Zero Sight (35 page)

My last class of the day was
Introduction to the Political Science of Magic
, or Polimag for short. Polimag was a total snore. Professor Simons droned on in a steady monotone. He was like an inner tube leaking air. Words slid out one after another, and the concepts melted together like chocolate in the midday sun. Were we talking about tort or a law? Was it an edict or a verdict? Who knew? Who cared? Serpentine tangents were the norm. Caffeinated beverages outnumbered students two-to-one. I spent half my time in the book’s index looking up arcane terms and hastily scribbling them in my notebook. It was hopeless. One day I went thirty minutes thinking the Department of Mana Affairs had signed a treaty with the US Navy SEALs to not throw out dried bread in the forest only to discover that SEAL was actually spelled SEELIE, and that while Navy SEALs were as tough as nails, forest Seelie could be killed by them. The only thing that made Polimag bearable was Dante. We sat together in the back, and he taught me some basic illusions like shroud-the-pencil and thumb-through-the-ear. I sucked terribly—my illusions only held for a second or two—but it was a great way to pass time.

After classes ended at 7PM, most of my fellow first-years got to go and hang out. Maybe they grabbed a coffee. Maybe they hit a bong. (You know, college stuff.) The first semester coursework was designed to get everyone on the same page. A lot of the material was old hat to them. Their biggest concern was passing biology. The first semester was a time to join a few clubs, summon a few demons, and get plastered. I wasn’t so lucky…

Jules Nelson was a tyrant, and I, her humble serf.

Every single day Jules Nelson would be standing outside of Central. She’d be wearing one of her dreary chalk-stained dresses wrapped up in an Elliot robe, books in one hand, notebooks in the other, blond curls going every which way. Every single day she’d adjust her glasses, say, “Right then, Dieter, off to the library witya,” and drag me to said hellhole.

Every. Single. Day.

Jules liked Structure.

Jules liked Repetition.

Jules liked Consistent Results.

From seven to nine we sat in the library and studied our coursework. This was followed by a trip to the cafeteria for plastic wrapped sandwiches. Our thermoses filled—mine with coffee and hers with a half milk, half Darjeeling concoction Jules called a “cupan tae”—we headed off into the forest behind the dorms. Once we entered the forest, I had to follow Jules closely. We were headed to a place past students had nicknamed the Woodworks. The Woodworks was particular about the type of company it kept. If I didn’t stick to within an inch of Jules’ robe, I would end up straying off into the darkness. The Woodworks found Jules kosher—but me? Me it sent into mud puddles.

That’s hallowed ground for you. They’re like the ATM machines of the magical world: oft sought but rarely found. Such dark places want to be left be, but we mages want to find them. Mana flows differently within their borders, altering which spells can be cast. Each hallowed place makes certain magiks easier and other magiks harder. Each hallowed place has its own groupies. The Woodworks was suited for healing crafts; another site on the opposite side of campus was great for enchantments. Individual hallowed places really only share one thing in common: they absolutely hate visitors.

So how are hallowed places found in the first place? Every once in a while, a lucky someone is granted entrance. Most of the time they don't even realize it. Sure, they sense something’s odd. The colors are a bit unusual, the air a bit too still, but they merely scratch their head and move on. And yet the memory sticks with them. Years later, the experience still seems vaguely important. Jules says that’s because they’ve been offered an invitation. The ground had something to show them, something important, something life altering, but they missed it. Still, even if the poor soul saw whatever they were destined to see, they probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend it’s meaning. Hallowed places have their own logic. Few mortals can ever hope to grasp it.

The same was true for this small circle of grass before us. It was an opening in the trees just large enough to allow the stars to poke through to say hello. Why had no trees bother to grow here? No one knew. Who first discovered it? No one knew. Had it always been here? No one knew. It was the Woodworks. It was a piece of land that had pinched itself off from the rest of reality. It just was. That was that. I didn’t find that explanation very satisfying, but not knowing was a big part of my life now.

Approaching the space, I took Jules’ hand and we squeezed through the taut air. Clear of the threshold, I walked over to the moss covered picnic bench and put down my pack. As Jules spread out her supplies and shined her long polished reed, I set up the gas lamp and adjusted the flame. When it was to her liking, she would turn to me and nod. Sure as sure, she would say, “Right then, Dieter, let’s get on wit it,” and we would get to work.

Jules had started her training when she was nothing but a toddler. The Dru commit none of their knowledge into writing. Everything has to be passed down from mother-to-daughter or father-to-son. The process started before you even learned to walk. You became one link in an unbroken chain of knowledge that stretched back over a thousand years.

Jules referred to mana as “Awen,” the Dru word for flowing spirit. To Jules, mana wasn’t just a substance to be molded; it was the living embodiment of a god-like entity that danced through our lives. During the first few weeks of school, I learned there wasn’t a single path to becoming a mage, nor was there even one right way to cast a spell. Only one thing was consistent across the many schools of magic: the root of all spellmaking was the formation of a mental image. The clarity of that image, and the amount of focus you could commit to forming it, were the key components to a spell’s effectiveness. Conviction was what mattered most. Beliefs, rituals, drawings, songs, and faith could all help strengthen a mental image by fortifying a caster’s resolve, and so the caster’s culture, upbringing, and belief system strongly influenced their style. Jules’ style was steady and methodical. My training followed suit.

After settling in, we would meditate for an hour to eliminate intrusive thoughts.

We were “cleaning the canvas,” as Jules put it. “Imagine a parfect black sphere,” she would say. “Move yer mind’s eye around that dark globe like a satellite. Spin it. Admire its parfection. Eliminate everything else from yer mind…”

Sounds simple? Well try doing it for a moment. The crack of a branch, a rustling of leaves, any little thing would knock my focus. Jules didn’t seem bothered when I bungled it. She just patiently repeated the instructions, and I would try spinning my little black brain ball yet again. The absence of attention, it was an esoteric concept. How can you ignore the events transpiring around you? How can you be of the moment rather than in the moment? Hour-after-hour, day-after-day, I pondered it. I meditated so much that I dreamt little black spheres.

Jules had smiled when I told her.

“
When you can’t
recall
dreamin’ em you’ll be ready, Dieter.”

The weeks passed, and I began to improve. The absence of thought became familiar, less abstract. The nothingness arrived quicker when I called for it. I realized that Sadie had been right. Moving mana required talent, you couldn’t get around that, but mana could only be refined into something
useful
through an insane amount of practice. You needed to learn the basics so thoroughly that you didn’t even have to think about them. Then and only then could you step up to the greater challenge of preparing a transmutation. Nothing in my life had ever come free. I found magery was no different. I took comfort in that. It meant I could earn it.

After our meditation sessions, Jules conducted her assignments alone. My role was simple. I just sat tight and observed. But watching wasn’t easy. When I told Jules about my Sight, she didn’t respond with Sadie’s indifference. She called my Sight auraception, and she wanted me to strengthen it. While Jules worked, my job was to will open my Sight and keep it focused for longer and longer periods of time.

“‘
Fraid pain is gainful on this one, Dieter,” she’d said. And Jules was right. Holding my Sight open was incredibly taxing. I got juicy headaches, and from time-to-time throughout the night, I would have to return to the meditation exercises Jules taught me to regain my focus. Exerting my Sight was painful, but watching Jules work was worth it.

Jules’ craft was altogether different from the magic I’d seen so far. She didn’t use her body to conduit mana. Instead, Jules cast using circles. And she didn’t just work one magic circle at a time. Jules’ workspace consisted of three stone circles resting against one another to form a shape called a trefoil. The three circles served as the entrapment fields of the Druid style. The three circles touched at three distinct points. To the Dru, these three points represented the times of transition: sunrise, solstice, and equinox. These points served as three independent sites of transmutation. Because the three circles didn’t overlap, there was a gap formed at the center of the trefoil. This was Jules’ workspace. It served as the black canvas onto which she painted her craft.

Jules explained that she too could cast by forming a conduit within herself, but that she avoided it like the plague. Jules disliked the instability of the human body. She argued that it always contaminated your transmutations to some degree. Thinking back to my previous experiences, I could see her point. Simply noticing Sadie’s juice box had corrupted my own simple mana extraction to terrible effect. With Jules’ method, that risk was eliminated. You could draw up mana, generate conduits, and cast spells while keeping them free from mental contamination. Better still, the Dru style let Jules focus on each component of a spell independently. After completing a component, you could just step away from it, leaving it humming like a car in neutral. Only after the three entrapment fields and three transmutation points were completely tuned did Jules began the chant that un-dammed the flows. Her style afforded tremendous control and gave Jules the confidence to practice a craft that many others remained wary of—casting on life. On the first night of my apprenticeship, Jules explained the risks:

“
Listen now, Dieter. Life’s a fragile balance. Any organism—even the simplest worm—is an incredibly complex array of movin’ parts. Squelch the flow of nutrients, compress a nerve, or disrupt the flow of air and the symphony we call life will come a crashin’ down around ya. Destroyin’ flesh is fockin’ easy. There’s a million ways to wreck a body. Just stick a wrench in here or there and you’ll be splatterin’ guts everywhere. For that same reason, any endeavor seekin' to improve a body’s function, or repair a body’s damage, is an imposin' feat.”

“
Fine,” I replied. “I’ll buy that, but how do you manage the risks?”

“
It is like fixin’ a car’s engine as it’s a speedin’ down the highway,” she mused. “There can be no half-measures. No false starts. Actions must be precise and executed with conviction. The best way is to execute all the interventions instantaneously. If ya achieve all yer objectives in one fell swoop, ya eliminate the most nasty variable of all: time.”

I scratched my head. “Okay, but how on earth do you do everything at once?”

“
Aye, Dieter, that’s the crux. The problem lies with the human mind. It’s the limiting factor in all casting. No matter how sharp yer noggin’, ya cannot possibly moderate the manaflows, execute transmutation after transmutation, and apply the treatments fast enough in series. You’ll reach the limit of usin’ yerself as a conduit well before ya cure what ails the patient. So the answer be simple: Stop usin’ yer cluncky self as the conduit. Prepare all the components in advance. Hit ‘em with everything at once.”

I gestured at Jules’ trefoil. “So in exchange for taking more time in the setup, you’re able to execute a spell that no one could ever achieve using only their body as a conduit?”

“
That’s along the right lines, Dieter, but yer thinkin’ be too narrow. A single complex spell? Me style uses
three
points of transmutation. Usin’ a trefoil, I can cast
three
complex spells simultaneously.”

“
Okay, I’ll give it to ya, that’s pretty cool, Jules.”

“
Of course it be pretty cool, Dieter,” she said smiling. “The Dru saved civilization, after all.”

And so it went night after night. Meditation and observation. Learning the craft without so much as casting a spell. I wanted to try my hand at my own, but Jules would have none of it. A month passed. Another. Summer died away. We traded our thin summer robes for more substantial woolen ones. As the intensity of my studies increased, hours past like minutes. Work occupied all my time. I gave up any hope of a normal social life. I joined no clubs. I read nothing but textbooks. I knew the neighborhood squirrels better than I did my dormmates. I stopped reading the paper. Didn’t pay heed to any of the rumors. All the concerns of the world dissolved from my mind. I was a machine with one concern: I’d catch them. I’d catch them, and I’d pass them.

At the start of October, Monique gave the go ahead for me to start casting again. Lambda threw me a Madonna party. Sadie mixed spiked Shirley Temples while Roster sang, “Like a Virgin / Casting for the very first time.” The whole group hung out into the wee hours of the morning. I had a blast. It was the first party I’d been to since I started school.

Jules started my casting slow. I would manage setting up the circles’ extraction points as Jules worked on the more complex transmutations. To charge circles, the goal was to extract a set amount of very pure mana and trap it inside. Drawing mana from the leyline was easy for me—I had shown a natural predilection for it—the challenge was keeping the mana pure and in control.