by Damien Lake
Caresse sent it against Marik’s shield rather than forming it into a physical object. This was so he could feel the pure energy and make the required adjustments. Such as now. A small section had eroded. Marik quickly drew the power needed to reform that corner and maintain the shield’s integrity.
“Good! Now we’ll do a little more, we shall!”
The flow of power against his shield increased, collapsing it much faster. No longer merely eroding, his shield deformed under the torrent, the center pushed inward as though a leather ball had been squeezed from its outside.
But Marik knew what to do. He built a reinforcement between the shield and himself, duplicating the original form. Marik pushed it forward, blending the two into one stronger shield. As long as he had the strength and the energy, he could keep reforming his shield from within as it peeled away from without.
Caresse ceased her assault. “I think you have picked up the knack for it.”
“I think so. I’m finally used to it.”
“Chief Mage Tollaf will be pleased to hear that, so he will. I know he wants you to begin working with the lines as soon as you can.”
“I don’t know about that, but I’m ready for whatever’s next.” He still remembered the blinding headache that had plagued him after his first encounter.
“No, you are ready!”
“Ready to have my head examined at any rate.”
“Doh-ah?”
“Never mind. You were going to show me your other talent next.”
“Yes, my geomancy. Indeed, so it is different. The chief mage asked that I show it to you if you were ready. Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’m ever likely to be.”
Marik began raising his shield until Caresse stopped him. “No, no, there’s no need for that, not at all! That simple shield would not be able to handle the elemental energies.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Just watch. See with the eyes of your talent so you may tell one from another when you must. Are you ready?”
“I guess,” Marik said, wondering what would happen.
“Okay! Here I go! Stone will be first.”
Marik watched what the young woman did, unsure he understood. To his magesight, Caresse appeared to be melting or deforming slightly. Her actual shape remained the same. Only her aura turned strange.
Most of it slid down Caresse’s body to pool at her feet on the small stone patch she stood upon. The blackness of the rock looked a dead thing to Marik’s sight, but this particular stone took on life under her influence. It held no glowing aura like everything else, yet the black deadness gradually seemed less deep. Lightening, it shifted until it bore a dark gray color.
“Watch closely, you must. I will twice demonstrate stone.”
Under his magesight, Marik watched while Caresse firmed whatever grip she had over the stone’s soul. She retracted her aura slightly, as if to withdraw it back to herself, and the ground beneath Marik’s feet moved.
The massive buried boulder, for that is what the stone patch in the grass truly was, rose from its resting place a half-foot before Caresse released her grip on it. Once she did, it sank back to its previous position.
“And now the other,” Caresse panted while the two wobbled, nearly falling. She bent to retrieve a stick that had fallen from a tree along the vale’s ridge. It reached a foot in length and had dried, having died during the summer. “Watch again, you should.”
Caresse held the stick out, withdrawing her aura to herself. This time she left the ground where the gods had intended it to be. Instead she pulled off a portion of the grayness she had coaxed from the stone. Marik recognized it as a different form of energy, unlike the etheric energy he could use. As he watched Caresse work, he knew deep inside that this door would forever remain closed to him. No amount of practice would allow him to touch this type of power, much less use it. He felt relief at the instinctive knowledge.
Marik watched her bring the grayness she had withdrawn from the stone to the stick in her hands. She wrapped it around the wood, enclosing it within the sheen of elemental power. With a mysterious twisting of her abilities, she forced the energy into the wood, saturating it, blending, becoming one. Caresse severed her link with the stone and sat down.
“Hoowee, that’s very tiring, so it is! Here you go, Marik. Take a look.”
After closing his mage’s eyes, Marik viewed the world resplendent in its normal colors. He took the stick from Caresse, not entirely surprised to find a stone replica. Had this come from an artisan’s hands, people across the kingdom would marvel at the level of craftsmanship required to carve such a delicate and incredibly realistic branch from rock. Marik could see the bark flecks that protected the tree limb, and could clearly define the wood grain where the bark had chipped away.
He handed the stone stick back to her. “How hard is that to do? Could a wizard do that to a person?”
“I imagine so. My geomancy is stronger than my mage talent, but the awakening of the secret heart and drawing of elemental essence is a very difficult matter! Even harder with stone than the other elements. It sleeps deep, it does.”
“So a stronger geomancer could attack me that way? Then how do I defend myself if my shield is useless?”
“Doh-ah?”
“Didn’t you tell me my defense would be ripped apart by your energies?”
“If you had used that shield, indeed yes.”
“So I can’t defend against such an attack.” Marik felt his spine crawl in a familiar fashion.
“Use a different shield, you should.”
“What?”
“That one you have been using is suitable for errant or wild energies, especially etheric ones. You are good at that now, indeed you are. When we return to the chief mage, it will be time to learn another shield.”
“Another shield? There’s more?”
Caresse cocked her head. “Hasn’t the chief mage told you this?”
Had he? Marik tried to remember. The old man might have mentioned something to that effect but he could not bring the memory fully to life.
“I don’t remember,” he admitted.
“There are many other types of shielding to protect you, and those around you. They are not so different from the basic shield, and no harder once you have them learned. You alter their nature to defend against specific types of energy or different shapes.”
“Shapes?”
“Indeed, yes! Many attacking spells are simple energy of different shapes. Your shield can handle waves of energy, but if I had formed my power into a spear and attacked, I could have burst it like a foamy bubble. Same power, different effect.”
“Why isn’t anything ever easy anymore?”
“It is not hard! Once you learn, it is very simple!”
“For you, maybe. Are we done?”
“No indeed! Now I’ll show you water.”
“I thought you were exhausted.”
“Water is much easier than stone, so it is, and we will be refreshed for the walk back.”
“Refreshed?” Did he want to know?
“Watch and see, you should! Come!”
Caresse leapt to her feet, surprisingly energetic for an exhausted person. She led Marik to the pond occupying the vale’s east end and started working. Marik watched her blend her aura with the terrain. This time she coaxed the water and unveiled its hidden shine quicker than the stone’s.
After gathering the light blue aura of the water, she startled Marik by covering them both in the same manner as the wooden stick she had turned to stone. Marik reminded himself that Caresse had no cause to hurt him and forced his body to relax.
The infusion made him feel lighter, revived, as though his vitality had been restored. He felt he had stepped from his cot after a sound night’s sleep.
“This is nice, is it not?” asked Caresse.
“Interesting at any rate.”
“This is good for long marches if the men are fee
ling tired, so it is.”
“I can see that. How long does it last?”
“Not long, it’s sad to say. Most of the strength is an illusion brought on by water’s energy. Water is naturally suited to illusion! If you rely on it to keep you going for days and days and days, you will fall over dead from exhaustion though you still feel fresh. It is proper for short uses only.”
“Well, let’s use it to walk back and find the old man.”
“Okay.”
Caresse continued talking during the return trip. Her step was light and frisky as a colt’s. She told Marik that of the elements she could use, fire was the easiest, it being a lively element by nature. Once drawn from the sunlight around them, she could use its energies in several ways.
At one point, Marik asked, “But that’s as a geomancer. You can work spells as a wizard that mages and geomancers can’t, right?”
“Oh, indeed yes I can! It’s a simple blending of the two talents, but very effective in the right places.”
“Give me an example.”
“Okay, umm…okay, for example, the fire spells. Like the one you were hit by.”
Marik ran his hand through the stubbley hair coating his head. “I remember. What could you have done about that?”
“I could have formed a shield against the spell. Any mage can do that, but I can do it differently. I make the shield as normal, then I draw the essence of fire from the sunlight. If I infuse my shield with it, it can catch any attack that uses the essence of fire, so it would.”
“Whereas I would have to keep changing to different types of shields for different types of spells, even if they were all fire based?”
“Yes, you see my meaning very well! All alone, that makes the wizarding skills very useful.”
“More useful, by my reckoning.”
Caresse shook her head. “No. I can do many different wondrous things, but there are many magics I cannot do in both magecraft and the art of geomancy. They lie beyond my strength.”
“I’m sure most of them lie beyond my own as well.”
“Still, you should never count your strength by the size of your talent, Marik. That you must never do. You must have seen how a clever person in battle can defeat a stronger or larger opponent than they.”
“Yes, of course I have.”
“The same is true in the magics. A clever person who knows how to use his strengths can face one with a larger talent who is not so clever, and prevail. It is all about doing the right thing at the right time.”
“Like waiting for the right moment to strike with your sword.”
“So it is. But it is also in making your enemy think in wrong directions, like fooling a foe with a tricky piece of sword work so he thinks the last blow will come from the right as you strike from the left.” She swung mightily with her arms to demonstrate. From the simple motion, Marik recognized that she possessed more than a passing familiarity with true swordsmanship. Of course, she had been fighting with the Fifth Squad when her talents had been discovered. That simple fact was easy to forget, since, as fit as she appeared, her body lacked the nearly mannish muscles sported by the other woman he had seen within Kingshome.
“Hmm,” Marik said to himself rather than to Caresse. “I’ll think that over.”
“Good! We are almost to the walls, so we are. I’m sure the chief mage is eager to begin the next stage of your learning!”
Marik thought silently, Yeah, Caresse, I’m sure he can hardly wait.
* * * * *
“Remember not to take too much at first,” Tollaf instructed yet again. “It’s like a blacksmith who can pick up hot iron in his bare hands. He’s been doing it for years, but if his apprentice lifted it he’d burn the skin off his palms.”
“Are you going to keep repeating yourself all day?”
“It’s the only way to get anything through your thick skull. I have to bludgeon the facts in.”
Marik declined to reply. He sat on a stool in Tollaf’s workroom, ready for his attempt to draw on the line energies for the first time. His magesight had advanced until he no longer needed to be directly over the line to find it. By letting his vision slip into the etheric plane, he could sense the energies from farther away.
As Tollaf had promised, his sight had matured further. He could finally see the mass diffusion. The energies freed from their living generators hung in a vast mist everywhere. Seeing the world in such a way still felt strange, with the air a purple mist, the buildings dead black holes, the plant life a green glow defining the ground and all living creatures around him like candle flames in the dark. To make it stranger yet, the sun chose not to exist in this etheric world.
The first time he’d looked up at the sky, scanning the purple mists which did nothing to hinder vision like a fog of equal density in the physical plane could, he had sensed a flaw beyond the odd colors. Despite his study, he was unable to define what it might be. Many days later he noticed that no matter the time of day or night, the lighting never changed in the etheric. He searched for the sun where he knew it ought to be, astounded to find it missing. Where it should be the sky remained a purple wash.
He asked the chief mage about this anomaly and received a terse reply. “You’re still thinking of the etheric as a copy of the physical plane. I’ve told you before that the two are close enough to affect each other, but they are still separate planes. The physical plane has greater effect on the etheric, it’s true, defining its shape, but they are still different nonetheless.”
“Then how can I see people from the physical walking around as auras in the etheric? We exist here!”
“The etheric is a plane of pure energy. It exists simultaneously in the same space as the physical plane, unlike other planes of existence on different levels.”
That explained nothing to Marik, and thinking about it usually gave him a headache. As long as whatever he did worked, it would be enough for him.
Today he would draw the energy from the line into himself. Both Tollaf and Caresse assured him it was little different from drawing on his own power to form his shield. Still, he must remember to draw it through his shield rather than draw it straight from the line. Though he would be able to use energies drawn directly, the raw, wild power would scorch him, leaving him sore and tender. Too large an amount of untamed power would kill him painfully.
His personal energies within the shield would tame most of the wildness from the line’s power while he drew it through, then his mage talent would complete the task when it assimilated the new energy.
Marik formed his shield with barely a thought for it while he mulled the task ahead. Though still uncomfortable with magic, he felt no crippling anxiety regarding the coming task. Performing a dangerous task would never, by itself, unhinge him. After being pinned behind a tree for a day with only a corpse for company as several archers waited for him to flinch a muscle, he knew what situations were worth fearing, and this did not qualify. It would take harsher situations than this, uncomfortable as he might find it, to make him feel the freezing paralysis crawl through his body again.
The thought recalled the hedge-wizard on the northern border. He had felt no fear then, but mostly because he never had time to. Also, he had not appreciated the danger he faced even as the gaunt man cast his spell. If he were to find himself against another such man he would exercise greater caution. You could take that to the counting houses!
Tollaf thumped him over the head. “Quite daydreaming. You especially have to concentrate your first time!”
“Old man, don’t push the spirit of our truce. Which reminds me, what progress have you made on my search?”
“I haven’t had much time yet,” Tollaf stated. He hastily added when Marik’s suspicious gaze considered him, “But I have discovered a little.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tollaf imitated back. “But concentrate on this first. I’ll tell you what I know if you succeed.”
Motivated, Marik rebuilt his shield,
making it strong. “Here I go.”
He carefully checked the bindings between his core and the shield, then realized his magesight still lay dormant. Marik had grown so used to this strange manipulation of power he had done it entirely by feel. Under his magesight the room turned purple surrounded by pitch black walls. Far below and to the east he could feel the line pulsing with its own life under the horses’ vale.
Caresse had taught him how to drift. Traveling the etheric in astral form lay beyond his capabilities, yet drifting allowed him to roam areas close to his body, within the range of his new senses. Marik set his mind to drifting east, passing ghostlike through the workroom wall.
Once outside, Marik drifted upward. Quickly he rose above the town wall. He could see the vale at the hill’s base and focused on it, flying toward the ground at amazing speed. Since he knew his goal this time he did not stop at the ground, instead plunging through in the manner of a diver leaping from a cliff into the ocean.
He could still feel the line’s heat, like the bright sun on his skin. In spite of that, his shield protected him from the radiant energy this time. Marik paused to study it before attempting to draw. The slow moving energy resembled a colossal rope dropped absentmindedly by one of the gods. Shiconn perhaps, God of Cunning and patron of both merchants and thieves. On his way to scale the wall of Eross’Drose’s home to steal the love goddess’ virtue, he had failed to notice he’d lost his rope along the way.
The amusing image made him laugh to himself before he cast away the extraneous thoughts to complete his task.
Marik reached through his shield, into the energy flowing through the line. Since his own energy comprised the shield, he could pass through it without compromising its structure.
Both his instructors had been adamant about never grasping the line like the rope it seemed. Doing so would create feedback loops that could harm him. Instead, he dipped his mental fingers into the surface, feeling its heat and its wildness, though a wildness within his handling. He pulled a wisp from the stream.