114 – Karen provokes reactions, and gets provoked

  Karen spoke as Rox paused to gather her thoughts. “Perhaps there is a different perception or belief on what happens after death. I have met people who believed that the soul did not continue. I know of myself, by my talents, that the soul does live on, but it does not linger here. I leave it to religion to squabble over those questions. What I need to prepare you to do is . . .” Karen paused as she looked for the right words.

  Rox let Karen find the words.

  “. . . is be ready to do whatever the situation will require.” Karen finished.

  Rox could see that Karen wanted to say more, but was not able to for some reason. “For that I need to know how to light silver on fire. All right.”

  Karen paused and Rox took initiative. “You’ve never asked about how we know your language. Why not?”

  Karen pushed this question aside as almost irrelevant. “I never needed to. You have a skilled, non-local wizard with you. Our understanding about their training is that the wanderers pick up a way to learn and share languages.”

  “What about your talents? I have met another talent who was able to understand what I meant just by listening to my thoughts.”

  Karen was a little surprised by this. Few outside the general talent community understand what that really meant, as opposed to ‘reading minds’. She did not immediately answer while looking at Rox in her surprise.

  “I don’t use them that way. It’s not polite most of the time, and the noise of all the minds in a city going can be deafening, so I keep that ability suppressed.”

  Rox nodded, remembering glimmerings of ideas from Macsam son of Voloam, whom she had met in Shalaia; also fragments from her magic training. “Kind of like standing in a noisy room and listening to only one person.”

  Karen was surprised to find that Rox generally understood the concepts. Most non-psionics were not aware of theses ideas, let alone understand them.

  They talked for a while about this and a few other things, and then Karen stepped out and caught up with Steven, walking point. Caspian was leading the cart a few paces behind. Steven was working though his hand drills; blocking and throwing punches as he walked.

  Karen watched for the pattern to finish only to realize he was doing sets, not a pattern. He finished and she spoke.

  “Do you really know how to use that sword?” Karen indicated the sword at his left hip.

  “That depends on what you mean by use. ‘Hold the blunt end; poke the other guy with the pointy end.’ Yeah, I know that. Do I know the entire manual of arms of combat with this general and particular design of weapon? No.” Steven’s hand went down to his sword hilt as he spoke.

  “Have you killed anybody with one?” Karen was curious to know his experience level.

  “Caspian says I did, but I don’t remember it explicitly. After picking up Rox we then headed for the coast, then reversed and headed for the city where her elf relatives live. Along that way we were jumped by a gang. I remember slicing a few people up, but do not remember explicitly killing any of them.” Steven said this with what Karen understood to be a professional’s detachment.

  “So you have not had a prolonged sword duel. Fine, tonight I want to test you, with live steel. As I was just mentioning to your wife, you need to be ready for any situation.” Karen said.

  Steven drew his sword with his right hand. As Karen watched, she though he needed a buckler. The sword was a long sword. In Caspian’s or Karen’s hands it would be a hand and a half. In Steven’s it was more like a hand and a quarter. She watched as he held it out in front of him one handed. He turned his wrist and retracted his arm, swinging the sword back over in an overhand chop. He swung out and back, right and left, underhand, and then from the diagonals, finishing with a straight forward thrust. He twisted his torso in almost the same manor as he did with his empty hands, adding power.

  Then he took the blade at its midpoint with his left and used it almost like a quarter staff. Slashing and stabbing with the pointed end, and similarly striking with the pommel and crossbar. Karen had seen this in the past, but most of the swords in Skarg were of a slimmer blade profile and different crossbar and guard design and so not as easily wielded this way. Further, while this sword had a good edge on it, Steven’s hand and glove were not cut by his grip on it; most local swords were either slim stabbing swords, similar to the stiletto on her left wrist, or single edged curved slicing scimitars. This straight double edged blade was not unheard of, just not deployed among the local populace, despite it being the simplest shape to make a sword.

  As she walked, Karen cast about for an appropriate stick. She soon found one, and using the broad cutting and slicing blade knife from her right wrist, she began carving it down to approximate sword shape.

  Steven watched Karen. “I though you said live steel?”

  “You use live steel. I will use this. I don’t have a large enough sword anyway.” Karen continued shaving the shape to flatten it some. She continued to work on it as she fell into step with Caspian.

  Caspian quietly spoke to her. “What did you do to them last night?”

  Karen worked a knot smooth. “What do you mean?”

  “Cyrril saw you knock each of them over and then kneel over them for a while. Then they got up and went back into their tent. First Steven, then Rox. What are you up to?” Caspian kept his voice low, so only she could hear it.

  “My job. There are some things they need to know that words alone can’t communicate in the time available.” Karen ran her hand along the flat she had carved into the stick. Then she turned it over and started shaving down this side to match.

  “And how much time is that?”

  “We get to the Ring Road tomorrow, and then the cave mouth two days after that. If you want to stop moving, I could sit down and hold a weeks worth of class, each. Or I can use my skills to put the information into their subconscious minds, and talk to them about when this information would be useful.” Wood shavings dropped form the stick.

  Rox walked past, and up to Steven. Caspian slowed his pace slightly, letting the Caplan’s get another pace ahead.

  Caspian spoke again. “Is there anything I need to be taught that way, or am I marked for death before any such information would be useful?”

  Karen did not answer. Shavings continued to fall as one side of the round stick flattened.

  They walked in silence for a while. Finally she began quizzing Caspian on his herb lore. Then when Rox drifted back to earshot, Karen asked Caspian how to attract a lightening bolt.

  “Well, generally, to get a large bolt to come down, you need a small one to go up. Some of the spells I am competent with are throwing single and chain-lightening bolts around. The weather conditions here are not conducive, but that can be overcome through resonance. I may as well demonstrate.”

  Caspian raised his voice. “Steven. Come take the animals, I am going to demonstrate calling down a lightening bolt, from a mostly blue sky.”

  Steven led the cart further along the path as Caspian led the women off the trail and up a hill to a stand of trees.

  “This can be done anywhere, but having trees nearby for the lightening to hit is the safest way.” Caspian explained.

  “Right. Lightening likes to hit the tallest thing nearby.” Rox added.

  Caspian made a snap decision. “I’m not going to cast this. You are. First in an area right in front of you, or wherever, you need to make a miniature thunder storm. Then through a resonance, get the air above your target to also form a storm cell. Then cast a low power lightening bolt up, near the tree, into the resonant storm cell.”

  Karen understood enough magic theory, it being similar to psionic theory, and enough practical theory to know what happened next. “Then duck and cover your ears.”

  Rox was unsure, but decided to start by defining a space in between her hands in front of her. Using her magic ability, she drew on the mana in the area and first raised her shields, and safed herself against surges and stray magics. Then she lowered the air pressure between her hands. She then increased the heat and humidity in a column of air under the low pressure. A small cloud began to form between her hands. Rox then reached out with this form and spread it out through the mana over the hill. A wind picked up around them, and quickly a cloud formed some distance above the top of the trees.

  Caspian and Karen both stepped back, putting their hands over their ears. Rox cast a silence spell over her ears, and let the miniature storm before her dissipate, feeling the larger version running on its own inertia, and already beginning to break up from the flow of the local weather she was disrupting. She felt the energy build and static slightly pick up. She decided she was ready. Rox knelt and as if doing a double palm strike in her martial arts, she punched across the top of the nearby trees into the slowly dissipating heart of the storm pocket she had created, and let loose a small magic powered lightening bolt. The concussion was negligible, but the backwash of heat was impressive, as she was unprepared for it.

  The return downward bolt was almost instantaneous.

  The tallest tree caught the bolt and glowed as the energy crawled down it. The concussion from this was as much larger as the bolt coming down was from the bolt going up.

  Rox had to blink several times to clear her eyes of the flash blindness.

  Elation flowed over Rox, followed by some panic as she saw the tree combust from the lightening. She reached out into the mana, and the storm, and increased the low pressure and humidity, and quickly had a down poor localized on the hill putting the fire out.

  Caspian and Karen stood aside, soaked by the downpour, and awed by what this novice mage had just done.

  Caspian found his tongue first. “Wow.”

  Karen only soberly nodded, thinking to herself. ‘If she can do this, untrained and raw, I see why they are scared.’

  They walked off the damp hill after Rox made sure the fire was out, and soon caught up with Steven. Rox almost floated the whole way, bobbing in elation.

  Steven commented as they approached. “I heard the lightening, and felt a few gusts of wind.”

  Rox smiled. “I called forth a bolt of lightening, and then put out a forest fire. All by magic, by myself.”

  Steven turned to Caspian and Karen, both damp from the rain, who both nodded. Karen had slowly begun to smile at some point. She continued carving her stick.

  When Karen tested Steven’s skill that evening she was equally elated. He chopped her stick to pieces and was almost a match for her general fencing skills. When she drew her sai’s, she had his sword out of his hands in a few moves, but she figured this an unfair test, as it was her best against his novice level. Then she tried to have Caspian strengthen another stick to use for a second sparing drill.

  Caspian and Rox felt the spell take on the stick. Karen felt energy about it. Then as Steven wielded his sword they all felt the energy dissipate and the stick revert to being a normal stick.

  “What just happened?” Karen asked as she put the stick down. She turned over to Caspian. “I felt the energy on the stick, so the spell must have taken.”

  Steven put the sword down, from ready to carrying it.

  The other three felt the energy of the spell reengage.

  Caspian remembered what the elves had said about the sword, at the same time Steven said it.

  “The elves said this sword had negative-magical properties. That is probably a poor translation.” Steven continued to wait, sword just held down.

  Caspian nodded, having neglected to remember. “So when wielded, it negates the magic in a direction, or in all directions. It probably has some aspect of the magic on it that is keyed to intent.”

  Karen nodded. “As you put the sword down I could feel the energy on the stick re-energize.” She turned to engage Steven.

  He put the sword up to a ready position.

  Karen nodded as the energy faded. “Yep. That sword is apparently an equalizer for you, well chosen by those elves. You don’t have the experience to fight on the level of, say, me, without some way to force me down to a level of skill and ability equal to yours. So let’s try that fencing again, and see how quick you can smash this stick.”

  This time Karen started on the fundamental patterns of the style she knew. Steven recognized this as similar but not the same as what the Wolf’s Weapon Master had drilled him on. Karen went in close using the stick as a staff, and getting Steven to use the blunt end in defending himself from her. By the time Rox called a stop and that her stew and bread was served, Karen had broken a sweat, and Steven was soaked. The stick was kindling.