and feeling like blood and death; again when she reached a big, open book that looked like new pages had been added.
She moved on to another table with a series of glass jars that looked a little like terrariums, increasing in size from a large mug to a great globe of about two feet. She touched the top of one in the middle and a sharp ping sounded in her mind. Static electricity—from glass?—shot up her arm.
In an instant Bossgond was beside her. Grinning.
“Very good,” he said, rubbing his hands.
Marian wet her lips, stared at the jars. Now that she’d touched one, they all sang to her, like a series of glass windchimes. “What does it mean?”
7
Bossgond smiled. “You are a Weather Mage.”
Her pulse quickened. “Weather? Are you sure?” She’d always had that odd sense….
He chuckled. “Very sure.” Taking the largest globe with both hands, he walked to the conversation pit and set it in the middle. “You must start with this one. When you reach Scholar status, you will be competent in modifying the weather in the midsize jar. Your Circlet Test will be of fire, wind, wave and earth in the smallest jar.”
The one with plants and trees and tiny bugs. Marian gulped, knowing instinctively that she could kill them all.
She sat cross-legged in front of the large sphere.
“Look into the glass,” he said.
She did and caught her breath. There was a world down there! With continents and oceans, mountains, streams, vegetation.
Bossgond sat behind her, his skinny chest to her back, his legs framing hers. Marian tensed.
He clucked his tongue and placed his knobby hands on hers. His chest expanded behind her as he inhaled deeply. “I was no better than average at this task,” he murmured. “But I can show you how to direct your Power. Concentrate on the world below. Do you see the clouds?”
Marian frowned and narrowed her vision, and a portion of one continent seemed to enlarge. “I see…buildings! There aren’t really people down there, are there?” Her voice trembled in horror. She couldn’t do this, wouldn’t do this if she might harm anyone! Mistakes would be terrible.
“Look closer,” Bossgond said.
Marian did. Concentrating, she focused her gaze until she saw a city of stone and wood, with winding roads to manor houses and two castles on a hill. They were all perfect little models, but they were models—as were the trees and animals. There were no fake people. Her breath rushed out.
“Now, back to where you see clouds,” Bossgond said.
She “zoomed out,” noted fat cumulus clouds and some wispy ones. She hadn’t taken any science courses in years, wished she recalled more about weather. She smiled. Weather, with a capital W, was now her focus of study. She was a potential Weather Magician. How cool!
“We will try to move the clouds.” Bossgond’s hands tightened over hers. “Feel the essence of the clouds, their density and shape.”
Was that like the exercise of “be a cloud” that profs in the Drama Department taught? Bossgond’s mind led her to a cloud that showed gray at the bottom, yet puffed up white and pretty near the top. It was humongous.
She shut her eyes and focused on sensation. She seemed to be floating in the sky, but not as she had before, not herself, Marian, but Cloud. She floated stomach-down, and the portion of her body closest to the ground felt heavy and full of liquid. For the first time in her life her ass felt airy. She couldn’t prevent herself from thinking of it as a huge billowing cloud, and giggled.
Bossgond hissed. His irritation nudged her, and control of the cloud slipped from her grasp. It rained. Thankfully nothing happened to her real body.
“See if you can move the cloud,” Bossgond said, disapproval clear.
She pushed her cloud. Nothing happened, except that she got a visual of her hands penetrating cool air. She tried something different. She was now separate from the cloud and grappled to encompass it. With her mind she formed a tiny membrane from air molecule to air molecule of the cloud, then pushed. It moved. She pushed again, and it slid rapidly through the air. Having fun, she set her mind against it and shoved. It turned into a streak of white.
“Whee!” Marian cried. She was flying, chasing a cloud.
Bossgond made a strangled sound and fell backward, away from her.
She stopped, withdrew her consciousness from the weather globe and shifted around to see what was wrong.
He was holding his head as if he had a migraine.
“Bossgond?” she asked.
The mage winced. “You are Powerful. I didn’t expect you to be able to move the cloud so easily, so fast and far. I never could,” he grumbled.
“You have other talents.” Marian scooted behind him and started massaging his temples, wondering why she felt compelled to reassure him. He grunted, then sighed with pleasure.
“Of course,” he said, but he didn’t sound as sarcastic as she’d expected. He huffed out a breath. “You are a naturally gifted student in Power. It happens sometimes, that there are geniuses.”
An inner glow of pleasure lit her. Of course, she’d been a professional student all her life and knew she learned quickly…not that this was learning so much as revealing, discovering something deep inside her, something she was meant to be.
Bossgond said, “Naturally the Song would bring someone innately Powerful to the Tower Community.”
That evening after another mediocre meal, Marian joined Bossgond in the ritual room. He began to Sing the blood-bond ceremony and she joined in when she could. When he picked up a small, sharp knife and strips of linen, she froze. What was she getting into?
Bossgond smiled reassuringly. “We will be bound together for four hours—the correct amount of time for a bond between Master and Apprentice. There are both lesser and greater bonds, depending upon the length of the binding. A Pairing-Marriage bond is a full night and day.”
She nodded and tried to relax as he took her arm and shoved up her sleeve, concentrating on something else—like how glad she was that neither of them had drunk a lot at dinner.
His voice deepened with mystery, with mastery as he cut her arm. The pain was slight, but she yelped and stared as he inserted a little tube in her arm. It looked as if he’d encased a whole vein. Then he slit open his own arm and captured a vein.
Exactly how much blood would they be exchanging? This whole thing involved a lot more than she’d realized.
After they were linked, they finished Singing the ceremony, Marian in a low tone, experimenting with using her voice and Power. Even before they snuffed the last candle, she could feel his blood inside her, weighty with age, with Power, but also…murky.
With his blood came memories, strange and distorted and flickering too fast before her mind’s eye for her to catch and analyze them.
As the minutes passed, through Bossgond, Marian’s small tune merged with the planet’s. Wonder grew inside her.
She found herself panting, and regulated her breath—yoga breaths. Slowly, they left the top ritual floor and descended to Bossgond’s study. He’d placed a small desk and chair next to his larger one, along with the big glass sphere that contained Marian’s planet.
His mouth moved and a second or two later she heard his distorted voice, not beautiful now, but beating at her ears.
“Study the continents, the contours of the land, and especially the weather.”
Marian stared at the sphere, but minutes passed before her eyes focused. She swallowed. Everything was so overwhelming! She chose a cloud—studied