Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven (19 page)

Her interest now sharpened abruptly; this was what she had asked for, bargained for. Needed, if it came to that.

“Magic,” said Idwal, “Is neither good nor bad, dark nor light. It is like the sea, like a fire, like a knife. A tool. It is the hand that wields it for good or evil, it is not good nor evil in itself.”

It was her turn to furrow her brow, because it had seemed to her that this was not entirely true. At least, not if some things she had vaguely sensed were accurate. “But—”

“It can be corrupted, tainted,” Idwal replied, before she could finish her objection. “And so it will seem evil. But what has been corrupted can be purified. The hand behind it, however, cannot. It is also everywhere, though it runs stronger in some places than others, and each Elemental magician will sense his own magic more strongly than the others, though he can sense all of them.”

She considered that. “How?” she finally asked.

One corner of his mouth quirked a little. “Why don’t you tell
me?”
he replied.

She was about to say something injudicious, when suddenly she remembered something—how, when she had been a child, all the world had been wreathed in transparent colors… and how, over
time, when she discovered other people didn’t see these colors, these auras and bursts and flows of tinted light, she forgot to look for them.

But if she thought about it, and turned her thoughts just the right way… then maybe…

And there it was.

All of the Selch were haloed in greens and turquoise, and more green swirled around Idwal as if he had a little whirlwind around him laden with motes of light. There were other colors too, but they were subtle, dim, compared to the brilliance of the Selch colors. “Oh!” she said in surprise, her eyes widening as she gazed at them all. “It’s—green!”

“So it is,” Idwal replied genially. He sounded pleased. “It is Water; the idea, the essence, the soul of Water. And now that you can see it again, I wish for you to study it before we use it in any way. It has currents and deeps and shallows. It is not just of one kind. Learn how it looks and tastes and smells and feels. Learn where it is and is not. For this day, I wish you merely to wander as you will, and learn about the power hereabouts, until you grow weary and your Sight fades. Then come and tell me of what you have learned.”

With a feeling of cautious delight, she nodded to him, but did not immediately move away. Though her four suitors soon grew bored and went off on their own business, Idwal remained serenely where he was, carefully and slowly carving his bit of bone, while she studied the currents that flowed around him.

They were, she soon saw, not uniform. First, there was a sort of shell around him, like a bubble, except it had many layers, each a different, subtle shade of green. And every layer moved, so that fleeting patterns rippled across the surface of the whole.

She stared at it for a long time, and saw that it was not just that the nested bubbles of magic existed; it was that there were little wisps and eddies of more green light feeding into them. She longed, suddenly, to touch one of them—but he hadn’t said to do that. He’d said to just look. So look was all that she did.

Idwal watched her, without any expression that she could see,
as she prowled around him, observing him as narrowly as the cat would watch something she couldn’t identify. How was he doing this? That he
was
the one controlling it was a certainty. This had to be some of the magic that he intended to teach her, and she suspected it must be elementary in nature. Probably one of the very first things that a magician was taught.

All right,
why
would someone construct such a thing?

She pondered that question. These bubbles looked so fragile… and yet, was it possible that they represented protection? Like a kind of wall? A wall made of magic?

No, not a wall,
walls
, in plurality. She didn’t know why you would do things that way, but there must be a reason.

“Have you guessed what I am doing?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Made a shell to protect yourself?” she replied, as she stopped prowling and faced him. “I can’t see how it would, though…”

“Oh it wouldn’t protect me from a rock or a rainstorm—not the way it is constructed at the moment—but it would defend me against a direct magical attack,” he said, with a pleased little smile. “It would also keep any purely Elemental creature from attacking me.”

“Like the little nasty Tylwyth Teg I saw here the other day?” she asked in surprise, and described the ill-tempered little creature.

He nodded. “That is a creature of pure magic, and there are many names for them. Tylwyth Teg will do. It’s more the sort of thing to create malicious mischief than actual harm, and if you don’t fly into a rage over what it’s doing, it generally gets bored and goes away. Unlike some, it isn’t feeding from your anger; it just likes seeing you losing your temper. It finds that amusing. Mostly harmless.”

She nodded, and got back to the original subject, doggedly. “I can’t see how you’re making that shell.” She thought a moment. “Is it like the circles that witches make to do their work in?”

He smiled just a little more. “Very good. Yes it is. As it happens, the circle a witch draws is just the boundary line for a sphere of
protection exactly like this. She puts the line on the ground to remind her of where she wants the boundary to be, and to fix that boundary in place so her protection doesn’t grow and become thinner, or shrink and leave part of her sticking out of it.”

Mari blinked a little, and tried not to laugh at the sudden mental image of a woman with her arms, legs and head sticking out of a big translucent bubble. “But why would she need a line?”

“Because you don’t need to be able to
see
power to be a witch.” She was glad that her questions were pleasing him, rather than making him impatient. She felt like a dunce. “It does help tremendously, of course, but to work with the lower levels of magic, you only need to be aware it exists, to have the concentration to perform certain actions without being distracted, and to have the power of will to impose on it.”

“Is that what they call a spell then?” Certain things were falling into a pattern in her head.

Now he was delighted. “Exactly!” he applauded. “A spell is a process, not a thing. That is why you are said to
cast
them. Not in the sense of casting a net, but in the sense of performing an operation, or even, in a sense, of giving shape to something. As you would
cast
lead into fishing weights, giving it shape with the mold you have, so you
cast
a spell, giving shape to the magic with your will. And when the magic has the right shape, your will maintains it. That shape can be, well, almost anything.” He actually smiled broadly at her. “I see that you not only have the power to be a Master, you have the mind to be one as well. I fully intended to keep you merely observing for the next day or two, but… go ahead. Touch some of the power. You can either touch my shields or the power feeding into them.”

“With my—hand?” she asked, hesitating.

He nodded. “In time you won’t need to use your physical hand, but for now, yes, use your hand.”

She didn’t really like to touch that bubble—fragile as it looked, she had the feeling it was not fragile at all, and she didn’t want a rude surprise—so instead, she reached out to one of the wisps of
sparkling nothingness and tried to gather it up on her fingers, as if it were a spiderweb.

And it
did
gather, tangling in her fingers at first, and then, to her surprise and delight, flowing around them. That was when, in addition to seeing the power, she got sensations of touch and taste… it was soft on her skin, like rainwater, and had the same clean, pure taste as rainwater, drunk fresh as it came out of the sky: cool, pure, and just a little sweet, yet a little metallic at the same time. How she could taste it when it was getting nowhere near her mouth, she hadn’t a clue, but there it was.

“Well?” he asked.

“I can feel it. And taste it, though that makes no sense at all.” She moved it over to her other hand, then amused herself by passing it from hand to hand.

“That’s just how your mind interprets the sensations,” he told her. “That’s fine. Every mage experiences his or her magic a little differently. Now,
want
it to form a little ball in your right hand.”

He’d barely given her the instruction, and she had barely
begun
to think about it, when the magic flowed politely into her palm and obligingly became a whirling, sparkling little ball of blue-green motes.

“Well…” His voice was surprised and pleased. “If I had known you would be this apt a pupil, I would have turned up here long ago. I wish my blockheaded kin were this adept.”

She felt irrationally pleased at having pleased him. “I’m glad I’m not a disappointment.”

“The exact opposite. Are you feeling tired?”

Until he asked, she hadn’t been aware of it… but once he did, she realized that she felt very much as if she had run all the way to Clogwyn or as if she had filled the rain barrel from the spring. Not exhausted, but definitely as if she had been doing work. And there was beginning to be a kind of ache in her head and inside her chest, the kind of ache you would have if you were using muscles you’d never exercised before.

“A bit,” she said, then admitted, “More than a bit.”

“I’m not surprised. The use of magic isn’t—well,
magic.
It doesn’t come out of nothing, and the strength you use to work with it comes from inside you. Time to stop. You’ve made a good start, Mari.” And with that, he made a tiny gesture with one of his fingers, and the sphere in her hands spun out into a skein of threads and whirled into his bubble.

“But—” she felt a little deflated. They’d hardly done anything!

“Another lesson just before your father comes back,” he promised. “And more tomorrow. We must build up the strength of your will as well as your understanding and your knowledge of the processes.” The smile he gave her made her feel good again.

“I suppose baby has to crawl before she can walk,” she admitted, and was rewarded by another smile.

“If only all my students were that sensible!” He laughed. “Come and sit down, and I will reward your patience with a tale.”

This was going to be quite the journey, Nan had decided, looking at all the train-changes and tickets. In time, as long a journey as some they’d made in Africa, though the actual distance was a fraction of what those had been.
The problem is, of course, that there’s no way to get there directly
…

First, they’d get up before dawn and take a train into London to Victoria Station, and a hired vehicle would be waiting to take them to Paddington. From there, it would be the long journey on the Great Western Railway to Shrewsbury, which would take them through Birmingham and Wolverhampton,.

From Shrewsbury, they would be taking a new train line into Wales. This would occasion another train change at a city called Maclynnleth. Once there, they would transfer to the Cambrian Line that would finally drop them in the seaside town of Criccieth, where for the short term they had rooms at what was purportedly the best hotel in the town. Well, that didn’t much concern Nan; she and Sarah had stayed in places that would likely have turned the hair of most British women pure white—even the ones that counted
themselves lucky to get a bed at night at all. But this was going to be just a bit grueling. Lots of changes at stations, since there were very few “expresses” in that direction. This was where she thanked her lucky stars for Lord Alderscroft’s name; they would be in private, first class compartments most, if not all of the way (she wasn’t entirely sure on that, and the tickets didn’t spell it out), and their baggage would be seen to without either of them lifting a finger.

She was very glad that she and Sarah and the birds were all seasoned travelers. And even gladder for the new carriers that Lord Alderscroft had had made for the birds. Not only were they vastly superior and easier to carry than a hatbox, they were beautifully appointed. Made of hard leather, and fashioned after the manner of a little dog kennel, each had leather flaps over openings screened with linen mesh that could be buckled up or down, water and food dishes, and a sturdy perch made of a natural branch with the bark left on for the birds to grip. Each had a food container and a water bottle attached to the side, though the food was more in the nature of “emergency rations,” since the birds preferred to share what the girls ate. The arched tops had a good, padded handle just like a fine portmanteau. Both were waterproof, and should the air in Birmingham be so bad that even buckling the leather flaps down would not help, there were cotton gauze pads that could be placed over the openings to further filter the air.

The birds would never have to leave their sides, and would be protected from just about everything. And as for two-footed problems, Lord Alderscroft had seen to that too.

The first had been that he had
insisted
that they each have a traveling outfit that was appropriate for… well, to put it bluntly,
his
class. Since they were going to be traveling in first class compartments the entire way, and didn’t want to look out of place, even Sarah had sighed and agreed. Several fittings later, they had their traveling gear, a pair of sober traveling suits of impeccable tailoring, and to Sarah’s relief, were fashioned after the sort of things that ladies wore to hunt, so they had to be comfortable.