But he was young, and his father had most likely seen more of the worlds, she reasoned.
“Yes, but there is as much wonder as danger in the worlds,” Baluka told her. “I have always longed to explore beyond those of our cycle, but it is forbidden. Traveller families would grow weak in magical ability if they kept losing their strongest offspring to wanderlust.” Then she caught a deeper kernel of knowledge. They did, occasionally, take in outsiders if it would strengthen their magical bloodlines.
“Let’s keep your options open,” he said. “Perhaps we should start by testing your strength,” he told her. “There’s no point you attempting to learn anything if you don’t have the strength for it.”
She nodded. “By strength you mean how far I can reach to draw in magic, right?” she asked, thinking about how Inekera had urged her to reach to the limit of her world. Baluka’s gaze sharpened with interest.
“Yes. Reach out but don’t take any magic. I will be able to see in your mind how far you manage to stretch.”
Closing her eyes, she extended her will. As she stretched outwards she marvelled at the sheer quantity of magic she was sensing. If her own world had been a desert and magic was water, then this one was more than a jungle. It was an ocean.
“In all the worlds…” Baluka whispered, then let out a tight, short laugh. At the odd noise she looked at him closely, worried that something was wrong. He didn’t meet her eyes.
“Enough?”
“Yes. Plenty.” It’s almost frightening how much strength she has, he was thinking. That only makes it more of a waste if she won’t use it.
“So I’m stronger than you?” she guessed.
He nodded as he met her gaze. “You’re the strongest sorcerer I’ve ever met.” He shrugged. “That I know of, of course. It’s not as if sorcerers compare abilities every time they meet. I could have met someone stronger and not known it.”
Rielle looked away. To be told she was magically strong was like being told she was beautiful. It appeased her vanity in a vague and purposeless way, yet to use either for personal advantage was wrong.
So was returning to her world using it for personal advantage? Of course it was. But if Lejikh was right, if she stayed outside her world she might still need to use magic for her own survival.
How was that different to letting Betzi teach her how to defend herself? So long as she only used magic for self-defence it was not forbidden. If she had to return to her world for her own safety, then that was self-defence.
Baluka was fighting not to smile at her thoughts. She drew in a deep breath. “So what next?”
“Working out how to push yourself into the place between worlds is the hardest part, so we usually start by taking a novice there and letting them work out how to hold themselves in place. So… take a deep breath and some magic and we’ll begin.”
She obeyed, and linked hands with him again. Their surroundings faded a little.
“I’ll stop resisting the pull to this world now,” Baluka told her. “See if you can take over.”
At once she sensed the pull. Baluka had called it gravity. To resist normal gravity she would normally hang on to something. But there was nothing to take hold of. Moist air surrounded her and she realised they had arrived again.
Baluka shook his head. “There is nothing physical, in a normal sense, in the space between. Seek an awareness of the world you are being pulled towards, not the pull itself, and try to push against it.” He smiled. “Ready?”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
He took her a little further out of the world this time. The pulling was weaker. She sought the world they had left, but felt nothing but the pull. Unless… she stretched out as she had when reaching to the limits of magic in a world. A world was a big thing. Something in her mind shifted as her perception changed, and suddenly she understood that the pull was the world.
How to push against it? She could not seize a whole world and still it. The pull was growing stronger as it drew them closer. Whatever she was supposed to do involved magic, but nothing physical. In desperation she sent out magic, but it simply drained out of her, unused. Shadows sharpened into land and the peculiar sky, and she was able to breathe again.
They tried again, and again. When she failed a fifth time, Baluka let go of her hands and paced a little, thinking. “Perhaps this is harder for you because you’ve not learned to use magic at all. Of course! You have hardly ever tried to shape it and you probably didn’t know what you were doing when you did.” He frowned, then returned to her. “Let’s try this one more time. All I can suggest now is just do what feels natural. Work on instinct alone.”