Aethersmith (Book 2) Read Free Page B

to strengthen his powers with the
spirit world, and Gahalu knew why that was important to Kyrus.
    Kyrus had explained that, with enough power, he could make
himself disappear from Denku Appa and appear in his homeland of Acardia. There
was a girl there, in Scar Harbor, that he missed very much, and he wished to
return to her. He was too polite to shun Tippu and Kahli, and was smart enough
to know that if he did, more would come after him, but he did not want them.
Surely he had fallen prey to their charms—the two girls were not shy at all
about their victories when speaking to the other Denku women—but he always
seemed shamed by it after.
    The Scar Harbor girl was like a shark, Gahalu thought: she
had sunk her teeth into Kyrus, and he was not able to swim free of her. Gahalu
found himself thinking like the elder that his grey hairs said he was becoming,
meddling in the loves of the young. For all their inane chatter, he wished the
two girls well in their quest to win Kyrus’s heart. He did not want to see his
friend go.
    * * * * * * * *
    I had expected this to be harder , Kyrus thought.
    He was holding back a wall of water ten feet high and
hundreds of feet long. He had struggled at first to get the wall shaped
properly. It had to be wider than usual, and therefore could not be as far out
to sea as he would have liked. He had abandoned his usual tactic of standing at
the center of the arced wall, and instead stood close to it. With how long the
wall needed to be to protect the village, to center it at the water’s edge
would have pushed it so far out that it would have had to be thrice the height
and bear a much greater weight of water. As it was, Kyrus was hardly noticing
the effort now that he had it stable.
    Aether in, aether out .
    Kyrus was drawing a small, constant flow of aether to keep
up the spell. Aether was fortunately a resource in abundance on the island.
Many of the native species produced admirable amounts of the stuff, and the sea
life inhabited the area in such vast numbers that the supply seemed
inexhaustible. With few sorcerers in his own world, the aether seemed to be all
his for the taking. In his counterpart’s world, sorcerers were common enough
that such vast seas of aether were unheard of.
    Kyrus knew that he ought to have felt like a mighty wizard
of the fairy stories, but he knew the trick now. It was still wondrous, but he
suspected that any sorcerer from Kadrin, brought into his world, would be able
to manage much the same with the ready supply of aether at hand. More than
that, though, with the more challenging effort of creating and stabilizing the
wall now past, it was growing boring. Storms were not momentary things by and
large, and this one had already been raging for hours. His feet were aching,
and his back was growing sore from standing so long in one place.
    Kyrus knew that he could sit down in the mud, or even
recline, and still hold the wall intact just as well. He also knew that there
were a dozen or more Denku who had trusted him enough to come out as close as
the tree line to watch. Among them were all his closest friends on the island,
as well as Tippu and Kahli. As much as their advances exasperated him, he did
not wish to diminish himself in their eyes. A primal, primitive part of his
brain insisted that the affection of pretty girls was important—and not to be
jeopardized by sore feet or boredom.
    * * * * * * * *
    Kyrus took his midday meal at his post, holding back the
storm sea. He had grown accustomed enough to the light work of holding the
aether-formed wall in place that he felt safe performing other magics while he
held it. He had chosen from among the multitudes of fish arrayed before him
like a child’s fishbowl, and plucked the Source from a tasty-looking specimen.
Flat and tall, the green-and-yellow striped fish was shaped like the paddles
the Denku used for their fishing boats, and as long as Kyrus’s forearm. Gone
limp as its life’s essence was cleanly