Mage Storms 02: Storm Rising by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey [Lackey, Mercedes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

Six

Firesong had found the most private place in the Palace, a place where no one ever intruded, and a place where his own magics were shielded from the outside by the most powerful shields available inside or outside of a Vale. He could disappear here for hours at a time, and he did.

It was not the place he would have thought of first as a very private spot, but no one seemed to want to spend any time in the chamber of Valdemar's Heartstone. Perhaps they found the sensation of all that power rather unnerving; the pressure of it was as palpable as hot sunlight on one's exposed flesh. Firesong liked it, but for someone sensitive, and one who was not used to being in the presence of so much power, it was probably very uncomfortable. He had been told that even those who had no Gift for mage-craft could feel the Power in this room, and that in itself was impressive.

This was the most powerful Heartstone he had ever worked with; it represented the latent power of the Stone Vanyel had originally constructed and linked into the Web, and the power from k'Sheyna's Heartstone that Vanyel, now a spirit and able to work more freely with such energies, had cleverly purloined.

He opened the door —a door that was by no means obvious, even though everyone in the Palace knew it was here—and walked inside, allowing it to fall closed behind him. This chamber was identical to one directly above it that had been used for scrying for centuries. The room itself was tiny, with so many shields on it that even sound had difficulty penetrating the walls. A round stone table all but filled the available space, with four curved benches around it. A single oil lamp was suspended above the table, but it was not lit, for it was not needed. A single globe of crystal in the middle of the table itself glowed with enough light to illuminate the room perfectly. The fact that this light was merely a by-product of the power held in the Stone was astonishing. I've never known a Heartstone to glow before. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that it is crystal? This is quite fascinating.

That globe of stone was the tip of Valdemar's Heartstone; the globe was fused into the tabletop, which was fused in turn to the column that supported it, which was fused in its turn to the stone floor and the bedrock beneath it. If one chipped everything away, one would find a single column of fused, ultra-hard, heat- forged stone, topped by the crystal globe, extending downward into the earth until it touched the place where the rock flowed with molten heat. The end result would look rather like a charlatan's "magic wand."

Firesong felt completely comfortable and at home here, despite the fact that this room had no windows and was inclined to induce claustrophobia. He was one of two people who had been originally keyed into the Heartstone's powers, after all.

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