Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm
Lightning flashed and thunder exploded so close they joined.
A drop of rain hit my head. Then another.
Great. Why did it always rain when the world needed saving?
The disks around the circle flickered as rain pattered through the rising magic.
I looked around, uncertain as to how this was a storm rod that was going to channel the magic. Unless they intended to channel bits of the magic into the disks at their feet. Even so, there weren’t nearly enough disks to contain that storm.
The big, heavy figure of Jingo Jingo lumbered out into the center of the circle. He carried a sack over his back. Lightning struck, painting him pale as a horror-movie Santa Claus. A flash of ghostly faces, children’s faces, swarmed around his body, tied to him, clinging to him in sorrow and desperation.
Darkness returned, snuffing out the ghosts.
But I knew I’d see them in my nightmares.
Jingo swung the bag off his back and upended it.
Disks poured out, dozens and dozens, striking one another in sweet glass tones, primal music and magic, ringing in song so pure I caught my breath. Disks and magic poured into a pile, a mountain, a treasure of glittering, beautiful power.
I moaned softly. I wasn’t the only one.
There it was-the unattainable dream. Easy magic.
Safely contained, safely used. No price to pay. Ready to do what you wanted it to do. At no cost.
I wanted it to stop a storm. I wanted it to help me open a gate so I could get Zayvion back.
I looked around the circle, at faces brushed in liquid light from the disks at their feet. I saw awe, doubt, greed. I saw anger, and fear. All the good things a human could feel and all the bad, played out across the faces of those gathered.
The Authority, Zayvion had told me, was on the brink of a war.
And someone had just poured a pile of loaded weapons at their feet.
“Allison Beckstrom,” Jingo Jingo said. “Come forward now.”
“What?” Thunder struck, covering my voice. I shot a panicked look at Shame and Terric, both of whom looked away from the thrall of the disks and at me. They looked as confused as I felt.
“We need a focal point,” Sedra said softly next to me. “I had hoped there would be another way. If Zayvion hadn’t fallen, he would be the one standing here. I would not have asked this of you.”
“Asked what of me? Explain-” Lightning, thunder. I waited them out, or at least until the thunder’s volume went down a notch. Tried again, “Explain what you think I’m going to do.”
She smiled, and it looked out of place beneath her cool, brittle eyes, as if there were two different people with two different emotions behind that face. “You are going to direct the wild magic. You don’t need to wield it, don’t need to absorb it. You simply need to Ground it, into the disks.”
How had she not noticed that I sucked at Grounding? I thought my teachers reported to her about me. I wasn’t even any good at keeping control over the magic inside me and never left home without a void stone anymore.
Volatile was the polite word my teachers used when they didn’t think I was listening. You’d think someone would have pointed that out to her.
“I don’t Ground.”
Her eyebrows flicked up. “You will do so now. If you are the Soul Complement to the Guardian of the Gate, then you will be strong enough. We will divert the wild magic to you, and you will Ground it. Using the disks.”
“I’m a lightning rod? A storm rod?” I blinked back rain that trickled into the corners of my eyes. “I tapped into a wild storm and it almost killed me.”
“Zayvion wielded all manifestations of magic. It is now your time to prove you can do the same. Prove that you really are his equal.” This last bit she said with more anger than I expected. I got the feeling she didn’t like me very much.
“Zayvion’s had a hell of a lot more training than I have.”
“There is only you. If you don’t channel the magic, the city will burn, magic will explode, melt the conduits, destroy. People will die. Zayvion will die.”
“What? Why?”
“He has been broken by magic. And only magic-dark and light-can make him whole again.”
Holy shit. “So if the storm hits, it’s going to kill him?”
“If we don’t control it, yes.” I did not like the pitying smile she gave me. It looked like she wanted me to fail.
Well, screw that.
The entire conversation lasted all of a few seconds. It scared the crap out of me. But I was getting tired of standing there getting wet and arguing about things I knew too little about.
Not knowing what the hell I was doing had never stopped me before. And so far, not knowing what I was doing with magic hadn’t killed me.
But this time it wasn’t just my life on the line. It was Zay’s life, and the lives of people in the city-Violet’s life, her baby’s life.
If I failed and magic blew out the conduits in the city, thousands could die.
Maybe some of the fear showed on my face.
Victor, who stood next to Sedra, said, “We will guide you. We will be your hands if you falter, your strength if you fear, your breath if you fall.”
That was good and all, but what I really needed was someone to be my sense of self-preservation and oh, I don’t know, tell me to run away now and run real fast.
Since that wasn’t going to happen, I nodded and pushed my fear as far away as I could. I was good at denial.
I walked out into the center of the circle where Jingo Jingo waited for me.
“You’re gonna do just fine, Allison,” Jingo Jingo said in his low, smooth liar’s voice. “You were born for this, made for this.” He smiled, but there was a fevered gloss in his eyes. Even in the rain I could tell he was sweating. Even in the rain, I could smell his lie.
Or maybe I was reading too much into this. Panic will do that to a girl. I took a deep breath, and squared my shoulders.
“What do I need to do?”
Jingo Jingo stepped closer to me and ran his hand down my arm, petting my right shoulder and stroking down to my fingers, which he caught up. It was weird, creepy, invasive. I gave him a look that let him know exactly what I thought about that.
“You’re gonna stand here.” He guided me around the pile of disks so I stood facing Sedra.
Sedra looked calm and cool as an ice sculpture. Which is to say she looked like she always looked.
Well, that and wet. Lightning flashed, painting ragged glyphs across the sky, and for a second, less than that, I thought I saw something else in her, something under her skin that was dark, twisted.
Panic shot through me. I looked at the other users gathered. There was something wrong with their body language. Too many sideways glances, meaningful looks. Even Liddy, my teacher in Death magic, looked tense, as if she was waiting for her cue.
Sedra might be the head of this parade, but I was pretty sure some of the band didn’t want to march.
“All you need to do is hold this,” Jingo Jingo continued. He bent, dug through the piles of disks. They were all the same. I didn’t know what he was looking for. He finally selected one and placed it in my palm. “And meditate.”
Meditate? Oh, yeah. That would be no problem in the middle of a wild-magic storm surrounded by a circle of users-all better trained than me, all giving one another hateful looks-with a big pile of free magic at my feet.
Okay, yes, granted, you had to have a clear mind to actually cast magic, and high emotion destroys the concentration it takes to access magic. But meditation takes time to do well. So if my ability to meditate was what was going to save the world, or at least save Portland, then I was pretty sure we should all think about moving to Seattle.
“Meditate,” I said. “Right, then what?”
Jingo Jingo stood in front of me. I could smell his fear, bitter and sharp on the back of my sinuses. And something else-the candy sweet of excitement, anticipation. He licked his lips. He was looking forward to this, anxious, eager. “Then, you are going to do the right thing, Allison Beckstrom. And you won’t need me to tell you what that is.”
He stepped back, putting rain and space between us. Lightning flashed again and thunder broke the sky to pieces. I had zero chance to tell him how incredibly unhelpful he had been.
Some teacher. Going silent on me when I most needed a clear answer. Bastard.
Okay, I had my disk. It was heavy and cool in my hand. And I had my sword. It was heavy and cool on my back. It shouldn’t, but just the presence of Zayvion’s blade made me feel better, like a part of him was with me, telling me, calmly, to stop thinking so hard, and just kick some ass.
And that was exactly what I planned on doing. I was about to meditate like no one had ever meditated before.
Yes, that sounded stupid.
I took a deep breath, spread my feet so I wouldn’t fall over when the winds picked up.
Just as I began to close the outside world away from my senses, the storm tore open the sky, the air. And the magic beneath the earth rushed into me, and burned through me.
Chapter Nineteen
Too hot, too hard, magic rushed up out of the earth and poured down from the sky to stretch and fill my bones, my skin, my body. There wasn’t enough room in my body for me to breathe, wasn’t enough room for me to think.
Meditate, he’d said.
Jingo Jingo was such a joker.
I had to clear my mind. Had to direct-no, channel-no, Ground. I was supposed to Ground, and they were going to direct the magic that ricocheted and fractured, leaping above me, above us, above St. Johns, striking wild, random arcs of lightning and wild glyphs that would tear us all to shreds.
We might be using magic, but it was going to use us right back.
I cleared my mind. Sang my “Miss Mary Mack” song. Lost the line when thunder rolled and rolled, and lightning hit so low I felt it in my molars and thought we’d all go up in a crisp. Picked up at the “silver buttons, buttons, buttons” line and held tight to the disk, which hummed with magic, in my hand over the pile of disks.
The wild magic was not me. The wild magic could not change me. It could pour around me, fill the disk in my hand, and fill the other disks on the ground. It could follow the marks, the paths, the ribbons, magic had painted in my skin, my blood, my bones, and use me as a conduit. Magic could slide through me, soft, gentle, and return to the soil, the stones, the heart of the earth, where it belonged.
The reason St. Johns had been chosen for this suddenly made sense. St. Johns was an empty sieve. Magic would flow through it, and into the channels beyond this neighborhood, and fill all the rest of Portland.
That was, if I could Ground it.
I inhaled, exhaled, tasted the burnt wood and hot ozone of fire. The wind lifted, buffeting, hot in the cold, cold rain.
Grounding wasn’t a difficult glyph to draw, but making magic follow it, and standing there, steady, calm, and completely focused while the magic used me, was what made Grounding hard. I set a Disbursement, hoping to push off some of the pain for later. Maybe I’d catch a flu in a week or so.
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