Penrys had no idea where she was going when she stumbled out of the hall, but the door to the street wasn’t far. Behind her she could hear the rising clamor of voices and she walked faster to put them further behind her, until she reached the door and opened it. Then she stood there at the top of the stairs leading down into the square.
There was a stone bench to the right of the doorway, and she sank onto it and took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself.
So, I can’t drink power-stones, any more than any other wizard, but that’s all right—I can drink wizards instead.
Her stomach revolted and she concentrated on swallowing.
An image of Chang came to her mind. A general can’t make friends of his soldiers, can he? Or how could he use them in battle?
The door of the guild hall opened, and Zandaril stepped out. When he spotted her, his face lit up with a tired smile. He sat down deliberately next to her, and she shrank from him.
Zandaril stretched out an arm, laid it around her shoulder, and drew her to his side.
She couldn’t meet his eyes. *I am so sorry.*
*Look at me. I already have a shield returning.*
Penrys reached out tentatively. Zandaril was weak, and bruised, but it was true—he was able to raise a light shield. If there’s this much recovery in a short time…
*It was worth it. We learned important things, and no harm done.*
She sighed. At least he didn’t flinch away again.
“They were worried about you, inside. I told them I’d come get you,” Zandaril said. “We have to go back. They need us, and they know it now.”
She muttered into her lap. “That a wizard could do what I just did, over and over, and think nothing of it… I don’t understand such a man.”
“We don’t have to understand him,” Zandaril told her. “Just stop him.”
By common consent, they broke the classes and arranged to resume after the mid-day meal. Penrys was grateful for the chance to settle her thoughts, but she could only pretend to eat.
They established some of the limits to what Penrys could do, before the next session wound down in the late-afternoon.
She could steal the power of another wizard, if she could break his shield. While she couldn’t compel his mind, she could control his body from the outside, clumsily.
She wasn’t sure where the power went, once she took it, if she didn’t use it immediately. Maybe she stored it in her chain.
Vladzan tried to follow her example on one of the student wizards, but Penrys couldn’t feel any increase in his strength when she tested his shield afterward. Of course, the power levels were small, from her perspective, so she thought the test was inconclusive.
You can’t put more power into a power-stone than it will hold. That’s why you sometimes need more stones.
Maybe Vladzan can’t get any stronger than he is now, so if he doesn’t use the stolen power directly, it’s lost to him. That’s why no one’s exploited this already as a way to get stronger. Easier to just use power-stones.
How much power can I hold?
There was no way to answer that without experiment, and she was unwilling to drain a roomful of wizards to find out. She’d never felt a limit from the chain, but then she hadn’t subjected it to a deliberate attempt to exhaust it.
Or had she? Why could I only shield three men in Chang’s tent, when I arrived? By the numbers we’ve been exploring, it should’ve been more. Was the chain the source of the power that moved me a quarter of the way around the world? Maybe there wasn’t much left afterward.
“Vladzan,” she said. “Where are your power-stones? You must have a lot of them here somewhere, right?”
He eyed her warily.
She waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t need to see your armory. I want to try something. How many can you charge, each of you, at a time?”
“Depends on the wizard. Students can do a couple of small ones, every day. I can do several.”
“What happens if you do too many?” she asked.
He stared at her.
She shrugged. “It’s never happened to me.”
Vladzan took on a thoughtful expression. “If you exceed your limit, you can feel diminished for a day or two.”
“So, it goes from your own core to the power-stones, yes?”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s how we think of it, yes.”
“You see, I don’t do it like that, m’self—I never thought to ask. I do it from here.” She tapped the chain around her neck. “At least it feels like that to me.”
She continued, “So couldn’t you use the number of power-stones a wizard could charge as a rough test of his strength?”
He nodded, seeing where she was going. “That would be more precise, and simpler, than testing against each other.”
“Right. So, how many can I charge? Just me, with the chain?”
Vladzan beckoned two of the senior wizards over and sent them away.
They returned in a few minutes with two sacks each, larger than the ones Penrys carried in her pack. Word spread through the hall about the test, and Zandaril came over with the others to watch.
Vladzan opened one sack and poured some of the stones out onto a table top where their facets gleamed dully in a variety of colors.
Vladzan scooped up a small handful. “This would be about my daily limit,” he said.
Penrys said, “If I’m about ten times stronger, then I should be able to do about ten times as many, right?”
He nodded, and added nine more handfuls to the first one. Altogether, it was about a third of the sack.
Penrys sat down at the table. “So, let’s start there,” she said. “Feel free to watch with me, everyone.”
She felt the mental echo that told her others were watching.
“One stone—that’s nothing,” she said out loud. She picked up a stone and powered it casually.
“A handful…” She scooped up part of the little pile and powered it. “No different.”
“What about the rest of them?” She laid her hand down on top of the heap and powered them all. They glowed vividly to her mind, but she felt no reduction in strength.
She glanced at Vladzan with a question in her eyes, and he gestured at the remainder of the sack.
“All right, let’s try the rest of them.” She picked up the sack, two thirds full, and powered the contents.
She stood up, and she could hear her footsteps on the stone floor clearly in the silent hall as she walked over to the three unopened sacks. She took a breath, laid her hands on top of them and powered all the stones inside. She felt giddy for a moment, as if she’d taken in too little air, but she didn’t think she was actually weakened. The shock of the watchers was perceptible, and she raised her shield and thrust them out.
She smiled uncertainly at Vladzan. “Well, there must be a limit, but maybe there’s no point continuing. It’s got to be the chain—that’s much more than I should be able to do with just my own power, even given the… disparity in our strengths.”
“And if I can do it,” she said, “so can your enemy. That must be what he does with the captive wizards. He drains them for his own use, and keeps them drained most of the way. The more of them he can keep alive, the stronger he becomes.”
Vladzan looked at the sacks of power-stones, one partially emptied out onto the table. “It’s a shame we can’t boost our own core strength directly from these, but it’s a one-way flow.”
A commotion at the doorway disturbed the low conversations that had resumed, and a rider, dust-covered and weary, strode in. The servant who escorted him led him straight to Zongchas and he handed over a packet of papers from the satchel slung over his shoulders.
Zongchas scanned through them quickly while all eyes watched. When he lifted his head the conversations stopped. “We’re out of time,” he said. “They’re on the move, east from Nakshadzam. Southeast, into Neshilik.”
