A Practical Guide to Sorcery (Books 1 & 2)

Chapter 61 - To Slumber but not Rest (Part 3)

Miles shook his head, but paused with his mouth open, suddenly hesitant. The silence drew on.

"You're a little afraid?" she guessed. "Because of your visions and everything they've done to try and fix them?" She gestured to Lynwood and the boy's mother, who were both watching them intently from across the room. "Which hasn't been so pleasant, and sometimes, has been quite torturous." She herself had taken a couple years off practicing magic after the...incident that led her father to taking over his duties as a parent again.

Miles nodded. "They've been talking about you...whether to call you here or not. They're afraid of you. But they're afraid of what I might do if they don't fix me, too. And I'm dying," he said matter-of-factly.

"Tonight will not hurt," she said. "And it will not be frightening, either. At the very worst, nothing will change and you will wake up as soon as your visions slip through. But if things go well, you will wake up in the morning feeling better than you have in a long time. To make sure you can fall asleep, I want to try something."

"Okay," he said in a small voice.

She knew that sometimes when she was exhausted beyond all reason, it actually became harder to fall asleep. "I'll need you to sit in my lap, with your back against my chest."

Slowly, awkwardly, he moved to climb into the scoop of her crossed legs. His small body was cold and faintly trembling, either from the chill or sheer exhaustion.

She reached her arms around him, touching her middle fingers to her thumbs, with the large black Conduit gripped to her palm by her pinky and ring finger, a little awkwardly. She pressed her hands against his sternum.

Miles copied her.

She took a deep breath and let it out with a low hum, like Newton had showed her.

As soon as Miles caught on to her rhythm, she began to cast the esoteric calming spell on the both of them. The spell wasn't meant to work on someone else, but with him being so small and close, and going along with all the prerequisites except for actually casting himself, it wasn't that hard to bend the magic in this way.

A few minutes later, Miles was slouching against her limply, his eyes closed and on the brink of sleep, the only indication that he was still awake being the purring sounds coming out of his throat along with her own deep hum.

She released the magic, settling him back on the bed and drawing a thick blanket over him to hold in some warmth. She sent a servant to fetch a wrapped, hot brick, and then tucked it next to the boy's feet so it could warm him up slowly.

Without further preamble, she announced, "It is time," with what she hoped was sufficient gravitas.

The other thaumaturges quickly moved to stand at equal distances around the outer Circle.

She moved to the head of the bed and, with a finger dipped in herb-infused alcohol, drew a small Circle around the boy's head, straight on the pillow. Aloud, she walked the others through the process as she cast her normal dreamless sleep spell, which would facilitate Miles falling asleep but probably wouldn't keep him that way.

Then she stepped back to the head of the larger Circle drawn on the floor. They would be actively casting through the night for Miles, keeping him asleep, dreamless, and facilitating his body's natural healing process.

She pulled her hood up to cover her face. Her ward remained active, but she reduced the attention and power she was channeling into it. Her mind couldn't handle the split concentration when casting something new like this, even with all the others to provide power and stabilize the spell.

Siobhan was the first to start casting, drawing upon the trio of beast cores sitting within one of the component Circles for power. She channeled it with ease through her new Conduit, as smoothly as the one Lacer had lent her.

The other thaumaturges joined in, one by one.

Siobhan thought she could feel it when Miles fell asleep. Slowly, she increased the amount of energy flowing through her Conduit and the lines of the spell array, drawing on the star-maple for healing and the other components for dreamless sleep. Her companions did the same, till the air thrummed faintly against the hair on her arms and the array began to glow.

At this rate, the boy would have slept for the equivalent of two or three days by the time the sun rose, and without the accompanying problems with pent-up bodily processes that would have normally interrupted such a long rest.

After about half an hour, when she was sure the others had the hang of it and was starting to feel the crush of true fatigue herself, she released her grip on the spell and stepped back. The spell array flared for a moment with inefficiency, and she frowned. 'I was channeling under three hundred thaums, at best. The spell shouldn't have been so strained by my departure.' She looked suspiciously at the others who were still casting.

Lord Lynwood and Gera were standing a few feet away, staring avidly at the sleeping boy. They both turned their attention to Siobhan as she moved toward them.

Gera's scarred, blind eye was weeping, and she bowed deeply before Siobhan could say anything. "I thank you," she choked out.

Siobhan was too tired to go through the long-winded standard niceties. She'd been brewing all day, and after this, she just wanted to collapse into her own bed. "You were lucky that this is my specialty."

"Is it working, then?"

"It seems so. The spell does not force him to remain unconscious, so if his rest were being disturbed by visions, he would wake. You will need to have someone cast this on him every night for the time being. It need not be this large a group after this first time. Millennium will wake rested and will only need maintenance going forward. One or two moderately powerful thaumaturges should be enough. However, none of them are particularly good at this spell, and I doubt a lack of practice is the problem. I have a number of suggestions."

"Speak them," Lynwood said.

"The boy should be trained. Give him physical and mental exercise each day. Exercises that focus on clarity—some call it meditation—could be helpful, if he can master them deeply enough, and he need not actively channel magic to learn that. As for your casters..."

She sneered. "Keep them awake, like the boy has been kept awake. When they are truly desperate for sleep, only then will they understand how the spell is properly cast. When he has rested, they will be able to as well."

Lynwood frowned at them. "I will do as you say, Queen of Ravens." He hesitated, obviously wanting to speak.

She waved an impatient hand at him.

"Might depriving them of rest make them more likely to lose control of the magic? This spell you have designed...is it meant to be cast by someone without your particular advantages?"

She sighed. "If your people are so incompetent that a little fatigue has them miscasting, you should replace them. I hear first term students at your Thaumaturgic University deal with such conditions on a regular basis. This spell is not special. It is not even particularly difficult. It works as it does for me because I know what it is to be desperate for oblivion."

Lynwood and Gera bowed again, said some more words of thanks and praise, and, in a moment when no one was looking at her, Siobhan strengthened the force of her anti-divination ward. Its effects seeped into the physical world so well that she was ignored, even by the prognos, as she left the building.

Outside, she smirked up at the University atop the towering white cliffs to the north of the city, visible by their light crystals twinkling in the dark night like so many stars. She broke one of her bracelets to let Katerin know she could finally stop scrying for her.

'That should fortify the Raven Queen's reputation. What a fruitful evening.'