traces of protective magics, wind magics, healing magics, prosperity magics and love magics.”
“That’s what this Kethlun pulled in from around the neighbourhood,” Tris explained. “Every loose bit of magic from a block around all ended up in her. I told you he didn’t raise any barriers.”
“As I have now seen for myself,” replied Niko. “Her blood though — her blood is lightning.”
Tris sat on a stool, frowning, then turned her attention to the dragon. Carefully she removed her spectacles and set them on the table. Once they were off, everything in everyday world went grainy: without her spectacles, she was nearly blind. On the other hand, if she wanted to look at highly detailed magic, her vision was sharper without the lenses. She rubbed her eyes for a moment, then surveyed her new charge.
The dragon blazed, the silver fire of the neighbourhood magics rippling over her surface. Through the ripples shone a skeleton as bright as real silver, needle-thin bones that supported the dragon’s elegant form. Twined around those bones was the hotter, blue-white fire of pure lightning, moving in streams like veins. Lightning shone in the small round bumps that served it for eyes, glinted along its thin teeth, and swirled down the length of its forked tongue.
Tris sighed as she hooked her spectacles back over her ears. “I wonder if he even could have killed you.”
The dragon shrugged, her magical skin rolling with the movement.
“That isn’t your lightning,” pointed out Niko. As her teacher, he knew the many shapes of Tris’s magic better than anyone.
“No. I didn’t use mine till after the dragon broke away from the blowpipe,” Tris admitted.
“Do you suppose it’s his? Kethlun’s?” asked Niko.
The dragon toddled over to Tris and stepped down into the girl’s lap. There she curled herself, cat-like, into a ball.
“I thought that lightning mages either learned to control themselves before they got to be my age or they died,” Tris replied quietly. “That’s what you told me.” She smoothed a hand over the length of the dragon’s spine. A pure musical note rose from the creature as Tris stroked her, a lingering tone like those drawn from the lips of glasses filled with water. The girl smiled. “Is that your purr?” she asked. The ringing tone rose each time she ran her fingers down the dragon’s spine. The sound continued, first low, then higher, a melody that grew softer and softer, until it stopped. “I think she’s asleep,” Tris whispered to Niko. “I’m going to name her Chime.”
Niko was still fixed on Chime’s lightning blood. “It’s true, if this Kethlun Warder were born with lightning magic, he wouldn’t survive to adulthood without mastering it,” he pointed out, smoothing his moustache with a bony finger. “There has to be an explanation of some kind.”
“You’re welcome to find it,” Tris replied. She kept her voice soft, not wanting to wake the dragon. “Are you going to have time after the conference?”
Niko cleared his throat. “Actually, that was something I wanted to discuss with you.”
Tris raised her eyebrows and waited.
“We, er, had a vote today,” Niko explained, tugging the cuffs of his sleeves. “You know that from time to time mages get together to do some encompassing study of a particular sort of magic.”
Tris knew that. She had handled the result of such research in the past four years, substances which helped mages to fashion cures for diseases. Those substances had been the result of years of research on the part of a handful of mages. “The conference is for something like that?” she asked.
“It is now,” replied Niko. “In an outburst of magely fellowship and affection, it was resolved that all of us work together to create the single biggest compendium of visionary magics ever written, ambient and academic, truthsaying, past seeing, scrying in water, flame — ”
“On the wind?” Tris asked eagerly. “You’re going to write about scrying on the wind?” She knew that some mages were able to see images on the wind, glimpses of things the wind had touched. Being fond of winds herself, Tris thought that being able to see things on them would be well worth learning. The problem was that Niko, the finest seer she knew, couldn’t do it, and thus couldn’t teach it. “Who have you got for it? Can I meet her? Him?”
Niko sighed. “We don’t have a wind seer. I hate to think of leaving this out… I suppose we could dig up what’s been written about it until now, though it would be