Elizabeth shook her head. “Nothing of the sort.
Water is all around you; in the ground beneath your feet, in the air—good
heavens,
especially
in the air around here!” She laughed, and
Marina giggled nervously. “You would be hard pressed to isolate yourself
from a single element; even in the heart of the driest desert on earth there is
water somewhere, if only in your own body. Each element has a sphere in which
it can
dominate,
but none can be eliminated. Now, I assume you know
how to recognize the energy of Water?”
Marina nodded.
“Good. Then call upon your inner eye, and watch what
I do.”
Marina clasped her hands in her lap and let fall the guard
she usually kept on that sense that Thomas called Sight, but which was so much
more than merely seeing beyond the material world. And the moment she did so,
she was aware that the room was alive with energies.
The golds and browns of Earth Magic and the reds of Fire
invested the shields around them, forming an ever-changing tapestry of moving
color, scent, taste, and sensation. Earth magic had a special scent to Marina,
of soil freshly-turned by the plow; its taste, rich and smooth,
vanilla-flavored cream. And it seemed to wrap her in warm fur. Whereas Fire
tasted of cinnamon, smelled of smoke, and felt like the sun on her skin just
before she was about to be sunburned.
Water, though, smelled exactly like the air the moment
before it was about to rain, mingled with new-mown hay; it tasted of all the
waters of the world, faintly sweet and cool, and it felt exactly like chilled
silk sliding across her bare arms. In color it was every shade of green there
had ever been, from the tender, yellow-green of unfolding leaves, to the deep black-green
of ancient pines in a thunderstorm. This was what she saw now, investing the
very air of the room, condensing out of it like fog, or like her breath on a
frosty morning, or a cloud blooming overhead in the sky. Tender threads, tiny
tendrils of it, coalescing out of nowhere, each one a different shade of green;
they sprang up and flowed toward Elizabeth, joining thread to thread to make
cords, streams, all of them flowing to her and into her, and she began to glow
with the growing power she had gathered into herself.
“Oh, my!” Marina breathed. But she wasn’t
going to just sit there and admire—Elizabeth had said to watch what the
older woman was doing, and she set herself to finding out just
how
Elizabeth was doing this.
It took some time of studying and puzzling before she
figured it out.
The clue was in what Elizabeth had said earlier, that the
energy was everywhere. It
was,
and it could be coaxed into a more
coherent form by application of the energies of her own mind, the ones that
Uncle Thomas had already taught her how to use.
“You see?” Elizabeth said softly, and she
nodded. “Good.” Abruptly the older woman stopped gathering in the
energies and looked at her pupil expectantly. “Now you try it.”
Knowing how it was done and doing it herself were two
different things… akin to the difference between knowing how to ride a
horse and actually staying on its back. But this was what she’d wanted,
wasn’t it?
Be careful what you ask for,
she reminded herself
ruefully, and set to work.
And
work
it certainly was. Elizabeth made it look
so effortless, but compared with dipping energy out of the aura of a
free-flowing stream, a spring, or a deep well, it was anything but effortless.
Exhausting was more like it. It took a peculiar combination
of relaxation and concentration that was infernally hard to master, and by the
time she had managed to coax the first tentative tendrils of power out of the
aether, she was limp with fatigue.
“That will do for now,” Elizabeth said, and she
let the burgeoning streamlets go with no little relief. “Luncheon, I
think; then a little rest for both of us, perhaps an hour or so, and we’ll
start again.”
So
soon?
she thought with concealed dismay. Uncle
Thomas had
Water is all around you; in the ground beneath your feet, in the air—good
heavens,
especially
in the air around here!” She laughed, and
Marina giggled nervously. “You would be hard pressed to isolate yourself
from a single element; even in the heart of the driest desert on earth there is
water somewhere, if only in your own body. Each element has a sphere in which
it can
dominate,
but none can be eliminated. Now, I assume you know
how to recognize the energy of Water?”
Marina nodded.
“Good. Then call upon your inner eye, and watch what
I do.”
Marina clasped her hands in her lap and let fall the guard
she usually kept on that sense that Thomas called Sight, but which was so much
more than merely seeing beyond the material world. And the moment she did so,
she was aware that the room was alive with energies.
The golds and browns of Earth Magic and the reds of Fire
invested the shields around them, forming an ever-changing tapestry of moving
color, scent, taste, and sensation. Earth magic had a special scent to Marina,
of soil freshly-turned by the plow; its taste, rich and smooth,
vanilla-flavored cream. And it seemed to wrap her in warm fur. Whereas Fire
tasted of cinnamon, smelled of smoke, and felt like the sun on her skin just
before she was about to be sunburned.
Water, though, smelled exactly like the air the moment
before it was about to rain, mingled with new-mown hay; it tasted of all the
waters of the world, faintly sweet and cool, and it felt exactly like chilled
silk sliding across her bare arms. In color it was every shade of green there
had ever been, from the tender, yellow-green of unfolding leaves, to the deep black-green
of ancient pines in a thunderstorm. This was what she saw now, investing the
very air of the room, condensing out of it like fog, or like her breath on a
frosty morning, or a cloud blooming overhead in the sky. Tender threads, tiny
tendrils of it, coalescing out of nowhere, each one a different shade of green;
they sprang up and flowed toward Elizabeth, joining thread to thread to make
cords, streams, all of them flowing to her and into her, and she began to glow
with the growing power she had gathered into herself.
“Oh, my!” Marina breathed. But she wasn’t
going to just sit there and admire—Elizabeth had said to watch what the
older woman was doing, and she set herself to finding out just
how
Elizabeth was doing this.
It took some time of studying and puzzling before she
figured it out.
The clue was in what Elizabeth had said earlier, that the
energy was everywhere. It
was,
and it could be coaxed into a more
coherent form by application of the energies of her own mind, the ones that
Uncle Thomas had already taught her how to use.
“You see?” Elizabeth said softly, and she
nodded. “Good.” Abruptly the older woman stopped gathering in the
energies and looked at her pupil expectantly. “Now you try it.”
Knowing how it was done and doing it herself were two
different things… akin to the difference between knowing how to ride a
horse and actually staying on its back. But this was what she’d wanted,
wasn’t it?
Be careful what you ask for,
she reminded herself
ruefully, and set to work.
And
work
it certainly was. Elizabeth made it look
so effortless, but compared with dipping energy out of the aura of a
free-flowing stream, a spring, or a deep well, it was anything but effortless.
Exhausting was more like it. It took a peculiar combination
of relaxation and concentration that was infernally hard to master, and by the
time she had managed to coax the first tentative tendrils of power out of the
aether, she was limp with fatigue.
“That will do for now,” Elizabeth said, and she
let the burgeoning streamlets go with no little relief. “Luncheon, I
think; then a little rest for both of us, perhaps an hour or so, and we’ll
start again.”
So
soon?
she thought with concealed dismay. Uncle
Thomas had
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