“Ice, yes.”
“But you know it cannot be those three things at the same time, yet it is always water.”
Jorim nodded. He’d not thought about anything in that manner before, but could instantly see that most everything could be found in those three states. He’d seen metal turned fluid in a furnace, and had no doubt that were it hot enough, it might rise as steam.
Nauana half closed her eyes. “The very nature of a thing’s being-that which makes it what it is regardless of form-this is how these things exist in the mai. Mai is like the light from the sun, but there are many suns and they always shine. Mai is everywhere and defines everything. That which we see and touch and taste and experience are all maichom-you would call it magic-shadow. Only through mai may we see the thing as it is, and as we know it through mai, we can use and manipulate it.”
She reached a hand toward the flame, palm out. “Use a hand to feel the flame. Feel the heat. See how the light plays over your flesh. Watch the flame dance. Encompass all of it.”
Jorim took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. He raised his right hand and stretched it toward the flame. The light did play over it, wavering shadows as it twisted and flowed. He brought his hand close enough to feel the first hints of warmth, then closer. The heat intensified and where his hand eclipsed it, some of the light glowed red through his skin. He watched the flame, matching its undulations to the rise and fall of heat and the sway of shadows.
Her directive to “encompass” the flame baffled him for a moment. What she wanted was for him to take physical aspects-things he could sense-and to carry them into the theoretical realm of the mai. He knew magic existed, but only in the way that he accepted the existence of things he’d never seen. While he had seen Mystics duel and otherwise had seen evidence of magic, he had still been insulated from its reality. She wanted him to push past that.
He could identify the aspects of the flame and sought to keep all of them in his mind, according none of them ascendance, even as the light flared or the heat rose. By opening himself to all of them, embracing all of them, he would not be doing what most people did, which was to diminish things. Most people, while they knew all the elements that went into fire, tended to concentrate on one or the other. If you needed light, you lit a torch. If you were cold, you kindled a fire. If you wanted to clear brush or get rid of debris, you burned it, then spread the ashes on the fields as fertilizer. Fire was thought of not as what it was, but as a means to an end.
Jorim refused to allow himself to be so lazy. He forced himself to experience the flame as an amalgam of his sensory experience. He listened for it, watched it, felt it. He brought his hand through the flame and back, feeling the way it caressed his flesh. He caught the acrid scent of hair singeing on his hand.
And then he found it. Just for a heartbeat, there was something more. A fusion of everything that surrounded its true essence like a shell on a nut. He sensed the thing within. It existed, the truth of fire. The second the concept of truth struck him, he knew that was how his mind would classify the essence. It was truth. It was distillation. It was that without which the thing did not exist.
His head snapped up. “I felt it. I saw it. The truth of fire.”
Nauana smiled. “Very good. My lord recovers his knowledge quickly. The truth, as you call it, is part of the secret teaching. When you realize that, you have the key. That which defines the truth is mai. The mai is what you use to change the truth, to redefine it. For this first lesson, however, you only need a trickle, and you only need to modify two aspects of this particular flame.”
“Which two?”
“The flame exists because enough mai was used to stabilize an imbalance. Where the flame exists, cold and shadow are held at bay.” She looked into his eyes. “You will touch the mai and rebalance things.”
Jorim found himself nodding matter-of-factly even though his hand trembled and his stomach began to tighten. His first brush with magic, just sensing the truth of flame, was passive, learning to see things in a new way. He’d had that experience countless times before. As a cartographer, he saw the world quite differently from others.
He steeled himself. He did not know if he truly were Tetcomchoa-reborn or not. He did not know if he could use magic-at least not beyond how it would be used as a Mystic cartographer, if he ever became that good. His learning how to use it, however, did not demand that he would use it. The learning itself did no harm; it was only in how it was used that could do harm.
And if the Amentzutl are right about centenco, to refuse to learn could be a disaster.
Jorim calmed his mind and reached out to find the truth of fire again. It took work, but he retraced the steps that had led him there before and found it. Reflected from it, like sunlight from a mirror, he found the mai. In his mind it was soft and resilient, like a porridge that had not hardened, but was not fluid either. When he tried to grasp it, it squirted away from him. So he stopped trying to grab it and, instead-as if it were a living thing-teased it forward.
He wove it through the shadows of his fingers and bound into it the sense of cold he felt from his wet hair against the nape of his neck. He used the mai to strengthen shadow and cold, to embolden them. He brought them forward and they lapped at the flame the way water flows and recedes on a beach. With each successive wave, the cold dark tide rose and the flame shrank.
And finally, it was smothered, instantly plunging the chamber into darkness.
Nauana’s voice filled the room with soft, steady tones. “This, then, is the first lesson. It is easier to restore a balance that has been disturbed through the mai than it is to unbalance something. Balance is the key. As you become stronger, you will be able to use more the mai, but you must beware attempting to unbalance too many things.”
“What happens if I do?”
“Mai is everywhere, even in us. It gives us life.” Her voice became colder. “If you attempt too great an invocation, a balance will be maintained. Mai will be drawn from the nearest source: you. It may kill you. It will exhaust you.”
“How do you know if what you are trying to do is too much?”
“When you fail to waken from the attempt.”
A spark sprang from her fingers and the lamp ignited again. She looked at him solemnly. “Now, my Lord Tetcomchoa, you will restore the balance again. And again. You will do this until you are satisfied you have mastered this invocation, and then you will do it again.”
He smiled. “My sense of sufficiency is not good enough?”
“It is, my lord, but such are the decrees you laid down when you gave us the gift of your knowledge.” Nauana nodded toward the flame. “Begin, please. Centenco is a time when the world is out of balance. Only you, a god, can restore it to the way it must be.”
Chapter Thirteen
28th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Ministry of Harmony, Liankun
Moriande, Nalenyr
Pelut Vniel knelt at a small table. The brush in his right hand hung high over the pristine sheet of rice paper. Ink hung in a pregnant drop at the bristle’s end. He did not know if it would grow fatter and drop, splattering over the paper, ruining it, or if somehow it would remain there, where it should, waiting for him to apply brush to paper in a flash of inspiration.
How like the problem the Prince has presented me.
His face tightened slightly. The Komyr, grandfather through grandsons, had never understood the way the world worked. They were great ones for giving lip service to how valuable the ministries were; they praised how well the ministries worked and urged them to do more. In private-but what in the world was ever truly private? — they railed against sloth and inaction, as if they were bad things.