Elrinaris

Tales from The Woldwood - Story 16

In Pryth, we join a master who believes he understands every language that power can speak, and a student standing at the precise moment where listening is mistaken for weakness. What follows is a tale of a name spoken once, too honestly, and a truth that answers with fire.

Pryth stood where three old roads met. Its stone buildings rose in confident tiers along the slope, and smoke rose from the chimneys atop roofs of slate and tile. Storefronts opened onto its broad streets, and the sound of industry carried even in the early hours. Seen from a distance, Pryth carried the assured sprawl of a place that expected to be visited.

Trofius lived on the northern edge of the town. His house was set back behind a stone wall and a wrought iron gate, worked with intricate patterns. Lamps burned at the entrance each evening, steady and well-tended, and a path led inward through a small courtyard. Those who came to Trofius did so on account of his reputation, which was built on results.

Cyrene had first walked to that door as a girl, with split lips and a small bruise on her cheek. Trofius had not asked how she came by either. He had assessed her as he might a tool before purchase, and then, without a word, had turned and left the door open. She followed because she had learned young that when Pryth winds pushed you forward, you either found shelter or fell.

Years later, she stood in the same place with her hands clean and her hair braided back. She was not the same child. Trofius had ensured she did not grow up soft.

Inside, it was warm with a slate floor. Along one wall, shelves held objects wrapped in cloth and cord, jars of powder, coils of metal thin as wire, and carved pieces of wood that looked like they could be wands.

Cyrene waited in the centre of the room, where a blackened oak table had been cleared. Trofius came in behind her and shut the door with his heel.

“You ate?” he said. This mattered only for the work.

“Yes,” she answered.

He grunted, which in him could mean approval or annoyance. He moved around the table and placed something down. It was a wand shell, pale and unfinished. The wood had been carved into clean lines, and it was light enough to lift with two fingers. There were faint grooves along its length, the beginning of patterning that might become runes, jewels or scars, yet it sat as ordinary as any piece of old wood.

Trofius saw her looking at it and smirked.

“You know what this is?” he said.

“A wand shell, of course,” she replied. She kept her voice steady, though her heartbeat had quickened. “A waiting.”

“Not just any shell,” he said. “Do not reduce it with plain words. This was not cut yesterday and left to dry on a windowsill.”

Cyrene let her eyes rest on it, but she was careful not to reach for it. Trofius had trained her never to touch what she had not learned to hold.

“It looks old,” she said.

“It is old,” Trofius answered, with the satisfaction of someone who had proved himself right. “It came through hands that did not want to let it go. It was paid for with gold and favours. Do you understand what that means?”

“That it matters?” she said.

“That it is prized,” he corrected. “That it is never replaced. That it does not come again. You are ready now, Cyrene. You have been ready for longer than you think, and it is only your hesitation that has delayed us.”

Cyrene had learned early that Trofius spoke as though his conclusions were facts the world had agreed to. Arguing with him was like arguing with winter.

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

Trofius laughed this time “What you have always been taught,” he said. “You will take it. You will listen, and you will name it. You will let it answer you. The shell will take bone as it should, and you will stop being a girl in training and become what you are meant to be. There is, of course, the matter of essence, but we can deal with that afterwards.”

Cyrene stared at it more intently. “And if it does not respond to me?” she said.

Trofius frowned with a quick flash of annoyance. “It will,” he said. “You have been trained for it, and that is the purpose of training. Stop inventing failure in advance. It is an ugly habit.”

Cyrene’s hands were steady as she brought them up and hovered them above the shell. She did not touch it yet. She let her breathing slow. Trofius had taught her that Verdicrence work began where impatience ended. He had taught her that, and yet he stood now like a man waiting for a kettle to boil as she let her mind go quiet.

When she reached down and closed her fingers around the wand shell, it felt cool. Lifting it, she noticed that it now weighed more than she had expected, but still she held it loosely in her palm.

Trofius spoke behind her. “Don’t grip it like a weapon,” he said, “ and don’t cradle it like a child either. Let it sit and be what it is. Now listen.”

Cyrene did as she was told. She closed her eyes and tried to feel past the surface. She had done this before in moments Trofius described as exercises. With lesser shells, carved branches and bone scraps. Those had all responded in faint ways, but this was nothing. It was silent.

“Do not drift,” he said. “Focus.”

“I am,” Cyrene replied, though she was struggling with it.

“Then why do you have nothing?” Trofius snapped. “You are standing there like a pilgrim waiting for a miracle. There are no miracles, only the work.”

Cyrene kept her eyes closed and let his words pass around her, but still nothing.

Trofius sighed impatiently. “Open your eyes”

Cyrene did. The shell lay in her hand, dead. Trofius stared at it, then at her.

“You feel nothing?” he said.

“I feel,” she began, then stopped. Lying to him was pointless. “I feel… quiet.”

“Quiet,” he repeated, offended by this assessment. “Quiet is what fools call emptiness. Quiet is what cowards cling to when they do not want to admit they have nothing.”

Cyrene’s cheeks warmed with anger, but she kept her voice calm. “I am listening,” she said. “It is not responding to me. What else can I say, Master Trofius?”

Trofius invaded her space uninvited. “It answers what is worth answering,” he said. “If it is silent, perhaps it has judged you. Perhaps it has found you lacking.”

Cyrene gripped it harder without intending to, but the shell did not react. Trofius saw the movement and was irritated by it. “Do you want this or not?” he demanded. “Do you want to carry a bone wand and have the Marchlands look at you as something more than a girl who can coax leaves to bend. Do you want to matter or not?”

Cyrene could not contain her annoyance any longer. “I do not need to be bullied into wanting what I have trained for,” she said.

Trofius almost smiled. “Then stop acting like a child with a sweet in her mouth,” he said. “Name it.”

Cyrene hesitated. Naming was not supposed to be demanded like tribute. It was supposed to arrive. Trofius watched her, and his disappointment curdled into contempt. “You have spent years learning restraint,” he said, “and now you hide behind it. Restraint is not paralysis. It is control. If you cannot act, you cannot guard. If you cannot guard, you do not deserve what you ask for.”

Cyrene had swallowed so many of his words over the years that she had grown used to the taste of his bitterness, but this crossed a line. “Tell me what you want!” she yelled. “Do you want me to listen, or do you want me to perform?”

Trofius’s hand shot out and took her wrist, and hard enough to leave no doubt about who held the power in the room. The contact sparked heat along her skin, a brief prickling that made her muscles tense. “I want you to stop making excuses,” he said. “You must do what you are capable of. I have seen you take a living branch in winter and make it remember spring. Do not stand before me now and pretend you are empty.”

He released her wrist with a sharp jerk, and Cyrene tried the wand shell again. Its surface held no hint or encouragement. But as she looked, she began to sense something else. It was not a whisper of green or a tug of growth, but a thin edge of heat buried beneath the wood like an ember. A promise of burning rather than blooming. It startled her and felt wrong in her hand, like holding a knife by the blade.

Trofius concentrated on her, watching her face. “There,” he said, as if he could see it too. “You have found it. Now listen properly. Do not think. Do not choose. Let the name come.”

Cyrene closed her eyes again. She tried to soften her grip, to open herself the way she had been trained and become a vessel for the name to settle into.

The ember flared, but not into flame. It was a sudden clarity. A shape formed in her mind, of heat moving through air, of light bending on scorched stone and of a hand raised in command. A name rose sharply in her mouth. It did not feel like hers. It felt like something pushed against her from the inside.

Cyrene’s eyes snapped open. Trofius’s gaze was locked onto her. “Say it,” he said.

She knew this was not right, but Trofius was watching her like a hawk, and she spoke before fear could stop her.

“Elrinaris.”

The shell in her hand reacted as though struck. Heat exploded along its length, a sudden, brutal surge that tore into her palms and fingers. The pain hit so hard she could not breathe. The wood flared into a deep orange that made the carved grooves look like molten seams. Cyrene screamed and dropped it onto the slate. It thudded once and rolled, leaving a scorch mark.

She staggered back, hands held out, staring. Blisters were already forming, swelling fast. The skin across her palms had split in places, red and angry, the burning spreading into her wrists and up her arms.

Trofius swore, a vicious word that sounded like betrayal. “ What? Elrinaris? No, no. You stupid girl,” he snapped.

Cyrene stared at him, “I did what you said, and look what happened”.

“You forced it,” Trofius barked. “You spat a name like a curse, and you ruined it.”

Cyrene’s hands trembled. “It came,” she said. “I heard it.”

The wand shell lay still on the floor now, its glow gone, as innocent as dead wood again. Only the scorch mark betrayed it. He looked back at Cyrene, and his face twisted.“You heard nothing,” he said. “You grabbed at something you did not understand. You always do. You pretend you listen, and then you lunge. That is why you are still here after so many years, still waiting for a shell to take bone. You have no patience, no discipline, only stubbornness and a hunger to be something you are not.”

Cyrene was in too much pain to argue, and the room was spinning around her. “Stop,” she said.

“You think you can stop me,” he said. “You think you have earned the right to protest. Look at your hands. Look at what you have done. Do you know what that shell cost me?”

Cyrene forced herself to meet his eyes. “If it cost you so much,” she said, her voice shaking with fury and pain, “why did you put it in my hand?”

Trofius was about to speak when something occurred to him. Something like calculation, or perhaps the brief recognition that he had stepped onto ground that could not support his certainty. He strode to Cyrene’s side. “Hold still,” he said. She tried to pull back, and the movement sent fresh pain flaring. “I said hold still,” Trofius repeated, and this time the command carried the subtle power of his strange gift, the way he could lay a hand on any school of magic and make it kneel. Cyrene’s muscles locked. Trofius placed his fingers lightly on her wrists. Heat gathered there, nothing brutal, and magical energy threaded carefully through her flesh and bone.

Cyrene gasped as the blisters cooled. The raw split skin knit itself back together, and pain receded like the tide. The flesh smoothed, leaving only a faint pinkness that faded even as she watched. Within moments, her hands were whole, and Trofius released her wrists.

“There,” he said, “No scars. No weakness. You must not carry this as an excuse.”

Cyrene flexed her fingers, and they moved as before. The memory of the pain remained, but her body showed nothing. She looked down at the scorch mark on the slate floor. Then at the wand shell. “I am leaving,” she said.

Trofius’s brows rose, a faint incredulity. “Leaving,” he repeated.

“Yes,” Cyrene said. Her voice was steadier now that the pain was gone, but beneath it, something had changed. “I came here to be trained, not broken. I will not stand in this room and be blamed for a thing you do not understand.”

Trofius’s eyes flashed. “I understand more than you will ever,” he began.

“No,” Cyrene interrupted, and the boldness of it startled even her. “You understand how to command. You do not understand what refuses you.”

Trofius had never been this affronted by anyone, let alone a student. “Do you think there is anywhere else you will be taken?” he said. “Do you think Pryth will weep for you. Do you think the Marchlands will make a place for a wandless Verdicrence who burned herself on her own arrogance?”

Cyrene was stoic. “I burned because I listened to you. And because I spoke what came. If that makes me unfit, then perhaps your teachings have always been wrong.”

For a moment, Cyrene thought Trofius might strike her. Instead, he turned his anger into stillness. “You will regret this,” he said softly.

Cyrene nodded. “Perhaps,” she said. “But I will regret staying here more.”

She turned and walked to the door, her legs trembling. “Taveth Hall might take me. I’ll go there.” And she was gone

He did not follow her, and for a time the room held only Trofius and the wand shell, just lying there. He stood very still, staring at it. The anger that had come so easily at Cyrene’s defiance ebbed, leaving behind something more complicated. Disappointment, yes, but threaded through it now was unease. Cyrene’s challenge had landed where it was unwelcome.

What refuses you

Trofius moved to the table and drew a length of cord from a drawer. It was not an ordinary cord. It had been soaked in certain oils and then dried until it held stiffly. He knelt and began to trace a containment circle around the shell with powdered chalk and iron filings. He spoke under his breath as he worked, a murmur of syllables that belonged to no single tongue.

When the circle was complete, Trofius reached for the wand shell without touching it. “Enough,” he said, not to the shell as an object, but to whatever sat inside it. The shell did not move. Trofius felt something beneath his palm, and he pressed harder.

The air warmed, and he adjusted the nature of his will. He had always been proud of this, the way he could move from one discipline to another as easily as changing a coat. Verdicrence work was listening and persuasion. If this was connected to Elrinaris, then he needed Pirrus, and that meant command. Other schools had their own textures. Trofius could grasp them all and pull.

He tried Verdicrence first, out of habit and stubbornness. He softened his mind, waited and listened for its familiar tug, but just as with Cyrene, the shell gave him nothing. It was silent. Indifferent to invitation.

Trofius nodded as he spoke, “So you are not that, I see. You test me”

He changed again and drew on the Pirrus school instead. He gave it authority, invoking heat shaped by will and the right to impose. The wand shell reacted instantly. It warmed under his hand as it woke. A recognisable glow threaded through the carved grooves in orange, deepening toward red. Trofius felt its obedience run from the shell into his palm.

He had expected resistance, corruption and unpredictability. He had expected to wrestle it into submission. Instead, it reacted as though it had been waiting. He brought his other hand up above the shell, feeling the heat and the way it coiled and steadied in response to him. A shell meant for Verdicrence should have been reluctant, coy and responsive to patience. This was nothing less than eager.

Trofius’s voice was quiet. “Elrinaris,” he said, testing the name on his own tongue. The glow flared, and for an instant, the shell’s pale surface seemed to move. Trofius felt the name settle like a key turning in a lock. He knew that name, but not from living memory. From stories that had clung stubbornly to the Marchlands even when wiser men had tried to scrub them away. From half-burned parchments in the hands of collectors and from whispered warnings about firecasters who had wielded flame like judgement.

Agrus.

Trofius tried to grasp the centuries that separated that name from the present and pull them apart to see what had been hidden between. “Elrinaris was destroyed,” he murmured. “Lost. Broken into ash.” The shell in the circle did not care what he believed. It responded to his will again, and the heat gathered obediently.

Trofius sat back, and a shock moved through him. He had acquired this shell through channels that had promised rarity, not impossibility. He had paid in coin, in favours and in knowledge he did not like giving away. He had believed he had secured a prize for Cyrene, a culmination that would bind her loyalty to him.

If this were Elrinaris, then he had not purchased a prize. He had stumbled into an old question, long unanswered. How had a wand once wielded centuries ago become a pale shell waiting to be named in a stone house on the edge of Pryth? And not just any Pirrus. Agrus, their father.

Who had dared to disguise it in Verdicrence expectation? Who had thought to put it into the hands of a Verdicrence apprentice?

Trofius examined the scorch mark on the floor where it had burned Cyrene. The burn had been deep because the wand had refused her. It had been its rejection, delivered with the honesty of flame. He remembered Cyrene’s face when she spoke the name. The shock in her eyes. The pain. He had seen it as failure because he could not tolerate a world where his plans were wrong. Now, sitting on the floor with Elrinaris warming obediently, Trofius felt the first real sting of shame.

He pushed it aside. Feelings were indulgences he would never submit to.

He added a second ring of binding runes to the containment circle, and chanted in a tongue older than Pryth, older than his own birth, and the shell’s glow dimmed slightly. Elrinaris resisted a little. “You will not burn anyone else in my house,” he said. The shell’s glow steadied and fell back, and the room cooled.

Trofius stood and walked to the shelves. He pulled down a narrow box of dark wood bound with metal straps. It was heavy, and he set it beside the circle and opened it. Inside lay a lining of woven fibre dusted with fine grey powder. He looked down at Elrinaris one more time.

Agrus. The name sat in his mind like a coal. There had been songs once, harsh ones, sung by soldiers who had survived fire. There had been stories of fields turned to glass. There had been whispered claims that Agrus had not merely cast flame but commanded it the way a general commands men. Trofius had dismissed most of it as exaggeration, the kind of myth that grows when people need their fear to have a face. Yet here the wand was, in his house, channelling heat, yearning to be wielded once more.

Trofius reached into the containment circle carefully. He did not touch the shell with his bare skin. He wrapped it in the cord and lifted it. The warmth radiated through the bindings, but Trofius enforced its silence and placed it into the box. The lining hissed faintly, and the glow vanished entirely.

He closed the lid and fastened the straps but remained standing beside the sealed box, contemplating his next steps. His mind moved in circles. He was not a man given to wondering why without also wondering how. If Elrinaris had returned, then someone had made that happen. Someone had moved it through hands, through time, and through hidden channels. Someone had carved away its old form and presented it as a shell that would be named anew.

Was it meant to be found or meant to be used?

He thought again of Cyrene walking away into the evening. He pictured her braided hair, her cloak pulled tight, her posture rigid with the kind of anger that could harden into purpose if left unbroken. She had heard the name and spoken it. She would not forget it.

A part of Trofius wanted to get her back. He could still salvage this, he told himself. He could still shape her into obedience with time and pressure, the way he had shaped so many other things. Then he remembered the way she had looked at him when she said he did not understand what refused him.

Trofius’s fingers moved slowly over the box. “No,” he said aloud, though no one was there to hear. “You are not mine to salvage.” He carried it to the far corner of the room, where the slate gave way to a section of stone that had been poured as one piece. He knelt, pressed his palm to it and murmured words that belonged to earth-binding and the art of sealing. The stone responded, and a seam appeared, thin as a hairline crack. The slab lifted just enough for him to slide the box beneath. Before finally sealing it away, Trofius hesitated. He leaned close to the box and spoke softly, “Elrinaris,” he said. “You should not be here.” No answer came, and he closed the slab, the seam vanishing and the floor becoming whole again.

The silence of the room now struck him. Could it be possible that the wand’s presence in Pryth was not an accident? A deliberate placement and not just a rediscovery? He did not like that thought. It suggested there were hands at work beyond his reach.

Trofius went back to his shelves and began, methodically, to rearrange his tools. He cleaned the scorch mark from the slate floor until the stone looked unscarred, only to watch it return, deeper. He wiped the table down until the grain held no trace of the shell’s presence. Only when everything looked as it had before did he stop, leave his home and seek distraction amongst the noise and bustle of Pryth.

Just outside the city, Cyrene walked on into the southern Marchlands with healed hands and an unhealed knowledge, carrying nothing but the name she had spoken and the knowledge that it had not belonged to her. Inside, beneath Trofius’s feet, Elrinaris waited in darkness, obedient to command and silent toward all else. It had never been made for listening at all, and it could afford to wait for centuries more.

Cyrene was taught to listen for that which wanted to grow, but Trofius saw too late that fire may not be commanded with gentleness nor healed into submission.

Tales from the Woldwood is a free 40-story descent into the Marchlands. The forests, ruins, people, monsters, bargains, and histories that shape the world before the first novel arrives

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