Read Online Pathspace: The Space of Paths by Matthew Kennedy - Free Book Online

hand reached out to stroke the side of
the coin. A reddish mote of light appeared in the air above the
coin and grew in intensity as he stroked the edge of the coin
clockwise, until it was a hot point of blue-white radiance. “What
I've done,” he said, it to affect a change in the space near the
metal that makes it able to concentrate free energy to a point. It
releases heat and light without needing to burn wood or oil, and
you can turn the power, the rate at which energy is released into
3-space, up or down by stroking the side. It's just like the one
your mother uses to cook back at the inn in Inverness.”
    Les supposed he ought to be impressed, but
he was used to seeing the everflame back home. “And how would this
make it more useful out in the wilderness?” he challenged. “I'd
still have no food or water.”
    “No,” Xander agreed. “But you could use this
to stay warm and keep wolves away. A simple coin couldn't do that.”
He drew for a handful of something from the little pouch and
sprinkled it on the surface of the water. It appeared to be dried
leaves of some kind. Gradually, they began to soak up the water,
and waterlogged, to sink down into the warming liquid as he
continued to speak.
    “Do you remember the trick with the
soup?”
    “The what?” Les looked up from the water to
the wizard's eyes, but the old man was still intent on the
submerging fragments.
    “When we first met, you wanted to know how I
did it. It was in the nature of a test, you know. I'd sensed that
someone with the potential to learn magic was in that village.”
    Lester's brow compressed. “A soup test?” But
he remembered now. The bits of cracker had been drifting around the
soup. No, he thought. Not just drifting. They were circling, and
going in opposite directions. At the time it had seemed
strange.
    “Most people are too caught up in the eddies
of fate, too absorbed in their own muddled lives to notice the
truly peculiar, even when it is right in front of them,” said
Xander. “We are every day, all of us, surrounded by wonders our
entire lives. Sunlight lifts water into clouds that snow upon the
distant hills, so rivers don't run out of water. Most life slows to
a tiny pace in winter, only to explode into growth again in the
Spring in time to save us from starving. We walk on sand that used
to be mountains. And most of us are blind to such mysteries. To
wonders. But to become a wizard, you must not be blind to
them.”
    Les quirked a smile. “You're saying the
reason I'm here is because I wasn't blind to the wonder of circling
soup crackers?”
    “In times not long from now,” the wizard
predicted, “you will remember that the course of your life was
changed forever by two bits of cracker in a bowl of soup.”
    “Whatever,” said Les. “So how did you
do do it?”
    “With magic,” thee old man answered. “Not
the sort from storybooks, with flaming swords and summoned demons.
The magic of psionics, the effect of the mind upon space.”
    Now Les frowned. “You mean, on the crackers.
There's nothing to affect in space. It's empty, or else we couldn't
move through it.”
    “I mean what I say. I affected the space
around them, and the crackers just followed where the space wanted
them to go. I call it pathspace . I don't know what the
Tourists called it. I didn't push the crackers. I set up the paths
that they followed.”
    “But how? How did you do it? Now he found
that he really did want to know. The old man said he had the
seeds of greatness in him. Him! Useless Lester! Could it be true?
Could he ignore the chance? Father , he prayed, help me
become what is required to avenge you .
    “Your mind,” said Xander, “is mapped onto
the world. Projected upon it. Written upon it. While we live, while
we live in this space, we are affected by it. We can perceive
events that take place within it, aided by our senses born of flesh
and wired to our very souls. And this goes both ways. We are
affected, AND we can