Before I knew it, winter solstice break had ended, and the spring semester began. Jumping back into the ethics course with professor Emir felt strange, but things started to level out and return to normal when I reached professor Silverbark’s class.

  “Welcome back everyone, welcome back. I hope you all had a good break, and are feeling refreshed. We’re starting this semester with something that should be at least somewhat familiar to all of you, but incredibly useful nevertheless.”

  He gestured to the candle sitting on his desk and smiled.

  “Imbued items. As a quick refresh, imbuement is a process certain spells have, allowing you to make their effects permanent if you go through a specific ritual, frequently involving casting the spell many times. Outside of affinity imbuement and those lucky enough to have an artifice affinity or the like, this is the best way a mage can make magical items. For example, this candle.”

  He lifted the candle stick and shoved it into his silver hair. I snapped to my feet on reflex, half convinced that he’d been possessed, or was under mental assault, but… nothing happened. Seren hissed as if wet logs had just been placed on him, and said that the not-fire was harmless. Professor Silverbark pulled the candle out, and the flame continued to dance merrily.

  “Heatless flame is a second circle spell that is often considered… mediocre. After all, a weirlight is roughly as bright as the spell, and doesn’t require a hand to hold a torch or candle. But despite that, it’s one of the most useful spells that a wizard can know, as through the simple use of roughly fifty silver worth of ether crystal dust and an hour of incantation, you can create this: a nearly permanent light source that does not spread heat or risk flame, only requires the fuel of ambient ether. It’s not uncommon for wealthy people’s mansions to be lit through judicious application of this spell, and you can even make a decent amount through selling them. For those of you who delve in the library, adding one of these to your repertoire is an excellent way to allow light without the ether cost of a constant weirlight.”

  I frowned as he said the last portion. There was some truth to it, but it was also ignoring the fact that it took a hand to hold it, like he had just said. Maybe if the lantern had some sort of permanent floating ability? Or maybe if someone could learn to set their hair on not-fire? Though that would probably make them look like they were part fire elemental. Hmm. Something to think of another time.

  “Our next spell, which really ought to have been our first: repair rope. It’s a first circle spell, but cutting a rope and letting it glue itself back together is simply so much less dramatic than the fire demonstration,” professor Silverbark said with a wink. “Still, it's a useful spell. Shipwrights often use it to repair nets, as it can restore far more of a length of rope than the cantrip. But for us non-sailors, it’s rare to need to mend rope so often as to dedicate the time to learning. That is, if it were not an imbued spell.”

  He removed about a foot of rope from his locker and held it up for us to see, then waved his hand and cast a spell. A blade of force sliced the rope cleanly in two. The bottom half thumped onto the floor, before professor Silverbark lifted it, touched it to its other half, and let go. The rope simply hung there, as if it had never been cut in the first place.

  “While not as lucrative as learning heatless flame, imbued mend rope spells do have a market. The cost for laying the imbuement goes up depending on the length and thickness of the rope, which results in most ships finding it too costly to have all of their rope self-mending, but it’s often used for the most critical components.”

  He stored the rope away, then removed what looked like two hand mirrors from his locker, placing them both on the table.

  “The final spell of our imbuement unit is this: speaking mirror. It requires two mirrors that are largely similar, which become linked through the casting of the spell.”

  He gestured his hand and spoke a few words, before the surface of the mirrors shimmered. He held one of them up to us, while he turned the other to face him, and on the surface of the mirror facing us, I could see his face. I presumed that the opposite would also hold true, and that he could see us.

  “Unlike the others, this imbued item cannot simply absorb ambient ether to power itself, which is one of the three major barriers to its widespread use,” professor Silverbark said, his voice echoing strangely as it emerged from the mirror facing us, as well as from his body. He tapped the mirror with one finger and cut off the spell, returning the mirror to its ordinary surface, then placed them both down on the table.

  “The second barrier is the range limitation. Each mirror can only cover a range of roughly ten miles or so, depending on how close the match is. Poorly matched mirrors will have less than this. Finally, the expense to create the mirror permanently is over three thousand silver worth of ether crystal. It makes them excellent for short range, mage-to-mage communication, but is one of the reasons that we stick to sending spells when plying long distance communication. There have been attempts in the past to create networks of mirrors that can be used for communication, as any one of the factors can be managed in a bubble, but attempting to manage all three under real-world conditions has proved to be far more difficult. Perhaps the sixth circle spell, true speaking mirror, would be better, but it has its own issues…”

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  He waved his hand and sighed.

  “Ambitious nationwide communication networks aside, the spell can still make a decent amount of money when sold to mages. Many wealthy people are willing to pour ether crystal dust into the mirrors to power them for clandestine meetings. If you’ve got an artifice affinity, all the better, as you’re able to create versions that include cores of self-replenishing power. But still. All three of these spells can be used as a minor way to turn a profit for any of you entrepreneurial enough to get a contract supplying an enchanter’s shop. I’d advise finding one somewhere other than the Citadel, though – there is rather an abundance of mages…”

  He waved his hand and the chalk lifted itself up into the air to begin writing the spells out on the board, but more spells began to write out as well, and professor Silverbark gave us a tired smile.

  “I’m afraid that our class has actually fallen a bit behind, so we’re going to have to move onto some of our standard third circle spells now, at least if we want to get to some of the more important fourth circle spells. It is rather amazing how each year seems to fly by faster and faster, isn’t it? Well, regardless. These are the next spells on our curriculum.”

  I leaned forward and examined them. The first one was clearly a conjuration spell, and it possessed a feature that I’d only ever seen in lesser planar contract before, a kind of binding of flows and runes that acted as a sort of… locking mechanism for the spell. Where the contract seemed designed to lock something to the plane for the duration of the terms, this seemed to be permanent. No ifs and or buts. It simply summoned something, for real.

  “Create food and water,” professor Silverbark said, a sad, tired smile on his face. “To my knowledge, it’s one of the most costly third circle spells to power. It takes as much ether to cast as many fifth circle spells, despite its lower complexity.”

  He removed a large glass from his locker and placed it atop the table, before removing his staff and tapping it to the rim of the glass. An instant later, there was a blooming of blue light, then the glass was filled with water, and a pile of vegetables and fruits were stacked around the water. There were blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and fruits I couldn’t put a name to; carrots, broccoli, spinach, and vegetables that I didn’t know.

  “The food created by the spell is permanent, summoned from an elemental plane of wood, and the water is fresh water from a plane of water. It summons sufficient food to keep a person from starving for a meal, though it may not be ideal for those who care about attaining their ideal physique. The water is roughly a third of what you’ll need to drink for the day. Much to my dismay, this spell won’t resolve a crisis on a national level, even if someone like Henry – the Erudite – was to devote all of his ether to this one spell. Still, it’s invaluable if you ever find yourself stranded on a foreign plane, or far from home when a teleport goes awry.”

  I nodded my agreement on the utility of that, then focused on the second spell on the list and grinned, while Salem and Kybar both groaned. The spell was inordinately complicated, a transmutation spell that would clearly enlarge, then transform something. It interacted with lifeforce in three different streams, one of which was draining the object of power, while the second and third both were creating artificial life force.

  “Pumpkin carriage!” declared professor Silverbark. “A classic spell for any wizard to learn. Any large gourd or melon will work – I’ve used muskmelon, honeydew, calabash, and more. It transforms a relatively fresh specimen into a carriage and creates a pair of magically constructed horses to pull it. A very luxurious carriage, but a short lived one. Wherever you cast the spell serves as a referendum, and when midnight strikes, the carriage is reduced to nothing but rotting gourd.”

  “Why is this an essential spell for a mage to know?” someone asked, and professor Silverbark smiled.

  “Presentation. Many events expect their guests to arrive by carriage, and if you’re not wealthy enough to make a statement with an owned carriage, you can put on a show of magical skill, as the spell is quite difficult. If you’re dealing with a group of scared villagers with two cantrips between them, teleportation is likely to scare them half to death. A carriage made from pumpkin might frighten them, but it’s far more familiar at a basic level. And finally, it can often be about the journey, not the destination. Now, our third and final spell.”

  I leaned in again and frowned. The spell was clearly something more in Salem’s wheelhouse, either a divination or an enchantment spell, though I wasn’t sure which. It also looked like an imbuement? Or perhaps it was a simple ritual? It looked to have the spaces for a spell to place ritual components, but it was far simpler than any ritual I’d ever seen.

  “True tongue,” professor Silverbark explained. “A quite contentious spell. Some call it a ritual, some an imbuement, and others a unique category to its own. Like an imbuement, the spell can be cast normally, or used as part of a more complex casting to create a permanent effect. Only, it doesn’t create a magical item, but instead fuses the spell into your spirit, like a ritual.”

  “What does it do?” Kybar asked.

  “It’s a universal translation spell,” professor Silverbark explained. “It allows you to understand all languages, and be understood by anyone in turn. The translation is flawless – which is often a dead giveaway. It’s far more flawless than anyone who actually learned the language would have.”

  He clapped and smiled before looking around.

  “Excellent. Well that’s enough overview: let’s launch into these spells!”

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