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a great height. She placed her palm over the bowl, closed her eyes, then took her palm away. The bowl held just normal well water again, clear and untroubled. The magicker stood up. He looked ready to laugh out loud.
    “One more test,” he told her in his gentle voice, and pointed above his head. Without any control over her own actions she looked up, and even though it was a clear day she saw a group of stars set against the blue sky. She stared at them for a long time before anything happened, but then they started to whirl about a central point, like dancers around a spring tree. Some of the entourage clapped at the performance. Jenrosa pointed at the stars and they blazed briefly in a glorious light and then disappeared.
    “What is your name?” the magicker asked again, but before she could reply, her mother appeared, curious about the eruption of noise on the street. When her mother saw the magicker, she took a step back into the house.
    “I hope my daughter’s done nothing to offend you, sir?” she asked in a whining voice.
    The magicker shook his head. “What is her name?”
    “Jenrosa.”
    “Jenrosa is to come with me.”
    Her mother considered the words for a moment, and then a smile creased her face. “That would come with a fee, sir?”
    The magicker nodded. “Of course. You will receive an annual award as determined by the queen. What is her family name?”
    “My husband is dead, sir, and so she inherits mine. Alucar.”
    Jenrosa tried to let go of the memory, and returned her attention to her beer, but not before acknowledging with some bitterness that her name was the only thing her mother had ever given her, and she would do anything to avoid returning to her.
    And what if there were contradictions in her studies? she asked herself. Magic itself was a contradiction, a way of viewing and manipulating the world that broached common sense and was out of reach of the vast majority of people. Some were lucky enough to be born with the ability to take advantage of that contradiction, to influence the way clouds formed and rain fell, or the way metal changed in a furnace, or the way water ran down a hill, or the way crops grew.
    Or the way the stars influenced the lives of all the mere mortals trudging the common earth beneath their gaze. Maybe.
    Jenrosa shook her head. She knew all the other theurgia—those of Air, Fire, Water and Earth—performed real magic, but she was yet to discover anything magical at all about the stars. Or rather, she had not learned a single magical thing. What she did know was what she had picked up from observation, and from questioning sailors in taverns just like the one she was now outside. She knew that if you kept the prow of a ship in line with the star Leurtas, the last point of the constellation known as the Bow Wave, you would eventually reach the pack ice that lay far south of Theare; or, conversely, if you kept the constellation dead on the stem, you would head north into the Sea Between, eventually hitting the reefs and shoals that guarded the waters around Haxus. She knew that all the constellations spun around the very point of Leurtas, moving in a slow graceful dance, and that, as you sailed north, new constellations came into view even as the familiar ones disappeared behind you. And yet, as far as anyone in the Theurgia of Stars knew, there was no formula, no sign, that could make the stars bend to human will or human desire. Jenrosa knew there had been great sages in the past who could use the stars to predict momentous events, but the last of those had died decades ago, and no one alive today could replicate their achievements, although many within the theurgia tried. As far as Jenrosa could tell, the real stars obeyed only their own rules. She sighed heavily and finished off her beer. Despite her misgivings, if she wished eventually to earn her own keep, to gain even a modest independence, she would have to keep her doubts to herself and