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“Did you notice she smiled at what Lord Gawain
says?” Hiroko asked, opening and closing her hand several times in quick
succession, experimenting with creating and closing down wards. The result was
a sort of flicker of magic in front of her. “He says, ‘Oneida is a master
academic of many magical arts and methods not known or used by more
conventional styles of magic’.”
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No, I didn’t miss Oneida’s sidewards glance and
her flash of amusement, but I hadn’t realised anyone else had detected it.
“I don’t even know what that means, so I can’t begin to suggest why she found it funny,” I
admitted. Hiroko was thoughtful as she readied for the next onslaught of
pillows.
“I think it means she does not practise white
magic,” she said. “This should not be a surprise because she is not from the
White Elm’s nation, but it is a
surprise that the White Elm wants her if she uses uncontrolled magics.”
“Uncontrolled magics? It’s all white magic, isn’t
it, unless it’s bad?”
Hiroko lowered her ward and stared at me, thinking
how best to answer, and I took the opportunity to lob pillows at her.
“White magic is the magic Jadon teaches us here,”
she explained carefully. “This is the type of magic the White Elm con….
Condone? Condones and monitors. They say it is clean. It is energy. The rest is…” She struggled to articulate. “It
is clean like when you scrub the dirt and
the skin away. Bare. But there are other ways to channel and shape magic. These
ways are older and difficult to predict. Wild magic. These are not legal in
communities controlled by the White Elm.”
I’d never considered that magic could be wild, or that there were other methods
beyond what I was being taught here. The White Elm’s methodology was identical
to what my parents and aunt and uncle had used, and that pretty much
encompassed my entire exposure to the magical world.
Actually, I realised, that wasn’t true. I knew
that there were other types of magic. There was dark magic – Renatus’s job was
to study it, learn it and know it, for when other sorcerers skilled in these
arts challenged the council.
Hiroko smiled slyly, privy to an inside joke I
wasn’t in on. She said, “Lord Gawain is careful. He calls her an academic.”
Like Renatus. Just an academic. I thought of some
of the spells I’d seen Renatus use. I thought of the fireball I’d used on
Lisandro to keep him at bay on Monday night, the magic that had come from the
part of my brain I now shared with Renatus’s memory bank of magical skills –
that had not felt like the magic I was used to casting with. Wild magic. Dark
magic.
He’s been
teaching you bad things, sweetie.
I’d gathered, of course, that this particular
spell wasn’t legal, and as such I’d neglected to mention it to anyone else on
the council. But it had come from the same place as the incredible feat of
Renatus using my own power and filling my cupped hands with water out of thin
air. That was beautiful, and I
remembered the delight I’d felt at knowing I’d one day be able to do that and
other magic like it unassisted.
Wild magic.
If those two examples were one and the same, or at
least from the same source, was all wild magic necessarily also dark magic?
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