Serena walked after her uncle, to a part of the house she hadn’t been before. They were in the lower west wing of the house. “There are only two rooms on the ground floor in this part of the house. The dining hall you have already seen.” They walked to a set of double doors. “This,” he said as he threw open the double doors, “is the ballroom.”

The room was massive, as long as the dining hall, bur far broader. On her left, a wall of mirrors had been installed, probably so that the dancers could look at themselves and the other people on the floor. The room was washed in light by the enormous windows on the other sides of the room. She walked towards the window, but halted instantly as she stepped inside the room. Magic. There were hundreds, no a thousand kinds of magic in this room. She took in a deep breath.

“Ah, I can see you can feel it, excellent.” Her uncle said as he stepped inside himself. “Magic leaves traces and in this ballroom some of the greatest mages Britain has ever known have dances and practiced. Generations of mages have waltzed over these flours and left some trace of their magic behind. Some mages can draw power from that sort of thing, but it requires a deep knowledge of ritual magic, not to mention necromancy, I personally saw little use in it myself. When your reserves of power are as deep as mine, there is little need to draw power from another well.”

He clapped in his hands. “From now on all your practical lessons will be done in here. The place is very well warded, so you don’t have to worry about fallout. You can practice here whenever you want, but don’t start experimenting by yourself, that might be dangerous.” He walked towards the far end of the room, where a number of instruments were lying on display.

“Magic comes in infinite forms, and since no consensus has been reached on how it exactly works, I won’t bore you with the details.” He picked up a flute, but laid it down again. “Inside of you there is a reservoir of magic, I want you to tap into it.” He touched a saxophone, but retracted his hand as if it was a hot pan.

“How do I do that?” Serena asked, sounding excited and a little confused.

“I don’t know.” Her uncle said, a warm smile on his lips. “My reservoir is sound. There is a finite number of tones I can play, before I run out and my spells stop working. That reservoir is a part of me, but it is also separate. You need to reach for it. Close your eyes, it might help.” Serena took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She saw nothing. With pursed lips she tried to find this mysterious source.

Unbidden a memory rose to the surface of her mind. She walked through a dark hallway, down a pair of stairs, entering a small damp room. There was a door there. She opened it. Inside it was dark. Her hand found the light switch and she switched it on. Thousands of lightbulbs went on. She opened her eyes, in the palm of her hand was a light. It was warm and bright and suddenly her face cracked open into a smile. It was beautiful. With the hint of a thought she made the light grow in size, until it was like a football sitting in her hand.

“Good, very good even. I was right about you, you have extraordinary control for someone your age.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “It is a shame that you rely on light. Without it,” he waved his hand and the curtains closed, “you’re vulnerable.” The darkness within the ballroom was absolute, and to her dismay the ball in her hands started to shrink quickly. She reached for the room and the lights, they were still there, but she could no longer draw on them. It was like she was being blocked.

“Merlin’s first law,” her uncle said from somewhere in the room, “all magic has both an external and internal source. Both are needed to cast spells.” A pure note resounded through the room and the curtains opened, letting the light back in. With it came Serena’s power, which almost felt like a warm hug from her mum. “Put me in a room where there is no sound and I become powerless. If somebody takes your light away, they will be able to triumph over you. Mages are strong, much, much stronger than ordinary people. We aren’t invulnerable or immortal.”

Her uncle’s eyes were serious as they bored into her. “If we were, we would have taken over the world a long time ago. It is always good to remind yourself that a resolved person, with a gun and time, can get to us.” Serena nodded, no shiver ran down her back this time. The notion that somebody might want to murder her was getting old. Especially since nobody so far had tried to do so. Maybe her uncle was just a touch too paranoid and melodramatic. Especially the latter one, she had noticed, he had a flair for.

The next hour or so they started casting spells. They focused mostly on defensive and offensive spell casting, and Serena found that she was, in fact, enjoying herself. She felt a little bit like a super hero, shooting beams of light out of her hands, blocking her uncle’s aggressive spells. She was almost sad when the lightbulbs in the room in her mind all turned off, and she found herself unable to cast anything.

When no more blasts came in his direction, her uncle nodded and put the violin down. “Your reservoir runs deep enough for a prolonged engagement, but your offensive spell casting needs improvement, at most those beams would injure me. Your spells need to be either crippling or lethal, because the spells of your enemies will be.” He evaluated. Serena threw her hands in the air.

“You keep talking about enemies as if I have a host of them, I don’t even know any mages apart from Aram and you. And yet, you act as if at any moment some kind of evil mage will jump out of the bushes and curse us into oblivion! Can you tone it down a little bit?”

She breathed heavily, becoming increasingly aware that she had shouted the last sentence. “Did you know that there used to be more dark than light mages?” He quietly said. Serena, who of course didn’t know, shook her head. “It wasn’t even that long ago either. Your grandfather lived in those days, and they ended with him. I was nearing the end of my apprenticeship, watching the house, when it happened. First, they hit the gathering of influential dark mages your grandfather was attending. There were no survivors. Then they went to the homes of those dark mages.”

His face was an emotionless mask. “When the sun rose the next morning, the council had taken over, establishing themselves as the rulers of all mages in the nation. They might call themselves “light mages”, but that doesn’t make them good. The remaining dark mages banded together for a while, but we failed to overcome our rivalries and old blood feuds. There are plenty of people on either side that want you dead, simply because you carry the Cairn name.”

He abruptly turned around and left the ballroom, leaving Serena alone with the ominous statement.