Jadis had been quite astonished when Sir Jospar—or simply “Teacher”, as he preferred to be addressed—bypassed the stables altogether and kept straight his path toward the western wood. She’d have been concerned for the fidelity of her secret, had Lady Quvaja not been escorted indoors by Tujur and Jamäis at exactly the right instant: thus ensuring they did not see where the girl and her plumed tutor were off to. Though that thought was altogether eclipsed by another: why indeed had Jospar chosen Pesul Qur’s west holt, of all places? Jadis had assumed the only reason Finis and Mistress Ilšmi had opted for the rear pavilion was a simple matter of clearance: an elephant stood no chance whatsoever of entering any building on the premises of the estate—even the manor house’s capacious doors weren’t of adequate dimensions to allow Ilšmi entry. But Jadis’ Teacher had no such handicap. Why then the wood?
“Teacher,” Jadis asked, walking beside the cobalt bird, “where are we going?”
“You know very well,” he replied flatly—almost before she’d finished talking.
“Sir?”
“The secret barrow, in the glade. Don’t act like you don’t know. I’ve seen it.”
“Then… you’ve been to Pesul Qur—” she began, perplexedly; he interrupted.
“Fool,” the bird hissed, “I have seen it in your face. In your hands. Your skin. Your hair. In your organs; in your sinew; and in your bones. Secrets do not shy away from me: they surrender themselves like helots—like the whores of The Mbute. Your privacies are safe with me, to be sure: but from me, none can help but be forfeit.”
Jadis wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He’d apparently admitted to piercing her mind—reading her thoughts. She wanted to be offended, or disgusted—or maybe shocked, astounded, amazed… flummoxed, baffled, bemused… or perhaps mystified. But she seemed weirdly blank. Hollow. As if he’d so thoroughly rooted through her deepest, uncharted regions—past brain, and dream, and spirit—that nothing was left. Her only biological response was to breathe slightly funny, and continue walking. A thought occurred—wait, does he know it already?—that he knew exactly how she felt: or didn’t feel. He probably knew that she was thinking about him knowing what she was thinking. Jadis began to feel a bit silly at that point, and tried not to think at all.
“You’ve not been told of the inward senses,” Jospar seemed to scoff—the little breath he made sounded fairly scoff-ish, anyway—as if he were half-questioning, half-stating, “I must say, I am surprised. Your father is superb. One of my finest pupils.”
“You—”
“I trained your father, yes,” the bird interjected—even Jadis wasn’t sure if he’d read her mind and replied, or if he’d meant to say it anyway—“That was… aeons ago; when I was younger, and could take nearly a dozen disciples at once.”
“Wait, but, you—”
“Teacher, child.”
“Teacher—forgive me—do you mean to tell me that my father—”
“Can ‘read minds’ as well? Certainly. Exquisitely, might I add,” Jospar stated, an air of distinct pride encompassing mention of Tujur, “You should have seen him in his prime! Bastard used it on women, constantly,” he chortled.
The grove seemed somehow changed today; perhaps it was just that Jadis had been so captivated by it in the dark, but having seen it practically every day for years, she was quite certain something was different. Even if, perhaps, that something was her. Something was different. She felt new, somehow—though how she couldn’t say.
Jospar sighed a bit and flexed his tailfeathers—flapping them out and in again once or twice, as if clearing away any dust in his wake. He spread his wings and flew a little ways ahead, roosting on a mossy boulder. He perched at an angle and turned his head to see Jadis, who was still approaching him; he reached out a wing and with a rapid, flickering motion caused the leaves on the ground to stir. Jadis stood in her tracks as she watched—disbelieving—the leaves spiral up weightlessly into midair, the light breeze from the south visibly striking them, but failing to divert their course.
Eventually, after several moments, the leaves had whirled together—in such a baffling fashion that Jadis’ eyes seemed entirely convinced it was an optical illusion—and transfigured into what appeared to be a huge black leather-bound book, closed, and resting on an appropriately-sized wooden rehal. Jadis stood—petrified—unsure of what she should do next; though Jospar plainly nodded for her to move, so she did.
On closer examination, the material of the book’s binding seemed to be scaly hide of some kind, somehow both glossy and rough at once—and pitch, tarry black. Wrought iron bands and chains wreathed the spine and sealed the thing tightly shut by the look of it; threads of spun bronze flecked with verdigris lined the trim of the pages like eerie stitches—the pages were apparently bound together separately inside, with the outer scaly cover simply a protective jacket to defend them. If Jadis guessed, she might’ve said the pages looked like ragged old vellum, or sheer slabs of yellowed, dilapidated wood, possibly. The pages seemed to be sutured, individually, one to the next, on all four sides: making them, like the cover, apparently impossible to open.
“It is an ancient tome of spellcraft and miracles,” Jospar spoke, his voice a bit ominous, “Only the most powerful sorcerers can read it—only the most stupid dare.”
“Then why have you brought it before me, Teacher?” inquired Jadis, keeping at a wary distance from the book.
“You are young,” he replied instantly, “so virtually by definition you are still quite stupid. But that is why I am here. To polish your stupidity into competence.”
She didn’t quite appreciate his choice of phrase, but she did understand. The training began at once: her task was to first attempt to read the book (that was what she presumed her Teacher meant, anyway)—to dare, stupidly, to attempt that. And it was stupid. The book, bound absurdly, was a veritable strongbox: she didn’t wish to risk damaging it (she’d assumed that would be a failure to her objective), nor could she have, even if she’d opted to try—the leathery scaled binding resisted everything.
After about half an hour of trying, and contemplating, Jadis could not go on; she simply had no clue how to open the book, and Jospar remained tight-lipped—or perhaps tight-beaked—all the while. She sat on the ground, exasperated; the peacock flapped a wing and made the huge tome utterly vanish and dissipate in a whirlwind of leaves. It was a little past noon, Jadis intuited. She knew she could discover what the trick for opening the book was—but as of now she was completely fed up trying.
“And you objected to my saying ‘stupid’,” Jospar gibed, “I am never wrong.”
The sound of Mistress Ilšmi trumpeting from the pavilion was rather audible even at this distance. I should hope she’s not mistreating Nis, Jadis thought to herself. If it was really to herself, only, that is. She couldn’t be sure. Even after only an hour of knowing the sorcerous bird, she was fairly paranoid about Jospar; for all she knew, it wasn’t safe even to think badly of him though, so she tried her very hardest not to. It proved extremely difficult.
“I am disappointed in your father,” sighed Jospar, “With his talents, I’d high hopes that he’d’ve taught a little of the arcane arts to his fledglings by now. A pity.”
“Well, are you not my teacher, Teacher?” Jadis snapped—she’d not intended it to be so brusque, but her patience was depleted—“Isn’t it your prerogative to teach?”
“How dare you!” Jospar screeched, “I will not be lectured by an insolent, bare-skinned halfwit!” A ferocious gale tore through the treebranches with a terrible shrieking, knocking Jadis to the ground with its sheer strength; a ghastly weight bore down on the glade, and shadows of odd, unearthly shapes, sizes, and colors crept over the hillock and enwreathed the furious peacock like horrifying demons from old Bramand folktales. Sir Jospar’s fan stood erect and glistening with an eerie incandescence like an aurora as the trees buckled and creaked—billowing masses of thundering cloud gathered in moments from out of thin air, obscuring the sun altogether. It all seemed to seethe—hot with rage.
His words resonated like thunderclaps, shuddering every fiber of Jadis’ being as if the rebuke of some wrathful deity. “My prerogative is mine—and mine alone! And I will keep it! I have said, and I will teach you. But whether you are whole or in splinters by the end of it shall depend entirely upon your deference!”
Jadis had never witnessed the fearsome power of a sorcerer before: and it was without contest the most terrifying thing she’d ever beheld. It felt as though she were suffocating, or drowning; or perhaps even being ground mercilessly into the earth. An aching horror filled her as she lay there, petrified; her body incapable of being persuaded to move even a finger joint. Her clothes were whisked away by a typhonic howl of icy winds, torn from her frame like mere decrepit rags off a launderer’s line. Naked, pained, and absolutely broken—Jadis was left to stare in abject terror (for she could not scream) as every shred of her identity she had presumed to be meaningful was rendered utterly irrelevant at the feet of the godlike peacock. In the presence of this ineffable might, she felt as though her very existence was extinguished: as if she were a mere fleeting mirage. Although her mind was not lucid, something like a thought crept in, somewhere deep—perhaps her spirit: So this is what death is…
✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
Jadis awoke some time later in a numb daze—her flesh wracked with tingling, and her skeleton seeming to almost throb with a dull ache. Her eyelids were heavy—eyes stinging, as if they’d been doused in scalding water as she attempted to pry them open. She was still unclothed, and it looked to be dusk—Jospar was roosted on the gnarled root of a banyan tree, incanting some spell among the stones.
“You’re not harmed,” Jospar said without turning, “you fainted, of course.”
Jadis tried to speak, but discovered her throat, tongue, and all, would not—at the moment—cooperate.
“Yes, your capacity for speech should recover before long,” Jospar interjected.
“Y—you…” she muttered, “my…”
“So, words return to you sooner than most. How unfortunate…” the peacock said, somewhat exasperatedly, “Your clothes are quite safe. But you shan’t have need of them.”
A thought crossed Jadis’ foggy mind—had he a mind to… take advantage?
“Ha!” the vain bird aspirated, jeering, “what do you take me for, an ostrich? Don’t flatter yourself, girl. Temper your thoughts. Fool. I perceive them plainly as any uttered.”
Jadis regained more of her motor faculties and instinctively covered herself as best she could.
“You’ll find your training will progress more swiftly unrestrained by cloth.”
“R—rest… rain…?”
“Yes. Your garb will only be a hindrance. It will be far simpler to instruct you in the arcane arts if you are able to feel the magic of the world around you. You’ve felt it before. Just last night.”
“Last…” Jadis struggled to recall the previous evening’s events, and what did resurface was hazy at best. She remembered the worn stone faces of the bas-relief in pale moonbeams. She remembered showing Finis her bosom when drying her sari of chillum water. She remembered something of a theological debate—though all detail escaped her.
“You’ve felt the urge of the sorceress… and danced to arouse the grove’s magic,” Jospar coolly explained, “Normally it takes some years for magicians to acquire the talent for the witches’ dance—that you have, apparently, arrived at by happenstance.”
“Witch…?” Jadis was beginning to feel her tongue again, but her throat and lungs were not yet strong enough to speak in more than monosyllables.
“You know of some variations of the dance. The female magicians of many a race in Charn have danced a witches’ dance, in whatever name or steps they take. It is a dance like none other. A woman who seduces the world can bend it to her will as easily as her body. She who dances a witches’ dance… inspires earth and sky to dance along with her.”
Jadis was beginning to remember—and to understand, somewhat. Her strength of body and clarity of mind were slowly but surely reemerging. She attempted to stand, only for the peacock to swoop down in an instant to posture over her as she fell flatly on the ground again at his feet. She wasn’t immobilized this time. Merely startled—recoiling. Jospar’s eyes were fierce, blazing with a quiet wrath that had apparently flared up again spontaneously—he was still furious concerning Jadis’ insubordination earlier.
“Defy me again,” Jospar said, threateningly—his tone vitriolic—“and I will not hesitate to raze you to your very foundation and begin again. Repeatedly, if necessary. If you so much as pretend to put even one toe out of line from where I’ve placed it, I will not hesitate to see that the guilty appendage never moves again. Do I make myself clear?”
Jadis let out something like a whimper, gathering every ounce of her convalescing physical power to nod in acquiescence. The bird nodded in reply and turned back toward the banyan, now allowing Jadis to gain her footing and arise. Her body was no longer in a state of numbness; it had instead been replaced with a deep, lingering ache. The air felt as tactile and palpable as if it were the ocean tide on her sore flesh. Her bones felt as if they might break under the pull of gravity as she stood, straining. She was absolutely parched.
Jospar’s power was something truly chilling. Jadis had never felt such a sense of sheer, inescapable vulnerability as she did now. Powerless. Jospar was like a creature out of a holy book. A mighty angel from a temple wall. A fearsome god. Beside him, she felt as insignificant as a dream forgotten after waking; helpless as a windblown cobweb. She was a faint, dim, pinprick of a star, swept out of reality by the overwhelming break of day before any eye caught sight of her. A single nostril’s-breath of air; inhaled, and then gone.
“Do not swoon again, if it can be helped,” Jospar uttered, “Pedagogy would be the most futile of endeavors, if indeed you are too frail to tolerate discipline.”
Jadis stood there—exposed, shaken, mildly aching. She had no more thoughts. All her mental activity seemed muted—spiraling, exhausted, defeated. She had no will left to contend. Not even to entertain the notion. She was frail. Transparent. She was nothing.
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