Autonomous Learning

Mors reclined in a wicker chair, slowly sliding down along its back to adjust his angle and take in the exquisite mural on the ceiling.

He detected something of olive branches and Attic temples in the mural style of the Lokos court.

Dameks had arranged the finest guest rooms for his honored visitors. When bored, Mors had glanced into Dameks's chambers with his psychic power and found them even plainer than this place.

Then the wicker chair above his head creaked, and a pair of young, damp hands pressed down on it, drawing his attention.

"What would make you willing to teach me smithing, Mors?" Peturabo asked. He had bathed, received a new gray satin robe, and finally put on sandals to save his battle-worn toes. He had also stubbornly cut his own hair—his black hair had grown a little too long, and Peturabo was unwilling to accept that he had any more in common with the man before him.

It had taken considerable courage for him to ask that question. Mors could read the signs in the boy's uneasy brows.

"You're testing me. There's far too little reasonable payment I could get from you."

Mors said lightly. Halfway through, a bored thought sprang into his mind, and he casually made a joke only he understood. "You'll have to provide some surplus value."

Peturabo clearly felt there had to be some hidden meaning in that phrasing. He frowned and said stiffly, "Don't give me the hammer anymore. Teach me to forge iron tools."

Mors said sharply, "You want to trade the gift I was going to give you for my knowledge?"

Peturabo gripped the top of the wicker chair. Under Mors's gaze, his resolve gradually became fragile and pale, like a thin sheet of iron—seemingly silver-bright and unbreakable, yet not all that difficult to bend.

"I..." His words caught. Those with nothing feared no challenge; they feared only giving.

Mors continued staring at his ceiling. By the time he had rearranged every pattern on it in his mind and drafted a design that unified their styles, he still had not heard Peturabo's next sentence.

Sometimes, the boy's mind ran off course. Not slowly—he simply could not turn.

Mors stopped tormenting his morning-mist-thin patience with Peturabo's performance. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers before Peturabo's eyes, bringing him back to himself.

"That was a question," he said. "Not a rhetorical question, not an interrogation. Just an ordinary question. Are you trading or not?"

Peturabo's eyes lit up. Fairly speaking, they were more beautiful than the gemstones adorning Dameks's palace, making it difficult not to feel sincere admiration for the craftsmanship of his creator.

"Then it's settled. I'll trade." He agreed at once, showing not the slightest attachment to the hammer Mors had promised him. That bluntness made Mors sigh.

Once the deal was settled, Peturabo relaxed somewhat. He tossed aside the cushioned seat of the Lokos palace chair, sat on the hard chair, and straightened his waist and back in the most comfortable position.

He was still somewhat puzzled. "Mors, do you think this deal is fair?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Mors was curious about Peturabo's train of thought.

"I didn't offer something first in exchange for your gift."

"Gifts are a special clause outside the rules of fairness. The giver has no right to demand payment from the recipient." Mors grinned and slid eerily upward against the back of the wicker chair until his gaze met Peturabo's.

"Then what about a return gift?"

"That depends entirely on the recipient's conscience. I don't mind if you have none." As Mors spoke, he brought his hands before his chest and clapped his palms together. "All right, I'm throwing you into the training workshop. My personal craft isn't suited to the masses with weak psychic techniques, and instructional smithing stripped of creativity would damage my mental health."

"Wait—" Before Peturabo could finish, his mind was immersed in a space constructed from psychic power.

Dense darkness outlined the cavern of a stone chamber. A wisp of firelight deep within the darkness was cut into several bright fragments, which in turn split apart the pitch-black field of vision.

Cursing Mors inwardly as he walked toward the light—not for any particular reason, merely because resentment weighed heavily in his heart—he approached the source.

Statues of varying sizes lay scattered throughout the corners of this mental space. Some displayed masterful skill, others clumsy workmanship, while still others revealed an artistic style somewhat incompatible with Mors's. His urge to investigate drove him to crouch and reach out, but darkness rose and spread like mist, becoming a fluid barrier that blocked him.

Peturabo had no choice but to temporarily abandon his investigation into Mors's secrets and go to the light source.

A full set of blacksmithing equipment was vigorously breathing out blazing flames and scorching air on its own, awaiting Peturabo's use.

Beside it floated a strange black metal cube. As Peturabo approached, its surface lit up.

Curiously, he tapped the illuminated surface with a finger. A small square unfolded, flattened, and enlarged to occupy the entire rectangular display. A tiny imitation humanoid appeared from nowhere within the rectangle, speaking to him and explaining basic forging knowledge. He also discovered that when he asked questions, the thing could even answer them, as though it possessed life and thought.

Peturabo stared at the silver little object that was human-shaped yet not human, gave up trying to understand what sort of strange creation beyond conventional smithing knowledge it was, and concentrated on listening.

In the real world, Peturabo's body toppled sideways, knocking over the entire chair with a crash. He then slammed into a clay jar nearby, bearing down with tremendous force upon several rolled documents inside it, the chain reaction nearly spreading to the several-tiered heavy bookshelf beside it.

Cold spread at terrifying speed, and ice crystals stole the moisture from the air. In the blink of an eye, all the chaos was halted as though time had stopped, and then everything returned to its original position on its own.

Except for Peturabo, who had unfortunately fallen to the floor and received no attention.

Mors did not believe that lying in an uncomfortable position would affect the normal development of such an exquisite creation.

He stepped around the boy blocking his way on the floor, picked up the clay jar, took out the rolls of paper within, and began to read.

It was worth mentioning that although these things were called paper rolls, they were more like soft screens that lit up on their own, not actually made from tree fibers.

The rolls contained locally popular novels and poetry anthologies from Lokos. Compared with the region's far-from-backward technology, their subject matter was especially ancient: heroes at sunset, warriors blessed by gods, mistaken love born of coincidence, and the like. At the beginning of the scrolls, Mors found festival drama numbers marking the years and occasions for which these stories had been performed in the grand theater of Lokos.

After finishing the scrolls, he returned to the house in the woods. First, he stuffed the finished silver-plate photographs into another, even more neglected secret storage room hundreds of miles away. Then he found the Perseus statue he was re-carving and slung it over his shoulder, dug out the small two-person stone carving Peturabo had recently been developing from a corner, and brought them all back to the Lokos royal palace.

Before leaving, he snapped his fingers, and the entire house collapsed with a thunderous crash.

Back at the palace, Mors exercised his imagination. He stared at Peturabo's unfinished work for a long while and decided it might depict a boy displaying great prowess as he twisted a man's head off.

As for where these stones that had abruptly appeared within the palace walls had come from, Mors trusted that the tyrant Dameks would invent an answer himself.