Page 82 of Cage of Starlight
Tory stands in the center of the round rug Iri has rolled across the ground, Sena’s kerchief (offered up when Iri realized he didn’t have anything on hand for the purpose) wrapped around his eyes, knotted at the base of his skull.
“Do you sense an energy?” Iri asks for the fifth or sixth time.
Each time, he hides something under a silky stretch of cloth on top of a wooden barrel, and each time he spins Tory in a wide circle and asks him to locate the energy in question. For the purposes of the exercise, Sena and Iri stand in various locations on the circular rug.
As he has done for the past two times, Tory turns first toward Sena, which makes something inside him leap. It’s a strange feeling, to be found.
“This one’s you, right, Sena?” Even with his eyes covered, Tory points directly at Sena’s chest. “Right . . . here.”
Iri sighs. “Very good, but not the object of the exercise. Try again. The energy I’m asking you to seek out will be faint.”
“Seed energy this time?”
“No. It will be many times fainter than our previous exercises, but it will be the same type I’ve been asking you to find so far. You’ve done well in our previous tries. This time, it will be . . . nearly absent. The energy I’m asking you to seek is likely to be so faint it’s a mere thread away from nonexistence.”
“What the fuck, that’s—” Tory reaches up to his blindfold. Iri stops him.
“Removing the blindfold will ruin the object of the exercise. Leave it on.”
“But I can’t—”
“You can. We have already done it many times.” Iri sighs and takes Tory’s shoulder.
“Those were easier!”
“Did you expect them to stay that way?”
Tory huffs.
Iri mutters something in Arlunian, too quiet to catch. By the tone, it’s not complimentary. “Excuse me,” he says, before he spins Tory a few times.
When Tory stops, he staggers, feet tangling like a drunkard’s.
“All right. The cups on the end of this training rug hold stones that silence outside energies, so you are already doing this in theeasiestpossible situation. Other than Sena and I, there should be no interference. The energy lies not behind you but in front of you. If you had to guess whether it lay to the left, right, or center of your current position, which direction feels most likely?”
“None of them.”
“Choose one. This is not a trick question.”
Tory frowns, turning to his left, then center, then right.
“If it would be easier, Sena and I can leave the training rug so you can focus more effectively.”
Whatever it is Iri wants him to find, it lies atop the barrel, hidden beneath an elegantly embroidered towel to Tory’s right. “No, it’s actually . . . I think it’s easier with Sena here.”
Tory turns again, lingering a while in each direction. One hand scrubs at the short hairs at the back of his neck, and he exhales slowly. “There,” he says at last, finger pointing more or less at the barrel. “Over there feels . . . more. There’s something there, I think.”
Iri’s eyes shine with some complicated, overpowering joy. “Yes.”
Tory waves at the blindfold. “Can I . . .?”
“Not yet. Heal it.”
“Heal? This is . . . that’s not . . . it’s not a person. I can tell.”
Iri’s eyebrows rise. “Can you tell me what it is, then?”
Tory shakes his head.
