8 Nevrine

Jeddan was back to normal today, or at least he was able to talk about normal things as we walked. We discussed pouvrin, mostly our mutual unexpected discoveries. Jeddan showed enthusiasm when he told me, in more detail, how he’d mastered the concealment pouvra. “You’re right,” he said, “it’s not the same as the others. It felt sharp, somehow, like a dull knife blade pressing against my skin.”

“Yes, to me it feels more angular than the Balaenic ones,” I said. “I wish I could talk to the mage who invented it. I wonder what he thought he’d discovered. He put everything in terms of th’an, even though Cederic said there was no way it would have done anything if someone tried to write it. But he knew something about pouvrin. Not the way we both do, but even so, maybe his knowledge would help us.”

“You said he was insane,” Jeddan said. “I’m not sure how useful that would be.”

“True,” I said, and sighed. “What I’d like to know is how I managed to do that with the walk-through-walls pouvra. It happened so quickly I’m not sure I can do it again.”

“I think you should practice as we go,” Jeddan said. He took a few steps off the road and wrenched a thick branch from a tree; it was dry, and snapped off easily. “I’ll hold it, and you make it fall.”

“I guess it’s something to do,” I said. So we did that for a couple of hours, with no success. I feel like I’m groping for something I’ve only heard about, even though I can remember a little of how it felt. It was I don’t want to lie. After hearing what Jeddan did to that guard, I was feeling uncertain about using the walk-through-walls pouvra in any way. We haven’t discussed it, but neither of us has any idea why, after all the times Jeddan has dived through people, this one died of it. So my heart wasn’t in my efforts. I’ll try again tomorrow.