We told them the moment we returned to the camp, for neither Ivy nor Chester would hear of anything else, particularly the former: “It would be unfair to withhold it from them. They deserve to know, one way or the other.”

“You can what?” Radburn asked.

“I can pull the potential out of you,” I replied. “If you pay attention, you will learn where it lies, and then....”

“We’ll be magicians?” Radburn said, incredulous.

“We’ll be tyros,” Guy said, wry. He glanced at the Vessel, whose expression remained inscrutable. “Isn’t that right.”

“A potential is only potential,” she demurred.

“Ugh,” Radburn muttered. “I was done being a neophyte years ago. I worked hard to no longer have to be a neophyte.”

“And now we will have to work hard again,” Eyre said. “Have some cheer. We are only done learning when we’re dead, and we’re surely not that yet.” He stepped toward me, wearing a faint smile. “Go on, my student. Let’s see what surprises this old body has still in store.”

“You are not so old as that, yet,” I said, but I reached for his hand and cradled it in mine. The spectacles didn’t help in this endeavor: they showed the same smoldering light in him that they’d always shown, and it didn’t seem to indicate the point of the well within. I closed my eyes, but I needn’t have. Handling Ivy and Chester had made all of the human sources suddenly obvious. Like mathematics, the problem only seemed impenetrable until one grasped how it might be solved, and then it was all simplicity. “I could show you all at once,” I said, eyes still closed. “But I suggest you sit.”

“Is it that overwhelming an experience then?” I heard the hope in Radburn’s voice, and how pleasing it was to have a welcome answer!

“It is.”

I heard them sit, felt Ivy and Chester range themselves behind me. Last burned a little beyond them, a low, thin glow in compare, his essence used up by the constant motion of the enchantment. And Almond... Almond came to stand beside me, hesitant until I pulled her gently against me.

“Ready?”

A murmur of agreement.

I drew in a breath, and with it the world, the smell of a crisp autumn evening, piquant with the bouquet of crumbling leaves. On the out-breath, I reached for Radburn, Guy, and Eyre... pulled their magic taut in them while they fumbled past their initial shock and toward awareness of an organ in them they’d never sensed. Eyre found it first, perhaps unavoidably, for his was a disciplined mind and I could sense the patience of his years in his apprehension of reality. Guy and Radburn came to it almost simultaneously. They were all strong. As strong as the Vessel, whom I could feel now that I was extending my senses. Her knights were dim embers to her small fire, but they had it too.

“This is it, then.” For once, Guy sounded shaken. “The force that powers enchantment.”

“And temporary magics,” Last said in his accented Lit. “Not all magic is enchantment.”

“And now we have all the differences to learn,” Radburn breathed. “Oh, this is...” He paused, then laughed past tears I was sure he wasn’t cognizant of shedding. “This is magic!”

“Astonishing,” Eyre agreed, voice soft.

How long would it take them to work past the wonder and into the repercussions of what I’d just done? I found my back growing more and more tense as I waited, grateful for Almond’s embrace and the support of the others at my back.

“So then, my prince,” Eyre said. “I could use a hand standing.”

I met his eyes, found humor there and affection... and knowledge, too. More than that... a kind of regret. I took his hand, wanting very badly to ask him about it, but Guy was laughing.

“Oh, then. So we are committed to a world of elven and human commingling. I can’t wait to see how that goes over in the capital.”

“Until what goes over?” Radburn asked. “That we need to ask elves to help us discover our potential?” He frowned. “I have to imagine that will become burdensome. It would take thousands of elves to work through the entire human population—”

“You dolt.” Guy smacked Radburn on the back of the shoulder. “Start thinking with your head instead of your sentiments.”

“I beg your pardon!”

Guy turned Radburn toward me and pointed past his shoulder. “Yon ponce will be able to do the whole population at once. Won’t you, Morgan?”

“If not me,” I said, slowly, “then Amhric will. Yes.”

“Because he’s the prince. The prince of all creatures magical. And guess what we’ve just become?”

Radburn paused, then glowered at me. “I am not about to become the subject of the weasel who neglected to inform us of his illness until he was nearly dead.”

“If we are diligent students,” Guy said, “we might be able to tell when he’s lying to us. Certainly anyone who can reach into our hearts and mess around with our innards will not be able to do that without us having a touch of an insight back up the other way, eh?”

Radburn snorted. Then said, “I admit it’s worth it just for the chance to feel... this.” He palpated his chest with delicate fingers, as if expecting it to cave beneath his touch. “To think that all our lives this has been within us, and none of us the wiser!”

“Not much of a surprise, really,” Guy said. “There are plenty of organs in our bodies we are utterly unaware of unless they malfunction catastrophically.” He glanced at the Vessel. “You will provide us instruction, I assume?”

The Vessel looked toward me and I nodded.

“Of course.”

Guy watched this interaction and lifted his brows.

“She knew,” Eyre said. “She’s always known.” He smiled at the Vessel. “‘My lord.’ Not a courtesy title.”

“No,” she said. “But I will teach you, yes. It is not as simple as waving an arm and reality obeying, though. It will require self-discipline. You will become acquainted with disappointment. We are limited in our capabilities.”

Because of how parched the land was, I wondered? Where did the magic in people come from, and how was it replenished? So much I didn’t know.

“Why don’t you begin now?” I said. “I doubt anyone will be sleeping tonight, not after this.”

Her mouth creased with discontent, but she sighed. “No, I imagine not. Very well, then. Sit, all of you who would learn.”

Chester and Ivy joined the others. So did I. What did I know of magic-wielding, after all? I could direct the prince’s gift, but the compulsion of magic from one being to another was not the ordinary use of it.

“Let us begin,” the Vessel said, “with prayer.”

I didn’t need to look to sense the mutinous looks, and sighed.

The Vessel’s first lesson lasted half an hour—more than that, and she claimed we would not retain anything, particularly on the first day. Her instruction involved breath control, and a great deal of sensing and moving the little ball of warmth around one’s body. I was not the only person who’d thought that nothing but fine words, because even Chester started when the Vessel demonstrated that when done correctly, the exercise made the extremity warmer to the touch. The doing of it proved more difficult than my companions expected, but they were at least able. I could not at all.

“Don’t be distressed,” she said to me. “Your magic is knotted in the enchantment, my lord.”

“But I can move the magic in you around,” I protested. “How not myself, then?”

“Because moving the magic in others is the royal gift,” she said. “It is a different power. Think of it as the difference between your right hand and your left. Just because your right hand can be used to write neatly doesn’t mean your left is similarly able.”

I still thought it nonsensical, but accepted the explanation. The breathing, at least, I could practice, and did. But more than that, simply sitting near my companions was soothing to me, in much the same way it was to sit near the genets. I should have found the observation distressing—one thought of predators, lulled by the smell of easy meat—but I couldn’t. These people were dear to me. That they now emanated a force that I could use at need was only relevant if I chose to use it, and I didn’t. I would not become what the other elves had.

Could it be the royal gifts cropped up only in those with the moral center to avoid their abuse, and was that why there had been no king and prince to replace the one lost at Threnody-Calling-Forward? Perhaps that’s how we had gone so wrong: the demons had bestowed the ability to feed on other reasoning beings to everyone, regardless of their virtue; had stripped that ability from the purpose to which it had been wedded since the beginning of time. The king and the prince fought demons with their powers. What use those powers without purpose?

This was much on my mind when the lesson broke up and I found Eyre accompanying me back to my bedroll.

“What was it?” I said, remembering the regret. “That made you sad.”

“Not sad,” he said. He sighed and smiled at me. “You have been my student for a long time, Morgan. How many folk tales have you read?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied, startled. “Hundreds? Thousands? The Red Prince tales alone had dozens of iterations.”

“You recall the feel you had when you read a story and knew something of its ending, though you hadn’t read the particular one before?”

“There’s a pattern to fairy stories,” I agreed. “The folk wisdom tends to reinforce the same messages....” I stopped, looked at him and found him watching me. “You think we are settling into one of these patterns.”

“We are,” Eyre said. “All is happening as it must.”

“Then why the sorrow?” I said. He didn’t answer, as I half-expected, so I sorted through it on my own. “Because the grand epics and the folktales that last all involve sorrow.”

“They involve sacrifice,” Eyre corrected. “And they involve payment for sin and error. There is no happy ending without the warning of what awaits those who fail in their trust.”

“We won’t fail,” I said, firm.

Eyre set his hand on my shoulder, gentle. “I know you won’t. You will be the good prince who does right and saves the world from evil. But you will need a balance, my student, or the story won’t serve. And the rest of us are not quite as safe as you are, being the protagonist of this tale.”

“I suppose I will just have to protect you, then.”

“From others, certainly. But from ourselves?” Eyre shook his head. “No one can do that.” He smiled. “Go on then. Go rest. Your companions await.”

I would have protested that they were all my companions until I turned around and saw Ivy and Chester, already sleeping on either side of my bedroll. Was it so obvious then? I glanced at him, wide-eyed, and he chuckled. “The prince always has a loyal knight or two. Good night, Morgan.”

The prince also tends to have a wise mentor, I thought. Those mentors might fade out of the story toward the end, but only because they returned to their tidy cottages to await the next prince in need of advice. It was the only thing that allowed me to contemplate slumber, for the idea of anything else befalling Eyre was unbearable. But as I fell asleep, I remembered Sedetnet’s breath on my neck. Had he not said something similar to what Eyre had once told me, about one’s heart’s desires, and how one might be one’s own worst enemy… and how little we knew about what we truly wanted?