man.”
“What is this? What is it? It’s not going to do anything … drastic, is it?”
“It’s an air sprite and it’s checking you out. It’s curious, I don’t think it’s ever been this close to a priest before.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to keep his trembling hands under control. “How does it know I’m a priest?”
“Smell.”
“It smells my priestliness?” His voice took on a ragged edge as he strove to maintain his composure.
The sprite disengaged, whirled around my legs a couple more times and flittered off, whistling its breezy laughter.
“Mike, to a person sensitive to magic, a magus, Elemental magic, all magic, has a … well … smell I guess is the correct word. Every magus experiences those smells differently. When I do a Healing, I smell cinnamon, but another magus might smell antiseptic or chocolate-chip cookies. Elementals have the same kind of sense, but for them it’s much more keen. When it ‘smelled’ you, it said you smelled ‘of the Creator.’ God.”
He stared at me for perhaps five seconds before turning around and walking inside. I hurried to catch up. “What’s wrong?”
Large muscles bunched and unbunched as he threw his arms up in frustration. “What’s wrong? You just whistled up what you told me is an air sprite and that you and it can smell my priestliness! Also, you did magic. Magic . Magic !”
“Saying the word more than once doesn’t make it any less real, man.”
He responded to my sarcasm with a dyspeptic glare. “ Magic , Jude. Not what our lot really believes in or encounters on a day-to-day basis.”
I raised my hands, trying to placate the big man. “ Elemental magic, Mike. Neither good nor evil, it merely is … like the weather. Elementals know of God, they call him the Creator and respect him. It’s man they really don’t care for.”
“Oh, this is heavy,” he muttered, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Elemental magic … creatures outside my ken.” He looked up, face drawn. “Traveling with you sure is interesting.” After a moment, he narrowed his eyes. “How can you see those things?”
Sitting next to him, I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my thighs. “Magi can see what you normal people can’t. It’s part and parcel of the whole magus bit. And don’t worry, man, it’ll get stranger than this because there’s a lot more to this world than you can possibly imagine. Some good, some evil, but most of it neither.”
“I don’t know if I can accept it. Oh, I believe it, but accepting it is another thing entirely. I was taught that magic is the exclusive realm of diabolical forces.”
It took heroic self-control on my part not to point out that I looked upon exorcism as a Catholic rite of magic, but I didn’t want to open that can of worms while he still reeled from the night’s revelations. How would you take it?
Sighing, I chose my words carefully. “Mike, God created the world and all the spirits and sprites within. The magic in the plants, the elementals … all created by God in His infinite wisdom. As for the Words, that I don’t know.”
“Words?”
“There are Words that do things … magical things, like healing and such,” I sighed. “There are twelve Words of Great Power that a Magus can use. Most only master three or four, but they can do much with those. An Adept can master up to nine and with those he can achieve wonders you wouldn’t believe.
“But Mike, the real, evil magic—the magic that can corrupt a soul and shatter the world—is in the Thirty Words.” I held up a clenched fist. “Thirty Words of such virulence and destruction that their origin can only be infernal.”
Moments passed as the priest considered what I had said. “What are they?”
I shook my head. “No one knows, unless they have the Silver. The Silver holds the Words and conveys them to the Magus, but not all of them. One, two, maybe three Words are all a Magus can handle because they are too