(eng) P. T. Hylton & Michael Anderle - Storms of Magic 02 by Storm Callers

Author:Storm Callers [Callers, Storm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dahlia made her way up the stone steps that snaked along the nearly sheer cliffside. Normally the lengthy climb was a challenge that left her winded, but today she was so angry she didn’t even notice the exertion.

The building at the top of the cliff didn’t have a name. It didn’t need one. The people who lived in the building never left it, so they had no need to refer to it as anything but “home.” The guards and soldiers who worked there were forbidden to speak of the place. When King Elias talked about it to his most trusted aides, he simply called it “the school.”

In Dahlia’s mind, it was “that damned annoyance.”

She reached the top and stormed toward the massive building. She didn’t have to speak a word to the guards; they knew her and opened the gate as she approached.

After a bit of searching, she found Viktor in the classroom. It was a large space dominated by a massive pool of seawater, which had to be replenished weekly by servants who painstakingly hauled buckets up the traitorous cliffside staircase.

Viktor stood in the ankle-deep pool, his empty hand held outward, palm-up. His twelve students were lined up in the pool in front of him.

Dahlia stopped in the doorway and waited in the shadows, her anger momentarily forgotten. It was always fascinating to listen to Viktor talk about his bizarre theories of magic.

“The sea flows with the tide.” Viktor spoke softly in an almost offhanded way, as if he were thinking aloud. He might have been talking about his methods to himself, and the others just happened to be there to hear it. “Its power ebbs and flows. Let it wash into you and then rush out again. Don’t fight it. The more easily the power flows in and out of you, the more of it you’ll be able to channel in your casting.”

Dahlia bit her lip in annoyance. Viktor’s way of explaining magic was so different from what she’d learned and how she’d taught the few apprentices she’d had over the years. She’d been told by her mentor that you coaxed power from the sea and then once you had a grip on it, you wrestled that power away. Viktor’s approach was to siphon power in a gentler fashion, building up a little more power with each breath. It seemed insane to Dahlia.

And yet it worked. She was certain she could take Viktor in a one-on-one duel if it ever came to that, but he could also do things she couldn’t. He could create a storm miles away simply by thinking about the place. He could combine his magic with that of his pupils to create more powerful storms at even farther distances. Granted, they were not nearly as strong as the tempests Dahlia or even relatively new Storm Callers trained in the Holdgate method were able to conjure. The Barskall way was something different—less powerful, but more flexible.

Even Dahlia had to admit there was something to be said for flexibility.

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