Edit April 2010: FFN decided to eat all the scene dividers so I'm having to go back and add them all in again. I'm also removing the review responses. NOTHING ELSE HAS BEEN ALTERED; if you've read this story before, you don't need to read it again (although you're more than welcome to).

It's great to see my reviewers are still with me. I'm spoiling you all with another long-ish update. I hope you appreciate it. It's 'fun with magic' time!

Numair spent the better part of the next day working his way through a pile of books that might have something buried in their pages that would prove helpful, just as many other mages and scholars were doing throughout the palace. It was a relief to leave the library behind after lunch and head out to find his new student, since he was getting precisely nowhere.

"How's it going?" he asked innocently, leaning on the fence next to her; she looked exhausted, frankly, and it took several attempts before she managed to answer hoarsely.

"Fine. It's all fine." Liar, but he wasn't going to press her about last night, not yet at least.

"I was wondering – about that range-finding experiment. You're too busy to try it now, I suppose."

Cloud trotted over towards them, and Daine glanced sharply at the pony before starting to laugh. He gave her an odd look; while it was good to see her laughing, he'd clearly missed something here. She shook her head breathlessly. "No, don't ask me. You really don't want to know!" Somewhat suspicious, he took her word for it as she turned back to the grey mare. "But there's no hearing spell for me to talk to him with. I can't ask Onua, not now. I shouldn't even really try it myself, not if I'm to earn my pay with these people."

By now totally confused, he watched as Cloud stamped. After a moment Daine turned back to him. "She says she'll go with you and let you know when she can't hear me any more."

"You mean she'll undertake the test situation without dealing through you? Can she do that?" he asked, fascinated. He'd never really thought about wild magic working two ways before.

"She says she can. I know she always finds me if one of us wanders off."

"All right, then," he agreed, bowing somewhat ironically to the pony. "Lead on. And no biting."

The walk with the pony had given him a lot to think about. Now that he was paying attention, Cloud seemed different to the other horses; more aware, somehow. Certainly she seemed to understand everything he said to her. And she seemed to have grudgingly accepted him; when she bit him to let him know they were out of range, she was careful to catch his sleeve and not his skin. From Cloud, that might as well have been a declaration of love, he suspected as they returned to the palace and the stables. He did wish he knew what she'd said to Daine, though. And why wasn't the pony afraid of wolves? He'd been thinking about it on and off since the previous night, but truthfully he didn't know enough about horses to come up with any reasonable theory. Maybe she's just as stubborn as her mistress.

That evening he returned to the mess hall to find Daine, having decided what he would show her first; she was still a little scared of this magic she'd never heard of, and he wanted to let her see that it was a wondrous thing. "Ready for lessons?" he asked, joining her and her friends at the table.

"How was it this afternoon?"

"We determined that your range, with Cloud at least, is a mile and a half. It may be more or less than that with animals who haven't been exposed to you for a prolonged period of time."

"You make her sound like a disease," the young man George had recommended to the Riders laughed. Evin, that was his name. "Are we going to need healers or something?"

Numair smiled. "No. But Daine, have you found that animals you spend a lot of time with are, well, smarter than others? Smarter in a human sense?"

She fidgeted, uncertain. "Is it bad?"

"No, how could it be? It doesn't make your animals less able to survive in the wild; quite the opposite." Now he was certain that she needed to see that her magic could be a good thing. "Come on. We're going for a walk."

Crossing the horse meadow took some time, as every animal there insisted on greeting her personally. It didn't matter; they weren't in any particular hurry. They had time to let their eyes adjust; he saw well in the dark, and it seemed she did as well. Once clear of the meadow, Numair took the lead, heading into the forest and weaving between the trees along a barely-visible trail to a small clearing with a pond in it that he had discovered some time ago.

"Have a seat," he told her softly, and she obeyed, looking slightly nervous. He moved to stand behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders reassuringly. "I'm going to use my Gift, but through you. You must understand that. If I did this with the king or Alanna, they wouldn't see what you will."

She was trembling under his hands. "If you say so."

He laid his fingers on her temples. "Now, do just as we do when we're meditating," he told her quietly. "Slow, deep breath – inhale. Hold it. Let it go, carefully. Again, in... and... out." He breathed with her, closing his eyes and concentrating; he deliberately hadn't told her what this involved, because it would have frightened her even more. Even people he'd known for years would have hesitated about letting him through their defences like this. Now he felt the calm of meditation settling over them both, and reached for the sense of the wild magic with his own magic.

There.

"Open your eyes." He wasn't sure if he'd said it aloud or in her mind, but it didn't matter. She obeyed, and he heard her gasp, felt her shock. Opening his own eyes, he stared at the shimmering world around them, full of life and magic; he'd only ever seen flickers of this, pale shadows compared to what he was seeing now. She truly was powerful, and he felt privileged to be able to share this.

She moved, slowly, reaching down to pluck a blade of grass. The bright emerald fire darkened and she gasped. "I didn't mean to – "

"Hush," he told her softly. "Look at the earth."

He watched with her as she let the grass fall, its spine matching the bronze of the soil as it hit the ground. "It returns to the Goddess," she whispered, sounding awed, before turning to look around the clearing, then at herself, and finally at him. He followed her attention; this was so much more than he had seen before with other students, and far different from anything he could see with his own magic. The wild magic he had seen in her before looked different now; no longer an aura, he could see how the copper fire followed every vein of her body, matching the red that marked her as human. He'd never seen that before; with his other students, their magic had flickered over them, like the white fire of his own aura.

"Sit straight," he told her. "I have to remain in contact with you to keep the spell going."

She obeyed. "I wish I could see this by myself."

"You can learn. The vision is in your mind, like the power to heal. Just remember what your magic feels like, and practice reaching for it."

"Reaching for it how?"

Rather than try to find words to express an impossible concept, he showed her instead, feeling the shift in perception until he saw the wellspring of copper fire that was the source of her magic – again, far stronger than he had seen before.

Numair felt her reach for the magic, separating a thread of it and tossing it towards the owl that perched nearby; it was impressive that she had known how to do that. "You don't need the hand motion," he murmured. "In magic, the thought is the deed."

"If you want it bad enough," she added. "That's what Ma said."

"She was right." The owl glided to them, perching on the arm she offered and studying them both, and Numair watched in silent fascination. He'd always liked animals, and at the university his teacher Lindhall had encouraged his interest, but he'd never seen a wild creature so close before.

You called to me, night-sister?

The voice was a shock, too. Even the strongest of his previous students had only had an increased awareness of animals; they could communicate after a fashion, but never so clearly and precisely. If he continued teaching Daine, he had a feeling she would end up teaching him.

"Only to greet you, silent one," she answered respectfully.

"You don't need to say it aloud," he murmured, and she shook her head.

"Can we do this a little bit at a time? Please?"

Her tone was almost pleading, and he smiled. This truly must be overwhelming for her; he knew what it was like to learn that you had powerful magic and start the long struggle to learn how to use it. "Whatever you say."

The owl ruffled his feathers, blinking slowly. It is not for the nestling to decide the proper time for lessons, he informed them both sternly before taking off and flying away.

"I heard that," Numair told her. "He's right," he added wryly. "And it's time to stop." Reluctantly, he let the magic go; it was a wrench to lose the vision, since he could only see it through her, but exhausting them both would get him into a lot of trouble. He watched regretfully as the sparkling life drained away and the night returned to black and grey shadows once more, before looking at her. "How do you feel?"

She didn't answer immediately, staring at something on the edge of the pool; he followed her gaze and frowned, trying to see what she was looking at. Without thinking, he spoke the light spell and was left blinking in the bright light that filled the clearing, catching only a glimpse before it vanished.

"Her hair was blue," Daine said distantly. "She was all over scales, and her hair was blue."

"Undine," Numair whispered in reply, staring at the place where the creature had vanished; he'd never seen one before. "I think we just saw an undine – a water sprite." Moving slowly, he crossed to the pond's edge and knelt, staring curiously into the water. "I'm sorry, little one. Won't you come up again?"

"Maybe if you doused the light," Daine told him, and he felt stupid.

"Oh – of course." He broke the spell and stayed silent, letting his eyes adjust, watching hopefully for a further sighting. He would quite happily have stayed there all night, but Daine had to work tomorrow and was probably tired from what they'd done tonight; eventually, reluctantly, he abandoned the watch and roused her from where she was almost asleep.

"I'll have to tell the king," he remarked as Daine stretched. "Or maybe not," he added more thoughtfully. "She won't harm anyone. They're said to be incredibly shy of humans."

"I noticed." Her voice was dry; he smiled in response, lifting a hand and creating a small globe of light so they could see the path without straining.

"To see a water sprite," he murmured, mostly to himself, as they moved down the path. Tonight had been one experience he hoped never to forget. "We live in marvellous times, my little magelet."

"What's a magelet?" she asked, yawning.

He flushed slightly, not having meant to say it out loud. Feeling slightly embarrassed, he smiled sheepishly in the darkness. "Nothing, really. Well, 'little mage'. Isn't that what you are?" She didn't answer.

The following night she was keen to talk about what she had seen during the day, describing the flashes of colour at the corners of her vision; she also told him wonderingly of the copper fire she'd seen in Onua.

"Why so surprised?" Numair asked as they headed back towards the horse meadow. "She's – what's the K'miri term? – horse-hearted. Did you think Thayet would commission just anyone to obtain mounts? The Riders depend on horses more than any other military company. Onua ensures they have the best."

"Does she know?"

"Of course." He pulled himself up to sit on the top rail of the fence. "She doesn't have it enough that she needed training in it, like you. There are a few people here with it; a man and his grandson in the palace mews, two sisters at the kennels, some of the hostlers. Stefan, the chief hostler, has a lot of it." Well, he had thought so until meeting Daine, at least. Stefan was barely a candle to her bonfire; she stood as far above the hostler as he himself stood above other mages. "He breeds great-horses – the extra-large mounts many knights need to ride in combat. I trained him."

Shaking her head, Daine climbed up to sit beside him. "And I only heard of all this two days ago."

Grinning, he reached to tweak her nose playfully. "Being all of thirteen, of course you should be omniscient," he teased. "Now, magelet – to work." He pointed to a single pony some distance off. "Call to it." She opened her mouth and he clapped his hand over it, nearly overbalancing in the process. "Without sound."

She glared at him, her lips moving against his palm. "Then how'm I supposed to call her?"

"With your mind. One thing I've noticed is that you tend to be confused about how you speak to and hear animals. We're going to break you of the habit of assigning concrete manifestation to magical phenomena." He took his hand away.

"What?" She sounded so completely lost that he had to smile. He'd actually been quoting a lecture from his time at university; the rest of the lecture had been even less comprehensible and even he had dozed off by the end of it.

"Believing you actually hear or speak with your body when all of it is done with your mind," he translated. "Call that pony."

"'That pony' is a mare. Why can't I just talk to her?"

Numair sighed; he understood that she still distrusted thinking of what she did as magic, but if she was going to be this stubborn about every lesson... "A time may come when being heard will get you killed," he explained patiently. "Also, your mind needs discipline. If your thinking is more direct, what you can do with your thoughts will happen more directly. Learn to focus your mind; focus creates strength. Meditation helps you reach the same end."

He reached out and tapped her forehead lightly with a finger. "We're doing spring cleaning up here. Once you put everything into its proper place – once you organise your mind – you'll be able to find what you want quickly. Now call her, please."

An hour later they had had no success, and Daine's patience had clearly reached its limit; she looked tired and irritated, and Numair decided it was best to stop. There was no point pushing her too hard; once she made the connection on her own, it would be easier. "We'll keep practising," he told her calmly as they headed back to her room.

"Lucky me," she muttered, sounding sullen as she followed him into her room. "What's this?" she asked, noticing the book he'd left there earlier and curiously opening it; her reaction was everything he could have hoped for, and he resisted the urge to smile – his present seemed to be a success.

"It's a book on mammalian anatomy," he told her, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"A book on what?"

He sighed. "I keep forgetting you're not a scholar – sorry. Anatomy is what's inside a body: muscles, veins, organs and so on. 'Mammalian' refers to mammals. You know what they are; you just don't know the fancy term. Warm-blooded animals with hair-covered bodies that suckle their young are mammals." There was a time he hadn't known all the fancy scientific terminology either; until going to Carthak he had had almost no formal education and had barely been able to read and write.

"That's most of my friends." She was only half-listening, lost in staring at the book.

"Exactly. If you're to learn healing, you need to understand how animals are put together."

"I already know some."

"This book will help you to organise what you know and add to your present knowledge." He was belabouring the point, he knew, but this was important.

She looked distinctly unimpressed. "Why? My friends don't organise their minds. Everything they think about is all tumbled together, willy-nilly."

"For them that's enough," Numair answered patiently. "As animals they remember the past only vaguely. They are unable to visualise a future, apart from the change of seasons. They have no comprehension of mortality – of their deaths. They don't learn from books or teachers, so they have no need to structure their minds in order to find what they learn. You, however, are human and different. If you do not find a way to organise your mind, at worst you might go mad. At best, you'll be stupid."

Daine made a face and looked back at the book, from which he deduced that he'd won the argument, temporarily at least. "You'd best take this when you go. My friends come in every night. I wouldn't want it soiled."

He'd thought of that already. "The book is spelled against dirt and tearing. It's yours. I want you to use it, not admire it."

Her reaction surprised him. "Mine! No! It's – it's too valuable. The likes of me don't keep such things."

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place; so that was it. Well, he knew that attitude, too. He reached out and caught her hand. "Daine, listen to me." He pulled her down to sit beside him and made her look at him. "You're a student mage. You need books like this to do your work. I am your master." And if he ever managed to utter that sentence again without getting a slap for it, he'd be amazed. "It's my duty – in this case it's my pleasure – to give you whatever books and scrolls I believe you require to learn. Unless you don't want to learn?" he added teasingly, and was rewarded with a smile.

"Odd's bobs, of course I do!"

"Good. Then get your book. We'll start at page one."

Work on Wolf-Speaker is going pretty well, you'll be pleased to know. Poor Numair – once I took a look at the timeline of the book, I realised that he actually spends an entire week stuck outside Dunlath on the other side of the barrier before the final fight. Spending a whole week on his own, not knowing what's going on and not able to do anything about it = very unhappy mage. Should be fun to write.

We're probably about a third of the way through Wild Magic now; as always, leave me a review and let me know what you think.

Loten.