THOUGHTS OF MAGIC whirled in Richon’s head. Magic was everywhere, in every Eloliran.
He found Chala standing near a hound, a horse, and a man who seemed to own them.
He nodded absently toward Chala and ignored the others. He simply picked up the sack of swords he had left beside her and moved toward the end of the town.
“How was your drink?” asked Chala, on his heels.
“Fine,” said Richon shortly. He knew he should explain to her what had happened, but he had to sort it out in his own head. He was still not sure he believed it.
“You look unsteady,” she said.
He was indeed. He tripped over his own feet, stumbling into Chala and nearly pulling her down.
She stared at him with disgust. “You are drunk,” she said.
“No,” said Richon. He had only had the one drink. “At least, not on ale. It was…” He could not say it out loud. Not yet.
Chala walked with him, but not so close anymore that he might walk into her.
Moving out of the town, they passed a well. She stopped to drop a bucket in and dumped it on top of her head.
He watched as the water poured down her face.
Then she did the same thing again. And again.
The fourth time, she rubbed her hands in the water, and failing to find soap, used a stone nearby to make her hands raw.
“What are you doing?” he asked, torn out of himself for a moment.
“Making myself clean,” she said.
Was she that disgusted by his drinking?
He wanted to tell her he had magic, as she did. But if he was wrong—He dared not give her, or himself, hope that was false.
They walked farther, and Richon wondered if every person they passed had magic.
Had his whole court had magic and simply hidden it from him all those years?
His own body servants?
The cook?
The stable boys?
Lady Finick and Lady Trinner?
The lord chamberlain?
The royal steward?
And himself?
Was it possible that a man could have magic for more than two hundred years and not know it?
He had wanted the magic so often it had eaten at him. But he had never been able to find the least stirring of it inside himself.
Even now he had come to save those with the magic, not to find his own.
And besides, those who had magic needed no lessons in it. It simply came to them, like crawling or walking upright.
Chala put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. “You must listen to me. The unmagic is here in this time as well. I have seen it, in the forests, and elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Richon echoed, turning to her.
“The horse and the hound in the village. They were touched by unmagic.” She shuddered. “Made lifeless.”
“Unmagic? And I did not sense it?” Was that not proof enough that he had no magic? “Should we go back?”
“No. We must first save the kingdom. Then we can save its magic.”
They walked on, and Richon thought of one day when he was a child and he had found his mother standing under a parasol outside the palace, dressed in her night-clothes, her hair still tied back in braids, though it was the middle of the day.
“I am thinking,” she said when he asked her what she was doing.
She did not look at him or turn toward him as she always had before. She did not give him her full attention.
It seemed she was deeply herself in this moment, and not his mother. Or his father’s wife. Or Elolira’s queen.
“What are you thinking of?”
“I am not thinking of anything. I am thinking,” she had said.
So he had tried to do the same. Think, but not of any particular thing. Just think.
He had run away after trying it for just a moment or two. It had been like drowning. He could not breathe. He could not even tell where he ended and everything else began. There were no boundaries, and he needed boundaries.
Now he found himself slipping away from his own sense of self. It was not so hard, nor so frightening, as it had been when he was young. He drifted in his mind and was no longer tethered to his body. He did not know if he was still walking with Chala or if he had stopped.
It did not matter.
He felt as if he were touching tender new skin to the world around him, and the sensations were exquisitely clear and sharp. Everything touched him.
The forest. The sounds of the animals within, the tiny flutter of leaves, the burble of a stream nearby, the smell of life and death combined, of wildflowers and juniper bushes, the sight of color juxtaposed on color, green overwhelming all.
He quickly became exhausted by the overwhelming sensation, but there was no escape. The magic, long put off, had come for him at last, and it pressed at him with demands such as he had never known.
It was as if his ears had grown larger, for he could hear the scurry of the ants searching for food in the rotting limbs of a tree, and the beetles with them, the worms in the ground underneath, digging their way through dirt.
His nose was overwhelmed with scents, as when he was a bear. The scent of berries. A dead mouse, rotting in the leaves. The fish in the stream. Overhead, the scent of an owl’s nest.
He could see to the woodpecker’s marks on the oak tree there, and the lines left in the dirt by the crossing of a snake.
His hands felt as if they were on fire from the feel of the air on them, telling him so many things. Speaking to him in a new language.
And he tasted the whole world. Flowers yet to bloom. Pine trees far away in the mountains. The meat a mother wolf fed her cub.
He choked and gasped.
In his mind he heard a sound, soft and high-pitched as his mother’s voice, but something else altogether. It was inviting, and he stepped into a new place that was full of all the sensations he had felt before, only they did not overwhelm him. They were part of him, but not all of him.
He felt his body again.
He was slumped against a log, and Chala was next to him.
He turned to her and now he could see the magic in her. The color was green, and it pulsed through her like blood.
He could see the magic everywhere now, in all the animals around him. Even the trees had a portion of magic, though it was a cooler green. The air itself, it seemed, was made of life, for it, too, had a greenish tinge to it.
What else could he see?
He looked down at his own hands and saw the magic in them.
If he had needed more proof, here it was. His hands were so bright that they were more white than green. He stared at them, feeling part of the forest as he had never felt before.
It was like falling, and yet he fell into himself.
He heard a sound from Chala.
She pointed to his hand, on his knee.
He glanced toward it and saw a bear paw on his knee rather than the human hand he had begun with. Only one bear paw, and it was fading quickly, becoming smaller and hairless, losing its claws.
But still, there it had been.
And he had changed it himself, not the wild man.
“Your magic,” said Chala encouragingly.
It made him immediately want to try again.
But by then he had a terrible headache that seemed to block his vision entirely. The world was black again, with floating blobs of light in it, all color gone.
He banged on the doors of his mind, but it was no use.
The magic had suddenly fled him, like a fish avoiding his grasp as he leaned over a pool of water, eager for dinner.
“It will return when you are ready,” Chala assured him as he held his head to his knees, afraid that if he did not he would fall to pieces.
But he told himself that Chala was right as he held her in his arms, and for the first time he felt he might be worthy of her.