Chosen (9781742844657) (13 page)

The three of us sat down in a line and arranged our belongings on our sturdy wooden desks just as Jadon began the lesson.

‘Welcome to your first class of the term,' he said. His voice was a cheerful and upbeat one. I could tell he was American, although I had no idea which state or part he came from. ‘For those of you who do not know, my name is Jadon. I have been with the White Elm for about half a year. During your lessons you are encouraged to address me and the other White Elm by our names rather than by titles such as “Sir” or “Miss”. This room will be our classroom for every lesson. Even if I tell you ahead of time that our lesson will be outdoors, we will meet in here first.'

He looked up as a girl blushingly walked in late. ‘Spell-casting is one of the fundamental practices of basic sorcery. We will cover energy transference, spelling techniques, energy spiking, wand-making, correct wand use, and the benefits of hand and voice-initiated magic. We will also learn assorted useful spells, such as forces and animation, and you will learn how to research and select suitable spells for your use. Once we reach that point, I intend to let you experiment with some of the spells you discover, and that can often be a lot of fun.'

I understandably became more interested at this point. Hiroko and I smiled at each other. How much cooler could life get?

‘Unfortunately, the curriculum plan I worked on with Lord Gawain requires me to begin with the dull stuff, so for at least the first couple of weeks I'll be working with you on the transference of energies,' Jadon continued, now sorting through a few papers on the front desk. ‘It's a useful talent. However, many of those who study this subject have found it to be tedious, repetitive and difficult to appreciate at first. Learning the nature of energy is not particularly fun in its early stages, particularly the theory, but it is the basis of many more advanced subjects, and so I hope you'll listen and learn regardless.'

I'd not really done any conscious energy transferring. I'd done a lot of silly, little, made-up spells and I frequently played around with scrying exercises (and frequently failed), but I'd never sat down and tried to transfer energy between stuff.

Jadon was handing out smooth clear quartz pieces. I accepted mine with a murmured thank you and looked over it briefly. It was very standard, roughly polished and shapeless. I placed it on my desk in front of me.

‘The stone you have received today will be yours for the remainder of the year,' Jadon said as he distributed the crystals. ‘They should be stored with your other tools when not in use. I expect that you all have crystals of your own but these will be the ones we will use to learn energy transference, as they are almost identical to one another. We will begin practical transference shortly, but first, please open your notebooks and copy this down.'

For the next hour and twelve minutes my interest in this subject rapidly dropped as we dutifully copied sentence after uninteresting sentence off the board. Theory and legislation were indeed incredibly boring. Thankfully, it was eventually over, and I was glad to put down my pen and pick up my quartz once again. Soon everyone was finished and gazing silently and attentively at our teacher. Jadon waved his hand vaguely and the writing on the chalkboard disappeared.

‘Thank you all for writing down those notes, and I am sorry for boring you so badly on your first day,' he said as the chalk dust floated weightlessly to the floor around him. ‘Now: generally, what colours, according to the chart you just copied down, are positive energy?'

I glanced down at my page, but Hiroko already had her hand up. Jadon selected her.

‘Positive energy is often green, Sir, but also is white in its purest form,' she said, reading directly from her page. Nodding approvingly, Jadon smiled and reminded her to call him by his name.

‘That's correct. Pure energy is the whitest white, but I don't expect anyone here to be capable of producing pure and untainted energy from within yourselves. Inexperience inhibits your abilities, but with practice and clarity of mind, you will improve.'

That sounded like meditation. Damn, I sucked at any kind of meditation. I hoped my other subjects didn't require much of this.

‘You just wrote down the theory behind the “orthodox” method – the method I'm meant to teach you, because this is how you cast spells. You've all done magic before, and the first time you cast a spell it was probably more a reflex than any conscious effort. Essentially, this is what happens each time you cast a spell: you draw magic inside you; you decide what you want done with it; you channel it and it comes out, hopefully as the spell you'd intended. Put like that, it sounds very simple. Give it a go. Try to transfer energy into those crystals.'

Looking at him dubiously, most of us had a go, to no success, of course.

‘You need to mean it,' our teacher reminded us.

Jadon closed his hand and reopened it, a few glowing balls of light suddenly in his palm. He tossed them into the air, and, while we all looked on enthralled, began to juggle them. Very quickly, though, all three little lights faded to nothing, and Jadon dropped his hands.

‘No energy or emotion can remain forever unless made to. Like everything, it moves on. The stronger the intent and power of the transference, the better the effect. For example, in order to transport energy from a healthy person to a sick person, as is often required in healing, you need to really mean it. Without a strong intention, the energy dissipates too quickly. The same applies for any spell or transference.'

I examined the crystal in my hand for a moment. My failed attempt to push energy inside it had stirred a question in my head. How much energy could a little thing like this hold? How much energy could my body hold? As I thought this over, Jadon said my name. I blinked and looked up.

‘Aristea, you read my mind – or, more correctly, I read yours, and you were thinking just what I wanted to talk about next,' Jadon said with a smile. I tried to smile back, but felt slightly shaken.

‘Oh,' was all I said at first, then, stupidly, ‘how did you read my mind?'

‘I'm a Telepath by trade,' he said jokingly. He sat down on the edge of his desk. He was so, so young, I noticed then. He must have been only days past twenty when the White Elm had brought him on. I tried to stop thinking about it; clearly he could read my thoughts and I didn't want him overhearing that, but he seemed not to notice, or at least said nothing about it.

‘Essentially, Aristea was wondering about capacity. How much power can an item hold? How much can
you
hold?'

Jadon reached for the jug of water on his desk and placed an empty plastic cup on the desk of a girl in the front row.

‘Imagine this cup is you. You are a vessel, capable of channelling “x” amount of energy at once. You draw power to you,' he poured water in until it was about a third full, ‘and expel energy in your desired form, perhaps a spell or an effort to heal a cut,' he picked up the cup and poured it back into the jug, ‘hence returning the power to the universe. You borrow and direct magic;
you
are not a creator of magic. Magic is only energy; it cannot be made nor destroyed, only manipulated. The idea behind spell-casting is that you manipulate the power you draw in to suit your purpose.'

He had poured water back into the cup; now he haphazardly tipped the cup over the jug, swirling the cup as the water trickled out. The thin stream glowed and sparkled and ignored gravity, falling slowly and pausing in the delicate spiral in which it had been poured. We all stared, mesmerised by the glass-like mobile he'd created. Then the spell broke, the water fell back into the jug and a murmur of appreciation ran through the class.

‘Now, I mentioned capacity,' Jadon went on, arranging a line of ten plastic cups on his desk, in order of smallest to biggest. ‘Every vessel has its limitations. A rowboat can only carry so many people, and
you
can only channel so much magic.' With the cups arranged, he began pouring water into each one, filling them to their brims. ‘Capacity for energy is often historically referred to as a sorcerer's “strength”. In the 1700s a magical theorist called Emile Trefzer devised a widely popular scale which identified a sorcerer's capacity for energy, from one being barely psychic to ten being unstoppable. The factors and algorithms behind the Trefzer Scale are incredibly complex, so I won't try to explain exactly how it's worked out, but really, once you start getting a true sense of others' abilities and of your own, you don't really need a big, confusing scale to work out whether or not someone is stronger than you. These days the Trefzer Scale is considered quite politically incorrect in academic circles anyway, because it labels people, but I still think it's worth learning.'

Nine cups were now full, and the jug almost empty.

‘Every person in this room weighs in as level six or above on the Trefzer Scale, making you all reasonably powerful sorcerers,' Jadon said, pouring water into the last, and biggest, glass. ‘While it's great to know your own awesomeness, it's also wise to know your limitations. Your body, though strong and amazing,
can only hold so much power
. Attempting to channel more than one's capacity…' He kept pouring, and the water level reached the brim. The water's tension held it together for an instant as it raised above the edge, and then it spilled over the edge and onto the desk.

‘How anticlimactic,' Jadon commented, still holding the now empty jug above the overflowing cup. ‘That doesn't illustrate my point properly at all.'

He flicked a finger, and the spilling water paused, then, impossibly, began moving backwards like it was on rewind. Trickles slid back up the sides of the cup, and a stream flowed up from the cup back to the jug until the cup was only just full. Another wave of his hand, and a thin, glassy film spread across the top of the cup like a lid.

‘This should be a more impressive and accurate representation,' he said, pouring once again. The water fell through the film of energy (maybe a ward of some sort) but did not spill back out. It continued to fill, and overfill, and the cup shook with strain, but there was no outlet…

There was a collective cry of shock from the class as the cup exploded, shards of sharp plastic and huge blobs of water bursting outwards across the room. I ducked, closing my eyes to protect them, but nothing touched me.

‘As I was saying, you can only hold so much power,' Jadon said, and I looked up to see the explosion frozen in the air like a special effect from a film, water droplets floating alongside suspended chunks of plastic. ‘You are not a cup, with a hole in your head where dangerous excess power can slip out. If you draw it in, you need to expel it. If you take in more than you're capable of expelling…' He gestured to his impressive floating demonstration. ‘Well, I've never heard of anyone actually
exploding
, but people have died from trying to overextend themselves and “burning out”.'

There was a quiet moment of sombre reflection as everyone let this sink in.

‘When you say “burning out”…?' one boy asked in a tone of morbid curiosity. A few girls shot him disgusted looks.

‘I mean, not much left, Miguel,' Jadon confirmed. ‘Charred remains.'

‘So it's true you can catch on fire?' another boy asked excitedly, receiving his own dark looks.

‘There're no recent reports of that, but some historical eye-witnesses claim it, yes. And it makes sense. The excess energy would burn its way out of the overfilled vessel.'

This lesson seemed geared towards telling us not to attempt big magic on our own. I was convinced. I glanced silently at Hiroko, sufficiently horrified for one day.

‘People aren't the only things that can hold energy,' Jadon said, turning his finger lazily in a “rewind” gesture. The still-suspended explosion began to reverse itself, droplets joining together to create larger droplets and plastic shards fitting themselves together. ‘With control and intention, energy can be channelled into objects, such as crystals or jewellery, for storage and later use. Normally this would just transform and fade over time as it leaks out through natural outlets, but with appropriate spells, objects can be made to hold power for years, decades…maybe centuries.'

I turned the quartz over in my hands. How much could this little crystal hold? Could I learn to transfer my energy into it, and ask it to hold onto it for me, to use it later to stay up late cramming for an exam or watching a movie marathon?

‘Aristea, I'm certain you can demonstrate active transference to the rest of the class,' Jadon said with a smile.

‘I've never done it,' I admitted, hoping everyone wasn't staring at me. Jadon's smile widened.

‘Give it a try,' he suggested. ‘Here, stand up.' I did. ‘Think about this, Aristea,' Jadon continued, looking at me directly. ‘Emotion is made up of energy, like all things – it is like a mask, something that can be peeled away to reveal something pure. All I'm asking of you today is a transference of your feelings. Easy as.'

I nodded, turning the quartz slowly in my hand.

‘Concentrate on a happy feeling, Aristea,' Jadon said. ‘Just do whatever you need to do.'

Jadon let me think in silence for a few moments. I searched my memory for a time when I was truly happy. I came to the conclusion that I hadn't been truly happy since my parents were alive, and after extensive digging through my cluttered memory, I selected a fleeting memory of Christmas when I was nine. Aidan and Angela were both in high school and I was dying to go. They always seemed to get everything better than me. But this Christmas, I got the most beautiful present in the world – a tiny silver locket with a diamond set into the front. At the time I was incredibly overjoyed to receive that locket. It was so delicate and beautiful – I'd never felt so entrusted. I was so happy to see that my parents loved me and trusted me with something so lovely.