Heart of the Exiled Read Online Free PDF

asking for guidance from whatever spirits might be watching over the circle, he let it continue a little longer, then inhaled and released the contact.
    “Good. Resume your seats, please.”
    He picked up a quiver of arrows and withdrew one, holding it before him. “These arrows represent an exercise in focus-building. You have all done this sort of work before; the difference is that now we must do it quickly. There will be hundreds of guardians to equip. Help has been requested, but for now it falls to us to bless as many items as we can in as short a time as possible.
    “I caution you that though the work must be done swiftly it must yet be done thoroughly. This hall has never produced inferior work, and we shall not begin now.”
    The mages nodded agreement. Rephanin distributed the arrows, one to each. Greenglen colors marked the shafts, the fletchings were white, and the points new-made bronze.
    As he handed one to Heléri he felt a whisper of her khi along the shaft until it left his fingers. She glanced up at him, smiling softly in a way that woke several distracting memories. He returned to his worktable, setting the quiver down as he kept one arrow in hand.
    “The qualities to be focused are trueness, accuracy in flight, and penetration of the point. The denser the material, the more attention is required, so the metalpoint will require the greatest effort. Lay the khi
into
the arrow’s fibre. A laying on of khi is not sufficient.
    “Remember always to draw on prime khi. Do not use your own khi. And do not let the point of a weapon aim at anyone else in the chamber. Questions?”
    Several of the mages were already preparing to work, aiming their arrows toward the fire, a good source of prime khi, especially for work with fire-forged weaponry. Rephanin moved away from the hearth to a table on which stood a timekeeper—a basin of water and several metal bowls. Selecting the smallest, he held it above the water in which it would float, slowly filling through a tiny hole in its base until it sank.
    “You will have one cycle to complete the focus. Begin.”
    Releasing the bowl, Rephanin seated himself and turned his attention away from the surprised shifting of some in the circle. One cycle was little enough time; a quiver of arrows could take as much as half a day, though they were all blessed at once, not individually.
    The arrow lay across his palms. Gazing at it with half-lidded eyes, he was briefly aware of small sounds in the chamber, then slipped past them to the place of calm from which he performed focus work. The sounds were still there—if he gave them his attention he would perceive them—but he kept his concentration on the arrow.
    First he explored the faint echoes of khi within it: the life of the wood, that of the bird whose feathers had become the fletching, the fiery shaping of the bronze tip and the honing of its point. Rephanin decided to lay in this section of the focus first.
    Closing his eyes, he shifted his awareness to the khiwithin the chamber—a sparkling vivid cloud of energy swirling about the working mages—then beyond to prime khi, which pervaded all things. Khi moved fastest through air, so it was from air that he drew it and focused it within himself before directing it through his hands into the arrow.
    Sharpness, strength, penetration. These qualities he held in his mind and laid into the dense fibre of the point. His perception narrowed to the tiny inner structure of the bronze—orderly for the most part, with some imperfections—and he set khi flowing through the pathways of this structure. Occasionally he would correct a flaw in the crystalline form of the metal, but he passed by all but the worst defects.
    He moved on to the arrow’s shaft, laying in trueness, strength, flexibility to withstand the shock of impact. Working through the lighter fibre of the wood was easier, though the material was also less well organized. Again he left most flaws alone.
    Lastly, he