Successor''s Promise

  Qall opened his eyes. “I’d like to see that.”

  “You will one day,” she told him.

  He looked at the sky. “I had no idea I could do that.”

  “Not many people can sense all the way around the world. How far you can is called your ‘reach.’”

  “How rare is it?”

  “I know of three people who can. You, me and a friend. This is a small world though. Some worlds are too large for me to sense the entirety of.” She thought back to her own world, recalling that Valhan had needed to travel from the north to the south in order to take in all the magic in it, which was proof that her world had been larger than average—and that even he had had limits.

  Which meant Qall did too. She remembered, as she had many times, what she had learned from Dahli: at times Valhan hadn’t been able to read her mind. She did not think that meant she had been equal to him in strength, but she might have been close. Qall should have trouble reading her mind too, though he shouldn’t be trying. He ought to be sticking to the Travellers’ rule of good manners that said you should respect the privacy of family members and friends—especially your elders.

  “Reach out again,” she instructed Qall. “Tell me where you can take magic without anyone noticing.”

  “At the poles,” he said.

  “Not necessarily. It may be cold there, but people can live in very hostile places—especially if they have magic.”

  “So … nowhere, because you’ll be able to sense it.”

  “Discount me.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Then … high in the air?”

  “You could take it from there, yes. The chance that a sorcerer will notice is slim.”

  “And far underground?”

  “Yes. People are often unaware of what is below solid ground. An absence of magic feels like darkness, and it is easier to hide darkness in a place with no light.”

  “If I slice an even layer off the furthest outer edge, it wouldn’t be as obvious as taking a chunk somewhere.”

  She nodded, pleased. “Or the lowest inner edge.”

  “So magic doesn’t extend right through the globe …? Ah! I see. If I took a slice of equal thickness from the inner and outer edges, the one from the inner would contain less magic, since the area gets smaller the closer you get to the centre of the globe.”

  “You get the idea,” she said. “Take a little magic now. You won’t need much. We’re going to do some skill tests.”

  Qall followed her instructions willingly at first, but as she worked her way through tests of his reflexes and control, he quickly grew impatient.

  “I’ve done all this before,” he grumbled as he floated effortlessly a hand span from the ground.

  “Yes, but I don’t know what you can and can’t do,” she replied. “I don’t want to waste time devising whole lessons only to discover you already know what I want to teach you or that I miss a hole in your knowledge. I need to know the level of skill you have. Come down and sit.”

  He obeyed, returning to the rock.

  “What do you know of the five applications of magic?”

  He shook his head. “The Travellers don’t divide them up into five. They have three: basic, mind reading and world travelling.”

  “What are the basic kinds?”

  “Moving, stilling, heating and cooling.” He paused. “Which are two kinds, since to heat you move, and to cool it you still.”

  “Correct. What do you know of mind reading?”

  He shrugged. “A stronger sorcerer can read a weaker sorcerer’s mind even if they are blocking. People without magical ability can’t block at all.”

  “What else?”

  He drummed his fingers on his knees. “It is impolite to read the mind of family and friends.”

  “Among the Travellers. In many worlds it is forbidden to read minds, so if you do you had better not be too obvious about it. Have you read Timane’s mind?”

  Looking away, Qall bit his lip and didn’t answer for a moment.

  “Ah … she’s not family.”

  “So you think, therefore, that she doesn’t deserve to be treated with respect?”

  “No.”

  Rielle set her elbows on her knees and steepled her fingers. “She knows you read her mind. She’s no fool. You should apologise.”

  He nodded. “I will,” he murmured.

  “I understand the temptation,” she told him. “We are in a position where we may need to bend rules, but only when it’s necessary. The only person I expect you to not read the mind of is me. For everyone else, I want you to get used to reading minds and not showing any sign that you have.”

  He looked up. “But what if …?” He stopped and shook his head.

  “What?”

  “What if we encounter Travellers?”

  “It’s unlikely we will, but if we do it’s up to you to decide whether you will respect their privacy or not. I will be reading their minds, however. I won’t be taking any risks.”

  He nodded.

  Next on the list was world travelling, and she hesitated as she considered how much to tell him. She was reluctant to even talk about it in case she gave him a clue or an incentive to try to do it on his own. But if she did, she could underline the dangers, which would encourage him to wait for lessons.

  “My teacher told me there are five kinds of magic. Moving and stilling were the first two, mind reading the third, world travelling the fourth,” she explained. “Did you ever travel between worlds with your family?”

  A light had entered his eyes. “Only when I was younger, when they were looking for a place to settle.”

  “What do you understand of it?”

  “Not much. I know that the place between is white, and that you can’t breathe while you’re there so you will suffocate if you stay too long. I know about ‘skimming,’ where you move out of a world a little so you can still see it, then change your position.”

  Rielle nodded. “Moving away and towards a world is a little like pushing and pulling, but not exactly. Lejihk’s son tried to teach me by describing it that way, but I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t stop thinking of it as a physical act rather than a mental one. The place between is more accurately described as light or energy. It is like the opposite of the darkness we perceive as the absence of—”

  “How did you learn to travel between worlds then?” he interrupted.

  She smiled. “I read how to from a sorcerer’s mind as he was doing it.”

  His eyebrows rose and his eyes brightened with interest.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have told him that. “And if I ever catch you reading my mind while I push out of a world, I’ll make you do a quarter cycle of digging in the fields before I teach you anything more.”

  His mouth twisted in amused defeat.

  “I will teach you, once you know all of the dangers,” she told him. “Suffocation is only one. Arriving inside something would be a particularly unpleasant way to die. Arriving at a dangerous orientation to the ground is another risk. Knowing exactly how to protect yourself the instant you arrive is vital. The environment you arrive in may have hidden dangers, like poisoned air, unstable ground or temperatures that could kill you.”

  “Why would a path lead to a place where people can’t survive?”

  “The last sorcerer to travel there might have made the path and died at the other end. Or they backtracked—perhaps when someone who arrived before them died. Or they arrived and left again very quickly. An ageless sorcerer might survive a brief exposure to a dangerous world when an ordinary sorcerer wouldn’t.

  “Something might have changed since a path was made,” she continued. “A volcano explodes. Floods inundate the land. The air is poisoned, by natural or human causes. War breaks out. There are stories of worlds disappearing completely, of suns exploding or going cold, of enormous rocks falling from the sky or the land shaking apart. Then there are the dangers of dead and weak worlds.” She grimaced. “Which ar
e becoming more common, I am told.”

  “Why?”

  She opened her mouth to explain, then shook her head. “Another time. Stories of the worlds could take up the rest of the day, and as much as I’d enjoy that, we should stick to the applications of magic. Can you guess what the fifth is?”

  His brows lowered as he considered; then he shook his head.

  “I don’t … but I guess it has to be what the last four don’t explain. So … agelessness?”

  “Yes. Or rather, agelessness is only the most coveted use of the fifth application. The application is known as pattern shifting.”

  “‘Pattern shifting,’” he repeated. “Shifting patterns. What patterns?”

  “The ones that make up every living thing. You. Me. The flying creature over there. Those plants.”

  “Only living things?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. “It might be possible to change those rocks to gold, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. I’ve only worked with the patterns of living things.”

  “What can it do other than making someone ageless?”

  “Healing. I don’t need to worry as much about breathing between worlds because my body heals the damage of suffocation as soon as I arrive in one. I can heal other people. All living things.”

  “Can you bring the dead back to life?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t tried. I think, if they hadn’t been dead long, I probably could. They might have lost some memories though.”

  He tensed. “Is that what happened to me?”

  “No,” she replied. “You never died. You were put into a deep sleep, your bodily processes slowed by cold.”

  He swallowed and looked down at his hands. “And my memories were removed.”

  “Mostly. Enough remained that I could see that what was done to you was done against your will.”

  “Will I ever get those memories back?” His voice was barely audible.

  She shook her head. “It’s very unlikely at this point. If they were going to return, I think they would have by now. If I hadn’t taken you away, what was left would have been erased when … when the Raen replaced them.”

  “Using pattern shifting.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is … is that how you became ageless?” He looked up, his gaze suddenly piercing. “Do you take over someone else’s body when you get old?”

  She shuddered at the thought. “No. Nothing like that. I altered my mind so that it constantly uses a little bit of magic to keep my body in the same pattern.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Oh. That’s … very different to what I imagined. Much simpler.”

  “It is only simple once you achieve it. Achieving it takes a great deal of magic and time.”

  “So why did this Raen want to live in my body?”

  “He knew he was going to die. In fact, he deliberately killed himself to make his enemies think they’d defeated him. Only a small part of his body survived—his hand—and he put all of his memories into it, though don’t ask me how. That I don’t know.”

  “And my enemies still have this part of him with his memories?”

  “I believe so.”

  He looked away, his gaze fixed far beyond the valley below as he absorbed that. Then he suddenly shrugged and turned back to her.

  “What is it like being ageless?”

  She considered how to answer that. “I don’t feel any different to how I did before, most of the time, but I don’t get tired or sick. I still feel like sleeping and eating, because they’re natural needs of the body. I might be able to change that, but I guess I’d eventually run out of the stuff my body needs to repair itself. Or I’d have to change my body so it can get what it needs another way. Which would make me less human.

  “That leads me to one of the dangers of pattern shifting,” she added. “If you’re always aware of how others see you, and keep changing to please them, you may end up forgetting how you’re supposed to look. Or want to look.”

  “You can’t return to your original pattern?”

  “Perhaps only by stopping your mind automatically pattern shifting.”

  “So you need to pattern-shift to make any change, and that includes going back to what you were,” he said, nodding. “If your body is constantly repairing itself so its pattern remains the same, why doesn’t that erase new memories?”

  “It only removes flaws.” She smiled. “Developments are preserved. Not just memories, but muscle, so if you learn and keep practising a skill, you retain it.”

  Qall nodded. “I suppose you’d have never done it if that hadn’t been true. Not just the memories, but the skills, because you’re an artist.”

  Rielle winced, and he immediately straightened.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing relevant to this lesson.” She waved a hand dismissively.

  “No? How can you be sure? Have you read my mind?”

  She nearly laughed aloud at him turning her earlier words against her.

  “No, but I’m sure Lejihk and Ankari would have told me if you were a Maker.”

  He frowned. “I’m not. But you are. Ankari told me.”

  “I was. Losing that was the price I paid for becoming ageless. You cannot be ageless and a Maker.”

  His eyebrows rose. “That was a great sacrifice.”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t told it would happen, so it wasn’t a willing sacrifice. However, I never saw much value in generating magic. I can still draw and paint and weave. That’s what matters to me.”

  He nodded slowly, an odd expression on his face—like the knowing look of an elder, but instead of sympathy there was a shine of satisfaction that made his efforts at appearing wise seem unconvincing.

  His heart was in the right place though. She stood up. “That’s enough for today, I think. You need to apologise to Timane for leaving her alone for days.”

  His brows lowered. “Must I?”

  “Yes. She, like you, has also left behind everything that was familiar.”

  “She wanted to.”

  “Because her world was at war. She was sold into near-slavery by her parents, so she could hardly return to them.” Rielle sought his gaze, but he avoided meeting her eyes. “She’s a person, no better or worse than you—and not your servant.”

  “Or yours,” he pointed out. “So why do you get to explore and buy seeds?”

  “Because she can’t travel between worlds,” she told him, “and I needed to make sure we are safe here before you show your face anywhere.”

  His brow creased. “And are we?”

  She nodded. “As far as I can tell.”

  His face relaxed. “I could do with some breakfast, I suppose.”

  “Me, too.” Standing up, she led the way back down to the cottage. That went well I think, she mused. Despite finding out some grim things about his past, he actually seems happier. All I need to do now is figure out how to teach him everything he needs to know without freaking out the locals.

  CHAPTER 7

  “No, Qall!” Rielle scolded, her senses reeling at the sudden blackness. “You’ll learn nothing if you strip the entire room of magic.”

  “But it did stop you attacking,” he pointed out smugly. “And I’m sure I have more magic than you now.”

  “Put it back.”

  He sighed and let it go all at once. Magic spilled outward, intense and dazzling, and spread beyond the room into the burned city beyond.

  “No more than what you took, or someone might notice.” Exasperated, she drew the extra magic in.

  “There’s nobody here,” he pointed out. “None of the locals with ability would understand what they were sensing, even if they did come up here. And they won’t. They think the souls of the dead live here.”

  “It’s not villagers we have to be careful of. It’s sorcerers who might follow my path here.” She cursed Qall silently. He had been in a defiant mood all day, refusing to focus on the manoeuvre she was trying to teach
. Keeping up with his moods was a constant challenge. At times like this she wondered if she’d made a mistake, promising to take care of and train him. His defiance and lack of interest were so easy to interpret as ingratitude and a failure to appreciate the threat he faced if he did not learn to protect himself.

  And yet at other times he was gratifying to teach—attentive and quick to learn. Sometimes she recalled what Dahli said about Valhan being good at all forms of magic, and wondered if that had been transferred to Qall when she’d changed his pattern.

  “Why am I learning to fight like a weak sorcerer? I’m never going to use these moves.”

  “You need to understand how weaker sorcerers fight, because it’s far more likely you’ll face a group of them than one strong one.”

  “You’re avoiding teaching me how to defeat you,” he accused.

  She began to deny it, then smiled. “That’s a good idea actually. It doesn’t make sense to teach one of the few people in the worlds who could defeat me how to kill me.”

  His eyes widened slightly as he realised his mistake. “What if your friend, Tyen, tries to kill me?”

  She let her smile drop. “Let’s hope it never comes to that.” How does he know about Tyen? Did he read about Tyen from Timane’s mind?

  His chin rose. “Because I’d kill him?”

  “No, because I like both of you. I don’t want to lose either of you.”

  His eyes flickered away and back again. “What if another strong sorcerer—one you don’t know about—attacks me?”

  She crossed her arms. “It’s not that I don’t want to teach you how to fight someone close to you in strength, Qall. I will eventually.”

  Qall’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t fought anyone as strong as us before, have you?”

  He was too smart with his guesses sometimes. She smiled again. “No. And I’m glad of that too.”

  “You haven’t killed someone either.”

  A chill ran down her spine. “Actually, I have.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Who?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”