Ley Lines

by Lisa Lowell

  “Are you doing this, or am I?” she asked awkwardly with one hand shoveling food into her mouth and the other trying to write. She had to turn the page to read his reply, but he finally began to explain, having realized that she would pepper him with questions for the remainder of the night if he didn't explain quickly.

  “You are now a magician. That globe I gave you on the gallows is called a Heart Stone. It is the key to magic in this Land. You are a Wise One, a magician of the Land. There are relatively few people here who can tap into magic here. In fact, you are the third of sixteen who will eventually protect the Land and seal it from outside magic and invasion. As such, you are now going to live forever, but you will have to sacrifice your will to the good of the people. Unlike in other kingdoms, magic here will only flow to those who are naturally gifted for it and who hold to the magic-directed values that only God will allow. That is what the Heart Stone will demand of you. You will find it impossible to even lie or do other evil now. But because of those restrictions, you will be a more powerful magician than in other lands like Marewn, Demion or Malornia. There the magic is widespread but it does not flow freely and one must use spells, demons and blood sacrifice to invoke it. And the magicians there naturally lust for more and more power. It will eventually corrupt them.”

  Gailin watched the gentle etching of lead spreading across the page and wondered at this turn in her life. One day she was going to be hung for magic that wasn't real and the next she found herself with more magical power than she could even comprehend. She set the plate aside and picked up the stylus before Vamilion could continue.

  “Why me?”

  Vamilion must have been hesitating on his side of the correspondence, for his reply did not emerge until after she had finally finished her meal and picked up the stylus again, wondering if he had fallen asleep on the other end.

  “God gave me your name,” Vamilion wrote frankly. “He selected you and I found you. It is how the next Wise One is chosen.”

  That reply left more questions than it answered, but she managed to pare it down to just one at a time. “And why are we writing in this book instead of you telling me this in person? You ran from me.”

  Again Vamilion's reply waited a painfully long time and Gailin feared she would fall asleep before he replied. Finally she almost wanted to turn the book into a pillow, for she could hardly keep her eyes open to read. The moon had set and she had no light or guidance to consider making a lantern. But eventually he replied. “It is best this way. You are tired. We will write again in the morning.”

  Chapter 3 – Compulsion

  How she managed to sleep well into the morning, she never knew, but Gailin woke with the sun bright in her eyes and her muscles sore beyond anything she could remember. She must have run hours yesterday and after the terror of almost being hung and then finding magic was real in her life; well, she could understand if her body forced her to suffer. She must have conjured a blanket for herself, for she brushed off a covering she didn't really remember creating and wondered if it was all a dream. Well, one way to find out.

  She looked at her 'camp' that consisted of the blanket at the base of a dead tree and a book for a pillow. Could she prove that Vamilion and his wondrous promise of magic were real? Could she make herself breakfast without his instruction? Warily, fearing it would not work, she reached out toward the ground and wished a fire into being. Kindling obediently popped out of the ground like dandelions and then collapsed under the weight of heavier wood and then the pile burst into flames. Her smile appeared just as magically.

  The fire was only for comfort. She conjured an already cooked plate of eggs and toast, sat down at her fire to eat it and then considered what she had learned. In a way she knew so little, she felt like she was trying to diagnose someone whose only symptom was a headache. It could be as simple as stress or as deadly as a tumor. She needed to know more to dispel her fear. All the implied power but none of the direction had been forthcoming. Could she really live forever? Was there a consequence to tapping into all this wishing? Why must she not use her name? Why was Vamilion running away from her and yet trying to teach her using the book as a go between? And what were they both fleeing? He had told her to run for her life. Why was that?

  With a full stomach and no direction, Gailin picked up the book, expecting to review the previous night's dialog, but to her surprise, the pages were as white and clear as new-fallen snow once again. One would think her entire encounter with Vamilion was a dream, but for her obvious skill in conjuring. Gailin snatched up her stylus that had not disappeared and began with that question. “Where is everything we wrote last night?” and then launched into a dozen more questions she wanted answered. If Vamilion wasn't going to come and teach her, she would at least act the dutiful student and find answers somehow.

  Suddenly she felt her hand freeze midway through the word she wrote. “Gailin, stop writing,” she heard in her head. Alarmed, she looked up and then saw new words appear below hers.

  “I can't reply while you're writing,” Vamilion wrote. “You have to give me a chance to answer.”

  She had not considered that, and wrote a brief apology and then added “How did you stop me?”

  “That is one of the most dangerous forms of magic. Its name magic. If a magician – any magician- knows your name he can command you to do anything, like forcing you to stop writing. That's why I told you to never use your name again. There are evil magicians we call sorcerers, stalking me…probably you now too, who have enough power to command you to do anything. It's how the Queen of Rivers died.”

  Gailin didn't write anything in reply for she recognized the pause might be that Vamilion was upset with that statement. When he continued, his hand looked a little unsteady and his handwriting grew smaller, tighter. “She was the second Wise One. Owailion, the first Wise One did not know about name magic and so didn't warn her to protect her name. The sorcerers on the other side of the Seal heard her name and used it to manipulate her. Eventually she used name magic on herself and commanded herself to die rather than harm the Land and the people she loved. It was some of her final magic that broke the Seal in the first place. Either that or the last command she obeyed was to break the Seal which opened the Land to immigration…and invasion by foreign magic.”

  A sense of panic began to sink down Gailin's spine. “Can you help me avoid that? Everyone in the village knows my name. My grandmother, she's not well and she's probably alone. I must go to help her.”

  “No, you cannot go back.” Vamilion must have felt her panic and pain, for he continued almost immediately. “But yes, I can help you. I can help you build your mind into a fortress. After the skill of conjuring, shielding out minds while reading others, it's our most fundamental magical skill. It's vital to protect your thoughts from manipulation by this evil. There was one of those sorcerers at the hanging yesterday. I'm afraid that's why I ran. I had hoped that he would follow me and not even realize that you were also a Wise One at that point. It failed, but it was worth a try.”

  “So why are you still running? Can you go and help my grandmother, if I cannot?” Gailin wrote frantically.

  She waited for Vamilion's reply but the white page remained blank and she grew impatient. “You know I will just go myself. One or the other of us must go see to my grandmother and she knows me.”

  “Don't manipulate me, woman.”

  The words practically growled at her from the page and she suspected he was speaking in her head again, for she felt his frustration with this dilemma. Reluctantly she waited for him to think about what she had said. Of course someone needed to go tend to her grandmother. If there was a sorcerer out there seeking for the both of them and Gailin's name was free out in the wind, something must be done. She had no idea how magic might help her grandmother but she suspected Vamilion did. She wanted to know what he was thinking. Could she listen in on his thoughts too?

  Feeling her way through the book, Gailin let her mind wander,
imagining Vamilion as a stranger; dark haired and mysterious, huddled under a tree in the deepest depth of the forest with a book in his lap but his mind far away as he considered the possibilities. She felt drawn to him and wondered if her imagination had tapped into the truth of him. She daydreamed his real voice would be the same as his mental one; gravely and comfortable with the pain behind the words. It wasn't a soothing thought. Little knowing what she was doing, she crafted this new magical link, reaching out, hoping she would at least hear something.

  “If I go,” Vamilion thought, “I will have to battle him and there will be time in a fight. It will only take a just a snap of thought to kill her. But if I let her go to tend her grandmother, the sorcerer might sense the magic on her. Can I teach her to protect herself enough to not seem magical and maybe he won't suspect what she really is? He won't even think to manipulate her. Can she learn that much magic without more intense training? She'll need to learn it eventually, but then I'll have to get close. I cannot avoid the compulsion if I get close enough to teach her. How many years can she endure without training? Could I get Owailion to train her instead? And that still leaves her grandmother.”

  Gailin couldn't resist adding her own thought. “If I didn't use magic, just went home like nothing happened, would any sorcerer even know who I was?”

  “!”

  Something hard and blank slammed up in front of Gailin's startled imagination. All she could sense out in the forest was a wall, high and forbidding. Unfazed, she picked up the stylus and wrote in terse words back. “What was that?”

  She had to wait for the slow, tedious words to arrive on the page, but at least he was willing to reply. “That was what I intended to teach you next; me blocking you out. You must not listen into my mind and I won't listen into yours unless you allow me access. It's dangerous ….and rude.”

  She sighed before she replied. “I can understand that it is rude, and I'm sorry. But why would listening to your thoughts be dangerous as well?”

  This answer took more time than she expected. They were allies weren't they?

  “Yes, we are more than allies, but…” he wrote, and she realized he had listened into her mental comments again. “But it will become a compulsion.”

  And again there came the pause, as if he had to consider his words with such care that he almost did not dare trust the book with them. Eventually he wrote and she wished suddenly that she could read his body language and hear his actual words to judge why this came so painfully.

  “The compulsion is magical. You will be drawn to love me and I will have no choice but to love you as well. It is natural in Wise One magic, but it is also wrong that you will not have the freedom to choose for yourself. If we don't formally meet, my hope is that the compulsion will not be as strong, or as immediate and we can resist it.”

  “That's another reason I ran,” he continued. “I fled you, and I'm sorry. Gailin, you deserve to have the freedom to pick your life, as far as the magic will allow. I was given no choice about becoming a magician and neither were you really. If I had the chance to stop that hanging and discuss what would happen to your life before I gave you the Heart Stone, turning you into a magician, you might have chosen a normal life instead. I couldn't give you that choice. So now I will fight for whatever other choices are left: your loves, for example. The compulsion to help people, the drive to go Seeking your gifts, that cannot be stopped now. Even the inspired ideas on how to handle difficult situations come from magic. We are called Wise Ones because of these compulsions, but at least in your loves, you should still have some choice.”

  Gailin had no words for that reply. Vamilion sounded so unhappy with the all that power. Why would it be such a miserable life, helping people and wandering magically through the wonders of the Land? What adventures must he have enjoyed? He could live forever and could have anything he wanted.

  “Except Paget,” he wrote.

  Again he had listened to her thoughts rather than the words she had not written as she considered his dilemma.

  “Paget?”

  “She is my wife. She came with me to the Land, along with our two children. When Owailion met us at the Breaking of the Seal he didn't explain any of this to me. He didn't have any time as we were under attack. I took the Heart Stone thinking it would help us, but instead it is tearing us apart. Paget is essentially old enough to be my mother now and continues to age while I stay the way I was that day over thirty years ago. Paget ages, gets sick and even bored despite all I can give her because I have to hide her away lest the sorcerers and demons I deal with harm her. She also knows about the compulsion that will draw me to another magician and she knows that someday I would meet someone else…meet you and would be drawn and…”

  Gailin waited for the words to continue, but they didn't and she felt her own way through what he was trying not to say. “And you want to remain faithful to her?”

  She could almost hear his sigh of regret. “Yes, fidelity is part of the make-up of all Wise Ones. We are essentially good people, not tempted or corrupted by the power we are given. That is why it is so rare a gift. However, it brings with it pain. Paget knows this and while she trusts me, my children have grown and left us, bitter at the awkward thought that I am younger than they are. They realize I have no way to stop her dying eventually. Paget has made hints that I should leave her and go Seek as the compulsion demands. Sometimes I give in. For example, I couldn't resist the itch to come and find you before you were hung, but I will still go back to her and watch over her as she slowly ages and dies in my arms.”

  For the longest time Gailin could think of nothing to reply and didn't dare reach her mind out in case he had let down the wall he had created around his thoughts and she would hear the pain there. So she had discovered that although the magic seemed ultimately powerful, drawbacks abounded. She could not imagine what he was feeling, but she sensed that she would be weeping for him if she knew him just a little bit better. She would want to comfort him and….and was that the compulsion of which he spoke? If so, she swallowed a shiver of fear. She hadn't officially set eyes on the man and already she wanted to comfort him and somehow ease his burden. What a powerful spell. What would it be like when they finally met formally? Or was this desire to help just a general thing, meant for all the people she encountered now? In any case she must break the spell and encourage her mentor to teach her more.

  Carefully she scratched out a few more words. “It's probably good for me to learn how to block thoughts, isn't it?”

  It took him a bit before he had gathered himself to reply. “Yes, that's for the best. Normally we would do this with me trying to get past your barrier but I don't think that's wise right at this point. So let's try with you getting past my shields and you'll learn from that how to craft shields for yourself.”

  They spent the remainder of the morning working from that distance on shielding the mind from magical invasion. Gailin learned how to protect herself behind a wall that didn't seem magical, but might have been purely instinct and how to project her voice into the mind of others. This second skill, while valuable, would not be safe if she intended to go back to her house. What if she found a sorcerer there waiting for her? She had to appear, at least on the surface, as only somewhat gifted, like the minor sorcerers in Marewn or the untrained, apprentice magicians in Demonia who had not yet bonded with demons that would enhance their gift.

  “You will encounter many different levels of magic, from many sources. It is better to know about them and be able to observe their motives, weaknesses and strengths without being judged for yourself as a magician. A good solid shield will protect you without seeming overtly magical. In fact some non-magical people have shielded thoughts. It will be naturally what anyone who wants to protect their name would use. Watch them and then let the Wise One instincts guide your decisions,” Vamilion assured her.

  “Well, right now my instincts are telling me to go home. Is that right, or is this the compulsion speaking?
” she wrote back.

  “There are different types of compulsion too. As a Wise One the good instincts, to help and be of service, are clean and while you might not know their cause, you will not feel duress if you fight them. It's almost like hunger. You want to do something about it but you can wait and resist if you are willing to ignore the itch. On the other hand, a magically demanding compulsion, like your name being invoked feels…like…I don't know, now that I think about it. How did you feel when I told you to run for your life?”

  “Like I couldn't resist, that I had no choice in the matter. I couldn't stop unless I died.”

  “Exactly,” Vamilion replied. “If you have no choice, it is magically driven and not your Wise One instincts. No other magic in this world will give you a choice, but the compulsion of the Wise Ones…”

  “Even the one that will draw us toward each other?” she asked carefully.

  “Yes, that too can be resisted. Owailion still feels his compulsion toward his wife, the Queen of Rivers I told you about, but he is resisting it. He would just as easily do what she did; speak his true name, if he knows it, and command himself to die. But he resists. It makes him irritable and not very friendly, but he resists.”

  “What other compulsions have you experienced,” she asked, eagerly, hoping for something that wasn't so grim.

  “Well, I've already told you of the drive to help others. Then there is the compulsion to go Seeking. There are Talismans of our power that have been hidden throughout the Land. We alone can find and use them. I have a rock pick and a sword that were hidden, waiting for me in the mountains. They have magical gifts as well as their strength that I have used to help settle the Land and drive off evil magic. Also, my yearnings are for the mountains and stone; that also might be considered a compulsion. We call it an affinity. The earth speaks to me and I am drawn to its power. I feel its pain when it quakes and I go and comfort the mountains. And so I am called the King of Mountains.”