Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (simple e reader .TXT) 📕

“I can appreciate that,” Dreya agreed, “better than anyone. I think I can see the point you’re heading towards but say it anyway.”

“My point is that I want to try and find a way for us to live and work together, to grow as friends, in full understanding of each other, and I want—”

“—You want assurance that I will never take power from your staff, no matter how tempted I might be.”

“Exactly. I know asking you to promise is futile. Your word is not as binding as your debts. Therefore,” she concluded, “I want you to think of taking power from my staff, as a debt that can never be repaid.

“Because that is the one line I would never cross,” Dreya replied.

Cat shrugged. “Like I say: I understand you.”

Dreya took a slow breath, in and out, in deep consideration of how to answer.

*****

Aunt Dreya was always far more multifaceted than any tyrant ever was. People don’t often give her enough credit for that, but my mother always did. Cat was right that Dreya would break a promise if circumstances changed, but she did not like lies. To her mind, that was a form of debt. She would keep secrets, conceal strategic information, but first and foremost, she wanted to spearhead the building of a world of magic on Tempestria. Lies, it seemed to her, served as feeble foundations upon which to build anything.

Dreya’s quest for power, Cat’s search for knowledge, and their friendship for each other – all of these things were important to Dreya, and she was of one mind with Catriona in that she wanted to find a way for those things to co-exist.

*****

“Currently,” Dreya said at last, “the different powers are too entangled to even think of tapping into them. I couldn’t possibly control what might be unleashed. As for the future, you want to know exactly what is buried in that staff before you decide what to do with it. I completely agree. So, since I believe your word to be more binding than mine, I want you to promise me something: whenever you break through to the final layer of security and are ready to uncover what is buried, promise me I will be there, and you will include me in whatever you find. If you promise me that, I will consider myself indebted to you before the fact. Deal?”

“Deal,” Cat agreed.

She and Dreya shook hands to seal it. “OK Cat, having sorted that out,” Dreya said, “I have a compelling urge to shoot you.”

Cat knew, when Dreya said things like that, she didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but all the sane, she feigned indignation as she said, “And I thought we were getting along so well!”

“Don’t worry, I can turn the power of the energy beam right down. No sense in wasting power.”

“Heavens forbid you should ever waste your power on me,” her friend remarked.

It was Dreya’s turn to shake her head in wonder. “Oh, Cat,” she said, “only you could make it sound like I’m insulting you by not shooting you with a deadly energy beam.”

“Well, power isn’t everything, Dreya, but it’s nice to know I’m worthy of yours.”

“Has it occurred to you that half the things we say to each other don’t make any sense, conventionally speaking?”

“Of course!” Cat concurred. “We’re unconventional people. If we did make sense, that would be weird.”

Deciding not to comment on that, Dreya led Cat to her training room, magically shielded to prevent any accidents due to stray magic.

Having shut the door behind her, she wasted not a moment before shooting her friend. As promised, the power was turned down so much, it was about as dangerous as any other beam of torchlight. Still, Cat treated the threat as real and responded with her Nature’s Mirror, reflecting it back.

Dreya repeated the attack numerous times, sometimes with high frequency, other times with a long gap in between, so as not to give Cat any rhythm to anticipate the ‘attack.’ Still, every time, without fail, Cat reflected it back. Dreya switched to other magic, periodically, which allowed Catriona time to recycle the mirror back to sand.

“Interesting,” Dreya remarked. “Why don’t you just reuse the mirror?”

Cat picked up the most recently used one and invited Dreya to shoot her one more time. When she did so, the mirror failed to stop the torch beam and disintegrated into magical energy, leaving her with nothing to recycle back to sand.

“See?” Catriona said. “They only work once. I have to recreate all my magic from scratch every time. It’s one of the drawbacks of druid magic.”

“Everything has drawbacks,” Dreya replied. “Conventional wizard magic takes more power than what you would need to accomplish the same thing, and as you pointed out, it requires the free use of the hands. Blood magic requires self-harm and the utmost concentration.”

“What about your power words?” Cat asked, referring to the way Dreya had turned their initial contest around with nothing but the words, ‘STUN,’ ‘BREAK,’ ‘SHATTER,’ and ‘SQUEEZE.’

Dreya explained that one of the more thought-provoking parts of Ulvarius’ research had involved trying to compress writing in the language of conventional spells into what he referred to as ‘power words.’ He had been close, but as with blood magic, what he lacked was control.

Before explaining further, Dreya fetched a simple wooden chair from another room.

“If this broke apart, could you put it back together with your magic?” she asked. Cat agreed that would be perfectly simple. “Good,” Dreya said. “I rather like it.”

She set the chair down in a corner and stepped back, indicating Catriona should join her.

“If I just look at the chair and say ‘Break,’ nothing happens.” Sure enough, nothing did. “But if I use my power word, ‘BREAK’…” The chair broke apart. “Over to you, Cat,” she said. Catriona used her magic, visualised how the chair looked before, and reconstructed it, flawlessly. “Now, I can’t just do that again straight away, because power words