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Her face turned so red Richard thought her curly hair might catch fire. "You will not speak blasphemy."
"And lying is not?"
"You do not understand, Richard, why I am angry."
Richard sat on the ground and, grasping his ankles, folded his legs in. "Maybe I do. You are supposed to be my protector. Not the other way around. Maybe you feel that you have failed. But I don't feel that you failed. We both just did what we had to, to survive."
"Did what we must?" Fine wrinkles radiated around her eyes as they narrowed. "As I recall from the book, when Bonnie, Geraldine, and Jessup led the people across the poison river, some of those people died."
Richard smiled to himself. "So, you really did read it."
"I told you I did! That was foolhardy. We could have been killed taking that risk."
"We didn't have any choice."
"You always have a choice, Richard. That is what I am trying to teach you." She sat back on her heels. "The wizards who created that place thought they had no choice, but they made things worse. You were using your Han back there, and you were doing it without understanding the consequences."
"What choice did we have?"
Hands on her knees, she leaned forward. "We always have a choice, Richard. You were lucky, this time, that your use of magic didn't get you killed."
"What are you talking about?"
Sister Verna drew a saddlebag close and started rummaging through it, finally pulling out a green, cloth bag. "You got some blood from that beast on your arm. Did any of the bugs bite you?"
"On my legs."
"Show me."
Richard pulled up his pant legs and showed her the swollen, red bites. She shook her head and, whispering to herself, pulled first one and then a second bottle from the bag.
With a stick found on the ground nearby, she dipped a white paste from one bottle and wiped it onto the flat of a knife blade. She threw the stick in the fire. Taking up another stick, she dipped a dark paste from the other bottle and mixed it with the light on the flat of the blade, then spread it along the edge. She threw the second stick, with some of the mixed paste on it, into the fire. Richard flinched when it exploded in a white-hot ball of fire that lifted skyward, dissipating as it rose, turning to a boiling cloud of black smoke.
She held up the knife to reveal a gray paste spread on the blade. "Light and dark, earth and sky. Magic, to heal what would otherwise kill you by tonight. You have a way of getting yourself out onto thin limbs, Richard. Each step you take only makes your predicament worse. Now, come over here, closer."
Richard dug his heels in and scooted around the fire. "Were you trying to decide whether or not you were going to help me?"
"Of course not. This is made from powerful magic, constructed magic, to smother the venom injected into you by the conjured creatures. Too soon, and the cure would kill you. Too late, the bites would kill you. It must be the right kind of magic, at the right time. I was simply waiting for the proper time."
Richard wanted to argue with her, but instead said, "Thank you for helping me." She frowned at him before leaning over his bites. "Sister, how was I making things worse?"
"You were being reckless. Using magic is dangerous, not only to others, but to the one who calls it forth as well."
Richard winced as she drew the edge across one of the bites, first one way, then the other, cutting an X on it. The sting made his eyes water.
"How can it be dangerous to me?"
She concentrated as she leaned over his leg, whispering an incantation while stroking the knife across his swollen flesh. He tried not to jump when she cut the next bite. She was only making light cuts, but they stung fiercely.
"It is like starting a fire in the center of a tinder dry wood. You find yourself in the center of the fire, in the center of what you have started. What you did was foolish and dangerous."
"Sister Verna, I was trying to stay alive."
She jabbed a finger at one of the painful bites. "And look what happened! If I don't heal you, you'll die." She finished with his legs and turned her attention to his arm. "When we were being attacked by those beasts, you thought to save us, but everything you did only increased the danger."
When she finished, she held the knife blade over the fire. A thin stream of white flame roared up from the steel, consuming the remaining paste. She held the blade to the fire until the paste, and the white flame, were gone.
"If I wouldn't have acted, sister, we would be dead."
She shook the hot blade at him. "I did not say you were wrong to act! I said you acted in the wrong way! You used the wrong kind of magic!"
"I used the only thing I had! The sword!"
She pitched the knife. With a thunk, it stuck solidly in a piece of firewood. "Acting without knowing the consequences of the magic you call forth is perilous behavior!"
"Well, nothing you were doing was helping!"
Sister Verna rocked back on her heels, stared at him for a moment, and then turned to busy herself with replacing the bottles in the green bag.
"I'm sorry, Sister. I didn't really mean that. It didn't come out the way I intended. I only meant that you weren't able to sense the way, and I knew if we stayed, we would be killed."
The bottles clinked together as she moved them around in the bag. She seemed to be having difficulty getting them packed the way she wanted. "Richard, you think that controlling the gift, using magic, is what you are to learn with us. That is the easy part. Knowing what kind of magic to use, how much to use, when to use it, and the consequences of using it, that is the hard part. That is the meaning of everything. How, how much, when and what if—just like the magic I have put on your bites."
She fixed him with a deadly serious expression. "Without that knowledge, you are a blind man swinging an axe in a crowd of children. You have no idea of the danger you invoke when you use magic. We try to give you sight, and some sense, before you swing that axe."
Richard picked at a clump of grass at his feet. "I never thought about it that way."
"Perhaps, if anything, I should be angry with myself for being foolish. I didn't think there was anything powerful enough to tempt me into a trap. I was wrong. Thank you, Richard, for saving me."
He wrapped a long stalk of grass around his finger. "I was so relieved to find you... I thought you were dead. I'm glad you're not."
She had pulled all the little bottles out of the bag and set them on the ground. "I could have been lost in that spell for all time. I should have been."
"What do you mean?"
There seemed to him to be more bottles than would fit into the bag, but then, he had seen them all come out. "We have tried to rescue sisters before. We have seen some, and their charges, lost in those enchantment spells. I saw one, the first time I went through. We have never been able to get them out. Sisters have died trying." She started replacing the bottles. "You used magic."
"I used the sword. The sword has magic, you know."
"No. You didn't use the sword's magic. You used your Han, even though you didn't realize it. Using your Han through desire, without wisdom, is the most dangerous thing you can do."
"Sister, I think it was just the sword's magic."
"When you called to me, I heard you. We have tried to call to others, and they have never heard us. Not once."
"You just didn't know how. You couldn't hear me either, until I stepped through some sort of sparkling wall around you. Then you could hear me. You just have to step through that wall first."
She pushed bottles to each side to make more room as she spoke softly. "We know that, Richard. We have tried every sort of magic, and never been able to pass through or break the wall of one of these spells, or been able to get the attention of one captured by it. No one has ever been brought out of an enchantment spell before." She replaced the last bottle and finally turned to face him. "Thank you, Richard."
He shrugged as he pulled the grass off his finger. "Well, it was the least I could do
to make up for what I did."
"For what you did?"
Richard occupied himself with carefully rolling his pants back down. "Well, before I saved you, I kind of killed you."
She leaned closer. "You did what?"
"You were hurting me. With your magic. With the collar."
"I'm sorry, Richard. I was in the spell and didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't intend to hurt you."
He shook his head. "Not then. Before. In the white tower."
She leaned even closer and gritted her teeth. "You went into a tower? Are you mad! I told you what those towers are! How could you be so..."
"Sister. I had no choice."
"We have already discussed choice. I told you how dangerous those towers are. I told you to stay away from them!"
"Look, there was lightning all around. It was trying to strike me. I... well, I didn't know what else to do. So I dove through an archway, into the tower, for protection."
"Can't you follow the simplest instructions! Must you always act a child!"
Richard looked up from under his eyebrows. "Those were your exact words. You came into the tower. I was sure it was you. You were angry with me, much as you are now, and you used those exact words."
He gritted his teeth as he put a finger to the collar at his neck. "You used this. You used it to throw me against the wall, and pin me there with it. Can this collar do that, Sister?"
