Once, there was an apprentice magician who was very curious. This is often a good quality in a mage. Or at least, it’s good for other sorcerers; it means that, if you make it through your apprenticeship, you will have left some fascinating notes when other conjurers are going through your effects, trying to determine if you left a will, wondering where the rest of the body is, and nervously muttering protective spells against whatever delightfully remarkable thing you (temporarily) called forth, just in case it’s still around.
This apprentice was once given one of the great, best-known, least-understood maxims of magic: All magic has a cost.
Let’s note that this tale will involve the Master hitting the Student with a stick. We therefore will allow you to choose your level of discomfort with the tale, assuming the idea discomforts you in the first place. If you wish to remove the sting of considering a young disciple undergoing negative corporal reinforcements, feel free to perceive the student as a massive, strapping, recently-former knight/warrior, and the magician as tiny, withered weakling using a series of small twigs, each of which break upon impact. You might lose any real sense of the story, but at least you won’t be discomforted.
Because we’d never want that.
So the student said, “And Magic has a cost because meddling with forces beyond human ken is ultimately fatal, is it not, O Master?”
“Did you not, as per instructions, use a certain spell to light last night’s candle, the one with which you then lit the flame upon our holy altar? Because if you did not, you will soon have a life of extraordinary regret. If you did do so, did you not understand the spell? Was it ‘beyond your ken’, such that you might have accidentally started a bonfire which consumed us all? Because if it was, the first regret I suggested is merely a tiny little imposter thereof, compared to the degree of pain which will mark your remaining existence.”
(There are apprenticeships within which the proper response to an angry, sarcastic Master is cringing, begging, and pleading for forgiveness. Magic is, obviously, not among those avocations; if teaching only happened when the Master was in a good mood, it would never happen at all. So the Apprentice’s voice was relatively calm, with only a slightly querulous edge): “No, Master, I lit it properly, as instructed.”
“And the world did not dissolve around you? You did not meet with a fate worse than can be imagined by the fragile mentality of humankind?”
“No, Master. I just singed my thumb a bit getting the wick right.”
“But you did the Magic correctly. And therefore, it is not about ignorance; or, at least, that’s not a real reason, it’s just a contributing factor.” The Wizard hefted his stave and clipped the Apprentice smartly across the elbow. “Ow!” complained the younger man.
“That’s for asking stupid questions.”
“You said I should ask stupid questions. You said that a Wizard bends the world to Will, and it’s never too soon to start. You said that Magic is complicated and unpredictable and you never know when you might ask something important.”
“I also said that auditory learning is sometimes best reinforced with a somatic component.”
“You didn’t say you’d be hitting me with a stick!”
“I,” said the Wizard austerely, “am a Wizard, strong of mind, small of arm. You don’t even want to think about what you’d be getting hit with right now, if you were apprenticed to a blacksmith.”
The apprentice rolled his eyes; the Magus pretended that noticing such an insignificant action was far beneath the dignity of an Adept of the Unseen Arts. There was a time when Wizards withheld information, lest apprentices study in secret and become, in time, the Masters. This was an inefficient system, in that it involved a great deal of misinformation all around, and the state of knowledge suffered. +
This was clearly intolerable, and eventually evolved into today’s much more modern system of eternal bickering. It was rather like the Socratic method, if Socrates had been an insufferable know-it-all (which he was; but conveniently, those accounts disappeared with the Library of Alexandria.
“If it’s Secret Man Was Not Meant To Know,” said the Sage, using the Voice-That-Wizards-Assume-Gods-Would-Have-If-They-Had-Been-Smart-Enough-To-Be-Wizards-Instead-Of-Gods, “if that’s it, then go look up the Magnum Innominandum in the Library. Present me with an extempore expostulation on the subject, five hundred to a thousand words, by the Midnight Rite. Be prepared to defend your position.”
The Midnight Rite was a very, very secret ceremony, spoken of only in the most nigh-subvocalized tones amongst all the uninitiated. Only Wizards and their students knew that it consisted of locking the doors, making certain secret Signs, placing particular Wards of Bane and Guarding, and saying, “Looks like it’s midnight; spot of sherry before bed?” (Since one is revealing Guild secrets here, one can mention a little-known fact: the ritual is considered valid with either dry or sweet sherry, but not both, never both, not unless you feel like it, anyway.)
(The Wizard’s Guild is perfectly aware of the importance of having awe-inspiring secrets; it also recognizes that most real secrets of Magic are either extremely dangerous, or look like gibberish. It is therefore necessary to create some powerful, hidden, deeply mundane secrets, suitable for impressing people without preemptively bringing about a premature Earth-rending cataclysm).
The apprentice looked hopeful. “No chores, then?”
“No. Go read.”
The apprentice scampered. The Wizard sighed. He rather liked that kid. It was a cruel test, but a necessary one. The Magnum Innominandum begins by hinting that it’s about to reveal things that None May Know, and then it progresses to saying that one ought not read further, Lest One Understand That Which Ought Not Be Understood, and towards the middle, it started to say openly that Great Secrets of Terrifying Power were easily unlocked, but should never be, but if one pressed on…
It was the Xeno’s Paradox of knowledge. It brought you infinitely close to learning something useful, always with the promise that the thing was almost upon us, and it ended by saying that, now that one had finished the first reading, one would understand the Hidden Meanings of the book, if one would only read it over…
The tome was bound in a strange, very durable metal, with pages that felt like gossamer, and were, in reality, harder than the fruitcake you got four Christmases ago. And a good thing, too. Many who read it decided that they weren’t cut out for Magic, after all. The rest tended to curse and throw the book across the room; he, himself, recalled striking it repeatedly with a nearby fire-poker. Those who survived the test, then, came away with two contradictory lessons, each one important to both teacher and Student, and each part of a delicate balance.
LESSON ONE: Magic is arcane and complex, and there is a reason why one undergoes the servitude, pain, and dreadful terrors involved in learning its use. And one should appreciate the wisdom of those who are older, more knowledgeable, and wiser.
LESSON TWO: …but also, those who are older, more knowledgeable, and wiser are sometimes idiots; and eventually, there will come a time when you have to do things for yourself.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
My new book, “I Hate Your Time Machine”, is now available! Go pick it up!
