His hands fell; the spell vanished. “Whenever you are ready.”
Panic squeezed my heart. A minute ago I had worried that I had too much magic. Now? Now the Gift stayed in my chest, bright and powerful and massive, and very definitely not moving. I held nothing in my palms. I tried casting the spell anyway, but no flames appeared.
I tried the imagining part again. The casting part again. Finally, I faced the truth.
“I can’t do it,” I murmured, opening my eyes.
Zoland studied me intently. I may have shrunk back. “You felt the magic in your chest?”
“Yes! But. It never left. I should have felt it in my hands, right?”
“Ah. An error in visualization, perhaps, due to a poor explanation on my side.”
Not my peasant blood’s fault? I relaxed as Zoland’s vague, I’m-thinking expression returned.
“You should always feel magic in your chest. If you do not, then you have used the entirety of your Gift before it could replenish itself. That kills a mage.” He gestured to my hands. “This time, imagine your heart as an anchor as the Gift travels.”
“Anchor?”
“Right. Mountains.” He frowned. “Your heart as the root of a flowering tree.”
That image I understood. I tried again, but the new visualization didn’t help. I admitted failure once more. By then, my lesson had ended. Only the thinnest sliver of the Time Sphere had yet to form.
“Do not worry,” Zoland said as he stood. “Next session, we will try a different focal point. Not every beginning mage has success with her hands. Did Orrik teach you meditation?”
He had. Every day I visualized the pasture near my old home in Stoneyfield. It had been pretty enough in the summer, covered in wildflowers. The village altar stood in its center. I knew it almost as well as my own home.
“Meditate three times a day to strengthen your mind.” Zoland tapped his temple. “Most mages say the Gift’s color determines power, but they are wrong. It is the strength of the mind. Feel free to attempt Light on your own. It is a benign spell.”
Zoland held out his hand to help me up, but I didn’t take it. “What happens if I never cast Light? Or anything?”
“Then you don’t bond.”
Simple. Clear. All this time, I’d worried about passing as a noble, but it was the magic that mattered. No bonding meant no home.
“No one has left the Kyer due to their magic failing.” Zoland reached out again; my rough skin pulled at his soft palm as he helped me to standing.
To my shock, my legs wobbled as if I’d just planted an entire field. I pulled my rough fingers from his and leaned against the stone chair to steady myself. “Why do trainees leave?”
“Over half return home because Kyer life is… challenging. Our ways do not align with the rest of Drageria.” Zoland opened the door. Blurs of people zoomed by. “In rare cases, no dragon wishes to bond with a potential Dragon Mage.”
Lovely. I decided not to worry about dragons liking me. My worry bucket already overflowed.
“… if you don’t mind?”
“Hm?” I snapped to attention.
Zoland still stood by the door, and he held out an envelope. “Kyer tradition. Trainees, when we can pin them down, deliver messages. It familiarizes you with the Kyer and introduces you to others.”
I left the chair. The strange weakness had vanished. Still, I didn’t want to deliver anything. I wanted to eat dinner, alone, and get back to studying. But I reached for the envelope rather than tell Zoland no.
My hands went clammy at the address: Seneschal. Dragon Quarters, Mountain 4.
Zoland laughed at my apparent dread. “The Seneschal will barely notice you. All Shamino cares about is his dragons.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the address. The Seneschal took care of all unbonded, ill, and newly hatched dragons; he oversaw the Kyer in the Dragonmaster’s absence. This Seneschal, Orrik had mentioned, possessed a rare Gift for dragon healing.
I hadn’t even started my etiquette lessons. How was I supposed to—
Smile and hold out an envelope? Stop being an ox-brain, Adara.
Besides. Dragon Quarters. After days of being stuck in my rooms or the dining hall, I’d finally get to see a dragon.
“I’ll deliver it,” I said, brightening. I entered the hall, recalled the waypoints I’d memorized since Orrik’s departure, and fixed Mountain Four in my mind. I took a step.
Instantly, the world blurred. The Transportation spell had been sunk into the mountains long ago, and the precise workings were no longer understood. It worked for everyone, even the Giftless commoners. As long as a person had memorized the waypoints, he or she could get around the Kyer without walking for days. Mountain Four, the Dragon Quarters, was a waypoint in itself, and it was far from the practice room in Mountain Two. Within steps, the air became a soft breeze and colorful blurs of people whizzed by.
Twenty minutes later, the blurs grew more distinct, and the breeze died down. Somehow the magic knew to stop right before I came to a large, stone door. It had also kept me from colliding into a single person on the way.
I loved walking down the hallways.
The door opened at a light touch, revealing a room for waiting. A gray rug, thick and slightly darker than the stone, covered the floor. Plush chairs of dark green and dark wood made small waiting spaces here and there. Enormous tapestries hid the walls, all of them bright with scenes of dragons flying in the sky.
The waiting room was empty. I went to sit… But the chairs, had they ever been sat in? The room was beautiful, but there was no dust. No wrinkles in
