The Magician’s Land Read Online Free PDF

was.
    He’d felt so far below her then, he wasn’t sure she’d even remember him. But she did.
    “Of course I do. You weren’t quite as invisible as you thought you were.”
    Had he thought that? Probably he had.
    “Does that mean my secret crush on you wasn’t as secret as I thought it was?”
    She smiled, but not unkindly.
    “The concealment of crushes probably isn’t your discipline,” she said. “Roll up your sleeves, above your elbows. Let me see the backs of your hands.”
    He showed her. She gave them a brisk rub with fine powder and an irregular pattern of tiny cold sparks appeared on his skin, like a sparsely populated countryside seen from above by night. He thought he felt a web of icy prickles too, though that could have been his imagination.
    “Mmmmm.”
    She chewed her lip, studying him, then she tapped his hands, one, two, like a child playing a game, and the sparks went out. There was nothing there that interested Professor Sunderland. Or Pearl—now that they were colleagues he should get in the habit of calling her by her first name.
    She snipped a lock of his hair and burned it in a brazier. It smelled like burning hair. She scrutinized the smoke.
    “Nope.”
    Now that the pleasantries were out of the way she was all business. He could have been a tricky flower arrangement that she couldn’t get quite right. She studied him through a graduated series of smoked lenses while he walked backward around the room.
    “Why do you think this is so difficult?” Quentin asked, trying not to run into anything.
    “Mm? Don’t look over your shoulder.”
    “My discipline? Why do you think it’s so hard to figure out?”
    “Could be a few things.” She smoothed her straight blond hair back behind her ears and switched lenses. “It could be occluded. Some disciplines just by their natures don’t want to be found. Some are just really minor, pointless really, and it’s hard to pick them out of the background noise.”
    “Right. Though could it also be”—he stumbled over a stool—“because it’s something interesting? That no one’s ever seen before?”
    “Sure. Why not.”
    He’d always envied Penny his fancy and apparently unique discipline,which was interdimensional travel. But from her tone he suspected she could have listed a few reasons why not.
    “Remember when I made those sparks, that one time?”
    “I remember. Aha. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Stand still.”
    He stopped, and Pearl rummaged in a drawer and took out a heavy, brass-edged ruler marked in irregular units that Quentin didn’t recognize.
    “Close your eyes.”
    He did, and immediately an electric bar of pain flashed across the back of his right hand. He clamped it between his knees; it was ten seconds before he even recovered enough to say
ow.
When he opened his eyes he half expected to see his fingers sheared right off at the second knuckle.
    They were still there, though they were turning red. She’d whacked them with the sharp edge of the ruler.
    “Sorry,” she said. “The pain response is often very revealing.”
    “Listen, if that doesn’t do it I think I’m all right with not knowing.”
    “No, that did it. You’re very sensitive, I must say.”
    Quentin didn’t think that not wanting to get smacked across the knuckles with a ruler made him unusually sensitive, but he didn’t say anything, and Pearl was already paging through a huge old reference book printed all in jewel type. Quentin had a sudden crazy urge to stop her. He’d been living with this for so long, it was part of who he was—he was the Man Without a Discipline. Was he ready to give that up? If she told him he’d be like everybody else . . .
    But he didn’t stop her.
    “I had a pet theory about you.” Pearl ran her finger down a column. “Which was that I couldn’t find your discipline last time because you didn’t have one yet. I always thought you were a bit young for your age. Personality is a