The Zi'veyn: The Devoted Trilogy, Book One

by Kim Wedlock

  "Well, in the sense that no one else can use my magic, I suppose they don't have any 'right' to it - but as for it being a tool..." he considered his next words carefully, but she took his lingering silence as completion.

  "It's not how you use it," she said, "but how you regard it. You were taught the facts, weren't you? That magic is born within you, it moves in your blood and your will is what directs it and shapes it to do what you want."

  He nodded.

  "And do you see the pattern?"

  He blinked.

  "'You'."

  "...I don't understand."

  "You've not been taught to feel magic, respect it, or understand its nature, only how to use it. Instead you see the magic as a part of you and immediately place yourself above or in front of it when you begin to cast a spell. You force it to do what you want it to, you've never regarded the magic alone."

  He blinked again. "I still don't understand."

  She sighed wearily, but its shortness revealed she'd expected such a response. She spoke slowly. "Magic is not a gift that many are granted, so for those among my people whom it inhabits, it cannot be considered a part of us. And so we learn to understand it instead, like observing an animal before a hunt, and we work with it rather than forcing it to do what we want. It's true that you get results with your magic through manipulation, but it's also true that I can do things you cannot, even though my magic is no different from yours except in how I regard it." She saw the change in his eyes, a thoughtfulness that had descended in place of confusion while he chewed over her words and the events they summoned from his memory. She stepped around in front of him and levelled her eyes with his. "You need to remove yourself from your mind and regard your magic's own existence. Feel its structure, its power, and tap into it on a more basic level. Work with it, don't force it. That's how my people are taught to use our magic without ever going to your schools, and how we're able to heal: our magic works with the body of the person we are trying to help, rather than trying to coerce the magic to forcibly repair the body itself. The two of us perceive our magic differently, but that perception is everything."

  "The magic floating around here isn't in anyone," Aria pointed out with a similarly thoughtful frown. "It's on its own...and you said you think the magic is affecting people, not people affecting the magic..."

  The wrinkles in his brow deepened as he descended further into his wonderings. "Are you saying," he began slowly, "that I and all of my predecessors have misunderstood magic?"

  "To a degree," she nodded, "that is what I'm saying, yes. You can use it, you just don't understand how it works. And this 'floating magic' is little different from what is in your veins. If you can look at your own magic as its own being then you can see the magic around you in that way, too. You'll drop the barriers you've put up around what's 'yours' and what's not and it will be easier for you to combine them."

  The earnest glint in her eyes steadied his tongue before he could try to dispute the idea. She was capable of things he wasn't, things that no other mage he knew of was - aside from Kienza, but she was a category all of her own.

  But if that meant that she was right...

  The idea struck him unpleasantly. He had no real love for the Order, nor for his own magic, but the idea that they - that he - had been wrong about something they'd always been so certain about made him want to close his eyes, stick his fingers in his ears and babble at the top of his lungs if just so he wouldn't have to consider the possibility.

  But he was an adult. So he would just have to prove her wrong instead.

  "How," he began cynically, "would I do that? Regard my magic on its own?"

  "By simply regarding it on its own."

  His brow flattened.

  "All right, try this." She pressed her bronze hand against his chest and ignored his flinching reaction. "Breathe deeply a few times, but not too slowly. In and out." He frowned in growing doubt as she concentrated herself on his heartbeat, but did as she'd told him, breathing neither too slowly nor quickly, and became aware as he did so of just how difficult it was to maintain a normal rhythm. But he continued, taking one deep breath after the next, counting to three as he inhaled and again as he released it. "I'm getting light-headed."

  "Good. Keep going, don't stop." He continued with less confidence, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened. "Your heart," she said quietly, soothingly. "Feel it beat. It doesn't do so to keep you alive, not out of fear of you nor any kind of desire or respect. It simply does it. You cannot stop your heart beat like you can your breath, you cannot reverse the blood flow. You have no control over it at all."

  His dark eyebrows twitched uncertainly, but he said nothing as the truth of the words seeped into his dizzy mind and he closed his eyes against the rotating room.

  "And yet, it pumps the blood around your body constantly, without your effort, your thought, or your direction. You grew the heart, but you have no mastery over it. Everything it does, it does on its own. And the magic that forms within it doesn't form at the heart's instruction, either. It forms there because it can, because there is room in there for it, and it joins your blood without your direction. Whether you want it to or not."

  He felt his heart jump - he hadn't told it to do so, nor to speed up, nor slow down. Suddenly, he found himself wondering if this organ was truly his own. The idea sparked a madness within him.

  "The magic moves freely into your blood," she continued hauntingly. "It courses through your veins; it joins your will to manifest your desires. It does not need to be ordered; it wants to be put to use. Can you feel it swimming in your veins? Filling your body? Your arms, your legs, your chest, your head. It moves as it pleases. It is its own entity."

  His head grew dizzier.

  "Good - feel it within you, feel its colour. Feel it reach your skin, that within and that which surrounds you."

  He swallowed hard and shifted his weight to catch himself before he could fall.

  "Envision the water in the bucket. Let your own magic keep moving, don't restrain it. Let it flow - encourage it to flow, and keep the water in your mind. That water, the water that you swished, can be changed just as it can be pushed. Guide your magic into it."

  His dizzy mind cleared and one single thought presented itself at its centre. 'Blue'. His fingers moved.

  His heart did not lurch. His cuff did not burn. There was no sensation at all. And yet he knew what had happened. His eyes flashed open. Eyila was already following his gaze, and Aria, Garon and Petra joined her. Anthis did so, too, as he peered through the ruined doorway, jealousy still burning in his eyes as they flicked away from the sight of her hand upon the mage's chest.

  An insignificant tendril of indigo, vibrant against the dark water and visible only for the conjured light, spread like ink through the pool that swallowed the edge of the chamber. All stared at it, wide-eyed, shocked at first, then sceptical. Only Rathen seemed truly dumbfounded.

  Eyila dropped her hand as he made towards the water and peered closely at the colouration. Water wasn't really blue, he knew that, but even in his forties the childish idea was still immediate. But now this water was blue.

  "A spell?" Petra asked warily, taking a step closer towards it, but Eyila shook her head. She was the only one among them who seemed confident in the result, smiling with satisfaction.

  Rathen was hesitant to respond, himself. He crouched beside the water to flood the spell chains with his own magic using his usual technique, and there he identified them as he had when he'd begun. Except the blue water. Those chains, that small collection, the ones he had envisioned in a bucket, had changed. They were longer, though only slightly; one detail, a single link, had attached itself to the ends: blue.

  And the change was seamless. It had not patched, it had not overlayed nor cancelled out. It had joined.

  His magic had laced itself into the disembodied and ancient elven chain.

  A giddy laugh slipped past his lips and his smile widened uncon
trollably. Suddenly, anything seemed possible.

  Chapter 41

  Anthis had taken another of his quiet and moody turns since her father had succeeded in affecting the magic, and as he was absorbed in trying to understand just exactly what he'd done, Aria was left to amuse herself. With a small conjured light carried needlessly in an equally conjured jam jar, she pottered about in a room Anthis had already scoured, peering through the darkness with big, measuring eyes. He'd pushed and pulled everything in search of hidden compartments, but he'd also become easily distracted by the place itself with every few paces and she was certain he'd missed something. He'd been adamant at the edge of the lake that something important could be in here, and while he might be oddly content to give up so easily and stare at rocks and soggy books, she was not.

  She decided that perhaps he didn't know how to find such hidden places. She'd been the one to find the secret room in the tangled forest, after all; maybe he just didn't know where to start.

  In that case, she would rise to the challenge.

  There were no recessed doorways or arches carved into the stonework - nothing as obvious as that - so instead she focused on anything that looked a little too much at home. The magic elves hadn't created the hidey hole they'd left their box in, so why would they have done that here?

  Unfortunately, the chamber was so dark and its contents so damp and strewn about that she couldn't tell just exactly what belonged where, so looking for anything suspiciously inconspicuous proved hopeless, as immensely clever an idea as it had been.

  And so it was that she wandered about with a light and flitting gaze that soon barely even tried to see through the darkness, puffing to herself in boredom yet still resigned to her self-imposed task. After all, she couldn't begin work on her own arty-fact until she'd spoken to Kienza, so she had to find some other way to help in the mean time.

  She yawned as a chill passed over her. She had no idea what the time was, but as she'd been up since before dawn and given no rest as Garon had decided they should push on through that amazing and terrifying storm, she knew her weariness was not uncalled for. Of course, there was nowhere comfortable to indulge it.

  She sighed again, and heard a small pop as she did so. She smiled to herself, assuming it to have been the movement of her own lips, but when it came again and her lips were most certainly closed, she stopped in her stride and frowned.

  Silence.

  She shrugged and decided she must have imagined it - but it came again just as she raised her foot to continue her roving.

  Her head snapped quickly to the left. The light from her lantern caught the slightest ring spreading across the water surface, close to the wall, and she watched it intently until another bubble rose from the depths, popped softly and sent out another glittering ripple.

  She pursed her lips suspiciously and crouched low beside the flood, but she could see nothing through the reflection of her lantern, and without the light, she wouldn't see anything at all. But perhaps...perhaps it wasn't so obvious. Obvious would be easy, and if something was hidden, finding it wasn't supposed to be easy. And if her attention was drawn below, then maybe...

  She rose back to her feet, lifted her lantern high above her head to brighten as much of the wall as she could, and began walking backwards, eyes fixed firmly to the heights of the stone. She jumped and cursed clumsily as she bumped into one of the narrow decorative pillars, managing at least to stifle a startled scream if not the goosebumps prickling her skin, and muttered in embarrassment beneath her breath as she stepped around it, sparing it only a brief and vengeful glance before looking back to the wall. Those bubbles had to have come from somewhere...

  But if there was a hidden doorway, she couldn't see it; her light was not the sun. She moved around to the right and raised the lantern higher, and though the shadows lurched and shifted and seemed to transport her into a whole other room, there was nothing new to see. So she moved instead to the left, closer to the edge of the water, and sent the colossal shadow of the meagre pillar sweeping across the chamber.

  A flash of something familiar made her freeze.

  Eyes widening in a daring flood of hope, Aria took a slow, half-step back to the right and passed her light through its previous path as precisely as she could - and a broad, victorious smile crept across her face.

  "Anthis!" She hollered with a grin, and he appeared almost immediately in the cracked doorway, damp scrolls in his hands and a frown of concern shading his alarmed eyes. Her father was instantly beside him and wearing very much the same expression, but she didn't bother to reassure them. She merely pointed instead to the pillar.

  "What is it?" Anthis frowned, stepping in more calmly while Rathen hurried around him, but she rolled her eyes haughtily as she watched him peer about on his approach, trying to see it from completely the wrong position.

  "You have to stand right here," she drawled, pointing down to her feet. Her father had stopped behind her, but when his eyes suddenly widened and he took a few steps forwards, Anthis hurried the final distance to take her spot as she moved aside. Then he, too, grinned in triumph.

  "What is it?" Eyila asked cautiously from the break in the wall.

  "Anarchy..." He moved forwards as Rathen had to perfect the alignment, then chuckled giddily to himself and took a careless step to the left, breaking the order of the familiar, circular sign.

  It was too expansive to mistake, and yet shallow and fragmented enough to hide. Nestled among the noisy etchings of leaves and vines, the central piece marked six feet down the length of the pillar, while the larger, encasing ends graced the wall fifteen feet behind it. To discover the image, one had to stand at just the right distance and just the right angle from an insignificant spot in the room, and broaden their attention far beyond the myriad of distracting details - in short, they had to know it was there. "I told you there could be something here!"

  "You didn't find it, though," Rathen remarked drily, but the excitable young man ignored him. He dashed towards the wall, splashing into the water, and stopped half a foot deep and perfectly between the crest's outer edges. He immediately began pushing at the bricks, throwing his weight against them one stone at a time, deaf to Eyila's outrage, and before too long, one of them began to give way. Rathen hurried forwards and lent his own strength, and between them they managed to push open a door that had been seamlessly hidden in the low light - concealed once again by masonry, not by magic.

  The way was barely wide enough when Anthis rushed inside, and Rathen stifled a snicker when his splashing footsteps were silenced by an abrupt bang, chased quickly by a yelp. In his defence, the historian hadn't given him the chance to conjure a light, which he proceeded to do as he stepped inside after him, and Aria and the others followed close behind. The flooded room was immediately cramped.

  Petra grunted as Garon's abrupt weight shoved her back against the door frame, who in turn had been pushed by whomever was in front of him. "This room is even smaller than the last one," she complained, but as more weight pinned the edge of the stone deeper between her shoulder blades, she growled and wriggled her way back out of the door. Garon, too, saw little other option.

  Everything inside was either damp or damaged - tomes, relics, cloths of some kind, perhaps tapestries or robes - and it was plain that the entire dome had none too long ago been submerged deeper than it presently stood. But that didn't seem to spoil Anthis's enthusiasm. He giggled to himself as he stood over the familiar box nestled amongst the far more elaborate texts and relics, but this time he had no patience for awe. He raised the lid after only the briefest hesitation, bracing himself for the treasures within. Rathen and Aria watched with bated breath while the others peered in hopefully from behind, and Eyila, her tongue stilled by intrigue, observed with far more caution, a slight furrow in her painted brow at the importance the old chest apparently held.

  The lid fell back and an expectant silence emerged. All eyes turned to Anthis as he stared inside, but his face, they noti
ced, was suddenly devoid of all expression. Each of them felt their hope diminish.

  They jumped when he finally moved; his hands lunged into the box quicker than he could stop them and began rifling through its contents, and though, to their relief, a smile returned to his face, he seemed careful not to inspire too much promise. The collection of scrolls and books were little different to anything they'd found before, but as he leafed through pages and skimmed over scrawling elven script, his smile began to broaden, and all gazes shifted, heavy and hopeful, back to the unadorned box.

  "What is it?" Aria asked, standing on her tiptoes to peer over the edge.

  "Journals!" He beamed. "Journals, diaries, workbooks..." He chuckled dizzily again.

  "Is that good?"

  "It's always good, but in this case it could be very good..." Though they waited, Anthis offered no more, losing himself in his reading. They knew better than to bother trying to regain his attention. Reluctantly, they filed out of the compact room instead, but no sooner had the last of them done so than Anthis burst out behind them, raced out of the chamber and on into the next. They frowned after him, and he returned a moment later with his satchel and notebook open in his hands, then disappeared back inside.

  "What's wrong with him?" Eyila asked as his frantically muttering voice drifted out through the door.

  Petra looked back at her dismally. "What's right?"

  An hour later, and under Petra's supervision, Aria was practising with her stick sword while her father continued his work. The hopeful gleam in his eye had diminished since his initial victory, and he appeared to be struggling again. There were two new streaks of blue in the water, but he'd accomplished little else, and Eyila seemed unable to give him any new advice - or at least none that he could grasp.

  "Elves, humans, and one more mention against the gods," Anthis's voice echoed out from the room a little too loudly for him to be talking to himself. "And it doesn't seem to be theoretical... And this 'ravein'okh' has come up again, the 'place of magic', but this one's just as vague as the last time..."