Ch. 175 The Strength to Choose

Chapter 175: The Strength to Choose

Aurelia changed our lessons the morning after Thesra’s visit.

I discovered this when the shield I had raised folded inward and deposited a basin of cold water over my boots.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Evelyn looked at our teacher.

“Was that supposed to happen?”

“No.”

I looked down.

“That is reassuring.”

“You held against the first pressure,” Aurelia said. “Then you stopped paying attention to anything else.”

“There was rather a lot of first pressure.”

“Yes.”

She refilled the basin.

We had moved to an empty chamber below the western stair.

Stone walls.

A clear floor.

Enough distance from the nursery that nobody would wake because I had failed to manage water.

The Castellan had examined the room before we began.

He remained near the door while Aurelia placed three small stones on the floor between us.

“Again,” she said.

This time, Evelyn held the water.

I raised the shield.

Aurelia pressed against it.

Gently at first.

Then harder.

I braced my feet.

One of the stones rose.

Then another.

The third struck my ankle.

Not hard.

Enough to make its point.

“You have been teaching us to divide our attention for months,” I said.

“I have.”

“This feels different.”

“It is.”

She stepped closer to the working.

Previously, Aurelia had guided us until we found the right shape.

Now she disturbed it while we were still forming it.

She changed the direction of pressure.

Interrupted the connection between my shield and Evelyn’s.

Made us recover without abandoning everything we had already built.

By the time we stopped for water we could actually drink, my shirt clung to my back.

My wife looked little better.

Aurelia appeared thoughtful.

I was beginning to fear that expression.

Evelyn’s next exercise involved a thread of power so fine that I could barely feel it.

She had to pass it through a moving ring while keeping three suspended drops of water apart.

Aurelia moved the ring.

Then changed its size.

Then asked Evelyn a question about the infirmary.

My wife answered.

The drops touched.

Water struck the floor.

Evelyn stared at it.

“That was unfair.”

“People will speak while you work.”

“They usually wait until I have finished something delicate.”

Aurelia lifted an eyebrow.

My wife sighed.

“Some of them.”

When Evelyn finally passed the thread through without losing the water, Aurelia smiled.

“Enough.”

I relaxed.

“For Evelyn.”

I looked at her.

My wife took a towel from the bench with an expression that was not nearly sympathetic enough.

“Shall I wait?”

“I’d rather you fetched someone to tell her there’s an emergency.”

Aurelia picked up the three stones.

“There is no emergency.”

“Could be a small one.”

Evelyn kissed my cheek.

“I’ll see you at breakfast.”

Aurelia asked me to lift the stones.

I did.

Then she added a fourth.

A fifth.

By the tenth, I expected her to ask me to arrange them in some unnecessarily difficult pattern.

Instead, she said, “Keep them there. Show me where the power begins.”

“In me.”

“Where?”

I hesitated.

I could feel the force.

I knew how to reach for it.

I had grown used to thinking of it through what it could do.

Lift.

Hold.

Turn aside.

But following it inward was different.

My attention shifted.

Three stones dropped.

Aurelia caught them.

“Slowly,” she said.

We worked until the breakfast bell.

She made me release a working without scattering the strength I had put into it.

Then hold that strength within myself.

Then use it again.

The first attempt left me breathless.

The second made my hands shake.

On the third, something settled.

Not much.

Enough that the stone rose without the familiar hard pull beneath my ribs.

Aurelia watched my face.

“There.”

I lowered it.

“What did I do?”

“You stopped reaching past yourself every time you wanted more.”

I tried to understand that.

She took the stone from my hand.

“We will continue after the children’s birthday.”

“Why?”

The word came out more sharply than I intended.

Aurelia looked at me.

I leaned against the table.

“Why all of this? The longer lessons. Keeping me after Evelyn leaves. Making me feel things I’ve never needed to find before.”

She set the stone down.

“Because I am preparing you in case you want to ascend to godhood someday.”

I stared at her.

Beyond the chamber, footsteps crossed the passage.

Someone laughed.

The ordinary sounds made her answer harder to grasp.

“You could have mentioned that before the tenth stone.”

“Yes,” she said. “I should have.”

Aurelia drew a chair away from the wall.

She sat.

I remained standing for a moment, then took the other.

“I thought we were learning to defend the castle.”

“We are. Evelyn needs greater strength and finer control. So do you. Those things will serve you whether you ever become divine or not.”

“But mine goes further.”

“Yes.”

“Because of what Thesra told us.”

“Because of what she told us, and what I have seen in you.”

I looked at my hands.

They appeared disappointingly ordinary.

One thumbnail had a little dirt beneath it from the workshop.

“Do you know how to make it happen?”

“I know how it happened to me.”

“That isn’t quite the same.”

“No.”

She answered without hesitation.

“I can teach you what I understand about holding power, recovering it, and remaining yourself when it becomes greater than your body can comfortably bear. I can tell you what I failed to understand when I changed.”

“And then?”

“Then we learn what applies to you.”

I rubbed my palms together.

“Thesra said I have the capacity.”

“You do.”

“But this morning didn’t bring me halfway to becoming a god?”

Aurelia’s mouth softened.

“This morning brought you halfway to breakfast.”

I laughed despite myself.

Then the room became quiet again.

“Do you want me to?”

She considered that before answering.

“I want you to have a choice you understand.”

“That wasn’t quite what I asked.”

“No.”

She looked toward the door.

“I would be less frightened for you if I knew you could meet Othellos with strength he could not easily dismiss.”

There it was.

Her fear.

My own, reflected back at me.

“But I would be ashamed,” she continued, “if I used that fear to choose your life for you.”

I leaned back.

“What if I never want it?”

“Then we shall have made you a much better mage.”

“And if I do become divine, you become weaker.”

“Yes.”

“You would help me knowing that?”

Aurelia looked almost surprised by the question.

Then her expression changed.

“I have already lost a great deal to people who thought their strength mattered more than someone else’s freedom.”

She reached across and touched my wrist.

“I am not unwilling to give up some power, Uriah.”

I swallowed.

The breakfast bell rang again.

This time, someone in the corridor called my name.

Mary.

Aurelia withdrew her hand.

“We should go before she comes looking.”

“Are you afraid of Mary?”

“When she is holding a timetable.”

I told Evelyn after breakfast.

All of it.

She listened beside our bedroom window while I changed into dry boots.

When I finished, she sat on the edge of the bed.

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded.

That helped.

I had been afraid she would hear uncertainty as an answer I had already made.

“I want to be able to keep you safe,” I said.

“I want that too.”

“And the children.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t know what becoming a god would do to the rest of our life.”

My wife held out her hand.

I sat beside her.

“Then that belongs among the things you learn.”

“What if it changes how I feel?”

“About us?”

I nodded.

Evelyn looked toward the passage.

“Aurelia spent yesterday worrying about whether the stitching in a cloth door would hold.”

“That’s true.”

“She still misses her son. She still gets annoyed with you.”

“That may survive anything.”

My wife smiled.

Then she grew serious.

“I won’t pretend there are no questions. There are many. I intend to ask some of them myself.”

“I hoped you would.”

“Good. And I intend to continue the lessons.”

I kissed her fingers.

“I noticed you escaped the last part.”

“I completed my part.”

It was a distinction she appeared to enjoy.

The rest of that day concerned the birthday.

There were chairs to move.

A table to lower.

Someone had brought lengths of coloured cloth, which Helena said could be hung where the children would be able to see them without pulling them down.

Melody disagreed about what distance would prevent Carol from reaching something.

She had evidence.

A missing ribbon.

We found it beneath a cushion.

Our daughter watched the discovery without remorse.

I helped hang the cloth.

My arms objected.

Eleanor noticed.

“Training?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Hold that end higher.”

The children woke early on their birthday.

They did not seem aware that anything unusual was expected of them.

Garrick wanted breakfast.

Carol wanted Garrick’s cup.

Evelyn sat with our son while I persuaded our daughter that she possessed an equally useful cup of her own.

For several minutes, we managed.

Then my wife looked at me across the table.

“One year.”

I smiled.

“One year.”

Garrick put his hand into his porridge.

Carol laughed.

Neither of us attempted to improve the moment.

By afternoon, the hall was warm.

People arrived between their duties, carrying parcels or coming with empty hands and staying long enough to see the children.

Ilyen embraced Evelyn before sitting down.

Nessa inspected Garrick’s new teeth.

He objected.

Mary placed two little books on the gift table, one for each child’s years to come.

Eleanor brought broad wooden blocks that could be stacked and would, she assured me, withstand my son’s attention.

Perrin had helped smooth them.

He watched anxiously until Carol struck two together.

“They seem sound,” Melody told him.

He relaxed.

My boat was received with enthusiasm.

Mostly because Garrick could put its rounded bow in his mouth.

I had hoped for admiration of its shape.

His grandfather rested a hand on my shoulder.

“That is why we smoothed it.”

The little carved horse pleased Carol until she discovered the cloth book.

Then everything else could wait.

Aurelia sat beside her as promised.

She opened the page with the house.

Our daughter reached at once.

“Who is coming home?” Aurelia asked.

Garrick turned at the sound of her voice.

Evelyn lowered him beside his sister.

They bent over the book together.

The cake required more supervision than any working we had practiced that morning.

Carol pressed both hands into her small piece.

Garrick examined his.

Then examined hers.

I recognized the beginning of a dispute.

Before it developed, Helena moved the plates farther apart.

Experience was a formidable thing.

Music began near the hearth.

A fiddle.

Someone keeping time with a hand against a knee.

The Castellan stood near the wall, his golden eyes following the children as they moved between us.

When Carol offered him a damp crumb, he held out one metal hand.

She placed it carefully in his palm.

He thanked her.

Evelyn tried to arrange the family drawing before the children became tired.

It lasted perhaps three minutes.

Garrick wanted his grandfather.

Then me.

Then the floor.

Carol remained in Aurelia’s lap but kept lifting the cloth book in front of her face.

Helena laughed.

That made Evelyn stop drawing so she could look at her.

“Stay like that.”

“Laughing?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do it on command.”

I shifted our son higher on my knee.

He caught my ear.

The resulting expression pleased my wife enormously.

She began drawing again.

Later, when the tables had been cleared and most of the guests had returned to their work, I found Aurelia beside the hearth.

The cloth book lay open in her lap.

Both children slept upstairs.

“You look tired,” she said.

“You may have something to do with that.”

“Only a little.”

I sat beside her.

Across the hall, Evelyn was speaking to Ilyen.

My wife looked up.

Smiled.

Then returned to the conversation.

“I want to continue,” I said.

Aurelia turned toward me.

“The training.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t decided about the rest.”

“I understand.”

I watched Evelyn tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“There are things I want to ask before I ever could.”

“Then we will make time for them.”

Aurelia closed the book.

“Not tomorrow morning.”

I looked at her.

“Why?”

“Because you have spent the day carrying children, and I intend to sleep late.”

“That seems unusually merciful.”

She smiled.

“Enjoy it.”

Evelyn came to join us.

She sat on the arm of my chair and rested her hand against my shoulder.

“What are you discussing?”

“Our teacher has granted us a morning.”

“One?”

“We should accept before she reconsiders.”

My wife leaned down and kissed my cheek.

Across from us, Aurelia began carefully gathering the ribbons from the gifts.

She meant to keep them.

I watched her fold a blue one around her fingers.

Whatever I might become someday, I thought, there was still a great deal she could teach me.