Читаем Phoenix and Ashes полностью

She had originally intended to concentrate only on her own Element, but it soon became clear that this was a bad idea. Not only were the powers and meanings of all four Elements incestuously intertwined, but after all, Alison was an Earth Master and Reggie an Air Master. To defeat the one and help the other, she had to learn about their Elements, and at that point it made little sense to skip learning about the Antagonistic Element to her own, Water.

She finally felt her eyelids growing too heavy, and set the book aside, blowing out the candle, phrases from the book still echoing in her mind as she drifted into sleep. She didn't understand them yet— but soon—soon—

. . . the first step must be into the first Sphere, the Sphere of Imagination, for Intellect must be the servant of Imagination, and not the master. . . .

Eleanor woke slowly, with the strangest feeling—as if, once she had put the book down last night, she had gone into dreams only to find that in her dreams she was still trying to come to grips with what she had read. Except that in the dream, there was something or someone helping her grasp it.

And the moment she woke, she realized that she did grasp some of what she'd been reading, and had put it together with what had been in the workbook.

In fact, that was exactly what she needed to do—start putting things together, since all things were connected, and each had aspects of the rest. The only actual starting place was the intellect, which led into the imagination. After that, the imagination led everywhere.

She'd been trying to think of all of the Planes of her mother's book—or "Spheres," as the Alchemy book called them—as being separate, and that things somehow passed from one to another. But it wasn't like that at all; everything was layered on top of everything else, and everything coexisted at once. The physical world that everyone saw and lived in was overlaid with all of the magic worlds. The difference between a regular person and a magician was whether or not you could see each layer.

Which was why those nasty little gnomish things in the meadow had seemed to dig their way into the ground without actually disturbing it; they weren't really digging into the ground, they were moving themselves out of the Plane of the "real world"—which the alchemy book called "Middle Earth," and into one of the lower Planes, probably the Dark Earth Plane, where she couldn't see them anymore. And the Salamanders couldn't follow, both because they weren't creatures of Earth and because they weren't creatures of the Dark Ways. Every Sphere had a corresponding Dark Side, and as a Light Path magician, you didn't want to go there, unless you absolutely had to. Not because you could get hurt, but because you could get seduced and corrupted unless you were very, very careful. You couldn't go there, if you were a Light Path Elemental.

She could have, if she had known how to get her imagination to move her awareness into the Plane of Earth, because humans were uniquely able to move among all the Planes. But she wouldn't have been comfortable there, because it wasn't her Element, either.

Imagination. That was the key. Whatever she could imagine, if she could do it well enough, and believe in it, she could see.

Intellect ruled the Middle Earth, which lay between the Spheres of the Light Path and the Spheres of the Dark. It reflected both, though the balance shifted as affairs in the Middle Earth itself shifted, and as the balance of power between the Light Path Spheres and the Dark Path Spheres shifted.

Those who subscribed only to Intellect could never move beyond the Middle Earth. But those who explored Imagination and Intuition found the way into the other Spheres open to them.

And once you learned the symbolic logic of those other Spheres, you knew how to manipulate your magic, and how to counter the magic of other Elements than your own. Now, that meant that Eleanor would have a fighting chance of undoing what Alison had done to her, even if she wasn't as strong a magician as Alison. It didn't take a hammer to crack a nut; a little pressure applied at the right place would split it open. What was more, Eleanor had a shrewd hunch that Alison's spells only worked against her on this Plane. Once she learned how to move among the Planes, she could travel them relatively unhindered.

Once I learn to move among the Planes, once I really understand the Plane of Earth magic, I will find the key to break her spells! She knew that; it made perfect sense. Knowledge and understanding, not force, were going to be the keys to her shackles.

Перейти на страницу:

Все книги серии the elemental masters

Phoenix and Ashes
Phoenix and Ashes

Elanor Robinson's life had shattered when Father volunteered for the Great War, leaving her alone with a woman he had just married. Then the letter had come that told of her father's death in the trenches and though Eleanor thought things couldn't get any worse, her life took an even more bizarre turn.Dragged to the hearth by her stepmother Alison, Eleanor was forced to endure a painful and frightening ritual during which the smallest finger of her left had was severed and buried beneath a hearthstone. For her stepmother was an Elemental Master of Earth who practiced the darker blood-fueled arts. Alison had bound Eleanor to the hearth with a spell that prevented her from leaving home, caused her to fade from people's memories, and made her into a virtual slave. Months faded into years for Eleanor, and still the war raged. There were times she felt she was losing her mind - times she seemed to see faces in the hearth fire.Reginald Fenyx was a pilot. He lived to fly, and whenever he returned home on break from Oxford, the youngsters of the town would turn out to see him lift his aeroplan - a frail ship of canvas and sticks - into the sky and soar through the clouds.During the war Reggie had become an acclaimed air ace, for he was an Elemental Master of Air. His Air Elementals had protected him until the fateful day when he had met another of his kind aloft, and nearly died. When he returned home, Reggie was a broken man plagued by shell shock, his Elemental powers vanished.Eleanor and Reginald were two souls scourged by war and evil magic. Could they find the strength to help one another rise from the ashes of their destruction?

Мерседес Лэки

Фэнтези

Похожие книги

Неудержимый. Книга I
Неудержимый. Книга I

Несколько часов назад я был одним из лучших убийц на планете. Мой рейтинг среди коллег был на недосягаемом для простых смертных уровне, а силы практически безграничны. Мировая элита стояла в очереди за моими услугами и замирала в страхе, когда я выбирал чужой заказ. Они правильно делали, ведь в этом заказе мог оказаться любой из них.Чёрт! Поверить не могу, что я так нелепо сдох! Что же случилось? В моей памяти не нашлось ничего, что бы могло объяснить мою смерть. Благо судьба подарила мне второй шанс в теле юного барона. Я должен восстановить свою силу и вернуться назад! Вот только есть одна небольшая проблемка… как это сделать? Если я самый слабый ученик в интернате для одарённых детей?Примечания автора:Друзья, ваши лайки и комментарии придают мне заряд бодрости на весь день. Спасибо!ОСТОРОЖНО! В КНИГЕ ПРИСУТСТВУЮТ АРТЫ!ВТОРАЯ КНИГА ЗДЕСЬ — https://author.today/reader/279048

Андрей Боярский

Попаданцы / Фэнтези / Бояръ-Аниме