Free Shade and Sorceress by Catherine Egan Page A

This is so amazing, you must be having the prize time of your life. If you learn Magic you HAVE to teach me. Your da said he’s going to see you and can take a letter but he’s going soon so I dinnay have time to write more. I’ll write another letter later but you HAVE to write to me and tell me EVERYTHING. What is going on???
Lots of love from your best friend, Nell
Eliza sat on the bed re-reading the letter until Smoky came and nosed it out of the way, climbing onto her lap. She rubbed the cat behind his ears and he set up a rhythmic purr. She didn’t feel like crying anymore. She felt almost empty of emotion, wrung dry. She fell asleep on top of the covers, still dressed, with Smoky on her stomach and Nell’s letter on the bed beside her. She dreamed she was planting a little tree in the snow, digging at the frozen soil beneath the snow with her bare hands, which were torn and cold.
“It won’t bloom,” said Anargul, manipulator of wood, behind her.
Eliza gritted her teeth in the dream and didn’t answer. When she put the tree in the frozen ground she felt its roots stretch gratefully, eagerly, as if it were a part of herself. Ravens wheeled in circles overhead, crying out in almost human voices. Poor little tree, somebody else said, a woman’s voice, but Eliza couldn’t see her. How will it weather the storm when it comes?
~
The days after her father’s visit passed swiftly. Always quick to pick up new dialects, Eliza was at least able to please Foss with her rapid progress in learning the Language of First Days. However, each lesson began less successfully with the practice of Magic. Foss would place a pencil before her, or one enchanted amulet with two ordinary amulets, or he would tell her how to mix a simple potion. But since she could not make the pencil float, or distinguish the enchanted amulet from the others, or make an effective potion, they began to spend less and less time in practice and devoted more and more of the lesson to writing and reading out loud. She quite enjoyed these mornings in the Library, poring over huge musty books and learning how to decipher the mysterious script within them. She particularly liked being allowed to climb the ladders way up to fetch books, balancing carefully along the ropeways, following the leaping amber lights that spun and twirled acrobatically. She felt like she was climbing about in a forest of books, as if they grew naturally from the lofty marble shelves.
But every day around lunchtime her stomach began to work its way into a knot of anxiety. Her afternoon sessions with Kyreth left her always bewildered and depressed, seeing sunspots from the brightness of his eyes. Most days he read to her from Commentaries on the Early Texts, reading each passage in the Language of First Days before translating it into Kallanese for her. The books varied. Sometimes they were about applying Magic to Deep Astronomy or Deep Physics, which Eliza found nearly impossible to follow. Sometimes he read from a book called The History of Symbols, a dry, ponderous tome which described in far too much detail how particular symbols had come into use and what they were used for, but the key points were so buried in excess information that Eliza found she could remember almost none of it at the end of the lesson. Occasionally, without referring to books, Kyreth simply lectured her on topics such as The Interpretation of Prophecy, or Moral Uses of Magic, or Dyads and Balance. He encouraged her to ask questions and voice opinions, but Eliza was mute with confusion and left his study always with the greatest relief. She knew he was disappointed in her and it was an awful feeling.
Her favorite part of the day was the late afternoon, before supper, when she was free to run outside. She found Charlie always waiting for her. They made a few half-hearted attempts to find a way into the towers, but beyond looking for doors they knew they wouldn’t find there was not much they could do. Mostly