Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Forty Six: A Secret

Draskell's Runic Manual was exactly what it sounded like; it was a vast slab of a book, filled with image after image of runes, from the most basic to the most complicated, with any number of different combinations for different uses. It was bewildering, like learning another language, and it didn't help at all that the annotations were also in another language. It was all so confusing.

Jordan looked at the rune on the page, and then the rune in his sketchbook. He hadn't had high hopes, since his dominant wrist was still the size of a small fruit and protested at the slightest movements. Somehow he was still disappointed.

He didn't even know what the rune was for, because he couldn't read the notes.

"You got any ideas?" he asked Ren, who was sitting on his desk playing with a ball of twine he'd found in Yddris's cupboard. She glanced at him as if to ask him what he was asking her for, and then continued to tangle her claws into a knot.

He sighed, and reached over to help her extract herself.

His self-defence training was out of the question while his wrist healed, so Yddris had started him on the basic principles of magic. His tutor was in the front room with the five Unspoken strangers who were staying with them, while Jordan grappled with the easiest of runes on his own, trying to draw them left-handed.

Worst of all, he was still in trouble.

Yddris hadn't said it, but Jordan could tell. He would never say he knew the man very well, but the clipped tones and passive-aggressive approach to teaching would have been a giveaway in a complete stranger. Nika had put it aside, and Koen and Hap hadn't mentioned it; neither had any of the Unspoken he didn't know. Jordan had given up wracking his brains for a reason why Yddris had reacted so much worse. He had put it down to embarrassment and then tried not to think about it.

At least he had a new pencil. Nika had visited the stationer's during the festival and returned with several. They were fairly crude; the wood was thin and clearly just to prevent breakage, but it was better than nothing. Jordan had commandeered a cracked stone pot from a mucky corner of Yddris's yard, washed it out and stuck them in it. There was a lot of time to explore the house, he'd found, while his tutor was pissed at him and he was trying to dodge awkward conversations with strangers.

"Any progress?"

Jordan turned. Yddris stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. He thought about slinging back some sharp retort, but thought better of it. He didn't want this to last even longer than it already had.

"Minimal," he muttered, turning away again. He eyed the huge chunk of the book he hadn't even touched yet.

He felt his tutor stop at his shoulder, and reluctantly nudged his sketchbook over. Yddris was silent for a moment, and then he picked up the book and started flicking through it.

"You do all these, boy?"

"Yeah."

"They're good."

"Thanks."

"This is a good start," the man said, putting the book back down open on the page where Jordan had attempted to copy the runes.

"Hardly." A tiny thread of hope filtered into Jordan's thoughts. Yddris's voice was several degrees warmer than it had been for a couple of days. "Maybe I'll do better when my wrist heals."

"That's not your dominant hand?"

Jordan glanced round, frowning. He couldn't decipher Yddris's tone. "No."

"Night take me." Yddris hovered, still looking at the page, and then said, "When your wrist heals we can start with practical magic. Looks like you'll pick up the runes quicker than anything else, but they're useless if you can't use the magic."