“Figured what out?” “Why people in this world are trained in weapons or magik, but not both!”
“How’s that?”
“Well, two reasons I can see just offhand. First off, it’s a matter of conditioning. Reflexes. You’ll react the way you’re trained. If you’ve been trained with weapons, you’ll react to crisis with a weapon. If you’re trained in magik, you’ll react with magik. The problem is, if you’re trained both ways, you’ll hesitate, trying to make up your mind which to use, and probably get clobbered in the process. So to keep things simple, Garkin only trained you in magik. It’s probably all he had been trained in himself.”
I thought about it.
“That makes sense. What’s the other reason?”
He grinned at me.
“Learning curve. If what you told me about life expectancy in this world is even vaguely accurate, and if you’re any example of how fast people in this world learn, you only have time to learn one or the other.”
“I think I prefer the first explanation.”
He chortled to himself and went back to sharpening his sword.
Once his needling would have bothered me, but now I took it in stride. It seemed to be his habit to be critical of everything in our world, and me in particular. After a week of constant exposure to him, the only way I would worry is if he stopped complaining.
Actually I was quite pleased with my progress in magik. Under Aahz’s tutelage, my powers were growing daily. One of the most valuable lessons I had learned was to draw strength directly from the earth. It was a matter of envisioning energy as a tangible force, like water, and drawing new energy up one leg and into my mind while releasing exhausted energy down the other leg and back into the earth. Already, I could completely recharge myself even after a hard day’s walking just by standing motionless with my eyes closed for several minutes and effecting this energy exchange. Aahz, as always, was unimpressed. According to him, I should have been able to do the energy exchange while we were walking, but I didn’t let his grumbling dampen my enthusiasm. I was learning, and at a faster pace than I had dreamed possible.
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