Taking that as a negative, I pushed again. “Should I try again?”
“No,” he lifted his hand and shook his head. “Just give me a moment to process what has just happened.”
“So I sent something?”
“Oh, yes. You sent, child. You just sent more than any trainee has ever sent before on his or her first try.” He pinned me with his strange gaze. “You haven’t been studying behind my back, have you? Selwyn giving you lessons?”
“No, Master. I only did the exercises you told me to.” I shrunk back in the chair. I could not think of what I might have done. Had I sent the whole word when I should have only been able to manage half or nothing on the first try? I watched Errol warily. “I did try that one time in the carriage,” I reminded him.
He waved me to shush and reached for Xornitic’s Book of Sending Exercises. Opening it to the appendix, he flipped a few pages and then set it before me open. “Read that,” he ordered.
“‘Sending Images, Feelings, and Intentions,’” I read out loud. It was the title of the section. “I don’t understand.”
“That is what you just did, child.” He whipped the book away from me and closed it with a muffled thump. “I can see that that book is going to be useless,” he muttered.
“I sent an image, feeling, and intention?” I asked. I was still confused as to what Errol was so agitated about.
He finally looked up and actually looked at me. “You sent a word, an image, and an emotion, Zezilia.”
“And that is significant?”
He laughed. “It means that you have a strong talent for sending. Sending multiple things in one sending is a skill that most advanced trainees learn after two years of study. You just did it instinctively, which means that your sending lessons are going to focus on something totally different than I was planning. Instead of learning how to send these things together, you are going to need to learn to separate them out and send only the one you intend to send.”
He rose from his chair and crossed to one of the floor to ceiling bookcases. Selecting a thick book with a deep purple cover, he said, “There is going to be a change in textbooks.” He set the book before me and removed the Xornitic’s Exercises. I read the faded gold lettering on the new book, Defensive Discernment.
“I want you to begin reading that immediately. It will be tough to digest at first because you will not be familiar with the vocabulary. This should help with that.” He set a dictionary on top of the purple book. “I want you to take notes on everything you read. We will discuss a section every morning and then practice it.”
“But I am not very good at sending yet. I have only done it once.” In fact I was feeling overwhelmed.
“That,” he said as he resumed his seat, “Is what we are going to do today.” He settled into the chair as though he expected to be there a long while. “I want to hear a story,” he declared.
I looked at him in stunned apprehension.
“Touch my mind and tell me a story. I want you to develop the discipline for sustained sending. If I am right, you are very capable, you just need practice. Now, tell me a story.”
I struggled to think a tale to tell. My thoughts were too full of the discoveries of the past half hour.
“It could be a bedtime story about a pig and a goat for all I care, child. I am waiting and you are wasting time. Compose your thoughts and begin.”
Taking him literally at his word, I pulled a bedtime tale that my nurse told me when I was young from my memory. Repeating the steps from before, I falteringly began to send my tale a word at a time.
“You can do better than that,” Errol complained. “Send sentences. Maintain touch; just be careful not to press into my thoughts.”
Hands shaking, I began again. This time I let the fusion of taste fill my mouth until I could smell nothing but what my taste buds insisted was on my tongue. With great concentration I told the tale. Thankfully, it was brief.
“Good,” Errol proclaimed. I jumped at the abrupt presence in my mind. An instinct that I hadn’t known was there did something, and suddenly I could no longer taste plum. Errol laughed. “So that is what he meant.”
“Who?”
Waving me off, Errol shook his head. “Enough for today. Take out Talents and Morals and read the first chapter. After you are done, we will discuss the concepts.”
I obeyed, wondering if every day of study was going to be as disconcerting as this one. I hoped not. Feeling more confused than enlightened, I turned my thoughts to the first chapter of Talents and Morals.
Hadrian
THE NIGHT BECKONED to me. From the candle-lit confines of my study with its floor to ceiling bookcases and white vacant walls, the darkness looked velvet and deep. Where I sat, leaning over the cluttered stacks of evaluations, reports, letters, and documents, the cool waft spoke of relief and repose. My thoughts strayed from the letter about the latest birth of a seventh son to the enticing music of trees in the breeze.
On those days, exhaustion frequently drove me to bed long before the dimness of evening fell into night. Long hours of work with no glimmer of relief thrust me onward from early morn, before the sun rose, to sunset. Then I would collapse into bed only to rise to do it again. For three months, this had been my life. Almost half my first year as Sept Son was over and yet both the High King and Neleck lingered.
Tonight, however, promised to be the end of one wait for death. Neleck grew weaker hourly and the healers predicted he would breathe his last tonight. That was why I lingered so long in my
