CHAPTER 11

It was a few years later, and Catriona Redfletching was talking to an old White wizard named Renjaf. "Oh, come on!" she pleaded, "It's not like I'm asking for the moon!" Renjaf was something of a recluse. He lived in a tall tower, as was the fashion for wizards in those days, that sat within several acres of much-neglected land a few miles from the town of Compton, leaving only rarely. Why was Catriona there, gentle reader? The answer to that requires some explanation. It naturally took some time for Cat to come to terms with everything that had happened, but eventually, life went on, as it always does. Pyrah helped enormously, with her frequent visits. Who is Pyrah? Well, not all higher planar beings appear human. They may manifest in all manner of guises. Pyrah, gentle reader, was one such creature, who seemed to be a small, green, highly venomous snake that had been Catriona's friend and protector since she was a child. Cat first met her while playing in the forest around her father's Quarthonian home. Pyrah had been injured, caught in the middle of another of Daelen's battles. That time it was not against Kullos, but rather his dark clone, although that was a distinction without difference when dodging beam cannon blasts. Cat said, "hello," and was astonished when the snake said 'hello' back. Well, not 'said' exactly, but communicated certainly – communicated sympathically. Let me see…how to explain sympathic communication… More than empathy, less than telepathy. Not that you can draw a straight line through the three. Sympathic communication involves the transmission of concepts. So rather than saying, "I am your friend," Pyrah simply transmitted the concept, the idea of friendship. It didn't allow for much in the way of subtlety in those days, but thanks to Catriona's efforts to nurse her back to health, they managed to develop a powerful bond. Pyrah was sorry she had not been around to help when Cat lost her parents. Catriona was glad she had been absent. Otherwise, she might have lost her, too. Still, there was no denying things had changed for Catriona. Before the day she lost her parents, the Day of the Monster, the Day of the Angel, Cat had been a promising student at magic school – a relatively new concept at the time, but one that would eventually supplant the old apprentice system. Three years later, her grades at college were mediocre at best. It just didn't hold her interest as it had before. Now, she was more interested in her Angel. I should point out that my mother didn't really consider her miraculous visitor to have been an Angel in the literal sense. It was just that she couldn't think of another label she could use that fitted any better. She dearly wished for something better, though, for one reason above all others: everybody said her Angel wasn't real. To everybody else who was there that day, the restoration of their village was an unexplained miracle, and they seemed happy for it to remain so. Not Catriona. Everybody attributed her imaginary guardian Angel to an expression of her grief. A way of dealing with the trauma and even survivor guilt. Her way of explaining the inexplicable, why she survived when others only a few feet away from her – her father included – did not. 'Poor Catriona' people would say. 'It must be so hard for her to accept that there was no reason, just random chance.' 'Give her time,' the experts said. 'In time, she will see and learn to accept it.' But she never did. She knew her Angel was real. How else did she acquire her 'Crystal Mage Staff' as she had named her gift, mostly for the convenience of having something to call it. She didn't want to give it some grandiose name like 'The Great Staff of Zarathon' or 'The Mystical Rod of Destiny' or 'The Almighty Staff of the Gods.' No. It was a simple wooden staff, something that mages liked to use to channel magic and it had a large blue crystal on the top. Hence 'Crystal Mage Staff.' Simple. Unassuming. Unpretentious. Although, it did radiate a kind of higher planar energy that Cat did not understand, buried beneath layers upon layers of security and protection. Her Angel had warned her not to tamper with that energy, "Except," they said, "in the event of some dire emergency of worldwide, cataclysmic proportions. And even then, think twice." Catriona kept that part to herself. No sense in drawing attention to it if it were that important. There were always those who were covetous of power and might seek to take the staff from her. She could never allow that. She herself was hardly likely to be involved in any 'dire emergency of worldwide, cataclysmic proportions.' Besides, she wasn't interested in power as such. She was much more interested in acquiring knowledge. Specifically, knowledge relating to the Crystal Mage Staff, because that was her only link to her Angel. On a more practical level, her Angel had inspired her to look at druid magic in a new way. Of the three principal flavours of magic, druid abilities were something of a poor cousin next to wizardry and clerical magic. Not knowing how magic works on your world, gentle reader, or indeed whether any such equivalent exists where you are, I should break off for a moment to explain how it works on Tempestria. To put that in its proper context, however, I first need to discuss dimensional cosmology.