Aisling and Jim obliged.
“Do you want to know what spell I used?” I asked when Jim was once again shifted back.
“The spell is immaterial,” he answered dismissively, gesturing toward a penholder on his desk. “Change that pen to a vase of flowers.”
“All right.” I focused my energy, recited the most basic of transmutation spells, and watched with resignation as the pen, rather than re-forming its matter to that of the requested vase of flowers, turned into a bowl of spaghetti.
“Lunch!” Jim said with a brightening of its face.
“It’s like my magic is all backward. It’s been that way ever since you put the interdiction on me, only now it seems to be—”
We all stared in surprise as the bowl morphed into a pigeon that blinked back at us.
“—worsening,” I finished as the pigeon flicked its tail and pooped on Dr. Kostich’s papers.
He closed his eyes for a moment, his gaunt face reflecting patience that had worn thin. “You are sundren.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sundren. It is an archaic term, but it aptly describes the relationship between mages and their powers when they have ill used them.”
“Me? I haven’t ill used anything.” The pigeon squawked and changed into a small marble statue of Hermes. “Well, not much. How did I hurt my magic?”
“You are a dragon.” He held up a hand to stop my protest. “You appear human, yes, but you are not. You have yourself admitted that your current form harbors that of your previous being, and it is that which has caused the sunder between your magic and your being. This manifests itself in the misfirings that you see.”
“Great. I’m a misfiring?” Jim looked pathetically at me. “Can you refire me, please?”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Aisling said, looking puzzled. “We all saw the vision where the First Dragon resurrected Ysolde. She’s been human ever since then, which means if she was sundren before, it would have shown up then, wouldn’t it?”
“She was sundren, yes, but the division wasn’t as pronounced as it is now that her dragon being has begun to awaken. Before the attack by her immense mate on the house of the green wyvern, her magic was simply ineffectual. Now the sundering has increased, causing the effects you see.”
We all looked at the statue as it disappeared into nothing.
Dr. Kostich sighed. “And now I have lost a favored pen.”
“OK, I changed my mind,” Jim said, backing away from me. “I don’t want you to try to give me back my magnificent form.”
“Is there nothing I can do?” I asked Kostich, my heart heavy with sorrow at the thought of losing such an integral part of my being, not to mention leaving Jim in a form it detested. “Can’t you help me?”
“With the sundering? No.” His gaze shifted to Jim, his expression sour. “I can, however, act as a focal point for your magic to change the demon back to its canine form, not that I understand why it wishes to do so. But there is a cost.”
“I have a credit card,” Aisling said, reaching for her purse.
“No, this one’s on me,” I said, doing the same.
“Not that sort of a cost,” Kostich interrupted, giving us both a disgusted look. “There is a cost to your attunement with arcane magic to have another act as your focal point. That is why it is forbidden in the Magister’s Guild. In effect, you are allowing another mage to use your power, and arcane magic does not like being used in such a manner. So long as you are aware of the risks associated with such an act, we can proceed.”
“What risks, exactly?” I asked, my stomach tight with nerves.
“Oh, man, I’m going to lose more toes. I just know it,” Jim moaned. Aisling smacked it on the arm again.
Dr. Kostich shrugged. “You will not know until you try.”
“You make it sound like arcane magic is . . . well . . . sentient,” Aisling said.
“You were proscribed. You have felt the opposite of arcane magic. Would you say the dark power was sentient?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a shudder. “Although I didn’t realize that at first. I thought someone was using it to get to me.”
“Someone was,” he said dismissively, getting to his feet. “Are you willing to try, Tully Sullivan?”
I flinched at the sting that accompanied my name. “Yes. I owe it to Jim. So long as you’re sure that with you focusing the magic, Jim will be changed back.”
“My powers have not yet begun to diminish,” was all he said as he gestured me toward him, placing his cold fingers at the base of my neck. “Proceed.”
I closed my eyes and turned east, beginning the call to quarters. “Air surrounds thee.”
Dr. Kostich, his fingers still on the back of my neck, turned with me as I faced south. “Fire fills thee.”
“Oh, great, this is the one that left me naked before,” Jim complained. “Ash, you better have a blanket handy just in case.”
“Quiet, demonic one,” she snapped.
Kostich and I turned north, then west. “Earth nourishes thee. Water gives life to thee.”
I faced Jim again, opening my eyes and pulling as hard as I could on Baltic’s fire. “Demon in birth, demon in being, by the grace within me, I release thee from thy form.”
For a second, nothing happened. Jim stood with a frightened expression on its face; then the same rushing sensation of power flowed over and through and inside me, wiping out everything I had been and would ever be, before ebbing away to an abyss of emptiness.
The man looked at me with an expression of mingled annoyance and patience. “You are making a habit of this, daughter of light.”
I sat up, eyeing him. He looked familiar somehow, his eyes infinitely wise, his face that of a man, and yet there was a sense of something other about him.
“Are you here to see my father?” I asked, confused about who he was. I glanced quickly around the room, startled to find other people present, a man and woman in strange clothing and a large black dog, all three of whom were staring at me with expressions of stark disbelief. “I’ll fetch him for you. I think it’s him you wish to see, my lord . . . er . . . I’m sorry, but I seem to have lost my wits this morning, and don’t believe I was told a mage was coming to see my father. What is your name, sir?”
“I am not a visiting mage,” the odd man said, holding out his hand to me. I took it and rose to my feet, the world spinning for a few seconds before it settled down. “You are important to me, daughter, but I cannot keep rescuing you. You must find your own path, and not rely upon me to help you again.”
I put my hand to my head, my brain swimming at both his words and the strange surroundings in which I found myself.
“Fires of Abaddon,” someone said. “Has she, like, reverted to her old self?”
“Hush, Jim. Um . . . Mr. First Dragon?” The woman, dressed in an odd shortened tunic and leggings, gave a little wave to the man who still held my hand. “I know Ysolde has a bunch of questions about what you want her to do, and since she seems to be a little out of it, I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I asked them.”
The man cast a glance at her, repeating, “She must make her own path.”
“Yes, but—”
“A life was given for yours once, daughter. Do not repay that debt with failure.”
My mouth dropped open as the man shimmered with a bright silver light, as if he was suddenly made up of a thousand raindrops shining in the sun, the drops glittering brightly before dissolving into nothingness.
“By the rood!” I gasped, waving my hand through the air that had just held the man. “I must tell Papa about that! Even he can’t turn himself into light drops!”
“I would find this tedious except for my interest in elemental beings such as the dragon ancestor,” the tall, thin man with washed-out blue eyes said. I didn’t like him. He eyed me as if I were a bucket of slops. “Now that he is gone, however, the charm of the situation fails to engage me. Aisling Grey, please remove my former apprentice.”
“You can’t just throw her out like that!” the woman said, rounding on the man. Her, I liked. “She was just killed a few minutes ago! Killed because of your magic, I’d like to point out!”