Chapter 5

Brook dragged me over to Gendun, who doubled as our Study Hall monitor, "Sir, I need to get a dictionary from the library! Julie's spell? I think it's written in Gaelic!" At his nod she dashed off but he held up a hand when I turned to follow. "Julie? A moment please."

"Yes sir..."

"We have received word that your guardians have been called away. Which means, until we hear otherwise, you will be staying here at the school."

"Do you know where they went?" I asked, feeling a chill up my spine. "And for how long?" The last out-of-town trip, they were away for a whole three months, while I waited by my friend Maddie's mangled body, hoping and praying they find the medicine she so desperately needed. They were successful, but at a terrible cost. Most of them had been badly injured, and some good people never made it back.

"I believe they are still in the U. S., but the message from the keep did not provide any more details. I'm given to understand it would only be a week, ten days at most." He spread his hands and gave me a sympathetic look, we all knew traveling any distance is extremely unpredictable, if not worse. "And they're quite capable of taking care of themselves..." Gendun offered, as if sharing my thoughts.

Which reminded me, "Err, Sir, I need to, I mean, I promised to speak with Yu. To ... to apologize to him, for earlier!" I said.

"You can have ten minutes." Gendun nodded again.

I'd not seen Yu since our flare-up at the Garden earlier but, just by concentrating on it, I could tell where he was. So I headed directly for the stone bench in front of the maze where he was placidly sitting and working on his book.

"Yu..." I started, then faltered when he looked up. Something about him in the moonlight made me feel like I was teetering on the edge of a hole. A dark, bottomless hole.

"Ah... Julie Olsen... I... I..." Yu started, then scrambled up, "y-you are here..."

"Dammit, Yu, stop doing your mind tricks on me!"

"It's not me! Julie Olsen!" He stepped back, holding his hands up, "Or not just me - assuming you are what I think you are."

I stared at him, stunned, how on earth did he find out? "And just what exactly do you think I am?"

"You're a god, of course!" He declared, beaming with the genius of his statement.

"Ah... Y-you think I'm a-a god..." The relief of not being found out made me want to giggle out loud.

"After careful consideration, I have arrived at the conclusion that there can be no other reason for me to feel such attraction to you!" Yu continued with grave seriousness, "you do not possess great beauty, and you are thin to the point of malnourished. Then there's that hostile demeanor and acerbic tongue... Wait, what are you doing?"

"I'm looking for a pad so I can write down all the godly words to teach my followers with, so that they, too, can become acerbically tongued with the hostile demeanor!"

"That's not..." He paused, "right, I forgot to mention the biting sarcasm." He put a hand up when I stuck my tongue out at him and turned to go, "But, how else can you explain why I think of you constantly?"

"Ah... you think... you DO?"

"Yes," he nodded, "I am at a loss to understand how I can be so infatuated with one person!"

"Even besotted?"

"Perhaps, a little." He nodded, "so you admit you're a god?"

"S-sure..." I said, anything BUT sure with the millions of emotions going through me, in all direction, all at once.

"I knew it," he crowed, "I KNEW it!"

"Stop it already! I can't understand how you need an explanation for your own feelings!" I told him, "why can't you just say you enjoy being with someone who's not afraid of you and not afraid of telling you the truth!"

"Perhaps... but I am also merely stating the truth. I have not felt this way with anybody but you, Julie Olsen - even other gods failed to impact me so."

"You've met other gods?"

"Yes, but of course they were all much older... decades, if not centuries older..."

"Oh sure... I hope you're not pulling a prank on me, Yu Fong, or whatever your name is. I will not be amused if I find out this is all a big joke!" I snarled and glared at him.

"Uhh," Yu took a step back. He blinked a long blink at me, looking shaken, "You're a god for certain!" He held up his hands in surrender, "I have not lied to you, Julie Olsen, in all that I have told you. I know you have powers few others understand, and there is talk that your mother is some form of a celestial being sent to do battle against the Tower Master of ancient lore!"

"Pfft," I waved it off, since I wasn't sure I understand that mess at all. "Just keep the god thing to yourself, but I want you to understand that you have been warned!" I wasn't sure I could threaten him and ask him to keep a secret all at the same time, but right then my head was buzzing around like crazy, and I was more worried about it falling off. "I had one guy lie to me before," I added, "and now he's bound for eternity in an underground cave."

"No, no, I do not lie. What I say is the truth, Julie Olsen, you will understand better once you realize my origins."

"You've said that a few times before, and I'm still waiting to hear it!" With a nod he sat and gestured to the seat beside him. "Ahh, but I can't now," I amended, "Gendun's only given me ten minutes to tell you I am really, really sorry about screaming in your head this afternoon..."

"Thank you, and I also want to apologize for reacting so rashly and scaring your friends, but, nevertheless," he grinned, looking, for once, like a real eighteen year old, "I learned how to converse directly to you!"

"Yeah, there's that." I nodded and continued. "But there is another thing that was bothering me, maybe you can explain..." He just looked at me, "When Ashlyn's tunnel was blocked this afternoon, she mentioned that she was having the same problem with her other links too."

"Yes, she has encountered similar blockages elsewhere."

"But what about the Richmond line? She got through there didn't she?"

"Yes, but in a rather haphazard manner. She still could not locate a clear passage and the opening she managed had to be deep, in an unstable area very close to the... the..."

"...What she calls the Boundary?"

"Yes... boundary, but it's not." He spread his hands, "Again, I have no words. The ancients call it Szishwei, meaning, roughly, the Sea of Nothing. Magically, it seems to move in all directions at once, and there's no known record of anyone or anything ever returning from it. In any event, the Richmond link is clearly a tenuous one, if the 'Boundary' shifts just a fraction, it will be destroyed."

"So the only solution is to keep jabbing at the blockage until she finds a way through?"

"Yes, that is an apt description."

"Do you know what it is that's stopping her?"

"It appears to be a certain kind of rock... but there is not much known about it."

"Do you think it would help if I got a piece as a sample? So someone can analyze it, or something?"

Yu frowned, "It definitely cannot hurt, but how do you propose to obtain the sample?"

"I had watched Dr. Tessect do something like that," when she took a chunk of Yu's flower-perfume present off me to study, "and I think I can try it here..."

I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the spot where Ashlyn had trouble before and, using the same threads as had the Medmage, burrowed into the rock. I knew I had hit the correct spot because there was a definite resistance to my efforts.

I'm not sure how long it took, but I found that by wrapping an entire chunk in the magic threads, I could kind of 'slide' it out of the boulder, which is what it was, then up through the dirt and into my hand. I had to admit it was somewhat of an anticlimax when, for all the effort, it wasn't even warm.

"Well, that was disappointing!" I sighed. It was also small, no bigger than a .45 cartridge. I looked up and Yu was glaring at me, then the rock, then up at me again. "I KNOW it's not much, but that's all I can do!" I said hotly.

"No, no, NO! You've done very well!" I didn't even have time to say 'Thank you!' when he suddenly grabbed my hand and dashed inside.

He dragged me in front of Master Gendun, who was having a discussion with Brook over a huge volume.

"Master Gendun, I must talk to you, now!" Yu Fong said, then turn to Brook and me, "Can you and Brook find Ashlyn and make sure this is the rock she's been having problems with? Please?"

"S-sure!" I scurried off, Brook and her big book in tow. Yu was already involved in a frantic, arm-waving discussion with Gendun.

"What the hell was that?" Brook wanted to know, "what did you do to the poor boy this time?"

"Whaddaya mean, 'poor boy?' Out of nowhere, he started freaking and dragged me here! I think he's got some sort of brain damage! Oh, right, assuming he HAS a brain at all!" I snickered at the thought.

"Yeah, then why do you keep sneaking looks back at him all the time?"

"Do not! Ah, there's Ashlyn! And no talking about him!" I warned her.

Ashlyn and Sheila were in the small room we used for our 'peer-to-peer' tutoring. They were with a fae girl, the first person to learn the spell, I remembered. Then, as I tried to focus on her face, it started wavering. I blinked and looked again, and my eyes started to water. Glamor! The girl was using glamor on us!

"Hi! This is Rhe'en." Ashlyn introduced us. "She's helping us with the spell. She's really good at it too!"

"Can you stop doing that?" I squinted at her, "it's making my eyes go funny!"

"I-I can't help it!" She stammered.

"Rhe'en is a Spriggan!" Sheila elbowed me. "Don't be mean!"

"Yeah," Brook kicked me from the other side. "Leave the girl be!"

"Ugh, I'll stop if you will! What IS the problem with you two?" I said, glaring at them.

I turned back to Ashlyn, "Master Gendun wants us to find out if this is the same rock that's blocking you!"

She touched it gingerly and shrank back. "Yes, it's the same stuff."

"OK, let's go tell them!" Brook grabbed my elbow and hustled off with me.

"OK, OK! Stop trying to freaking rip my arm off!"

"Rhe'en is a very nice girl, so be good to her!" Brook slowed when she noticed the blank look on my face, "Spriggans are usually very reclusive and totally harmless; they can't even fight to defend themselves, but if threatened, they show their true faces and they're supposed to be so hideous and revolting that people faint when they see it!"

"Oh... alright, I get it now. But her glamor is pretty nasty too!"

"Whatever, just don't be mean to her!" She warned me just before delivering me to Gendun and Yu, now joined by an equally animated Medmage.

"I told you, I can do it, but I need to see it!" She protested.

"Show Ms. Tessect the sample, Julie." Gendun said.

I held it out, but she barely glanced at it before going on, "I don't mean that! I know what I'm supposed to do, but I still need to see where it's coming from!"

"Can you explain to the doctor how you found the rock blocking Ashlyn?" Gendun said to me.

"I, er, just followed the root from Ashlyn's Tree to where it had stopped."

"Can you do that?" Gendun turned to her.

"No," she shook her head, "at least extremely unlikely. I still need full visuals before doing something like that!"

I looked at Yu, "I'm kinda foggy here, what's happening?"

"When you used Dr. Tessect's technique to remove a piece from the boulder, I saw it as a possible solution to our current situation."

"Uhmm..." I blinked, as it slowly dawned on me, "ah, you mean by using it to dig a hole through the block? But it'll be an awfully small hole! It's not even a half inch!"" I held up the slender cylinder I had managed.

"The Richmond connection is even smaller than this - and you can see the energy that is available!"

"But the real question is, Julie, if the Doctor cannot manage it, can you do it again?"

"Er, maybe once more, then I'm pretty sure the imprint will disappear." I hated to lie to them, but I couldn't risk exposing my sensate abilities.

"But you can recharge your imprint, can't you?" Brook suggested, "I mean, if the Doctor was there to show you how it's done... Again."

"Yeah, yeah, I can do that, I suppose."

"Excellent! That leaves me with deciding which period I can spare you to assist Ashlyn!" Gendun declared.

"Algebra?" I ventured.

Brook burst out laughing and even Gendun cracked a smile. "No, no, I cannot do that, not for someone who's showing such great promise! For now, back to your studies, and I will make arrangements with your teachers." With a curt nod from him, we were dismissed.

"Whew, I thought they'd never stop talking!" Brook said as she led the way back to our room, "Now you can help me complete the spell!" She went to the opened Spell book, and dragged over a hefty tome entitled 'A Compendium of Goidelic Languages.' She pointed at it. "We were checking up the words in the spell, and so far we've decided it's not new, or high Scottish, or Irish... None of those has your 'chewy gnat.' "

"It's Cornish..." Came a timid voice. Rhe'en, who was looking at us from the other side of the table.

"Uhh... Oh right, you're from there aren't you? So you can say the spell for us?"

"Yes, but this line only explains that the next section is to make the light burn for a 'hyarliech', I guess it's a length of time. And the 'gnat' is actually 'ghtat' - the ink must've rubbed off. These lines is to make it brighter, and this part means, 'Say it to unmake spell.' " She fidgeted, "I DID try to sound it out, but it didn't do anything."

"The sounds are not always spot on, sometimes you have to play with it a little." I told her.

"OK! Here's what we're going to do. You say the words, and Julie will tell if you're doing it right." Brook urged, "while I take exquisitely detailed notes. Ha! Mage Guild, here I come! OK, Rhe'en, teach us how to make the light run for a hyarliech!"

With Rhe'en's knowledge of the language, and some feedback from me, it was much easier to piece the various components together. A crowd began to gather, eager to learn each part of the light spell as it was revealed. I was staring too, but I was more curious about how the spell controlled the magic components.

One segment of the spell pushed magic into the light to make it brighter, which I could do already, but the same sequence was used in the part that changed the duration of the spell as well. The trick, it turned out, was to say the line that 'flipped' the light, somewhat like turning it inside-out to my sensate sight, and then all the magic pushed in would be used to make it run longer. But it was very good information - it meant correctly spoken lines always did the same thing, and that magic spells were kind of predictable.

It was a bit after Study period before Gendun finished their discussion, but for a change, nobody complained, and when he dismissed us, we were able to head up to the dorms carrying our own magic-lights.