At the inn at the Port of Mercia the first morning, we had brought a sailor from Kondor to translate for us. That conversation held the item that now worried at my mind. A careful review revealed what had been obvious but forgotten in all else that had happened. He said the reason his language skills were so good, was because a mage had used magic to teach him our Common language.
The girls were learning remarkably fast, but a few hundred words only allowed the most basic of concepts to be exchanged. My magic had seen the arrowhead inside Flier’s knee, like the work a sorceress might do. I’d delved into the physical part of a person instead of dealing with external forces like rain and wind. What else could I do?
The problem was that the three of us, Elizabeth, Kendra, and myself, had kept my abilities secret, which protected me, but it failed to allow me to learn from others who knew magic so I might have progressed. Mages and sorceresses may have been willing to teach me, at least enough so they could test me and determine if I was one of them. The problem with that was if I failed to live up to their demands, what would they have done? Worse, if I was one of them, would they have removed me and sent me to some far-off place for training and indoctrination?
If my abilities matched those of other mages, or if they did not, the answer was simple. If they were a new subset or inferior, we didn’t know what would happen. My scant powers may have scared them, or perhaps they have a policy of extermination for those like me. None of us had ever heard of such a thing. However, walking uphill for hours on end gave me time to consider and wonder. I flipped Anna’s hair again and watched her hand smooth it down.
Carefully, as if my magic was fog slipping in on a winter’s night, my mind reached out. Like extending tendrils of a fog, it explored and probed Anna in much the same way I’d done with Flier’s knee. My search revealed nothing. With each advance, my powers ‘bumped’ into resilient obstructions, much like sleepwalking into a mattress hung from a wall.
I’d expected to either find my powers couldn’t reach her, or they could. Instead, I found myself stumbling in the dark and encountering soft resistance at every turn. I couldn’t move ahead, only stall or return and probe again.
After pulling back from Anna’s mind for the tenth time, I reconsidered my approach. I felt I’d ‘touched’ her in some manner that last time. There might be a way to test her a little more. An often-used trick of mine convinced someone an insect like a mosquito had landed on her bare arm and drew a slap from her other hand.
So, in the same way, I started thinking of words she wouldn’t know in our language, a concrete word I could point to and yet be sure she hadn’t heard it. Every word that came to mind, she might have heard. I needed an object, one so obscure that she couldn’t possibly know it.
Bouncing at my side was my sword and the four arrows in the new addition to the scabbard. Only the ends of the arrows showed, the fletching made from feathers. Fletching was a word she wouldn’t know but could point to when requested so I’d know she understood my mental teachings.
Fletching. The word was repeated in my mind. Directed at her. Images formed in my head, detailing an arrow, most centered on the fletching at the end of the shaft. The word was used over and over as I tried to instill the knowledge in her mind. I pronounced it mentally and provided a description. Then, the idea occurred that if it took this sort of effort to teach Anna something so simple, I was better off simply speaking to her.
Without drawing the attention of the others, I moved to her side and touched her arm. When she looked at me, I pointed to the arrows and said, “What is this?”
“Arrow,” she said immediately, although I didn’t know how she knew that word.
“No.” I fingered the feathers glued to the arrow. “This.”
“Fletching,” she said as if I was a dolt who knew nothing.
I fell back to my position behind her to consider what had happened. In my opinion, she had learned both arrow and fletching from me in the last few minutes. How she did that was unknown, but also how I’d done it with her was equally unknown. Which of my attempts had succeeded? And which had failed?
It didn’t matter. One of them had been successful on the first try. A few more experiments and the proper method would be determined.
When faced with complicated problems, my usual routine was to pull away and allow my mind to work on it while I did other things. Like a pot of stew simmering. At first, the broth is tasteless, however, after a good simmer, the flavors are spread and absorbed by the broth, meat, and vegetables. A few spices also help.
That was my plan. Allow my thoughts to simmer, perform a few additional small tests, and hopefully teach Anna to speak even faster than she was learning in the traditional ways. Emma? Well, we’d see. While Anna was receptive, my attention would focus on her. After learning the proper methods that worked, Emma might be easier to teach.
A while later, just before we stopped to eat, I wanted to be sure the dragon was nearby, so I landed another imaginary mosquito on Anna’s arm. She slapped it, examined where the insect should have been, and noticed me intently watching her. She turned away, and immediately I felt a mosquito land on my arm. I slapped at it.
There was no sign of a mosquito on my arm when I looked.
Anna giggled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
T he incident with the imaginary mosquito confused me so massively I tripped, and that drew another series of giggles from Anna. She didn’t turn to look or gloat, but in that single instant, I knew for a fact that she had used magic as retaliation on me. Small-magic. Not a lot. However, there was no doubt she had used it when not one in a thousand people could duplicate her feat. No, not one in ten thousand, I corrected myself. Those few who use magic are scarce, more so than two-headed snakes.
In the entire kingdom of Dire, only six magicians were known, four mages and two sorceresses. And of course, there was also me who was an unknown and didn’t count. Only three of us knew of my skills, and none of us had ever heard rumors of others like me. It would be unfair to mages to consider my meager skills on par with theirs, and my talents had recently bled to those of a sorceress. Yet, in our group of five on the mountain pass, there seemed to be four. Myself, Kendra since freeing the dragon, Anna with her mental mosquito, and of course little Emma who had banished the Blue Lady. The mathematical odds of calculating that were far beyond my abilities—but I knew the answer must be near infinity.
The oddest thing was that while magic ‘abilities’ or ‘powers’ varied between mages and sorceresses, all were essentially the same along the lines of sex. Those walking ahead of me were unknowns. I doubted if any of us had the power of true magicians, but until the last few days, I’d been the only example of a lesser one we’d ever heard of. Now, I walked with three others and couldn’t get that out of my mind.
We watched for food along the way since we had little. A fat, lazy grouse, a type of gamebird of a couple pounds stood at the edge of the path and watched. I slipped my little-used bow over my shoulder from my back as my right hand found an arrow.
The kill-shot was quick and anticlimactic. The arrow flew fast and sure—without my magical help, and the arrow skewered the bird. We made a fire and roasted it within a few steps of where it died. Two identical birds would have better satisfied our appetites, but no other showed itself. That wasn’t too odd that there were no others because the only places I’d seen them was in the lowlands, usually in meadows. Finding one high in the mountains was strange but not unheard of.