Free Knights Magi (Book 4) by Terry Mancour Page A

“But you might want to fool someone, sometime.  You’d have to smile to do that.”
    He only glanced back over his shoulder for a moment – but she was smiling.
    Now that’s how you do real magic, he thought to himself with a smirk as he headed for the library. 
    As helpful as Pentandra’s coaching had been, he had to credit his recent interest in Psychomancy for the idea.  Once he realized that the discipline could be used in love as well as war, he found it even more alluring.  He knew from his studies that to let her assume that she was not all that terribly interesting to him would flatter her sense of self while at the same time challenging the value of her heart.  It was a maddeningly sophisticated and subtle approach, but it was also (apparently) highly effective.
    There were entire treatises on persuasion, argument, discussion and seduction in the Blue Magic archives.  A few had been quite revealing on the subject, and he had committed them to memory for later study.  Seduction was an art, and there were many masters in antiquity.  And every maiden aunt and tipsy priestess had hours of advice about how a young man should pay court to a lady.   He had listened to all of them with a healthy dose of skeptism. 
    Tyndal was wise enough to know when he did not have mastery of a subject, and astute enough to enlist the aid of those that did, so when it came to learning how to court and woo a woman, he had appealed to his best living authority on the subject: Lady Pentandra Benuvrial, one of the few living masters – mistresses – of sex magic.
    Pentandra, of course, had given him far more useful instruction than he’d received from the other women who had offered their counsel.  Lady Alya and Lady Estret, for instance, had been replete with advice about women.  But their counsel relied heavily on flattery and proper treatment, and that was easily learned.  What Tyndal had needed help with was navigating the dangerous territory of introduction and seduction – preferably without involving jealous husbands or irate fathers.
    He felt a little deceitful applying base science to what, according to poets and minstrels and the priestesses of Ishi, should properly be a matter of fate, fortune or divine will, depending upon which theory one favored.  But in matters of the heart, he had learned, one could not go into conflict unprepared any more than one could go into battle unarmed. 
    So he had solicited Pentandra’s advice.  Amused, she took the challenge and pointed him toward the proper texts.  Among the scrolls on the nature of seduction, one was known to be short but highly informative for a young man.  She’d even told him where he might find it in the library.
    Penned by some obscure courtier or rogue in the Later Magocracy, under the ridiculous pseudonym of Sire Rose, Master of Castle Heart, the Meditations on the Sixteen Laws of Love purported to be a divine revelation from Tharis, Ishi’s illegitimate son with the god Luin.  Tharis was known for his lusty and capricious nature.  He was a divinity after Tyndal’s own heart.
    Tyndal had read the scroll eagerly, with great humor, and found the Meditations to be wonderfully applicable in such matters. 
    The Tenth Law, for instance : If she be truly fair, ignore thee her beauty and treat her as a common-looking woman; treat her not as a great beauty, or she will despise you for it.  
    If he’d told Estasia she was the prettiest girl he’d seen, it was unlikely she would be as interested.  Pretty girls hear how pretty they are often, said the Sage of Castle Heart.  Appearing as if they are not challenges their sense of self.
    Of course, that was difficult.  Estasia was, indeed, gorgeous.  And while Estasia might be fuming and fussing about the slightly rude remark all night . . . she’d be fuming and fussing about Tyndal’s slightly rude remark all night. 
    And interest, as Pentandra would say, is far more valuable than apathy in the