“Edward, I know you could probably teach this lesson, but please be patient and confine your interruptions to the relevant rather than the needlessly pedantic.”
He doesn’t even bother to look affronted at that, just sighs a little.
“Magic,” Electra muses. “What is it, really? A way of shaping the world to our will, if one is fortunate enough to have the aptitude. There are five known ways to access its power, each bringing with it its own strengths and weaknesses, its own specific way of casting. Rittome, for instance, can easily transform the shapes of objects, whereas Latira find that much more difficult. Siaril are frequently better than any other School at wardwork and enchantments. Malaina have more raw power to draw on, but can often struggle with more precise work.
“We control our power by incantations and gestures of command, but these are structures which we impose on magic. In essence, they are the best ways of casting because we believe them to be. What really matters is the will and the intent of the magician. Most of what you will learn here is the result of centuries of careful scientific study in the best ways to channel that intent and produce the desired effects, the precise ways in which you must move your fingers or pronounce incantations. But something that has personal meaning to you, something that you believe is magical, will be just as effective.
“It is all an illusion, of course. The true nature of magic has nothing to do with how your fingers move or what words you say. But some illusions are very much necessary. It is possible to dispense with these constructs and cast directly from pure intent, but it is not advised. In particular for Malaina: it is all too easy to slip from intent-casting into an active episode without even noticing. But for all Schools, the danger is that each time you cast in this way, you temporarily lose a part of yourself.
“Your judgement, I suppose you could say. The part of you that knows the consequences your actions can have beyond the immediate problem. The part of you that knows when to stop. And that is the problem. The amount of magic the human body can channel is finite. There are warning signs, which you will know when you feel them, but when you lack the presence of mind to notice them… then you will channel more magic than you are capable of. And that is nearly always fatal.”
Great. More ways magic can ruin my life or get me killed. All I need.
“Is that why there are no more spell-singers?” Edward asks. He’s been silent throughout Electra’s speech.
I narrow my eyes at that. I don’t know much about spell-singers, only that a few historical texts mention them in the context of battle as an apparently quite powerful force.
“Yes. The fatalities sustained were simply too high to be practical. Any further questions?”
There are none.
“That is a general introduction to magic; when you catch up on the last few days’ lessons you will learn more about individual areas. For now, let us move to something more practical.”
Despite myself, I can’t help feeling a little excited at that prospect.
Electra leans back into her office and makes a beckoning motion with her hands; two brown box-like objects fly towards her and she plucks them out of the air.
“If those are what you think, I won’t need one,” Edward says, removing a similar object from the pocket of his robes.
“Of course you won’t,” Electra mutters. She tosses one of the boxes at me; I’m startled but I manage to react in time to snatch it before it hits the ground. “At least tell me you haven’t done any independent Malaina casting.”
“I haven’t,” says Edward. “Only channelling, and that only so I could tell which School I was using and how to choose which to draw on. And I was more than adequately supervised for that.”
I turn the object over in my hand. It’s made of a rough wood, square and about the size of my palm and the thickness of my thumb. On one side there’s a copper-piece-sized area of grey metal just off-centre, and in its centre is a tiny glass dome.
“This device has a simple enchantment,” Electra says. “It is remarkably inefficient for any practical purpose, and is instead used to introduce magicians to the concept of channelling their power into an object, which is essential to all enchanting work and useful for most other casting. Place your middle finger on the metal disc.”
I let the box sit in the palm of my left hand, wincing at a stab of pain from its burn, and my right hand sit on top of it, middle finger on the metal as directed.
“Now close your eyes and imagine a river flowing through your body. Magic isn’t something you do, it’s what you are. It’s part of you now.”
That’s probably supposed to be a good thing, something thrilling and exciting. In a way it is, but in another way it’s just terrifying. The destructive power of Malaina is my power, and I could do terrible things with it.
I don’t want to do terrible things.
I make myself set that thought aside and follow the instructions. There is a river of magic flowing through my body, in my blood. My heart is pumping magic around my body. It’s easier than I thought to imagine its potential building up inside me, until there’s so much that I can’t contain it anymore and it has to get out –
“Good,” says Electra, but her voice sounds like it’s coming from a very long way away. “Now feel the metal beneath your finger. Feel the magic running through that finger. And – “
I don’t wait for her to finish, because I know that this is the outlet I need, and I feel all the magic that’s built up flowing out of me through that finger and –
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Bang.
My eyes snap open, and I immediately blink at the brightness of the light I’m holding in my hand. It takes me a second to realise what’s happened: the glass dome in the box has been reduced to powder, and a blinding white light is being emitted from the place where it was.
Oh, stars. I did that.
“Tallulah,” someone is saying. A woman’s voice: Electra’s, I think. “Put the box down.”
I crouch down and place it on the floor – or I try to, but my fingers won’t release it. I’m gripping it hard enough to hurt, and it feels as if the metal disc is an extension of my finger.
“Look at me,” says another voice, low and intense, expecting to be obeyed.
I drag my gaze up away from the box and meet Edward’s warm grey eyes. He’s crouched down next to me, an expression I can’t read on his face. “It’s okay,” he tells me. “You can’t get these things right first time. I’ve destroyed three of those boxes since last night. But you have to stop now, Tallulah.”
He reaches out with a long-fingered hand, slowly but inevitably, until our hands brush together atop the box. Gently, he grips my central finger between his finger and thumb and lifts it away from the metal disc.
The light vanishes instantly, and I drop the box as if it were burning my hand. It clatters to the floor, filling the suddenly awkward silence as I realise how close I am to this strange boy, how our eyes are locked on each other and our hands are still touching.
The firm, confident Edward from a second ago has vanished. He seems suddenly awkward and uncertain. “Sorry,” he says, ducking his head to break eye contact and releasing my hand. “I shouldn’t have – “
“It’s fine,” I reply, sitting down and leaning back against the wall. Its solidness is reassuring. “Thank you.”
“Are you hurt?” asks Electra. “Even powdered glass can do quite a bit of damage to the body.”
I turn my hands over to check for blood or embedded glass. They’re shaking, but there’s nothing wrong with them other than the burn. “No. No, I’m fine.” My voice comes out calm and level, to my surprise.
“Are you ready to try again?”
No. I never want to do that again. “Yes.”
“It’s okay if you’re not.”
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“You’re not fine,” Electra snaps. “There’s nothing wrong with not being fine. There’s quite a lot wrong with telling people you’re fine when you’re not.”
Maybe she’s right; maybe if I’d told someone I wasn’t fine months ago I wouldn’t be sitting here now. But I’ve been doing it all my life. “Give me a few minutes?” I try.
Electra nods and picks up the remnants of my box. “Edward, I’d ask you to do the same, but I’m sure you already have. The next thing we’re going to do is a simple light spell.”
Edward nods. “Sunlight, come to me,” he says, lifting one hand towards the sky. When he lowers it, it’s filled with a warm golden glow.
“Siaril, I take it?”
“Yes. I suppose I’ll need to choose a different incantation for Malaina? I haven’t studied casting in other Schools in any detail.”
“It’s important to keep them separate in your mind, yes. You must always be quite clear which School you are casting from, because otherwise it is only too easy to find yourself leaving structure behind and drawing too deeply. Malaina tends to rely on personal meaning more than other Schools, and the gestures of command are more dramatic in general.”
The more I hear about Malaina, the less I realise it suits me. I do everything by the textbook, I’m careful and precise, nothing grand or dramatic about my work and certainly nothing of personal meaning. But it seems like my magic will have to be different.
If I can ever make it work.
“You don’t have specific advice, then?” Edward asks.
“Not as such.”
He falls silent, and Electra turns back to me. “You’re scared of it, aren’t you?”
“Of – Malaina?”
She scoffs. “What else?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I am.”
“Most are, at first. But the more you fear it, the more power you give it over you. Malaina has the potential to be destructive, but so does any other School. I could destroy this building and kill everyone here, were I so inclined.”
I can’t help wincing at that example after the knives, but she’s right. All magic can be destructive, if that’s what the magician wants. It’s just that with Malaina, what I want might not matter.
“You have to believe that the magic is yours. You are capable of controlling it and making it do your bidding. That won’t come all at once, but you will learn it with practice.” Electra pulls the other box, the one Edward didn’t need, out of her robe and holds it out to me.
I take it with a steady hand and slowly place my finger onto the metal disc. I close my eyes, breathe in and out, focusing on the river of magic that runs through me, the river which is part of me, the cold metal that touches my finger. The magic wants to pour out of me and into the metal, to escape –
No. I take another breath. I mustn’t release it, not all of it. It’s not releasing it at all, really; just letting it keep flowing through my finger and into the metal without disturbing the delicate balance of its course through my body.
I open my eyes. The glass dome is glowing a dim white. I laugh: it suddenly seems so easy, so natural.
I did that. I’m a magician.
“Good,” says Electra. “Practice for as long as you need; you can keep the box once we are done. Edward, are you ready to attempt the light spell?”
He nods sharply and reaches upwards with one hand, further than before, as if he could touch the stars if he stretched just a little further. “Always,” he whispers reverently, “and forever.”
And light blazes out from his hand. It’s different from the light he cast earlier: this is a silvery-grey, almost the colour of starlight. Its brightness changes as I watch, cycling from dim enough to be barely visible to bright enough it hurts to look at.
He makes it look so easy.
You are neither required nor expected to keep up with him.
My mind doesn’t work that way, though. I’ve never coped well with someone being better than me; I always have to work harder, study later, prove to myself that I’m just as good as they are.
That’s probably not a good idea now.
I focus on the box, on channelling a trickle of magic through it, enough to light the glass without reducing it to powder. It gets easier each time as I grow used to the process, until I don’t need to shut my eyes and can change the brightness in the same way Edward does with his spell-light.
Edward is struggling more with what he’s doing next, which is trying to summon the gold Siaril light and the silver Malaina one simultaneously. Each time he casts one, the other flickers out of existence.
“Simultaneous casting is hard,” Electra informs him. “Only a handful of multi-School magicians can do it at all, never mind when they’ve had magic barely a day.”
“And?” Edward asks.
Okay, so he’s either extremely arrogant or ridiculously talented. Or, quite possibly, both.
“And I suppose trying to do something like that will keep you occupied enough not to give me any headaches, so I won’t discourage you any further.”
I’m ready to try the light-spell, I think. I’ve spent enough time watching Edward that I know what I need to do. It’s just a matter of finding the right incantation. Something connected to light, something with personal meaning…
A line from A History of the Kings of Rasin appears in my mind. But Philippa’s army followed her because they saw her as a light in the ugly darkness of the times. I don’t know if it’s personal meaning in the sense Electra meant, but it’s a quote that’s always stuck in my mind and that I’ve always liked wondering about.
“In the ugly darkness,” I pronounce, stretching my hand upwards towards the ceiling and above it the sky.
And it blazes with a silvery light.