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  Eva didn't wait. She ignored Lunia but instead began battering away against my shields. I tried a detection spell, and I got an approximate direction before she bored her way through my shields. Seconds later she was dragging me across the field, and she wasn't gentle about it. I tried another detection spell, got a better idea of where she was, then began slamming light spells after her. I managed to light her up, but they weren't going to get through her shields. All I could hope was that my teammates saw her and decided to help.

  A few spells went after her, but nothing got through.

  Loralai loomed out of the mist, so to speak, but I threw a light spell on my hand and raised it between us, momentarily blinding both of us, and then Lunia was after Loralai, distracting her. Eva let the two of them go at each other but just continued to drag me to the far end of the field. Soon she dragged me all the way off. She hadn't even paralyzed me, but I was off the end of the field and officially captured.

  Eva knelt down next to me. "Whatever Eva says," she said.

  "Whatever Eva says," I agreed.

  "On your stomach, prisoner."

  I rolled over obediently, expecting a brief spanking, but instead she patted my bottom gently and whispered in my ear, "Mine."

  "Yours."

  The Nature of Magic

  There are difficulties in assembling more complicated spells. It's not simply a matter of getting the myriad connections built properly. The strength of the connections also matters. Some of the connections are bold and firm. Others must be delicate, a hairline of magic. Still others must be flexible, allowed to stretch as the spell is built. A spell might go through several changes to its overall shape as it is built. It might start out looking like a flat box, but then one end of the box might be tied to the other end, pulling the box into a cylinder. This not only bends the shape, but requires the outside of the cylinder to stretch.

  Eva and I had separate problems when building these more dynamic spells. I tended to put too much power into the connections. I was capable of more delicate control, but it took more concentration for me than it did for Eva.

  Eva tended to do the opposite, although not quite. She was able to vary her power more readily, but she wasn't good at leaving extra power in the connection, ready to be used when it was necessary. Thus, her stretchy connections tended to snap when she pulled on them.

  So mine weren't necessarily as flexible as required. Hers were more brittle. Both were problems we had largely solved as apprentices, but it still required concentration from both of us.

  The ability to cast a particular spell required several things. First, the sorceress must possess the require flavor of magic. Some advanced spells required two or more flavors, and they weren't necessarily related flavors, either. You couldn't teach someone to have a flavor; you either had it or not just like your eyes were blue or they were not.

  Next, you must have sufficient magic. There were exercises one could do to build the amount of magic one had, and a woman's access to magic naturally grew for the first twenty-five years of her life. But still, the ability to teach someone to have sufficient magic was limited.

  After that, you must be able to control your magic sufficiently as to produce the right type of magic in the right shape and with the right connections. The simplest spells worked with any type of magic, the shapes were easy, and there were only a few dozen connections. The light spell consisted of exactly eighteen lines and was extremely flexible in the amount of power the lines required. It was, by and large, easy to learn. This is why it was the first spell any of us were taught.

  As spells became more difficult, the difficulty came in multiple ways. A spell might require two or more flavors of magic to cast. Quartain once showed me a spell that required six flavors of magic, and she was the only woman alive who could cast it, but in the end all it did was produce a spinning ball of light. "I invented this spell, and it is likely it will die when I die."

  I hadn't cared for that thought.

  Of course, spell difficulty was also related to the number of connections and the complexity of those connections. Connecting one line of magic to another wasn't hard, but if the spell required multiple connections at one spot, it could be difficult to connect the third and subsequent lines without destroying earlier connections.

  This is something we also learn to solve long before we become journeywomen.

  What we don't learn before we are journeywomen is to change the shape of the lines of magic we create. Earlier spells required simple lines, strings of magic. But later, we might need to produce bands of magic, which was harder to do, and then we might need to twist those bands, which was significantly harder. The first time I produced a spell that required a twisted band of magic, it took me two and a half months to learn how to twist the band, and the day I finally reproduced the spell, it took me an hour for each of the three connections that required twisted bands. It was a frustrating two and a half months, as I learned no new spells during that time.

  The only consolation was that it took Eva the same amount of time.

  In order to become an adept, one must pass both the oral exam and the practical exam. The practical exam required a demonstration of control over raw magic as well as management of sufficient magic for more powerful spells. I'd had both for years, and Eva was no longer far behind me in the control of raw magic.

  After that, one must demonstrate advanced competence in at least one main flavor of magic. In short, one must be able to readily assemble adept-level spells. For someone with only a limited number of flavors, this portion of the exam could be performed fairly quickly, running through the production of perhaps as few as a dozen spells in a single flavor. For me, this was going to take much longer, as I would be expected to demonstrate healing, botany and knowledge spells, all at adept level of competence.

  But then there were two sticking points, and not every woman would ever pass these requirements. One must be able to assemble a magic containment dome. This spell is an impervious shield bent into a dome, embedded into a scribed circle. The dome could be destroyed, as I had demonstrated years ago, but the exam required it to remain sufficiently cohesive to contain most magic. When I was ready, my dome would be tested with me standing outside the circle and a magus inside the circle. I would build the dome, and then she would spend as much time as she wanted casting spells inside the dome.

  The second sticking point was even trickier: one needed to be able to learn to keep spells at the ready. This meant not the ability to build a spell very quickly, but to have it instantly available. This required a form of permanence magic. The sorceress built the spell she wished to make readily available, and then she cast a permanence magic spell around the constructed spell before absorbing the spell into herself. Doing so lodged the spell into memory, after a fashion, and after that, she could cast the spell instantly, or nearly so, as long as her raw magic held up.

  Permanence was actually a rare magic, and so it was possible for another sorceress to perform that magic as proxy. But for some reason, and no one understood why, not every sorceress was able to absorb the results.

  These last two criteria could be waived. It required approval from Queen Hallamarie and all practicing senior magi. Not every sorceress had defensive magic flavors, but if she were otherwise very strong in other areas, her inability to form a magic shield of any sort was not necessarily held against her.

  Magus Hallow was a perfect example. She only had healing magic, but she had quite a bit, and limiting her to journeywoman when she was casting adept and magus level spells would have been ridiculous. She had received a waiver.

  Neither Eva nor I would receive a waiver for that reason.

  The tricky part of the containment dome was actually rather simple. The first step in building the containment dome was to produce a Mobius strip of magic. A Mobius strip is basically a loop of ribbon that has a half twist in it and connected end to end. That sounds easy, but unfortunately, one couldn't actually produce it t
hat way. One couldn't produce a band of magic, give it a half twist, and connect the ends. Well, one could, and there were spells that could be built that way.

  But for the containment dome, the Mobius strip must be seamless, and no one had ever learned how to connect two ends of magic without a seam. One could smooth the seam, but the joint was always there, and the containment dome didn't work with that joint.

  The Mobius strip must be extruded, much like pasta.

  And that was hard. That was very, very hard.

  Eva and I had both been working on it for two years.

  * * * *

  We lay in bed together, sweaty and spent.

  "You've gotten good at that," she said, still panting. She laughed lightly. "I really need to thank Marie."

  "I'm pretty sure the queen didn't teach me that."

  "I need to thank her for not keeping you. I was so jealous, you know." She rolled over and snuggled against me.

  "I didn't even know I wanted you," I said. "Not this way. But then you kissed me, and I knew I never wanted anything more in my life."

  We lay quietly for a while.

  "Do you suppose one of us should let Lunia and Loralai know it's safe to come in?"

  "I'll do it," I said. I cast a light ball, the smallest I could cast, then sent it towards the door. Eva saw what I was doing and began to laugh. I slid the spell underneath the bottom of the door, which was at least as hard as it sounds, then lifted it up and plopped it down to splat against the coffee table in front of the sitting room fireplace, guessing where it was.

  Two moments later, the bedroom door opened. "Which of you did that?"

  "Who do you think?" Eva asked.

  "Hey," I said in defense. "I didn't want to get out of bed."

  "Like we couldn't tell it was safe," Loralai said as the two stepped into the bedroom. "Your lover is a little vocal."

  "Hey," Eva said. "She was doing that thing she does."

  "So we gathered," said Lunia. The two swordsmen climbed into their own beds, rolling over on their stomachs to look at us. "When are you going to tell us what we're doing this summer?"

  "As soon as Quartain tells us," Eva said. "She's been very quiet so far."

  "I tried to blackmail her last night, but all she'd say was that she hadn't decided yet." I sighed. "I tossed a truth spell at her, but she batted it away and gave me nine demerits for the attempt." I sighed. "I bet you could have gotten her, Eva."

  "I'm not foolish enough to try," Eva said. "So what's your balance?"

  "I have no idea," I said. "Negative one-hundred and something."

  Eva laughed. "You wish."

  "Yeah."

  Try as I might, I couldn't convince Quartain to let me rack up a negative demerit balance.

  "Well," said Loralai, "if Lunia and I get a vote, then we vote for whatever keeps the four of us together."

  "You aren't tired of me, Loralai?"

  "No."

  "You're not tired of sharing a bed with Lunia?"

  Lunia chuckled. "No," they said together.

  Eva and I both froze then, without spoken signal, we flopped over onto our stomachs to look at them, all our faces only a foot or so apart. "Eva, as senior roommate, I believe they have to answer any question you ask," I declared.

  "I believe you're right, Kia. You two. Spill."

  "Who, us?" Loralai asked.

  "There's nothing new to spill," Lunia added.

  "You both know you're dying to tell us, or you wouldn't have hinted," Eva said.

  "You two are so caught up in each other, you don't notice what's going on under your own noses," Lunia replied. She turned to Loralai, and a moment later, the two of them were kissing. Eva and I stared at them.

  "How long has this been going on?" Eva asked.

  "Oh, hmm. Ten or eleven years," Loralai said.

  "On and off," Lunia added.

  "It was off for a few years," Loralai admitted.

  "But it's been on for a few years, too," Lunia said.

  "Unlike two of us in the room, not everyone is loud when she makes love. For instance, the two of us made love three nights ago while you two were murmuring at each other."

  "No way!" I said.

  They both grinned.

  I turned to Eva. "Did you know?"

  "I knew they had been lovers, but I thought it was long over. We're that unobservant?"

  "Well, unlike two of us in the room," Lunia said, "we didn't feel the need to flaunt it to everyone who couldn't avert her head quickly enough."

  "I'm just a healer," I said, "but Eva, you are the crappiest spy in the school."

  Our swordswomen chuckled, but then Loralai said, "Well, it's not like we rut like rabbits. And we're alone doing 'swordswoman things’ a lot."

  "Wait!" I said. "Where do you go?"

  They laughed and refused to answer.

  "At first, you didn't notice," Lunia said. "You've been so caught up with each other. We wondered if we should tell you, but the longer it went on, the more fun we were having keeping it from you. We wondered if you were ever going to figure it out."

  "We finally decided that no, you weren't. So we've been growing increasingly obvious."

  "Like making love in the same room we were in," I suggested.

  "Yes. We decided to see if we could do that without you two noticing," Lunia said. "Loralai, how do you spell oblivious?"

  "E-v-a and K-i-a," she said with a grin.

  I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. "Is it love?" I asked.

  "Yes," said Lunia.

  "Good," Eva said. She rolled onto her back, cradling her head in the crook of my shoulder.

  We lay there for a while, the four of us talking softly. I played with my magic, half-forming spells and dispersing them. I wasn't paying much attention at all, daydreaming really, when Eva suddenly said, "Freeze. Kia, stop!"

  "What?" I asked.

  "Look what you're doing!" she said. She sounded excited.

  "I'm not doing anything," I said. I was about to wave the magic away, but she rolled over and grabbed my hand.

  "No!" she said. "Look!" she pointed into the air above us.

  "What?" asked Loralai.

  I looked up at the magic I'd been producing. I stared at it for a long time. From past our heads, Lunia and Loralai both asked, "What?" a couple more times.

  "Can you do it again?" Eva asked.

  "I-" I wet my lips. "I don't know."

  "Try."

  I waved the magic away, relaxed, and then poured a small amount of magic into the air above us. It took a half dozen tries, but then I did it again.

  "Again," Eva commanded.

  So I did.

  She made me do it an even dozen times before we stared at it above us.

  "What's going on?" Lunia asked.

  "Congratulate Kia," Eva said. "She made a Mobius strip."

  Eva and I began squealing in joy. Lunia and Loralai had no idea why we were so excited.

  "Can you complete that?" Eva asked.

  "Into what?" I asked. "It's not like I memorized any spells that use it."

  "We have to show someone!" Eva said. "Get up!" she jumped from the bed, found my clothes, and began throwing them at me. Two minutes later we were both dressed and she was dragging me from the dormitory, our perplexed swordswomen following in our wake.

  "Bring that with you!" Eva said, pointing to my bit of magic hanging in the air.

  We didn't run to Senior Magus Quartain's, but it was as good as a run, the way Eva was dragging me, my partial spell bobbing along over our heads. We arrived, and she began pounding on the door.

  "Not like that," I said. I opened the door and stepped in. "Quartain? Mother?"

  "Kia," I heard her call out. "It's late. Is it an emergency?"

  "Yes!" hollered Eva. "Come see! Come see!"

  It took a minute or so, but then Quartain appeared in her sitting room, coming to a stop when she saw the four of us standing in her entry.

  "This is
unexpected, Kia," Quartain said. "I hope it's important or we'll be having a discussion."

  "It is!" Eva said. "Look what Kia made!" she pointed to my bit of magic hanging in the air.

  Quartain stepped forward, walking around me to examine the bit of magic.

  "I don't see a seam," she said. "Kia, have you had a breakthrough?"

  I waved the spell fragment away and made another one.

  "Well, well, well," Quartain said. "I supposed that was worth climbing out of bed to see. Congratulations, Kia!" She gave me a hug.

  "What-" I started to say. "What do I do with it?"

  Quartain laughed. "We have some new spells to teach you, but they're going to take time. We're not starting tonight."

  "But-"

  She laughed again. "If you want to practice, make it smaller. Make it thinner. Make it wider." She paused. "It just happened, didn't it? You weren't even trying?"

  "You know how I like to play with my magic when I daydream."

  She laughed. "My first one was like that, too," she said. "Now, unless Eva is going to demonstrate the same skill tonight, I have a bed to climb back into."

  "We're sorry," Eva said. "We thought someone should know."

  "Oh, this was definitely worth seeing, Eva." She hugged us both then Lunia and Loralai as well before shooing us out the door. But then Quartain stood in the door and called out, "Eva?"

  We turned to her.

  "You know if she gets too far ahead of you, she's going to start beating you on Sevenday."

  Eva laughed. "She'll never get through my shields."

  "She doesn't have to. She'll pick one of the youngest journeywomen, but one with good offensive skills. She'll shield her, and the two of them will destroy everyone else, including you. Think about it."

  Quartain closed the door, and I sighed dramatically.

  "What?" Eva asked.

  "Mother loves you better."

  Eva laughed and spread her arms away from her sides. "What's not to love?"

  We got to the dormitory doors before I yanked us all to a stop. I grabbed Eva by the shoulders.