Now she stopped quite dead in her tracks, and turned to stare at him, her lips parted in utter amazement. He gave her a droll and triumphant grin over his shoulder, and tugged on her hand.
"So, Apprentice, as you can see, I am quite prepared to see you through this. You are, as you probably already know, far ahead of most Apprentices of your short experience, simply because you are used to conducting research and are possessed of formidable self-discipline and concentration." His grin widened at her reaction to that astounding statement. "I expect you to achieve Mastery within a year, quite frankly. Perhaps sooner. The Sylphs are gentler creatures than the Salamanders, and less wary; the usual weaknesses of one destined for Air Mastery are a lack of concentration and a general flightiness, and you suffer from neither—if you ever were burdened with such faults, you overcame them long ago. Now, come along, and you'll prove what I already know to yourself."
Once again he tugged on her hand, and she perforce followed him into the Work Room, taking the irrevocable steps down a path that would govern all she did for the rest of her life.
In the end, the conjuration proved just as easy as Cameron had claimed it would be for her. In fact—as she moved through the Work, with its studied gestures, poetic incantations, and all the attendant ritual, she felt a growing sense of joy, of rightness, as if she was doing something she had been born to do. By the time the moment arrived for the actual appearance of the Sylph, her happiness was bubbling out of her like an effervescent spring bubbling into life after being frozen over during the winter. It was all she could do to keep from dancing a little as she spoke the final words.
The Work as written in the reference she had used called for a circle of containment as well as invocation, but Cameron had advised against it, making the alterations in her copy of the diagram himself. "If you wish to follow my example, and persuade your Elementals rather than coercing them, you had better begin as I did, and do without the containment circles altogether."
"Isn't that—well—dangerous?" she had asked, doubtfully. "The book says it is. Without the containment circle, there is no way to be certain the Sylph will cooperate."
"Of course it is!" he had replied. "Friendship is inherently more dangerous than slavery. A friend always has the option to tell you that he will not do something, and that may happen, especially at first. My Salamanders disobeyed me once or twice to test my resolve not to coerce them, and I suspect your Sylphs will do the same, although they may simply confine themselves to impudence. But a slave will never offer his help unasked, and that is what you gain from persuasion rather than coercion."
So, she stood now before the marble altar, trembling with joy and nervousness, and spoke the last words of her invocation, as Jason watched her from outside the chalked diagram.
For a moment, she thought that nothing had happened—that she had failed.
Then, out of nowhere, a lively breeze whirled around her, a breeze full of a sense of laughter, tugging at her garments, teasing her hair until it fell out of its carefully pinned-up coiffure. It stole all of her hairpins and disarranged her clothing, twirling around her faster and faster until she looked as if she had been running up a hill in a strong March wind.
Then it gave a final tug on her sleeves, formed into a tiny vortex in which all of her hairpins danced, and dropped down onto the altar. Then it wasn't a vortex at all, but a creature that could have been the original for all of the illustrations in every children's fairy-book ever written.
She had not been quite certain what to expect, since the Salamander was so patently unhuman, but this ethereal, semitransparent creature was quite human in appearance. It had a narrow face with a pointed chin, high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes tilted upwards at the outer corners. It was androgynous, disturbingly pretty, more-or-less "clothed" in long, flowing, pale hair and what seemed to be a series of gauzy, ever-moving scarves, and even had a suggestion of transparent hummingbird-wings at the small of its back. The colors of the Salamander were intense golds, reds, and oranges—the colors of this creature were the palest of blues, violets, and pinks. The expression on its face suggested that its chief motivation was mischief, and now Rose understood why Sylphs were notoriously difficult to control.
"Well!" it said, quite cheerfully. "It certainly took you long enough! We thought you'd never get up the courage to call us!"
She took a step nearer, and the elfin creature widened its eyes playfully until its eyes were twice their original size. She stared into them, distracted and entranced; she had never seen eyes like those before, as blue as the skies over the desert, as infinite, and as hypnotic.
"So, what will you have of me?" it murmured, in a soft, silken voice, a voice that beguiled and bewitched her. "Shall I show you the world? Everywhere the Air goes, we go. I can show you anything, anywhere. Would you care to hear music? The Air carries all music—I can bring you the voice of Caruso, the piano of Rachmaninov, the violin of—"
Behind her, Jason cleared his throat. Only that, but it jarred her back to sanity and out from under the hypnotic spell of those eyes, that voice. And now she understood the danger the Sylph represented, the danger of the Lotus-eater, the opium-smoker, the one who dreams without direction and purpose. This was the first test—to see if she could withstand the temptation of the endless dream.
"I would really prefer if we made the Pact first," she murmured diffidently. "Please, it would really be better so. And once the Pact is sworn, you may depart if you wish."
That was a departure from the standard—if she had cast a containment circle, she would have said, "I give you leave to depart." But Jason's Salamanders came and went as they wished when he did not specifically need them, and he took no harm from them—if she was to follow in his footsteps, she must give the Sylphs the same freedom.
The books had all warned that when presented with the Pact that bound Magician and Elementals, the Sylph might turn angry and refuse to swear-another reason for the containment circle, which would prevent it from departing until it had sworn on behalf of all its kind.
But that did not happen, not this time; this seemed to be another example in favor of Jason's policy of cooperation instead of coercion. It laughed, long and merrily. "Too clever, too cautious, too disciplined to be caught!" it crowed. "You will be a good friend, and a good Master. Very well, Rosalind Hawkins, we will swear the Pact with you, for you will not abuse it, but neither will you be seduced by us!"
It remained solemn—although its eyes danced with merriment—just long enough to repeat the phrases that bound them Magickally together. But the moment the Pact was sworn, it became a laughing breeze again, and whirled around the room one more time, before vanishing.
And it took all her hairpins with it.
Rose sat down, all in a heap, right where she was, feeling completely drained of energy and emotion. Jason allowed her to remain long enough to catch her breath, then crossed the now-superfluous chalked lines to extend a hand to her.
She looked up at him without taking his hand. "It nearly had me," she said, reaction to what she had so narrowly escaped setting in. "It nearly pulled me in, and I would never have come out again."
"And depending on whether or not I could persuade the Sylphs to listen to my Salamanders, I would either have spent several days trying to bring you back, or regretfully sent what was left of you off to a lunatic asylum," he replied gravely. "Yes. I could not warn you; you had to face that danger, that temptation, all yourself. Now you see the danger inherent in treating with the Sylphs. The Salamanders invite one to unregulated passion when they first appear; the Sylphs to losing one's self in dreaming. The Gnomes tempt to the extreme of sloth, self-indulgence, and if you will forgive me—sexual excess; and the Undines to the extreme of self-deception, particularly where one's own abilities are concerned. That is the danger with all the Elementals; they can entice the would—be Magician into fatal excess of the worst kind—the kind that always lives within him, because of his unbalanced Nature."