“Not possible, Pug,” Kulgan said, sitting down. He pointed to the wall. “If one had been installed when the tower was built, fine. But to try to remove the stones from the tower, from here past my room, and up to the roof would be difficult, not to mention costly.”
“I wasn’t thinking of a chimney in the wall, Kulgan. You know how the forge in the smithy has a stone hood taking the heat and smoke through the roof?” The magician nodded. “Well, if I could have a metal one fashioned by the smith, and a metal chimney coming from the hood to carry the smoke away, it would work the same way, wouldn’t it?”
Kulgan pondered this for a moment. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t. But where would you put this chimney?”
“There.” Pug pointed to two stones above and to the left of the window. They had been ill fitted when the tower was built, and now there was a large crack between them that allowed the wind to come howling into the room “This stone could be taken out,” he said, indicating the leftmost one. “I checked it and it’s loose. The chimney could come from above the fire pot, bend here”—he pointed to a spot in the air above the pot and level with the stone—”and come out here. If we covered the space around it, it would keep the wind out.”
Kulgan looked impressed. “It’s a novel idea, Pug. It might work. I’ll speak to the smith in the morning and get his opinion on the matter. I wonder that no one thought of it before.”
Feeling pleased with himself for having thought of the chimney, Pug resumed his studies. He reread a passage that had caught his eye before, puzzling over an ambiguity. Finally he looked up at the magician and said, “Kulgan.”
“Yes, Pug?” he answered, looking up from his book.
“Here it is again. Magician Lewton uses the same cantrip here as Marsus did, to baffle the effects of the spell upon the caster, directing it to an external target.” Placing the large tome down so as not to lose his place, he picked up another. “But here Dorcas writes that the use of this cantrip blunts the spell, increasing the chance that it will not work. How can there be so much disagreement over the nature of this single construction?”
Kulgan narrowed his gaze a moment as he regarded his student. Then he sat back, taking a long pull on his pipe, sending forth a cloud of blue smoke “It shows what I’ve said before, lad. Despite any vanity we magicians might feel about our craft, there’s really very little order or science involved. Magic is a collection of folk arts and skills passed along from master to apprentice since the beginning of time. Trial and error, trial and error is the way. There has never been an attempt to create a system for magic, with laws and rules and axioms that are well understood and widely accepted.” He looked thoughtfully at Pug. “Each of us is like a carpenter, making a table, but each of us choosing different woods, different types of saws, some using pegs and dowel, others using nails, another dovetailing joints, some staining, others not. In the end there’s a table, but the means for making it are not the same in each case.
“What we have here is most likely an insight about the limits of each of these venerable sages you study, rather than any sort of prescription for magic. For Lewton and Marsus, the cantrip aided the construction of the spell; for Dorcas, it hindered.”
“I understand your example, Kulgan, but I’ll never understand how these magicians all could do the same thing, but in so many different ways. I understand that each of them wanted to achieve his end and found a different means, but there is something missing in the manner they did it.”
Kulgan looked intrigued. “What is missing, Pug?”
The boy looked thoughtful. “I . . . I don’t know. It’s as if I expect to find something that will tell me, ‘This is the way it must be done, the only way,’ or something like that. Does that make any sense?”
Kulgan nodded. “I think I know you well enough to understand. You have a very well-ordered mind, Pug. You understand logic far better than most, even those much older than yourself. You see things as a system, rather than as a haphazard collection of events. Perhaps that is part of your trouble.”
Pug’s expression showed his interest in what the magician was saying Kulgan continued. “Much of what I am trying to teach is based on a system of logic, cause and effect, but much is not. It is like trying to teach someone to play the lute. You can show them the fingering of the strings, but that knowledge alone will not make a great troubadour. It is the art, not the scholarship, that troubles you.”
“I think I understand, Kulgan.” He sounded dispirited.
Kulgan stood up. “Don’t dwell on it; you are still young, and I have hope for you yet.” His tone was light, and Pug felt the humor in it.
“Then I am not a complete loss?” he said with a smile.
“Indeed not.” Kulgan looked thoughtfully at his pupil. “In fact, I have the feeling that someday you may use that logical mind of yours for the betterment of magic.”