Thornbear (Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

held in the hand, but as soon as you released one it would hover in the air, as though weightless.
    Gram placed them in the air in front of himself and began gently batting at them with a small paddle. The first ball flew away in one direction until it reached the end of its invisible tether. At that point it jerked the other ball into motion, and they began circling one another while drifting at half the speed of the original. Stepping around them, Gram struck one hard, causing it to fly violently in the other direction, yanking its partner out of its previous path.
    He distracted himself in that fashion for several minutes, until he heard Matthew’s voice, “You ought to keep those. They were always your favorite.” The two of them had frequently shared the odd toys that Matthew received.
    “Didn’t your dad give you these?” asked Gram.
    “Nah, I made those. One of my first projects. I can make more,” explained his friend.
    Gram was sorely tempted. “Thanks, but I think we’ve both outgrown ‘em.”
    “Screw you then,” said Matthew with a half-grin. “I was going to make another set immediately. I still like to mess with a lot of that junk.”
    “Fine, I’ll take them,” announced Gram. “If only to make you work more.” He caught one of the balls in his hand and watched the other spin in circles around it for a moment, and then he stopped it as well and put both of them in the pocket of his waistcoat. “What did you want?” he asked.
    Matthew’s face became more serious, “About the other day…”
    “Forget it,” said Gram. “I was just cross.”
    “Yeah, I understand, but I had an idea…,” said his friend.
    Gram gave Matt a sidelong look.
    “…about what you said the other day…” began the young wizard. Matthew’s arms moved as he spoke, always seeming to be in danger of knocking something over, though they never quite did. “…about how you thought a wizard could do anything…”
    Gram shook his head, “Well, I know that wasn’t quite true…”
    “That’s not it,” interrupted Matt. “It got me to thinking about you—and your dad.”
    “And?”
    “Well, Dad always said your father was a stoic. It was a kind of miracle he ever managed to form the earthbond to begin with, but somehow he did. But that’s not what I’m wondering. Your mother was normal, so it’s anyone’s guess whether you’re a stoic like your dad, or whether you have some emittance like your mother.”
    As usual, Matthew was beginning the conversation in the middle of what had probably been a long chain of thought. It didn’t help that although Gram had grown up around wizards, he didn’t really understand magic, much less what ‘emittance’ was. Gram didn’t bother asking for an explanation, he’d been down that road before. “I’m assuming you have a point here,” he said instead.
    “We should find out whether you’re a stoic or not, and if not, how much emittance and capacitance you possess,” continued Matthew.
    “I don’t have a damned clue what you’re talking about.”
    “Whether or not you can use magic,” said Matthew.
    “I’m not a wizard,” reminded Gram.
    Matt shook his head, “That’s not what I mean. There’s more to it than that. There’s a lot of variation, even among ordinary people. Some, like your dad, are almost completely dead to aythar, while most others have varying degrees of emittance and capacitance. For example, Marcus Lancaster had a normal, low capacitance, but he had a rather high emittance, which made him an ideal channeler for Millicenth.”
    “I wish you could hear yourself,” commented Gram.
    “Would you like to know what it’s like to be a wizard, for just a minute?”
    That caught Gram’s attention, “You can do that?”
    “Maybe,” shrugged his friend. “If you aren’t a stoic…mostly I want to know for a project.”
    “What project?” asked Gram suspiciously. He could tell by the way Matthew’s eyes shifted suddenly that he