He rose and splashed some water on his face to wake up and clean the sleep out of his eyes. The food she had left was cold but delicious, soft bread with butter and honey to complement grilled slices of salted ham. Once he was dressed and armored, Will teleported to Rimberlin House, and after apologizing for his tardiness, he took them back to the ley-line intersection in the mountains where Tailtiu awaited.

  His aunt wasn’t any more pleased about having been forced to wait, but Will deflected her ire by shifting the topic to her feeding. Tailtiu insisted it wasn’t necessary yet, but he wanted to stay ahead of the problem. When he explained to Sammy and Emory that they’d be taking turns, an entirely different conversation ensued.

  Both of them wanted to be first, but Emory insisted, then looked distinctly hurt when Sammy didn’t seem even faintly jealous. Will was beyond caring—he just wanted to get on with the day. “Can we just get this over with? There’s a lot to do.”

  Tailtiu laid her hand on Emory’s cheek and kept it there for a solid minute, while the young wizard made an effort to appear stoic. In spite of his efforts, there was one obvious sign he couldn’t hide. After another round of snippy remarks between him and Sammy, Will lost his patience.

  “I’m calling your tutor now. Please don’t joke around in front of her; she’s incredibly dangerous. One wrong word and you could end up on a leash for eternity.”

  That got their attention. Will repeated his grandmother’s name three times, then began lecturing them on the rules. “Accept no gifts, unless she names it a gift. Anything you accept without an agreed payment could be considered a debt. If you ever meet one of the fae without me, always negotiate a duration for a peaceful truce while you settle the terms for your interaction. As long as you’re in Hercynia, they can’t hurt you, unless you violate the terms of the Accord, or incur a debt that can be paid for in blood. Never travel to the fae realm unless you have the power to compel respect—you don’t have the same protection there that you do here.”

  Emory raised a hand. “Can you clarify that last part?”

  “In their realm, we are prey. It’s handy to use congruence points to travel back and forth, but if you get caught, you’d better be stronger than whoever catches you. If not, they’ll do what they please, or force you into a bargain you won’t like. They can’t lie, but they don’t need to. They can deceive with the truth, and you’ll never know their true motives.”

  “I’m starting to think this is a bad idea,” observed Will’s cousin.

  Will agreed. “Dealing with them is always a bad idea. No matter what bargain you make, they always come out ahead. The best you can do is to know what you’re willing to lose before you make a deal and stick to that.”

  Sammy lifted one brow, giving him a dubious look. “And you’re leaving us alone with her?”

  “I’ve already made the deal. While she’s here, she will teach you just as if she’s human. If you ask for anything she hasn’t already agreed to, she will warn you—I specified that with her already. Follow her instructions and tell her when you don’t understand. So long as it relates to her agreement with me, she’ll behave as any other teacher. She will also protect you while she is here.”

  “If there’s nothing to worry about, why are you giving us so many warnings?” asked Emory.

  “The fae are always something to worry about. I’ve tried to think of everything, but she has probably already thought of loopholes I missed. She has to warn you before you get caught by one, though. Pay attention and don’t take her lightly,” warned Will.

  “Lightly?” huffed the young nobleman. “After what happened to you yesterday, I’m already on the verge of pissing myself.”

  Will didn’t really want to remember that, but he rolled with it. “That was nothing. Let me tell you the story of how my grandmother came to be who she is now and you’ll see how much worse it can be.”

  Floating down from the ledge above, Aislinn landed as though she weighed less than a feather. “Telling bedtime stories to scare the children, William?”

  He shrugged. “I had to fill the time.”

  After a short series of introductions, he let Aislinn get to work. As promised, she behaved just as any human teacher would have. She explained the theory and demonstrated the details while remaining patient. She had no expectation that her students would understand immediately.

  The first day was too short to get past the preliminaries, but after the second, Will asked her, “What do you think? Can they do it?”

  Aislinn responded with confidence, “I must confess to being worried before I met them, but your apprentices have a solid foundation. Either of them could do it alone, given time to mature. The aristocrat already has the knowledge needed—he just hasn’t developed the stability to control such large flows. With your cousin acting as a ritual conduit, he should succeed.”

  “My life is forfeit if they fail,” Will reminded her.

  His grandmother smiled. “As is mine. If my teaching is unsuccessful, I will have violated our bargain.”

  “That’s not a motivation for you.”

  The fae queen clucked her tongue at him. “My nature demands that I do my best. Fear not. I simply made certain the outcome was a win for me either way.”

  On the fourth day, Sammy was given a break. Aislinn declared she was already fit for her part, and since Will’s cousin was becoming frustrated trying to follow along with spellcraft that was years too soon for her to attempt, she was told to find something else to occupy her time.

  Will had been elsewhere for most of each day, working on a new idea of his own, so when he came back for lunch, Sammy immediately latched onto him. “I’m sick of this,” she announced.

  “Aislinn said you were doing well,” said Will encouragingly.

  Sammy twisted her face into a scowl, wrinkling her nose dramatically. “The stuff they’re doing now is just too much. I don’t know if I’ll ever be good enough for it. It’s like that cleaning spell you showed me. I want to be that good, I’m just not.”

  “You’ll get there,” said Will. “It took me years. Just keep practicing. I have something else you can do if you want to help me instead.”

  Her spirits lifted immediately. “Really? What?”

  Insisting it was a secret, he waited until after lunch, then took her with him when he left, using a travel disk to get down the mountain to a gentler clime. In a small clearing he’d been using, he showed her what he’d been trying to do.

  Will took a wide stance, then brought his hands together in an exaggerated clapping motion. The sound that resulted was far greater than that of a normal clap, but it faded an instant later, becoming a strange hum that continued long after. Standing a few feet away, Sammy noticed that Will’s outline was blurry. She circled him slowly to see if he looked the same from all sides. He did. “What is that?”

  “I’m not sure,” he responded with a grin. “I think of it as a wall of sound, but that’s not really accurate. I haven’t come up with a name for it.”

  She continued studying the effect. It was sort of like what she might have expected from heat waves in the distance on a summer day, but not nearly as irregular. Her cousin was still easily identifiable, just slightly blurred in a highly uniform fashion. The turyn around him was even more interesting. “That’s not a spell,” she observed.

  Will nodded. “It’s wild magic. More specifically, I’m using my talent with sound.”

  “Could I do that?” she asked.

  “Maybe, if you have the same talent. Or maybe even without it. I’m not sure how hard it is for someone else. Talents are weird. I’m just feeling my way around it. Remember what you did with fire last week while clearing the platform?” When she nodded, he continued, “I tried it too. As simple as it seemed, it was a lot more difficult for me.”

  “But you were able to do it.”

  “Yes, but that was a fairly basic application of turyn. You just had a knack for it. Later on, you might develop a talent related to it,” he explained.

  Sammy clapped her hands, her brows knitting together in concentration. She made several more attempts before giving up. “I don’t get how you’re doing it. There’s nothing there. How are you grabbing sound and holding it?”

  “It’s like air, but it isn’t,” said Will. “It’s not turyn, but it is energy. I don’t know how to explain it. The clap is just to give me a starting point. Once the sound starts, I keep it bound to one place and feed turyn in to amplify it. The vibrations bounce back and forth over a span of a few inches until I let them escape.”

  Sammy’s shoulders drooped. “That makes absolutely no sense. You expect me to learn this?”

  He waved his hand at her. “Oh, no! I want you to help me test it.”

  “Oh. How?”

  “Throw some fire at me.”

  His cousin seemed dubious. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”

  “You can’t burn me, even if it doesn’t work,” said Will. When she rolled her eyes, he demonstrated by using some unskilled wild magic, sending an unfocused wave of flame rolling over her.

  Sammy deflected it without thinking, parting the wall of fire like a curtain so that it passed around her. “Are you trying to kill me?” Panic was written in her eyes.

  “I’m trying to demonstrate a point,” said Will. “Most magic won’t hurt you, unless the other caster is vastly stronger. By the time it reaches your skin your control will be too strong for them to maintain it. I’ve told you about this before. It’s called resistance.”

  “What if they fling a boulder at me?” she asked.

  Will grinned. “You better move. Earth, air, water, fire, they all have different levels of physicality. Fire is almost entirely magic, at least when we create it out of nothing, so your resistance can completely nullify it. Air and water have more physical matter involved, so while you might weaken the attack, it could still do serious damage. Solid earth is way worse, unless you steal the power propelling it while it’s still at a distance.”

  She narrowed her eyes, thinking. “What if there’s no magic? What if someone tossed burning oil at me?”

  “You’d best block it with a shield,” said Will. “Most fire magic, like a fire-bolt, uses turyn as the fuel that feeds the flame. No magic, no flame. If something ordinary like oil is burning then no turyn is required, so be sure to block it.” He sent another massive wave of fire at her, but once again, Sammy opened a hole in the fire so that it passed around her. After it passed, she seized the flames and sent them back in his direction.

  A split second later, they vanished as his will flooded the area, smothering hers. Sammy gave him a sour look. “That’s hardly fair.”

  Will relaxed. “Sorry, force of habit. Try again.”

  “You’re sure it’s safe?”

  “Definitely.” He was intentionally forcing himself to relax so she could do as he asked, but he didn’t expect the blaze that appeared.

  As she extended her hands, an intense gout of orange-white fire blasted into him. As expected, his resistance kept him from burning, but the heat in the air all around him was such that it singed the tips of his hair. “Damn,” he swore, impressed.

  “Are you all right? Will? I’m so sorry!” In a state of alarm his cousin ran over to him. “I didn’t mean to do that. Can you see?”

  He smiled. “That was great, but I have to wonder, are you secretly angry at me about something? You really gave it everything, didn’t you?”

  “No! No, no, no, definitely not.” She was patting his clothes and hair, searching for burned places. “You’re sure you’re fine?” When he nodded, she remarked, “I didn’t expect it to be like that. I wasn’t trying that hard.”

  Will filed that away as something to remember. “That’s exactly what I need, although maybe don’t try any harder than that until I tell you to. Let me make another sound barrier, and we can see if it does anything to the fire.”

  The first test was disappointing, and Will almost lost his eyebrows. Sammy’s flames came straight through, and the only real change was that she claimed the sound barrier remixed them as they passed through.

  The second, third, and fourth tests were similar failures, although Sammy did get better at limiting herself to a more reasonable amount of fire. They took a short break to rest since they weren’t near the ley lines and his cousin needed more time to recover her turyn after so many attacks.

  When they resumed, Will tried changing frequencies and increasing the amount of power he used, but none of it seemed to help. Finally, he asked Sammy to use a steady stream rather than intermittent blasts.

  “I don’t think I can sustain it. I’ll run out of turyn.”

  “Keep it small,” Will replied. “Just a small line, something the size of your arm, maybe. If you can keep it going, that will give me a chance to experiment with my barrier and see what works.”

  “Why do you think this will work?” she asked suddenly. “Sound isn’t solid. It can’t block anything.”

  He shrugged, feeling unsure. Will had a vague memory of someone suggesting it, but he couldn’t remember when or where. “Sound can shatter gates and bring down castle walls. I have a feeling it can do this too. I don’t know why. I might be crazy.”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Sammy. “If you’re mad, I’ll be crazy with you.” She sent a stream of fire toward him, a ribbon five inches across that flowed through the air like a burning river of water.

  For five minutes, Will shifted and changed everything he could, and though he failed, he sensed that success was possible. His efforts did alter the flame, sometimes causing it to widen or bend slightly in one direction or the other. By the end of the day, he was glad to take a rest.

  After they returned to Rimberlin, Will discovered he couldn’t contact Selene, which probably meant she was working late. He spent the night there, and they got an early start the next day. Since Sammy had been excused, he went over her morning spell exercises with her and let her watch him run through his.

  She marveled at what she saw. “How many spells was that?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t counted them. I just run through every spell I’ve learned at least once a day. The newer spells I’ll repeat over and over for the remaining time to help me get better with them.”

  “You didn’t even cast most of them. The spell constructs were just appearing and disappearing, one after another. They were gone before my eyes could even get a good look at most of them.”

  Will nodded. “I slow down for my practice.”

  She scoffed. “Now I know you’re bragging.”

  “No. Most of them I can reflex cast now. You wouldn’t even see the construct form. I just think it, and it happens instantly. When I practice like this I deliberately slow down so I can be sure I really remember how each one is done. Arrogan once told me he’d forgotten how some of the spells he used were actually constructed, which made it hard for him to teach them. Plus, I think doing this makes it easier to learn new spells that I have to perform the normal way.”

  “Show me one you’re still mastering, then,” suggested his cousin.

  Holding out one hand, Will crafted the construct for a teleport spell. Due to its complexity, it took him more than a minute, but he was pleased with his progress. Every day, he was faster.

  Sammy was amazed. “The runes are flowing together so quickly, it’s just a blur. This is slow? I’m doomed. I’ll never be able to do that!”

  “You will,” he insisted. “It may be a few years, a decade, or longer. I’ve been told I’m far ahead of what most wizards achieve at this age. Arrogan even let slip that he thought I might be close to what he usually expected from someone after a century.”

  She nodded. “So you’re a prodigy. That figures.”

  “No.” Will caught her eyes and spoke slowly to emphasize his words. “I am just stubborn. I have also been put through a long series of life-or-death events. I practice every day, without fail. There have been times in the past when I practiced a lot more than an hour a day. Sometimes I would spend eight or ten hours, when I had the luxury. I’ve deliberately cultivated this skill, because I can’t afford to wait a century.”

  “You always say Selene is better than you, though.”

  “She really is a prodigy,” Will agreed. “She’s smart, and she understands spell theory more deeply than most of the professors at Wurthaven. She also started a lot younger than I did, but when I say she’s better, I don’t mean at everything. She knows more, and she is a genius at spell design, but she doesn’t have this kind of speed, not with most of her spells, anyway. My will is also stronger than hers, but that’s probably just because I’ve been a real wizard longer than she has. She’s moving at a different pace, but I bet in a century she’ll be far beyond me, and she’ll probably wonder why she married a dunce.”

  Sammy stared at him intently, then said, “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” He was genuinely confused.

  “You build others up and then run yourself down. Yes, you’re dumb in some ways, but if you could see yourself the way the rest of us do, you wouldn’t say things like that.”

  Will squinted at her, then said, “Most of Terabinia is scared to death of the Stormking.”

  “Not them,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean those of us who know you.”

  He studied his feet for a moment. “Well, thank you.” Then he looked around. “Let’s not start the day being overly sentimental. Are you ready to help me with my new idea?”

  Sleeping had done him some good, because within an hour of practicing, he was able to redirect her flame ribbon far enough to avoid his body. By noon, he’d managed to keep it from penetrating the boundary of his sound barrier at all, forcing it to slide away and disperse along one edge or the other. After lunch, they tried using different shapes and volumes of flame, and Will found that his barrier didn’t work well for many of them. Yet.