out a frustrated sound, he pulled chilly calm about him like a cloak. “Ye ask that question more often than a toddling child.”
Kylah didn’t like the condescension in his voice. “Well, it’s a simple question, isn’t it? I apologized for the scream, so why do you so passionately dismiss my presence? It’s not like I can upset anything here.” She slapped at a stone bowl and the Druid flinched, though they both knew it would remain undamaged. “Tell me the reason, and I’ll decide if it’s valid or not.” She leaned down to inspect the unfamiliar powder that glittered in her light.
“The why of it doesna matter,” the Druid countered. “My will should be deterrent enough,”
“Not to me.”
“Then I question yer intelligence.” He stalked to the table, hovering and glowering, as though warning her not to touch anything. An intimidation tactic, maybe? He was so tall as to tower over most men, maybe as tall as Katriona’s new husband. And possibly thicker, judging by the width of his robes.
Kylah wrinkled her nose and levitated to meet him at eye level. “I’m not stupid, I’m dead. What have I to fear from you?”
The Druid gave a derisive snort and shoved away from the table, “Considering what ye are, more than ye realize.”
What did that mean? Kylah looked over his shoulder to a cauldron left boiling over a second fire in the middle of the room. She looked up. The ceiling of the cave disappeared into the darkness. Where did the smoke from the fires go? How did he get the fodder for them?
She stepped around him and moved to an adjacent slab of balanced rock, ignoring his growl. This one stacked with smaller pieces of earth that varied in size, shape and color and seemed to be organized accordingly.
“You said that I’m a creature of magic, and you’re a being of power. What is the difference?”
He remained silent, but she could feel exactly where he was behind her. His body radiated so many complex, stimulating sensations that he stood as a point of reference no matter what he surrounded himself with.
“Is not magic a kind of power?” she prompted, turning to face him.
He put up a hand. “Patience, woman, I’m trying to answer in the right terms.”
“Which would be?”
“The simplest,” he said imperiously.
Kylah bristled. “You’ve yet to offer me a simple answer.”
He grunted and crossed his arms. “We’ve yet to touch complexity.”
She adopted his exact posture. “Well then, go on, touch it.”
His nostrils flared on a long exhale, and his eyes flared with something else, though the light was squelched as quickly as it appeared. “Magic is the manipulation of elements by creatures not bound by the laws of our plane.” His lip curled again, as though it couldn’t help itself. “Faeries, Demons, Shape-shifters, Berserkers, those who would call themselves deities and so forth. It is merely power we don’t yet understand.
“My power, Druid power, is gained by testing the elements of our Earth, our plane, through exhausting all variables and learning to control them for definitive use.”
Kylah nodded, though she wished she had swallowed her pride and asked for a more simplified answer. “What sort of uses? What do you seek from this knowledge? This… Control?”
He turned his head to stare at a row of strange tools all hung on hand-crafted hooks littering the far wall, offering what Kylah knew to be the unadorned side of his face. She yearned to uncover it. To make a study of it whilst his notice was elsewhere.
“Truth is what I seek,” he murmured. “What else is there?”
“Oh lots of things,” she ticked them off on her fingers. “Beauty, freedom, life, love, family—”
His derisive snort interrupted her. “Doona be ridiculous. Beauty is but an illusion that subjectively changes with perception and cannot be trusted.” He gave her a pointed look, but continued. “Freedom, also a perception, can be granted and taken at the whim of another, generally one with more power. Same as life, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”
Kylah flinched.
“And love,” he scoffed. “Love is an indefinable, variant weakness that can be used against you.” He vehemently shook his head, upsetting the braids at his temple. “Nay, I want for none of those things.”
Kylah couldn’t disagree with him on any particular point. Which unsettled her. All those “things” had been violently taken from her, by someone with a great deal more power.
Except… “What about family?”
A muscle flexed in his jaw, upsetting more of his mask. “I doona have a conception of what that