The Wizard King (12 page)

Athaya’s first impulse was to dismiss the explanation as too simplistic to be useful, but then she stopped abruptly on the narrow trail and shifted a meaningful gaze to Jaren. “Just like Nicolas and the spell of compulsion.”

Yes, Hedric had described her brother’s inner struggle in strikingly similar terms.
Much of his mental energies are involved with combating the spell.
As strongly as the Sage’s compulsion bade Nicolas to do his brother harm, Nicolas in turn rebelled against it, but the price of the constant effort left him simple-minded. The Sage’s technique was much the same, the only difference being that applying his mental energies to the corbal’s covert persuasions left his spells out of reach, but not his elemental self.

“The Sage once told me that it was rather like battling another wizard during a Challenge,” Drianna added. “The corbal uses its power to make him feel pain, and he uses his own abilities to resist the compulsion and turn the pain aside.”

Athaya furrowed her brows; it sounded simple enough in theory, but she doubted very much that it would prove so easy in practice. “To push back against a corbal without giving in to the pain must take a great deal of focused concentration.”

Drianna lifted the hem of her skirt and hopped over a patch of mud in her path. “The Sage spoke quite often about the need for a disciplined mind. Before he practiced with his crystals, he would recite things to clear his mind of distractions—children’s rhymes, bits of poetry… and Dameronne’s prophecy,” she added with a subtle scowl. “He used to recite them aloud, but as he got better he just repeated the litany in his head. Then, once he faced the crystal itself, he used those same disciplines to overpower it. He likened it to defending against mind-magic—a traditional weapon of the Challenge. You must take control of your thoughts so they can’t be manipulated so easily by your enemy.”

The longer Athaya thought on it, the more credible the Sage’s strategy became. Master Hedric had long since taught her that the key to perfecting wizardry of any kind was to be found in mental discipline; clearly, much as they would chafe in unison at being likened to their Reykan brethren and their more prudent approach to magic, the Sarian wizards used that same philosophy to avoid falling victim to the crystal’s seductions. Regardless of the tradition, be it Reykan or Sarian, Athaya had learned the wisdom of discipline firsthand. The rote memorization that Master Hedric forced on her was intended to sharpen her mind and it was that expertly honed control that helped her fend off the devastating effects of the sealing spell as long as she had. Her last memory of the previous summer was reciting the Succession of Circles time and time again to keep her mind from splitting apart at the agonizing pressure of captive power wailing to be free.
Credony, lord of the first Circle, twenty-six years; Sidra, lord of the second…

Without the familiar sanctuary of that mindless chant, she would never have lived long enough be rescued.

“This could explain why only the Sage can overpower the larger corbals without resorting to pastle seed,” Jaren mused. “Only adepts have the level of concentration required. After all, they’re trained to higher levels of mental discipline out of sheer necessity—they need that degree of control to master their more potent level of power. Curious… the stronger a wizard you are, the more intensely you feel a corbal’s pain. Now it looks as if that weakness is also a hidden strength.”

Athaya plucked a maple leaf from an overhanging branch and shredded it worriedly between her fingers; hidden strength or no, she foresaw one vital drawback to this talent. “I gather, then, that the Sage has to reach this state of concentration
before
someone confronts him with a corbal crystal—I mean, if someone takes him by surprise, he wouldn’t be able to focus his thoughts enough to fight it, what with his paths crossing this way and that.”

Drianna nodded reluctantly. “Several years ago, he asked me to sneak up on him with a crystal without telling him when or where, just to see whether he could drive the pain back once it already had him in its grip. He tried, but he simply couldn’t do it. It made him terribly cross,” she added, eyes flashing with belated vengeance.

Frowning deeply, Athaya tossed the skeletal remains of the maple leaf aside. “All this talk about corbals makes me wonder… If the crystals make us think we’re in pain, then why don’t they inflict pain on everyone? Why just wizards? Our paths—and our magic, of course—are the only thing wizards have that other people don’t. There’s got to be a link somewhere. I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence.”

Jaren offered his hand to help her over a fallen log in their path. “Coincidence or not, the last thing you need right now is another riddle to distract you,” he advised. He tilted his head in the direction of Drianna’s willow basket. “You’ve got an appointment with some corbal crystals.”

Obligingly, Athaya abandoned the mystery to focus on the task at hand. “So what we know is this: a corbal makes it impossible to work our spells because our paths cross—or we’re deceived into thinking they do—making it impossible to locate our spells. And even if we could find the right spell, the pain, real or not, robs us of the concentration we need to cast it. So the secret is to mentally steel ourselves in advance and then block the pain by sending out thoughts of defiance. We can’t work any magic while we’re doing it, but at least we can think straight—that is, unless we stop pushing back and let the crystal overpower us.”

“That about sums it up,” Jaren remarked with an approving nod. “Just don’t forget to write all of that down in your journal for posterity. The one you promised Master Hedric you’d start the moment you got back to camp, remember?”

Athaya looked away evasively; as Jaren suspected, she had completely forgotten her pledge. “Oh, that.”

By this time, they had reached the clearing they sought. Kale spread a pair of wool blankets in a sunny patch of grass near a winding creek, while Drianna unpacked the basket, careful to leave the corbals undisturbed for the moment, and doled out four equal portions of molasses bread, green cheese, and blueberries.

Jaren gathered up his ration in a scrap of cloth and turned to go. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said, offering Athaya a quick kiss on the cheek. “Have a very pleasant headache.”

“Sure you don’t want to stay?” she asked playfully, swishing away a bee that had grown overly interested in her meal.

Jaren shook his head in adamant refusal. “You’ll be in a sour enough mood when you get back. If we both go home with splitting skulls, we’ll be sniping at each other all night. And besides, if the Sage’s best magicians can’t overpower a corbal crystal without resorting to pastle seed, then nobody on our side has much chance of mastering them besides you. I’ll go back and help Marya with her wards for a while, and then I’m due in the kitchens.” He expelled a shallow sigh of resignation. “I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, but Master Tonia volunteered me to help bake the rest of those blueberries into pies this afternoon.”

Athaya teased him with a grin. “Really, Jaren. You ought to find yourself a dutiful wife to do things like that for you.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he replied with a smirk, and then sauntered along the banks of the creek, munching on a slab of bread and quickly winking out of sight behind the massive trunk of an oak tree.

Once they had all finished eating, Athaya brushed a flurry of soft breadcrumbs from her skirt and settled into a comfortable cross-legged position on the blanket. “Start with the smallest crystal you have,” she said, motioning to the small leather pouch poised in Kale’s hands. “And make sure to hold it away from the shade so that the sunlight can hit it directly.”

Athaya expelled a bubble of dry laughter at the instructions she had just given.
A bit like telling the executioner exactly how to hold the ax.

“I’m not going to try and resist the pain at first, so don’t worry if I grimace a bit in the beginning. I’ve never taken a very close look at a corbal before—not since my magic came, anyway—so I want to study it for a while. Get… ‘acquainted’ with it,” she added, conscious of how absurd that must sound to the others.
Not only telling him how to hold the ax,
she mused,
but politely inquiring as to the blade’s construction and history of use.

“That is wise,” Kale observed, surprisingly accepting of her strategy. “Knowing the true nature of your enemy is often the key to defeating him, not physical strength alone.”

The feathery hairs at the nape of her neck bristled as Athaya lifted her finger and bade Kale to produce the first crystal. Her flesh prickled with sweat as she braced for the expected barrage of pain. With morbid fascination, she watched Kale slowly unwrap the crystal—a tiny one, no larger than an apple seed.

She made no effort to repel the corbal’s small measure of power, allowing it to trickle over her freely. The gem was tiny enough to cause only mild discomfort even in daylight. The pain was an irritant, but not overly distracting—like the gentle ache of a tired muscle or the fading itch of a mosquito bite.

Letting the rest of the world fade around her, Athaya reached out and embraced the corbal with her senses. Her touch was wary, like running a tentative finger across a blade to test its sharpness without cutting flesh. Despite its threat of pain, the crystal was quite beautiful. Sunlight danced across its myriad facets, dazzling her eyes with indigo beauty. Some of its edges were flat and shiny, like new glass, others were ridged and murky, like a chunk of ice clouded with dirt and leaf mold. Its purple shade shifted from light to dark with the crystal’s grain—sometimes sheer, other times opaque. It was as if Kale held a tiny mountain in his palm, she thought, with slopes and peaks and hidden caves, ripe for exploration.

Just beneath the surface of her awareness, Athaya heard the restless murmur of the corbal’s voice like a babbling stream, endlessly bidding her to feel pain and to flee its menacing presence. But though she called it a ‘voice,’ the crystal did not commune with words, but spoke to her in the deeper, more inaccessible language of emotion and sensation.

Athaya sucked in a breath and held it.
Just like magic.

When her power was newly born, Jaren had guided her through her inner paths—that labyrinthine chain of caverns whose hidden alcoves were home to all her spells—instructing her to discover her spells by sensation, like groping in the dark for a flintbox with which to light a lamp. Each spell was marked by runes etched on the canvas of her mind; runes that spoke in wordless whispers to the farthest recesses of her mind, telling her the nature of the magic they invoked. When she opened herself to the runes of a witchlight, they warmed her with the gentle heat of a candle’s flame; when she touched upon the spell of translocation, she was enveloped by feelings of security and flight.

Likewise, the corbal flooded her with thoughts of pain and warned her away from its presence.

Athaya expelled her breath slowly. If the corbal was, in essence, casting a spell of deception at her, then where was its magic coming from?

She thought again of her paths, and then of the source that was the locus of all those twisting corridors—the inner spring from which all her magic flowed.

Was it possible?

Intrigued, and not a little unnerved, Athaya allowed her senses to drift deeper, determined to seek the treasures of this cavern without regard to the beasts that might be guarding it. But when her senses brushed against the center of the gem, she felt a sudden upsurge in its strength; the pain, slight as it was, came back to gnaw at her more diligently. The crystal’s voice grew louder, compelling her to surrender.

Retreating slightly from the crystal’s core, Athaya stared in muted awe at the little gem. She saw her own face reflected in her enemy’s glittering slopes and realized that their natures were not so different as she first supposed. Just as the locus of her paths was the source of her magic, so was the core of the crystal’s facets the root of its own.

Athaya chewed on her lip thoughtfully. A corbal crystal was not a living thing—not in any sense she knew of life—but it was still a thing of power. Was it so odd, then, to think that its power had a source as well?

And what better way to block the crystal’s pain, she reasoned, than to dam it at its source?

The crystal’s grip on her was weak—too weak to foul her concentration for the task that lay ahead. Breathing deep, Athaya focused both eyes and thoughts on the crystal’s heart.
I feel nothing from you,
she told it, scouring it with her gaze. Her voice was nonthreatening but resolute, as if disciplining a beloved but unruly child.
You cannot harm me now. know your secrets and you have no power over me…

Athaya repeated the litany over and over until it came unthinkingly, bubbling up from the depths of memory. To sharpen her focus, she pictured each word as her mind gave it silent voice, fixating on the shape of each letter, the sound of each syllable. Soon, she no longer felt the warmth of the sun on her hair, or the tickle of ants as they scurried across her ankles. All she knew were the words, pressed against the crystal’s heart like a blade.

I feel nothing from you. You cannot harm me now. I know your secrets and you have no power over me…

Not long after, the crystal’s power was engulfed and the voice was all but silent. A heady rush of triumph washed over her, but Athaya persisted in her efforts despite the powerful temptation to cry out. She couldn’t afford to let her victory distract her. A misstep might not matter with a tiny gem like this, but it would matter a great deal later on, when she met with larger stones.

I feel nothing from you…

The corbal’s pain was gone, negated by sheer force of will.

Now she faced the second part of her task: to ease out of her intensely focused state enough to reenter the world around her. She had to divide her attentions in two, sustaining her battle with the crystal while she went back to the business of living, exerting conscious control over her own thoughts, words, and actions. Again, the similarities between this task and her first lessons with magic surprised her; dividing her attentions was remarkably like the dual sight she experienced when learning to cast spells within her paths. Until it became instinctive, her mind’s eye view of her paths was superimposed over her eyes’ view of the world—until the spell was cast and the image flickered away.