Wiz shrugged. “No reason. We don’t have magic where I come from and I’m curious.”
“Magic is not taught save to those duly apprenticed to the Craft,” Moira scolded. “You are too old to become an apprentice.”
“Hey, I don’t want to make magic, I just want to know how it works, okay?” They both looked at Shiara.
“You do not intend to practice magic?” she asked.
“No, Lady.” Wiz said. Then he added: “I don’t have the talent for it anyway.”
Shiara stroked the line of her jaw with her index finger, as she often did when she was thinking.
“Normally it is as Moira says,” she said at last. “However there is nothing that forbids merely discussing magic in a general fashion with an outsider—so long as there is no attempt to use the knowledge. If you will promise me never to try to practice magic, I will attempt to answer your questions.”
“Thank you, Lady. Yes, I will promise.”
Shiara nodded. Moira sniffed and bent to her mending.
After that Wiz and Shiara talked almost every night. Moira usually went to bed earlier than they did and out of deference to her feelings they waited until she had retired. Then Wiz would try to explain his world and computers to Shiara and the former wizardess would tell Wiz about the ways of magic. While Shiara learned about video game-user operating systems, Wiz learned about initiation rites and spell weaving.
“You know, I still don’t understand why that fire spell worked the second time,” Wiz said one evening shortly after the first hard frost.
“Why is that, Sparrow?” Shiara asked.
“Well, according to what Moira told me I shouldn’t have been able to reproduce it accurately enough to work. She said you needed to get everything from the angle of your hand to the phase of the moon just right and no one but a trained magician could do that.”
Shiara smiled. “Our hedge witch exaggerates slightly. It is true that most spells are impossible for anyone but a trained magician to repeat, but there are some which are insensitive to most—variables?—yes, variables. The coarse outlines of word and gesture are sufficient to invoke them. Apparently you stumbled across such a spell. Although I doubt a spell to start forest fires would be generally useful.”
Wiz laughed. “Probably not. But it saved our bacon.”
“You know, Sparrow, sometimes I wonder if your talent isn’t luck.”
Wiz sobered. “I’m not all that lucky, Lady.”
The former sorceress reached out and laid her hand on his. “Forgive me, Sparrow,” she said gently.
Wiz moved to change the subject.
“I can see why it takes a magician to discover a spell, but why can’t a non-magician use a spell once it’s known?”
“That is not the way magic works, Sparrow.”
“I know that. I just don’t understand why.”
“Well, some spells, the very simple ones, can be used by anyone—although the Mighty discourage it lest the ignorant be tempted. But Moira was basically correct. A major spell is too complex to be learned properly by a non-magician. A mispronounced word, an incorrect gesture and the spell becomes something else, often something deadly.” Her brow wrinkled.
“Great spells often take months to learn. You must study them in parts so you can master them without invoking them. Even then it is hard. Many apprentices cannot master the great spells.”
“What happens to them?”
“The wise ones, like Moira, settle for a lesser order. Those who are not so wise or perhaps more driven persevere until they make a serious mistake.” She smiled slightly. “In magic that is usually fatal.”
Wiz thought about what it would be like to work with a computer that killed the programmer every time it crashed and shuddered.
“But can’t you teach people the insensitive spells?” he asked. “The ones that are safe to learn?”
Shiara shrugged. “We could, I suppose, but it would be pointless. Safe spells are almost always weak spells. They do little and not much of it is useful. Your forest fire spell was unusual in that it was apparently both insensitive and powerful.
“There are a very few exception but in general the spells that are easy to learn do so little that no one bothers to learn them, save by accident.”