Joe shook his head sadly. “I should have realized. There were clues that your training was lacking, but I didn’t realize it was that serious.”
“What do you mean, Joe? What kind of clues?” Tess interjected.
“Raphael has always traveled on that big beast of his. I’ve never seen him come or go anyway but on Beast. I thought it was just an affectation of the Wanderers that they always ride their familiars wherever they were going. It never seemed to be an issue to worry over since Fate always gives you time to get wherever you are needed. But portals can be opened from one spot in our world to another in our world, just as they can be opened from our world to one of the other worlds. Granted it’s more difficult to open one to another physical location in the same world, but it can be done. It’s just a matter of technique.”
I sat back in my rocker and stared out across the vista toward Kansas. I’d been such a fool. Why hadn’t I asked Walt or any of the other Wanderers I’d come across or helped out over the years? I really didn’t need to ask myself that question. Because I knew the answer to it. I’ve always been self-reliant. So much so that I wouldn’t ask for help with anything unless there was no other option. Walt had been the only person I could ever ask anything, and I’d only had him around for five years.
“Well, hell,” I said at last. “Joe, do you think you could give me a few pointers on how to go about it?”
Joe nodded slowly. “I can help, but it’s not something you could put in one of those tattoos of yours. You need to cast the spell while concentrating on the location you want. If you’ve never been there before, it’s infinitely more difficult, but it can still be done. The easy way to get a portal open is to mark the two locations in your mind with a spell of remembrance and then you can go between those two points with relative ease.”
“A spell of remembrance?” Tess asked. “What’s that, Joe?”
“The spell is to help you remember a location or event. I guess to use modern terms, it stores everything about a particular place and time in your long-term memory. Cast it before reading a spell, and you will find it nearly impossible to forget the spell. Cast it while staring out over a vista like this…” Joe waved a hand indicating the view to the north and east “…and you’ll never forget this moment in time. You’ll always be able to remember how things looked, how the wind felt on your face, sounds and smells all as if you were back here at this particular instance.”
“That would be helpful in my studying spells,” Tess said.
“It’s a crutch, a cheat,” I said. “You should learn the spells the way I taught you.”
“Why? Because that’s how you learned them?” Tess asked.
“You shouldn’t depend on magic to help you learn other magic. You don’t know whether you actually remember the spell correctly if you rely on a spell rather than memorization.”
Tess frowned at me. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“There’s an old axiom about the value of things are directly related to the effort it takes to learn them. Magic is like that. The more power you want to control, the more effort you have to put into learning it.”
“Like learning to shoot a gun as comparing to learning to sword fight?” Tess asked.
“What?”
“You know how easy it is to train troops to use a rifle compared to back when they had to learn swordplay? Just because it took soldiers years to learn to properly fight with a sword didn’t mean that they could best the people who had learned to use a rifle in a couple of days.”
I frowned at her analogy. So she thought of an example that didn’t match my conclusion. What was one example compared to years of experience? “Who’s the mentor here?”
“You are, of course,” Tess answered.
“Then you should follow my lead.”
“You said I should question everything I don’t understand,” Tess groused.
“Yes, I did. I’m not saying you shouldn’t question what I’m telling you when we’re training or any other time, as long as it’s not while we’re facing a threat. That spell takes time to learn, just like the other spells. I need you to concentrate on learning the ones I tell you.”
“Even if this one would speed up my learning of the other spells?”
“Even so,” I said.
“You sound like my father. Do it my way. That’s the way it’s always worked, and there’s no point in trying something new. Come on, Rafe. You’re better than that. I expect that sort of response from an old man, no offense Joe, but not from my mentor.”
“None taken,” Joe said with a chuckle.
I stared at my apprentice, thinking once again that Walt didn’t know how easy he had it with me as his apprentice. I never gave him that kind of lip.
Chapter 20
Raphael
Beast opened the portal while I watched to see how it was done. It’d been a long time since my familiar had shown me something I hadn’t known how to do. The portal he created was wide enough for all of us to step through and a strong blast of cold air flowed into our faces from the other side. Tess was on Maia and I on Beast. We moved into the portal from the front of Joe’s cabin and emerged in a frozen river valley. My ears popped with the change of pressure and Beast closed the portal behind us. The gale force wind ceased immediately.
“Wow, I’d forgotten how cold it was here,” Tess shouted to be heard over the tumultuous cacophony of the waterfall.
I had forgotten too,
