The Master's Chair (The Chronicles of Terah) (41 page)

Kevin’s mouth watered as Chris popped a chocolate drop in his mouth. He could almost taste it himself. “I guess I should wait until after I’ve found everyone.”

“Why?” Chris asked as he tossed one of his chocolate drops to Kevin. “Now, while you and your seeing eye are out there looking for everyone, I’m going down to the waterfall. Let me know when the hunt’s over and it’s time for dinner.”

“How?” Kevin asked.

“You owe me a chocolate drop,” Chris said as he walked out of the kitchen.

Less than an hour later, while Chris was stretched out on the grass near the splash pool, a chocolate drop fell on his stomach, telling him it was time to head back for dinner.

~ ~ ~ ~

The next morning, Glendymere watched Kevin practice rising up to a height of about ten feet and then lowering himself back to the ground. His landings had improved to the point that they were no longer dangerous, but he still hadn’t managed to land without leaving his footprints in the sand.

“You’re getting better, but this time when you get up there, stop and hold your position. I want you to try doing a little more.”

Kevin rose up about ten feet and stopped

“
Now I want you to move yourself over to the left. Don’t try to walk over, that won’t work. You have to imagine that your support is moving. Picture it moving to the left, with you on top.”

When Kevin tried to move to the left, he leaned in the direction that he wanted to go and lost his balance. He struggled for a few seconds before he started to fall. Just as he was about to hit the ground, he felt himself land on a soft cushion, almost like a giant air bag. He was able to stand back up without injury. Kevin and Chris both looked at Glendymere with questions in their eyes.

“Yes, that was me. I was planning to go over how to do that later today, but maybe you need to learn how to catch something before we go much farther with the flying.”
Then Glendymere turned towards Chris and said,
“I need an egg.”

“An egg?” Chris asked.

“Yes, an egg. Let’s go inside. I asked Blalick to bring some down yesterday. They should be in the storeroom. Would you go get one for me, Chris? On second thought, get several.”

Once they were back in the inner chamber, Glendymere said,
“When you’re trying to catch something small, like an egg, you could just reach out with your mind’s hand and grab it out of the air, but if you aren’t really careful, you might break it. An air cushion is the safest way to catch something. And the nice thing about an air cushion is that it’ll work for anything from an egg to a man, or even a horse and wagon.”

“How do you make one?” Kevin asked.

“You make the air near the ground really dense and then you build up the pressure until there’s enough force to support the weight of what’s falling. You don’t have to worry about building up too much pressure though. It’s not going to explode or anything. Once whatever you’re trying to catch is riding on top of the air cushion, you release the air nice and slow and let it sink to the ground. Ah, here comes Chris. Watch as I catch the egg.”
Glendymere waited for Chris to join them.
“Chris, I want you to hold one of the eggs out in front of you at shoulder height. Yes, that’s right. Now drop it.”

Chris dropped the egg, but before it hit the ground it came to rest on an invisible cushion about six inches above the ground. It bobbed up and down for a moment and then slowly sank to the floor. When Kevin picked the egg up to examine it, the shell wasn’t even cracked.

“Now, you try it,”
Glendymere said to Kevin.

Once again Chris held the egg out at shoulder’s height and released it. A couple of seconds later the egg splattered all over the floor. “Well, at least we know he wasn’t using a hard boiled egg for the demonstration,” Chris said with a chuckle.

“Let me know when you can catch the egg without breaking the shell. Then we’ll move on to something more interesting, like catching Chris when he jumps off a cliff,”
Glendymere said with a twinkle in his eye.

“You are kidding, right?” Chris asked as he pictured the cliff on the east side of the canyon. It was a vertical wall at least a thousand feet high.

“Not really, but we’ll get to that later. Right now, the egg. Wake me up when you can catch the egg three times without breaking the shell,”
Glendymere opened his mouth in a big yawn.
“I’m ready for a nap,”
he said as he curled up, closed his eyes, and began to snore.

“He was kidding, wasn’t he?” Chris asked.

“I have no idea, but don’t worry about it. If I miss, you probably won’t feel a thing when you hit. They say that a person dies of a heart attack before he hits the ground,” Kevin teased.

Chris ignored him and stooped down to clean up the broken egg.  “Why don’t we try a rock or something first? Then when you figure how to make the air cushion we could go back to eggs. Otherwise we’re going to spend all our time cleaning the floor.”

“Good idea. And if we use a rock, we can work on it in my room after dinner tonight,” Kevin replied, and grinned as Chris groaned.

~ ~ ~ ~

A couple of weeks later, Theresa and Joan were making a grocery list for Macin to take with him to Abernon when Ashni walked in.

“I know Macin picks herbs up at the Chapel, but I don’t know who fills the orders,” Theresa said. “By any chance does he know Sister Evelyne?”

“Yes, he knows Evelyne,” Ashni answered. “She and I often exchange notes. She helped with the birth of both of my children.”

“Would Macin be willing to deliver a note for me? I thought I’d ask her if she’d like to come for a visit while I’m here, or maybe I could go into Abernon with Macin sometime to see her. But I don’t want anyone else knowing where we are, so he would need to put the note directly into her hands.”

“I am sure that would be no problem. I will send her a jar of strawberry preserves.”

Theresa raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t ask any questions.

Ashni grinned. “A few years ago, Blalick took a couple of jars of my preserves to the Chapel for Evelyne and left them with her staff. By the time Evelyne found out about the preserves, all that was left was empty jars. When Macin started making the trips to Abernon, she gave him strict orders not to leave the preserves with anyone but her.”

“Good. Then no one will notice the note. I’ll write it tonight and give it to him tomorrow. Thanks.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Glendymere had asked Kevin and Chris to meet him outside in the canyon first thing the next morning, but when they got there, Glendymere was nowhere to be found. While they waited, Kevin practiced rising, moving horizontally, descending a little, moving horizontally again, then rising again, and so on. Chris was leaning back against a large boulder watching him when he spotted Glendymere off in the distance. A few minutes later, Glendymere swooped down.

 “Sorry I’m late,”
he said as he settled on the canyon floor.
“Got to talking with some of my friends and lost track of time.”

“Do you go visiting often?” Chris asked.

“No, not really, which is one reason time got away from me. After I asked them if they’d be willing to spar with Kevin, we started talking and since we don’t see each other very often, there was a lot to say.”

“Wait a minute,” Kevin said. “Back up. Did you say you asked someone to spar with me?”

“Yes, that was the purpose of the trip. I was lining up some magical sparring matches for you for later this fall. Anyway, don’t worry about that now. We have something else to work on.”

“Hold on. Magical sparring matches,” Kevin repeated. “Exactly what are you talking about?”

“Just what it sounds like. I’ve asked a few friends of mine to spar with you. It’ll be good practice for when you have to fight for real. Don’t worry, like I said, they’re friends of mine. They won’t be trying to kill you.”

“But that could happen, right?” Chris asked. “When we spar, there’s always the chance that someone could get hurt. And as powerful as magic is … are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Kevin has to learn to protect himself sometime, doesn’t he? What better way than to duel with a dragon?”

“You set these sparring matches up against dragons?” Kevin gasped.

“Of course. Who else would I ask?”

Chris shook his head and held his hands up, palm out. “No! Not against a dragon! There’s no way he could win. He won’t stand a chance!”

Glendymere tilted his head and bunched his eyebrows.
“This isn’t about wining. It’s about learning to fight. What’s the point of training if you don’t train against the best? This way he’ll learn to defend himself against sorcerers more powerful than any that he’ll ever face in combat. I don’t know what you two are so upset about, but you can worry about it later. We have other things to think about today,”
Glendymere said as he looked around the clearing, searching for something.
“Ahh, that’s a good one.”
Glendymere mentally picked up a rock about the size of a basketball and set it down about five feet in front of Kevin.
“Now, I want you to tap into the same energy that you use to light the candle and concentrate on heating that rock.”

Kevin shook his head, trying to cast all thoughts of sparring with dragons out of his mind. “All right, I’ll give it a shot.” About half an hour later, he walked over towards the rock and put his hand out over it to see if he could feel any heat coming from it. “I didn’t think I was getting anywhere with this. What am I doing wrong?”

“You aren’t doing anything wrong; you just aren’t doing it right. Now try it again.”

Kevin concentrated once again on the rock, but this time he focused so hard that it made his head ache. After a few minutes, the rock blew apart, throwing hot chunks of rock all around the clearing. Kevin and Chris would both have been hit if the chunks hadn’t been stopped in mid-flight by some kind of invisible barrier.

After the dust settled, Chris looked at Glendymere and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Glendymere nodded. Then he turned to Kevin and said,
“All right. You have the general idea. Now let’s try for something somewhere between nothing and destruction. You need to release the energy in a controlled manner. Build it slowly until you find the right level for what you want to do.”

Kevin looked around for another rock while he thought about what Glendymere had said. “I’ve got a question. It seems to me that my major breakthroughs have always come when I have the least amount of control, when frustration has built up to the point of anger. Like the time with the pebble, or the time that I set my bed on fire, or just now. I was angry, and something seemed to explode in my head just before the rock exploded.”

“So, what is your question?”

“It just seems to me that lack of control is the key, not control.”

“For the explosion, yes. But how useful is the explosion? Did the pebble go where you wanted it to go? Did the candle get lit? Did the rock give off a useful warmth? After the explosion, comes the control, and you must control the magic. Otherwise it controls you. We want all the explosions to happen here, where I can sort of keep a lid on things, before you get strong enough to cause real damage.”

Kevin thought about what Glendymere had said for a moment and then nodded.

“Now, back to the rock. See if you can get a nice warm glow out of it. Could come in handy on a cold winter’s night out on the prairie.”

~ ~ ~ ~

A week later, Kevin and Glendymere were on top of the cliff on the east wall of Willow Canyon. Kevin was trying to stir up enough turbulence in the air to produce a rain shower, but he wasn’t having much luck. He had managed to push some clouds together and he had even created a few up and down drafts to mix warm and cool air, but it wasn’t enough to cause the drops of moisture to become large enough to fall as rain.

While he was concentrating on the wind and clouds, Glendymere spotted Macin’s wagon as it wound its way up the side of Wildcat Mountain towards the peak.
“You might want to wait until Macin unloads his wagon before you start the rain.”

“Like I’m really going to be able to make it rain,” Kevin said, irritated that his efforts had yet to produce any results. “This place is in for one long draught if it only rains when I cause it!”

Well, why don’t you take a break for a bit and let him get inside before you play in the clouds anymore. Who knows? You might do it right for a change.”

“Yeah. Just my luck, to do it right at the wrong time,” Kevin said as he sat down on the edge of the cliff. About that time he felt a few raindrops hit his head. As he looked up at the sky, the cloud opened up and rain pelted down all over the area. At first Kevin just sat there with his mouth hanging open and his hands out for the rain drops to hit. Then he looked at Glendymere and asked, “Did you do that?”

Glendymere shook his head no.

Then Kevin jumped up and started dancing around in the rain, yelling, “I did it! I finally did it! I made it rain! I did it!”

“Yes, you do have a knack for doing it right at the wrong time,”
Glendymere said with a quiet chuckle.
“Why don’t you fly over there and help Macin unload? Unless, of course, you’ve figured out how to make it stop. I’m not going to do it for you.”

“No, I haven’t gotten there yet,” Kevin said as he rose a little above the treetops and worked his way sideways towards Macin.

After Macin and Kevin unloaded most of the goods at the giants’ house, they drove the wagon down the side of the mountain to Rainbow Valley and pulled into the cave entrance where Karl and Blalick were waiting somewhat patiently for the sudden rain shower to end.

“That sky was pretty much clear a little while ago, Kevin,” Karl commented. “I don’t suppose you had anything to do with this sudden rain shower, did you?”

“Well, yes, sort of. Sorry about that. But I did it! And it feels great!” Kevin broke out in a big grin. “Well, since you two are here to help Macin, I’m going back over to Willow Canyon and see if I can do it again. See you at dinner.”