Part 4 (2/2)

”What I learned was a special group of protective spells designed to guard us from magical attack,” I explained, privately wondering how anyone anywhere could be unfa- miliar with magic. ”One of the spells creates a large.

invisible sphere around us which will keep anything of a magical nature out. Another of the spells builds a wall of the same kind, a third a platform which will also raise us into the air, and the rest are of the same sort. For anything nonmagical in nature, I already have the necessary de- fenses. What took so long was memorizing the details of spells mat work against other spells, which means I'm practically working without the Sight. I won't be able to See if I'm constructing them properly against what's com- ing at us, so I can't afford to forget the least little-”

45.

The frown on his face made me break off the explana- tion, telling me it wasn't explaining anything at all to him.

Just what part he wasn't getting was another question, though, as I found out when he shook his head.

”1 have no knowledge of what sight you speak of, nor do I understand what difference there might be between spells,” he said, looking as though not understanding annoyed him- ”Are you able to say in what manner / would need to labor in order to leam what you have?”

”But you couldn't leam it, not unless you had the Sight,” I protested with a laugh, then understood how much he was actually missing. ”Maybe I'd better start from the very beginning, and explain it to you that way.

People are born either with the Sight or without it, and if they're without it they can never learn to do magic no matter how hard they try. You can't have just a little bit of the Sight, you either have it or you don't. Are you with me so far?”

His nod was definite despite his silence, and for some reason I had the feeling that he was keeping himself from making a comment. That unwavering blue gaze seemed to be just a little put out, but I couldn't imagine why.

”Now, if you have the Sigh^you have the ability to do magic, but the keys to real power are how much strength you can bring to bear, and how complete your control is of the things around you. If we were standing together some- where and you began to walk away when I didn't want you to, I could reach out a hand to grab your sleeve to stop you physically. How well I did stopping you would depend on how good a grip I had on your sleeve; a light or badly placed grip would be one you could pull away from, but a strong, full, sure grip would keep you from getting very far. Have you got that?”

”indeed,” he said with a faint smile, and then the smile widened. ”And yet do I believe that my halting would require one with hands less slender and considerably more powerful than yours. Even had I a sleeve which might be grasped.”

”That was just an example,” I told him patiently, half expecting his remark. Boys always have to be so-ignorant- about everything. ”With magic, the way to get a firm,

46 .

sure grip on something is to See it clearly and in detail, the more detail, the better the grip. At the same time you must describe what you're Seeing, since it's that description and the strength you exert mat gives you power over what you See. If someone has a red hat, people without the Sight will see nothing but a red hat; people with the Sight, however, will See the exact shade of that color, me exact shape of die hat itself, the thickness of the material the thing was made from, the strands or layers involved, all the way down to the smallest mote mat's a part of that hat.

Seeing it lets them describe it, and describing it gives mem power over it. Spells are the verbal description of what someone with the Sight Sees.”

”These spells, then, must be complex indeed,” he said, back to frowning in an attempt to understand. ”Even to describe what / am able to see of a thing would be complex, and never have I been able to see to the core of an object.”

”Not all spells are that complex,” 1 corrected, pleas- antly surprised that he seemed to be following my explana- tion. ”If the details needing to be described had to be spoken in this language, it would take hours simply to describe enough of that red hat just to lift it in the air. The language used for spells is sort of a-short-cut code, I suppose you might say-that lets you describe hours' worth of detail in only one or two words. If I wanted to change that hat instead of simply lifting it, my description of it would have to be a lot more detailed so that I had more power over it. A spell like that could run five or six words, depending on just what change I wanted to make. And, of course, some descriptions can be added to with gestures rather than words. There are a lot of different getures, all standing for different things, and that's where the old saying comes from. You know. the one that goes, 'One gesture is worth a thousand words.' ”

”That adage is more familiar to me in another form,”

he muttered, clearly trying to decide whether or not to be impressed. His big hand rubbed at his face as his mind worked behind distracted eyes, and men his attention was mine again. ”Then all those with the-the Sight-have power over that which is about them. Why is it, then, that 47.

some have more power than others? For what reason was it necessary that you leam-spells-from the wizard which your own-Sight-should have found it possible to give you?”

”I think I'll answer the first part of your question first,” I said with a smile, really pleased with how bright he was. He was having trouble with unfamiliar phrases, but he wasn't using them wrong. ”Some with the Sight have more power than others for a variety of reasons, one of which is how long they've lived. The longer you study it, the easier the language of spells becomes, and the easier it becomes, the more power you can exert over what happens to be around you. Also, you've learned to See things in greater and greater detail, which gives you more to describe, which in turn gives you more power over them. You have to leam how to look at things, you know.

in magic as well as in anything else. To someone who didn't know about hats, our red hat would be nothing but a red hat. To a maker of hats, though, it would be of such and such a style, that color and this shape, individually dyed or batch dyed, st.i.tched or woven, made by someone with skill or without, old and well worn or new and unfaded- There's so much to know about things that the amount is incredible, and some people with the Sight are too lazy to leam it all. That's where a lot of them run into trouble.''

”I do believe I would dislike trouble of that sort,” he said, a reluctant but definite admission. ”Of what does their dereliction consist?”

”Well, some of them tend to be the sort to believe that any hold at all on a sleeve is enough to stop the person wearing the sleeve,” I said. ”They describe as little of the thing they're looking at as possible, exerting only a tenu- ous hold over it, then try to make it do what they want.

Sometimes they're successful, usually they're only half successful, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. They're the ones who are too lazy to really leam me language of spells, but mere are some who don't have the brains for it.

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