I dared to cut him off. “Not like this. Never like this. The mountain cracked below, and the walls were full of crystals, dancing in colors. The magic there was so thick and rich. Your excellencies, I think the Breaking Time has arrived.”
Dorian rolled his eyes again and turned his back to me, walking to the back of the quarter. “You are an infant, Miss Raven. You have no idea of that which you speak.”
“Mistress Lunella,” I said, bowing respectfully in her direction. “Will you hear me out?”
Her sigh said everything.
“Master Hedregon?”
He pursed his lips.
“You are not going to listen to an acolyte of your own temple? I do not speak in hyperbole! I am not given to hysterics! I have been a faithful servant—”
“You are a child to us,” Dorian snapped at me from the distance. “You have no knowledge of power and magic that even begins to rival ours.”
Pompous ass!
“Excellency, I—”
The voice that interrupted me was calm and deep as the ocean. “Be still, child.”
Master Tymon walked into the rotunda from behind his fellow masters. He placed an arm on Mistress Lunella and guided her to the side. “Come forward, young one. You say the mountain spoke to you?”
I corrected him. “Called me, master.”
“And what did you see in the cave?”
“Crystals, sir. Colors and light dancing in the rocks. My companion said he could see the magic respond to my laugh through the crystals.”
“And now? What do you see?” His hand swept the vast space of the hall.
“Threads of magic, sir. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, some falling from the walkway above, some seemingly alive on the floors and walls around us.”
“Can you show us?”
I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t think of a way to show them the magic I could now see.
A moment later, the magic told me how.
Extending my palm up, a thread dropped to my touch and spun like a dust devil, swirling and twirling, and gathering more thread to itself. With my other finger, I touched the whirling dervish in my hand. It was soft and gentle, nothing at all like what a tornado should feel like. Bringing my lips closer to the tiny maelstrom, I dusted a breath across it, and whispered, “Glow.”
A cascade of chimes surrounded me as the magic flowed down from the whirlwind out into the air around me, creating its own waterfall. Cascading down to the floor, the threads lit each one they touched and a new chime added to the beautiful cacophony.
I watched as the colors and lights of the magic glowed more brilliantly than the moment before. Traveling across the floor, the threads seemed to catch fire when they reached the waterfalls that surround the rotunda. A burst of light flew up the threads, and soon, the whole room was aglow, and the chimes were melodic, sweet, and calming.
Marveling, I tipped my head back to stare up, and I realized Dorian was suddenly there, glaring at me with confused anger in his eyes.
“How are you doing this, acolyte?”
Not pleased, Dorian stared at me instead of the lights that I was able to create.
“I listened to what the magic told me to do.”
“You are nothing but a middling—”
Lunella raised a hand. “Dorian. With all respect to your station as the oldest of us, hush.”
Tymon nodded at Lunella and studied me. “You are well known to us, my dear. A bright, brilliant, but not naturally gifted druid. And now you can do this?”
