Another thought struck me, one urgent enough that I interrupted. “You said it’s a shield! If the other human familiars vowed their magic to magicians who failed to leave them enough to maintain…their…shields…” I slowed down at his patient, pitying regard. “You’ve already considered the possibility?”
“Indeed. Nora.” He coughed. “Nora double-checked the human familiars’ shields. They were all in place, as robust as any other human’s.”
My eyes widened. “All humans have shields?”
“Yes.”
“So we all have magic!”
He shuffled his paws. “Animals have shields. Trees have shields. They are a naturally occurring magical construct.”
“Oh. Sorry. Go on.”
Amusement lightened his voice. “You are as curious as any fledgling. I prefer that you question me than hug onto false conclusions.”
“I will.”
“Once magic users have strengthened their shield, their next instinctive step is to channel magic into acquiring what they most desire. If I was teaching griffin fledglings, at this point they would attempt to summon food, breathe fire or otherwise test my patience.”
I grinned. “Which is why you refused to teach them. I promise not to breathe fire.”
A harrumph greeted my humor. “The small magics of goblins are a good example of this stage of magic use. They can thread a needle, clean an oven, put a small ward around a home, or charm a tool against breaking.”
“Practical magic. It suits Peggy and her family.”
A dip of his head signaled agreement. “They are good people, and a good example of how magic doesn’t define a person’s potential. However, your magic is stronger again, which is why in Apfall Hill you were able to channel it into healing.”
“Which was what I most wanted.” I abandoned the armchair that Oscar had added to the office for my use and flopped down by Istvan’s side where he crouched on a woven wool rug. I hadn’t known I had magic. I’d purely wanted to save people when the summer epidemics raged.
“Instinctive use is inherently unstable once past the small magic stage, which is why the Fae Council was so determined to tie human mages’ magic to the service of trained magicians. Can you feel your magic?”
I automatically put a hand to my solar plexus. My magic coiled there. “I can’t sense my shield, though.”
“Everything takes practice, and for now, that isn’t worth practicing. At the familiar trials, you channeled your magic into fire. Don’t do that.”
I laughed. “Not inside. You said fledglings often tried to create fire. Is that one of the easiest methods of using magic?”
“Yes. When magic is unstable, the energy readily combusts. Forget fire. Put it out of your mind. Don’t concern yourself with your natural shield, either. Now that you know it exists, you’ll unconsciously channel more magic to it to protect yourself, literally to protect your sense of self.”
Contrary to Istvan’s advice, I mentally flagged the idea of a shield around complex, living things, and me in particular, for further study. However, I wouldn’t waste our time together questioning him about it. Since shields could exist around animals and trees, they obviously weren’t volatile magic. I could read up on them or ask Rory or Melinda or someone for a more in-depth explanation.
“Top drawer in my desk, left-hand corner,” Istvan said.
My knee popped as I got up and crossed to his desk. The large hoop handles on the drawers could be hooked by his beak or claws. The drawer slid open smoothly. “A blue marble?”
It was the size of my thumbnail, a flawless sphere of glass with a swirling pattern of blue trapped inside.
“Bring it here and sit in front of me.” He crouched in a sphinx pose, head tilted to the side to observe me as I folded my legs and sat cross-legged at the top of his paws. “Place the marble on the floor. Now, without physically touching it, move it five inches to the right.”
“Telekinesis.” I stared fixedly at the marble.
“Teleportation is another option, but telekinesis is the aim of the exercise. I want you to be in control of your magic, feeling it channel to the marble and nudge it along. The more you apply yourself to this exercise, the better you will understand magic.”
I glanced up. Why?
“In our next lesson, you’ll describe to me what you’ve learned. Don’t overthink it. This is a fledgling exercise. It is about experiencing magic under your control. One word of warning. A marble can be a dangerous projectile. You need very little magic to move the marble five inches. This is about the precision with which you channel your magic.”
I considered the marble. Shot with enough energy and with the wrong target, it could be as lethal as a musket ball. “Maybe I should start with a feather?”
“Concentrate.”
On what? Except that I had a good idea of what he meant. I brought my attention inward to my center, to my solar plexus and the magic coiled there. I didn’t know if I was meant to visualize the magic, or if what I imagined was a real representation of what I attempted, but I “saw” one end of a thread of magic separate from the coil and reach through me. I guided it, inadvertently holding my breath, and nudged the marble.
Nothing happened.
My lungs burned. I remembered to breathe.
I had my eyes open and I was seeing both the marble on the floor of the office and my thread of magic. It rested against the marble. I adjusted the angle of it so that the marble would go to the right. My right. Istvan’s left. Push! I directed it.
The marble moved faster than human vision could track, and stopped against Istvan’s left paw.
My awareness of magic blinked out. “Did I hurt you?” I patted tentatively at his paw.
“No, and before you apologize, I anticipated this result. It is the typical first attempt at telekinesis.”
I curled my hand over his paw, my heartbeat slowly steadying as I accepted that I hadn’t hurt him. “Because fledgling mages don’t know their own strength?”
“No. But you’ll work out the answer before our next lesson.”
A teensy bit irritated because I was worried, I sat back and eyed him exasperatedly. “How can I be sure I won’t hurt anyone?”
He reached around me and hooked my braid with his beak. It was a teasing gesture he’d never attempted before. The smoothness of his beak brushed the side of my neck.
I took the opportunity to run my hand along the long hook of his beak, astonished by how much warmer it was nearer his face.
He pulled back, but gently. “That was not the message you were meant to learn.” Soft laughter rumbled in his chest. “You assumed affection and responded to it.”
“Why is that amusing?”
He rose and retreated to his desk. “I was laughing at myself. Your response was endearing. I was attempting to remind you that I am dangerous. We are all dangerous. It is how we learn and choose to control our power that matters.”
“Oh.” He considered his sharp beak a weapon. I considered it similar to a hand, a body part that could be used to manipulate the world around us. But hands were dangerous. “Oh. Working out how dangerous magic is and remembering to protect others against our actions is part of the lesson.” I picked up the marble and weighed it in my palm. How many more lessons did it hold? “I’ll be careful,” I promised.
Waking up alone on your honeymoon sucks. I woke early the next day, and slid an arm across the cold expanse of Rory’s side of the bed. I hugged a pillow.
He and Nils had checked in with Emil last night, reporting that they’d met with the leader and first shaman of the Frost Nomad Clan, and with the lost shaman’s wife. The two of them would head out at daybreak to Mount Redoubt.
I would take up Yana’s offer of self-defense training before breakfast, then concentrate on Istvan’s marble exercise. I had an idea on how to limit the danger of a flying marble, although the gardener mightn’t approve. Today was about concentrating on the things that I could affect.
/> Rory had left me with an affectionate but concerned reminder that I was not responsible for humanity’s future.
My mind slipped to thoughts of the orb Xi the kraken had entrusted to me, and which I’d passed on to Istvan. I mightn’t be responsible for individual humans’ futures, but our collective future, the possibilities open to us, was partly mine to decide.
And I had decided, I reminded myself. The orb was too dangerous to activate now. No one knew what it might do to humanity’s ability to use magic and how that could destabilize Earth’s shield. Istvan would decide when it was prudent to reveal its existence and to activate it: two separate issues.
We also had to protect the kraken. They’d hidden from the other peoples of the Faerene the ancient power of their magic, and that wasn’t our secret to divulge.
Yet it was precisely because the kraken had their own pearl, an orb that held their collective knowledge since ancient times, that they’d recognized humanity’s orb when one of their children discovered it in a sunken city south of Miami. Xi brought it to Istvan because of Istvan’s reputation and because his and my partnership was the most successful magician-human familiar pairing so far.
I needed to understand more about magic to even begin to understand the challenges and opportunities the orb represented.
I rolled out of bed. My feet hit the cold floor. Ow! The rug had moved. I kicked it back into place and got dressed so that Yana could beat me up.
Three hours later, Rory reported in that he and Nils were heading out to the lost orc shaman’s last known location.
I gave up lingering around the clerks’ room hoping to hear Rory’s voice, and went in search of a spade.
In the time since Istvan had raised the foundations of Justice and the magistrate hall, I’d been distracted by far too many things. However, our dryad gardener had stayed on task. The empty yard at the rear of the hall outside the family room had paths meandering between established trees, shrubs, groundcovers and bright pink cyclamen.
Avoiding the pretty pink flowers, I pushed the groundcover aside and dug a hole about a hand’s length deep and an arm’s length in diameter. Commonsense dictated that I practice my magic at the hall where plenty of mages existed who could help in event of trouble. But I shrank from the idea of an audience; hence, the private courtyard garden location.
Having smoothed the base of the hole awkwardly with the spade, I returned the borrowed tool, diligently wiping off the dirt. The head gardener terrified me. “I…um…I’ve dug a hole in the back courtyard to practice some magic for Istvan. I’ll fill it back in in a few days.”
“See that you do.” Twiggy and thin with enormous knotted hands, he towered over me.
“Absolutely.” I backed away, then turned tail and ran. Surely I imagined the cough of laughter behind me?
At the training pit, I knelt and placed the marble left of center with the intention of rolling it five inches to the right using telekinesis. If I overdid the amount of magic, the marble ought to bury itself safely in the side of the hole. I had eliminated, or at least, greatly lessened the threat of physical injury. However, if I had to dig up the garden to find a lost marble the gardener would not be impressed, so I concentrated, hard.
Magic coiled around my center. I pulled at a thread of it and linked it to the blue marble. The thread looked faintly silver as my physical sight and magical vision mixed. I drew the thread back an inch, then tapped the marble.
The magic slid over the top of it.
Istvan had given me the training exercise to teach me about magic, not to learn telekinesis. Keeping the purpose of the activity in mind mattered. Istvan had told me to move it five inches. That meant controlling my magic.
He’d told me to take the exercise slowly.
When I tapped the marble, my magic flowed around it. Such a tiny amount of magic faded away instantly if I ceased feeding it.
Maybe I had to wrap the marble in magic, then nudge that magic coating to move the marble?
That theory hit a snag when the magic encountered the dirt. Suddenly, it ran everywhere—well, except for up. It looked as if the marble had grown magical roots like a mangrove.
I cut off the flow of magic and considered the difference. The magic I channeled had moved easily, obedient to my command, through the air. However, that changed when it reached the earth. Was it a matter of magic flowing differently through different elements?
Magic transformed readily into fire. It slid through the air, and fractured to find multiple paths through the earth. What would it do in water?
“Not the current problem,” I muttered. I’d moved the marble when practicing with Istvan. I just needed to learn how much magic to use.
Magic instead of force.
Magic disrupted humanity’s Einsteinian view of the universe: energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.
Unless magic is a type of energy. Which it has to be if I’m employing it to move an object. Aargh.
Nope.
Theory later. Practice, now.
I tried again, adding a bit more magic. I had to balance the nudge and apply enough magic to overcome inertia, but not enough that the marble shot away…
I dug it out of the side of the hole with my fingers, getting dirt under my nails.
Practice didn’t make perfect, not when I’d committed to the wrong strategy. I finally realized that magic flowed. So as a beginner, trying to hit things with it, was violently, volatilely inadequate. I needed to connect my magic to the marble and maintain that connection as it began moving.
“Be slow. Patient. Focus on the feedback.” I pushed at the marble. I needed to get it moving, overcome its inertia, then dial back the amount of force to keep it moving slowly for five inches.
And that was a key insight. I had to dial back the amount of force—what I was channeling the magic to do—but not the magic itself. My magic had to stay in contact with the object it was moving. In doing so, I could stop it before it buried itself in the dirt, again.
On hands and knees I stared into the hole, barely blinking.
I had a thread of magic from me to the marble. “Roll, baby. Roll.”
It rolled.
“Gently, gentle. Slow.” My thread of magic slid and slipped against the marble. Each time I managed to reconnect it before the marble stopped moving. Then the glass sphere reached the line I’d drawn in the dirt to mark five inches.
I collapsed onto my back, staring up at the sky. Instead of celebrating my success, I felt that I’d missed something.
A thread didn’t have a beginning and an end. It had two ends. I’d pushed magic in one direction, to the marble. But the Faerene worldview was cyclical. Life, death and rebirth. If I’d been channeling magic one way through the thread, what was returning to me?
What returned to me when I channeled magic for Istvan?
I sat up. The ground was cold. Or maybe my thoughts had chilled me. I concentrated on the marble, resolved to return it to its original position.
But why? There were so many other places in the hole that I could roll it to.
In the circular pattern of Faerene fate everything returned, but not to the exact same starting point.
I concentrated and pushed the marble five inches. My magic kept wanting to slide over the marble before scattering into the dirt.
How much of my magical vision was real and how much was my brain interpreting reality into something comprehensible to my previous experience and perspective?
I relied on vision as my primary sense. But others existed. Could I hear magic or smell it? Could I detect it as a pressure? Was there even a sense purely for magic, and had it simply atrophied in humans?
I rolled the marble five inches. It was a fiddly, precision exercise. It didn’t feel natural, but it didn’t feel wrong, either. However, it felt far more right to reach into the hole and pick up the marble and place it physically where I wanted it to be.
Training often included doing seemingly stupid
things that taught different aspects of a skill until suddenly you’d mastered a whole new ability.
If I imagined magic as a smell rather than a visible thread would that change how my magic interacted with the elements? Smell was gas. So if I imagined a mint smell going out from my solar plexus—no, not a fart. I laughed and inhaled the cold dirt and plant scents of the garden.
Concentrate.
A gas from me to the marble. A scent of mint. Could I smell mint? Did the marble have to have a smell? What did glass smell of?
Nope. This wasn’t working.
I re-visualized the silver of magic coiled around my center, opened my eyes, and pushed a thread at the marble. I pushed too hard and the marble shot into the dirt.
I was tired, dirty and done. I dug out the marble and retreated to my room to clean up before sitting down at the desk to write up my experience as observations, questions, and possible alternative methods for channeling my magic into telekinesis. My brain buzzed, but beneath it lay tiredness. I’d expended a lot of energy.
Peggy had prepared sandwiches for lunch: fresh rolls crammed with hot roast beef and gravy.
My stomach grumbled loudly as I entered the kitchen. “So good,” I mumbled through my first bite.
“Tea.” Oscar filled a mug and put it on the table in front of me. A second mug marked his place beside me. A minute later he returned with his own roast beef roll and sat down with an oof. “Busy morning.”
“Yeah.”
“Istvan left a book with me for you. Come by my office after lunch.”
I put my roll down. “About magic?” And at his nod, his mouth being full. “Thank goodness. I have so many questions.”
“You might find the book a bit puzzling. It’s written for griffin fledglings. In other circumstances any of us would answer your questions, but we don’t dare mess with your familiar bond with Istvan.”
Familiars had faded into legend on Elysium, so not even the Faerene quite knew how familiar bonds worked. Consequently, anything to do with me and magic had to be referred to Istvan. No one wanted to mess up what was between us, not even Rory. I probably shouldn’t ride out to ask Melinda about natural shields.
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