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. Below, in the basin, the
fires rippled yellow and white. When he scooped up a handfiil and worked
them together as a child might shape a snowball, they became an incandescent
blue. Then he threw it at me.
I sent it past with a simple parry. This was not Art, it was basic
energy work. But it served as a reminder, even as I saw Jasra perform the
preliminary gestures to a dangerous spell purely as a feint, bringing her
near enough to Jurt to trip him, pushing him backward down the stair.
Not Art. Whoever enjoyed the luxury of living near and utilizing a
power source such as this would doubtless get very sloppy as time went on,
only using the basic frames of spells as guides, running rivers of power
through them. One untutored, or extremely lazy, might possibly even dispense
with that much after a time and play directly with the raw forces, a kind of
shamanism, as opposed to the Higher Magic's purity-like that of a balanced
equation-producing a maximum effect from a minimum of effort.
Jasra knew this. I could tell she'd received formal training somewhere
along the line. That much was to the good anyway, I decided as I parried
another ball of fire and moved to my left.
I began descending the stair-sideways-never taking my gaze off Mask. I
was ready to defend or to strike in an instant.
The railing began to glow before me, then it burst into flame
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