The Serpent Mage Read Online Free PDF Page A

and invoke hyloka , the calling-of-heat from the center of his body, and in-seeing, the probing of another's aura to gain information.
    For the time being, he was content not to test the other skills he had learned in the Realm. He had not used evisa , or out-seeing, to throw a shadow; there had been no need.
    Each morning, he went through his exercises in the spacious back yard. He jogged around the neighborhood holding his kima , the running-stick, before him, as the Crane Women had taught him. Several times he jogged with Dopso, who kept up a panting stream of questions and observations. Despite the man's obvious curiosity about Michael, and nonstop talk, Michael liked him. He seemed decent.
    Each day, Michael investigated another cache of Waltiri's papers and began to make a catalog of what he found. Within a week, he had worked his way through the garage and knew basically what was in each file box — manuscripts, contracts and other legal documents, and correspondence, including a wooden box filled with love letters from Waltiri to Golda, written in German. Even though he had studied German after returning from the Realm, he was hardly fluent, and that handicapped him. He thought about hiring a German-speaking student and acquiring the language more rapidly tlirough in-seeing but decided to put that off for now.
    He concentrated on the manuscripts. What little musical training he had acquired before he was thirteen — when he had put his foot down and refused to continue piano lessons — was of little aid in sorting out the Waltiri papers.
    Michael recorded the names (if any), opus numbers and known associations of each musical manuscript. Most were scores for motion pictures; scattered throughout the four and a half decades' worth of work, however, were more personal pieces, even a draft of a ballet based on The Faerie Queene .
    He spent hours in the garage and then began moving the sorted boxes of manuscripts into the dining room, where he stacked them along a bare wall.
    There was no sign of a manuscript for Opus 45, The Infinity Concerto.
    At night, he fixed himself supper and ate alone. One night a week he joined his parents for dinner, and the visits were enjoyable; occasionally, John would drop by the Waltiri house on one pretext or another, and they would share a beer in the back yard and talk about inconsequential things. Ruth never visited.
    Michael did not tell his story to John, even with Ruth away. John seemed to sense that the time was not yet right for Ruth and that they should hear together when the time was right.
    All in all, with the exception of the discoveries in the Tippett Hotel, it was still a peaceful time. Michael felt himself growing stronger in more ways than one: stronger inside, less agonized by his mistakes, and stronger in dealing with the ways of the Earth, which were not much like the ways of the Realm.
    What impressed him most of all, now that he had gone outside and had a basis for comparison, was the Earth's sense of solidity and thoroughness . Always in the Realm there had been the sensation of things left not quite finished; Adonna's creation was no doubt masterful, and in places extremely beautiful, but it could not compare with the Earth.
    While the Realm had been built to accommodate Sidhe — and keep them in line — and while it contained some monstrous travesties, it had seemed in many ways a gentler place than Earth. What cruelty existed in the Realm was the fault of its occupants. Given Sidhe discipline, Michael had found survival in the Realm proper rather easy. He doubted if survival would be quite so easy in similar situations on Earth.
    The Earth seemed not to have been built for anybody's convenience; those who had come to it, or developed on it, made their own way and found and fought for specific niches. The Earth never stopped its pressures… Nor gave up its treasures easily.
    Michael acquired a videocassette recorder out of the stipend paid by the estate and