As she moved here and there, tweaking this and correcting that, a sense of her overall state grew until she began to fix damaged areas before Dahli alerted her to them. As she did, a sense of well-being spread through her body.
“Stop for now,” Dahli interrupted. “That is enough. We must move on to the second part of the process. You must gain an awareness of your whole body, in its entirety. Start with a part of it. Refine your knowledge of that part by examining the details. Try to hold on to your awareness of those as well. When you have, take in another part, and another.”
She obeyed, focusing on her foot. It did not take long before her understanding of one part of it slipped away as she tried to incorporate another. She returned to the first only to lose the second.
Dahli chuckled at her frustration. “You see? There is too much for an ordinary mind to grasp. But you can, if you use magic to make your mind capable of it. It will take a great deal of magic, so don’t use it sparingly–and don’t worry about depleting the magic of this world as there is plenty here.”
As when she had enhanced her awareness of her leg muscle at the beginning, now she willed her mind to improve its ability to grasp more and more of her body’s pattern. Her awareness slowly expanded, but soon its growth began to slow.
“You have reached your body’s limit,” Dahli told her. “Your mind can only be enhanced beyond this by turning the rest of your body to the task, and that would be a mistake since without organs such as the lungs and stomach your mind would soon die. So instead of using bodily matter, use magic. Bring it close around you. Imprint it with your living consciousness.”
He wanted her to use magic to think. Holding that information in her thoughts, she reached for more magic. Her perception shifted. Suddenly she was more than the physical vessel she existed in. She began to understand a great deal about it that she hadn’t before. Dahli did not tell her to stop, so she continued expanding her awareness until there was nothing more of her self to grasp.
In that state, she knew that her mind was just another physical system. Everything she was, was made of meat and sinew and bones and liquid.
This is me, she thought. It was humbling, disappointing and a little frightening. I feel like more than this. More than a pile of body parts. Somehow this collection of basic elements combined and interacted to form emotion and intelligence and creativity and morality.
And where, in all this, is my soul?
Perhaps it made sense that she had not found it. The soul was a non-physical thing. A non-magical thing, too. It would have been nice to see proof of its existence and know what state it was in. To see if it was stained, as the priests of her world believed.
“Make the change,” Dahli murmured.
Her attention snapped back to the task. She saw that while she could not keep this awareness of her body without using a great deal of magic, a few physical alterations would allow her to unconsciously maintain its current altered state. This holding of pattern took the tiniest bit of magic, compared to what she’d needed to grasp how to do it.
In moments it was done. The solution was so simple and so quick that she hovered there in that state of awareness, a little scared that she had got it wrong.
“You have done it,” Dahli said. “You are now ageless.”
She opened her eyes and stared at Dahli in astonishment.
“I really did it? After all the trouble I’ve had learning everything else?”
“Yes.”
She paused to relish the simple pleasure of success. Why had she learned pattern shifting so easily, when she had been so bad at everything else?
“How long have I been here?”
Dahli smiled. “Ninety-four days.”
Her satisfaction evaporated. “That long?”
He chuckled. “It usually takes much longer. Sometimes more than a cycle. Pattern shifting requires a teacher with plenty of time on his hands.” His smile was a touch smug, and she remembered he’d never taught pattern shifting before. “Welcome to the ranks of the ageless.”
That sent a shiver down her spine. He had given her–trusted her with–a rare and powerful knowledge.
“Thank you.”
Extending his legs, he stretched them. “It is Valhan you should thank.”
Valhan. Who had been ageless for over a thousand cycles. Would she live that long? Were some other ageless that old, or had all but Valhan died, either from accidents or at the hands of others–or perhaps some had simply grown tired of living and arranged their own deaths.
Dahli started to get up. “Though before you can thank him we have a long walk back to the palace,” he added. “So we had best make a start.”
CHAPTER 21
“I’ve not felt a vibration since I’ve been down here,” Rielle said as they began walking. “Is that because we are so far from the palace?”
“Yes.” The crease between Dahli’s brows deepened.
“Surely he’d skim here to find you, if he needed you.”
He gave her a direct and accusing look.