Mindbender (46 page)

Magda left them alone and the room fell silent for several long moments before Wren sniffed away her tears and tried, unsuccessfully, to smooth her unruly hair back into place.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a small voice.

“I am,” Abigail said. “Some lunch would be wonderful, Wren.”

“All right, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She left quietly with her head down, clearly still preoccupied and filled with emotion.

“If I fall in this battle, you have to run, and quickly,” Isabel said. “With me gone, Gabriella will move against you, so be ready to leave.”

“First you tell me you’re going to win and now you’re telling me to be ready to run. Which is it?” Abigail said.

“We have to be ready for any outcome. I have every intention of killing her, but she may surprise me with something totally unexpected. Just be ready.”

“Lita says I’ll be able to ride in a week or so,” Abigail said. “Either way, we won’t be here too much longer.”

“I’m going to make the best of the next two weeks and learn everything I can from Magda about witchcraft,” Isabel said. “I suggest you focus on healing. Once we leave, there’s no telling when we’ll have a safe place to rest again.”

“I wish I knew what Alexander was doing,” Abigail said. “I can only assume he’s raising an army on Ithilian and preparing to lead it through the Gate, but knowing when he plans to attack would be helpful.”

“All we can do is be ready as soon as possible,” Isabel said. “If we can win over the coven, we can send scouts to Ruatha and make contact with your father and the wizards. Alexander will try to coordinate his attack with them.”

“I’m still worried about Gabriella,” Abigail said. “You need to be really sure about this before you take such a risk. I suggest you take some of the time you have to make certain your plan will work.”

After lunch Abigail went back to her bedchamber to rest while Isabel went out onto the balcony to practice her connection with the wyverns and other beasts. She started with the seagulls, reasoning that they were smaller and stupider so they would be easier to control.

Her first attempt to touch the mind of one of the seabirds was successful. Even though the thoughts and instincts were very different from Slyder’s, she was able to gain control of the bird and soon had it flying to her command. After an hour or so of establishing control and then relinquishing it, she decided to focus on more than one bird at a time. Two were more difficult and five required a level of focus that she couldn’t maintain for very long. She also discovered that she could only send a single command to all of the birds she was controlling at any one time. She couldn’t make one bird dive and the other climb at the same time but she could make them all act together. She also discovered that the more she practiced, the easier it got to establish control and to maintain it even while focusing on other things.

She linked to a single bird and made it fly in a circle just below her balcony, then focused on creating a feeling of intense love and made a link to the firmament. The lure of the infinite was intense, especially with the distraction of her connection to the bird. Before she could form an image of her desired outcome, she felt like she was falling into the limitless possibility of the firmament and she broke off her connection in a sudden panic. She checked the position of the sun to assess how long she’d been attempting her spell and felt a sense of relief when she realized it had only been a few minutes.

She sat down and cleared her mind. One thing at a time, she told herself. With clear focus she reached out into the fortress island and found the mind of a wyvern. He was napping in the large cave that served as his home. His mind idly drifted on thoughts of the wind and the sky. Isabel moved into his mind and focused her will, infusing the beast with her presence. Once she felt firmly established in his mind, she commanded him to roar. A moment later she heard the faint echo of a wyvern’s roar reverberate through the stone of the island. She sat back and smiled to herself with satisfaction, then just as quickly chided herself for congratulating herself too soon.

Gabriella was formidable and Isabel couldn’t come up with a reliable way to test her battle plan that didn’t completely violate her own sense of morality. She needed to know if she could command a wyvern to kill for her. What’s more, she needed to know if she could command a wyvern to kill its own rider, but she had no idea how to test such a thing without killing someone who was completely innocent. She’d made wyverns change course while their riders struggled to correct their flight path but that was such a minor thing next to killing. From Abigail’s description of her relationship with Kallistos, there was a very definite bond created between rider and wyvern. Isabel’s life rested on knowing if her magical command of the beasts was greater than that bond.

With grim resolve she stood up and looked out over the ocean. Perhaps another kind of test would help her get closer to the answer she needed. She reached out and found a seagull. With a bit of a struggle she overcame her conscience and took command of the bird. She weighed the consequences of failure both for herself and for Alexander and hence the rest of the Seven Isles and made her terrible decision. She needed to know the truth of her power. The life of one bird was a small price to pay for that knowledge, even though she felt a pang of guilt for what she was about to do.

She commanded the bird into a fast and steep dive to gain speed and then turned the seagull into the side of the fortress island. She felt an instinctual resistance from the animal as it struggled to veer away from a fatal collision with the stone wall but she kept a firm grip on the creature’s will. A moment later it crashed into the side of the fortress island and tumbled away, falling into the sea. Isabel felt her bond with the dead bird break and a heaviness settle on her soul.

She sat quietly for a long time, evaluating her own moral character. She’d just killed an innocent creature—the thought made her sick to her stomach. She decided she didn’t like the demands that power placed on her but she had to admit her terrible experiment had proven the extent of her power, at least with more simple-minded creatures. But the nagging question still remained: Would it work with a wyvern?

Isabel called Slyder to her. A minute or so later her forest hawk landed on the balcony wall, then hopped onto her knee and looked at her curiously. She scratched under his chin and he happily leaned into her affections.

“Am I a terrible person, Slyder?”

Her hawk didn’t answer.

After some soul-searching, Isabel renewed her efforts to connect with and control the wyverns. She worked diligently and carefully for the remainder of the afternoon. By the time Wren arrived with their dinner, Isabel was confident in her ability to make a connection with a wyvern quickly and equally confident in her control over the beast. She was very careful to ensure that she didn’t cause the wyverns to do anything too much out of the ordinary for fear that the sudden odd behavior of the giant pseudo-dragons would draw attention from the witches and especially from Gabriella.

She practiced making contact with more than one wyvern but found that the level of concentration necessary increased dramatically with the number of creatures she tried to control. She could sense the presence of hundreds of wyverns in the fortress island and even make a passive connection with many of them all at once but that only gave her access to their very primal thoughts and instincts without giving her much control. She felt that with work and effort she could probably issue a single, very basic command to all of them at once but it would take a great deal of concentration.

***

The next day a guard came to their chambers just after breakfast with a summons from Magda.

Isabel went to her chambers and found the triumvir reading from a very old volume.

“Ah, Isabel, do you feel like learning a spell or two?” Magda asked with a smile.

“Absolutely,” Isabel said. “I feel like I can touch the light or the darkness but beyond that, I’m not sure what to do with them.”

Magda nodded knowingly. Spellcraft was as much about imagination and visualizing an outcome as it was about connecting with the firmament. Before a spell could be effective, the spell caster needed to know what they wanted to happen.

“You were able to heal Abigail with the light because giving life and healing is the natural power of light, however, it can also be used to kill,” Magda said. “Focused light, projected at an enemy, can burn like fire. This spell is called light lance. It is very old and commonly understood among both wizards and witches alike; however, none before you had such a connection to the realm of light, so it’s hard to predict how the spell will function for you.

“I suggest you learn how to cast the light-lance spell in its basic form before you attempt to cast it while you’re connected to the realm of light. It’s hard to say if the addition of your unique connection to the light will increase the power and deadliness of the spell or change the nature of the magic altogether.”

“All right. Tell me what to do,” Isabel said.

“Very good,” Magda said as she handed Isabel the book she’d been reading. “I wrote this myself many years ago when I was learning to create new spells. At the time, I knew this spell already so it made an ideal subject for the practice of writing a spellbook.

“Take this to your quarters and study it carefully. Do the exercises provided and be thorough about your practice. When you’ve done a particular exercise until you’re sick of it, you’re halfway there. Go on to another exercise and then come back to those that you’ve practiced previously.

“Do not attempt to cast the spell until you’ve returned to me and we’ve had a chance to discuss your understanding of the material. This is important, Isabel. More witches and wizards have died from attempting to cast a spell that they didn’t fully understand than from becoming lost in the firmament.

“Once you’ve mastered the contents of this book, come back and we’ll talk it over. When I believe you’re ready, I’ll guide you through the casting process. If you’re successful, then you’ll practice the spell until you can bring forth the magic with ease even while being distracted.

“After you’ve mastered that, you may attempt the spell while linked to the realm of light. Honestly, I have no way of predicting the results of such a thing.”

Isabel frowned a bit. “Doesn’t Gabriella know this spell and how to counter it?”

“Of course,” Magda said. “She’s familiar with every commonly known spell within your ability to learn in such a short period of time, as well as the proven counters for each of them. As I’ve said, Gabriella is a powerful and dangerous witch. You will not learn any common spell in the next two weeks capable of defeating her.

“As for your connection to the light, perhaps it will lend great power to this spell or maybe it will simply transform it into a means of healing another at a distance, which would be a profound capability even if it’s useless against Gabriella.”

“How long does it normally take to learn this spell?” Isabel asked.

“Typically, two to four weeks,” Magda said, “although that’s for a novice training on a normal schedule. You’ll probably master it in less time, provided you’re diligent in your studies and practice.”

Isabel nodded as she tried to frame her next question. “What do you know about the darkness?”

Magda looked at her for a moment before nodding to herself. “Please sit,” she said, motioning to a comfortable chair.

“There is the darkness of the night and there is the darkness of the netherworld. Many witches and wizards commonly use spells that create or manipulate the darkness created by an absence of light. Such spells can be useful for obscuring the vision of others, hiding in the night, or creating fear, but they have no substance. What you speak of is necromancy. Calling on the forces of the netherworld is a dangerous game even if you aren’t summoning a creature from the darkness into our world. There is always a price when dealing with the netherworld. I’ve been careful to avoid learning any magic related to the darkness for fear that I might be tempted to use it—and I would caution you to do the same.

“The stories say that Malachi Reishi started out dabbling in the magic of darkness to prolong the life of a beloved pet. Once he got a taste of the power it offered, he couldn’t resist the urge to call on it more often, until finally, it consumed him and he lost touch with his essential humanity.

“Another word of caution. If you were to defeat Gabriella with necromancy, there would be many within the coven who would be very skeptical of your character and unwilling to trust you, myself included. Focus on the light, Isabel. Keep your connection to the netherworld closed.”

Isabel swallowed hard. She knew that the netherworld was not the place she wanted to go for power but she was looking for any edge she could get in the coming fight. She realized that there were other considerations that she needed to explore, so she forged ahead.

“I can tell you from personal experience that the netherworld is a place of hate and suffering,” Isabel said. “I have no desire to call on it if I can help it, and I will heed your advice with regard to this fight with Gabriella. However, in the past, I’ve faced creatures conjured from the darkness that were sent to kill Alexander. Is there a way to use my link with the netherworld to send those creatures back where they belong?”