Page 12 of Twisted Magic

Liat raised a placid brow. “Did you have something else to do with your time?”

She wanted him to admit that no, he had nothing at all better to do, a humiliating fact in its own right. “Yes,” he snapped. “I could be getting an actual MP scorecard—something you continue to withhold from me—so I could become a legitimate Convocation citizen and obtain gainful employment to support myself and my familiar.”

“You already have gainful employment,” she replied, “at House Phel. You could both return there and be welcomed.”

“Yeah, and go down with that sinking ship,” he muttered ungraciously. “No, thank you. I’ll try my luck elsewhere.”

“You’ve been offered a place here at House Refoel,” she continued placidly. “If you master your healing gifts, you would be a tremendous asset.”

“And if wishes were ponies, we’d all have purple ones that sparkle.”

Liat gave him one last simmeringly patient look. Jadren had the impression she restrained a heavy sigh and congratulated himself for managing to stretch her eternal serenity to the breaking point. Then Liat withdrew something from a pocket inside her sleeve. She held it up so the official seal showed on the back and he stared at it, afraid to hope, unable to stop himself. “Is that—” he asked and broke off, suddenly too numb to move.

“Your MP scorecard, yes.”

“How…”

“One of our in-house Hanneil wizards had some free time in their schedule the other day, so they were able to use their oracle head to assess you while we were in a training session.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

Liat didn’t so much as blink at his accusing tone. “We did not. With the way your unusual manifestation eludes conscious control, we thought we might obtain a more accurate reading when you were unaware of the testing.”

Yes, his thinking always got in the way. That was fair. Still… “But you didn’t tell me you have an MP scorecard for me.” His fingers itched with the craving to grab the thing. So close.

“Correct. I’m telling you now.” She didn’t exactly pull it back as he reached for it, but she did raise her brows. “You might temper your expectations.”

He snatched it from her, beyond annoyed with Liat and her sympathy, and scanned the card with what he had to acknowledge was excited anticipation. Then frowned, trying to make sense of the scores. His MP scorecard looked like any other he’d seen, all officially official, with its neat march of columns and rows. Along the top, the major categories of magic headed the columns, then the long rows indicated the subgroups. With an amused smirk, he noted that water and moon magic had been added to the major categories, where they’d been only occasionally listed as subgroups in the past. All due to Phel’s re-emergence on the magical scene.

In the cross-section, the numerical scores indicated his potential in that category and subgroup. As expected for an El-Adrel, he had decent scores under Kinetic Magic and the various subgroups that applied to his family ability to make enchanted artifacts. He also demonstrated a scattering of adequacy at the magics that allowed him to establish wards and other basics of wizardry. It would have been odd if he didn’t, those were so common. Under the major category of Healing Magic, however, his scores were all below three—essentially nothing. Barely more than a non-magical commoner might have.

“This makes no sense,” he said, squinting at the numbers as if they might come into focus and be more meaningful. “You all said you sensed healing magic in me, an extraordinary amount.” But it’s perverted, Chaim had added. Twisted in upon itself.

Liat let out that heavy sigh she’d been so heroically restraining. She finally sat on the low couch with the angled head at one end to accommodate treating both physical injuries and craziness. Patting the flat space beside her, she regarded him gravely. “Sit with me, Jadren.”

No “Lord Jadren” now. He didn’t want to sit. He wanted to pace and rail and scream the injustice to the uncaring sky. But, apparently, if he also wanted her to explain this meaningless morass of his magical potential, he would have to pretend to be calm. Plopping himself beside the healer, he held out the card. “I’m agog to hear your explanation.”

She shook her head, looking almost weary. “I don’t have one. None of us do.”

How delightful to contemplate the lot of them debating his worthlessness. He could just imagine Chaim’s pithy observations.

“Is there a mistake? An error in the reading?” He realized how foolish that was as he asked it. Oracle heads didn’t make mistakes. They were infallible.

Liat huffed out a humorless laugh. “We wondered the same, honestly. Which is why our Hanneil wizard took the reading on three separate occasions. They all came out like this.” She flapped a hand at the scorecard.

“But this shows I have no magical potential in healing.”

“Don’t we know it.” She gave him a half smile. “Whatever allows you to heal yourself, and to channel that magic through the device—to heal or destroy—it isn’t healing magic.”

“Then what is it?” He asked the question helplessly, knowing Liat had no more answer for him than he did.

She held up her hands, palms to the sky. “Who knows? You’re likely something totally new and we’ll be creating a column on the scorecard in your honor next.”

Something totally new. A created monster, produced by his mother’s wiles and malicious experiments. How pleased she would be by the accomplishment. She’d turned out to be a genius after all, however mad. He glumly turned the card in his fingers. The scores it displayed in the standard magics wouldn’t get him a job as anything more than a minor minion in a third-tier house. That would be no life for Seliah. “Why did you keep pushing me to learn healing magic if you knew I didn’t have any?” he asked dully.

“Because you demonstrably can heal!” Liat burst out. “Whatever your magic is, you are able to heal. You can bring yourself and others back from the dead.”

“Not quite fully dead,” he corrected automatically.

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