Steel And Flame (Book 1) (55 page)

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 feeling
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.

The energy altered when he drew it through his
shield.  He felt its raw nature change while it joined with his own.  It
refreshed him as cool water down a dry throat would, and it filled every corner
of his being.  More followed, the act of drawing energy similar to siphoning
water.  Until he cut it off, the energy would continue flowing through the
channel he had built.

After a moment, he did cut it off.  He had drawn
enough energy to easily contain.  Any further would swell his reserves.  Marik
had no workings yet that required energy beyond what he could easily draw from
within himself, and the excess power would be discontented to sit unused for
long.  The energy he now contained could be expended in his practices or bleed
off back into the etheric naturally.

He checked his shield and found it holding fine under
the mild barrage radiated by the line, protecting him from a second exposure
headache.  With his new energy he returned to himself inside the workroom.

“Good.  It’s nice to see you can occasionally get your
lessons right on the first try,” were the words that greeted him.  “Now that
you can draw properly, you can begin working on the next set of shields.”

“More shields?  What about the scrying workings you
were going to show me?  I have what I need to work them now.”

“We’ll get to those after you’ve mastered basic
apprentice skills.  Listen to me.  The next time you go out with the Kings, you
will know four basic shields that can handle most of what you’ll encounter from
enemy spell casters
and
at least one attack.  If you don’t know them, I
won’t release you.  Seeing as there’s only four eightdays left until the end of
the winter, I’d say you’d better get cracking.”

He turned to leave, obviously meaning to make an
impressive exit.  “Wait, old man,” Marik growled.  “You promised me information.”

Tollaf paused, either having forgotten or having hoped
Marik would be so flushed with success he would fail to remember.  “So I did,”
he finally admitted and returned, taking a stool.

He spent a moment clearing his throat and adjusting
his position.  “Using your father’s sword, I’ve been able to determine he did
head north after leaving Spirratta.”