Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,51

She patted his cheek with evident and touching fondness, giving him a warm smile he returned more gravely, clearly concerned.

She stepped up to the waist-high stone - nearly chest high on her - and looked Jareth in the eye.

Respectfully, he kept his eyes on hers, staying still, letting her look her fill of him.

After a moment, she tilted her head. Her golden eyes darkened.

“We will know you, Jareth the wizard…someday.”

Prophecy whispered over Jareth’s skin; a thing of his meager foresight and her stronger prescience.

For a moment it was just the two of them, their hands on the stone as what would someday be moved between them.

Both turned to look at Elon at one and the same time, Palic’s eyes dark with the knowledge of the foretelling. Jareth’s gaze matched it.

Young as he was Jareth had more magic than he knew. He was still growing into it.

Elon nodded and stepped to join them, his hands with theirs on the stone. He felt the power move there, the metallic tang of Dwarven magic, the sharp sense of Wizard’s magic like the air after lightning, as he joined his own to it.

For a moment they were as one and the power one with them.

That power locked within the stone, sent tendrils like roots down into the earth to intertwine with it, binding it in place. Power swelled, surged, joined with and merged to the earth. Each and all of them felt it take hold with a sudden sharp snap and then they released it.

Beneath their hands the stone glowed, pinpoints of brightness spearing from within it where the stone had melded internally and now cooled slowly from the outside in.

For a moment even Elon felt mildly disoriented - as he would from any major joint working.

As the sensation passed, Palic turned to Jareth. “You will show me how to summon stone.”

It wasn’t a request.

Startled, Jareth stared at her a moment. He looked to Elon for guidance.

Elon looked back at him impassively but not unkindly.

This was for Jareth to decide - what to share and what not. It was the magic of men not Elves.

Turning back to Palic, Jareth looked at her. For a moment, their minds had touched and he had known her in ways he knew no other. As he now knew Elon.

“All right,” he said, and went to his knees with surprising grace for so ungainly a man.

He had only a little empathy. It would be on her to learn what she needed from him.

That he knelt before her took Palic aback for a moment, and then she smiled - warmly and gently - as kindly as the mother he couldn’t remember, as the lover he hadn’t yet found. It warmed a part of Jareth that he hadn’t known was cold.

Her fingers slid into his hair, cupped his temples tenderly.

The knowledge was there inside his mind, at the very forefront. He could almost hear her say “ah” in comprehension as she saw him lay his hands on each stone so he might ‘know’ it to conjure it.

At the same time he knew her; knew the intricacies of her, of her place in Dwarven society, of her love for her husband and her responsibility to her people. As she knew him.

Stepping away, she nodded, slowly, more than one question answered.

With a gesture, she summoned a stone - conjured it into her hand as he’d shown her - and allowed herself a smile of success and pleasure before placing it in his hand. She closed his fingers around it.

There was a touch of Dwarven magic in the air. It resonated as the stone seemed to melt into his palm.

For a moment he didn’t dare breathe as he opened his fingers, slowly.

His hand was empty.

“My blessing upon you, young Jareth,” she said serenely.

Her eyes went to Elon. “This is well done, Elon of Aerilann.”

She and her people mounted and rode away - back the way they had come.

###

They stood before the last of the stones that marked the edges of this Dwarven Cavern. Elon joined Jareth at the stone. He looked at Jareth and then at Colath. This, the knowledge of each other he and Jareth had shared with Palic, hadn’t been shared with Colath.

Not that Colath would have minded but it was on Elon to share this with his true-friend, too, to give Colath a knowledge of Jareth, and Jareth of Colath, that neither had yet.

“Would you join us, old friend?” Elon asked.

Although Colath had very little magic, he easily had enough for