Against The World

Chapter 98: Room to Learn

By the third morning, Tamsin could recognize her brother’s impatience in the sound of a bell.

I found this difficult to believe.

“It’s three notes,” I said.

“Yes.”

“The same three notes.”

“He’s ringing them too quickly.”

Mary looked up from the receiving manual.

“His name?”

“Bren.”

She wrote it down.

Then, after a moment, added something else.

I leaned closer.

Ask keeper to observe interval.

Tamsin looked pleased.

Somewhere on the coast, a man who had waited years for the gate to answer was about to discover that it came with correspondence.

The first inspection happened without anyone crossing.

The Castellan sent a little power through the connection and listened to what returned.

Aldren watched the marks along the console.

I watched him.

Tamsin watched the bell.

Eleanor, who trusted none of those things to tell her whether a roof might fall on someone, studied the measurements Tamsin had brought.

“The receiving floor slopes toward the harbor?”

“For drainage.”

“How much?”

Tamsin showed her.

Eleanor frowned.

“That’s more than the original drawing.”

“The quay settled after the great storm.”

“When?”

“Before I was born.”

“That doesn’t improve it.”

The Castellan’s eye brightened.

“The passage frame responds correctly. The receiving threshold requires examination.”

“So we can open it?” I asked.

“A narrow viewing aperture, if the far keeper confirms the space is clear. Passage should remain closed.”

Tamsin was already reaching for the manual.

It took most of the afternoon to explain what Bren needed to do.

The old watch signals had been designed for people who already knew their work.

They included arrival, refusal, delay, danger, and several varieties of request.

They did not include move whatever you have stored against the left pillar.

We sent the signal for an obstructed receiving area.

Bren answered that it was clear.

Tamsin shut her eyes.

“The rope cabinet.”

“What?”

“He won’t think of the rope cabinet as an obstruction. It’s been there for twenty years.”

I looked at the Castellan.

“Can we send words?”

“Slowly.”

Mary reached for another sheet.

Evelyn arrived while we were deciding how to explain a cabinet through an ancient signaling system.

She listened for a moment.

Then pointed to a passage halfway down the manual.

“Doesn’t that call for clearing the entire marked floor?”

Tamsin read it.

Then smiled.

We sent the signal.

Bren rang his answer after a considerable delay.

Tamsin folded her arms.

“He’s found somewhere else for the rope.”

I went to the practice yard afterward.

Alistair had left a wooden sword for me.

Beside it lay a feather.

I looked at both.

Then floated the feather above the low wall and began the sequence he had shown me.

Step.

Turn.

Keep the blade close.

The feather held through the first movement.

Drifted during the second.

By the sixth, it had settled on my shoulder.

I caught it before it slipped down my collar.

“Progress?”

Evelyn stood in the doorway.

“It’s following me now.”

“Perhaps it’s attached to you.”

“I’d prefer obedience.”

She came to sit on the wall while I tried again.

The sky above the courtyard had begun to darken.

This time, I managed the whole sequence before the feather fell.

When I turned, Evelyn was smiling.

I smiled back.

Then bent to collect it.

That night, I dreamed of an open courtyard.

There were trees beyond the wall.

Green leaves stirred in warm air, and somewhere nearby water trickled into a basin.

For a moment, I thought I was alone.

Then Evelyn took my hand.

Aurelia stood beside an archway, watching us.

The dream extended farther than it had before.

Beyond the arch, I could see a garden path, a sunlit bench, and a row of windows with their shutters open.

“You’ve made more of it,” I said.

“I can hold more of it.”

She came toward us.

There was pleasure in her face.

Enough that I found myself smiling before I remembered all the questions I usually brought.

“Does that mean another binding has broken?”

“Loosened. A little.”

She touched the leaves of a climbing rose.

“People are speaking to me who would once have been afraid to say my name. Some are remembering prayers their grandparents taught them.”

“And Soren?”

“He keeps asking whether he is using too much.”

“That sounds like him.”

“I’ve told him I will say so.”

She looked toward the courtyard’s far side.

“Come. There is something I would like to offer you.”

We sat beneath the trees.

For once, Aurelia did not begin with a warning.

She asked about Orselle.

I told her about Tamsin, the bell, and the cabinet.

At the last, her mouth curved.

“There was always something beside that pillar.”

“You remember the quay?”

“I remember arriving there with a trunk of clothes I never wore because it rained for six days.”

Evelyn laughed.

“Did you like it?”

“Very much. I complained throughout the visit.”

She leaned back.

Then looked at me more carefully.

“Your power has grown again.”

I glanced at my hands.

“It seems to keep doing that.”

“How does it feel?”

I considered the question.

“Easier to reach. Harder to judge sometimes.”

“And when you’re tired?”

“Louder.”

That was the closest word I had.

Aurelia nodded as though it made sense.

“I can help you with that now.”

I looked up.

“With lessons?”

“Yes.”

She rested her hands in her lap.

“When I first reached you, holding a dream together took nearly everything I could spare. I could speak. Show you a little. I couldn’t keep you here and watch you work carefully enough to teach.”

“And now?”

“Now we can begin.”

I looked around the courtyard.

There was room to move.

Room for mistakes.

I began to understand why she had brought us here.

“What could you teach me?”

“How to shape your strength without fighting it every moment. How to recognize another working before it reaches you. Wards that can help you protect a room, a gate, or the people standing behind you.”

Her expression gentled.

“You want to keep your family and Greykeep safe. I would like you to have more than instinct when someone makes that difficult.”

I thought of the wagon above the stream.

The bolt at Reed Crossing.

My son’s hand opening around a light he had not understood.

“Yes,” I said.

The word came more quickly than I expected.

“I’d like that.”

“So would I,” Evelyn said.

Aurelia turned toward her.

My wife sat forward.

“I want to keep learning with Ilyen. But I’d like to learn this too.”

“You can.”

Evelyn glanced at me.

“When the children are old enough, I want us to be able to teach them.”

I reached for her hand.

She held it tightly.

“I don’t want their first lesson to be us becoming frightened because something glows.”

Aurelia was quiet for a moment.

Then she nodded.

“We can prepare you for that.”

“Even though my magic is different from Uriah’s?”

“Your source is different. Much of what you need to understand is shared.”

She looked between us.

“We’ll learn where those differences matter. And when the children are ready, you can begin with what suits them.”

I pictured Garrick staring solemnly at his own fingers.

Carol kicking the blanket away.

“They may have opinions about lessons.”

“They will,” Aurelia said.

Evelyn smiled.

“We’ve been warned.”

The first lesson involved three stones.

Aurelia placed them on the paving.

I had expected something larger.

She noticed.

“We can find you a mountain later.”

Evelyn laughed.

I crouched beside the stones.

“What am I doing?”

“Lift one.”

I did.

“Now stop lifting it higher.”

“It isn’t going higher.”

“No. But you’re still pushing as though it might.”

I frowned.

The stone remained suspended.

Aurelia came to stand beside me.

“May I show you what I can feel?”

I nodded.

Her fingers touched my wrist.

For a moment, my own magic became startlingly clear.

The force beneath the stone was broad and restless. I was correcting it constantly, little movements I had never learned to notice.

There was more strength there than the stone needed.

Most of it was occupied arguing with the rest.

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Aurelia said.

She showed me how to give the working a shape.

A place to hold.

A boundary within which it could settle.

It still needed power.

It still needed my attention.

But after several attempts, I felt the difference.

The stone rested.

I reached toward the second.

The first dropped.

Evelyn moved her foot.

“An encouraging beginning.”

“I’m learning.”

“So am I. I’ve learned where not to stand.”

Aurelia smiled.

Then she put the stones farther apart.

We tried again.

When I finally held two without feeling as though I were gripping them inside my head, I looked up.

Aurelia was watching me with an expression I had seen on Garrick when his grandson did something small and new.

It made my chest ache unexpectedly.

She seemed to know.

“Again,” she said gently.

Evelyn began with a shallow curve of light.

Aurelia showed her how to spread it between her palms, then bring the edges together.

The first attempt vanished.

The second gathered into a bright knot that made my wife blink.

On the third, a faint golden surface held above her hands.

I leaned closer.

“What does it do?”

Aurelia picked up one of the stones and let it fall.

The light caught it.

Evelyn gasped.

The little shield broke, and the stone landed in her lap.

She stared down at it.

Then up at Aurelia.

“I felt that.”

“Yes. A ward has to bear what reaches it.”

“Can I try again?”

We exchanged places.

This time, I dropped the stone from a little lower.

Her light caught it for a heartbeat.

Then another.

She began to smile.

I forgot to watch my own stone.

It landed beside my boot.

We stopped before either of us wanted to.

Aurelia noticed us noticing.

“You’ll need to practice awake as well. These are real workings, but this place is helping you feel them.”

“So I won’t necessarily manage it in the morning,” I said.

“You may find it harder.”

Evelyn turned the practice stone between her fingers.

“How often can we come?”

“Short lessons, when you have the rest to spare. We’ll begin with that and see what I can sustain.”

I looked toward the garden beyond the arch.

It had faded a little at the edges.

Aurelia followed my gaze.

“I am stronger, Uriah. I’m still learning what that allows.”

I nodded.

“Then you’ll tell us when you need to stop.”

Her smile returned.

“I will.”

Before we left, she put her arms around us both.

For a little while, we stood together in the warm courtyard.

Then Carol woke, and the dream loosened around us.

In the morning, I could not make the second stone stay up.

Evelyn found this reassuring.

Her shield had become a gold shimmer that seemed uncertain whether it intended to exist.

We practiced in the small room beside the old training hall.

The children were with Helena.

Alistair watched from the doorway while we explained the lesson.

He listened closely when I described the way I had been correcting the force beneath the stone.

“That fits,” he said.

“With what?”

“The face you make when I ask you a question while you’re holding something.”

I looked at him.

He looked back.

Evelyn laughed.

Later, Ilyen examined my wife’s little ward with considerable interest.

“Show me again.”

Evelyn did.

It failed halfway through.

Ilyen nodded thoughtfully.

“And afterward, we’ll continue with the bowl.”

My wife sighed.

Apparently gaining a second teacher did not reduce the work assigned by the first.

Two days later, Orselle was ready for the viewing aperture.

Bren had cleared the marked floor.

He had also found the old inspection rods, checked the points described in the keeper’s book, and sent enough answers to satisfy the Castellan that we could proceed.

Tamsin stood beside the console.

Eleanor held a drawing.

Aldren had a measuring frame ready.

I put my hands against the stone and supplied the power the Castellan requested.

Only that much.

I found myself remembering the suspended stone.

The old channels warmed beneath my palms.

A narrow line appeared between the gate pillars.

Then it widened.

Light spilled through.

Different light.

Paler than our afternoon, with movement in it.

The smell of salt reached us first.

There was a man on the other side.

He stood in a room with whitewashed walls and an empty rectangle on the floor where a cabinet had recently been moved.

For a moment, he simply stared.

Then he saw Tamsin.

His mouth opened.

She put one hand against her lips.

“Bren.”

He could not hear her yet.

The aperture trembled.

I felt the urge to force it wider.

Instead, I held the shape I had been given.

The Castellan adjusted something beneath my hands.

Sound arrived in a rush.

A bell.

Gulls.

A man saying, “Tamsin?”

She laughed.

“Yes, you fool. Who else would it be?”

He covered his face.

Then lowered his hand and tried to look dignified.

It was too late.

We kept the opening narrow.

Wide enough to see.

Wide enough for speech.

Aldren and Eleanor asked their questions while Bren moved the inspection rods into place.

The threshold had settled, just as Eleanor feared.

One side would need lifting and bedding properly before anyone crossed.

Bren listened.

Then called someone over.

A woman with a mason’s mallet tucked into her belt leaned into view.

She examined Eleanor.

Eleanor examined her.

Within moments, they were arguing usefully.

Tamsin stood beside me, smiling at the sound of home.

Evelyn slipped her hand into the crook of my arm without disturbing my hold.

Beyond Bren, an open doorway showed a narrow strip of harbor.

Masts moved against the sky.

Sunlight flashed on water.

“There,” she whispered.

I followed her gaze.

For the first time since arriving in this world, I could see the sea.

We closed the aperture before the connection began to strain.

The salt smell lingered.

Tamsin remained in front of the empty gate for a while, holding the letter she had not yet been able to pass through.

Eleanor was already revising the repair drawing.

Mary wrote down the next agreed time.

I took my hands from the stone.

They were warm.

Tired, but steady.

Evelyn looked at them.

“Did it help?”

I thought about the moment I had wanted to push.

“Yes.”

She smiled.

Then turned back toward the gate.

In the next few days, there would be repairs at both ends. More discussions about the quay. Tamsin would finally be able to hand her brother his letter.

That evening, there would be two children wanting to be fed and a supper we had promised to attend.

And soon, when Aurelia had the strength and we had the rest, there would be another lesson.

I looked forward to all of it.

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