a
rectangular prism and held it out to me.
When I didn’t take it immediately she said,
“Your shields are in place now. It won’t affect you as before.”
I hadn’t even felt my third eyelids descend,
but there they were, casting the room into soothing shadow.
Swallowing my gorge and clamping my lips tight against the rising
nausea, I forced myself to hold the new prism up to the light. When
the spectrum unfolded onto my eyes, whatever had switched on inside
my head was showing me images I had never seen before, lines and
patterns beyond the visible. I recognized it from biology classes
and nature holograms: ultra-violet, infrared; the way insects and
birds and fishes see.
Lady Ertegun stood beside me, positioning my
hand with the prism as I looked at the world through new eyes. In
what felt like a dream, I brought distant objects into close focus
and projected near objects to the outer edges of space. I perceived
the world as a speck of rock orbiting a flaming ball of gas, and
enlarged the microscopic creatures inhabiting our eyelashes into
lumbering mammoths. Not good. I tilted my head back to examine the
walls of the Sanctum. The individual molecules of the granite,
locked in their rigid chemical structure, were revealed to me, as
readable as color and form. If I had wanted to, I could have taken
the stones apart cube by cube, brought down the entire room without
disturbing so much as a grain of sand.
“Very nice,” Lady Ertegun said. She snapped
her fingers in my face, breaking my concentration. “Please don’t
get carried away. I want you to try something simple.”
Coached by the sibyl, copying each step as
she performed it, I lifted and moved small objects through
telekinesis, and observed and analyzed the composition of various
substances. It is a betrayal of trust to disclose the particulars
of a
crypta
test; no two tests are exactly alike, as no
two people have the same abilities. Some can barely form communion;
others are adept at things I will never master, like teleportation
or clairvoyance. My gift is primarily physical. Untrained, and
coming to it late in life, I did nothing now that the ‘Graven
Assembly had not seen before.
For my last task, Lady Ertegun produced a
lamp consisting of a wick in a shallow bowl of oil. “Light the lamp
without touching it,” she said.
I was momentarily flummoxed, my mind spinning
in a void, unsettled by the expectant audience and the archaic
object. I stood stupidly, my left arm, tired from being raised
above my head, slowly drooping. The light from the window, no
longer splayed by the prism into a rainbow, fell in its ordinary
white form across the worn boards of the wooden dais. One ray hit
my foot, warming it through the vinyl of my boot. So obvious to
every child that’s incinerated ants with a magnifying glass. I held
the prism in the narrowest of angles, directing a concentrated beam
of light—and heat—at the exposed end of wick until it caught fire
with a whoosh and a high flame, then settled into a steady
burn.
I looked up triumphantly, my focus returning
to the larger world of human beings, of solid matter and emotion.
My hand closed tightly around the prism, locking its dangerous
separation of light beams behind the safety of darkness.
Lady Ertegun shook her head. “No. That’s
simple mechanics—you did not use your gift.” She studied me
internally for a few moments, before concluding I had no other
ideas and she might as well disclose the answer. “The usual way is
with the
inner flame
.”
“Be fair,” a young man wearing the uniform of
a junior officer in the Royal Guards protested from farther along
the front row. “How could Ms. Herzog know about the inner flame?”
Lord Roger Zichmni, the Viceroy’s grandson and heir, was the only
person here besides the Viceroy himself who could contradict the
Sibyl of La Sapienza.
Lady Ertegun bowed her head slightly. “Lord
Roger,” she said, “this is strange for all of us. I am being
rectangular prism and held it out to me.
When I didn’t take it immediately she said,
“Your shields are in place now. It won’t affect you as before.”
I hadn’t even felt my third eyelids descend,
but there they were, casting the room into soothing shadow.
Swallowing my gorge and clamping my lips tight against the rising
nausea, I forced myself to hold the new prism up to the light. When
the spectrum unfolded onto my eyes, whatever had switched on inside
my head was showing me images I had never seen before, lines and
patterns beyond the visible. I recognized it from biology classes
and nature holograms: ultra-violet, infrared; the way insects and
birds and fishes see.
Lady Ertegun stood beside me, positioning my
hand with the prism as I looked at the world through new eyes. In
what felt like a dream, I brought distant objects into close focus
and projected near objects to the outer edges of space. I perceived
the world as a speck of rock orbiting a flaming ball of gas, and
enlarged the microscopic creatures inhabiting our eyelashes into
lumbering mammoths. Not good. I tilted my head back to examine the
walls of the Sanctum. The individual molecules of the granite,
locked in their rigid chemical structure, were revealed to me, as
readable as color and form. If I had wanted to, I could have taken
the stones apart cube by cube, brought down the entire room without
disturbing so much as a grain of sand.
“Very nice,” Lady Ertegun said. She snapped
her fingers in my face, breaking my concentration. “Please don’t
get carried away. I want you to try something simple.”
Coached by the sibyl, copying each step as
she performed it, I lifted and moved small objects through
telekinesis, and observed and analyzed the composition of various
substances. It is a betrayal of trust to disclose the particulars
of a
crypta
test; no two tests are exactly alike, as no
two people have the same abilities. Some can barely form communion;
others are adept at things I will never master, like teleportation
or clairvoyance. My gift is primarily physical. Untrained, and
coming to it late in life, I did nothing now that the ‘Graven
Assembly had not seen before.
For my last task, Lady Ertegun produced a
lamp consisting of a wick in a shallow bowl of oil. “Light the lamp
without touching it,” she said.
I was momentarily flummoxed, my mind spinning
in a void, unsettled by the expectant audience and the archaic
object. I stood stupidly, my left arm, tired from being raised
above my head, slowly drooping. The light from the window, no
longer splayed by the prism into a rainbow, fell in its ordinary
white form across the worn boards of the wooden dais. One ray hit
my foot, warming it through the vinyl of my boot. So obvious to
every child that’s incinerated ants with a magnifying glass. I held
the prism in the narrowest of angles, directing a concentrated beam
of light—and heat—at the exposed end of wick until it caught fire
with a whoosh and a high flame, then settled into a steady
burn.
I looked up triumphantly, my focus returning
to the larger world of human beings, of solid matter and emotion.
My hand closed tightly around the prism, locking its dangerous
separation of light beams behind the safety of darkness.
Lady Ertegun shook her head. “No. That’s
simple mechanics—you did not use your gift.” She studied me
internally for a few moments, before concluding I had no other
ideas and she might as well disclose the answer. “The usual way is
with the
inner flame
.”
“Be fair,” a young man wearing the uniform of
a junior officer in the Royal Guards protested from farther along
the front row. “How could Ms. Herzog know about the inner flame?”
Lord Roger Zichmni, the Viceroy’s grandson and heir, was the only
person here besides the Viceroy himself who could contradict the
Sibyl of La Sapienza.
Lady Ertegun bowed her head slightly. “Lord
Roger,” she said, “this is strange for all of us. I am being
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