. What use are these directions to me? A long moment passed before at last the voice replied.

The island… You can find me there. You will be safe there. The vision of the island returned, that strange island, lost amongst a thick fog that blanketed a lake some unknown leagues away. It was somewhere to the north of Dolemn, he knew this for fact, though he was unsure how. Perhaps the voice’s intrusion had brought more than mere images. Yes, he could most likely find this damned island if he wanted to. He had seen the directions with such frequency that it was as if a map had been burned into his head. But countless armed guardsmen and towering city walls lay between him and the road that could carry him to safety and freedom.

I cannot leave the city! Their eyes are on us even at night! Their ears are everywhere! I would be captured before my tenth step out the door! It’s impossible! He began to feel something approaching anger. He felt certain that the voice wished to taunt him with these visions of sights and freedoms he would never know.

Impossible for most… but not for you… The voice was growing fainter, more and more distant as it spoke.

A new image suddenly appeared in his mind. A flame sparked to sudden life in the blackness. It grew in size rapidly, becoming brighter and brighter until it became blinding. He thought that he could feel the heat of it on his skin despite knowing that he was dreaming.

I know what you are capable of. In time you will as well. You have managed to avoid their detection so far, but that does not mean you will remain safe forever. The Syl are protective of their arts. Stolen or stumbled upon, it makes no difference to them. If they find you, they will take you. You will be put to death for your gift, or worse.

What I am capable of? I am capable of nothing! If I could fly like a bird or split stone with my will perhaps, but I can’t. I am as trapped in this place as any other slave.
Do not be so quick to abandon hope, or it will abandon you. Your chance at freedom will present itself… When it appears, you must be ready to seize it… Remember what I have shown you these past weeks… and seek me out when you are able…

Roh woke so suddenly that it took him several minutes to realize that he was in fact awake. He sat up and looked around the room, as if hoping to spot the source of the mysterious voice watching him from some dark corner. Unsurprisingly, this was not the case. There were only his fellow slaves, all of them still fast asleep on their tattered bedrolls.

He turned to look out the lone, cracked window of the large bedroom to find that the sun had not quite risen. Unwilling to drift back to sleep and risk another encounter with the voice, Roh rose to his feet and quietly exited the room.
The dining chamber was dark and empty, four lit but dying torches, one on either side of both doorways, illuminating the room just enough to make out the decaying oak tables and benches, crack-strewn clay walls and rough, dirt-caked stone floor. The sound of howling wind through the cracks brought a sudden realization that he was freezing cold.

The living conditions of the Slave District did little to keep out the bitter night air, and the thin linen bed sheets were a minor comfort at best.Cold claimed many of the older slaves, particularly in the winter months. Roh rubbed his hands together for warmth, but this was little help. He walked across the room to the kitchen doorway and eyed the torches for a moment, then raised his hands over them. It helped, but not as much as he had hoped. This late into the night the torches had all but burned out. He turned his head the eye the front windows for any sign of a passing patrol. Seeing none, he turned back around, eyeing the flame intensely.

Warm… Burn bright, burn warm… More suggestions than commands, he directed these thoughts at the dying torch flame. A moment passed, and then suddenly the flame obeyed, roaring to sudden new life and a powerful heat that surpassed even a freshly lit torch. Roh couldn’t help but smirk with satisfaction as he warmed his hands.

Humans outnumbered the Syl in Terrosia, this fact was well known to all. It was said that the Syl fleet had arrived only a thousand strong. Were it not for the great power they wielded, they would never have succeeded in their conquest of the Old Kingdoms so many centuries ago. The Syl were capable of bending the world to their will with the art they called magick. With magick their armies had leveled the great cities of old in a day and brought the Lost Age to a close by giving it its name.

Working in the Archive had its benefits. Traveling mages from across the continent came to study there, thinking little of the servant boy running stacks of books around. Had they known what he had heard them discuss, how much of it he eventually came to understand…

Magick, he had learned, was half training and half natural talent. All Syl seemed to possess basic magickal abilities. Even the youngest of them could do simple things such as levitate small objects and manipulate flame. Those who chose to pursue greater power dedicated themselves to their art, spending years studying at the Great Academy in Marvaine, the flying capital city.

A trained Mage’s potential was near limitless. Roh had overheard tales of Mages capable of traveling great distances in an instant, reading the minds of others, turning stone into precious metals, and even creating servants out of pure fire and water. Because of the immense power they could wield, the Syl kept detailed records of every known mage among them.

He had discovered his own capabilities quite by accident. One night on a whim in this very room he had tried to apply the things he had overheard in the Archive, trying to light the torches by will alone. He remembered feeling quite foolish as he stood there glaring at them, commanding them to burn, and his great surprise when eventually the air around the torch heeded his will a little too eagerly, engulfing the entire torch in a large fireball.

He had never expected a non-Syl to be capable of using their art. Since discovering that he could, he had experimented with his abilities whenever he was able, often in his quarters in the dead of night, where the eyes of the guardsmen and his fellow slaves would not be upon him.

Other abilities he acquired slowly, but acquire them he did. He had learned to lift things with his mind, though he was limited to small things such as wooden bowls, shoes and books.He rarely practiced this skill, for he rarely had the strength at the end of a hard day’s work to do it for long. Every time he did anything magickal he felt as if a bit of his strength was drained away, and lifting things for extended periods of time seemed to tire him very quickly.

Fire came surprisingly easy to him, easier than all other magicks. He could increase or decrease its size, heat and intensity with minimal effort. He could shape it and even touch it without being burned so long as he remembered to remind the flame not to burn him. Roh reached down to the fire he had just fed and plucked it off of the torch with one hand. It continued to burn fiercely as ever despite lack of fuel, and caused no harm to his palm when he dropped it to rest upon it. A moment later it had taken on a perfectly spherical shape. Roh rolled it around absentmindedly.

It was shortly after he had discovered his abilities that the voice had begun to speak with him. It seemed only able to speak with him in his sleep, and its clarity varied from dream to dream. Night after night it called to him, demanding he escape from Dolemn and follow the path that it had laid out for him in his dreams, assuring him that the island it had shown him was a place of safety, a place where the Syl could never find him.

Escape. It was a strange word to one such as him, a boy who had grown to accept the idea of a lifetime of servitude as being his only future. Did the voice know what it was asking of him? Did it know how impossible such a thing was? It had been decades since any slave had succeeded in escaping the city. Escape attempts, though not unheard of, had become extremely rare, most of the human population too terrified to even let the word enter their heads. It had been many seasons since the last one, but the memory of the result was still fresh in the minds of every last one of them. It had been planned in the quarters four doors down from his. A dozen builders had conspired to construct a tunnel under their quarters that would run beneath the city. Stealing small shovels, hammers and other tools used in their work, they toiled late into the night for weeks before finally they were discovered, their quarters raided in the midst of their work. The dozen builders and their families were executed on the spot, their corpses used to help refill the pit they had dug. How exactly the builders’ plot had been uncovered remained a mystery, but there were whispers of an informant amongst the slaves, perhaps more than one. Fear and mistrust ensured that it would be some time before another organized escape attempt could be planned.

His magick would be useful if he were to attempt it, this was true, but it would not be enough to get him out of the city. There were surely trained mages amongst the ranks of the guards, and they would make short work on a boy with mere months of practice. He grasped the fireball tightly in his hand, feeling the flame lick his fingers harmlessly.

Roh knew nothing of the methods of Mages. He wondered if they could indeed discover a human using their art. How long could he evade their notice? Did minor acts of magick such as this put him at risk? He thought about the slaves that shared living quarters with him. Many innocent people died the night the builders were found. Would they suffer a similar fate for harboring him under their roof?

“The sun is rising, you know. I’d put that back before the others wake.” Roh wheeled around in surprise to find that he was not alone. On a bench directly behind him sat Dain, his wild mane of black hair a mess, his expression one of great amusement at Roh’s surprise.

“Dain! I- Ah!” his concentration broken, he suddenly felt a jolt of pain as the fire he had been squeezing tightly was suddenly free to burn him. Quickly reasserting his influence over it, he returned it to the torch it had previously occupied.
“You’re getting reckless. Do you know how long I’ve been watching? What if I’d been a guardsman come to take a head count?”

“Reckless? I… you knew?” Dain stood up and walked toward him. Four years his elder, he stood a full foot taller than Roh, with dark brown eyes and a powerful frame built from years of hard labor. As he spoke, Dain put an arm on Roh’s shoulder.

“I’m a light sleeper, and you have a tendency to be a bit… unobservant. I’ve known almost as long as you. A human Mage… a strange thing indeed” Roh began to examine his burned hand, more as an excuse to look away than out of concern for it. Most found it hard to look Dain directly in the eyes, and Roh was no different.

“I’m a fool to be doing it. They’ll find me if I do, and that would be bad for everyone. I’ll stop, I promise.”

“Stop? No, that won’t do. That’s the opposite of what you should be doing actually. In fact, I want you practicing more.” Roh looked up in surprise.

“You… Why would you want that?” Dain’s amused smirk grew wider. He patted him on the shoulder.

“Because Roh, your talents present exciting opportunities, and the more you master them, the better our odds.”

“Our odds? Our odds at… what, exactly?” He couldn’t mean-

“Why, our odds at escaping of course.”

“Escaping? You can’t be serious! Nobody’s made it through that gate in years. Why would we be any different?” Dain removed his arm from Roh’s shoulder, shaking his head.
“Because they didn’t have what you have” he replied simply.

“What I have? I have nothing that they don’t. What I did just now, with the fire… That’s it! That’s all I can do, and that’s not going to get us past a city full of guards!” Dain’s expression underwent a sudden, drastic transformation. He wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t amused, he was angry now. When next he spoke he was as close to shouting as he could be without risking waking the others up.

“What you have is something we’ve never had to work with, you damned fool! You’ve been given a gift that just might let us take back our freedom, and I won’t let you throw it away!” There was a long pause. The sun had almost risen now. The room had begun to fill with the golden light of the early sun.

“If you won’t do it for your sake, do it for all the rest of us in this hellhole! I’ve been thinking about this for a long time! I’m not asking you to storm the wall with me tonight! Keep practicing, master whatever you can that might help us. Give me a few days to work out the details and I’ll have a plan to get us out of here. If I do that, can I count on your help?”

Dain had always looked out for Roh, as he had looked out for all the slaves.Ever since Roh had been brought to live in the Slave District as a small child, Dain had been someone he could rely on. When the Collector had tried to send a ten year old Roh to work in the smithy, where many a slave had suffered grievous injuries, accidental or otherwise, it had been Dain who stood up for him, taking his place and getting him sent to work in the Archive instead. If anyone could lead them to freedom, it was Dain, and if Dain had a use for him, how could he refuse?

“I…” he tried to break eye contact, but Dain refused to lose his gaze. “I’ll do what I can.” As quickly as it had come, Dain’s temper subsided, a slight smile returning to his face.

“That’s all I’m asking. Now go back to sleep. The Collector will be here within the hour.” Roh complied, starting back towards his bedroll in the other room. As he neared the doorway he turned back to look at Dain, and found him looking out the window at the streets of the Slave District, taking in every detail, no doubt already at work on a plan of escape. Once more he turned his back, lay down and shut his eyes.

Put to death for a failed escape, dragged off to the capital for who knows what purpose, or free to follow the voice in my head to an island I’ve never seen before. These are my only possible futures, and I don’t like the sound of any of them. He slept, but did not dream.

Chapter Two

By the time we had reached land, only a thousand of us remained. Many a good man and woman, among them our proudest soldiers and greatest mages, gave in either to despair or madness. Some threw themselves overboard, others slit their own throats, and still others simply starved themselves to death. Who could blame them after what we had witnessed? The once great civilization of the Syl, lost in a single night.
-Kyrin Nuluram, Book of Lost Things

A slave’s life was one of structure. Days were often so similar that they blended together. The slaves of Dolemn were property of the Governor, a man named Siranis. They were rented out to the citizens as was needed, spending their resting hours in the District that had been built for them.

The cycle repeated day after day with little variance. The sun would rise, the Collectors and their bodyguards would come, signaled by the ringing of the large bell at the center of the square. The slaves would be sorted and led off to work by the Collectors. While they worked, they did so under the eyes of the Overseers, who supervised them, fed and watered them as necessary, and punished them. At the end of the day the Collectors returned to shepherd them back to the confines of the Slave District, which consisted of countless ramshackle domiciles, a public bath, and a large mess hall where supper was eaten by those who had the strength left to drag themselves to it. At midnight the guardsmen arrived, and those found in the streets suffered their wrath. When the sun was fully risen, the cycle began anew.

Roh had spent five years under this structure, so much accustomed to it that his work often intruded into his dreams. The bell rang, and he awoke, immediately aware of what was going on and what was expected of him, he rose and followed the others, stretching, yawning, groaning, out into the square.

The collectors stood in a ring formation at the center, young Syl men clad in red hoods. Collectors were Mages all and, unlike those within the ranks of the guardsmen, openly flaunted it by wearing the traditional garb. This was enough of a deterrent to keep the small groups sedate. Collectors who had to handle large groups brought armed bodyguards to assist.

Roh quickly identified his Collector, a slim, golden haired Mage who traveled with no guard. Despite two years of being led by him, Roh did not know the Mage’s name, and indeed could not recall ever being spoken to by the man. Roh was quickly joined by Yosef, a curly haired, perpetually tired-looking boy of roughly his age, a woodworker, Gesain, a short, bald bearded man in his thirties, a baker’s assistant, and the duo of Lynd and Marsa was not far behind, old women, weavers. Roh suddenly felt an elbow dig into his side.

“Had a hard night, did ya Roh?” asked Yosef genially from beside him.

“Had some trouble sleeping, yeah.”

“Well, let’s hope ya got enough. I hear it’s rough work, working in a library.” Roh was silent, unsure of how to respond to Yosef’s sarcasm. He was the only slave who worked in the Archive, and he had worked there for the entirety of the five years he had spent in Dolemn. It was true that his work was likely a good deal easier than that of most slaves, a fact that he and many others were aware of it. It made him feel uncomfortable, guilty almost at times.
“Rough in some ways. Not those of woodworking I’d imagine.”

“Well, I’d take splinters over paper cuts any day.” Yosef clapped him on the shoulder and filed into line behind him.

When at last the full group had assembled, the Collector beckoned towards the large wooden gates, signaling them to set off. As they turned to leave, Roh spotted Dain and the other slaves assembling before a Collector who traveled with four well-armed guards. They looked at each other for a moment, then exchanged nods before Roh turned and hurried to catch up to his group as they set out through the gate.

***

Clang! Clang! Clang! The incessant ringing of hammer on molten iron. The blazing heat of the forge against his skin as he worked, shaping the metal into shovelheads, horseshoes and other simple tools, but never anything resembling either weaponry or art. Such things were reserved for the Syl smiths, who were free to work on the more luxurious while the slaves handled the mundane. The craft of these things had become second nature to Dain after five years of practice, but tools were not all that was made at the Dolemn Smithy.

Gripping the searing iron link with a set of tongs, slowly and carefully he hammered away at it, slowly shaping it into the very specific shape desired by the Overseer, an exceptionally cruel man by the name of Roros. Like all Syl he stood at a considerable height, a little over seven feet. His skin, pale and silvery, was rough and scarred.His blood red hair was short and neat, his remaining eye an emerald green, his ears and facial features sharply pointed.He wore a sleeveless black shirt and black leather pants over tan linens. Roros had been Overseer of the Smithy for two centuries, and he had the scars to prove it.

Clang! Clang! Dain continued to hammer, spinning the link around as he worked. When at last the iron link was complete, he joined it with its brothers, bringing the still searing hot ends together with a few quick final blows.

Chains had been in high demand in recent weeks. Some were requested by merchants and travelers to fasten goods to their carts, some were for farmers whose beasts had a habit of running off, and some were for wealthier men who kept personal slaves. Even within the Smithy there were many uses for chains. Each of the workers wore a chain around one of their legs, bolted tightly to an iron ring in the ground to prevent them from trying to run away or get too close to the Overseer. Dain’s chains had been fastened particularly tightly that morning. The shackle around his leg dug painfully into his skin with the slightest movement, and the closeness to the forge caused itto reach agonizing temperatures.

Chains also happened to be Roros’ favorite tool of discipline. He kept one on his person at all times, wrapped around his waist like a belt, and never hesitated to use it at the first sign of disobedience or exhaustion. A number of nasty scars ran across Dain’s back and arms, few of them from accidents with the forge. He worked tirelessly throughout the day, stopping only to gulp down water as a flask was passed around every second hour. Though his work was without flaw, his thoughts were far from the Smithy.

Even before discovering Roh’s gift, thoughts of escape were never far from his mind. He would spend entire days of hard labor pondering a single scenario and how it could go wrong. One idea he gave particular thought to was stealing aboard the merchant caravans that occasionally visited Dolemn carrying fruits and vegetables from the warmer regions in the south. He might have actually risked it had another slave not beaten him to it, a fellow Smith slave by the name of Gren. He had somehow managed to slip away from the Collector into the bustle of the early morning. A Mage had been standing guard at the main gate that day, and found the poor fool instantly, as Mages did. Ever since carts were habitually checked going in and out of Dolemn, and a Mage was almost always on guard at the gates, identifiable only by the red ruby ring that each of them wore, the mark of a Mage trained at the Academy in the flying city. That avenue of escape was closed off for the foreseeable future, but this didn’t bother him all that much.

Wasn’t a very good plan anyway.

If a Mage could find a slave stowing away in a caravan, could he not also feel the presence of a Syl guard in the night? The question had been running through Dain’s mind all day. He had long since ruled out the idea of escaping in day light, when the streets would be packed with enemies. Gren had managed it by some miracle, but a slave without a handler stuck out like a sore thumb. Only at night, when they were deep in their meditation-like trance that passed for sleep would there be any hope of success.

Roh was the key to it all, there was no doubt about that. Runaway slaves were nothing new. Stealing, smuggling, bribery. There was nothing they could do that hadn’t been tried before, nothing that the guardsmen wouldn’t be expecting and fully prepared to handle. Except for him. Magick was their masters’ greatest weapon, and now they had some.

Can’t rush into things. He’s unsure of himself, he’s fragile. Never had any training. Get reckless and you’ll only get yourselves killed. He was fond of the kid, had come to think of him as a little brother even. He was small and meek on the outside, but you could count on him in a pinch. The kid had natural smarts too, very unusual for a slave, noticed the small things that others would overlook. If there was anyone he could fully rely on it was Roh, and if there was a way out of this pit, they would climb out together or not at all. He had seen enough of abandonment in his life.

Whatever was done, they could not fail. He passed by the gates every morning as his Collector led the Smithy slaves to their work. There was a Mage amongst the guardsmen there every morning without fail, looking each of them over with minute detail as they passed, varying looks of disgust or indifference on their faces. They were a constant reminder of the long memory of their captors. When a door was found open, the Syl slammed it shut, locked it tight and watched it for centuries.

There was also the issue of trust. Who, and how many? The two of them alone wouldn’t be enough, but he wasn’t deluded enough to think that every last human in Dolemn could make it out of the city either. Some of them didn’t even want to. Far too many among them seemed perfectly content with their lot in life. You could drag those folk to the city gates and throw them open and they would simply turn around and make their way back to their work. Still, Dain knew of a few whose spirits had not been completely broken.

Eamon the builder maybe. They say he was in on the last escape, before his wife found out anyway. That woodworker boy Yosef perhaps. Old Frake, if he’s in a good enough mood. Yosef shared living quarters with he and Roh, Word could be sent to Eamon easily enough, and Frake could usually be found in the mess. These at least he felt he could trust, and they would trust him, if he came to them with at least half an idea of what he was doing. That part was a matter of time. Fortunately, time was something he had in abundance.

***

“There you are. You found all of them I trust?”

“I think so, sir.” Roh hurried across the room to Lumin, one of the four Archivists of Dolemn. Though he had the trademark height of a Syl, the toll of ten centuries had withered him such that Roh had barely to look up at him to make contact with his tired amethyst eyes.

Roh handed Lumin the stack of books that he had been sent to gather for their guest, a student of Marvaine sent on her Wandering, the year of travel and discovery required of all initiates. Lumin reached into his pocket, retrieved his spectacles and placed them on his long nose. He looked each book over in turn before handing them over to the Initiate.

“Here you are. Mind that you return them before you leave.” The Initiate nodded as she received the books, then turned to look at Roh.

“You use slaves in the Archive, do you? This is the first time I have seen such a thing.”

Lumin nodded. “Out of necessity. Dolemn is a city of craft and trade. There is little gold in books.”

“It just seems… improper. It can’t read, can it?”

“I can read” responded Roh, careful to conceal the twinge of anger he felt. The initiate looked at him in surprise, clearly not expecting a slave to speak to her.

“Not much of course” Lumin added hurriedly. “Some basic instruction was needed for him to be of any use in the archive. He knows nothing of the Elder tongue.” In fact, Roh’s reading skills were well beyond basic, a fact that the Archivists were thankfully unaware of. Long hours alone dusting the countless tomes had provided plenty of opportunities to sneak looks at their contents. Originally taught only enough to identify books by their covers, after five years he had learned the entirety of Low Sylish, the simplified set of characters used to represent the language used by the majority of Syl, the language forced upon humanity when theirs was taken. He knew almost nothing of Elder Sylish, the intricate flowery writing reserved for Mages, Generals and Nobility. Books written in this language were kept sectioned off from the rest, with careful records of their whereabouts. Slaves were absolutely forbidden from handling them.
The initiate walked off, bowing her head slightly to Lumin as she went. Lumin turned back toward Roh, looking him over for a moment before extending his gaze to the rest of the main chamber, and finally back to him.

“You found those very quickly. Thank you, Roh.”

“I… Uh… Yes sir.” He bowed his head. As minor a thing as it was, the other Archivists never would have thanked a slave for doing their job. He had been always been unique in this, and Roh often wondered why, though he never dared voice the question. It was the closest thing to kindness a Syl had ever shown him.

Lumin ducked down beneath his black marble desk, rising slowly with a small wooden crate near overflowing with books of all sizes and colors. He handed the crate to Roh. It was quite heavy.
“These still need sorting. Please take care of it.”

“Yes sir.” Roh proceeded to an unoccupied table with the crate, being careful to choose one far from guests. He set the crate down on it and began glancing at the cover of each book. Elvand’s Care of Desert Plants, Duranlo Ursed’s Recipes, Mysra’s Book of Tales (Volume VII), Kyrin Nuluram’s Book of Lost Things. Shelves extended in every direction from the main chamber in the large circular Archive, sorting books by the first letter of the author’s name. He grabbed books by the armful, returning each to its proper spot. He worked quickly and without thought until the reading the cover of one particular tome snapped him out of it.

It was a small book, about an inch thick with a worn out cover the faded crimson hue of a Wintersblood flower. Marlorn’s Basic Magicks. Roh stared at the book for a moment in silence, rereading the cover to be sure that his eyes were not fooling him. Nearly all books of magick were written in the Elder writing, for use by Mages who had not yet learned it as part of their training. Roh had never seen such a book in the Archive. Had an initiate left it here by mistake?

He dropped the book back into the nearly-empty crate, picked the crate up and carried it away, setting it down in an empty aisle where he felt nobody would notice him. He retrieved the small red book and flipped through it.
Within he found over a hundred pages of instructions, meditation exercises, pictures and descriptions of a multitude of spells, all in the Low Writing. It was too good to be true.

The things that I could learn from such a book… But how to get it away from the Archive? The Collector would search him when he came to return him to the Slave District. Small as the book was, it would bulge in his pockets. He looked up from the book to check that nobody was approaching. When he was satisfied to returned to leafing through it, searching for anything that might solve his predicament. And then he found it.

Shrouding is the use magick to conceal things from the senses, be they living or nonliving. With shrouding a Mage can make things undetectable by sight, sound, and even the spells of another Mage. The larger the thing being shrouded, the more difficult the shroud is to maintain. Living things are considerably more difficult to shroud…

The article went on to describe the different types of shrouding and the methods for creating and maintaining one. A shroud sounded like exactly what he needed to get the book to safety, and simple enough for a novice to maintain for an hour or two without trouble. He shut the book, then held it up in front of him at an arm’s length.

A veil of mirrors and light. Wrap around this, conceal this from all eyes. The book had said to visualize the elements of the spell in the simplest way he could think of, will it to be, and maintain the image in his head. Was all magick so simple? Visualize he did, and slowly The spellbook began to fade away.

At the same time a wave of exhaustion crept over him, and he realized that this would not come as easily as control of fire. The book shimmered in and out of existence, one moment being almost entirely transparent, and the next as solid and vivid as it had been to start. He began to feel a shortness of breath as if he had been running loops around the full length of the Archive.

One last desperate burst of willpower, and at last his desire took effect, the book fading to complete transparency. He could still feel its shape and weight, but to his and any eyes that happened to observe he was holding nothing but air. He issued new instructions, as the book had told him.

Maintain… Stay hidden… The book complied. He continued to feel a toll on himself as he held the spell in place, but it had lessened considerably now that the initial effort was over with. He quickly stuck the book into the waistband of his pants, grinning.

Maybe escape isn’t so hopeless after all.

The 'they' at the beginning of the fourth paragraph is not clear. For a moment I thought we were dealing with well armed slaves.

'Unbeknownst' looks cool, but is it really the best word to use? In fact you could probably delete everything in the sentance before the comma and still be effective.

Roh (I had to laugh at the name, put me in the mind of R-OH) speaks very formally. It seems unusual for a slave to have education.

I really liked it. The starting paragraph really got me. Also I like the quote It looks like you put a lot of planning into the story.

I really enjoyed this. It's made me want to know more and that's primarily what you want in a book. I could see this being published.
Post some more chapters, please? I want to continue reading this!!