Page 37 of Elvenbred

Triana took the stone, expecting it to feel as the other one had. Instead it burned with cold fire, sucking the heat away from her hand. Triana poured more of herself after it, seeking to warm it as she had before, to make friends with it, sharing her heartbeat. Where the red had responded in time, the orange remained defiant. She pressed harder, bearing down this time, insisting, commanding. The orange stone felt as though it were drawing all of her energies away, piling more fatigue onto her weariness. She grew dimly aware of the tick-tick sounds of the room as the sun warmed it, and the vague sense of defiance. Her temper built then, her frustration at being hemmed in and pushed down, of having to be sweet as cream when what she wanted to do was rage and shout and be sent back to her home … now.

She felt the frustration boil up, and used that, aiming it like a dart at the orange stone. It gave in and blazed with orange light, shimmering with beams emerging from each facet. Triana clenched her teeth, fusing the beams into one central pillar that she sent raging across the floor for a dozen long seconds before it winked out.

“Well!” Nora replied. “That was a show.”

Triana’s fingers trembled as she handed back the orange gem. The battle with the stone before it gave up its essence had proven long and difficult, and Triana felt exhausted.

“We’re almost done,” Nora replied. “Last one.”

She picked up the third gem, a yellow stone, and focused, her face a study in concentration. There seemed less battle in this one, but even so, Nora managed little more than a flicker of pale yellow, before she sighed and exhaled. “That’s it. Your turn.” She set the stone back in the box.

Triana lifted it and studied the thing. Yellow, and it felt neither warm nor … resentful, as the orange had. She held it and tried to see into it, to understand it, but its edges and boundaries slipped away. She tried to flow with it, as she had the red, but kept getting caught up in its twists and turns … not a crystal as the others had been, but something different. She held it in her hand and tried to understand. After long minutes, the stones felt less a single object with discrete planes than angle upon angle bent back on top of itself. That insight gave her space to study it more closely. She peered into it, and felt herself getting lost in its folds. Instinctively she knew this to be the best way forward, less a command than a dance, but the more she studied it, the more absurd it seemed. Not really a three-dimensional shape at all, and certainly not crystalline … rather, something like a single piece of paper folded back on itself, and folded back … through … itself. Does it really have only one side? Odd.

She felt herself being drawn into it, trying to understand its nature, and feeling it give a bit, yielding up its secrets, one by one. Not a contest, not a dance, more like a lover’s embrace. It seemed a bit of a trap, like a set of mirrors angled to make infinite reflections in all directions with no clear pathway through.

She began to perceive a pattern, a way of folding that created something that wasn’t repetition, but symmetry. She had a distant sense of satisfaction … of something … pleased with her learning. Encouraged, Triana began to unfold the complex stone in her mind, laying out its bends and twists, and imagined opening it, folding this piece back … just so. Following the symmetries. First this one. Then that one. She understood the … well, it certainly wasn’t a stone … still stood cold in her hand, and hadn’t moved, but in her inner eye she could turn it and see its folds and bends giving way and she unshaped it. As pieces opened up and unfolded they became harder to hold, harder to grip, and harder to manage. She was close, so close to understanding it, when a turn too many led to a rushed unfolding … and it was gone, vanishing as quickly as a snowflake caught in a warm breath.

She opened her eyes, and saw the yellow glow fading. Nora looked to be on the verge of tears.

“That was the loveliest thing I have ever seen.” she said, in a ragged voice. “The light from the gem, the shining soft dance, like flower petals in a fountain, and your expression ….” She trailed off.

Triana felt weary and uncertain, and a bit waspish, after her failure. So close! She wanted to try again, so complete the unfolding and find the secret that lay at the heart of the yellow gem, if gem it really was. She lifted her chin. “Yesss?” she said, drawing it out.

“Such a look of joy and wonder,” Nora answered, her own expression open and vulnerable. “You were beautiful.”

Triana had grown up hearing those platitudes, and had had them lavished on her from the time she was a child, enough that they had long since lost any meaning. The raw honesty of Nora’s expression, her presence, and opinion, caught her off-guard. She was glad for the dim light, as she was quite sure she was blushing.

She cleared her throat to try and cover her embarrassment. “Some game. I feel like I’ve been racked.”

Nora smiled in what Triana thought was relief … the moment had been a bit too honest, likely for Nora as well as Triana.

“Not entirely a game,” Nora looked a bit shamefaced, her usual guardedness at bay for the moment. “Everyone here is tested as a child, to see where they fit in. How much power they have. About a third never manage a red. Not enough power or not enough control. That’s the minimum. Reds and Oranges are the lowest ranks … ones and twos. I’m rated a strong two. Lower-class birth. Good enough to get a job as a children’s teacher. Threes … Yellows … you’re a Yellow … are usually fabricators, or farmers. Fours can light green crystals. They are mostly military and skilled craftsmen. Fives are highborn or raised by virtue of power. Lord Haldeen is a strong five. The rest of the technical lords will be fives, maybe low sixes. Blue and indigo crystals for the fives and sixes. The birth lords will be sevens … they watch those bloodlines carefully to make sure they breed true. Perhaps one in a thousand can light a violet crystal, and no one … no one can make one dance.”

She trailed off, aware she’d been running on. “I’m sorry, Triana. I lied to you. Haldeen wanted to know where you would fit in, what sorts of work you could do. He ordered you tested.”

Triana gave her a wan smile. “I understand. I really do. I’ve had to do things I found distasteful, regardless of how I felt about it.” Nora’s unhappiness gave Triana an opening, her first chance to try and understand a bit of what she had seen last night, the marks and squiggles. She doubted Nora could help her with that, and even asking would open up too much risk. She racked her tired brain for a way to frame the question, then winced inwardly as it all just came tumbling out.

“How does it all work?”

Nora rose, gathering up the crystals and setting them back into pockets in the box. “How does all what work? Magic?”

“Yes.”

Nora furrowed her brow, thinking. “Well, how does it work where you come from?”

Triana thought about that for a few moments. “Well, it depends. It’s different between males and females. Males are much more about overt power, but it mostly comes down to shaping things with the mind. Women are forbidden, if not by law, then by custom, from learning those ways, and female elven lords are inherently weaker in terms of power than the males.”

“A lot is what we call spellcraft. Father once said that the incantations, the spells, don’t have anything to do with the magic itself, but are needed to replicate, and shape and control the mind picture, getting the feel right. A powder burnt to get the smell right, to cue the right way something gets shaped, or how it should be.” She smiled. “I commented once that what he described is a sort of a recipe, and Father got quite offended ….” She assumed a deep and pretentious voice. “‘Something as lowly as a cook’s herbs cannot in any way compare to a high and powerful elven lord practicing his awesome and most puissant craft.’” She paused. “Speaking of cooks, I’m ravenous. Any chance of cadging an early lunch?”

Nora grinned at her and picked up the box with the gems. “The testing really takes it out of you. I’ll see what I can do. I make it a point of making friends in low places. You learn lots of interesting things, and can occasionally beg a snack. You were describing spell recipes ….”

Triana smiled and put her finger to her lips. “Shhh … don’t let the elven lords hear you say that. Recipes. It’ll be all offended dignity and lofted chins.” She stood. “Anyway, I thought it sounded like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, the way a cook will present a fancy dish that turns out to be simple to make.”

Nora took the hint and started for the door. Triana followed Nora back out of the small room, and into the bright sunlight, lured by the promise of a meal. She raised one hand as she stepped into the light, blinking against the bright sun that had moved well up into the sky. They had been in there far longer than Triana had suspected … hours instead of minutes. The realization threw her off-stride, and it took her a moment to find her place.

Nora smiled. “The testing takes longer than you think. And it is more work than it seems. I think the lunch line is forming over there.”

Triana looked around to where the household staff had begun to queue for their midday meal. She felt her stomach rumble. They made for the line.