Disciple of War Disciple of War (Art of the Adept #4) - Michael G. Manning Page 0,7

a spell for it. Perhaps you can get that doctor who keeps stitching you up to teach it to you.”

Chapter 3

The next morning Will woke early, intending to make a quick visit to see Doctor Morris, but before he could escape the bedroom Selene opened one eye. “Are you trying to sneak off?”

Will froze with his hand on the door handle. “No. I just wanted to take care of an errand before you woke.”

Her other eye joined the first in wakefulness. “What errand?”

For some reason, he had hoped to avoid the conversation. In his mind he had envisioned himself simply getting a quick explanation of the spell and then returning to cast it surreptitiously on Selene before beginning the compression of her source. It had been a foolish thought. “I need to learn a spell to see if you’re… uh…”

“If I’m what?”

He’d been around any number of pregnant women when he was growing up, and had even helped his mother deliver a few babies, but for some reason with Selene he felt intensely embarrassed. “If you’re with child.”

“With child—are you asking if I’m pregnant?”

He nodded.

“I’m not,” she said confidently. “You could have just asked me. I can even teach you the spell if you want to check for yourself.”

“Oh.” Feeling foolish, he waited for her to rise and then went to the study with her where Selene wrote out the spell. It wasn’t too difficult, being about third-order if he had to guess. With a few minutes of study, he constructed the spell and tried it out and saw a flash of yellow light around his wife, indicating she wasn’t pregnant. Green would have been the color if she were with child, followed by a pink or blue flash to indicate the child’s gender if the pregnancy had gone past the first two months.

“Told you,” she said smugly.

“I had to be sure.”

“Is it dangerous for an unborn child?”

He nodded. “It’s dangerous for you. A baby wouldn’t survive if you were carrying one. How did you know you weren’t pregnant?”

“We’ve been careful,” she said, her voice changing slightly. “Plus, I’m sure I would have noticed some changes. Call it a woman’s intuition.”

Will frowned at her. Something was off. “We haven’t been that careful, and since you haven’t been allowed to use spells you haven’t been using the prophylaxis spell.”

She smiled. “I guess we got lucky.”

“You aren’t hiding anything, are you?” he asked.

“You don’t trust me?” she asked innocently.

“Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t telling a white lie.”

She winked at him. “Trust is like clothing…” Will winced at the words, for his friends had been teasing him about his attempt at a wise metaphor ever since the vampire incident. Selene went on, loosening the front of her robe, “Perhaps you’d like me to surrender my clothing? Would that help?”

Will chuckled. “Fine, you win.”

“Can we start now?”

“I had planned on eating breakfast, but—”

“But what?”

He shrugged. “You’re not going to be hungry afterward. It might be better to have an empty stomach, although I would definitely make sure you take care of any other morning business before we start.”

“Is this so bad I won’t be able to pee?”

“Not exactly, but it would be best to be as comfortable as possible before we start. You won’t be comfortable again for quite some time.”

“How long?”

“For me it was an afternoon and most of a night in misery. After that, I just felt awful for a month or so.”

Selene headed for the door. “I’ll be right back then.”

Will sat down behind the desk, and while he waited, he formed the source-cage spell that would force Selene to halve her turyn production—or eventually kill her if she failed to do so. The scary part was that the final outcome was impossible to know until it occurred.

Arrogan had described it to him from a teacher’s perspective. “Most apprentices struggle for half a day or more, right up to the point that they’re on the verge of expiring. At the end, if you’re connected to them, you’ll feel their turyn drop, but that still doesn’t mean they’ve succeeded. You have to wait, because the same thing happens if they’re dying—their turyn production drops, and then keeps dropping. Even if you release them at that point, they’ll die. It’s too late. You’ll only know they’ve succeeded when they’ve survived a few hours like that.”

“I’m ready!” Will looked up to see Selene had returned. Taking a deep breath, he rose from the chair and crossed the room to