The Sacrifice

Chapter 2-3

“So, my little deer, have you chosen the spell you wish to attempt yet?”

Oisin wanted to ask why Bel kept calling him “little deer,” but instead he simply nodded and said, “Yes, sir.” He had pored over the book many times over the last few days. Though “days” seemed like the wrong word in a place where the sun never rose, but they were periods of time marked off by sleeping, and he didn’t know what else to call them.

Some of the spells had seemed terrifyingly powerful. Others had seemed nearly useless. But after being lured by the will o’ the wisps, and after the constant giggling attention of the house sprites, the decision had become surprisingly easy.

“Which spell is it?”

“The ointment to see the unseen.”

Bel smiled broadly, and Oisin noticed with a tiny shock that he seemed to have fangs. One more strange, inhuman thing about him. How many more such strangenesses remained to be discovered, he wondered? “An excellent choice.”

“Uhm. Thank you, sir.”

“I will leave you to your work on it, then. The house sprites will bring you anything you require for the spell, only ask.”

Oisin blinked up at Bel. “You’re not going to teach me how?”

Bel chuckled. “The book’s instructions are accurate, for the most part. Call me when you have completed it. Please do not apply the result until I have looked at it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bel turned and left the room, and Oisin looked at the spell book and frowned. Then he gave a shrug and flipped to the recipe for the ointment he wanted. “All right. Sprites? May I please have a sprig of rosemary? And…” He looked at the first line of instructions. “I’ll need a mortar and pestle too, please.”

The giggles seemed extra cheerful, the sprites seemed to like it when he asked them for things. A moment later both the herb and the mixing device appeared on the table in front of him.

It was painstaking work, but eventually he had a little bowl filled with a thick paste with a sharp, pleasant scent. Remembering Bel’s instructions, Oisin said, “Sprites? Could you go tell Bel that I’ve finished it?” Then his stomach rumbled and he added, “And could I have some lunch, please?” He hadn’t been aware of the time passing as he worked, but hours must have passed.

He was chewing on a thick slice of buttered bread when Bel ducked into the room and came over to regard the little bowl. Oisin put the bread down and swallowed hastily. “Sir? How did I do?”

Bel lifted the bowl and inhaled the scent, then nodded. “You seem to have done well. There is no magic in it yet, though. It must be empowered.”

Oisin blinked. “Empowered?”

“Yes. Anyone could follow that recipe and get this result. But not anyone can perform magic. As it is now it would be a pleasant-scented salve but would have little, if any, further effect. If you have the gift, you have magic within you, but you must get that magic from you into the ointment somehow.”

“Oh. But how?”

“There are many methods. But what do you think would work? If there is a power within your core, how would you take that and put it into this?” He set the bowl back on the table and looked at Oisin, his expression calmly patient.

“Uhm…” Oisin tried to think. To get something within him outside of him, and into the bowl? He thought suddenly of the altar, of the bowl for the blood, and said, “My blood?”

“Blood? Interesting.”

“Is that wrong, sir?”

“Oh no, it’s quite correct. Why don’t you try it?”

Oisin glanced around. He’d needed a small knife earlier in the process, there was one amid the scatter of ingredients and tools on the table. He picked it up, then glanced up at Bel again. Bel said nothing, but he nodded encouragingly. Oisin put the tip of the knife against his other hand and pricked his finger. A drop of blood came out, red and shining. Bel looked at it intently as Oisin put his hand over the bowl and shook the drop off into it. He picked up his spoon and stirred it in, and he felt an odd kind of tugging sensation in the center of his chest as he did.

“Very nicely done,” said Bel softly.

“It worked, then?”

“Yes. Try it.”

Hesitantly Oisin dipped a fingertip in the ointment and dabbed it on one eyelid, then the other, as the book had said to do. His vision wavered, as if looking through water. He blinked several times and it cleared. Nothing seemed immediately different, but turning to look up at Bel he saw a blurry, indistinct halo of light and shadow behind him.

Bel held out his hand, and a smudge of emerald light hovered above it. “What do you see here now, my little deer?”

“Green light,” he said, blinking again, as if to clear away the blurriness. But the rest of the world wasn’t blurry, only the light on Bel’s hand and the glow behind him. “And you’re glowing only it’s also shadows,” he added.

Bel’s eyebrows went up fractionally. “Interesting. Your power is stronger than I thought.”

The blur was giving Oisin a headache. He blinked more, then shook his head. “I’m not sure it worked right. Everything is blurry. Or not everything. But you are. The light is.”

“Yes. The spell did not quite succeed.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No, you did very well to come as close as you have! I think your power has carried it further than it would have otherwise gone, truth be told. I expected you to see nothing at all this first time, save perhaps a brief glimpse of the air sprite here. I certainly didn’t expect you to see my own aura, I do not display it any more than I must.”

“I don’t understand. The spell failed, but you expected it to? Why…?” Oisin trailed off, feeling confused.

“The spell book’s directions are mostly quite good, but its measurements are imprecise. This spell, for example, called for ‘a sprig’ of rosemary, but how large is a sprig? It asks for three spoons of tallow, but what size is a spoon? The spell requires somewhat more precise measurements than that.”

Oisin frowned. “Then what use is it?”

“It is a place to start, my little deer. It is a way to begin to learn. To fail and try again. To gain partial success, which is better than nothing. If you continue, you will eventually discover what works and what does not.”

“Oh.”

“Are you willing to continue?”

Oisin instantly nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Finish your luncheon, then, and try again. You can send the sprites to fetch me when you succeed.” He smiled then. “Or I will come to bid you good morrow when the stars have turned their full round again. That is likely to happen first, perfecting a spell takes time.” He gave Oisin another nod, then ducked again out of the room.

Oisin looked at the scattered remnants of the ingredients. He looked at the spell book. He frowned faintly. He needed to do it again, and…what? If the amounts were wrong, how was he to find the right ones? Bel had seemed to suggest he’d need to try the ointment again multiple times. So, if he added a bit less or a bit more of each thing each time, he might find some worked better. But what if he needed much more of one thing and much less of another? There were eight ingredients in the spell. More or less of each of them, and perhaps much more, or much less, would mean dozens of different possible combinations. And how to know exactly how much he was adding? If he asked the sprites to bring him another sprig of rosemary to begin, how would he know if it was bigger or smaller than the previous one?

He rubbed his forehead. Thinking about this would have given him a headache if he didn’t already have one.

There had to be a sensible way to approach this. First of all he needed a way to know exactly how much of any given thing he was adding. He had a sudden flash of memory, of carrying parcels for his brother’s wife on a visit to town, and the merchants with their scales, weighing out measures of their goods. He smiled.

“Excuse me, sprites? Could I get a small scale and a set of weights, one that’s quite accurate?”

This time he could see little green glows pop into view in front of him, giggling and bobbing up and down. They clustered together and a scale appeared, one pan dipping low beneath the burden of a dozen different weights, going down to a minute one that couldn’t have been bigger than a single grain of wheat. “Perfect! Thank you!” The little blurry glows bobbed up and down more, and their giggles sounded almost as if there were words in them now.

Next, he thought, he should record exactly how much of any given thing he used. Then he could repeat the spell, and slowly increase each ingredient one at a time, and see the results. He nodded to himself. “I think I need a bunch of paper that can be wasted or re-used, to take notes on. And a quill and ink, please?”

These also appeared in a swarm of little green lights. “Wonderful. Thank you again. Now, I’ll need some more rosemary. You might as well bring a whole bunch, since I’ll be at this for a while.” And with that he set to work, the half-finished slice of bread sitting forgotten at the edge of the table as he dove into his task.

An unknown amount of time and a large stack of bowls later he’d gotten to the point where instead of a vague blur, he could see a glowing, winged humanoid shape whenever he looked at the house sprites. Their giggling voices were nearly intelligible too, apparently the ointment carried some gift of hearing as well as of sight. He was fairly certain he wasn’t there yet, but he also was fairly certain that he’d gotten most of the ingredients right, it was just a matter of the right number of brier flower petals. Another attempt or two should do it.

The paper stacked around him recorded each and every attempt, and its results. The sheet currently in front of him had little star marks, showing that he seemed to have found the amount that worked best, next to nearly all the ingredients listed.

“Good morning.”

Oisin blinked, turning to look behind him. He was too tired to jump, and he was getting used to the noiseless way that Bel moved around. “Uhm…” He rubbed at his eyes, smearing the last ointment attempt around, suddenly aware that he was exhausted and half-starved.

“You seem to have worked the night through, my little deer.” Bel’s eyes took in the scattered mess on the table and fixed on the still-half-eaten crust of bread from lunch. “And you seem to have forgotten to eat.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Oisin through a yawn.

Bel chuckled. “Your dedication is admirable. But if I’d known that you were one of those who forgets about the world while working, I’d have told the sprites to insist you ate and slept. As it is, I believe it’s time for you to do both.”

“I’m getting very close, though,” protested Oisin.

“Since I see you’ve taken quite good notes, you will be just as close when you wake. Now come, you need to eat and then rest.” He clapped his hands, and sprites of several different colors, not just the green ones Oisin had mostly seen so far, swarmed around him. Some darted to the table, pushing his work aside and causing a tray laden with food to appear from nowhere. Others whisked the robe he usually slept in over to him, while still more began tugging his clothing from him, the little beings somehow more than strong enough to pull him about as they did.

One of them tried to pull his breeks off, and he grabbed the waistband of them and protested. “Hey!”

Bel chuckled, and Oisin felt himself flushing. Fortunately the sprite gave up, and the others whisked his robe around him and then tugged him over to the table. He sat and reached for the food, then looked up at Bel again.

“Uhm. Do you want to join me, sir?”

Bel smiled. “No thank you. I will be off now. But please do rest once you’ve eaten, no trying ‘just one more batch’ or any such nonsense.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bel reached out and touched his shoulder. “You’ve done very well, my little deer.”

“Th-thank you, sir.”

Bel smiled warmly at him, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. Then he turned and was gone as swiftly and silently as he’d come.

Oisin ate, and climbed into bed, and his exhaustion dragged him down to sleep almost immediately, but the last thing that lingered in his mind was not the work he’d done, but the feeling of Bel’s touch on his shoulder.