Chapter 29
Practice Hall
Vael gave him his first real task at their second meeting.
'You're holding too much,' she said, looking at him with the assessment
of someone reading a pressure gauge. 'I can feel it from here. The Mark
is efficient â€" more efficient than anything the Umbros texts describe â€"
but if you can't release in controlled amounts you're going to keep
overflowing.'
'I've been practicing,' he said. 'Small releases. Into the ground, at
night.'
'Into the ground dissipates it. That's waste.' She looked at him
steadily. 'The Umbros school didn't waste absorbed mana. That was the
point. You're a reservoir, not a drain. What goes in should be usable.'
'I don't know how to use it.'
'That's what we're going to work on.' She pushed a small stone across
the desk toward him. It was mana-inert â€" he could feel the absence of
any enchantment in it, just ordinary rock. 'The difference between
Umbros work and standard spellwork is intent. Standard mages shape their
own generated mana â€" it's theirs, it behaves according to their
training. What you hold is absorbed, which means it has different
characteristics depending on the source. What I want you to do is hold a
small amount of what you've absorbed and try to push it into the stone.
Not a spell. Not a technique. Just push.'
He looked at the stone.
'If I push wrong?'
'The stone is inert. The worst outcome is it gets warm.'
He took off his glove. The seven lines on his palm were clearly visible
in the lamplight of her office, the cyan-black of them slightly luminous
at this mana density. He picked up the stone.
He tried to push.
What happened instead was pull. The stone was inert but the air around
it had ambient mana from the enchantments in the walls, and his palm
drew from that rather than releasing into the stone. The stone stayed as
it was. He felt slightly fuller.
'The reflex is to take,' Vael said, watching. 'You'll have to override
it.'
He tried again. Override it: he thought about the small night releases,
the deliberate decision to open rather than close, the specific mental
motion of pushing outward rather than pulling inward.
The stone got warm.
Not dramatically. Not glowing. Just warm, the way a stone got warm in
sunlight, the warmth concentrated in the point where his thumb pressed
against it.
He set it down.
'Good,' Vael said.
'That took considerable effort for very little result,' Cyan said.
'Everything does at first.' She picked up the stone, examined it. 'The
mana you pushed into this is altered. I can feel the difference â€" it's
not the same quality as the ambient mana that was around it. It's been
through you.' She set it down. 'That's the other thing the Umbros texts
describe. Mana that passes through a Hollow practitioner comes out
changed. They called it darkened. The texts don't agree on what that
means in practice.'
He looked at the warm stone. 'What do you think it means?'
'I think we'll find out.' She folded her hands. 'I want you to go to the
practice halls. Not during staffed hours â€" late evening, when the
residual mana from the day's practice sessions is still heavy in the
air. Sit in it. Practice the push. Small amounts, consistent effort,
every night.'
'If someone finds me there after hours â€"'
'Tell them you have my authorization. Write it down and I'll sign it.'
She was already reaching for paper.
He took the authorization card she produced and went that first evening,
late, when the practice halls were empty and warm with the residual mana
of a day's worth of training by hundreds of students.
He sat in the middle of the largest hall and put his hands on the floor
and felt the mana around him like water around a stone, and practiced
for two hours the specific mental motion of giving back what had been
taken.
It was slow. It was not elegant. By the end of two hours he could move
small amounts, inconsistently, with effort.
But he was growing.
The mark on his palm pulsed steadily in the warm dark of the empty hall,
and he thought: seven beats, like a second heart, and something that had
been patient for a very long time slowly deciding it was almost ready.