Prisoner (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #2) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,35
Roseward to learn magic. Time was passing. Already she’d been more than a week on the island. But how much time had passed back at Wimborne? How many weeks, days, or hours did she have left before Gaspard’s deadline?
“Don’t be discouraged, Miss Beck.”
Silveri’s voice and the sudden scrape of his chair startled her. She’d almost forgotten he was still there. Nelle slid her hands down her cheeks, fingers pulling at the skin under her eyes, and cast him a baleful look as he crossed the room to his armoire, which he rummaged within before returning to the table with one of his spellbooks in hand. It looked like one of the better volumes, a little larger and more impressive than most of the stash. Something from later years of study, Nelle guessed.
The mage sat and paged through the book for some moments before he looked up again. “There is a ceremony,” he said, “usually performed at the end of a student’s first year. An acknowledgement of his place within the Miphates. We call it quill-binding.”
He plucked up her discarded quill, twirling it between finger and thumb. “No one knows if it’s true or not,” he continued, “but it is universally believed throughout the Miphates school that a mage may pour his magic into a favored quill, infusing it with power. Over time it becomes a channel for him, a means to more effectively access the magic inside him and direct it into the physical world. Any quill, of course, may serve the same basic purpose. But a bound quill, one that has served its one master for years, may work as a sort of . . .” Silveri paused, pursing his scarred lips thoughtfully as he sought the word. “A sort of talisman, as it were.”
“Like a good luck charm?” Nelle suggested.
Silveri nodded slowly. “You may think of it as such if you wish. Unlike your typical rabbit’s foot, however, there is more truth than fancy to a quill-binding.”
Nelle watched the quill still turning slowly in the mage’s fingers. It was a white goose feather, one of several she’d used over the last seven days. It had been trimmed three times already, and after the rough treatment she’d given it, she hardly thought it would last more than another day or two. Maybe the process of quill-binding made feathers last longer?
She thought suddenly of that dark night not so long ago . . . of that endless climb up the side of the Evenspire to the twelfth-story window. She thought of Gaspard’s quillary and all the grimoires brimming with power piled on his desk and around the room. But she’d not been sent to carry off any of those.
She’d been sent for a quill. A black swan’s feather. When she’d picked it out from the display of quills on the wall, she’d sensed no power inside it, no unnatural energy or essence. Nothing like the grimoires, which had hummed with potent magic.
Why had Gaspard desired the quill so specifically? And why had he feared to take it himself—why had he risked hiring a snatcher to do it for him? Was it Gaspard’s own quill? Or did it belong to someone else?
“I know what you’re thinking, Miss Beck.”
Nelle’s head shot up, and her hands dropped away from her face. For a moment her heart jolted. Was it possible the mage could perceive what went on in her mind?
But her surge of terror abated at once as he continued: “You’re thinking this quill-binding is a foolish practice, a school-boy superstition. And perhaps you are right. Nevertheless.”
He stood and approached her side of the table. The goose-feather quill lay across the palms of his hands, and he bowed to present it to her with solemn dignity. “If you will permit me the honor, I should like to perform the ceremony of quill-binding for you now. As a sign of my belief in your abilities and of my . . . my admiration.” He stopped for a moment, cleared his throat. “My admiration for your willingness to apply yourself to this difficult work. For the humility and determination you have exhibited over the last seven days. And for the true potential I believe flows in your veins.”
Nelle gaped up at him. Thunder pounded in her ears, almost deafening. If he asked her to stand at that moment, she didn’t believe her legs would support her. Had he truly just said all those things? Had he truly just spoken of admiration? For her?