It has been said that the government of Black Steel is the most powerful orphanage in the known world. The point is exaggerated -- many of Black Steel's top-ranking officials have living parents even now, though none of them have stayed in touch over the years -- but a disproportionate number have parents who died when they were very young, a fact that is perhaps less remarkable when you consider that four of them met and grew up together in an /actual/ orphanage.
The great orphanage of Venighas was run when Theril first arrived by the popular church of Shaer in the city. As the churches of Frei and Forseti grew in power however, they struggled for control of the beautiful building and its many parentless children, impressionable and open-minded, fertile ground for the seeds of their faiths. Political and economic maneuverings led the orphanage to change hands several times in the next few years, and with all the conflicting messages being taught from one hand-over to the next, all three churches lost the hearts over whom they were fighting -- at least in the cases of Nimlo, Theril, Dargon, and Quix. They did manage to benefit the children in between attempts to indoctrinate them however, and during one period when it held control of the orphanage for almost two full years consecutively, the church of Frei introduced the custom of bringing groups of orphans to homes it had established for elderly citizens who followed or converted to the faith. This plan was a great success, as the presence of troops of children was a delight to the church's aging parishioners, and the children loved to hear the stories that the old folks shared with them. Though the church lost control of the orphanage again some time later, the ranks of their elderly converts swelled in the meantime.
Theril and her friends were as interested in old stories as anyone, and conspired to make as many visits as they could to the home for the elderly, but the stories weren't the only draw: It was an opportunity to get out of the orphanage for a while, and to hear something other than lessons about the glory of the god of the year or the week. Theril collected friends and stories, Dargon and Quix collected tips on everything from King's Men strategy to cleaning bloodstains, and Nimlo collected opportunities for mischief, from which -- or from the blame for which -- his friends delighted in extracting him. More and more however, led as always by Theril's instincts, the group gravitated toward a certain forbidding old woman with wild hair and a habit of mumbling incoherencies. She didn't live at the home they were visiting, but they always passed her on the way, sitting on her porch and glaring at the world, and Theril liked her instantly without being able to say why, except that it was perhaps for the same reason that she had first been drawn to Dargon and Quix.
One day, they all made a daring escape -- daring because they risked never being allowed their trips to the elderly home again if they were caught -- and went right up to the old woman's porch together. The old woman glared at them, still muttering under her breath, and when it became impossible to pretend they were just going by on their way someplace else, she demanded in a croak, "What do you want?"
At once, Theril answered brightly, "We want to be friends. Didn't you ever go to make friends with someone when you were a little girl?"
The old woman scowled. "I did once, and forever regretted it." She might have intended to leave it at that, but inside of a minute, Theril had her spinning out the story, which was thrilling and heartbreaking, and before the hour was spent, she was smiling down at Theril in a way so unfamiliar to her it seemed to go against the grain of every wrinkle on her face. "You're a good child," she said to Theril. "Come inside, and I'll show you the secrets that I've shown to no one else."
Utterly fearless, surrounded by her friends and comfortably familiar with the old woman herself, Theril didn't hesitate. She and Dargon and Nimlo and Quix all helped the old woman up, put her stick into her hand, and piled into the house on her heels. She went to the hearth and told Theril to take out a certain brick, then to unlock the door of the iron box set into the brickwork behind it with the key the old woman wore around her neck. Inside was another key, old and dull, but intricate. "Go down into the cellar," the old woman told Theril. "I don't like to climb the steps anymore. There's an old iron woodbox in the corner, but no wood. It will seem to be rusted shut, but in fact it is locked. I made the lock myself, and disguised the keyhole so it looks like a hole in the rust, near the right hand corner. Bring a candle, and you will find it, because you are a clever child. Inside, you will find my treasures. When you see them, you will know. They are heavy, so bring me only the one on top." Her eyes gleamed wickedly and softly, the only way perhaps that they still could gleam at all.
Theril did as she was told, shining a candle to light the childrens' way down to the dusty cellar. Dargon and Quix looked suspiciously at the cellar door to see which way it opened and how easily it could be locked, but when Theril unlocked the woodbox and pried up the top with the help of her friends, they all saw the treasures of which the old woman had spoken: Great, heavy, leather tomes, covered in words of a language that none of the children understood. The boys carried the top book up together, as Theril led the way with the candle, and when she saw them emerge with it, and saw the expressions of awe on their faces, the old woman smiled once more. "Go ahead," she told them. "Open it up."
The book was filled with diagrams of nothing they could understand, with notes clearly, precisely recorded in a language strange to them all. The books were somehow beautiful, but in an alien way, with no jewels or precious metals or even dyes to enhance their simple letters and diagram lines. Dargon and Quix turned page after page, trying to spot a pattern and puzzle out the meaning of the strangeness. Nimlo's eyes and mind wandered around the little room to tricks he might play on his hostess. Theril was the first to look up and ask the old woman, "What does it say?"
The old woman laughed hoarsely in reply. "Here, let me show you," she said. The children brought the book to her, and she turned it back to the first page, and pointed a cracked and dirty nail at the diagram. "This is a symbol made for tradition. You don't have to worry about it. It's only a way to organize the text."
Dargon frowned, but Theril said quietly, "No; it's more than that."
"Is it, child?" The old woman looked at her carefully, as if deciding whether to still like her or not, and finally settled on asking, "Then what is it, my child?"
Theril examined it carefully once more, but finally shook her head. "I don't know. But it's not just for the words. It's important. It's an important book." Earnestly, she met the old woman's eyes.
"Ah," the old woman agreed. "There is power in tradition. Perhaps you are right. But you need not concern yourselves with the pictures. They just help to guide the eyes. Now the words..." and she read them off, and the children didn't understand them, for they were in another tongue, but the old woman's creaking voice was suddenly strong and steady, a voice of power, and the words were beautiful. And then she explained in her old, creaking voice, empty of strength once more, what each word meant in the language they shared.
They mostly didn't understand even then; the words were strange and specialized, and the old woman's explanations were beyond even Dargon and Quix. Nimlo's eyes and thoughts started wandering again, but Theril was attentive, and her bright blue, eager eyes were all the old woman needed to see. Theril asked quiet, awed questions, and asked very politely if she might please see an example of what the words meant, and when the old woman cackled and reached into the air to pluck at emptiness, and Dargon decided once and for all that she was batty, Theril straightened, and her eyes gleamed, and her smile was bright as she said, "Oh! It's magic! They're books of magic, aren't they?" The old woman stared at her, and she suddenly had all her friends' attention again; Theril was rarely wrong.
"How do you know this is magic?" the old woman sputtered, as though she were growing afraid, as if doubting her judgment of the children for the first time.
Theril was unfazed. "It's like what Elhuvin would do when she wanted to weave a spell. Only that was a long time ago, before I had to go away and find the orphanage."
Slowly, carefully, the old woman controlled her breathing. "Elhuvin is not a human name. My eyes aren't what they once were. Are you then elven children?"
"No, not real elves," Nimlo piped up. "Everyone just says 'elven blood.'"
The old woman turned her hazy eyes on him. "Ah," she said at last, with quiet satisfaction. "I see now." She smiled slowly. "So. You have elven blood, but no parents. You barely comprehend your heritage. You live here in the orphanage, where no one understands the potential of your blood. Am I right in this?"
Theril shuffled a little on her feet, but Nimlo agreed cheerfully, "That's right! I'm going to compy-rend my terry-hage someday though, all the way, and then just look out, world!"
The old woman laughed, a soft cackle. "Indeed. And how did you find your way to my porch from your orphanage?"
"It's right on the way," Nimlo answered, while Dargon and Quix did everything they could to persuade Theril to silence without drawing attention to themselves -- if the old woman was impressed by elven blood, and imagined they all had it, they had both independently come to the conclusion that it was best to let the one true child of elven blood among them do the talking. Still explaining, Nimlo said, "We go to the what's-it place all the time; that place for old people who're in love with Frei and don't have their very own houses like you have."
"The 'Love House'?" The old woman's voice betrayed a slight but sudden anger and disgust.
"Yeah, that. They're all right, the people there, as long as they're not talking about their goddess, but they don't have books like this one. They don't have any really good stuff."
"Well," the old woman said, rubbing her hands over each other. "Well, we'll have to do something about that. Run along now before you get caught. I'll keep the book out for you. There's much more to explain now since you're all of elven blood. Perhaps the orphanage can be ... persuaded ... to let you visit me instead of that Love House." She chuckled to herself a little, quietly.
Nimlo told her, "Okay; bye!" Theril thanked her with a formal courtesy, and Dargon and Quix added their thanks in the best imitation of Nimlo's voice they each could manage -- he was the only person with elven blood that either had met after all -- and they left the house together to find a good place to lie in wait and rejoin the parade of children to and from the orphanage once more when it passed. Whether thanks to their own clever ruses, their minders' lack of vigilance, or other uncertain causes, they managed to sneak back into their proper group without their absence ever being recorded.
After that, whenever the four went to visit the elderly followers of Frei, their minders always happened to be distracted or looking away when they passed the old woman's house, and they always slipped away. Sometimes they looked back, and got the impression that they saw themselves milling among the other children, though they couldn't be exactly sure -- except for Theril, who assured them the first time she saw it that there was some kind of magical spell there. Overhearing, the old woman agreed, "There is a spell, and it is my doing -- but hush about it; no one must know that magic is being done here." The children were happy to keep the secret, the more so as the old woman began to teach them to work magic themselves. She warned them never to show it in public -- "Not yet; not until you are strong" -- but it would be a long time before they were far from ready even to weave the simplest spell. Rare among human beings, and not as common as was believed even among people of elven blood, all four children were able to grasp the concepts of magical works, and eventually to weave spells. The old woman supposed it was their elven blood, knowing no better; the children never doubted their capacity. It was not until many years later that Theril came to understand how the coincidence was no coincidence at all.
When the church of Forseti took over the orphanage some time later, the visits to the "Love House" were discontinued, but other arrangements were made to fill the gap, and Theril managed to persuade the priests who ran the orphanage to let her and her friends visit their old mentor openly. She spoke of having passed her so often on the way to the Love House and feeling sorry for her; the unfairness that she never had visitors just because she didn't worship Frei; the power of Forseti to redress such wrongs; the season being propitious for such an enterprise. In the course of the orphanages many changes of ownership, Theril had learned the language of religion and of the church of Forseti in particular as ably as any foreign tongue, as skillfully as she had learned the language of her elven foster parents and the trade language of the Fire Coast, and she used her knowledge and the seeming innocence of her clean, childish beauty, perhaps as well with some small sorcerous assistance from her mentor, to great effect. She and her friends were soon granted the privilege of visiting their tutor openly, a privilege that they would not relinquish even with later changes in the orphanage's patron church, while they remained in the orphanage at all.
They studied sorcerous principles constantly, Nimlo with an apparent laziness that concealed a fiery interest, Dargon and Quix in heated competition with one another, Theril with pleasure and natural ease, and in time mastered the art of finding and weaving spell cords, and then their first, simple enchantments. Theril loved subtle magics that helped her to persuade, and to get her friends out of their inevitable bouts of trouble; Dargon and Quix prefered impressive magics, and gave Theril lots of practice trying to explain impossible things away. Nimlo liked a different kind of subtlety than Theril, and a different kind of punch than Dargon and Quix, but he soon won the other two boys over to helping him with his schemes -- for Nimlo, magic was a brilliant new means of making mischief: Creating chaos, stealing secrets, and playing ever-less-harmless tricks. As they grew surer in their abilities however, their old mentor began to give them practical tasks to accomplish as well -- supposedly, and in part actually, to improve their skills and apply them in real-world situations -- which mostly came down to stealing things that she wanted or needed from people more fortunate than she.
The children regarded this as extremely practical training; Dargon and Quix would soon be too old to continue at the orphanage, and had no intention of making a living in any of the boring ways they were taught to seek by the orphanage. As they grew into skilled young wizards, the four friends came to support one another and their teacher alike through various forms of magical larceny.
Of course it couldn't last. In the course of attempting an especially ambitious heist planned by their mentor, the four young wizards were caught. They tried to use what sorcerous power they had to extract themselves, but were in too deep for subtlety, and not nearly skilled enough for sheer power to succeed. To their credit or discredit, they shielded their mentor to the end, never admitting any connection between her and their crimes or sorcerous abilities, so when the judgment was handed down -- exile, for Venighas had no tolerance for sorcery outside the bounds of law, but could not execute them, least of all young Nimlo, for their relatively minor offenses -- they were sent away with neither the teacher nor the books from which they had learned.
