Last to Rise(72)
Instead of dwelling on whatever crackpot idea Perak had come up with, under the watchful gaze of two Specials who looked like breaking any limbs they happened to find wouldn’t bother them one little bit, I went to help Lise like a good helpless brother.
I found her at her desk, scribbling furiously on a notepad, little squiggles and symbols that meant less than nothing to me. She’d stuck the plans for the damned machine back together with tape, making them look more demented and incomprehensible than ever. Every now and again she’d glance up at the picture on her desk, of Dwarf, her mentor and perhaps more. I hadn’t liked to ask, especially after he died.
“It’ll work,” she muttered when she noticed me. “He shouldn’t have used it, not yet – why did he?”
“Because he didn’t see any other way,” I said. Because I wouldn’t let him use any other way, I thought.
“I can make it work, I’m sure. Safe too.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to work on the —”
She glared up at me, the family donkey line firmly in place between her eyes. I was going to lose this argument as well.
“If I can get this to work, we’ll be safe, all of us. If I can’t, it doesn’t matter how many guns the factory puts out, how much steel we can find. Guns won’t win this.”
And I couldn’t help with that, or understand half of what she was actually doing. I felt like one of her spare parts. Funny, I used to loathe my magic, afraid of it, not wanting to hurt myself, or get addicted to it like Dendal was. Well, I still thought hurting myself was a damnfool way to cast a spell, but now… I couldn’t use it, Perak was right. Not if I wanted to live, stay sane. A mage needs to be well fed, well rested, to get the most out of himself, the most out of his pain, and I was far from both of those things. I didn’t fancy dying much, so, Perak’s orders or not, magic was out of the question for now, and hell did I miss it.
Up there, in the pain room on the cusp of Trade, I was nothing more now than a hindrance, someone to get in Lise’s way or distract Perak from whatever scheme he had in mind. Worse, I had no Pasha. No one to call a little git, no one to rant at me and be my conscience. No more monkey grins, no passionate talk of the Goddess, no turning lion just when it was most awkward or calling me a prick when I needed to hear it.
I had no business being Over because I was Under through and through. I was useless, hopeless, helpless. So I did what anyone might do and went home.
Chapter Twenty
I hesitated at the door to the office. Something didn’t feel right and I cursed under my breath. Comes to something when a man goes home to find it isn’t what it was when he left.
The office seethed with people – youngsters, magelets. They were perched on Pasha’s desk, on the lumpy old sofa, on whatever floorspace they could find. One was even sat astride Griswald, who looked bizarrely pleased, or as pleased as a century-old stuffed tiger can look.
I was about to vent my entire spleen and ask what the hell everyone though they were doing when I caught sight of Halina and Dendal in a cleared space in the centre of the room. Dendal’s candles guttered in the breeze of more people breathing than our office had seen, well, maybe ever. The magelets were rapt, watching with avid eyes as Halina cracked a finger out of its socket.
I’d never seen Dendal quite so with it, or not for so long a time, not for more than five minutes or so. Then again, magic and its uses in the service of the Goddess always got him focused.
“All right, see how Halina concentrates, pulls that pain in. You feel it come up your arm like a warmth, a knowledge. Yes?”
Most of the kids nodded, though one or two looked dubious.
“Then you have to show it what to do, lead it along your path, whatever your path is. It will want to go somewhere else, almost always, but you are the master. Remember that. You master it, not the other way around.” Ah yes, the start of Dendal’s famous “mastery” speech. Soon he’d start banging on about control and I’d start to nod off. Or I would if there was any space to sit.
“Halina?” Dendal murmured.
She favoured us all with an arch and superior smile, half closed her eyes and concentrated. Nothing much happened for a moment, and then a boy gasped as Griswald lifted into the air and twirled slowly round, as though showing off his new boy-coat.
Halina let Griswald down to the floor gently, and Dendal caught my eye before he carried on.
“You all know by now what happened to Pasha. And the warning there is twofold. That is what happens if you can’t control your magic, when it masters you rather than the other way around. And also,” he held me with eyes clearer than I’d ever seen, “also sometimes it is what you have to do. No matter what the priests say now, they once held that the Goddess made us this way for a purpose. I believe that, with all I have. You have a purpose, and so does your magic, but it’s up to you to decide what that purpose is. For Pasha, it was to save Jake and others like her, perhaps to show us the way. It always was his purpose, and he was clear in his mind about what he was prepared to do for her, for them, us, and he did it. Now, Mahala is going to need us, and soon. She’s going to need everything you can give it, everything you can give to the people who, whether they like it or not, know it or not, will be relying on us, on the guards, on Lise and whatever genius she can perform. So I need you all to work with me, with Halina and Rojan here to do your best to learn some control. And I need you to think on your purpose, for the Goddess.”