Free Unnatural Issue by Mercedes Lackey

ceremony here, but the nomenclature for a table in the center of a Working Circle was an “altar.” The protective Circle in this room was permanently inlaid in the floor except for a tiny bridging piece that fitted into the circle of bronze like a puzzle piece. He fitted that piece in, and the Circle was sealed.
    Once it was, the permanent protections sprang up into life. When a mage had a personal, secure Working Room like this one, it was a matter of great convenience to have magic protections permanently in place. This room had served generations of Almsley mages and, God willing, would serve generations more.
    Peter’s brother Charles knew all about the room, of course, but he would no more have set foot in it than make himself up as a pantomime cow and cavort for the edification of the villagers. Charles took after his mother, the only difference being that Charles knew magic existed, and she didn’t. He had learned about it just as Peter had; he knew that their father had been a powerful mage and that Peter had stepped into their father’s shoes, and he even knew that their grandmother was just as powerful. He just refused to acknowledge anything having to do with magic, as if by doing so he could make it go away. He even ignored the family ghosts to the extent of deliberately walking right through them, which caused no end of ruffled feelings that Peter and the dowager duchess ended up having to soothe.
    So, there was less chance that Charles would barge in here than there was that His Majesty would loom in the door.
    The energy of Air was generally dominant in this room, since it was his grandmother that did the lion’s share of the Work here. Peter rested his palms on the little table and set about investing it with his own Element. Energies of every color of green there was, from the deep near-black of a storm-tossed ocean to the thin tint of aquamarine of a tiny freshet, condensed out of the air like fog. Tender threads, tiny tendrils of power, coalesced seemingly out of nowhere, each one a different shade of green; they sprang up and flowed toward him, joining thread to thread to make cords, streams, all of them flowing to him and into him, and he began to glow with the growing power he had gathered into himself.
    Now he took a carved quartz “singing bowl” from under the table and a pitcher of pure water. He filled the former and cupped his hands around it. Something stirred in the bowl, like a trail of bubbles in the clear water, a momentary fog passing over the surface. The water in the bowl rippled. And then—there, perfect in miniature, was an undine. The two ghosts—too wispy for him to tell which two they were—nodded approvingly.
    “Would you go to the creatures of the Earth Mage Charles Kerridge and ask them to tell him I need to speak to him please?” he said politely. The undine laughed up at him, in a voice that was as much inside his head as in his ears.
    “The Earth Mage already wishes to speak with you, Water Master!” she said gaily. “You have but to clear the bowl.”
    Of course, he should have expected that. With a chuckle, he bade farewell to the undine, who vanished in a flurry of bubbles, and waited for the water to clear and steady. As he looked down into it, drawing on his memory of his old chum and muttering the incantation that would link his bowl with Charles’ scrying plate, the water took on a mirror-like finish. But it was not his reflection that looked up at him.
    “Well, old man,” Charles said, peering up at him with a quizzical expression. “I can’t imagine that you’ve suddenly got a pash for the moors, so why the abrupt need for an invitation? Your man couldn’t be too specific with my man.”
    “That, old fellow, is because it’s magic, as you probably guessed,” Peter replied. “Alderscroft has me stalking the wild necromancer in your parts. Haven’t nosed anything out, have you?”
    Charles shook his head. “Not a hint nor a whiff, but there’s