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When Neal attended university, he never thought about making a lightsaber. He was studying to be a healer, and healers didn't need (or make) them.
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When Neal became a page, his magic classes changed. In the classes on magic for Gifted pages, it was assumed they would eventually make lightsabers, just not yet. Pages were not to be trusted with lightsabers. Squires could have them at their knight-masters' discretion. He had at least four years to get comfortable with the concept of carrying one – or not, as the case may be. Numair didn’t go into detail, but Neal knew the mage had a black lightsaber he’d never used. (There were rumors that Daine, the Wildmage, may have used Numair’s lightsaber*, but that might have been a euphemism.)
*She carried the silver one while they were in the Realms of the Gods, and she used it exactly once. Neither Daine nor Numair ever used the black lightsaber.
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After they passed the big exams, Neal offered to make Kel a lightsaber with the blade based off her glaive, if and when her knight master thought she was ready. Neal still felt too much the bookish healer to make one for himself, but for Kel? Maybe making one for someone else would help him be more comfortable with one of his own. Maybe. (Or his mental struggles with making one to keep his promise would make it very clear that he wasn’t meant to carry a lightsaber. One or the other.)
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Training with Sir Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau was … an experience, to say the least. If there were sniffles in the village, then down to the village they would go, to study the treatment of sniffles. And after they studied the treatment of sniffles, they would practice with regular weapons.
“A mage can be drained of their Gift,” Alanna told him, “But a knight always has their sword. If you are to be both, then you should be able to use your sword when drained of your Gift.”
Neal stared at her the first time she said that, disbelieving. Drained mages tended to pass out, and she wanted him to use a sword in that condition?
Guessing his question, she continued, “No, not when you’re so drained you lose consciousness. But if you can stand, you may still need to wield a sword. When we ride out to heal in the morning, we’ll be practicing in the afternoon or evening.”
One afternoon, while Neal was practicing sword drills, Alanna ignited a purple lightsaber for her own, still keeping an eye on the squire. Neal stared at the blade.
“Yes, squire?” Alanna asked, noticing Neal’s attention.
“You’re a healer.”
Alanna nodded. “I am, in fact, a healer. What’s your question?”
“I thought healers didn’t use lightsabers? Why do you? How do you? Is that allowed?”
Alanna deactivated her blade, sat, and gestured for her squire to join her. “When I was a child, I didn’t like my magic. Our local healing woman taught me all she knew, but never told me healers didn’t use lightsabers, or why. I think she knew I wouldn’t heal if it were a choice between healing and knighthood, or between healing and getting to use a lightsaber. The lightsaber was very important to my ideas of what adventuring lady knights did, though in practice I use my steel blades more.”
“But surely you’d have found out at the palace?”
“So I did, but not the same way you did, as a restriction that applied to me. I had a Gift for healing, but I wasn’t using it, so it was fine. Then I did, and I was worried, but still no one said anything about how I couldn’t use it if I was going to heal. I use my Gift for healing, but I never took the Healers’ Oath, because I’m a knight first. Lightsaber or no, my duties require me to kill on occasion. Fairly often, in my first years as Champion.” Alanna looked at him. “You didn’t take the Oath before you became a page, did you? I assume your father wouldn’t have let you change plans so drastically if you had.”
Neal shook his head. “I didn’t, no. But I studied for years, expecting to.”
“Well, I won’t order you to use a lightsaber, but I will tell you what your father told me. The Gift doesn’t discriminate. Sometimes warriors have healing gifts. The Healers’ Oath is a human tradition to remind us of our duty of care. We don’t have to take the Oath to heal people.” Alanna stood up. “Now, squire, I believe you still have sword drills to complete.”
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Neal read his latest letter from Kel. She said Lord Sir Raoul had, after seeing her use her glaive with the own, decided she could have the glaive saber Neal had offered to make her. He swallowed. Time to find out how well he could stomach it, then.
“Anything interesting, squire?” Sir Alanna asked. She always wanted to know as much of Kel’s progress as she could.
He looked at his knight-mistress – not really up at her, even with her standing and him seated. “You’ve probably already heard the Own will be going north?”
She cackled. “Of course I have. I asked if there was anything interesting.”
“Kel says she’s allowed to take a lightsaber north.”
“Is she now? Raoul promised me dibs on making her first one as a knight. And I can’t be openly giving it to her yet.”
“Not a sword. A glaive.”
Alanna thought for a moment. “Not exactly what I called dibs on. I’ll only yell at him a little. So, are you the one who’s supposed to make this light-glaive?”
Neal nodded.
“There should be time after dinner, tonight. Let me know if you want supervision or not.”
It took quite a bit longer than the time after dinner that night – adjusting the design to work with a longer hilt than either mage in residence had ever heard of turned out to be the work of several nights, made more complicated by the fact that Alanna flatly refused to use her Gift on any prototypes. “You know I can’t,” she reminded him, apologetically.
“Got to maintain some plausible deniability,” George drawled, having taken enough interest in the project to watch occasionally. “Right now, she’s just helping her mage squire with a project of his. But if her Gift is identifiable in a weapon Kel’s wielding before she’s knighted, or in any protypes you don’t plan to thoroughly destroy, it’ll cast doubt on your friend’s legitimacy.”
“So your Gift isn’t in Kel’s bruise balm?” Neal raised an eyebrow. He’s long since guessed Alanna was the “mysterious benefactor,” though she’d forbidden him from telling Kel.
“Technically, no. I leant a village healer strength to do it, but the only individual Gift you’ll identify in there isn’t mine.” She turned her attention back to the schematic for the light-glaive. “And strength is not your problem with this.”
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Neal thought he’d finally gotten the light-glaive to work, with the longest hilt he’d ever heard of. He hefted it. It was heavy, too. If Kel’s glaive weren’t steel cored, he’d have worried about her ability to swing this one. And like any saber meant for an un-Gifted user, it had an activation switch on the outside. He put his finger to the switch. Time for the moment of truth… he hesitated. It still felt wrong to activate a lightsaber. Carrying it – well, it wasn’t for him. But this was a bit much. I guess that’s my answer, then. No lightsaber for me. Not yet, anyways.
Shaking his head a bit, he went to find his knight-mistress. “Can you …” he trailed off.
“Activate it? And risk leaking my Gift into an an active light weapon, for Keladry of Mindelan, before she’s knighted?” She laughed at him. “Go ask George.”
George also laughed at him, but he activated the blade. “It doesn’t automatically leak, she’s just used to using her Gift with Thunder. Won’t hurt her to be a bit paranoid, for a few more years.”
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By anyone else’s standards, Kel’s face when she first held her light-glaive (not even attuned yet) was nearly expressionless. But Neal, who’d been friends with Kel for years, could tell she was delighted.
“Can I activate it now, or do you need to attune it first?” she asked, holding a staff that made longest lightsaber hilt Neal had ever heard of.
“Depends whether you want to see a green blade before you see it whatever color it will be for you,” he told her. “George already activated it, to test.”
She nodded. Holding the hilt like the glaive-staff it also was, she stood so the blade wouldn’t hit anything when she activated it, then slide it to the on position. Like her friend had said, the 18 inch blade was emerald-green, to match his gift, rather than the silver-grey of steel. She turned it off, then passed it back to him. “So, how do we attune it to me?”
“From your end, it’s basically meditation.”
They sat, cross-legged on the floor, each with a hand on the hilt. Unlike most attunements, they weren’t touching each other – that part wasn’t essential, just a reality of having two people sit, holding the same sword-hilt.
Neal felt through the blade, and to Kel’s essence, bringing it into the glaive. Steady loyalty, her personal understanding of chivalry (“or will we do as we learned when we were pages and squires?”), and a complete refusal to back down from bullies. Not harsh, but certainly unyielding.
The attunement hadn’t felt like it had taken long, but when Neal opened his eyes, the sun’s angle into the window had clearly changed. His stomach rumbled, and he groaned as he stood up.
Kel reactivated the blade. No longer emerald, it was a blue-grey. Not exactly the grey of the Mindelan owl, or of stone… a lake on a cloudy day? He wasn’t quite sure.