Practice

“And now I am in a dark, dank hole,” Princess Ophia grumbled, raising her lantern. “Shouldn’t you have the light if you’re in front, Morenna?”

“You can walk first if you’d rather,” Morenna answered without turning around as she descended the winding stone stairs, so ancient they were rounded with age, and worse, slick with dripping water and lichen. “I don’t need light to see.”

“Right, of course you don’t,” Ophia muttered. “Silly me. I guess it’s safer not to have you behind me, then.”

Morenna stopped—carefully—turning to look back at her.

“Morenna, I was joking.”

“It’s a fair point, though. You don’t really know me, and now I have you isolated underground. Ophia, if you want to stop here, I won’t be offended. I think you’re probably clever enough to find a solution with what I’ve told you already, and…I can’t be certain I’ll be much help getting you there.”

“But if I’m to practice forbidden magic,” Ophia said with a smile, “I’ll need to find a place where nobody can see me doing it, and truthfully I don’t even know another. If I must come down here anyway, I’d rather not be alone. Especially since you’re the one who knows your way around.”

“I don’t, really,” Morenna admitted, resuming her descent. “I can find my way anywhere, but I haven’t come down here much. There’s not much of use to me in the catacombs.”

“I also can’t get out without you,” Ophia added, following.

“I left the door unlocked.”

“Ah, how thoughtful. Who knew shadow magic could unlock doors?”

Morenna made no reply. The dark shape of her in front of Ophia was a black slash through the lantern’s light, blending with the ancient gloom.

It was several more minutes before Morenna came to a stop again beyond a stone doorway. “This should be enough space. And nothing down here will suffer much from being frozen. Or, hopefully, burned.”

Following her through, Ophia raised the lantern, taking in the view its thin light revealed. “Sister, you can’t be serious.”

“They’re harmless,” Morenna insisted.

“They’re creepy!”

“They’re dead!”

“That does not make them less creepy! In fact, rather the opposite!”

“I promise you’d like them less if they weren’t dead.”

“Aren’t there any other conveniently-sized underground galleries where we could practice magic?”

“…why would there be?”

“Typical,” Ophia muttered.

The room was spacious, with a wide central aisle down the long gallery and doors at both ends. Against the side walls, however, three ranks deep, stood ancient clockwork soldiers.

Tales of the Machine Men painted them in menace; these things looked incongruously unthreatening. They were stained with lichen and slick with dripping water, their enchanted alloy only slightly rusted. In form, the clockwork soldiers were simple humanoid shapes, with rounded edges rather like tailor’s dummies, each carrying a spear and a shield.

All standing immobile at attention, as they had been for centuries.

“Father knows these are here, right?” Ophia muttered as she tentatively stepped into the center of the room. Morenna had already wandered over to inspect the clockwork sentinels up close. “He has to. He’s probably preserving these for scholars to study. Maybe that’s why the only security on these catacombs was a single unguarded locked door…”

“I don’t think Khellvain is the scholarly type,” said Morenna, rapping her knuckles against a metal soldier’s chest. “It was just logistics. Kourvald is a good choice for a capital: near the center of the continent, access to two big waterways, good farmland on one side of the river, timber and decent mines on the other. But the only defensible structure fit to be expanded into a proper castle was the ancient fortress built to seal off the even more ancient Machine Men foundry, back when there was some worry of these things coming to life again. So now we live with them in our cellar.”

“I think you’re allowed to call him Father,” Ophia said.

“I’m allowed to call him Dickhead val Arseface, but I choose my words with more care.”

Ophia had to struggle to suppress a grin. “Ahem. Well, since you know all these inexplicable secrets about magic, sister, I trust I’m not about to learn that you also know how to revive Machine Men soldiers?”

“I’ve learned enough secrets to assume there are plenty more out there still hidden, but no, I have never heard of that. If any light mages still know how to recharge the crystal cores, they are keeping it quiet. They’re dead, Ophia, just scenery. The magic we need to be concerned about is yours.”

“I’d prefer almost any other scenery, but I guess I’m in no position to be picky,” Ophia muttered, setting down the lamp.

“All right, I’ve been thinking about your problem,” Morenna said, turning back to her.

“I should hope so.”

“The issue is the conflict in your beliefs. You are a thermal mage, Ophia, but you think you’re an ice mage.”

“Sister, you’ve already explained that. Not that it hasn’t been a lot to take in, but I have no reason to disbelieve you.”

“It’s…not as simple as that.” Morenna began to pace as she spoke. “Magic has to be felt, you know that. There’s…an emotional component. You need certainty, soul-deep belief—that’s why the form it takes is limited by how we perceive it. Believing me intellectually is one thing, Ophia. What you know in your heart is the same thing you’ve felt as utter certainty for… Ah, thirteen years?”

“I’m not sure if I’d be more offended if that was a guess or you had trouble remembering,” Ophia said archly. “Either way, correct.”

“Considering you’ve never tried to talk to me before today, I don’t think I’m out of line.”

“Fair enough, I suppose.”

“The point is, that’s what we have to overcome. And I have only a sort of vague idea how.”

Ophia shrugged. “That’s still more of one than I have, sister. My life is in your hands.”

“So, no pressure,” Morenna sighed. “Let’s start here, then: how does it feel to do magic?”

“It feels…it’s…” Ophia trailed off, frowning.

“I understand how hard it is to put it into words,” said Morenna. “You don’t have to explain it out loud, I just need you to think about the feeling. We know that what’s happening physically when you cast an ice spell is that you’re drawing heat away from the spell itself. So…I guess to start, try casting some ice magic and focus on the feeling of it. See if you can…sense the heat, and do anything with it.”

“All right, makes sense.”

Ophia once more conjured a floating spear of ice; with a flick of her wrist she sent it hurling at one of the clockwork soldiers. The ancient machine rocked from the impact, falling back into the next rank, but after a shiver went down the line they settled back on their feet upright.

“They make good target dummies,” Ophia said with a grin.

“Surprisingly well-balanced,” Morenna agreed.

Ophia went through the spells she knew, creating miniature snowstorms, walls of ice, patches of ice on the ground. She pelted the metal “dummies” with spears, hailstones, and a variety of spells that froze their feet to the ground or encased them in frost.

“Morenna, this isn’t working,” she said in frustration minutes later. “I can’t feel anything like what you’re describing. Creating ice feels like…creation. I have no sense of moving anything away from it.”

“This is what I was afraid of,” Morenna muttered. “Knowing things doesn’t make me a good teacher. I’m sorry, Ophia, I didn’t—”

“Now, hold on, I didn’t say I was giving up,” Ophia interrupted. “We’ll keep trying things. And when we run out of things to try, we’ll keep attacking the problem until it dies. We’re daughters of the Conqueror—that’s what we do.”

Morenna grimaced. “I wonder if that’s part of the problem.”