The Grand Crusade Read Online Free PDF

yourself and collapse.”
    “Because your body produces the energy you use to cast spells?”
    “Exactly.” Kerrigan answered quickly, but realized that he’d given the rote Vilwanese answer. Though he had learned to parrot such things to his tutors, he had secretly questioned the source of magick. The difficulty was that on Vilwan no one believed magick functioned any other way.
    The puppet folded his arms over its chest. “You realize there is a flaw in your description, don’t you?”
    The young man’s brows furrowed. “You think it is obvious. Not to me.”
    “Permit me to show you. If you were to go out and run up and down the mountain here, you would expend a lot of energy, wouldn’t you? You’d feel exhausted.”
    “Of course.”
    “And what else would happen?”
    Kerrigan thought for a second, then patted his stomach with his left hand. “I’d lose some of this.”
    “Exactly, and yet, you, the most powerful magician humanity has known in ages, waged a near-constant thaumaturgical battle at Navval and lost not an ounce. How is that?”
    Kerrigan started to answer, then frowned. “The energy doesn’t come from
    me?“
    The puppet shifted its hands to the small of its back. “It is possible for you to produce energy to work spells, though it should not be used directly to cast them. This is the grand error taught on Vilwan, and you were well instructed on your limitations there because of this presentation. What your masters did not tell you is that while they have studied how much energy a body produces, the simple fact is that even human magickers can use more energy than that.”
    The young man frowned. Rymramoch had informed him that in the days after the time of Kirun, the creator of the DragonCrown, the teaching on Vilwan had changed. Kirun had been from Vilwan and, in order that the nations of the world would not destroy the Vilwanese sorcerers, they chose to hobble their disciples. Because of the threat posed by Chytrine, Kerrigan had been taught forbidden knowledge and spells, progressing well past anyone else on the island. But evenhiseducation was flawed.
    “If what you are saying is true, there is another source of energy.”
    “No, it is the source of magick.” The puppet gestured and the silver sphere flowed like water through Kerrigan’s fingers, then pooled on the floor. “Magick is most easily seen as a river, though it is far more vast and varied. It has currents and eddies, cool flows and hot, fresh, brackish, and stagnant aspects to it. It pervades reality—all realities—in some places being weak and in others very strong. Here it is moderately strong, and just being here one soaks it up, much as cloth will drink in humidity. It is this ethereal moisture that is the extra energy humans wield.”
    “Then why do we become tired, if it is all around?”
    “Why does the man who lives near a river feel thirst?” The puppet laughed easily. “The energy you expend is the energy you use to divert magick into your spells. There are times, Kerrigan, when you have drawn magick into you without thinking, and the energy came effortlessly. It is easier and more likely to happen with Elder magicks, but that you can do it at all marks your intuitive talent for magick.”
    Kerrigan shook his head. “You mean there is no limit to the spells I can cast because I can draw on this river of magick?”
    “I did not say that, and that belief is one that has doomed many a foolish sorcerer.” Rymramoch shook his head. “You have seen rivers. What happens to the stones in them?”
    “They are worn smooth.”
    “They are wornaway‘’With a flick of a finger the puppet commanded the pooled silver to re-form the sphere. ”A dragon may be granite to magick, but you would be sandstone. Plunge yourself in without caution and you shall melt away to mud. Mind you, what youwillbe able to do will be beyond the ken of humanity, and perhaps even the elves and urZrethi. It would even amaze the Oromise, but not me, not dragons.“
    “Oromise?” Kerrigan shook