"Again," said Coric. "Concentrate this time, Aelia."

She seethed, silently. As if she hadn't been concentrating during every other attempt!

"You need to see in your mind's eye the fire leaving your hand. And then follow it until it reaches the branch."

"Yes, yes, I get it," she said impatiently. "It's what I've been trying to do each time, Coric. It just isn't working." She was tempted to add something about it perhaps being the result of a poor teacher, but decided against it. She was just flustered. Instead, she took another pinch of moss and held it tight in her left hand. See the fire -- how easy Coric made it sound. But there was nothing to see, in reality.

Aelia was attempting to cast the spell she'd used in the Academy, when she'd failed to alight a candle but managed to alight a ledger. The flame was meant to combust at a chosen location; it wasn't a fireball that careened along a path that she could control. Fireballs, she had been told, were far more complicated to cast and manipulate. They sounded much easier to Aelia, right now.

They were in a little meadow, late-blooming wildflowers surrounding Aelia in tangles of saffron and reds. Coric had jammed five sticks into the ground, about thirty paces from her. She'd managed to light two from a twenty pace gap, but perhaps that had been more luck than anything else as she was yet to light any of the sticks at this distance -- and she was already running low on her moss.

Coric said (meaning to be encouraging but coming across as irritating), "You can do it, Aelia!"

Okay, she told herself. If he really believes you can, maybe you can? Let's make this the one. Deep breath. Cast.

The spell rattled through her skull quickly now, less thinking of the order of the notes. The moss in her hand sizzled red, smoke drifting from between her knuckles.

A burst of flame exploded like a firework about five paces before the nearest of the standing sticks; it floated for a moment before dying out, its embers drifting harmlessly to the damp grass.

She sighed deeply. The distance was too great. At least for her, it was. Coric on the other hand, had demonstrated that it was possible from twice the distance she was attempting.

"Take in the lay of the land," Coric instructed. "Then close your eyes and recreate it in your mind with a paintbrush. Imagine the trajectory of the fire, as if it was a fireball moving from your hand to the target."

Aelia reluctantly shut her eyes. She began to paint the scene in her head: the flowers around her feet, puffs of cloud in the sky, Coric about halfway between her and the branches (themselves stuck in the ground in a pyramid of rows: three then two then one).

She took another pinch of moss, held out her free hand to channel the spell, and began to cast.

"That's it. Good."

She opened her eyes to see the explosion of ephemeral fire about a foot to the left of the first row of sticks.

"Good!" said Coric. "You're getting the distance. Easily, too. You just need a little more practise with directing the spell."

Aelia didn't feel as enthusiastic as Coric sounded. It'd taken three hours for her to get this near to the sticks. "Luck," she said. "Just luck. Again."

"You're too hard on yourself today," said Coric. "Lighten up. You've come such a long way in such a short space of time. That candle you couldn't light? It was what, ten paces from you? You'd have no problem lighting it now."

"Can we try something else?" Aelia asked. "A different spell or something? My head feels numb from the repetition."

Coric ran a finger down his cheek. "You're really getting the spell, Aelia. It might be best to keep at it."

She frowned. "Can we at least have a break first?"

"One minute. That's all you get. Your time is precious and so is mine."

Aelia didn't feel her time would be wasted even if her and Coric stood here doing nothing. The autumn sun was pleasantly warm and turned the grass a butter-gold. Coric, with his black hair and his black cloak, looked conspicuously out of place in the field, as if he was a walking pit in the earth.

"How about this," he said. "We try the same spell now, except with a branch only a few steps away from you--"

"That sounds great," Aelia said, thankful. She could cope with a branch that near to her.

"I hadn't finished. We try that, but we try something new, too. We place the moss on the ground next to your foot and you try to channel it without holding it."

"Are you serious?" she said. Her annoyance at her own failings had finely risen to the surface. "I can barely cast with the moss in my hand! I thought you were meant to be smart, Coric."

"Yes, that's it," he said. "Make yourself as fiery as the spell. That'll help us."

She surprised herself by laughing, then felt her cheeks redden.

Coric retrieved one of the dry branches and brought it back to Aelia, twisting it into the ground in front of her. "Give me your moss," he said.

Aelia took the threaded pouch from her pocket and handed it to him. In turn, Coric poured out most of the remaining moss onto a stone nearby.

"Stand next to it," he said.

She did so. "I really don't think I'm ready for this."

"It's hardly a risk to try. You can't burn yourself if you've no moss in your hand, and you can't set me on fire by accident if you can't use it."

With a straight face she said, "I'll never worry about accidentally setting you on fire, Coric."

This time he laughed. "That's very reassuring to know."

She couldn't keep a smirk from her lips for long. "Okay, so how does this work?"

"Move your foot so that your boot is touching this stone. That's it. Okay, now it's just the same, in principle, as any other cast. Your body will try to draw mana from moss, and if you're not holding any, you'll try to find moss near to you."

"I'll try to find? How will I do that?"

"Imagine a ghostly arm reaching out of you, searching for nearby moss that it can hold in its hand. It'll be instinctual. Go on, have a go now. Set the stick alight."

Aelia pointed her hand at the branch and imagined she was holding moss as she normally would in her other hand, going as far as to ball it up into a fist. Then, she cast the spell.

But nothing happened, of course. Perhaps a slight tingle, but nothing more than that. About what she'd expected.

"When you're ready," Coric said.

Aelia wasn't sure if he was joking. "I just tried to cast."

"Oh. Well try again. Concentrate harder. You know where the moss is, so it should be easy."

Easy for you, maybe. Not easy for someone with no formal training.

"Remember," he continued, "to imagine that extra arm reaching down to it and holding it. Close your eyes again -- see if that helps."

She did try again, squeezing her eyes tight. Visualizing the moss scattered on the stone next to her. And again, a tingle. Perhaps slightly more of one than before.

"Did... anything happen?" she asked, opening her eyes.

"No," Coric said, examining the moss. He ran a finger over the moist green plant, feeling for a trace-heat, Aelia suspected. He looked disappointed and Aelia felt like she'd let him down. Coric expected great things from her, and in a way she expected greatness of herself, too. But not this fast. Not this great.

"Sorry," she said.

"No. Don't be. It's months too early for you to be doing this, really. Like I said, you've already come a long way. So please don't be sorry. I just thought... Well, it doesn't really matter. I think that's probably enough for today, anyway."

Coric walked away towards the remaining sticks that stuck into the ground.

The pang of guilt inside Aelia became something close to a bubble of anger. She looked at the little pile of moss and said beaneath her breath, "You are to burn, understand me? I'm the mage and you're the mana. So you are going to do what I want."

She closed her eyes and imagined the fire burning from out her hand. Then, she recited the spell in her head. Nothing. Nothing except that slight vibration that ran down both her arms.

She attempted to cast the spell again and again.

And each time she did, the bubble of anger seemed to swell. Engulfing more of her body. More of her emotions.

Something was changing. She could feel a heat swelling in her belly. Could imagine a hand reaching out of her.

Only... the hand was withered. The skin wrinkled and thin over the bone.

A deep fright ran through her and the shiver became something else.

The bubble popped.

A wave of something exploded from her and threw her to the ground.

"Aelia!" said, Coric. She could hear him approach, but couldn't see. She was surrounded in a thick cloud of choking smoke.

"Aelia, are you okay?"

There was a gust of wind, and she realized it must have been a spell cast by Coric.

The smoke whirled away behind her.

And there she was, left sitting in a circle of wilted wildflowers. For a few feet in every direction, all plants --and even the grass itself -- were gray and dead.

Worst of all, the stick wedged into the ground in front of her was burning. Alight with a pitch-black flame.

The moss hadn't even been burned. It had been scattered from the stone over the dead flowers, but it was still unused.

"Aelia?" said Coric. His face was pale. Scared, even. "What did you do?"