Free Magesong by James R. Sanford Page B

all who had become true magicians, but
Reyin did not feel anything like that happening to him.  He only felt the hand.
    He ate a small portion of the flatbread Kestrin had given
him for this day's journey, and the scent of her hair came to him unbidden.  He
pushed it from his mind.  He was too old for these schoolboy thoughts.  Perhaps
his thoughts ran to this woman to hide from himself.  He wanted to pretend that
he knew nothing, that he could walk away from the unseen realm, that trying to
forget the secret ways of power posed no danger.
    He rose and continued his climb up the ravine.  The hillside
lay thick with evergreens and silence, broken only by the sound of his
footfalls and the crackling of dry branches strained by the breeze.  Becoming
aware of a dull soreness in his ankle, Reyin slowed his pace.  The natural
trail grew even more steep, approaching the vertical in places, and he now had
to climb in earnest, picking his footing carefully.  Through a part in the
trees he saw the crest of the Skialfanmir looking down on him from a thousand
feet above.
    As he neared the top of the wash he couldn't help but think
of his old master.  For years they had climbed the winding trail from
Ty'kojin's log house, high on a shoulder of Wind Peak, to the top of the
mountain almost every day.  How many times had they climbed it?  Perhaps a
thousand?  And every time, his teacher had said the same words as they labored
up the final length of trail to the summit.  "Look Reyin, look how the
path is deeply rutted.  Many have walked this path countless times.  They are
all great and powerful magicians now.  They were all like you, once.  Think
upon this as you go."
    Reyin broke though the tree line, and in a dozen long
strides reached the open ground at the base of the crag.  His heart beat fast. 
He had no need to reach for the Essa — it was there, flowing up from the earth
and falling down from the sky to complete its circle by touching at the center
of his being.  And so too had it been on Wind Peak.  Ty'kojin had said that
many such places existed, some at the tops of mountains, others where springs
welled up from the depths of the earth, and far out on the Western Sea whole
islands stood in the flow of power, as did unmarked places in desert lands.
    It had been a long time since he last stood on magic ground,
and he wished for a reason to use the art magic.  But he wasn't a novice
yearning to say his first spell; he had been to this place many hundreds of
times.  He sat down and brought out the remainder of the flatbread, eating it
slowly, patiently scanning the cracks and crevasses and angles and faces of the
Skialfanmir.  There was no way up.
    He had been certain that the sheer, seamless look of the
pinnacle was an illusion of distance, and that one of the spurs would offer a
route to the summit.  Close now, he saw overhangs that would turn back the most
nimble climber.  The first hundred feet of the near face stood rough and
rounded and looked easy to climb.  He popped the last bit of crust into his
mouth and began picking his way up the first boulder that belonged to the
mountain proper.  He stopped.
    The Essa was stronger here, so strong that he feared to take
another step — even on Wind Peak it was not so high.  He felt as if he could
perform magic simply by thinking of it, but that was impossible.  Not even
Artemes could cast a spell without sound or movement.
    He climbed over rough-hewn granite until he reached the
vertical wall that formed the east face of the pinnacle.  What stood before him
was more than obvious, and he wondered why he hadn't seen it from below.
    It was a door, smeared with crumbling plaster the same color
as the surrounding stone, perhaps hundreds of years, or even hundreds of cycles
old.  At one time, no doubt, it had been perfectly camouflaged.
    Reyin looked at it in the way a magician can look at things
if he so chooses.  The doorway had set upon it an elaborate