Too Much

Rishi did not return to Selanka the next morning.

Or the morning after.

He returned to his body instead.

The impressions stayed with him longer than bruises would have.

Roots tightened when he stood too quickly. Thorns waited in the thought before a step. Pressure gathered in empty air when doors opened near him.

Once, in the Hearth, a kettle spat steam and his body remembered the bead before his mind remembered the kettle.

He did not chase the sensations.

He sorted them.

Morning by morning, he took them into the quiet court and made them smaller.

Breath first. Feet next. Weight low. Shoulders loose. Hands empty. He practiced the moment before flinch became motion.

He slept when fatigue made practice dishonest and trained until the memories stopped arriving as wounds and began returning as warnings.

Maeril was elsewhere.

Not gone. Never gone.

But elsewhere enough that the word began to have shape.

He glimpsed her at breakfast, half-risen with a page in one hand and her attention somewhere beyond the room.

Once, she passed him with a muttered apology, three sealed folios under one arm, and a piece of toast held between her teeth because she had forgotten, again, that sitting down was an option.

One morning, Novice Lethan found Rishi in the court, lowering his weight as if the air itself had leaned toward him.

He stopped at the edge of the stones and waited until the movement had finished.

“You and Maeril are proving difficult to find today,” he said. “In different directions.”

Rishi straightened.

“Good morning, Novice Lethan.”

“Good morning.” Lethan glanced toward the east, then back at him. “She was in the abjuration rooms before first bell. I am not entirely certain she remained in the same one.”

“She is busy.”

“So I gathered.”

He looked at the marks Rishi’s sandals had left in the dust, then at Rishi’s hands.

“And you are training.”

“Yes.”

“Naturally.”

There was no mockery in it. Only the careful resignation of a novice learning that Rishi and Maeril could make simple errands complicated by being sincere.

Lethan checked the slate tucked beneath his arm.

“Reader Selanka asked me to tell you she can receive you again after the noon bell, if you still wish to continue.”

Rishi lowered his eyes once.

“I do.”

Lethan nodded, expecting that answer.

“I will tell her.”

Later that day, on his way back toward the lower reading chamber, Rishi found Maeril by accident.

She came out of a side passage with two books pressed to her chest, a folded sheet held between the pages with one finger, and a line of ink at the corner of her mouth.

She did not see him.

“Maeril.”

She stopped half a step too late.

“Oh.” Her eyes found him, then had to come back from somewhere else to understand what they had found. “Hi.”

For a moment, she stood there with the books still clutched against her, one thumb keeping her place, her mind plainly trying to hold three thoughts and one person at once.

He almost let her pass.

Then he said, “Would you have time to train with me?”

“Train?”

“With spells.”

That brought her attention fully back to him for one heartbeat. Then it pulled away again.

“I don’t think so.” She winced at how quickly it came out. “Not now. I mean—not today. I have to—”

She shifted the books, nearly lost the folded sheet, caught it with her elbow, and looked more annoyed with herself than with him.

“I have to go.”

Rishi nodded.

“Of course.”

“That sounded worse than I meant.”

Rishi remained silent.

She looked at him then, properly, and for one breath he thought she might stay.

Then the folded sheet slipped again.

Maeril swore under her breath, caught it, and gave him a small, helpless grimace.

“Later?”

“Okay.”

She was already moving when she said it. Not fleeing. Not refusing.

Elsewhere.

That evening, Maeril found him in the Hearth with tea between his hands.

That was ordinary enough.

The way he watched his own fingers before lifting the cup was not.

She sat across from him without comment at first. Her own cup steamed beside a stack of notes she had brought and then failed to open. For once, she did not seem to notice the ink on her wrist.

“What did she give you today?” she asked.

Rishi looked at her.

Then the question seemed to arrive again, more slowly.

“Wrong,” he said.

Maeril’s expression changed, only a little.

“Rish.”

“I am here.”

“I did not ask that.”

“Didn’t you?”

Behind him, someone laughed too sharply near the fire. A chair leg scraped stone. Rishi’s shoulders tightened, then released by force rather than ease.

Maeril saw that too.

She leaned forward.

“What happened?”

He opened his mouth.

Novice Lethan arrived beside the table with a slate tucked under his arm and a folded note in hand.

“Seeker Rishishura—”

Rishi turned toward him too fast.

Not violently.

Worse.

Afraid before recognition reached his face.

Lethan stopped at once.

Maeril’s hand was already on Rishi’s wrist.

“Rish.”

He stared past Lethan for one breath.

Then another.

The Hearth continued around them: cups, voices, the low crackle of fire, all of it ordinary and too far away. His body sat at the table. The rest of him seemed to need a moment longer to agree.

“Rish,” Maeril said again, softer.

His eyes came back to her.

Then to Lethan.

Then to the cup in his own hand.

“I am sorry,” he said.

Lethan did not step closer. He lowered the note and kept his hands where Rishi could see them.

“No apology needed,” he said.

Maeril did not look away from Rishi.

“What did you read?”

He swallowed.

“Compulsion. Confusion. Phantasmal Killer. Banishment.”

Maeril’s mouth fell open.

“Are you mad? Do you have any idea how dangerous those spells are?”

“Yes,” Rishi said. “Now I do.”

The answer did not help.

Her hand tightened around his wrist.

“Rish,” she said, with no joke in her voice, “I forbid you to ever read that book again.”

He looked at her hand.

Then at her.

A small tremor moved through him before he could hide it.

“Yes,” he said.

The word caught.

He breathed once, and tried again.

“Yes. I agree. I will do that.”

Maeril did not soften.

The answer had come too quickly. Too neatly. As if something in him had heard an order instead of a plea.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

Rishi looked at her.

“Don’t give me the answer I want because you’re hurt.”

His fingers trembled once under her hand.

Her thumb shifted over the beat of his pulse.

“You won’t stop.”

The truth passed through him before he could dress it as discipline.

“No,” he said quietly. “I won’t.”

Lethan set the folded note on the table as if placing it near a sleeping animal.

“It can wait until morning,” he said.

Then he left them with their tea.

Rishi was outside the keep before full dawn.

He had gone far enough from the walls that no Avowed would hear his feet in the grass or his breath cutting through effort.

Candlekeep stood behind him in dark stone and early light. Before him, the land opened toward sea-wind and pale sky.

He trained there.

No staff today. No partner. Only body, breath, ground.

He moved through his forms one by one, weight lowering, hands opening and closing around empty air.

He had repeated the same sequence six times when Maeril’s voice came from behind him.

“How dare you wake me this early.”

Rishi stopped with one hand extended and one knee bent.

Maeril stood in the grass with her cloak pulled around her shoulders, hair not yet fully persuaded into order, and the expression of a woman who had been wronged by sunrise itself.

“This violates every law of my existence,” she said.

Rishi straightened.

“I need your help.”

“Yes,” Maeril said. “That was implied by the crime.”

She came closer, yawning into the back of one hand. Then, before he could say more, she took both of his.

Rishi let her.

Maeril turned his hands over, palms up first, then palms down.

Her thumbs pressed along the joints, the old scars, the thickened skin below his fingers. She flexed each hand carefully, testing how tendons moved and fingers answered.

She had checked wounds before. This was not quite that.

This was study.

Rishi watched her bend over his hands as if they were a page written in a language she did not fully trust.

“Hm,” she said.

He waited.

Maeril pressed once more at the base of his right thumb, then released him.

“Can you cast Fireball?” Rishi asked.

Maeril stepped back.

For a moment, she looked genuinely stunned.

Then offense found her.

“Of course I can. Every respectable wizard in the Realms can. It is one of the most—”

She stopped.

Her eyes narrowed.

Understanding crossed her face, and the insult changed into something sharper.

“Ah,” she said. “You mean cast it now.”

Rishi did not answer quickly enough.

Maeril looked at his hands again.

“Are you—”

She stopped herself.

Then her voice dropped.

“You read that book again.”

He nodded.

“Yes. I have been practicing for weeks. My body knows the shape now. I need to know whether it holds.”

Maeril laughed once.

Not because it was funny.

“You know this is not like a punch,” she said. “I cannot hold back after it leaves my hand. It manifests. That is what it does.”

“I know.”

“You know I could kill you.”

“I do,” he said.

“And we both do not want that.”

“We do not.”

Maeril stared at him.

“You are insufferable.”

Rishi accepted the judgment without argument, which appeared to irritate her further.

He stepped back.

The grass was damp under his sandals. He lowered himself slightly, feet settling into the ground, body ready.

He remembered the book, and the bead: small, bright, almost courteous, the instant before the world became fire.

Maeril looked at him in disbelief.

“You really want to do this.”

There was no question in it. Not truly.

She laughed again, but fear had entered the sound and bent it wrong.

Rishi said nothing.

That was also an answer.

Maeril breathed in slowly.

Then she lifted one hand.

The morning changed around her in small ways.

Her fingers shaped the first part of the formula. Her mouth found the words.

She did not speak them as she would have in battle: quick, sharp, certain.

She spoke carefully, each syllable placed like a foot on unsafe ground.

Her eyes stayed on him.

Rishi listened.

The arcane pressure tightened.

Maeril finished the last word and snapped her fingers.

A bead of candlelight flew from her hand.

Not at him.

Not quite.

Far enough aside that Maeril could tell herself it was not aimed at him.

At that same instant, Rishi moved.

He ducked and drove himself sideways.

Heat and pressure tore outward.

The blast caught him before he cleared it fully.

It threw him back across the grass.

Flame snapped along the edge of his robe.

He hit shoulder first, hard enough that the world jarred white at the edge of sight. His feet lost the ground, and his body tried to fall badly.

He did not let it.

The fall became a turn. The turn became a roll. He struck the earth again, slid through wet grass, and came up on one knee with one hand braced before him.

For one breath, he could not speak.

Fire still licked at the edge of his robe.

He slapped it once.

The flame died under his palm, leaving smoke and the sharp stink of scorched cloth.

Rishi stayed on one knee, breathing hard.

Maeril had not moved.

Not because she was calm.

Because fear had held her still. Then she came back to herself all at once.

She hurried toward him, then stopped a few steps away and looked at him properly.

Disbelief, anger, and fear moved through her face. Then came the unwilling recognition that he had not been entirely wrong.

“All right,” she said, voice not quite steady. “You were right. That is a start.”

Rishi coughed.

A little smoke left him with the breath.

“Well,” Maeril said, still watching him closely, “it looks like you are still in training.”

“Yes,” he said. “I misjudged the timing.”

“You did.”

He drew another breath, rougher than he wanted.

“I need to move before you cast the spell. Not once you cast it.”

He coughed again.

Maeril walked closer to him.

“Enough,” she said.

Rishi looked up.

“For now,” she added, before he could answer.

She took his hands again, less ceremoniously this time. Her fingers checked their backs, then his wrists, the scorched edge of his robe, and the shoulder he had landed on.

Her mouth tightened.

“You are not doing that twice in one morning.”

“I learned.”

“Yes,” she said. “And I would like you to survive the lesson.”

Rishi lowered his eyes once.

“Good,” Maeril said. “Because next time, we make rules before the explosion.”

He breathed out, still rough.

“Rules?”

She looked at him as if the question itself deserved consequences.

“Distance,” she said. “Warding. A stopping point. No heroic idiocy.”

She drew one slow breath.

“If you catch fire again, I reserve the right to be extremely unpleasant about it.”

Rishi considered that.

“Yes,” he said.

Maeril’s expression did not soften much.

Her hand remained around his wrist anyway, thumb resting over the beat of his pulse.

“Good,” she said.

A few days later, Rishi returned to the lower reading room.

Selanka and Lethan were waiting for him.

The room was quiet in a way it had not been before.

Selanka studied Rishi for one breath, then turned to the second case.

Behind the second pane, Greater Impacts rested in dark leather and heavy clasps.

Selanka took two keys from her belt. One opened the outer lock. The other turned only after she spoke a short phrase under her breath.

The wards in the frame tightened the air, and the glass released.

Lethan stood very still while Selanka lifted the volume out with both hands and set it on the high table.

Rishi remained standing.

Selanka accepted that.

She opened the book to the marked place.

The title waited beneath the lamplight, plain and terrible.

Disintegrate.

Dread moved through him before he could steady it.

Rishi read slowly.

Many witnesses describe the spell as a green ray, which is technically correct in the same way that a dragon is technically a lizard.

The color is relevant.

It is simply late.

By the time one has confirmed the shade, one’s scholarly ambition has narrowed to dying with accurate notes.

Attend instead to the instant before the ray arrives.

The spell finds the places where the body is most certain of itself.

The tongue knows it before the mind does: copper, ash, green light tasted behind the teeth. The skin prickles from scalp to wrist.

For one fraction of a breath, you are still alive enough to feel each part of you preparing to become dust.

Attend there.

That is where the spell arrives before the wound.

I attempted to remove my death from this impression.

I failed.

Some part of it remains in the stone as residue.

Be careful.

Rishi laughed once at the dragon line, quietly and briefly.

By the time he reached the words about dust, Rishi had gone very still.

This was not pain preserved for study.

This was death left behind.

Lethan had gone pale.

Selanka watched Rishi over the open volume.

The question opened between them without being spoken.

Rishi read the last words again.

Be careful.

Then he looked at the sliver.

The sensory stone set into the page was black and small, no larger than the end of his thumb.

The lamplight found one edge and left the rest dark.

Rishi set his feet.

Weight low.

Hands quiet.

Breath gathered where fear could not spend it too quickly.

Selanka stepped closer, close enough to catch his wrist if she needed to.

Lethan stood at the other side of the table, silent.

His hand had already begun to rise.

He understood then where the line was.

Not every lesson had to be entered.

Not even for endurance.

Not even for training.

He lowered his hand.

“No,” he said.

Selanka watched him.

“No?”

Rishi kept his eyes on the stone.

“That’s too much.”

For a long moment, no one moved.

Then Selanka closed the book.

“Wise,” she said.

The clasps settled into place with a soft final sound.

Lethan looked from Rishi to the untouched stone.

Then, slowly, he bowed.

Rishi stood with his hand lowered at his side, breathing in the quiet room.

The lesson remained untouched.