David Coe: Spell Blind

Of course, that begs the question, what is a purist doing with a seven-hundred-dollar espresso machine? I have no answer. My personal philosophy remains a work in progress.

My coffee was still brewing when the figure began to materialize in the corner by my doorway. It was insubstantial at first, a faint glimmering, like reflections of moonlight on a mountain stream. Gradually it grew more distinct, taking the form of a man, tall, broadly built. But always he kept that rippled, glowing appearance, as if he were composed entirely of luminous waters. If others had been there with me, they would have thought that a ghost had come to my office. And they wouldn’t have been too far off.

To be precise, he was a runemyste, one of thirty-nine ancient weremystes who had been sacrificed by the Runeclave centuries ago, their spirits granted eternal life, so that they could be guardians of magic in our world. It’s easier to call him a ghost, but he gets touchy about that. This particular runemyste-my runemyste, I guess you could say-was named Namid’skemu. I called him Namid. He was once a shaman, what most people would call a medicine man, of the K’ya’na-Kwe clan of the A’shiwi, or Zuni nation. The K’ya’na-Kwe were known as the water people, and they were, in their day, a powerful clan, steeped in the spiritual realm of their people. Today their line is extinct. Unless you count Namid.

I saw only a small fraction of what Namid did to guard against those who would use magic for dark purposes, and I understood even less. But one of his duties was to instruct me in the ways of runecrafting.

I can’t say why Namid took an interest in me. As I’ve already admitted, I’m not the most powerful myste in the world; not even close. But I know that he was once my father’s instructor and I think that on some level he held himself responsible for my father’s descent into madness. I also know that he answers to a spirit council made up of his fellow runemystes, and from what I gather, they don’t allow members of their council to engage in magical charity or indulge their guilt. So apparently, like my dad before me, I’m weremyste enough to have earned Namid’s attention. I know for a fact that the magic is strong enough in me to have cost me my job. Namid would probably say that you couldn’t measure sorcery by degrees, that you either were a weremyste-a runecrafter, as he called those who used magic-or you weren’t. And he’d have been right. Being a weremyste was a lot like being a cop: once it was in your blood, that was it.

I nodded to the glowing figure. “Hey, Namid. What’s up?”

“Ohanko,” he answered, his voice fluid and resonant, like the rush of deep currents over stone. Ohanko was what he usually called me, although he had other names for me as well. All of them were in his language, and most of them he saved for those times when I’d really ticked him off. I only understood one or two of the others, but Ohanko I knew. It meant, roughly, “reckless one,” and I guess I had earned it over the years.

He stood there, staring at me. His eyes shone from his face, like bright, cold flames reflected off the surface of a wind-swept lake. I’d never actually touched Namid-not to shake his hand, or pat him on the shoulder, or sock him in the mouth, which I often wanted to do. I wasn’t even certain that it was possible. But I would have loved to try it, just once, just to feel what it was like. I imagined it would be like plunging my hand into an icy creek.

“Well?” I asked, uncomfortable under his gaze. “What do you want?”

“You need to practice your runecrafting.”

“Not today, Namid. I have a headache.” I grinned hoping to soften the refusal, and also to indicate that I was kidding. Namid’s expression didn’t change. He understood few of my jokes. He never found them funny. “Another time,” I said, knowing this wouldn’t satisfy him. My stomach had started to feel tight and hollow. I wasn’t sure why; I knew only that I got this feeling whenever Namid demanded that I work on my craft. “Later,” I said. “I promise. I’m wiped right now. I had an encounter with a myste this morning.”

“You will tell me about that when we are finished. Now, we work. You have much to learn.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to teach me all of it in one day. It can wait.”

The runemyste stepped to the middle of the room and lowered himself to the floor, his movements liquid and graceful. He eyed me expectantly. This was where he always sat when instructing me in the use of magic.

“No,” I said, sounding like a whiny kid. “I’m not doing this right now.” We’d had this argument too many times before. There was still a part of me that feared the powers I possessed. Though I had been casting spells for years, I understood little about the Runeclave and even less about Namid himself. And it was possible-likely, even-that I avoided these sessions because I’d seen what this same magic did to my father.

The phasings, those periods of each moon cycle when magic takes over our minds and bodies, turning us into crazed animals, are no picnic. The line between sanity and insanity, which much of the sane world takes for granted and thinks of as clear cut, feels disturbingly insubstantial to weremystes like me. Because while I consider myself sane most of the time, I also know what it’s like to be insane. I’ve been tipping over into madness every month for half my life. And as bad as the phasings are, the long-term effects are worse. Turns out-big surprise here-putting one’s mind through a psychic meat grinder every month takes a heavy toll. Most weremystes wind up permanently insane; a good number of them take their own lives before the descent into irreversible madness makes even that single act of will impossible. So, for good reason, I saw my magical powers as the source of my greatest weakness.

Whatever the root of my reluctance to train, I knew that sooner or later Namid would get his way. He always did.

“Is your scrying stone here or at your home?” he asked.

“It’s at the house.” Maybe there was a way out of this after all.

I should be so lucky.

“You can scry without the stone. Bring out the mirror from in there.” He pointed toward the john.

“Namid. .” I stopped, shaking my head. Then I got the mirror from the bathroom.

I hate scrying. People think of magic, and one of the first things that comes to mind is gazing into a crystal ball. That’s scrying-or rather, that’s Hollywood’s take on scrying.

Except that scrying doesn’t require a crystal ball, or even clear quartz. All you need is a smooth, lustrous surface. I use a piece of polished sea green agate, about the size of my hand, with a small crystalline opening at the center that’s surrounded by thin, sinuous bands of blue and white. I didn’t choose it because there’s anything inherently magical about that piece of agate; I found it several years ago in a gem store at a Phoenix mall. I happen to think it’s a beautiful stone, and I know its patterns and colors as well as I do the lines on my father’s face.

Namid was right, though. In the absence of my stone, the mirror would work just as well. I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him and laid the mirror across my lap.

“Look. Tell me what you see.”

I gazed down at the mirror. “Is there really a crack in my ceiling?” I asked, peering up at the sheet rock above me.

The runemyste let out a low rumble, like the distant roar of flood waters.

“Sorry.” I stared at the mirror again, concentrating on the surface of the glass, trying to ignore the inverted reflection of my office. For a while I saw nothing, and I let out a loud sigh, glancing up at Namid, hoping he’d agree that this was pointless. But the runemyste sat as motionless as ice, his eyes closed. I turned my attention back to the mirror, trying once more to ignore the reflections and see only the glass itself.