I wanted a bath. Instead, I went to Shamino’s study. He kept a set of spare clothes in the wardrobe. I brought them to the nearest washroom. There I peeled off my clothes, Incinerated them, vomited in a basin, sponged off my legs. I still reeked. I put the clothes on anyway, tying the waist with twine, and rushed back to the baby.
She was sleeping again. My hand brushed against her as I sat on the floor. I stiffened. *Mettalise! She vomited maybe ten minutes ago, and now her temperature has plummeted. The room’s warm, she has a few blankets… what else can I do?*
*How would I know? Let me get Mia.* I fidgeted as the dragons talked. *She can return and blow fire into the room?*
That’d help, but dragons could only sustain fire for a short time. A team of dragons, in shifts? The nursery could hold two adults. It’d be a solution, but an awkward one, having dragons slip in and out of the nursery.
*I’ll use my Gift.*
*Burning what?*
I thought of the spell I’d come up with to cook the steak. *Magic.*
I hauled the bucket, the blankets, some cloths, anything flammable out of Rose’s supply room and into the nursery. The wooden shelves would have to burn. *I will put up a partial block so I can concentrate. Did you think of, I don’t know, roaring? To get Shamino’s attention?*
A wave of embarrassment. *Um. No. We forget we can make audible noise. We’ll try that.*
Shamino had to notice a bunch of dragons terrifying the local animals. I wouldn’t need to work the spell very long.
I settled on the floor far from Rose. I didn’t want to fall into her aura of magic resistance—she didn’t have much control over the barrier. I took several deep breaths and cleared my thoughts. First, a thin layer of magic, all around the room... A film of blue fire spread from my body over the floors, the walls, the shelves, the ceiling. I left a magic-free circle around the kit. I also doubled the thickness over my body. I didn’t want to cook myself.
Weaving two spells was tricky, an advanced technique I was practicing. Just like with the steak, I fueled a layer of real fire with a layer of magic. It took several tries to get it in balance. Blue and orange blended in my vision into brown; sweat broke out on my skin so I thickened the blue layer.
This uses too much Gift. I won’t last long at this rate. I pulled back. My head ached as I struggled to keep the spell stable. Once it evened out, I pulled back a little more…
There. Fire roared around me. I couldn’t see Rose. I couldn’t see my own hand. All I could do was sit, work magic, and pray that any moment Mettalise would give me a mental tap with good news.
Time passed. Gift seeped away.
Where is he? I supposed they could have wandered farther than anyone suspected. Even if they’d heard the dragons, it’d take time to walk to the nearest Kyer entrance… unless they had taken a carriage. To the nearest town, to the nearest romantic mountain peak… how long had they been gone? My Gift, it was going too fast, but I doubted I could conserve any more of it.
The sapphire hung heavy against my skin.
If I use the gem, it’s another debt. I’ll owe Thorkel that much more.
Worse, it was another secret.
“I can’t let her die,” I whispered to myself. The vision’s echo—Don’t die, please don’t die. In the vision, I was coated in fire, just like this. But I held a man, not a dragon. Therefore, if I used the sapphire, it wouldn’t affect much. This couldn’t be a crossroads…
I ceased the spell. The entire room went dark. I blinked, made a Light. Rose still breathed, but I could feel her scales were already cooling. If I wanted to keep her warm, I’d have to use the sapphire.
I filled the gem with my Gift; it trickled out, slow but steady. Then I tried holding it there, like blocking a hole in a cup with my thumb. In fact… Zoland had taught me how to ‘tie’ my magic to one place. If I ‘tied’ my Gift to the gem and immobilized it—
My suspicions of Thorkel’s method proved true. The sapphire filled with magic until it filled to overflowing. It wasn’t a lot of magic; he’d need many, many gems for a massive Illusion spell, but with enough mages and enough gems it could be done. With a mental nudge, I eased my magic out of the sapphire. In a controlled burst, the room blazed.
Just like a crystal can concentrate light, the gem makes it so that not one scrap of magic goes to waste. Brilliant. This is how a handful of mages makes an Illusion large enough to cover dragons. This is how a red mage defeats a black.
For now, though, I simply needed to keep a kit alive. I settled against the wall and filled the gem. With more precision than I could ever manage on my own, I cast the spell. It didn’t take much effort to continually fill the sapphire nestled between my breasts. It took so little concentration, I began to yawn…
Heat vanished. No heat, no cold, an endless blue sky instead of blue fire… the world was bathed in sunshine, yet no sun hung in the sky. The colors—grass greener than green, flowers of vibrant gold, purple, scarlet—all glowed strangely, like a rainbow upon the ground.
What happened to the storeroom? All around, the strange, endless meadow. I still wore Shamino’s clothes, but they looked dull and dead against the surreal color. I didn’t reek of vomit, either. In fact, the meadow didn’t have that smell of grass, the rainbow flowers gave off no perfume. Somehow the place I stood was both more real than anywhere I’d ever been, yet it was not
