It did not appear to be a spell book. There was no organizing table or index of its contents like Hawthorne’s book. Strange symbols adorned the four corners of every page, but the text itself was in the common tongue, although the handwriting, which began in a very clear and ordered hand, deteriorated to wild, barely legible scribblings toward the end of the manuscript.
The tome was written in a conversational tone, not unlike a diary or notes one would write to oneself. The language did not appear to be directed at anyone other than the author. Furthermore, the book was filled with what appeared to be meditative exercises, and judging from the length and complexity of the first one, the task of progressing through all appeared daunting.
But why would a wielder spend so much time writing to himself? After all, the notes appeared to be written from memory, not a chronicle of the results of experimentation.
Then there was the increasingly desperate nature of the handwriting, as if the author was trying to work out something important to him, something that seemed to slip farther from his grasp as his notes progressed. The handwriting toward the book’s end had become almost indecipherable scribblings of short little blurbs, much briefer than the detailed ritual descriptions contained in the early pages. Perhaps the introductory exercises were the most thoroughly documented because they formed the basis of the work that followed, or perhaps the author had merely been driven toward madness. She decided that she would master the first exercise before delving deeper. There was nothing to be gained by taking unnecessary risks.
Carol rubbed her throbbing temples, turned, and walked back into her home. After being out in the dazzling sunlight, the cabin seemed too dark. She reached out with her mind, setting small flames atop candles and lamps around her bedroom. She felt . . . strong? More than that. She felt powerful in a heady way that begged her to exercise that power. She could feel the otherworldly planes, hidden from view but all around her, so full of elementals to contest with, so ready for someone strong enough to bend them to her will.
The book lay on the small table near the fireplace, binding strap firmly in place, the back leaning just against the base of the heavy candle stand. The manuscript had hardly been out of her mind since she had walked outside to clear her head. Carol was mildly amazed at how enthralled she had become, at how anxious she was to study the work. The brief scraps that she had read had inspired a curiosity she could barely contain.
The tightly packed, neatly appointed handwriting detailing the book’s first exercise took up two full pages with the description of what the author referred to as katas, which Carol took to mean exercises or rehearsals. She read through the pages rapidly to get the general context, but that approach failed miserably. She could not decipher what constituted success.
No attempt had been made to describe what the exercise was supposed to accomplish. Only a sequence of very detailed steps appeared, the first of which was to bring oneself into a deep meditation referred to as a state of neutrality. Carol hoped that this was the same as what she thought of as finding her center, but she could not be sure.
She began again, working her way very slowly from the beginning, trying to understand the author’s intention in each of the steps that followed.
When she looked up, the outside light was fading into early evening. Only the glow from her candles and lamp lit the room.
She leaned back in the chair, rubbing her face with both hands. Her temples pounded, a headache brought on by the frustration of trying to interpret instructions that relied upon knowledge she did not have. Several references had been made to establishing “the block” or to shifting “the filter.” These were intermingled among instructions for visualization and concentration that she understood, but they would be wondrously difficult to perform.
She stood up, stretching her arms high above her head, and rolled her neck in several complete circles, a routine that produced an abundance of pops and crackles. If the first exercise was this difficult, how could she ever hope to understand the latter ones, exercises that must have been too much even for the ancient master, who tried frantically to assign their descriptions to paper.
Since the first step demanded the adoption of a deep meditative state, Carol would need to have all other steps committed to memory. More than that, she would need the other steps burned into her brain so that they automatically sprang to mind whenever she needed them.
Deep meditation was tricky. The very act of trying to remember something or even thinking about the way you felt would suck you out of the meditation and back to normal consciousness.
Luckily, deep meditation was something she had always possessed a great talent for. What was it Hawthorne had said? My dear child, you can lose yourself more easily than anyone I have ever known.
At the time she had not been certain that his words were a compliment. She missed the kindly old man with the long, flowing whiskers. But he was not here to advise her, so she would just have to get on with the task.
Memorizing all the steps was a task that just took concentration and effort. That would not be a problem. But Carol was worried because she did not know what the author meant by blocking and filtering. He had evidently thought it obvious enough not to warrant description, so maybe the terms would become self-evident as the exercise progressed.
Dangerous or not, she could see no way to discover the procedures contained within the book without attempting the katas, mastering them one at a time. If fragments were missing, she would just have to figure those pieces out as she gained context.
She focused on memorizing the steps in the first kata. Readying her quill, ink, and paper, she sent a mental thank you to Darl for providing them. Then she set to work transcribing kata number one.
She left plenty of room between lines and in the margins so that she could make notes on the impressions gained during her experimentation with this first ritual. She had always found that transcribing a text focused her thoughts in a way that made the content her own.
As she wrote, the ritual formed in her mind. The kata began with the achievement of a meditative state of neutrality and then progressed through a complex visualization. She would envision herself alone within a sea of darkness, expanding outward to infinity in all directions until she was merely a tiny speck at its center.
And into that black sea she would cast tiny pebbles, producing ripples, tiny colored spheres that expanded ever outward. All of these glowing orbs would pass through each other and over her form.
She would conclude the kata by transmitting her own mental images to the closest of the glowing orbs.
Carol shook her head in frustration at the cryptic wording of these aspects of the text. She made a few notes in the transcribed sections that she did not understand. She mentally played back the description of the kata, verifying it against her notes and the original text.
She repeated the process again and again until she knew it by heart.
The distant crowing of a rooster caused Carol to lift her head and look out the window. What time was it? She stood, sending a sharp twinge through her back, and twisted her torso slowly to and fro until the cramp subsided. Then she walked out onto the porch. The canyon was still dark, but a pale orange glow had spread across the eastern sky.
Her eyes felt as if she could not keep them propped open unless she resorted to using small sticks. A gust of cold, predawn air brought gooseflesh to her arms, and she shuddered, a brief but hard shaking that coursed through her body.
Her feet felt like two icicles attached to the bottom of her legs, contrasting sharply with the spot where the elemental brand burned on her shoulder. Since arriving at the vale, she had never felt this tired. Carol collapsed into bed, pulled the heavy quilts around her, and succumbed to a dreamless sleep.
She awoke with a ravenous hunger gnawing at her stomach. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the western window of the cabin, but upon throwing off the covers, she discovered that it held little warmth. She hurriedly donned
her clothes and a thick jacket that she retrieved from her trunk.
She poured a small amount of water from a pitcher into the washbowl, scrubbed her face, and ran a brush through her tangled hair until she felt like a person again instead of some wild beast that had slunk from its lair.
She stepped out onto the porch, the cold wind pulling a gasp from her lips.
Carol walked to the woodpile, grabbed two small logs and several sticks, and carried them back to the hearth. She reached out with her mind and sent fire dancing among the wood, shooting sparks marking where the dried twigs roared to life. She hung her teakettle to boil over the blaze.
When she was finally convinced that she was ready to focus, Carol arose, moved to her desk, lit her study candles, and settled into her chair.
With a series of deep breaths, she centered, taking her mental self to a place she knew well, a place of peace and repose. All thought stilled, she allowed her mind to detach from her physical body and float free. Normally she was suspended in a gray cloud, but now she let that cloud fade to velvet nothingness.
She could see herself standing amidst the blackness, arms extended to the sides and slightly uplifted, palms upward. Her view was perfect in detail, down to the glowing elemental marking on her bare shoulder and her hair that fell in smooth brown swirls down her back.
She was slightly surprised to see that she had chosen a silk garment with pinpoints of light sprinkled liberally across it, the darkness of the gown against the emptiness of space giving the near illusion that Carol’s hands and head floated free of her body.
Her viewpoint drifted around her body, zooming in and out, feeling the vast emptiness of the expanse within which she floated as if it were some thick ebony fog. Carol opened her mind ever wider, visualizing tiny disturbances that spread through the void toward her from a number of points, some close and some far away.
When the first of the expanding spheres rippled across her floating form, she experienced a sudden flash of images, sounds, and feelings that knocked her out of the meditation. She again found herself sitting at the small desk in the near darkness of her cabin.
Carol clenched her fists, angry with herself. When had she last lost focus during a meditation? Was she a novice?
If she had allowed something like that to happen in the midst of casting a spell, even a minor elemental may have been able to possess her. She stood up and walked over to the crackling hearth. She suddenly had the distinct impression that someone was watching her through the window. Carol stepped out through the door. Lights twinkled in the small village of Longsford Watch. The sky had acquired the dark blue of a bruise.
She moved out to the edge of the porch and looked around the corner of the cabin. “Hello?” She received no reply.
Though mindful of her previous premonitions of evil in the vale, she discarded the feeling that someone was watching her and walked back inside.
This time she had difficulty finding her center. She had allowed herself to get flustered to the point where nothing came easily.
She gradually sank back into meditation, taking herself deeper than before, preparing as if she were going to be contesting with a major elemental force. The first attempt at the kata had disturbed her deeply, and she would take no chances.
When the first of the orblike disturbances in the blackness passed over her, she felt something unidentifiable but let it pass by, maintaining the state of a passive external observer to what was happening to the wielder in the center of the maelstrom.
Wave upon wave of glowing spheres rippled across Carol’s form in the blackness, painting it in refracted color amidst mutterings of sound, washes of sensation, and strong emotion. Carol eventually moved her viewpoint much farther from her visualized body until it became a tiny pinpoint of light among the ripples in the void.
While this helped to lessen the torrent of sensations that threatened to end the meditation, the range of feelings became an almost unbearable din.
She visualized a tablet, hoping to use it to filter the sensation storm, only to have it bulge as if it would burst. She looked outward, unable to locate her body in the blackness amidst the multitude of expanding spheres.
Then she saw it, the tiny speck of light that was her body, glowing oh so faintly now. What was it she had meant to do? That hardly mattered. She needed to get farther away from the pinprick being swamped with so many sensations it was bound to explode.
Explode? She looked at the image of the mental tablet, bulging so badly now that it was almost unrecognizable. She marveled vaguely. How could a construct be warped almost beyond recognition?
A sharp pain ripped through the darkness. Carol opened her eyes. She lay on the floor, the small table overturned on top of her. She rubbed at her forehead and felt a warm wetness run down her face to sting her eyes. She must have cut her head in the fall. Carol swam back to alertness. The candle lay overturned on the rug, the fringe of which had caught the flame so that it spread quickly.
She grabbed the near edge of the throw rug and rolled it into a bundle, smothering the growing flames within. Coughing, she staggered to her feet, opened the door, and tossed the rug off the porch. Blood dripped down her nose to fall on her shirt.
She stumbled off her porch. Her head felt like someone had been beating on it with a hammer. Bile rose in her throat, and she fell to her knees in the dirt, retching violently with dry heaves that seemed endless.
At last she was able to rise to her feet and stagger back inside. She poured water from her pitcher into the basin and gently bathed her face. She felt along the cut on her forehead. It was high up in the hairline, shallow and short in length.
She bandaged the head wound with a scarf, stripped off her clothes, and crawled into bed, overcome with a sudden fit of shaking that left her weak. Pulling her blankets up around her, Carol curled into a fetal ball and drifted into a troubled sleep, filled with faint whispers she could not quite make out.
23
Areana’s Vale
YOR 414, Early Autumn
When Carol awoke, she discovered that she was still alive if pain was any indication. She sat up and almost sank back down again as the pounding in her head brought a small gasp to her lips. The grayness of dawn crept through the window above her bed.
Outside the wind howled in a cold fury, rattling the door on its hinges. She trembled and walked into the main room, carefully avoiding glancing in the mirror. The last thing she needed was the sight that her bedraggled form was sure to present.
The small study table and chair lay overturned where she had left them, the candles having rolled some distance across the floor. A small flame still nipped at the remains of the log on the hearth, its charred form diminished to a warped stub of its former self.
She walked outside, ducking into the wind to retrieve several sticks and another small log. She carried the fuel back inside, kicking the door closed behind her. Tossing the wood onto the hearth, she stood with her hands outstretched to the warmth as flames leapt.
“Well, that was a wonderful experience,” she muttered to herself. “I can’t wait to try that again.”
A powerful odor caught her attention, accompanied by a savage hunger and a taste that filled her mouth with saliva. Blood. Then the sensation storm faded into nothingness. She stood alone before the flaming hearth, mystified by what had just happened.
She gazed into the fire, thankful that it had still been going. She was fairly confident that she could not even have managed the casting of the fire spell. Weary to the bone, she felt like she had just awakened from a long illness. Not really hungry, despite what she had felt only moments before, but knowing she needed something to restore her strength, Carol fixed a helping of bread and honey.
Having finished her repast, she felt a little better. By the time she had made her hot-spring bathing trip and dressed for the day, her headache had subsided completely, and she felt human. Examining her face in the mirror, she was pleased to see that the cut was almost i
nvisible in her hairline, although she could feel the knot easily with her hands.
By the time she finished clearing the mess made the previous night, including repairing the burned edge of the throw rug, the sun had crested the rim of the vale, sending thin pale rays through a layer of high clouds.
As she moved past the window facing the porch, her eyes were drawn outside. Was someone watching her? She looked through the window, but apart from a pair of squirrels that stood on their hind legs, peering about nervously, she saw nothing. The duo scampered off as she grabbed her heavy jacket and stepped out.
Her uneasiness was almost certainly an aftereffect of last night’s unsuccessful session. Deciding that the best cure for uneasy, lonely feelings was to visit some of her neighbors, she strolled down the path toward the nearby cabins in Longsford Watch.
Through the trees at the bottom of the hill, she could see the lights in the cabin of her nearest neighbors. Henry and Mary Beth Abercrombie had built a three-room log cabin for themselves and their five girls. Attached to the back, Henry had erected a pen for his pigs and another for the guinea hens that provided fresh eggs for many in the small village. Accompanied by the distant squeals of the pigs, he was busy slopping out their breakfast.
Henry endured hard work providing for such a large family with no sons to help with the heavy chores. Carol shook her head at the man’s lack of understanding of women’s capabilities; she had no doubt that his family would continue to grow until that shortfall was remedied or until the valley overflowed with Abercrombie children.
As she neared the family’s cabin, the pigs seemed to have picked up some of her own nervousness, running around their pen in an odd fashion, high-pitched squeals erupting in chorus.
Henry came around from the front of the house and then, seeing Carol, raised a hand in a cheery wave. He carried his bow in his left hand and wore a quiver of arrows.
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