Spiral Path (Night Calls Series Book 3) (32 page)

He got the water to come to him in a flow, all right.

He looked as beautiful as a forest after an ice storm, the
red in his dark hair glinting like the flash of a cardinal deep in the trees.

I stepped slowly on the thin ice past Mr. Smith, watching
Mr. St. John hold his own hands above Mr. Smith’s wet coat to help it dry.

That appeared to be a useful spell. I wondered when I would
learn it?

Hannah Wolfsson gently moved her wand tip around the rim of
a wooden goblet. Each time she finished, a ring of ice broke free of the small
vessel and fell to her feet. Once, the ice formed over the outside of the
goblet, and the ring fell around her wrist like a bracelet.

Mr. St. John was there to help the class. He made us split
up, spreading us out like a string of beads from the main building almost to
the carriage house. Each had a wooden goblet. I could see why. A goblet was
easier to hang onto, and wood was less likely to break.

So far only Miss Wolfsson and Mr. Riley seemed to be having
any luck. Mr. Riley’s wand dripped water into his cup. Perspiration ran down
the side of his face as he worked. At least I thought it was perspiration. If
it wasn’t, did it mean that the spell was backing up into his body?

That didn’t sound good.

Professor Tonneman was talking about grounding, trying to
get the others in position to make an attempt. He strode about as usual,
wearing a long black greatcoat and his riding boots, a hat of sable fur upon
his head.

I took up a goblet, found a spot away from the group, and
stomped the fluffy snow down to make a nice circle to stand on. I shut out his
voice and the other students’ soft comments or complaints or questions and
stared at the goblet’s lip.

The rock beneath me took care of anchoring. In fact, I was
so anchored that I wondered if I could pull water up through the Earth.

Maybe. But that wasn’t the lesson.

Visualization and
limitation
. Only the rim should produce water, and not until my wand
touched it. I imagined the rim of the cup weeping like an eye, and tears
swiftly trickling down the inside to fill the goblet. Marta had not simply
waved her wand to make water appear; she had rimmed the glass as she walked the
circle, as if inhaling all the extra moisture in the air above. So I would do. Snow
would no longer fall upon me, because I needed water, not snow. The snow would
become my water, pulled right from the air.

Taking out my lovely wand of golden oak, I touched the tip
to the open edge of the goblet. Then I traced the smooth wooden lip, imagining
water flowing from the wand into the cup. I had seen water rush down into a
gopher hole during a spring flood. It had swirled in a spiral. That’s what I
wanted here, a smooth, swift appearance of water. I could wring the water from
the air, like drawing from a cloud to make a waterspout.

Aqua, afflue ad me.
Water, flow to me.

Not wild magic, grabbing a handful of power and trying to
force a cloud to do my bidding. This was coaxing the water from the air, from
the snow . . . from whatever held more than it needed.

I did feel warmer. I didn’t need all that heat in me, but
trying to suppress it seemed to slow the process. So I let the heat trickle
into the cup as a thin sheet of water ran down the insides, raising the water
level within the goblet. Soon I had a full container of water, and I was only a
tiny bit tired.

“
How
are you doing, Miss Soren—ah. Very good. That’s one way to dissipate the heat,”
Mr. St. John said, coming up next to my side. “You’ve done this before?”

“
No.
But I know how to ground,” I murmured, reaching to put my hand above the
goblet.

“
Wait!”

I halted short of the vapor, my hand just beginning to open.

“
Sometimes
the water becomes very hot, hot enough for the steam to burn you. You are aware
that can happen?”

I looked at him. Did he think I was a baby? Of course I knew
steam could burn you—blister you—and so far in life I’d escaped with only a
reddening of my skin. “How else do you get rid of the heat, if you don’t want
hot water?” I asked. “I didn’t think the heat should be left in me.”

“
No,
only Fire mages easily contain the heat. The rest of us direct it somewhere
else. You can push it into the air around you,” he explained, holding up a
goblet to demonstrate. “You’ll want to push the energy out through your feet if
you can. Heat rises, so this will give you warmth rising around you. To rid yourself
of it in a hurry, you can let it flow out of your head.”

“
That’s
where body heat usually leaves,” I said, watching his goblet fill with water as
a soft puff of warm air rose from the ground around us. The weird thing was,
the snow under his feet was still there, if a little softer.

St. John used the same motion we all were attempting,
sliding the tip of his dark wand around the lip of the goblet.

I said, “Can you just point your wand at the cup and have
water flow out as if at a pump? Is that what Mr. Riley is trying?”

“
Yes,
it is possible. But think of it . . . eight or nine people trying that at once. The air
would become so dry so swiftly that one of us might have a nosebleed!” St. John
smiled as he said the words.

I considered it. “Is that how the fire spell works, then?
You pull energy from the air around you, and the heat coming from the tip of
the wand warms up water, or lights something that burns easily, like paper or a
wick?” Glancing around at the other students, I said: “You never start with
fire, do you? It would be too dangerous in this group.”

St. John’s smile was less broad, more relaxed. “Miss
Rutledge said you missed little. No, beginners start with earth or water. There’s
plenty of challenge, but less chance of a catastrophe.”

I nodded my agreement as I tried to reverse what I had just
done, and cause the water to return slowly to the air. Pulling the moisture out
of the water, turning it into vapor so it would dissipate into the air . . . .
 
Flamma
, I whispered in my mind.

First the steam increased, white clouds rising from the
container.

Then the rim of the goblet burst into flames.

“Snowbank!” St. John yelled, his wand flicking up like a
pointer. “
Cantamen dissolvatur!
”

Abruptly I heard popping noises around me as ice shattered
and water puffed into showers of snow.

I upended the goblet, dropping it rim-down into the pristine
snow to my right. An explosive hissing sound assured me that the flames were
extinguished. The container continued sinking into the surface of the snowbank,
the hot water dissolving the snow cover and heading downhill, finally freezing
into a long tongue of ice.

St. John laughed and reached to pick up the container. “Well,
now we have one with a fire-hardened lip!” he said cheerfully.

I stared at the hole in the blanket of snow.

It
was a good thing I didn’t know how to disappear, because I might have never
come back.

So
much for the control Marta had tried to teach me. I felt tired and very
foolish.

St.
John touched my shoulder, and I looked up at him. His grin had faded to a faint
smile. “Don’t be upset, Miss Sorensson. It’s a common mistake. You’ll just back
up to water, and we’ll work with it until you feel comfortable.”

“
Speed comes with practice,” Professor Tonneman said as he
walked up to us. “I know that it appears as if you should be able merely to
reverse the process of drawing down water, but water is keenly affected by
temperature, and its form is dictated by how cold or warm the air may be. Do
you have any room in your schedule for her, Sinjin?”

I
wasn’t sure what he was saying, but St. John answered: “I can slide her in to
tomorrow’s schedule.” He said to me, “Perhaps after your classes but before
First Herbal?”

“
Yes—yes, I can come then. Where should we meet?” I asked,
hope smothering my embarrassment.

“Let
us remain outside for another lesson or two,” St. John said, his expression
thoughtful. “Then we can look for available time in the dome.”

Well,
all right. But I wasn’t sure I cared at all for that dome place.

“In
the meantime, try it again,” he said, handing the wooden goblet back to me. “Fill
it slowly. If you work too quickly at this stage, you’ll tire yourself out and
have no energy for study tonight.”

That
confirmed it. St. John was now more teacher than student.

“You said something when you told me to toss the cup,” I
started slowly. “Cahn TAH mehn . . . ?”

“
Cantamen dissolvatur
—let
the enchantment be dissolved,” St. John said. “Spoken with authority and power,
those words break every spell within the sound of your voice. So they must be
used carefully. Without focus you could disrupt a school or practitioner’s
homestead!”

Yes. I could see that.

But it was good to know that there were words for an
emergency.

I studied the container in my gloved hand. The white oak
goblet now had a dark rim, as if it had been purposefully singed for
decoration.

I would think of it as a focus point.

Raising my wand, I began again.

o0o

“This tea is strong!” Moira said, setting the mug down on
her student table with a thump. “The ginger makes it taste spicy!”

Jane Adams reached with delicate fingers for the mug, which
Moira gave up without a fuss. I handed another cup of my brew to the boys to
sample from as I poured the balance of the decoction into a pottery jug Cousin
Esme had given me. The boys’ attention shifted to Mr. Riley. Where his opinion
led, they would follow.

“Much stronger than the dried version,” Mr. Riley remarked,
sipping first the tea made from dried herbs and then the fresh one we’d just
finished. “I could see having a cup of the dried tea to settle your stomach
after eating too much on a holiday. But this fresh one is so strong, I’d think
that only a swig or two would be necessary!”

“You can add the decoction to boiling water, and thin it to
have more of a tea,” I pointed out. “That works well for patients you can trust
to follow directions. But sometimes you have someone who always forgets your
instructions, or loses them when you write them out. That’s when you make the
tea as dilute as you can yet still have it help your patient. People have to
work hard at drinking too much of a thin medicinal tea. After a long day of
work, they’ll be tired, and they may get it wrong. Give them a large jug and
tell them to warm a mug’s worth at a time.”

While the boys worked at mixing up the mugs and then tested
whether they could tell the fresh decoction from the one made from dried herbs,
I stacked my utensils in a bucket to be returned to the kitchen for washing.
Young Mr. Williams wiped up a water spill, and I gave him a faint smile and a
nod of thanks.

There I was, smiling before I’d lasted a day. Would I be
tough enough to be a teacher?

What was Daniel
Williams doing that was getting him kitchen duty every week?
I wondered. So
far he hadn’t done a thing for a teacher to complain about.

“Should we include runners with our peppermint drawings,
Miss Sorensson?” Nancy Spenser asked, looking up from her work.

I leaned down to examine her drawing. It was lovingly done,
showing that she knew this plant and how to describe it. “I would,” I told her.
“You can label the runners to remind yourself that to get peppermint, you must
plant runner cuttings. Otherwise, the seed from the plant will be milder, more
like spearmint.”

“Also called ‘spiremint,’ isn’t it?” Mr. Williams asked as
he sat down in his seat.

“Yes, spirement is the old name for spearmint,” I agreed, “for
its narrow spike of flowers. The leaves are shorter, lighter and more wrinkled
than peppermint leaves. And remember that once mint has flowered, the leaves
become quite mild in scent and flavor!”

“We are out of time, Miss Sorensson,” Mr. Riley said
abruptly, looking at a pocket watch he’d pulled from his coat pocket.

I was impressed. Perhaps he was the first son of the family
to have such a treasure? “Thank you, Mr. Riley. Everyone, use your notes from
class and your Nightroad book to label your drawing,” I said as my students
shuffled papers and books. “You may start reading about other mints for
tomorrow. We can look at some of the more exotic mint plants and talk about how
they are used. Remember that European pennyroyal is a mint, and a dangerous one
at that. Class is dismissed!” As the group roiled like a cloudbank to thunder
out the door, I shouted: “Please bring the mugs up here to me before you leave!”
In a normal tone, I added: “Mr. Smith, if you will remain a moment?”

The other students vanished, almost like magic, except for
Daniel Williams, who hovered by the doorway.

“He’s not in trouble, Mr. Williams, you need not remain to
defend him,” I told Catherin’s brother, giving him a firm look. The boys
exchanged glances, and then Daniel disappeared into the murk of the hallway.

I turned my attention back to James Smith. I had noticed
while we were outside attempting the water spells that Mr. Smith was dark-eyed,
but his hair was not dark brown or black. It was some strange color of red that
only looked red in glimpses, like sunlight peeking under a cloud.

As far as I knew, that color of hair only showed up among
powerful fire mages.

Little Moira appeared to be fire, too, and was clearly sharp
as a whip and with the talent to become a strong practitioner.

Mr. Smith had the potential to be in another category
altogether.