"To recover, execute the beginning of a hand stand, but keep your feet below the horizontal plane as you bend upward. Twist erect, sweeping one leg out for spin control before dropping it back into a bounce crouch.” A moment later she stood before him again.
He grinned and flattened himself on the ground. With a shove of his arms he sprang upward, but his feet went above the horizontal and he ended up pushing himself erect, his feet coming down away from his center of gravity, and he toppled over backwards. The chorus of laughs that came from the Novices caught Aetria unawares, and she turned on them angrily.
"This is an advanced movement and very hard to learn. It is disrespectful to laugh at someone's effort."
An even heartier laugh exploded from behind her, and she wheeled to find Nemos lying on his back, laughing the loudest of all. He heaved himself up.
"Disrespectful maybe, Ma'am, but funny anyway. I will practice this by myself to save distracting your Novices. Thank you for the instruction. May I talk with you in private, please?"
Aetria nodded. “Shall we go to my tent?"
They left the Novices behind, walking past the picketed horses. Almost unconsciously, the two officers took a moment to check the horses, their feed, and the guards posted nearby. They then proceeded to the billeting area and to Aetria's tent set off slightly to one side. She entered the tent first, pulling a folding chair clear from her field table, and sat down. She pointed to a companion chair in the corner.
"Have a seat, Lieutenant."
Nemos politely refused. “I prefer to stand, Sorceress. This will only take a moment. The other night, when Novice Recanlin wandered off, I was making my rounds of the guards when I saw you set up that impressive illusion around the horses. I must say, if I was an enemy infiltrator and had penetrated the camp to steal our horses, I would have had no desire to accomplish my mission against those sentries."
Nemos was piling on praise for a reason, Aetria thought. She doubted if anything would have stopped him from getting the job done. “Thank you, Lieutenant, it is always nice to have your work appreciated. I thank you for allowing me to rescue one of my lost sheep."
"It's my job, Ma'am. I was a little surprised when you turned into a hunting dog and ran out of camp. I know sorcerers don't actually turn into the things they conjure up, but I'm curious to know if you can use the senses of the animals you put on the glamour of. You sure made a direct line towards Novice Recanlin, just like a scent dog on the trail."
Aetria picked up a towel from the table and mopped the sweat from her face, hiding the shock brought on by his question. Nemos had been spying on her! She had not headed toward Recanlin until she had gotten out of sight of the camp. Her fears of him following her were well founded.
What was he after anyway?
"There are sorcerers who can sense what animals can, but they are very rare. The simple explanation is that all of us can sense the use of the Power. Novice Recanlin was practicing the skills Commander Pleates had been teaching the Aggressors, and I sensed it. Who else would be doing so near our camp? No tricks, Lieutenant, really."
Nemos’ deadpan stare was hard to read. He smiled a ghost of a smile and said, “Why, of course, Ma'am. That explains it. I guess I was hoping you had some new skills I could use to more effectively guard the camp. I'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way, Sorceress. Thank you for your time."
Aetria watched him disappear out of her tent and mentally added another worry to her list.
Did he suspect? Would he tell?
CHAPTER 3
Turning the “floor” over to Novice Verdilan, Aetria resumed her seat at the front of the first wagon. The cloudless skies and bright sun that had greeted the Novices this morning made it easy for Aetria to order the covers removed from the wagons. The company now rode in comparative comfort, the cool spring breeze supplemented by the movement of the wagons down the road. The caravan was still heading north, parallel to the border with Hermania.
With less than two weeks left to go before they reached the army's encampment, Aetria was beginning to feel reasonably good about the progress of the Novices’ training. If only she did not have to bring up the next topic of her training lectures. It was going to put a strain back into her relationship with her small company to discuss the subject of grid burnouts, but their safety required it.
Verdilan had taken a seat on the Illusionists’ side of the wagon, as close to the front as he could get. He cleared his throat and began. “There is a danger directly associated with increasing one's Power grid. It is called grid burnout. Now, I know we have all learned during our Novice training at Inhestia of the effects of grid burnout, and I don't intend to retell the horror stories of what happened to those unfortunates who experienced it and died. We have a rare opportunity to talk with one of the few who suffered grid burnout and lived."
He glanced at Aetria, and all eyes followed his.
And so it begins, she thought.
"Before Novice Verdilan gets too far into the medical explanation of grid burnout, let me share some facts with you. Having lived through a burnout, I have been the focus of a lot of attention over the last few years and have learned a lot about the problem.
"At the end of the Sorcerer War, our Mage Council instilled discipline and order into our Lodges, and very tight controls were imposed on the training of sorcerers. Since that time, there have been thirty-four recorded cases of grid burnout in the last two hundred years: twenty-one Aggressors, ten Illusionists, two Healers, and one Provisioner. Novice Tracilus, based on these first few facts, what assumptions can you make already?"
Caught by surprise, Tracilus took a moment before answering. “Thirty-four cases in two hundred years are not many, so I would say the Council's plan appears to be working. If I were an Aggressor, I would be bothered by the high percentage of cases in that specialty, and I am curious why Provisioners are so low."
"Novice Verdilan will explain why in a few moments. Up until the start of our war with Hermania, there had only been ten cases of grid burnout. The other twenty-four have happened in the last six years. Of the original ten, five were Aggressors. They all died. Most of those were scholars above the Novice level who pushed the bounds of their training and lost. Only one practitioner has died in all that time.
"Two of the ten were Sorcerer level Illusionists. One left the Lodge and gave up the Power forever; the other returned to her Tierian people and practiced only minor spells until the end of her days.
"Of the remaining three cases that happened before the war, two were Adept Healers. Their remarkable case took place over forty years ago; again in a scholarly environment—an experiment gone wrong. One of them went insane and was confined. The other is now a Mage. The last one you have all heard of, Provisioner Adept Trilistes, who died of wine abuse."
"The Lush of Inhestia was a burnout victim?” Jalista asked.
Aetria nodded. She looked at Fernonia. “You Aggressors have a cause for concern. In the last six years, sixteen have died; fourteen of them were Novices, the other two were Sorcerers. In that same period of time, eight Illusionists have suffered grid burnout. Six were Novices who died, not from the burnout like Aggressors, but from losing consciousness in a battle and not being rescued. One Sorceress quit the Order and went into seclusion. And one Novice is now a Sorceress, presently the Sub-Commander of a Recruit Company headed for the army. What conclusions can you make now, Novice Tracilus?"
Licking his lips, he said in a shaky voice, “Twenty-four cases since the start of the war, the majority of which have happened to Novices, implies that something we are doing is causing the grid burnouts. That points towards the meditation techniques you will be teaching us. Perhaps it is not a good idea to learn them."
"Not your choice or mine, Novice Tracilus.” Aetria looked carefully into the faces of her Novices. “You will learn these techniques. It is not the techniques that cause the burnouts. These are the same techniques that have been taught in our Training Lodges for c
enturies, and you have learned there have been almost no cases of grid burnout in normal use.
"The Council has weighed the advantages and disadvantages, and has decided to take the risk of teaching them. What I am trying to accomplish today is to reinforce in each one of you the awareness that what you do, and what we all do, with Power is very risky all the time—and even more so in time of war. Now, Novice Verdilan, continue your lecture."
Verdilan's uneasiness in discussing the topic was abundantly apparent in his posture. “The engineers take great delight in saying our work is done by smoke and mirrors, that there is no discipline to our use of Power. They are uncomfortably close to the truth when they say we don't know ‘how we do what we do.’ We don't know, for instance, where we store the Power. We believe it is within the sorcerer and not in some strange plane of another existence. If the plane theory were true, then why would we need a source to energize ourselves? We would just open a tap to that energy whenever we needed to."
Aetria mentally supported the Novice Healer's point strongly because, with her strange ability to sense stored Power, she knew it was in the sorcerer. What she was not able to pinpoint was where in the sorcerer it existed. It was just there. She wondered if she could find out by somehow training her sense to detect stored Power with better resolution than she currently had. Intriguing idea, but probably a waste of time. It was not as if she could work with a Mage Healer and ask for advice! If the Council found out about her “abnormal ability,” she could end up cashiered. She brought her wandering mind back to Verdilan's lecture.
"Where it exists within the sorcerer is unknown. In the early days before the Sorcerer War, a non-sorcerer king, I believe his name was King Sepnotes, actually cut apart sorcerers a piece at a time to try to find out where they hid the Power. Cost quite a few sorcerer lives in the process. Removing any body part usually means death, particularly when you cut out vital parts, like the heart or brain.
"Grisly as these experiments were, they provided some proof that the Power is not stored in any specific organs within the body, unless you believe like the common folks do, that it was stored in the brain. They also did not find any unique or special organs within the butchered sorcerers that might explain why sorcerers can store Power and non-sorcerers can't."
Aetria watched the expressions on the Novices’ faces during Verdilan's dissection story. It was clear they had not heard it before. Perhaps in today's rush to produce more sorcerers to support the war, they were not being taught all that she had been. Her Novice training had taken six years; theirs was four or even less. What else had they not been told?
"We also don't know how the Power is stored. Our training has us envision it being stored in a lattice structure, a grid. We do this for ease of focus. Using our training models, and artist conceptions developed over the years, we are provided with something familiar to help us visualize a non-visible concept."
Breaking in rudely, Fernonia said, “Who cares about that? We sorcerers know we can sense the Power; we know we can capture it and store it someplace. We know we can blast into cinders the engineers who doubt our professionalism."
Aetria rescued Verdilan, who was starting to sputter with indignation over the nasty remark of the haughty Aggressor Novice. “Show proper respect for a lecturer, Novice Fernonia! Novice Verdilan's point is that if we knew more about how we stored Power, we would be able to increase our abilities and decrease our Aggressor death rate—something I'm sure you are interested in."
Fernonia gave Aetria a “respectful” frown and sat down, looking unhappy. Aetria stared at her to ensure she was properly put into her place, and then turned to Verdilan. Something in his eyes made her look back at Fernonia. She really was beautiful, even when pouting. Perhaps Verdilan's response to Fernonia was not indignation, but unrequited love.
Interesting, the play between our Novices, Aetria thought.
"Thank you, Sorceress. As long as I am making myself look bad, I might as well add to the list of ‘we don't knows’ by saying that we do not know the capacity of one's grid. The Healers have a measure of that capacity, which Sorceress Aetria demonstrated for you last night. I didn't know the army had another use for our Healer diagnostic technique, but that technique may help me explain to you a principle of Power use.
"Think back to last night. For the most part, our Novice flames’ intensity were about the same. That is true because Novices are generally trained to the same level of Power use. Let us say for the sake of discussion that the amount of Novice Power is—oh, say a bucket's worth."
A rude comment from a male voice came out the rear of the wagon, surprisingly on the Illusionist side, about the size of Verdilan's bucket. It caused a general outburst of laughter, but it also eased the tension a little. Aetria let that one pass without retort.
"Given you have accepted my measure, which some of you haven't, then let us say a Sorcerer is two buckets’ worth, an Adept is three buckets, and a Mage is four or more."
"Can you have half-buckets?” the same male voice asked. Aetria identified it now as Welendor, the other male Illusionist Novice. “Sorceress Aetria's flame was more than two buckets’ worth."
"Novice Welendor, flattering your Sub-Commander may gain you favors from her, but loses favor with your peers,” Aetria said to the guilty Illusionist.
"I beg the pardon of my fellow Novices if it looks like I am doing so, Sorceress. I just thought your flame was a lot more intense than the suggested level."
Aetria thought about her response for a moment, deciding truth held more value than putting junior officers into their place. “I have trained to the Adept level, Novice Welendor. When my mentor has decided I have shown proper control, she may advance me for candidacy. Grid burnout, as we will learn today, is an issue of control. Continue, Novice Verdilan."
The tall Healer had been watching Aetria, obviously wondering himself what her answer would be. She was a very powerful Sorceress.
"Yes, Ma'am. Now it is a known fact that it takes all levels of sorcerers about the same amount of time to charge their grids. This is a very interesting fact. It has led some Healers to the conclusion that the higher levels of sorcerer have bigger grids. Tracilus, you have something to add?"
"Or, if everyone has the same size grid structure, higher levels can put higher amounts of Power into their grid,” Tracilus offered.
Jalista waved her hand in confusion and said, “I can see bigger grid capacity for different levels, but I don't see pouring more water into a bucket than you can put a bucket's worth into."
Verdilan smiled, the first Aetria had seen on the serious young man in a long time. “In essence, yours is the very argument used for decades. But that begs several questions to be answered. If the Power resides in our bodies somewhere, does the size of the body affect the amount of stored Power? That would imply Magi should be physically bigger than Novices, but we know that is not true.
"Maybe the size of the Power bucket is fixed, and we Novices just don't fill our bucket full with our skill level, where a Mage can. However, if the bucket size is fixed, then at some point the Mage could not store any more Power. That point has never been reached. During the Sorcerer War, there were some abnormally powerful Magi. Their buckets must have been overflowing. Admittedly many of those Magi died violently. We believe the cause to be grid burnout, but can't prove it. So the concept of ‘buckets’ of Power has serious flaws."
"I have a feeling you are going to say Tracilus’ supposition is correct,” Jalista said. “Now if he could explain it better, maybe I could begin to see how you put more than a bucket of water into a bucket."
Tracilus joined in with the other Novices’ laughter. When the commotion had died down to where he could be heard, he said, “Which weighs more, Jalista, a bucket of steam or a bucket of water?"
Jalista gave him a puzzled frown, “A bucket of water. I don't see your point."
"Isn't steam just water turned into a vapor?"
"Yes, according to our en
gineer ‘friends.’”
"Well, suppose Novices fill their buckets with Power ‘steam,’ and Magi fill theirs with Power ‘water.’”
The simplicity of the explanation stunned everyone. Even Aetria was impressed with the idea. Verdilan was impressed most of all. “Very clever, Tracilus. I must pass that on to Mage Kelristo. It works very well with what we think may be the cause of grid burnout."
"Well, fine, Verdi—now explain it to us!” Jalista said in exasperation.
"Sorry, you're right, I have not done well in providing an explanation. Remember I said it was very interesting that a Mage and a Novice, using the same source, take about the same amount of time to fully charge their grids. If we use the flawed bucket theory for a moment, a Novice puts in a bucket in a day; the Mage puts in four buckets in a day. Therefore, the Mage stores more Power in the same amount of time, so the Mage has a higher speed of transferring Power into the grid. Now there seems to be a very strong correlation between how fast you can put Power into the grid with how fast you can take it out.
"Think about our hand flames—the intensity of the flame, not the size. Sorceress Aetria's flame at the level she displayed was very intense, because she could draw a lot more Power out of her grid in the same amount of time as we do. She can also make her flame the same intensity as ours, so she can control the speed at which she pulls Power from the grid. That is a major difference between our skills as Novices and the skills of our seniors."
"That and they can do a lot more spells than we can!” Recanlin said.
Aetria followed Recanlin's point with one of her own. “Novice Verdilan is right, my illuminated Novices. We all know that simple spells are simple because they are easy to conjure from Power. Complex spells are hard because they require you to control a lot more Power to make them work. If you can't control Power quickly, the spell fails or gets away from you. The meditation technique you will learn will increase your speed of transferring your Power into, and out of, your grids—therefore, a brighter flame. It will not allow you to do spells you couldn't do before, having not learned how to control them. You can only do spells you already know, just more intensely. In that lies the danger.” Glancing at the Novice Healer, she said, “Now I see why you like Tracilus’ example, Novice Verdilan. Please continue."
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