Chosen (9781742844657) (18 page)

‘Passive scrying, the ability to scry without conscious thought, is a level we will work towards but not one I expect anyone to achieve for probably a number of years. A great deal of discipline and focus is required for this skill to develop. Very few of you here possess the quietness of mind necessary.' Qasim glanced momentarily at me before continuing. ‘It is this skill that allows the White Elm to effectively police the magical world. While teaching this class, a part of my mind is focussed elsewhere, indiscriminately accepting visions of events around the world. Right now, a sorceress in Arizona is helping her young son to take his first steps. Such events are irrelevant to the White Elm, however, and so I can change my focus and accept visions only of sorcery being performed. This is how we can immediately know when someone is misusing their powers.'

I had often wondered this, and again, my question was answered.

‘There are variations of each of these forms,' Qasim continued. ‘Tool scrying can lead to future-seeing, if the scrier has that ability. Conscious scrying can be developed to a point that the scrier can mass-scry, as I did to find you all. There are other forms of scrying, but these involve the detachment of the consciousness from the body and are illegal. The use of these methods carries very harsh penalties, including imprisonment.'

My seven classmates and I sat in tense silence as Qasim dusted his hands on his robe.

‘Stand, all of you, and bring your candles to me so that I can light them,' he said. We all stood and waited in a short line, each grasping our candlesticks in one hand. The powerful blonde girl stood at the front. Now that she was standing, I realised that she was actually very short – probably only up to my shoulder – and proportionately tiny. The white fingers wrapped around the candlestick she held were small and skinny, with neat fingernails.

Qasim made a fist momentarily, and when he opened his fingers, a flame ignited in his open palm. A few of us leaned around those in front to see better. Qasim offered his hand to the little blonde student, who held her candle's tip into the flame. One by one we did the same, lighting our candles before sitting back down in our places. Qasim closed his hand, and the flame disappeared.

‘Perhaps Jadon will be able to teach you that one,' he said, when someone asked how he'd created the flame. ‘This now is a simple exercise to open your minds to the art of scrying. You'll need a partner, which shouldn't be hard, as there's an even number of you. One partner, stand behind the other.'

I glanced at Xanthe. She shrugged and stood, rounded the couch and stood behind me.

‘Good,' Qasim said, pacing slowly around the group. ‘Since there is truth to the saying that nobody knows you quite like yourself, you will find that it is quite simple to scry yourself. Those of you sitting, you need to close your eyes and envision yourselves exactly as you are. Those of you standing, choose a number between one and ten and hold up that number of fingers behind the head of your partner.'

I closed my eyes tightly against the dull pain in my head and focussed on myself. I was sitting on the left seat of the plush two-seater couch. I was wearing skinny jeans and a neat little jacket that would have looked more appropriate on Angela. I had black shoes. The top half of my dark hair was tied back; the rest hung loose over my shoulders. My eyes were closed. The studs in my ears were peridot. The candlestick in my hands was thin and tapered, and the flame was very still.

‘Hold that image in your mind, very tightly,' Qasim said into the silence, ‘and open your eyes. Focus on that image as you stare into the flame.'

I did as I was told. The flame flickered only a little with each exhalation I made. I concentrated on the image I had of myself and tried to see it within the flame. A few times I thought I'd done it, but then I'd lose focus in my excitement. After several minutes, Qasim called for us to stop.

‘When you scry yourself, you also see your surroundings, which would enable you to see and count the number of fingers your partner is holding up,' he explained now. ‘Did anybody succeed?'

The tiny blonde raised her hand.

‘What number did you count?' Qasim asked.

‘Eight,' she answered. Qasim glanced at the dark-haired boy behind her, who nodded, faintly surprised.

‘Excellent. Now swap places with your partners and see if the rest of you can do it.'

I swapped places with Xanthe and picked the number three. She sat very still for several minutes, staring intently into the flame. Opposite us, an Asian teenager exclaimed, ‘Two!' The other three attempting to scry themselves were distracted long enough to give him nasty looks before they went back to what they were doing.

Holding three fingers up behind Xanthe's head felt extremely unproductive. My head was still aching a little, although nowhere near as badly as it had at first. The candle in my hand was dripping hot wax onto my fingers, burning momentarily before quickly cooling and solidifying. I was quite relieved when Qasim called for an end to Xanthe and the others' turn at scrying.

‘Did anyone other than Isao manage to count their partner's fingers?' Qasim asked. The Asian teen looked abashed. Another lad raised his hand tentatively, and Qasim nodded appreciatively.

‘Good. We will continue this exercise until the end of the lesson, by which time everyone here should have made some progress. Tiredness is not,' he added, and though he didn't look at me, I felt the pointedness of his words, ‘a reason to slack off. It is in exhaustion that we can reach the furthest, so I should see you working
harder
as the lesson goes on.'

For the next hour, Xanthe and I continually swapped places, taking turns at staring pointlessly into the flame. As the class's end approached, Xanthe managed to scry herself, and by extension, her surroundings, including the four fingers I held up behind her. Qasim was impressed; by this point nearly everyone had begun to yield results. I determinedly took her place on the couch. There was no way I was going to be the only failure in the class. Absolutely no way.

I closed my eyes, shoving away thoughts of my aunt telling me this school was not for little girls like me. She loved me but she didn't know what I was really capable of. She didn't understand. With that thought I breathed deeply and opened my eyes to behold the little flame for what had to be the tenth time. The candle had lost a lot of length as it burnt away the time, but the fire still burned brightly.

Though it still twinged, I tried to stretch the part of my mind that Qasim had uncovered.
In exhaustion we reach our furthest
. Sounds like the crap Angela's gym instructor had spouted that time I'd gone with her – you know, that crap that makes you want to kick them. The latent gift was sluggish and largely unresponsive, but the more I tried to use it, the more obvious it became. Very slowly, something
clicked
. As I strained, something moved; something happened.

In the flame, I could see me.

It was like trying for the first time to lift a limb that has been bandaged to your side your entire life. It was difficult and felt alien, but it responded if you tried hard enough.

The tiny, fuzzy-outlined Aristea sitting on the little couch in the fire was staring intently at the dripping candle in her hands. I realised I was
scrying
, and in the excitement that suddenly rose from me I nearly lost my focus. The image I had finally managed to procure faded and became obscured, and I had to fight down my feelings in order to regain concentration.

Slowly, the image refocussed. I could see a tiny Xanthe standing behind me. I was unmoving; she was fidgeting and looking about in utter boredom. One hand held her candle. The other was by her side. She wasn't bothering to hold up any number of fingers for me to count.

My annoyance snapped my concentration, and my first scried image dissolved. I became aware of the rest of the room once again. Qasim was just passing by me; I felt a slight movement behind me.

‘Did you succeed this time?' the councillor asked me. I nodded, but my talent had started to hurt again, making my head swim with dizziness. I put it down to exertion. ‘What did you count?'

‘She wasn't holding up any fingers,' I said, putting my free hand to my head as the pain continued to increase. Both Qasim and I turned to Xanthe, who, to my surprise and then anger, was displaying one index finger – one index finger that I
knew
had not been there before.

‘Your mind is very disorganised, Aristea,' Qasim said. He waved a hand over my candle and snuffed the flame with a flick of his energy. ‘You should not be too discouraged – you have great talent, so with some practice you should be able to grasp the concepts eventually. I'd hoped you would be able to keep up with the progress of the rest of the class regardless of your mental blockages, however. Before our next class, you should do this exercise each morning before breakfast, when your mind is quietest. Take that candle with you. That way, when we return on Monday, you will hopefully not be too far behind the others. It will also help to prevent your talents from regressing.'

Before I had the chance to argue, Qasim turned away and addressed the class, snuffing each candle that was not blown out by the students.

‘Overall I consider today's lesson a success,' he said. ‘Neither of my other two classes is at the stage that you have reached today. Well done to those of you who succeeded at this first task. We will begin each lesson for the next few weeks with similar exercises, as they are good for preparing the mind for scrying. I will see you all again on Monday.'

With that dismissal, I stood and left immediately, seething.

‘That is very unfair,' Hiroko agreed quietly, with a sympathetic expression. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the library in the displacement section, and I had just finished recounting the story of my first scrying lesson. Aside from learning that I had a fantastic innate gift for scrying, and aside from scrying for the first time, the class had been a complete disaster. Qasim had been very unsupportive, Xanthe had been nasty, and on top of it all, my head had hurt then and ever since, although it had decreased once again to a dull throb.

‘She wasn't holding up any fingers – I
saw
her with her hand by her side, she just couldn't be bothered,' I went on passionately, though I kept my voice down, ‘and when Qasim came past I felt her move a little, and then suddenly she's got her hand behind my head!' Scowling, I held up my index finger to demonstrate. ‘He thought I just wasn't disciplined enough. He gave me extra work to do between lessons, to
make up for it
.'

‘I am surprised by Xanthe's behaviour,' Hiroko said with a slight frown, going back to her book and running her finger down the contents page. ‘She has been quite distant to me and does not often to speak to me. However, I did hope that she is nice.'

‘So did I,' I muttered, glaring at the bookshelf beside me. Perhaps I was overreacting, but as far as I was concerned, there had been no need today for Xanthe to make me look like I'd failed. I dismissed the possibility that I'd misinterpreted the image I'd perceived. I
knew
I'd scried, just as I knew my name and knew I liked the colour purple. I
knew
.

I'd not spoken to Xanthe since our scrying class, and had made a point of sitting far away from her at both lunch and dinner. She'd made no attempts to talk to me, either. I wondered, not for the first time, what her problem was.

‘At least Sterling is still pleasant to us,' Hiroko said, flicking to the page she wanted. ‘Sterling is very talkative and speaks to everybody.'

‘As long as you want to talk about Renatus,' I added, and we both smirked. Despite my strong Irish accent, and Hiroko's inconsistent ability to fully express herself in English, we understood one another perfectly and shared the same sense of humour. By this point we'd known each other only a few days but had already really connected.

I ran my fingers along the smooth spines of the books on the nearest shelf.
The Physics of Teleportation
and its neighbour,
Advanced Displacement
, were both very old books with peeling gold lettering. The author's name, Griffon, was flaking steadily away. I was too scared of having the ancient texts fall to pieces in my clumsy hands to dare remove the older books from the shelf, but the romantic in me still drew my fingertips magnetically to them, even if just to admire them.

‘What is this word?' Hiroko asked me, passing the book over and keeping her finger pressed to the page, indicating the offending word. ‘Foo-row?'

I took a quick glance at the sentence: …
causing a slight furrow in the Fabric of space but NOT of time…

‘Furrow,' I corrected, handing her back her book. ‘Like a crinkle.'

‘Like a fold?' she asked, and I nodded. ‘Thank you. Have you yet had a lesson in displacement?'