Book 4, Chapter 8: Magical Training and Worries
“Wizard Etienne, I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Did we have an appointment?”
“Not as such, no. In fact, we haven’t organized one since the week after your coronation, when you, ah, requested my help. Thinking on the matter, I decided we should set a schedule, like your weapons training, and came to discuss the matter.”
“How did you know about-”
“Your Highness, everyone knows about your practicing.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. I didn’t think anyone would pay attention.”
“Of course. This, though, we should keep secret. You seem to have many private rooms here, which would keep your secrets just fine. Are any of them suitable for meditation?”
“Yeah, I mean, yes.” And if they lacked fragile furniture, the better! “I’ll go find the keys.” It’d be easier to blast open a door, but not long term easier, since we’d eventually want to shut the door.
***
“Honestly, I’m glad you came today.” Setting my bracelet down, rings, necklace, onto the desk, the energy came alive, rushing up and down my arms as if it were happy to escape its iron confines. “Etienne, I’m finding myself sometimes very angry and, hell, maybe unstable is a better word, and it feels like the energy wants to get out, explode.”
“Do you often remove the perseidian iron?”
“No. Bathing alone or sometimes when changing. It’s too dangerous to be around people when I take my jewelry off. Excuse me, people who are not mages.” Blue flame lit up along my arms and hands, with a yellow beam waving in between them, the energy crackling, building up as the iron came off, up and down my entire body.
“It feels so intense. Too intense. I was hoping you’d have some teaching or trick or something you can show me to better control the power. More than I can now.”
He moved over to the center of the room, sitting down, “Let us begin the meditation then.”
Inwardly, I sighed as quietly as I could. “Do you have, this is the wrong way of saying this, but do you have anything stronger? Than meditation?”
“Excuse me, my lady, stronger than meditation? I’m struggling to see-”
“Right, ok, bad word choice. Etienne, meditation isn’t, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to contain the energy. Sometimes.”
“Perhaps you need more practice. Until it becomes natural for you to control your magic. Your emotions. Please sit.”
I sat across from him, cross legged on the floor, wondering how to control teenage hormones. It wasn’t easier the second time around, and it really should have been. My scalp tingled as the magic coursed around, hair rising, spreading out, little sparks jetting off here and there. I probably looked like some crazed witch. Waiting. Tilted my head, wide eyed, purple energy streaming out of them, waiting.
“The energy around your right hand.”
Holding up my hand, the yellow band flowed around it, a little stream in a current of blues and purples. “This one?”
“We’re going to try to direct its flow. First, your meditation. Tame your magic, bring it under control.”
I did so. Imagined wind through the trees, waves crashing on the shore, sand crunching underfoot with each step. The flow around me became less fiery and charged and more liquid-like, flowing.
“Now, guide that single ribbon around your hand.”
I stared at it, the little yellow, sometimes white, band of energy flowing around my hand. Thickest at the front, like a ribbon whose existence faded as it moved, its tail vanishing into nothing as its head streamed forward. Across my palm, around my thumb, the back of my hand, it curled around and around.
“Now move it up to your wrist.”
“I’m not consciously moving it.”
“Focus.”
‘Ok,’ I thought, staring at it, ‘beam of light, do what I want.’ It didn’t, and moved up to my wrist, played across my forearm, then circled over and over like a bracelet.
“Excellent.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“You don’t feel like you are, but it’s under your control.”
It didn’t seem that way to me, for I couldn’t feel it. Like breathing most of the time. Only, I couldn’t control it when I tried. Yet maybe he was right. It was just not of the body or something. Testing this, I tried to make it form an X across my wrist, eyes narrowing in concentration.
“You’re flaring up! Bring it down. Under control now.”
It brightened, thickening, and moving up and back down along my wrist like a tiny solar flare. I concentrated on pulling it down, but nothing happened. Then a little red arc shot up off my left hand. “Shit!” The smooth ribbons of energy rotating around my body became jagged and rough.
“Close your eyes. Princess. Close your eyes, please.”
“How will that help?” I shouted, panic growing, certain I was going to blast through him or the wall, but closed my eyes nonetheless, worried for his safety.
“Now try to imagine the energy – where is it on your arm?”
I was sorely tempted to open my eyes, as that would be the easiest way of knowing, and squeezed my eyelids tighter, fighting against myself.
“Calm now, slow your breathing,” his pitch raised. “Walking the beach, come on now, what do the waves sound like? Calm down, please. Princess!”
Giving up on meditation, I looked to see the energy coursing angrily and strong, quickly moving around and around my right wrist and then the wizard slapped my bracelet overtop, pushed rings onto my fingers and I snapped out of my state, focused on the iron, willing it to dampen the magic.
He took my left arm in his hands, placing the cold iron bracelet around my wrist, its snap clicking shut. I stared at it, concentrating on the grain of the iron, its strange charcoal colors woven into gold. The texture of the energy looked like the surface of the sun, a little solar flare arched up, faded into sparkles almost like a tiny firework, and gone.
“Damn. I’m sorry, Etienne.”
“No, no. Here, let’s get the rest of your jewelry back on.” He picked up a necklace, then gently put it around my neck, his fingers lightly touching my skin as he clasped it. I closed my eyes to feel my magic before it vanished, not wanting it to go, could feel it struggling against the iron. Etienne bent down to encircle my ankles with the light and small chains and was gentle when he took each of my hands to slide on the rings.
Yet that wasn’t entirely true, either. I had to close my eyes, concentrate, and force the energy away, for sometimes it won against the iron. More and more, it seemed, the energy demanded to be out, seen, and raging. Etienne could not be made aware of that. At some point, surely, he’d recognize that this power was too dangerous. That wielding it, I was.
My hands shook a little. I put them together, rubbing as if I were cold. Not entirely untrue as it was chilly. I’d neglected to put a fire on in this room and the rugs weren’t thick enough.
“Alright. Let’s begin again but focusing on meditation first. Really, I should have started with that. It was foolish of me to think you could simply control magic from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re nearly an adult and-”
“I am an adult.”
A smile, just a touch sardonic, crept across his face and he said, “Right, my mistake. Nearly fifteen, and ready for marriage, an adult, and-”
“Nearly sixteen! And not even slightly ready for marriage!”
“Yes, my lady.” He tilted his head to me, the smile reaching his eyes, “Sixteen. What I mean to say is that you are, not old, but well beyond the age where magical training usually begins. And it starts with meditation, not powerful magical energies.”
“Oh! I am so embarrassed.” I covered my face with my hands.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Come, let’s start from the beginning. Lie down on your back and close your eyes. Listen to my voice . . .”
I lay back thinking, ‘Why oh why did I just blurt out that I’m an adult.’ Oh my god, and almost sixteen! In truth, I couldn’t wait until I was. It would solve a great many issues in my life. Ugh. Sweet sixteen. The party’d better have a cake with candles and teenager pop music playing in the background, maybe a new car from the parents. I could do without the competing love interests, though.
In this manner, and on the cold floor, we began.
***
Later, feeling a bit drained or, oddly, refreshed – I couldn’t figure out which – and sitting, I poured first him and then myself tea. “I’m sorry for the, I don’t know what to call it, outburst, I guess.” Refreshed from the meditation, drained from the non-expenditure of raw power. It yet buzzed, beneath the iron, caged and restless.
“Worry and apology won’t help. You need to learn control and concentration. With time, you’ll learn to master your person and, with that, your magic.”
“Meditation! The Archbishop tried to stick me in one of the small rooms in the cathedral and have me think on my rash temper.” Really, though, he should have said that to Carlisele, a fully grown man, not me, a child. Well, not a child! Just from all outward appearances. And inward hormone levels, uncontrollable anger and . . . I needed Etienne to leave, so I could get to practicing, get the energy moving, give it purpose.
“Oh,” he smiled, bringing the tea to his lips. “That is the original meaning of the word, but no, that is not what I mean.”
“Original meaning?” I looked down into my cup, closed my eyes, and pushed the disturbing feelings down, away, as best I could.
“Yes. ‘To think about the gods.’ Or perhaps to think on them, think deeply about them, that sort of thing.”
“I did not know that.”
“What you need to do, Princess Cayce, is reach your inner peace. The beach, where you imagine yourself walking, and touch your power. Connect to it. Be at peace and bring it under your control. For now, your magic is not at peace.”
Naturally raging, controlled now but not at peace. Little by little, it bothered me less and less, I squeezed the teacup hard between my hands, just to feel its warmth. I had questions, so I asked, “Etienne, I need to know. Are you breaking oaths by teaching me? Does this put you in danger?”
His gaze dropped to his tea, where it remained for a while and a half, before he spoke, “I yet breathe, so no, I break no oaths.”
“Breathe? I don’t understand.”
“I swore a geas. We all did. No mere oath.”
I tested the word on my tongue, “Geas. I don’t know what that is.”
He looked up, “A binding commitment. One that when broken causes great harm to the breaker.”
“I take it this is magical?”
“Magical and holy, yes.”
“Yet, you’re teaching me to-”
“I’m teaching you to control yourself. Hopefully, to render your magic powerless. I’m not teaching you to use it, so I am not breaking my geas. At least, as I interpret things.”
“Ah. Wait,” I said. “Back up a moment. ‘Magical and holy’? What do you mean by holy? Do mages worship some sort of deity?”
He blew on his cup, took a sip, didn’t look up, “That would be oversimplifying it.”
“Ok.”
“It’s more of a ritual than an observance. We don’t worship the gods, but the ritual, the geas, invoked their power. It’s all a bit esoteric, I think.”
“Ah,” I said, not understanding anything. I had more pressing matters on my mind anyway. “What about the symbol in my back? Have you learned anything more about it?”
“Yes.” He looked up at me briefly, then stared into the fire.
“And? Etienne?”
“Allow me a little more time, if I may ask, my lady. I believe I’m putting it together, producing the correct interpretation, but it is far from simple. It’s like, well, it’s like translating an old language. I want to get the details just right before I attempt to explain them to you.”
“That is good news, then.”
“Is it?”
“Yes! It’ll tell us where the magic comes from, how to shut it off.” Maybe, just maybe, I thought, how to get myself home and in my own body. If that was a possible thing. If I had a body somewhere.
“I’m not so sure. That such a thing can be undone. Anyways, I haven’t started research on reversing the inscription, just understanding it.”
“Ah.”
“We’d require the knife that the grand magister has to alter the inscription, in any event. Assuming it can be altered once cast.”
“It can’t be?”
“I don’t know. If Bechalle followed a ritual, performing key procedures according to a schedule, the spell would be permanent. Once cast, that is, it would be unchangeable.”
“Fudge.”
“A little more time, a little more patience, and we’ll discuss my findings. Though, Your Highness, I’d be more comfortable discussing it with you once you are, once you can display more control over your vast energies.”
“Vast?”
“Meditation, work on that. I know it’s difficult as a young woman, but you already show dedication to the sword and spear. Think of it similarly.”
***
We talked for a bit, but as the silences grew between us, he eventually finished his tea and left. As often the case between teacher and student, small talk only increased the discomfort, the distance, separating us.
I stood there, by the fire, thinking. The energy was growing in strength. ‘Vast,’ he called it. And compelling. I wanted to use the power. Not quite like Reese’s healing energy, where using it was pleasurable, addictive, but invoking my power was alluring. Like a piece of dark chocolate sitting on a clean plate.
Chocolate! Why did I have to think of that? Chocolate and coffee, black and naughty bitterness. Damn.
Perhaps because Etienne’s were the first men’s hands on my person in some time. Since the dance. No, not true. Since Serce left, doing his best to convince me to be a fourth wife to his brother and a sidepiece to him. I sipped the tea, looked at it for a moment, thinking it should have been whiskey.
Etienne’s touch was gentle and that was a crazy thought. He was simply a contrast between Brin, who normally put on my jewelry. And the young girls who went by the contradictory title of ladies in waiting, but they were not allowed to touch my jewelry. Except Brin, who only takes my earrings off at night.
Oh.
Setting the tea down, I closed my eyes and sat back into the chair. Etienne didn’t put my earrings back on because I’d forgotten to take them off.
He knew.
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