***
They had walked about three hours, moving northwest when they stopped for a rest. Nevin asked Anson about his talk with Zael.
“He said he would arrange for us to follow the most direct route so we would not get lost. That bird up there,” he said, pointing to a large black bird nervously twittering on a high tree branch ahead of them, “has been our guide since we left.”
“It was nice of him to give us directions as the crow flies.” Nevin sniffed at the obvious pun, but neither of his companions saw the humor in it.
“I have no doubt he wanted us to take the most direct route so he would be rid of us,” said Orris. “It is plain to see that he cares little for humans.”
“You are correct, my military friend. And your testiness with him did not likely increase his love.”
“Ay, and I’ll be testy with anyone that threatens our mission. What say you, Sir Nevin?Shall I be the defender of our alliance?” Orris laughed heartily at the boast.
“Sure,” Nevin replied. “I’ll be glad to stand behind you whenever we get into trouble.”
With the danger passed, they shared a laugh over the tall man’s willingness to use Orris as a shield. Nevin was also pleased to see Orris so feisty, which suggested he was not suffering from blood poisoning or other ill effects from his injury. Orris had carefully heeded Nevin’s instructions in caring for the wound and they all marveled at how well it was healing.
At Anson’s nod, they started off again. Nevin fell in line, his attention frequently given to the bird they followed. For a moment, he was concerned about the magical implications involving this bird, but he pacified himself by recalling that the homing instincts of pigeons and other birds have been subject to training. There was no magic in that.
Eventually they turned to a more westerly direction and the heavy tree growth started to thin out. By early evening, the composition of the forest had changed from mixed hardwoods back to conifers and the ground was leveling out. They settled for the night alongside a stream, deeper and wider than others they had seen so far. They each took a bath in the chilly water to wash off the grime of several days travel, with Orris playfully splashing the other two. Spirits lifted to match their growing friendship. Each man carried out his own camp duty so that wood was collected, a fire started, and a meal prepared with efficiency. They talked among themselves and agreed that it was not necessary to post a guard this night. Even Orris felt a sense of security offered by the unseen elves they knew were watching them.
After Orris built up the campfire to last through the night, he joined the other two in repose on their bedrolls. He said to Anson, “I thought I saw Zael give you something?”
Anson reached over to his parcel and pulled out some kind of pipe or flute made out of a hollowed antler, which he passed around cautioning them not to play. It was beautifully crafted and marked with odd designs that Nevin likened to runes. “Should we find ourselves in their Wood again, Zael said we should blow this pipe. I am not sure what would happen, but I expect he would soon appear.” Anson replaced the item for safekeeping. “It does not seem likely that we will have occasion to use it since we will reach Sartell by late morning.”
Anson added with a look of puzzlement, “Zael also said something about ‘our follower’ joining us. I am not sure what he meant.”
“He must have been referring to the crow,” Nevin suggested. “Or maybe he has one of his elves hidden to follow our progress all the way to the city.”
“Perhaps,” answered Anson. “But we would never see them unless they wanted it so.”
Orris straightened out his bedroll and asked, “Do they make themselves invisible by spell?”
The question piqued Nevin’s interest, but he surprised himself by being a little disappointed at Anson’s response.
“No. Elves do not cast spells. Elves are not seen simply because they hide amongst the coloration of leaves and trees. Not only do the hues of their clothing blend with these surroundings, but they seem to have a knack for moving quietly without disturbing plant or animal.”
Nevin found it interesting that elves did not use magic and asked a question of his own, “Can you make yourself invisible?”
Anson was in turn surprised that the question was asked again. “Oh, no. A spell of invisibility is beyond my skills, as you must surely know. No mage in my land has either the spellwords or mindpower to change the physical laws so greatly,” Anson said. With a wry smile he added, “...Perhaps it could be done by one with a greater force of mind.”
Nevin missed the implication as his thoughts returned to the subject of spellcasting and the structural similarities in the spell passages he had learned so far. After a while, he asked if he could attempt another spell. Anson was willing, so they decided on a luminescence and spent about an hour as teacher and pupil. The lesson was not disappointing.
Nevin learned that luminescence would produce a cold light, something like mythical “witchlight,” except this spell imparted radiance to crystalline objects and did not form a nimbus around the spellcaster. Anson searched the creek bed for a small quartz-like stone and demonstrated on it, making it glow pale green. He said the color and intensity, as well as the duration of the glowing effect, would vary with the object of the spell, and probably with the power of the mage. Luminescence worked especially well on small articles made of crystal and sometimes glassy art pieces. Nevin guessed the glow resulted from some type of excitation of phosphorescent minerals in the object’s composition. Nevin asked, “ Can you reverse this spell? Would it make the objects dark?”
Anson shrugged.
When he finally decided to sleep for the night, Nevin pondered the machinations of this newest spell compared with the others he had learned. This spell was different in that it required a low bass drone of spellwords syncopated with “mindpower.” Maybe the auditory tone combined with radiant neural energy to produce some minute fibrillation in the crystalline structure. It was plausible. He knew that EEGs record voltage fluctuations from the scalp emitting at least four types of energy waves; billions of neurons firing at once could be some kind of mindpower. Nevin laughed to himself at this deduction, remembering how skeptical people were about the first lasers not too many years ago. How magical that device seemed though it was little more than a narrow, focused beam of light passing through a ruby.
The plausibility of the luminescence spell was comforting, but Nevin was still troubled by his lack of an explanation for the heat-producing spell Bartram used on the aquarium. Raising water temperature required a potent source of energy, much more than eliciting phosphorescent light or firing a candlewick. Bartram must have drawn energy from some potent though unapparent source, possibly neural energy but that seemed far-fetched. Brain waves are electrochemical energy, more or less. The luminescence spell obviously had to draw on some power source, although small in consumption, but does it tap the same energy source? In any event, Nevin was pleased because science still reigned—more or less—and what so easily passed as ephemeral magic had some possible explanations. In time, the conjuring of cold light might be as simple to explain as turning on a laser. He fell asleep, thinking of glowworms and fireflies and their photochemical mechanisms of generating cold light.