by Ann Macela
In counterpoint, her magic center fluttered, hummed, spread warmth and contentment. What was it trying to tell her? Whatever was going on—it was all right? Why with this man?
Nothing made sense.
Except …
Unless …
Another soul mate?
No, impossible. Yet …
Could a person have two soul mates in a lifetime? Although she’d never heard of that, why couldn’t it be possible? Soul mates did die. Hers had. So had Saxt’s. She recalled some of the statements about him by women in the restroom—rating his “hotness,” his clothes, and his bank account. They called him ‘Sexy Saxton’ and compared tales they’d read of his appearing with different women at various events.
Oh, puh-lease. Those were simply gossips, airheads with the intellectual capacity of a lightball. As if a practitioner woman would be truly attracted to a man not her soul mate. The gossips were practitioners. They should know better.
Get serious. What did she truly feel? Johanna had to admit, she did seem attracted to him. At the thought, her center hummed harder, gave her a little pinch. Okay, she was attracted to him.
That didn’t, couldn’t, automatically mean they were soul mates, did it?
Her center hummed, warmed up, sent little zings of happiness through her system.
Well, no matter what her center thought, she needed more information. Impartial information. Impersonal information. She knew exactly where to get it.
With a groan, she threw back the covers and stood, pushed her feet into her fuzzy slippers, grabbed her quilted robe from the bottom of the bed, and headed downstairs to her home office. She turned on the computer with one hand and the space heater with the other. Wrapping herself in her afghan, she settled into her warm cocoon in the chilly house.
The computer barely finished its startup routine before she was online, at the practitioner website, into the library section, into the soul-mate section, and searching on “soul mate, second, after one dies, frequency, statistics, imperative.”
An hour later, Johanna was in bed again, mulling over what she had learned. Yes, you could have a second soul mate. It didn’t happen frequently, partly because practitioners were naturally long-lived, partly because the older you were when the loss occurred, the less you wanted another. Or was it the less the phenomenon and its “enforcer,” the imperative, tried to find you a new mate?
Thinking over the past seventeen years since Billy died—had it really been that long?—she had to conclude she wouldn’t have entertained the notion of another mate until maybe five years ago, when she was thirty. Several aspects of her life had changed at that time. First, she’d completed the grueling and intense study and become a teaching master. Second, after she’d reassured them about a million times that she was fine, her parents and Billy’s had retired to Arizona to the same senior development and loved it. Although she’d lived on her own since college, Johanna hadn’t realized how much her life revolved around them until they did move.
Thank goodness for her team, who, individually and collectively, made certain she wasn’t alone unless she wanted to be. She’d focused on her career and on her love of art, both the viewing and the doing. Her life had settled into a comfortable routine.
She’d had offers, mostly for sex, sometimes more, from practitioner and non-practitioner men, but she declined. Sex without love? An empty exercise that didn’t appeal to her at all. The “more?” Live with a man, married to him or not, without love? No matter how fond of a man she might become, she knew she wouldn’t love him, not that deep, all-satisfying love of soul mates. Without it, for her, the relationship would be doomed to failure. No, better to refuse them all.
Darn it, she wouldn’t “settle.” Better to be lonely alone than lonely with someone.
Now, it appeared from her reactions—her magic center hadn’t been this happy since she was with Billy—a new soul mate had appeared.
And she felt torn. The wonderful joys of having a mate beckoned. To have a mate to love, to be loved by, to share life with, to laugh, cry, sing, and dance with. A pang of longing speared through her, and hugging her knees she curled into a ball. Oh, God, how lonely she’d been and not let herself acknowledge it.
But … in the way of seizing those pleasures stood her loyalty to Billy and her oath to love him forever. What had she told Billy at his grave, he was her one and only soul mate? Nobody would take his place in her heart?
How do you forsake promises like that?
What would she do if she rejected the idea of another soul mate and the imperative came after her to “encourage” her to accept Saxt? She’d seen the pain in mates when one tried to reject the other. Would the imperative leave her alone? Not likely.
She had to think of Saxt, too. Did he know what possibly lay in store for them? He must, from that look he gave her across the ring. He was in the same situation, wasn’t he? Didn’t that article tell of a tragic accident and the death of his son as well as his wife? Oh, God, how had he lived with that? His loss was even greater than hers.
What if Saxt didn’t want another soul mate? What if he was the one rejecting? Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head? And the heart?
They had to talk. Come to terms with the situation, decide how to live with it.
She glanced at the clock. Four-thirty. In two hours she had to wake up with enough energy to demonstrate their new method and train people all day. She couldn’t answer a single one of her questions at the moment. Lying here obsessing on them wouldn’t help either.
Resolutely she shifted onto her back, stretched out, and started relaxing from the toes up, blanking her mind of all except how her muscles softened and her breathing steadied. Loosening her shoulders was the last thing she remembered.
Chapter Nine
Sunday morning at ten, Johanna stood with her teammates and Saxt in the middle of the large arena floor and inside the testing pentagon, ready to cast the fortress.
Their notices about the meeting had attracted more than simply the attendees to the Defender/Sword presentation. Residents of the center, a number of students and their parents, and practitioners of every talent sat in the two-tiered balcony also. Johanna noted Phil’s presence in the middle of the first tier.
Because of the mixed audience, Clyde, on the outside of the etched figure, explained how evil items were created, how difficult it was to destroy them, how long the old method took, and how their new procedure would work.
Because the team was destroying an evil item in a public space, Jake and three Defender masters had cast the spell protections around the balcony and raised the magic barrier wall along the etching of the oval boundary in the stone floors. They had not activated the silence barriers that usually kept out crowd noise, however, and those on the floor could hear a buzz of excited conversations coming from the balconies. Two healers in yellow robes stood near one of the exit doors.
Johanna made one last survey of the arena, the spells, the safety precautions, and the people. Good. They were prepared.
She snuck a glance at Saxt. He was acting as if no connection existed between her and him. Probably a good idea, given what they were about to do. She focused her mind on the task ahead.
Clyde finished his explanation and faced the team. “Everybody ready?”
“Ready,” they all answered simultaneously.
“It’s all yours, Johanna,” Clyde said.
“On three,” Johanna said softly. “One, two, three. Castellum.”
The gleaming, translucent pentagonal fortress walls shot up to the ceiling and closed overhead.
“One, two, three.”
The team members extended their hands and sent energy from their fingertips to blend into the ring. This pentagon was wider than they were used to, and it took a minute to position the ring so that it passed through the open C correctly. After that, they easily built the circle and sent it spinning.
As the ring grew, rotated faster, and changed to a deeper gold, J
ohanna could hear the crowd begin to exclaim in surprise and call encouragement. They probably felt the increased power the team was generating. The atmosphere reminded her of a baseball or basketball game.
She tuned out the noise and increased her energy outflow. The others matched her, and the threads multiplied, wove, and wrapped around each other until the cable was a foot in diameter.
Power in the ring increased and rose in level. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen … Ah! There it was, the exchange of energy between the ring and its weavers. As the power flowed in and out of her center like the tides, the weaving in the ring changed subtly. The structure became stronger, tighter, thicker.
Then one of her strands found one of Saxt’s. She couldn’t mistake his essence, his energy, his magic when their threads twisted together, melted, almost became one.
When Johanna raised her eyes from the ring to gaze straight into his, the sheer joy and desire that exploded in her stole her breath and transfixed her heart.
Bewitchment of the highest order.
In that instant, her questions were answered. The phenomenon had decided she and this man were soul mates, meant to be together, entwined just as their threads were—melded into one.
All of her guilt over going back on her promise to Billy, however, struck a blow to her heart.
No, she couldn’t accept the new possibility. Not completely. Not on such slim evidence as entwined threads and a look across a spinning ring. Not yet. Not until she understood better what was happening to her. Imperative, be damned. What did she want for herself?
She closed her eyes and gave herself a mental shake. Coming to terms with the situation and Saxt would have to wait. They had work to do. Somehow her rational mind asserted itself, or maybe his did, because when she opened her eyes, they blinked at each other and managed to return their gazes to the ring.
She heard Clyde say the Swords would cease their connection to it and move inside the circle. She cut her thread to the ring and walked into the spinning energy. When she took the steps, the rush of power through her body resonated in every cell—with much greater energy than ever before. How high had the level risen? Seventeen? Eighteen?
Saxt picked up the lead box at the foot of the pedestal and opened it. When he slid the item into the crystal bowl, the potent stench of evil wafted into the air. Johanna heard a couple of team members cough at the smell. Like all pieces of the Cataclysm Stone, this dull black flake absorbed light. When the ring’s illumination fell on it, the shard seemed to huddle in the bottom of the container as if it recognized the threat.
Clyde spoke to the audience about blade creation, their signal to draw their swords.
Johanna raised her hands, and Saxt mirrored her actions. She brought her hands together and said softly, “One, two, three.”
Shining silver swords, swirling with indigo, appeared in their hands.
The audience was abruptly quiet. Only the whooooosh of the ring broke the silence.
“One, two, three,” she murmured.
They lowered their tips to point at the item, which quivered under the brightness of the weapons.
As Clyde explained their actions, Johanna’s center reached for the energy in the spinning wheel, drawing more and more power into her body and her sword. She watched Saxt fill with energy until he glowed. Their blades shown totally silver. With the help of the ring, she’d cast a sword to a level sixteen—higher than ever before.
“Ready?”
When he nodded, she said, “One. Two. Three!”
With all her might, she pushed a mass of power through her sword. Saxt’s attack duplicated hers. When the concentrated energy struck the item, it flashed into a dazzling white.
The black crystal silently disintegrated into the usual pile of ash.
After she and Saxt raised their blades and canceled their spells, Johanna looked up at the balcony.
The audience sat absolutely still, making no noise at all. The sole sound in the arena was the whoooosh of the ring as the Defenders stopped sending energy and it wound down, dying with a familiar “poof.”
The silence lasted about ten seconds. Then, with a roar, every person in the balcony was on his feet shouting, clapping, and stomping.
The team members grinned at each other before taking a bow. One of the masters brought out the vials, and he and Pat handled the ashes. Jake and the other masters canceled the protective spells on the balcony and around the oval.
Clyde handed the microphone to Saxt, who began to call for quiet.
It took several minutes for everyone to settle. As Saxt raised the mic again but before he could say a word, from the doorway to the measuring instruments Gary and Herb appeared. One of them yelled, “Holy crap! You almost broke our machine!”
Chapter Ten
By the time lunch was served, Saxt was one frustrated man. He knew, he knew, Johanna had recognized the soul-mate connection. Did they have even a second alone to discuss it?
Of course not.
Training in the new spinning-ring method had started immediately after the demonstration. Johanna went off with the teaching masters to work with them. He and Clyde talked with all the Swords about how to gather and release the power—by lecture and question-and-answer session, not actual casting. Using blades with the ring would come later. The remainder of the team worked with Defenders on ring and thread generation.
Next one of the teams actually tried to generate and sustain a ring while everyone else watched. Thank God he’d made that arbitrary schedule last night so nobody could squabble about being first. Oh, a couple of pushy types tried, but Saxt stuck to his list. When the team proved successful, he and Clyde shook celebratory hands. The new method worked.
Under the eyes of Clyde’s Defenders, several other teams took their places in fortresses scattered around the large arena. The teams not in action and all of the Indies observed and asked questions. At one point eight pentagons spun glowing rings on the arena floor.
In the midst of all that, three members of the Defender Council and one of the Committee on Swords showed up, and he and Clyde threw them into teams to experience the spinning ring for themselves. Saxt knew the newcomers would want to confer about the situation later. More interference between him and Johanna. Saxt’s center grumbled in agreement.
Giddy with success—and relief their apparatus had survived—Herb and Gary announced at lunch that, under the old method, the measurement of energy output ranged from four hundred to nine hundred Merlins. For Clyde’s team, the new method had measured a sustained plateau of three thousand Merlins, and at the moment of contact with the item, the output spiked to five thousand.
Saxt scanned the ballroom where they were eating. Clyde’s team members had dispersed among the tables to answer questions. Those who had spun their rings were explaining to the as-yet untrained what it felt like. An electric atmosphere of excitement pervaded the entire room.
Well, on second observation, not quite all of it.
At a table in a corner were Phil Bellman and several Independents. As so many were doing, a couple rotated their fingers around salt and pepper shakers to represent movement of the ring. One even had a little lightball in the shape of a donut spinning around a spoon. Phil was not taking part in the discussions. He was frowning, seemingly not excited, not even curious. Simply sitting, arms crossed, like a disgusted lump.
Was recognition of Johanna’s higher level the cause for the man’s glum demeanor? Saxt recalled her statement that Bellman didn’t know her true level, and he wondered if the man had noticed her level-fifteen sword during the demonstration. If he had, maybe Bellman wouldn’t challenge her again.
Phil could simply be frustrated because he was not on a team and, as a Sword, craved the opportunity to use his powers to destroy an item. Or because he wasn’t the center of attention, of praise, of adulation.
No matter what, Saxt wanted to observe Bellman in action, especially to see if he became the energy hog Johanna had d
escribed. He looked at his watch—they’d spent enough time eating.
Saxt rose, picked up the mic at the lectern, and announced, “Defenders and Swords, let’s return to our practice. Those teams who have not spun a ring, meet in the large arena. Those who have can use the practice rooms in the Defender building. Independents, Johanna and I will meet you in the small arena, and we’ll try some ring generation.”
***
Twenty minutes later, Saxt’s desire for a few minutes with Johanna had not abated. Yes, he and she had walked over to the Defender building side by side—together with the Independents, who asked questions the entire way. No chance for a quiet word.
Maybe that was okay. When they did talk, he wanted time, not simply a few seconds, and privacy, not the middle of a circus, to discuss and explore their situation.
Definitely not the present situation.
Of the sixty Indies present, forty had come to the arena. Most of the remaining twenty had friends on teams and were training with them. Saying it might be time to retire, a few of the oldest Indie Defenders had opted out completely.
Saxt and Johanna quickly divided the forty into five teams of eight each, but didn’t send them into fortresses yet. First, she reminded everyone of the need to let go of control and the threads would take care of themselves. While she explained the procedure again, he and one of the teaching masters demonstrated by elongating balls of energy into threads and letting them weave together.
Within a few minutes, the teams were in pentagons and producing rings—some with more success or more seriousness than others. Once one team, made up solely of women, had produced a woven ring, and especially when they successfully started it spinning, the rest, mostly men, buckled down. Before long, five silver-to-gold wheels were revolving. He and Johanna moved from fortress to fortress, answering questions, helping to refine energy production, encouraging the hesitant.