A long while later, the animal woke, stood up and walked around the room on legs slightly longer than they had been before. To Rielle’s relief, he did not seem bothered by his sudden new height. She marvelled at how little time it had taken to learn this compared to how long it had taken her to grasp how her leg muscle worked. Thinking about that simple task, it was suddenly clear she had come a long way since the lessons had begun. So what would it take to finish them?
She expected Dahli to return soon after, but he did not. The animal was hungry, making her aware of her own grumbling stomach. To keep them both distracted, Rielle played with her small companion, laughing at the grunting noise he made when excited, and the rumbling sound of contentment when his belly was scratched.
Sleepiness was compelling her to lie down when the door finally opened. Dahli gave the animal a measuring look, then set down his usual delivery of food and necessities. He caught the animal in mid-dash for the meal.
“Eat,” he said, struggling to hold a wriggling, hungry beast. “I will return.”
When he did, he sat down on the floor, which he’d not done before. She looked at him closely, wondering what this signified. A line had appeared between his eyebrows. His mouth was thin, lips pressed together tightly. He had the air of someone about to deliver bad news.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
He blinked, then shook his head. “Nothing. Or rather, nothing you need worry about. There is always something happening out in the worlds.” His tone was dry. He straightened and met her gaze. “Now begins the final lesson. There are three parts to this. First, you undo the damage of ageing within your body. Ironically, this would be easier if you were older, when the signs of ageing are obvious. But you are old enough that some parts of you will not be functioning as well as they could be.
“Second, you find and memorise the pattern you wish to return to. Ageing, as I have explained, is a natural process. It is your body not healing perfectly in countless ways over time. It is also not always accurate when it reverts to your original pattern after you change it, too. Changing and reverting over and over will speed up the process of ageing, so it is better to change once and maintain it.
“Third, you learn the secret to maintaining it. Changing your whole body requires awareness and understanding that is not normally achievable by the human mind. It is not a state that allows you to do anything else that requires focus, whether that be using magic or simply conversing with someone.”
Dahli leaned forward, his gaze unwavering. “The secret of agelessness is this: you change your mind into one that is capable of unconsciously maintaining a youthful state.”
Rielle let out a soft “ah”. It was so obvious, now that she knew. She almost felt foolish for not having guessed how it was done. But the more she’d progressed the less time she’d had to consider the possibilities of what she’d learned before concentrating on the next lesson.
Dahli straightened and smiled. “So: let’s begin with the first part. We will move on to the second and third without pause or rest. In my limited experience, it has to be done that way, but I may be wrong, so do not panic if we do stop. Now, focus your attention on your body.”
She closed her eyes and, as he guided her, looked at the places he said she’d find the earliest signs of ageing. It was impossible, once aware of them, to resist fixing the damage. Though she still considered herself a young woman, the evidence suggested otherwise and that appalled her. Perhaps she would not have been so dismayed if she’d had a much older woman to compare herself to.
Perhaps I will always feel younger than I am. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. It would be sad to be the opposite.
As she moved here and there, tweaking this and correcting that, a sense of her overall state grew until she began to fix damaged areas before Dahli alerted her to them. As she did, a sense of well-being spread through her body.
“Stop for now,” Dahli interrupted. “That is enough. We must move on to the second part of the process. You must gain an awareness of your whole body, in its entirety. Start with a part of it. Refine your knowledge of that part by examining the details. Try to hold on to your awareness of those as well. When you have, take in another part, and another.”
She obeyed, focusing on her foot. It did not take long before her understanding of one part of it slipped away as she tried to incorporate another. She returned to the first only to lose the second.
Dahli chuckled at her frustration. “You see? There is too much for an ordinary mind to grasp. But you can, if you use magic to make your mind capable of it. It will take a great deal of magic, so don’t use it sparingly–and don’t worry about depleting the magic of this world as there is plenty here.”
As when she had enhanced her awareness of her leg muscle at the beginning, now she willed her mind to improve its ability to grasp more and more of her body’s pattern. Her awareness slowly expanded, but soon its growth began to slow.
“You have reached your body’s limit,” Dahli told her. “Your mind can only be enhanced beyond this by turning the rest of your body to the task, and that would be a mistake since without organs such as the lungs and stomach your mind would soon die. So instead of using bodily matter, use magic. Bring it close around you. Imprint it with your living consciousness.”
He wanted her to use magic to think. Holding that information in her thoughts, she reached for more magic. Her perception shifted. Suddenly she was more than the physical vessel she existed in. She began to understand a great deal about it that she hadn’t before. Dahli did not tell her to stop, so she continued expanding her awareness until there was nothing more of her self to grasp.
In that state, she knew that her mind was just another physical system. Everything she was, was made of meat and sinew and bones and liquid.
This is me, she thought. It was humbling, disappointing and a little frightening. I feel like more than this. More than a pile of body parts. Somehow this collection of basic elements combined and interacted to form emotion and intelligence and creativity and morality.
And where, in all this, is my soul?
Perhaps it made sense that she had not found it. The soul was a non-physical thing. A non-magical thing, too. It would have been nice to see proof of its existence and know what state it was in. To see if it was stained, as the priests of her world believed.
“Make the change,” Dahli murmured.
Her attention snapped back to the task. She saw that while she could not keep this awareness of her body without using a great deal of magic, a few physical alterations would allow her to unconsciously maintain its current altered state. This holding of pattern took the tiniest bit of magic, compared to what she’d needed to grasp how to do it.
In moments it was done. The solution was so simple and so quick that she hovered there in that state of awareness, a little scared that she had got it wrong.
“You have done it,” Dahli said. “You are now ageless.”
She opened her eyes and stared at Dahli in astonishment.
“I really did it? After all the trouble I’ve had learning everything else?”
“Yes.”
She paused to relish the simple pleasure of success. Why had she learned pattern shifting so easily, when she had been so bad at everything else?
“How long have I been here?”
Dahli smiled. “Ninety-four days.”
Her satisfaction evaporated. “That long?”
He chuckled. “It usually takes much longer. Sometimes more than a cycle. Pattern shifting requires a teacher with plenty of time on his hands.” His smile was a touch smug, and she remembered he’d never taught pattern shifting before. “Welcome to the ranks of the ageless.”
That sent a shiver down her spine. He had given her–trusted her with–a rare and powerful knowledge.
“Thank you.”
Extending his legs, he stretched them. “It is Valhan you should thank.”
Valhan. Who had been ageless for o
ver a thousand cycles. Would she live that long? Were some other ageless that old, or had all but Valhan died, either from accidents or at the hands of others–or perhaps some had simply grown tired of living and arranged their own deaths.
Dahli started to get up. “Though before you can thank him we have a long walk back to the palace,” he added. “So we had best make a start.”
CHAPTER 21
“I’ve not felt a vibration since I’ve been down here,” Rielle said as they began walking. “Is that because we are so far from the palace?”
“Yes.” The crease between Dahli’s brows deepened.
“Surely he’d skim here to find you, if he needed you.”
He gave her a direct and accusing look.
“No, I haven’t read your mind,” she retorted. “You know that. Unless you’re being polite now, and not reading mine.”
His expression softened. “No, I know you haven’t. My reaction is merely a reflex. And this reminds me…” He sighed. “You may block your mind again now.”
Rielle rebuilt the defences around her mind, wondering if she had imagined the reluctance in his manner. For countless days he’d seen all her thoughts, while she had continued to avoid reading his–despite the temptation to go looking for it during times of great boredom, loneliness and anxiety. He knew a great deal about her now, but still she knew nothing more about him.
I feel like he owes me a look into his mind now. But that’s not true or fair. Nobody owes anyone that.
Yet having trusted him with her thoughts made her want something equally intimate from him in return. Or maybe there is something more to it. She looked at him sidelong. I wonder… if he was interested in being more than friends, would I be willing? He was good-looking and charming. But then, Baluka had been as well. Do I love Dahli? She shook her head. Not right now. Maybe I will one day, but this time I won’t be making any promises until I’m sure.
They entered a circular stairwell spiralling into darkness. Dahli had insisted that they could not skim to the place she was to learn pattern shifting. Back when I was mortal. Not wanting to walk beside the abyss, Rielle followed behind Dahli. His light cast his shadow on the stair before her, so she reached for magic to create a light…
… and found none. Her senses flew wide instinctively, searching for the edge of the Stain. When she finally found it she had stretched almost all the way around the world. The small remaining patch of magic was spreading into the edges of the void, rapidly thinning in strength as it did.
Looking at Dahli, she saw no constant radiating lines of Stain bursting out around him. Suddenly she understood why he, and Valhan, had always done this. They were constantly, unconsciously drawing magic to prevent ageing. She would be doing it too, if she hadn’t been using a small store of leftover magic from her last lesson.
“Dahli. Where has all the magic gone?”
He chuckled. “You used it.”
“In pattern shifting?”
“In enhancing your mind enough to be able to alter it.”
“You said I should draw as much as I needed because there was plenty of magic here.”
“Yes. There was.” He chuckled, unconcerned. “If I’d told you that you’d probably strip this world you would have been distracted, wondering if you’d run out.”
“But… I have ruined Valhan’s world!”
He glanced back at her and smiled. “No, you haven’t.”
The world could recover, she realised. More magic could always be generated. Perhaps Valhan intended her to replace the magic when she began creating again. She wondered how often this has happened before. Once for every ageless sorcerer, at least.
“What happens if there isn’t enough magic in a world to alter a sorcerer’s mind?”
“The sorcerer fails.”
“And the world he is in?”
“Stripped bare.”
“So he or she would be mortal and trapped.”
“It is thought to be one of the reasons why worlds that were well supplied with magic suddenly become dead worlds.” He’d reached the bottom of the stairwell. Rielle joined him in the wide passage beyond. “This is one of the reasons why Valhan forbids the teaching of pattern shifting. Failure can be very destructive.”
“Could that be the reason why my world was so lacking in magic?”
Dahli shook his head. “It is more likely the battle in your world’s past that bled it dry. War is an even more common cause of dead worlds. It is another calamity Valhan tries to avoid.”
“But he’s led people into war before. He showed me the results of one of them.”
“Sometimes war is unavoidable. When it is, Valhan tries to ensure no worlds suffer such a fate.”
“I guess so long as there are people within them creating magic, worlds will not stay dead for ever. And if they contain Makers they will recover faster.”
“Yes.” He gave her a wary look, then his face relaxed.
“What is it?”
“You look a little different. Not in a bad way, I should add.”
She smiled, and resisted the temptation to touch her face.
“It is possible that when you return to your room you will be startled, even discomfited, by the change,” Dahli warned. “If you do not identify with the face and body you see you may unconsciously age yourself again to return to what is familiar.”
“Oh.” She grimaced. “So it’s good that I wasn’t much older when I learned this. It would be a greater shock if I was used to seeing wrinkles.”
“Yes, but you may also find you start to look more than just younger.” His expression turned grim. “All sorcerers tend to grow more attractive.”
She grinned. “I guess everyone is their own most savage critic.” Then she sucked in a quick breath as she realised what this meant. “So Valhan did not always look like that? Wait–the statue! He still looks like it and you said it was very old. If he changed his appearance, he’s been happy with it for a long time now, right?”
Dahli sighed. “You can’t assume that.”
“Isn’t he? Surely if he wasn’t, he’d change it.”
“It’s not that simple. When you can see into other people’s minds you can see how they perceive you. Their opinion is influenced by their own likes and dislikes–and prejudices. If you lived in a world of people who, for instance, thought blue eyes were more beautiful and indicated higher intelligence or status, you might change your eye colour unconsciously to please them–or to gain trust, or influence, or anonymity.”
“I see. Valhan has high expectations to meet, so he changes to meet them. But people wouldn’t recognise him if he didn’t resemble the portraits of him around the worlds.”
“When he no longer needs to conform to a short-term expectation he returns to his better-known appearance. Yet that, too, would evolve if he didn’t have a way to remind himself of what it is.”
“So how does he do… ah! You said he visits the statue. It’s not vanity, he’s reminding himself of how he should look.”
“More or less. Obviously, he isn’t made of stone.”
“And he has you and his other ageless friends who remember how he should look.”
Dahli winced. “To a point. We, too, have likes and dislikes that influence him.”
A shiver ran down her spine. “Have I influenced how he looks?”
“A little.” Dahli sighed.
“How?”
He shook his head. “You still think of him as… what did you call it?”
Her chest tightened. “An Angel.”
She sighed. So the Angelic qualities she still saw in Valhan were of her own making. That disappointed her more than it ought to, perhaps because it meant the portrait in Lord Felomar’s collection might be more accurate. If those cold eyes were closer to the true Valhan, she ought to be afraid of him. But then, it could have been the influence of the artist.
Not that an artist doesn’t already have an influence. The accuracy of a portrait relied on their s
kill. Not only could their feelings be expressed in a painting, but they aimed to capture the sitter’s personality. Which raised an interesting question.
“Can other people’s likes and dislikes change an ageless sorcerer’s temperament, as well?”
Dahli’s eyebrows rose. “A little, but not so easily as their appearance, and perhaps no more than being with another person does anyway.” He shrugged. “I would not worry too much about it. I recommend you leave portraits of yourself in many worlds, so that you can return to the appearance you most identify with, however.”
Rielle nodded. So being ageless wasn’t without some drawbacks, she mused. Compared to growing old and dying, it was a minor problem. But minor problems could become major ones. Until she had time to think about the possible consequences she would not dismiss this one entirely.
I thought I would only need to preserve how I am now, not resist the influence of others. If I don’t, how much alteration would it take before I am no longer me?
How much before she was no longer human?
And if not human, what would I be?
She pondered that thought for a long time, Dahli remaining silent to give her the space to do so. Then he began to tell her of moments in his life when he’d most felt the impacts of not ageing, and gave her advice on how to minimise the drawbacks. She’d guessed that seeing people she loved grow old and die would be a great source of sadness, but it sounded like the greater struggle was one of acceptance and belonging. A person’s outlook changed as they grew older and they tended to gravitate towards others like them. It did not take long before an ageless person had little in common with both the younger generation, who found them too “old” in their ways, and older people, whose choices were often motivated by an awareness of their shrinking future.
They had been silent for some time, Rielle lost in her thoughts, when Dahli suddenly spoke.
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