Chapter Fourteen #2
Yet once they began to discuss magical signatures, Jasper faced the obvious. Delia’s gift was always there, always—as far as they could tell—being exercised, albeit without Delia’s control. Could it be that his senses were right after all?
They’d soon find out. If he stood three hundred yards away, out in the open where the breeze was blowing, he’d not be able to detect any trace of perfume or soap or hair pomade.
But they already knew her gift was effective out to a distance of half a mile.
To Delia’s gift, three hundred yards was nothing.
If he could still sense her mage trace from here, he was detecting her gift.
And there it was. Aniseed, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, an undertone of violets, a burst on the tongue of spice and sweetness, a soft glow in a pale minty green. He couldn’t wait to tell her. He headed back to her side at a run, grinning broadly.
“Delia, it is your magic,” he shouted as he got nearer, and she grinned back.
“Can you teach me how to manage it?” she asked. She was so excited she was bouncing on her toes.
Cautious, Jasper said, “I can teach you the exercises I learned, but I cannot promise they will work with your gift. They only partially worked with mine, and I’m having to go through them all again to see what adjustments I need to make now my gift is fully awakened.”
Since Delia was eager to try, he taught her one of the basic exercises taught to all beginning mages. It was designed to direct the mind—to sharpen and focus the gift on a small bit of tinder until the heat from the compressed magic started a fire, or at least a spark or two.
*
They worked on basic exercises for the rest of the week, since Jasper, too, needed to return to basics to cement his control over his power. He made good progress. Delia, though, could not raise the smallest spark.
When they moved on to calling beasts—not everyone could do it, but Jasper thought Delia might have the gift, since she already influenced the beasts around her—he found his own ability vastly enhanced, while she had none at all.
He tried her on levitation, beginning with a fallen leaf.
Nothing. Scrying in a bowl of water. Nothing.
Diverting a breeze—the first step in weather working.
Nothing. Basic exercise after basic exercise, but the only one that worked for her was strengthening her sparkle, with him watching her field of magic from across the field and calling encouragement.
It didn’t impress Delia, who pointed out she had been able to do nothing else.
However, Jasper reassured her that this was great progress.
“We don’t understand your gift, Delia, so it is not surprising that the exercises don’t work.
After all, they are basically simple spells, and as far as we know, previous catalysts didn’t work magic.
They just were magic. As are you. But if you can increase your power, you should be able to learn to reduce it, and maybe even direct it. ”
For Jasper, this was a huge achievement, and one they might not have been able to accomplish in the noise and fuss of London, especially if Delia stuck to her insistence that she must return to her obligations as the unicorn’s maiden.
Even more important, at least to him, was Delia’s growing ease in his company.
They had worked together all week, and his regard for her grew by the day.
His attraction to her, too. And if he did not misread all the signs, she liked him, too.
He hoped it would be enough to make up for his abysmal proposal.
His own growing mastery of his power also justified the week’s delay in returning to London.
So far, he had found no limitations to the scope of his gift, though it was just as subject to the laws of distance and time as any other.
Suddenly, though, he could effortlessly do weather working, invisibility, elemental mastery, scrying, precognition, translocation, and combat magic—all gifts that had been so unreliable before.
In addition, he kept discovering new gifts.
When Delia slipped on a rock, he found his mind picturing a broken bone.
His hands on her ankle heated and he felt power slipping from him to her, even as the bone pictured in his mind mended.
It would need to be tested, but apparently, he now had a healing gift.
Similarly, he made a mistake one day in visualizing his dragon self. A stray thought crossed his mind—what would the sphinx look like when she grew up. And when the cloud of Jasper-parts reassembled, he was a sphinx.
He tried several other beasts, both thaumadiversa and thaumatypica, and was able to change into them all. Jasper had heard of shape changers who could turn themselves into two or even three animals, but he’d never heard of anyone else who could take whatever form he could visualize.
The most useful gift, at least for the moment, was the ability to speak to Delia mind-to-mind when he was in dragon form. Whether he could do it with others or when in human form remained to be seen, but the week was over and it was time to find out.
They packed the few possessions they had accumulated and carried them out to the field. Delia had sewn a strap to go around the dragon’s neck. Attached to it was a saddle pad to fit in the small gap where the neck ridge ended and the spine ridge began.
Jasper changed and then crouched as low as he could and put out a paw for her to step on so that she could pass the strap over his neck. Once it was fastened, she attached their packs to it, one on each side so that they balanced.
Finally, she used his paw again, and he lifted her up so she could climb onto the saddle pad and grab the hand holds sewn into the strap.
He sent his voice into her mind. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she replied.
*
Traveling by translocation was a peculiar experience, and not one that Delia ever wanted to repeat. She had already done it, of course, but since she had been unconscious at the time, she didn’t count it.
This time, she fisted her hands around the handholds and Jasper leapt into the air with a powerful push from his hind legs.
Flying for such a large creature was a matter of magic, Jasper had explained.
He thought himself light, and flew. But the spring from the ground was a matter of muscle strength, and he used his wings to keep them rising in the right direction and to add speed.
Once they reached altitude, he would use them to steer.
Delia clutched the handholds until her knuckles turned white. Jasper had said he would use magic to hold her in place on his back, but she didn’t feel safe as the ground rapidly receded beneath them.
It was only a matter of seconds before they were hovering high in the air, the lake tiny below them, and further lakes visible in valley after valley between hills that covered the landscape.
She was connected. She could see barely visible threads running from her to the slopes on the cavern side of their lake. And then she sensed a surge of power from Jasper. There was a wrenching and fracturing as all the threads broke, and then darkness.