Steel And Flame (Book 1) (51 page)

“I thought you said you were well,” Tollaf commented
without sympathy.

“I am!  I’m just enjoying the fresh air now that we’re
out of that mausoleum of yours.”

“Then let me know when you’re done ‘enjoying’.  I’ll
be waiting over here.”  He walked to an old, flat-topped stump near the steep
slope ringing the vale.  The slope nearly formed a drop-off rather than a
hillside.

Marik braced an arm on the tree, resting his head
against it.  The position gave him a clear view of the ground within this
stand.  Peculiar patterns in the scuffed dirt caught his eye.  Though never a
woodsman and unlearned in tracking, the sweeping glides dug into the loose pack
were familiar from his own sword practices.  He identified them easily.

Someone enjoyed coming here to work on their skills or
practice a new technique away from the eyes of others.  Probably they liked the
solitude, or perhaps they had an affinity with the horses below and enjoyed
watching them between sessions.

Seeing the marks of training reminded him he had yet
to take his sword from the closet and renew his own training for the winter. 
All his time had gone into his letters lessons or into the old man sitting ten
feet away.  Had he been more faithful to his sword, his body would not be so
weak that a short walk exhausted him.  The last wounds were nearly healed, but
his muscles needed attention.

If he could finish this business quickly, Tollaf
should call it an early day, then Marik would spend time in a training area. 
Straightening, he asked, “What’s so special out here anyway?”

Tollaf looked over his shoulder.  “Come here and
you’ll see.  Or at least, I hope you will.  I have matters to attend to after
this.  Don’t take all the day!”

“Tell me where to look and maybe this can go faster.”

“The closest line of flowing energy near Kingshome
runs beneath the vale.  Open your magesight and find it.”

“Move over.  I need to sit down.”

“Can’t stand?”

“Not when my eyes are all buggy.  Move over.”

Tollaf slid to the stump’s edge and Marik perched on
the corner left to him.  He gazed down at the horses running free below him.

Marik had learned the trick to this only a short while
ago.  Even so, knowing how and making himself do it were two different sides of
the coin.  It was actually simple, as most tricks tend to be.  When he saw an
object he needed to pick up, his hand reached out and his fingers closed around
it, because that was what he wanted them to do.  His mouth opened for food and
his jaws chewed it because he wanted them to and his mind told them to. 
Opening his eyes in the morning resulted from his desire to see, and his mind
instructing them to do so.

Seeing with the magesight was merely a matter of
wanting to, once he knew he could.  His difficulty lay in the fact he hated the
magesight to begin with, so wanting to use it persisted as a struggle against
his own nature.

It became easier every time, in much the same manner
his successive strikes with the sword became easier the longer he practiced. 
Which only proved the old man right, not that he would ever admit it aloud. 
Marik studied the valley, clearing his mind the way he did prior to battle.

In his mind’s eye, where he pictured his imaginary
foes attacking him, he instead pictured the network of lines and veins that had
formed the flower.  It grew there, like a true flower.  Shortly he felt as he
had during those moments in Tollaf’s workroom.  He opened his eyes.

First he saw the horses and the vibrant life they
contained.  Their shining forms crossed a field of glowing energy composed from
every single grass blade…yet what he saw differed from what had seen every time
before this.

He could see the individual networks that comprised
the horses, as though he peered through their skin at raw muscle and sinew, but
only if he peered closely.  The horses were surrounded by a faint blue glow, as
candle flames inside a hazy nimbus of light.  Watching the herd reminded him of
stories from Puarri’s Tavern, stories where men encountered floating swamp
lights in the fog or of the ghostly willow-wisps that led hunters astray in the
deep Rovasii.  They moved as glowing balls, bouncing and rolling according to
the whims of a giant, invisible child.

The same held true for the grass and shrubs covering
the vale floor.  Marik could distinguish the individual plants, except they,
too, radiated a strange nimbus.  Plants were all a bright green, which seemed
appropriate enough, though their glow shone fainter than that of the horses. 
All the vegetation merged together to create one continuous green background
against which the horses’ light blue stood out as beacon fires.

He saw that the rocks and bare dirt patches were dark,
almost black.  The water in the pond looked black as well at first, until he
decided a very dark shade of blue colored the liquid, matching the furthest
reaches of the sky immediately before the sun sets.

Marik turned to see a giant orange fireball burning
beside him and, memories of past encounters erupting in his mind, he jumped
away.  He remembered an instant too late that he had been sitting on a tree
stump.  He tumbled roughly backward and crashed to the ground before he could
catch himself.

“What in thunder are you about now?”

Tollaf stared down at him from his stump.  Marik
realized Tollaf must have been the fiery glow beside him, and then further
realized his magesight had switched off during the fall if he could see the old
man staring at him with scorn.

“Did you see the line before you took up acrobatics?”

“No, I didn’t.”

With a sigh that had quickly become habit around
Marik, Tollaf pulled a water skin from beneath his robes.  “I knew I was right
to bring this.  There was always a faint hope otherwise, but that’s experience
for you.”  He took a pull.

“Something’s wrong with me!”

“You can say that again.”

“I mean with my magesight, you old fool!  I knew I
would never be able to do this!”

“What’s wrong?”

He listened to Marik, learning about the change, then
nodded and said, “You see?  What did I tell you?”

“Tell me?  About what?”

“Your sight’s improving every time you use it.  You
can distinguish auras now, and color as well.”

“Auras?”  The word sparked childhood memories from the
Summerdawn festivals in Tattersfield.  “What’s fortune telling have to do with
this?”

“Oh, listen to yourself and still your tongue!  An
aura is the bleed off I explained about.  It’s the excess energy generated by
living things.  Plants have a faint aura and animals have larger ones.  People
give off the biggest auras of all.”  He snorted contemptuously.  “Fortune
telling indeed!”

“Then what’s the color have to do with anything?”

“The colors can change, depending on different factors. 
Plants are either green when they’re alive or black when they’re dead.  Animals
are usually different shades of blue or red.  When they’re sick, their auras
will dim and look off color.  People are the tricky ones.”

“I saw you.  You were orange.”

“That’s me.  I’ve noticed people, with few exceptions,
usually occupy the red side of the color field.  Yellow, orange, red and those
types, with all the different shades.”

“How about black and white?”

“For ‘good’ and ‘evil’ you mean?”  Tollaf nearly
snorted anew.  “No, I’ve never seen a person’s morality affect their auras in
that manner.  Usually it’s a reflection of their nature.”

“So you’re temperamental, huh?  A ball of fire?”

“Only when you’re around!  Are you going to finish
today or do I need to send for the Homeguard to bring me my dinner?”

“Where’s this line?  I didn’t notice it before.”

“Are you deaf?  I’ve told you it’s right down there!”

“Are
you
deaf?  I said I didn’t see it!”

“You didn’t go down far enough.  Hurry before I die of
boredom.”

It took Marik longer this time to clear his mind and
open the sight.  Since he knew what it meant now, he examined the auras of the
vale and the animals within.  He picked out birds hidden in the trees with
astonishing ease, their blue auras separate from the trees’ green, as if they
were torches in the night.  Blue sparks flitting in every direction revealed
entire unnoticed insect armies, startling him.  For the first time he
understood how many creatures lived in a relatively small area.  There were no
red auras in the vale.

All right, enough fooling around.  Time to get down to
it.
  Marik studied the valley floor,
seeing nothing except the green aura of the grass.  Nothing at all.  What was
the old man talking about?

As he wondered this, he realized with a start there
really
was
nothing to see!  Including the ground that surely must lay
beneath the grass. Interesting.  He narrowed his eyes, or he imagined narrowing
the eyes behind his real pair, and looked closer.

The effect dizzied him.  He felt like he had jumped
over the drop to land with his face pressed to the ground.  If he had not felt
the hard stump beneath him, he would swear he’d flown forward to more closely
inspect the object of his curiosity.

The ground and dirt still remained of course, but
thin, like a mist.  In the real world he would pass right through and fall
forever if he were unwise enough to trust his weight to it.

A distant object shimmered far below.  He squinted,
straining to make it out, having forgotten already what would result from his
desire to see clearly.  Marik suddenly found himself falling through this
vapory ground.

Except he did not fall, not exactly.  He slowed when
he drew closer to the shimmering object and stopped altogether mere feet from
it.  No doubt what it must be.  The line, naturally.

From Tollaf’s descriptions, Marik had expected a kind
of river, or at minimum a stream; a wide, flat flowing surface.  Those words
failed to accurately describe it.  He could call it an energy stream all he
wanted, except the word ‘line’ precisely described what he saw.

Shaped like a rope, long and cylindrical, it measured
three inches diameter.  It came from the northwest and flowed to the southeast,
unlike true water after all.  But then, why should it flatten out down here
where gravity seemed an option rather than an unbreakable rule?

Marik could see movement within it as pure energy
flowed past.  It flowed sluggishly, though it definitely moved.  Not in an
absolute straight line either, yet staying true to its course.

He drifted closer with a thought.  Marik could feel a
sensation of heat radiating from it.  It burned as a campfire, if with less
heat, and Marik sensed danger, though in a manageable amount.  Tollaf said
Marik would learn to handle these energies only after further instruction
prepared him for such.  While he experienced these sensations and watched the
line, he accepted the old man’s words.

Marik thought he had grown accustomed to this strange
method of movement.  With a thought, he ‘shut’ his magesight off.  Immediately
he snapped backward into his body at an insane speed.  He opened his eyes,
nearly falling off the stump a second time while he rocked from an unseen blow.

“Now what?  Haven’t you had enough of that?  Or are
you so eager to visit the chirurgeons again?”

“Oh, shove it, old man,” Marik mumbled through a
massive headache that crashed down on him all at once.  He massaged his
forehead.

“What’s wrong?  You get too close to the line?  Looks
like you have an exposure headache.”

“If you knew about this,” Marik demanded through
gritted teeth, “why the hells didn’t you mention it?”

“Because you never listen to me anyway, so why waste
my breath?  And I understand you now.  You’re the type who only learns by
experiencing things the hard way.  After your head clears tomorrow, you’ll have
learned not to get so close to raw power without shielding yourself first.” 
The old bastard grinned!

“You know, one of these days, I’m going to kill you.”

“I don’t remember ever being so disrespectful to my
master when I was an apprentice.”

“That’s probably because there was no such thing as an
older person when you were that young.  I’m going back.”

They left the vale and returned to the town,
separating without further comment.  Marik rested on his cot to regain his wind
before retrieving his sword from the closet.  No one else occupied the barracks
at the moment so he would be practicing alone unless he found a willing sparing
partner in the training areas.  Time to start working on his muscles, even if
he still remained too battered to work on his technique.

His head continued pounding, and he vowed no training
dummy would escape his blade.  Since they would all represent Tollaf, it was
unlikely that any would.

*        *        *        *        *

“Look old man, I’ve told you already the only sort of
spells I have any interest in at all are these scrying ones I keep hearing
about.  The ones that let you find things from far away.”