The Last Orellen

Tomas Orellen was not taking Kalen’s declaration that he would be traveling to the Archipelago very seriously. He seemed to think, as the people at the Office of the Post had, that trying to get there was the same as trying to leave the world altogether.

Rather than forcing an argument, though, Kalen allowed him to declare that they would “discuss the matter” when they had no other option. The mage could still come. In two days time, if she did, Tomas thought he might be able to persuade the group to take Kalen along with them all. They would be heading far to the south, below the Ossumun Empire and beyond its reach. And they would be nearer to the continent’s eastern coast, though Tomas didn’t give the name of the specific city.

It suited Kalen’s needs well enough, but…

“I would rather not meet the others,” he quietly admitted, as Tomas pulled him onto his feet in the middle of the ward circle. “I don’t want anyone but you to know what I am. But I shouldn’t stay here if I don’t have to, so I guess if it’s the only way— ”

“I don’t particularly want to introduce you to everyone either,” the older boy said. “If you think you can bear it, I’m tempted to stuff you in a barrel or a crate and say you’re something heavy I bought for myself.”

He shook his head, as if the idea were ridiculous, but Kalen thought it was brilliant.

“That’s what you should do!”

“Oh..well…”

“I would be so still and quiet. They would never know! And I don’t weigh much.”

Tomas gave him a nervous smile. “Maybe? I think us getting caught with you hidden in that way would make everyone very unhappy, but…it might be the better plan in the end. It’s a full portal we’ll be doing instead of a sending, so it’s not like there’s a reason for them to object to me bringing extra baggage. Let me worry about that. For now, I promised you a spell! You should take your casting posture.”

“You mean just stand up straight?”

Tomas looked briefly confused, then he said, “I suppose that is more of a thing you learn directly from a teacher instead of a book.”

Have I been doing something wrong all this time? Kalen had always known he must have been making a multitude of mistakes, but it was still embarrassing to think that he wasn’t even standing in place correctly. “Is there some special way—?

“No, it’s fine! People grow out of using them anyway. It’s just to help young practitioners focus. If you haven’t been doing it, you don’t have to start now.”

“Teach it to me.”

“It’s nothing imp—”

“I want to know everything you do,” Kalen said firmly. “Absolutely everything. I know I’m starting from far behind. And I’m twelve. And I’m too old—”

“Who told you that?” Tomas interrupted. “Gray hairs can learn magic if they want.”

“I have a book called Theoretical Advancements of the Fourth Age, and it says if you don’t start casting properly aligned spells before you’re my age, then you’re never going to amount to much.”

Tomas stared down at him. The expression on his face was one that Kalen couldn’t define, but it made him look much more adult than he usually did. Finally, he said, “I’ve been told by some teachers in the past that my education is pathetic, compared to what it should have been. And that I wouldn’t amount to much because of it. But you can’t help what you don’t have, can you? So there’s no point in worrying that you might be ruined for life when you’re only twelve.”

“You said I had to learn to read as soon as possible,” said Kalen. “But I didn’t start until I was seven or eight. And then—”

“I was stupid back then. I thought the whole world was like the Enclave when almost none of it is. Learning to read is an achievement. Learning to cast on your own just from books is even more of one. It’s much harder without someone pushing you toward it. Those first couple of years after we evacuated I couldn’t make myself care enough to try anything new unless a tutor was standing over me.”

Kalen couldn’t imagine. The more difficult things were, the more he wanted to hide inside his books.

“But,” said Tomas, “I did have a formal and highly structured education until I was nine. Our family was known for its schooling. It was serious and regimented, especially if they thought someone had high potential. They didn’t think that about me, but given who my father was, and the skill some of my siblings showed, they all pretended to for a while. So if you want to know everything—”

“I do,” Kalen interrupted.

Tomas grinned. “Then I’ll pretend to be one of those mean teachers who insists on flawless form. Here. Let me arrange you.”

Kalen was supposed to stand with his knees loose, his hips squared, his toes “reaching through the bottom of his shoes toward the ground.” His breaths should be measured and slow.

“When we were little and they were teaching us this, they made getting it wrong seem like a crime against magic itself. But what really matters about it is the fact that if you always perform a memorized pattern of actions before you cast, then the ritual becomes a signal to your mind that it’s time to let go of the world around you and focus on your pathways.”

“Do you do it still?”

“When I’m trying something difficult or new. Or when I’m in a bad mood and need to cast anyway.”

Tomas reached for Kalen’s shoulders and straightened them. “Now this is where our standing posture starts to look different from the ones a lot of families use. Head up, eyes forward, elbows in, and hands at the ready is the usual. Because most practitioners expect to be using their eyes to find whatever they’re going to cast a spell at. Our eyes only get in our way, so we close them.”

Kalen shut his eyes.

“It’s been a while since my first lessons,” Tomas said, pressing on the top of Kalen’s head gently until he bent his neck toward his chest. The older boy’s clothes smelled strange this close up, as if they’d been stored in a musty chest that was also heavily perfumed. “I’ve gotten so used to the way I do things, and I hardly ever think about how other people experience their magic. Do you sense your pathways as if they’re spread out on a page in front of you or as if they’re within your body?”

There are options?

“The second,” Kalen said. “But when I’m focused on my pathways, my body isn’t really that important. I feel like I’ve gone inside myself, but I can’t say, ‘Oh this pathway is near my arm and that other one is near my leg.’ That would be stupid.”

“That’s good. A lot of people actually do feel like a given pathway is associated with a certain body part, though. Some practitioners think that’s the best thing, but our family tried to train everyone out of it. They say the ideal for spatial affinities is to have a sense of your pathways as lines within you that flow out into the world around you.”

“I can do that.”

“Let your arms hang loose at your sides, cup your hands slightly, and don’t worry about reimagining your personal mana structure right now. That’s a months-long project if you want to try, not one for a single morning. I don’t have any of our family’s nucleic maps to show you. I could draw my own, but I feel like we should be able to identify your starting pathway just by sensation. We don’t have to do it before trying the spell, but learning the name of your strongest pathway is a rite of passage.”

This is that thing the mage book keeps talking about, Kalen thought, excitement welling inside him. Pathways have names and when you know the names of them you can use the proper ones to cast your spells better.

“By the way…” Tomas said, voice suddenly uncertain, “I’m just assuming you’re a spatialist because I am and almost all of my brothers and sisters are. The family thought Iven would father several luck practitioners if he married mother, but the Orellen line breeds truer than they hoped. So you’re probably one of us, but if you do have some other affinity, then I won’t be able to teach you the spell I have in mind. I’ll teach you something else instead to make up for it, so don’t be disappointed.”

Kalen opened his eyes and lifted his head in surprise. “Why wouldn’t it work? It’s only a beginner spell, isn’t it?”

“The first one,” Tomas confirmed. “The one they teach all spatial magic novices. But the pathways we use are isolated.”

Kalen frowned up at him. “What does that mean?”

“You’ve heard the theory that a practitioner is someone who can speak to the rivers that carve the universe? No…I’m guessing you haven’t heard that. The look on your face! I know how it sounds, but imagine that everything in existence is constantly being carved into being by thousands of streams of magic.”

“I’ll try, but that’s not very…”

“A hundred years on, our family will probably be teaching something different. But for now, we assume that a practitioner’s pathways are copies of some of those rivers and streams. And when we shape them and push mana through them in certain ways, we can carve new rules into being just as the rivers we reflect do.”

Lutcha had once spoken of clipping souls out of what she called “the universal pattern” with the Disc of the Sacred Fate and moving them around. If Kalen tried hard enough he could almost imagine thousands of stitches making up the pattern of a tapestry and thousands of rivers of magic being the same idea.

“Just like rivers follow certain natural channels, our pathways work best when we ask them to perform magic within our affinity. They’re carving according to their natures then, like they’re writing rules that they already know. When I say that the spatial magic pathways are isolated, I mean that they’re very disconnected from other types of magic. You may have heard Orellens are no good at anything except for our portals. Well, it’s true. When I form a non-spatial spell pattern, I have to use a lot more magic to make it cast effectively.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tomas smiled. “It’s annoying, but I’ve always thought the people who look down on us for it were secretly jealous. Because we can cast spells aligned with other affinities if we put enough power into it, and almost no other type of practitioner can do spatial magic at all.”

“I wondered!” said Kalen. “I haven’t ever seen any spatial spells in any of my other books. I thought the Orellens might be keeping their knowledge away from everyone else, but I also wondered if it was just a very hard type of magic.”

“Closer to impossible. Most of my relatives think the spatial pathways are not only isolated but also that they govern a higher plane of magic. I like that idea, too, because it would explain a lot of things. But I don’t repeat it much. It makes you sound like you’re making excuses when you try to tell someone that you can’t perform a basic spell because your power is suited to greater things.”

“That does sound arrogant,” Kalen said. “You should keep that opinion to yourselves.”

Tomas snickered. “Fine. Put your head down again, and close your eyes. Center yourself within your nucleus—”

“Center?”

“Focus all your attention on the very core of it, the point where all your pathways meet and are densest. Draw your magic there—let’s just do half so you can still cast the first spell after this—and push it through, as if the nucleus itself is a spell pattern you’ve created.”

“I’ve done this before,” said Kalen, disappointed but already going through the motions. “Lots of times when I was trying to check my affinity. It doesn’t work.”

He heard Tomas inhale. “What do you mean it doesn’t work?”

“Nothing happens. A girl I know told me how to do this, and she said something would happen and that was how you could guess your affinity. But every time I do it, the magic just disappears.”

In this nucleus anyway.

“How does it disappear?” Tomas’s voice was excited.

Kalen wanted to look up again, but he was trying to keep his posture right.

“It goes away.”

“But there are different ways it could disappear! Usually one of three. Pay very careful attention when you do the cast this time. Does the magic vanish as if it was taken into someone else’s hand, or does it feel as if you’ve flung it away into the distance, or is it more like it goes nowhere at all?”

It goes nowhere at all. Kalen had done it so many times he really didn’t have to do it again to know. It had always been such a disappointment, but…it sounded like Tomas was saying it was the right thing. It’s supposed to feel like that?

He was squeezing his hands into fists. He made them relax again. There’s no reason to be worked up about it. You knew almost for sure that it was spatial magic. A pixie told you so, and you’ve been assuming that was the right answer ever since.

But almost for sure wasn’t the same as completely sure. If Tomas could just tell him, this easily, then he would have solved one of Kalen’s oldest mysteries.

Kalen pulled the magic together—around half that contained within his pathways that formed the spatial nucleus, as Tomas had asked. Then he pushed it through in the way he’d done so many times before, during those last few months at home.

The magic coalesced in his nucleus, strong enough that it felt almost like a bright white heat, and then…it vanished.

“It’s not like it goes somewhere,” said Kalen, keeping his eyes shut and thinking about it. “It’s like it’s there and then it’s not at all. Like I didn’t even do anything.”

Hands gripped his arms, and he finally looked to see Tomas leaning over him and grinning delightedly. “Nerth! That’s a sure sign you do have a spatial affinity!”

“It is?”

“Yes! And your primary pathway is the Abyss. The other two main ones are the Arrow and the Reaching. Most practitioners name pathways after dead sorcerers, but ours are all more like this. I think it’s one of the nicer things about our family,” Tomas said with enthusiasm. “Now, close your eyes! Close your eyes. Your widest, strongest pathway will be the Abyss, and you should have a few more. It’s hard to identify the smaller ones at first, so don’t worry about those. The three largest ones will always be Abyss, Arrow, and Reaching.”

He stepped around to stand behind Kalen, who hadn’t closed his eyes despite being told to. He looked out the small window of the attic room. The neighboring rooftop was covered in snow.

Why does my heart feel so tight in my chest? Having a proper name for a pathway isn’t that significant.

From behind him, Tomas leaned over his shoulder and murmured, “All right, let me pretend I’m aligned with Abyss too…yes. If you’re still focused on your nucleus, imagine yourself at the center of it. Move as much of your magic as you can there and then push it through your largest pathway outward slowly.”

Still staring at the sunlight sparkling against the snowy roof, Kalen did it.

“As you follow your magic outward along Abyss, you can probably sense a couple of your other pathways winding around it or maybe even intersecting with it. Don’t worry about the lesser ones. There’s probably a place not far from your nucleus where Abyss comes very close to a natural bend in the pathway that should be your second or third largest. They don’t actually intersect there, but I think it will be easier for a beginner to identify that spot than it is to try to untangle the big three from each other within the nucleus itself.”

I know that place.

Two of his very largest pathways, an odd spot where one almost felt like it touched the other. Kalen knew it. He’d sensed it thousands of times before. He didn’t have to follow Abyss toward it, he only had to think about it and he was there.

Tomas was reaching over Kalen’s shoulder with a hand toward the window now, as if he were imagining it himself. “That other path that you’ve pulled all your magic away from feels almost hungry now, doesn’t it? Like it’s tugging…”

A slight frown entered his voice. “Nerth, you…do you feel something pulling on the ambient—?”

“I know the spot you mean,” Kalen said, still focusing on it. “The bent pathway. How it pulls on the magic in the neighbor when it’s empty. I’ve felt it do that before.”

It wasn’t at the moment. He’d already drawn in enough mana to satisfy it, and now he was flooding the smaller paths almost absentmindedly while he considered the spot Tomas had directed him toward.

“Yes. Good job. We should be focusing on that. That path is the Arrow. It’s actually my largest pathway, so it’s my favorite. It’s also the one you should use for your first spatial spell.”

“It is?”

“Yes. It’s the best one for it. You use arrow and any two of your other pathways that you find convenient. Oh, and here’s another thing that’s good to talk about! That place where Arrow feels like it wants to steal the magic from Abyss is always a good place to forge an intersection between the two. If you drain the magic from your Arrow path to make it hungrier you can feel the exact right spot to do it. What else…?”

Kalen waited with baited breath, hoping for another revelation, but after a few seconds, Tomas said, “I guess that’s enough for now. We should do the spell. The pattern isn’t difficult, but the technique might feel very strange since you’re used to off-casting.”

“Off-casting?”

“Casting spells not aligned with your affinity. Close your eyes again. Use some part of Arrow and two other pathways to make a series of three interlocking circles.”

“Three circles…you mean side-by-side ones like the constellations that are on the Orellen family symbol?”

“Our clan mark. The three circles represent the first spell and also the three worlds. The space between the stars represents Abyss. The arrow is self-explanatory. Have you built it yet?”

“No,” said Kalen. “I’m sorry. I’m a little slow with pattern formation.”

He was still finding a good spot to make that shape, one where he wouldn’t have to negotiate for space with all of his other pathways.

“Is it fine if it’s far away from my nucleus? As long as it’s still the Arrow pathway?”

“It’s usually better to cast as close as you can, but at your age your pathways don’t extend that far out anyway, so I wouldn’t worry.”

If pathways could be measured in miles, my nucleus is miles away from here, he thought, focusing on a spacious place where Arrow had become more of a stream than a river and where two small rivulets nearby could be tied into it. He rarely worked this far on his periphery these days. But he didn’t want to fail with someone watching, and he was absolutely sure he could make the three circles here.

He pulled them together as quickly as he could. “Done.”

“Given how long that took you, we might need to have a talk about perfectionism. Now. With your eyes still closed, focus on your non-dominant palm.”

“What do I focus on about it? The way it feels? The way it looks?”

“Neither. And let me apologize in advance because you’re going to absolutely hate this; everyone does. You need to try to focus on where it is.”

“On the end of my arm?”

“I mean where it is all by itself. As if it were an object that existed entirely alone in the universe, unconnected to anything else.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can’t you explain it better?” He had done so well up until now.

“When you try it, you’ll see why I can’t. Do your best to focus on the location of your palm. Not even your fingers or the back of your hand. Just your palm. Then, when you think you’ve got it, you’re going to reverse cast the spell.”

Before Kalen could ask what that meant, Tomas added, “I mean instead of sending magic out of your pathways into the world around you, cast through the spell pattern back at the Arrow path, toward your nucleus.”

What? No…that can’t be… “That sounds like a very wrong thing to do.”

“I bet it does. Since this was the first spell I ever learned, I was aghast the first time I tried to cast outward instead of inward. I promise it will work in this direction.”

“It sounds like it will hurt.”

Tomas snorted softly. “It doesn’t hurt. It does feel different. But you’re barely going to notice once the spell takes effect. Remember your palm.”

How can I think about my palm when I’m about to do something that sounds crazy? And not just my palm—where my palm is. As if it’s not even a part of my body?

But Tomas had just taught him something he’d had no other way of learning. And it had been so easy. And it wasn’t like this was a big spell. If the youngest children in the Orellen family all learned it, then it was weak. Even if he did cast it back along his own pathways it shouldn’t do anything too terrible.

Kalen took a deep breath.

“You truly need to focus on the location of your palm,” Tomas said quietly. “So much more than you think you do.”

I am focusing.

Kalen scrunched his eyes shut even tighter and cast the spell back at the very pathway that had created it. And…his mind went with it. Like the spell was carrying him through his own pathways, so swiftly and surely that he didn’t even have time to think he should maybe resist it. He and the spell disappeared into his own nucleus, and for the smallest of instants, he felt like he’d somehow eaten himself.

Then he sawfelttouchedexperienced his own palm, then the blood inside it, then wood, fur, a person maybe, down, up, blue, black, darkness, darkness, darkness.

Then it was over.

He was on his hands and knees.

“If you’re going to puke, don’t do it on the silencing ward!” Tomas said cheerfully.

Kalen gasped. “What was that?!” he asked in horror.

“Not a calm and peaceful contemplation of your palm I bet.”

“What’s that spell supposed to do!?”

“It helps you locate your own body in space. Once you get the hang of it. Which takes…around a year usually. But before then, as long as you can find just your palm, there are some other things you can do. The second spell we’ll do is Banish from Palm, which is really useful for getting rid of something you never want to be found by you or anyone else again. And the third I’ll teach you is From Palm to Palm, which lets you do this.”

He squatted down in front of Kalen, who was still reeling, and held out his hands. In his left was a small gold pin shaped like an arrow, with a tiny blue jewel on the tip.

“Watch,” said Tomas.

Before Kalen’s eyes, the pin vanished from Tomas’s left palm and reappeared almost in the same moment on the right.

He extended the hand toward him.

“It’s a family tradition—a good one—to give novices a pin to mark their first successful spell. I know this isn’t really your first, but it is your first aligned one. Take this. I’m sorry it’s the Arrow pin and not the Abyss one. Normally that one is a gold circle.”

Kalen reached for the small arrow.

“Can I try again?”

“So fearless! I’m proud.”

“Don’t be proud yet,” Kalen said as he stood. He pressed a hand to his stomach. “I’m not sure I won’t puke next time.”

Tomas grinned. “Please do it at least once. For my sake. I was a puker when I was learning.”

“Okay. It didn’t hurt,” Kalen muttered to himself.

“I told you.”

“It was very confusing, though.”

Tomas stood, too. “You are officially a spatial practitioner now. Welcome! You are currently on the run from literally everyone. But on the bright side, the secrets of the universe that confuse others will one day confuse you slightly less!”

Kalen peered at him. “You seem to be enjoying yourself.”

“I am. I’ve never taught anyone anything before. I was just going from memory. Only with less disappointment and derision than most of my teachers like to sprinkle into their lessons. How did I do?”

“You did good. As long as that finding my body spell isn’t a joke.”

“It’s not. You have the senses for it, believe it or not. If you keep practicing, you will get the hang of it, and it’s what you’ll build everything else on. Are you sure you have enough magic to go a second time?”

“I do.” Kalen looked out the window again. “Tomas, how many pathways am I supposed to have? As a spatial practitioner?”

“Oh, there’s not really a set number. A few new ones will come into view as you get older. And you’ll realize they were always there for you, but you couldn’t sense them before. Then of course there’s re-dendrification if you’re ever on the threshold between high magician and mage. But that’s a different process where they say your pathways actually grow new offshoot pathways.”

“So any number of them is fine?”

“As long as you can cast, it’s fine in my books,” said Tomas.

Kalen turned his eyes toward him.

“I have twelve,” Tomas said. “If you’re curious, it’s an average number for a magician my age. I’m slightly above average as far as the amount of power I can call on at once goes, but it’s nothing that earns attention from anyone.”

“Thank you,” Kalen said finally.

“For what? It’s just a first lesson.”

“I’ve spent so many days—so many years—not understanding my pathways at all. I heard that I should memorize and map them. So I did. And I could cast spells, so I did. I know the paths, but I also don’t know them at all. That they have names and work in specific ways and that one of them does magic slightly differently from another. It’s amazing.”

“Nerth, you were just unlucky to be born this particular kind of practitioner. There aren’t a lot of spatial magic books around, so of course you couldn’t learn. All I’ve done is tell you the most basic of basics; it’s no great thing.”

“It’s great to me. Will you teach me the names of your other pathways? And how to find them from Arrow and Abyss?”

“Yes, if you want. But you might not have the same ones as me. Really, as long as you known the names of the three main ones you’ll be all right for most magician level workings.”

“I want to know them all.”

Tomas smiled. “You’re an eager student! All right. Just don’t be disappointed if you can’t find the exact same set within your own structure. And let me renew our ward, if we’re going to be at this for longer. It’s nearly exhausted.”

“Let me do it,” said Kalen.

“You should save your strength, so you can focus on finding your palm.” He was already bending toward the activation rune for the ward.

“Let me do it,” Kalen said again. “You said spatial practitioners have to use more magic to make non-aligned spells work. That’s not a problem for me. I have other problems…but not that one.”

Tomas’s finger had stilled halfway to the rune. “What do you mean by that?”

Kalen stepped over to join him and knelt beside the line of glimmering crushed shells that made up the Orellen boy’s spellsand. He nudged Tomas’s hand aside with his own.

“I’m not a perfectionist,” he said, touching the rune lightly. “Well…I am. According to most people. But that’s only because I didn’t have many spells. All I could do was try to be perfect with the ones I did have. It’s not why I’m slow, though. I’m slow because my pathways are very sloppy. There are so many of them. Some of them seem to be strange or broken. And when I’m trying to work with one, the others nearby tangle with it and cling to it. They pull what I’m doing apart sometimes, and other times, I just lose track of what I’m trying to build because the wrong thread calls my attention and it all collapses.”

“Nerth, that doesn’t—”

“I can’t run out of magic though,” said Kalen. “Not here on the continent where you people have it all around you all the time. When I empty my pathways, I just refill them. It takes a minute or so. Like a long deep breath. I thought everyone did it like that for ages, but I’ve learned that’s not how it is.”

He finished forming the activation rune’s match.

“That’s how long it took me to make this rune. It’s simple, I know. It’s embarrassing that I can’t just do it. I saw a girl empower a rune by tapping her foot against it as she passed, like she barely even had to think about it. It takes me time. But this…”

He pushed his magic into the ward. It was a hungry thing, compared to the spell circles he’d done himself in the past, but he flooded it quickly. Light blazed from the sand, and Kalen pulled his hand back.

“That’s how long it took me to fill your ward. And now…”

He concentrated for a moment, then said, “And now I have as much magic as I started with.”

Tomas’s honey-brown eyes were flicking from the ward to Kalen and back again. He swallowed. “That’s very interesting,” he said in a higher than usual voice. “That’s…I see.”

“Do you?” Kalen asked. “I wish someone would explain it all to me.”

He stared at his new arrow pin. “Just knowing the name of three pathways makes me feel so much better. I really would appreciate it if you would teach me your other nine. And how to find them. So I don’t always feel so lost when I’m fighting to work with them.”

“How many are you saying you actually have?” Tomas asked.

“Do I have to count the little hairy ones?”

“The hairy ones?”

“Arrow, Abyss, and Reaching are like this,” said Kalen, spreading his arms wide. “And then there are the middle ones and the little ones. And then there are some that are like this.”

He plucked a strand of curly hair from his head and looked at it grimly. “They’re so annoying. They say you can’t be a magician unless you’ve mapped them all. I have to take time to re-memorize them every week, so I don’t forget the shape of the little hairy ones. I hate them so much. If they re-dendrify when I become a mage, I think I might scream.”

“I still don’t quite understand. Are you saying you have thirty pathways. Or fifty. Or…what?”

“I like around ninety-three of them,” Kalen decided after thinking about it. Ninety-three covered even the ones that were only barely useable in his spatial set. “If all the others could just disappear and leave me alone, I would really appreciate it.”

“Ninety-three,” said Tomas faintly. “I wouldn’t believe you, except I did feel you pulling in the ambient mana earlier. When I was standing right behind you. I thought I must have been mistaken…”

“What do you mean you felt me? How did you do that?” Kalen asked. “Can you teach it to me?”

“It’s not something you teach. It’s just something practitioners notice. When someone else is pulling in or outputting large quantities of power very nearby, it changes the flow into your own pathways a little.”

“I haven’t noticed! And I’ve been here in Circon around other practitioners enough that I should have, haven’t I?”

“You might not have been. You do have to be quite close if it’s not a drastic shift in the ambient. But also, if you can really refill your entire mana structure that quickly that means you might not be able to notice? Unless you’re trying to do it at the exact same time as sorcerer in the same room.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the one sucking up all the magic and…” He stared at the gleaming ward. “…spitting it right back out again. Someone would have to be pulling on the ambient magic harder and faster than you were for you to be aware that they were dominating the area.”

He whipped around to stare at Kalen. “Why don’t you have a teacher yet?”

“That’s why I’m trying to get to the Archipelago. To find one.”

“But…gods. You must have grown up in the middle of absolutely nowhere for someone not to have noticed.”

“There were no other practitioners around,” said Kalen. “That doesn’t mean it was nowhere. Can I just…if I pull magic in more slowly will that make me quieter to other people?”

“I think so. I hope so.” Tomas lifted an eyebrow. “Otherwise it’s going to be like traveling with a trumpet.”

“I will try not to trumpet,” said Kalen. “So you’ll still travel with me? And you’ll still teach me?”

“I’m your brother. We made a promise. I’ll teach you what I know, but…”

Kalen smiled. “You can call me Kalen. But only when we’re completely alone or behind a ward like this. It shouldn’t be my name anywhere else right now. I’m sure you understand.”