Geometry and Ritual
David had learned the principles of scrying at his uncle’s knee. He’d proved very poor it at, laughably unreliable. The things he glimpsed in the glass were impossibilities: towering buildings made of glass and iron, metal-skinned birds skimming high above even the uppermost roofline. An expansion of glass bridging a rift in red earth. Once, a giant clock face ticking atop a tower while figures swathed head-to-toe in white punted boats back and forth on a green river below.
“Imagination,” David’s uncle scolded him. “You have too much imagination. Steady your mind and try again!”
He was better at far-seeing than divination, but not by much. He could speak to a person through the mirror one room away, one house away, and on a good day one village over. While both his cousins, neither of whom had aspirations of joining the old magician on White Hill and spent more time practicing swordsmanship than the family business of poisons and potions, could scry Grand-mère in León.
“So much time spent admiring your pretty face!” They teased David as he glared into the glass. “Best hope the magician in his white château takes a shine to it as well, or he’ll never let you near his tower.”
David never met the old magician. He arrived at White Hill too late. Luckily Sir Thomas saw value in what he could do and did not judge him for what he could not.
“Use it sparingly,” he’d counseled as he’d admired the old mirror, a gift to David from his uncle – who thought himself very droll – on the day David had left Rouen for White Hill. “And for God’s sake always put yourself in a sacred circle first when you must. If you can’t control, do your best to contain.”
David did use the mirror sparingly, and while his technique improved with time, he never used it without first putting himself inside a protective circle.
He drew the circle now, limestone chalk on the cold stone floor. He didn’t need the light from the common room below. He could draw a sacred circle awake, asleep, blind and half-dead. Geometry and ritual he understand. Unlike far-seeing or divination, geometry and ritual were consistent, enduring and unchanging. The incantation fell from his lips without hesitation, his hand was steady as it moved across the floor. The chalk was a lodestone in his fist.
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