Begin at the Beginning

"This is you. And the light around you is your spirit." True to her word, Sister Thalia had propped up a half-length mirror of startling clarity and smoothed a place for Harrence to sit cross-legged in front of it. The sister sat behind him, on a wooden stool shaped from green wood which put her head above his.

The man who looked back at him was almost a total stranger. It wasn't just the cloud of light surrounding him, shifting with his breath and moods. It was also the leather armor, the muscles shaped by training for a new purpose, his stylish hair kept trim by Marlowe's comb and shears. Even his face was different, neatly shaved with cultivated sideburns. That was no farmer eyeing him from the glass, but a hardened mercenary in his prime, eyeing folks to see who might cause trouble.

"Why can't I see your spirit?" Thalia appeared behind him and above, her head partially cut off by the shortness of the looking glass.

"I'm holding mine in, of course, so that you can see yours without my interference. The point of this exercise is to learn to feel your spirit and learn to control it. Better control leads to stronger prayers, exacting techniques, and more work with less spirit. Manipulation is an endless road with infinite levels of difficulty, but it begins here. Observe."

The image of Sister Thalia was haloed by a yellow disk of light behind her, composed of layered blossom petals floating in the air. She held it long enough for him to get one good look, and then it faded. The mirror responded to the sudden lack of spirit by adjusting to show only his ill-defined aura. Harrence briefly felt embarrassed by his slack and lacking light until he remembered Thalia was there to do for his spirit what Ma'Tocha did for his body and his marshal skills: begin to give him basics. He didn't shine like Brynn and Yara had but if he could learn to use the light he had, then it might help their ghosts (or whatever they were) find the peace they must be looking for.

Harrence stared into the mirror and willed the light to brighten, or lessen, or simply neaten up its edges into a decent sphere, but nothing happened. The teacher's lips tipped up in a smile, recognizing his troubles. Ma'Tocha, looking on from one side, guffawed at his face screwed up with effort.

"Why aren't you teaching me this?" he asked the more seasoned woman. "Aren't you the Scourge of Bandits?"

"I've never seen these things. I learned the old-fashioned way: half by years of practice and half by accident. Don't mind me at all!"

Thalia silenced them both with a lector's impatient stare. Stop wasting class time.

"Be still. Just watch and feel." She waved her hand through his light, and Harrence was startled.

"I felt that!" He couldn't say where he felt it, or what he might do about it, or if it was a good feeling or a bad one. But he felt something, akin to moths' wings beating too close to his skin.

While Harrence took instruction from Sister Thalia, most of her cadre left with all the extra appalons. The animals were loaded high with lightweight cargo, and he suspected all the bulky parcels were sounding boards. Suddenly, Sister Thalia had a thin stick in her hand and snapped it across his thighs. It stung without hurting much, but he started in surprise.

"Don't worry about them. Focus, or we're just wasting time."

"If I'm recovering, why is now a good time to learn this?"

"You'll be more sensitive right now, while your spirit is low and your feelings are raw. We won't be doing any heavy work the first day, or maybe two. We're just learning to feel. Now, let's try again."

They attempted several exercises, only a few of which he could actually do. He was surprised to learn that he could sense spirit manipulation with his eyes closed, no matter which direction it came from, up to a meter from his skin. Static spirit was harder, like identifying where a hidden ball enchanted with spirit was. By using breathing exercises, Harrence could influence his glowing nimbus, calming and expanding it. But, that influence was indirect, not the full control they sought.

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Sister Thalia ended the session as quickly as it had started. "You've had enough for now. Eat and rest. Take a nap if you need to. Then, start reading these."

She handed him two books, The Disciple's Handbook and Elements of Art. The first he knew about, having read some aloud to practice his rudimentary reading skills. Ma'Tocha made him practice daily, though it was Dash who often helped him with those lessons. The second book was new to him entirely, and filled with spirit exercises, diagrams, and advice.

"Is it okay for me to have these?" he asked. He'd never had books of his own, and they seemed too much for him. These weren't wooden slats, written on with brush and paint and tied together in a stack. The nicer books he'd seen were backed with cloth and fan-folded. What Thalia had handed him was made of paper, thinner and lighter than parchment, bound in simple leather. The letters inside were so even, so the same throughout, it made him wonder how they were made. Ma'Tocha's Handbook was expensive parchment lettered in multiple hands.

"It's more than okay," said his new teacher, "it's necessary. But if you lose them, you'll have to pay to replace them. And we're not making any more until we get more paper. So take good care of them."

When they started up again, it was afternoon and Harrence had finally put his finger on what was bothering him. Two disciples and a bunch of appalons and bulwarks had left Thalia encamped, with only two guards of her own — the minimum, according to the Handbook. She had brought books with her, just for him, and an enchanted mirror. Other missions were happening, ones that Ma'Tocha wasn't taking part in just so he could learn. But … they said they weren't trying to make a disciple of him.

He posed the question to both disciples, but it was Thalia who answered. "Ma'Tocha has observed that you're very well informed about your surroundings. Perfectly informed. And yet you have no training of any kind. You're obviously using spirit, any Nexus-trained disciple can tell just by being near you. For example, you were doing something just a little while ago, weren't you? After lunch, when you were brushing down the appalons."

Harrence had been on the opposite side of camp from Thalia on purpose, so she wouldn't see the ghosts who gathered around him to convey their findings. There was a highway to the west, and caravans were passing by. A secret wallow between hills nurtured ripe thickets of blackberries. One of the hills was taller than the others and offered splendid views. While he was thus engaged with his ghosts, Sister Thalia had noticed something happening, despite their invisibility.

"I was checking on the area," he admitted, but that's all he wanted to say. Seeing ghosts wasn't something he wanted to admit. If they knew he was seeing his dead daughters, they might think he was crazy or sacrilegious. They might do something to send them away. Harrence knew they had to go someday, but he wasn't ready yet. He'd decided only recently that he was willing to live.

"It seems you have talent, a unique one that does not depend on prayer or hymns. There aren't any other practitioners of this particular art, that we know of. We don't even know what this is. So … what to do? Sister Ma'Tocha says your work as a scout is excellent and she wants your special skills developed, but our senior instructors are wary of tampering with talent they don't understand. If we just handed you a Book of Prayers and hoped for the best, we could be hurting more than helping.

"So, my instructions are to start you on the fundamentals of all arts: how to sense and handle spirit. When you're ready to talk about," Thalia waved her hands at him, "whatever all of this is, Nexus will do whatever we can to help. What we won't do is try to force you into the same mold as all the other disciples. You can learn the prayers if you want to, but it's entirely your call."

"First do no harm," Harrence said, quoting from the Handbook chapter Cautions for Healers.

"Exactly. Spirit strength and control are just as important to a practitioner as body strength and coordination are to a fighter. It can only help you. And, Ma'Tocha has some other skills to train you in, once you have some time to study properly.

"Now, if you're rested, we should begin. And then Ma'Tocha will have you the rest of the afternoon for weapons."

They went to work again, running through a bunch of exercises not covered in the morning, discovering what he was capable of today. Overall, it both excited and disappointed Harrence. The mirror brought into focus things he'd only glimpsed before, and hinted at such marvelous possibilities. But hints were only hints, and there were many basic things he couldn't even begin to do. Mastery was far away.

Interestingly, the children didn't show up in the mirror, even when they sat near and watched. They weren't visible by normal light, nor were they constructs of pure spirit.

If they weren't made of spirit, then what were they?