Taming the Elements: Elwin Escari Chronicles: Volume 1 (12 page)

Elwin shook his head. “I didn’t even know it was more than a dream until now. I didn’t say anything to anyone. I probably would have talked to Feffer about it, but I didn’t get a chance.”

Jasmine took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Do not tell him or anyone else, and in the meantime, do not leave sight of your body while in the shadow realm.”

“What do you mean?” Elwin said, “I don’t even know how I dreamed myself into the shadow realm to begin with. How do I
stay close to my body
? What does all of this mean? Why did he call me son of Bain?”

“Calm down,” she said in a firm voice. “It will be alright, Elwin. Praise the Lifebringer that I found you the day your powers manifested. He works in mysterious ways. I will show you what you need to know when we sleep. The Seeker would deceive you in any way he thought would gain your soul. Push it from your mind.

“But now, I must begin your first lesson. I must show you how to fill your essence with power and hold it. Once you can do this, you will not be a harm to those around you. Your essence cannot yet hold much safely. With time and training, your power will grow, but for now you must only pull in a small amount. Now, tell me what happened today in the square. Start from the beginning.”

The sudden change of topics left him with mixed feelings. He didn’t want to think about any part of what had happened, but he wanted to understand. He took a deep breath and tried to remember.

“Well,” Elwin said slowly to gather his thoughts. “I was on top of the Madrowl’s shop. It is the building across the street overlooking the square. The man started talking about war, then he said Wilton’s name. That’s when Feffer ran off. I followed him to the ladder, but it was so high up, I got dizzy. That is when I felt a breeze. But I didn’t feel it with my body. I felt it with my mind. Before I realized it, the wind had
filled
me. I know it sounds like madness to say aloud, but that is what happened. When I pushed against it, I fell upward. I held it in again, and began to fall toward the ground.”

Elwin felt a chill go up his spine. “I thought I was going to die.”

“You flew,” Zarah said. “Your first time and you flew.” He couldn’t tell if her voice sounded full of awe or jealously. He turned to see her looking at him. When he met her eyes, his heart began beating faster.

“This is no small feat,” Jasmine said. Elwin took the excuse to look away from Zarah. His heart was still pounding.

“Neither is what you did in the square. We call that a wind thrust. You pulled in more than you could handle at one time. When you could no longer hold the power, it came out in a burst. Just as one must train his muscles to lift heavy objects, you must train your essence to handle more power. Think of it like lifting a heavy boulder. Maybe you have the strength to pull it over your head, but you cannot hold it there for long. In time, if you lift the same boulder enough times, your muscles will be able to hold it there. If you attempt to lift a boulder too heavy, then you could permanently damage a muscle.”

He gave her an annoyed look. She always seemed to speak in riddles.

She sighed. “In other words, it is alright to pull in some power of Air to hold, but never fill your essence unless you have a specific purpose in mind. Now, we have to find the right size boulder for you to lift. Does that make sense to you?”

No, he decided after a minute. It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t want to sound dim-witted in front of Zarah. So he shrugged and said. “I think so.”

“Now, close your eyes and relax your mind,” Jasmine said. “Be aware of the Air around you. It is a part of you and you of it. It is alive in your mind.”

Elwin did as instructed. With his eyes closed he could
feel
the Air around him. Starting with his hands, the cool Air flowed down his arms and pulsed with a vibrant energy. It covered his body and touched every corner of the room. He could feel it surrounding Zarah and Jasmine.

“I can see by your face that you can feel it. But I want you to pay attention. You will feel the power enter myself and Zarah,” Jasmine said. “Slowly, Zarah. There, Elwin, do you feel that?”

He did. It was as if the pulse flowed into where they sat. He said as much aloud.

“Good,” she said. “Very slowly, I want you to open up your essence.”

“Okay,” Elwin said. “How?”

“You must allow it to flow into you, like you did earlier, when you ‘touched’ it.”

Elwin focused on the pulse. It was like his own heartbeat. He was a part of the pulse. Slowly, he
reached
for it with his mind. His body began to pulse in rhythm with the energy, and it began to fill him. Slowly at first, then it came at him like a flood.

He could feel the vibrations from Jasmine’s voice, but he could not make out her words. He could sense the ripples of heat from the candles flowing into the Air. The moisture in the Air between each strand, each breath. Each sound was a ripple of power, from which he could draw. But he didn’t know how to turn it off. It kept coming and he didn’t know how to make it go the other way. It felt as if he was in a rapid river of Air and could hear nothing over the roar of the flows around him.

Then there was pain. From head to toe, he ached. He opened his eyes. Both Jasmine and Zarah were on their feet. Their voices sounded odd, as if coming from a well.

“Do something Mother!”

“Link with me.”

Elwin felt the flow of Zarah’s power join with her mother’s. It was like pouring two half-filled mugs into a larger decanter. Then he felt
something
seize hold of his flow of power and
rip
it from his grasp.

Pain wracked his body. Every inch felt as if he was on fire. He rolled off the sofa, grasping his head. The next instant the pain was gone, and he felt his body being lifted by an invisible hand. It eased him back onto the sofa. Neither Zarah nor Jasmine had moved.

She had lifted him with Air? He wasn’t sure how he knew, but the power that lifted him had come from Jasmine.

He sagged into the sofa. “What happened?”

He could still feel the power, but it was seeping from them, all three of them. The Air stirred around him as Jasmine emptied his essence. His muscles felt weary. Elwin wanted to close his eyes again.

Zarah plopped down next to him, sweat beginning on her brow. Her wide eyes glowered at him.

“I said slowly.” Jasmine’s jaw was tight, and her breathing sounded as if she had been running.

“I’m sorry,” Elwin said. “I tried to, but it just all happened so quickly.”

“It is alright.” Jasmine sat down. “We are linked now, which means I have control of your essence. You will still be aware of everything I do, but you will have no control.”

“Why did you not do this in the beginning?” Elwin asked.

“A person must already have power in one’s essence to initiate a linking. That was to be our next course of action had you been listening to me.”

“Oh,” Elwin said. “But we are linked now?”

“Yes,” Jasmine said. “Of a sort. What I did to you is called taking. This process has the same outcome, but it requires me to battle your will. Fortunately for us, you do not know how to guard against this sort of attack. Had you fought me, even a little, I might have failed in taking your essence.”

She was silent for a moment, watching Elwin. Her eyes did not hold any compassion.

“I understand.” He looked away. “I could have hurt someone.”

“You must focus at all times,” Jasmine said. “At least in the beginning. Someday, it will be the same as breathing. And flying through the air will be the same as walking or running.”

“You are so powerful,” Zarah said with awe in her voice. “What you held in your essence by yourself … it was so much. I was afr—”

“Yes,” Jasmine said. “Like I said before, Elwin has more potential than I have seen in some time.”

“Mother.” Zarah stood up. “Are you not worried about what Abad—”

“Young lady,” Jasmine said. “I am trying to give Elwin instruction. If you cannot guard your tongue, perhaps you should retire for the evening?”

Zarah sat back down and crossed her arms beneath her bosom. Elwin blinked as she cast him a look suggesting that he was to blame for her chastisement.

“Wise decision. Now, where were we?” Jasmine said. “Ah yes. Now that we are linked, I am going to use our combined essence to tame the power of Air. I want you to pay attention to every detail. First, you will notice that I have drained our essence to an amount I can handle without much thought. I can—”

“I noticed how you released some of it back into our surroundings without hurting anyone.”

“Very good. Now do not interrupt.”

Elwin felt his cheeks heat up. “Oh. Sorry.”

“The first task you will do on your own is exactly that. You will simply fill your essence and empty it. Before you are entrusted with this, you must observe me. Like I was saying before I was interrupted, I can handle the amount we are holding for long periods. However, if I pull in half again as much as I am holding, I will begin to have trouble just holding it. But I can always release the power harmlessly back into the air. Just as if you were to lift a large rock over your head, you can then ease it back down or drop it.”

“Now, watch closely …”

Elwin didn’t remember falling asleep, but he knew Jasmine had worked with him well into the night. He just remembered being exhausted one moment and standing next to his own body the next. To say it felt strange to look down upon himself was to say a dragon was a big lizard, but he had no words for the feeling.

He could see the slow rise and fall of his own chest. Both his sleeping form and the bed seemed smaller than he remembered. The room felt cramped to him here. Looking up, he could touch the ceiling. Elwin chided himself for wasting time.

Jasmine had said to meet in the common room. He brought the image of Poppe’s stage to his mind and imagined himself to be there. A moment later, he was there. Elwin jumped when he saw the two translucent forms standing next to the bar. One of the shapes stood a foot taller than the other, but neither stretched much beyond the top of the bar. After a moment, the details of both began to stand out to him, and he recognized the two figures.

Zarah stared at him with a look of surprise and Jasmine blinked several times as her eyes followed up the length of his body, craning her neck to see his face. When her eyes met his, Jasmine said in a voice of icy calm. “How did you arrive here? Did you do it intentionally?”

“Yes,” Elwin said. Why were they acting so odd?“I did the same thing last night when I went to the forest. And again when I returned to my bed.”

“That is very good. It takes most of us many tries to be able to transport to other places with a thought. At least to do so intentionally is very good. You can only travel in this manner to places in which you are extremely familiar. With time you may be able to transport to people. But it is very difficult.

“Now, you will find that time does not pass the same while we are in the shadow realm as it does during the day. Time seems to move much more swiftly, so we must make efficient use of our time. Do you understand?”

Elwin nodded.

“Good,” she smiled. “First, you must know how to defend yourself here. Otherwise, you can be taken as I did to you earlier. You must learn to have two minds; one on your physical body and the other on your essence here.”

“Two minds?” Elwin said. “How am I supposed to do that?”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “It will come more easily than you think. When you walk, you are aware of your feet; even though, you are not focused on them. If you stub a toe or trip, your mind responds to the change and reacts. You will need to do so with your essence as well. If an elementalist takes you unaware, she can control your essence. The taking happens here in the shadow realm.

“Imagine a ship atop the water. An anchor on the ocean floor holds a boat in place, but the ship on the ocean’s surface is free to move. As I have said before, our body is like the anchor to which our essence is tethered. Like the boat, our essence is free to move here, even as our bodies move in the physical realm. Understand?”

“Yes,” Elwin said by reflex. Then he shook his head.“Um. No. What does this have to do with taking?”