Rhysel finished reading the first book - on image kamai - before she went to sleep and started on the second in the morning. She continued reading at home until early afternoon, then headed back to the school with her nose still in the book. She experimented with a couple of the simple image-based workings as she traveled, conjuring simple illusions and letting them fade to get the hang of the magic involved.

She arrived at the classroom about ten minutes before the class was due to start. "Good afternoon," Ar Kithen said politely when Rhysel walked in. "How are you?"

"Quite well, thank you. I hope you're the same."

"I am, thank you. Did you ask Aral Pyga if she knows any dragons who teach languages?"

"I did. In point of fact, I'm meeting with her cousin, who's a language teacher, tonight at five."

"Should I ask my grandmother anyway?"

"Let me see how this first meeting goes before I answer that question. I'll have a better idea of what she's like then."

"That seems wise."

She smiled, selecting a seat and depositing her satchel. "There was something else I wanted to ask you about, while I'm thinking about it. Kanaat's given me permission to build a transfer point here at the school. The working is power intensive enough that it requires me to have some other people to tap for power. The boy who brings my groceries and some of his friends have helped me before, and would probably do so again, but I'd need to have a staff member present to have them be on the grounds. You seem like the best choice, if you've got the time. Would you be available?"

"That's dependent on when you're planning to do this," he said, "and how long it's going to take, but probably."

"It would take about thirty minutes, and I hadn't set a time yet. Preferably this week, though. Living several miles outside of town makes the trip here a rather long one."

"I'd imagine it would, yes. I have half an hour available tomorrow after the practicum."

"I'll check with Kolaan tonight then, see if he and his friends can do it then."

Ar Kithen nodded.

"I can let you know in the morning. I can't think of a way to contact you before then."

"There are several ways, but none of them currently set up."

She nodded. "Like the communication crystals."

"Exactly."

"As long as you're okay with my letting you know tomorrow morning, I think that will probably work."

"I have no objections."

"Sounds like a plan then."

The door opened and Korulen and her friends walked in and took a clump of seats. "Hi, Rhysel," said Korulen. Kaarilel and Lutan waved.

"Hello, Korulen." She waved back to Kaarilel and Lutan.

"So anyway," said Pamen, "then she said that I shouldn't even be in the club if I was going to challenge her authority on stuff. And Minin was like, 'No way, she got elected just like you and if she'd run for president she'd have beat you but she didn't because Rasisen was running!' And she was like, 'Well, Rasisen lost and I'm the president,' and Pothenar said, 'Yeah, and we all know who counted the votes!'"

"Oooooh," said all the other girls.

Rhysel smiled as she took her seat, nodding politely to Ar Kithen before she did so.

More people started showing up. "So then," said the girl narrating the story, "she said she was going to get Lafiran and Heth and Kajan to back her up on demoting me, so she could kick me out, but Tab heard her and went and tipped off-"

By this time most of the class was present and Ar Kithen was looking at the clock. When it finally ticked to the pertinent time, he coughed and the students stopped talking. Rhysel already had her notebook open and on the table, although she hadn't started writing.

"Your assignment was -" Ar Kithen began, when the door opened again and a young elf girl slid in. "Thank you for joining us, Aralan Tem." He marked something on his attendance sheet. "Your assignment was to read the first three sections of your text. Who would like to volunteer to summarize the first one for those who either did not read it or would benefit from a refresher?"

After a brief silence, Aralan Tem came to her feet, perhaps hoping that it would redeem her somewhat for her lateness. "Uh, familiars are like these - critters that wizards get when they hit ninth tier, right?" she stammered. "They're, like, normal animals until the wizard casts this one spell, and then they, like, live as long as the wizard does and can get teleported to wherever the wizard is without, like, a spell." Rhysel listened intently, finding the information interesting despite the girl's apparent nervousness. "But they can't, like, have babies," Aralan Tem went on. "Um - and they make the wizard's channeling capacity kind of bigger."

"Thank you, Aralan Tem," said Ar Kithen dryly. "Who would like to summarize section two?"

A human boy got up. "The familiar-summoning spell - more accurately a familiar-tying spell, as familiars are created out of existing animals, not summoned - was developed by Zessis Mowren about 3,500 years ago, exact date unknown. His familiar was an erigrith, which remains the most popular familiar today.

"Familiar-summoning spells work by principles similar to those enabling wolfrider bonds and mental knotting spells to function, but since familiars are nonsentient animals, the knotting is incomplete, and the early familiar spells took advantage of this incompleteness to encourage the spell's spillover to form the other links that enable the telportation and the dependent lifespan. However, controlling spillover is very difficult, and early familiar summoning was fairly hazardous. Safer familiar spells came into existence about six hundred years after the first one was developed, and have undergone steady improvement since. However, it remains potentially dangerous to summon a familiar, and only about twenty percent of wizards attempt it; in most countries it is regulated by law and only those of eighth tier or higher, or in some cases only graduated wizards, are allowed to attempt it." He sat down.

Rhysel made a note to herself to talk to Korulen in private at some point soon, about the dangerous part.

"Thank you, Aran Seren. And section three?" said Ar Kithen.

A chubby halfling boy stood up. "Besides that you can use them for being able to cast big-CC spells without stinging yourself to death," he said, speaking slowly, "familiars can also be used as a focus for any of the same things you could, even if they haven't been sompeplace you went or whatever. Also familiar scales or fur or feathers or whatever are components in some spells.

"Also," he went on, "some species have particular animals that will increase their CCs by more. Like, dragons who have drake familiars have bigger CC boosts, and leonines or catfolk with cats, or whatever. But besides that how much bigger your CC gets when you get a familiar is mostly to do with how big it was to begin with so if you have a really small CC it won't get very much bigger even if you get the right kind of animal for whatever you are." He sat down.

Ar Kithen nodded and thanked the halfling as well. Then, he stuck out an arm, and a large, resplendently silver-and-blue bird appeared all of a sudden perched on it. The bird's feathers were smooth except for its three-foot-long plumed tail, but their patterns of color, in at least a dozen shades of blue and three of silver, were complicated and jagged.

Several of the students said "ooooh". Rhysel admired the bird's beauty along with the students, although she was less vocal about it. Ar Kithen set the bird on the table. "Who can identify my familiar?" he said. Korulen stuck up a hand.

"Aralan Inular," he acknowledged.

"It's a stratus-chaser!" she exclaimed. "Where in the world did you get one? They're almost impossible to find!"

"Not impossible, just very difficult," he said. "I have a distant cousin who works for a zoo, and oddly enough they had one that they couldn't convince any other zoos to take - they're more than a little difficult to take care of in captivity. In any event, that is not a particularly theoretical matter."

"What's his name?" called out someone.

Ar Kithen gave a small sigh. "Semel."

"How long have you had him?" asked someone else.

"Four years. Anyone who has further questions for me regarding Semel's history may stay afterwards to ask them. Class time is for seventh tier theory, if you will recall. Now, the reason I called my familiar here is to discuss calling gestures, a subject which your book does not cover in adequate detail. You will notice that as soon as I extended my arm, Semel appeared. Those of you who have not previously observed familiars being summoned may have been of the opinion that I was performing some mental task to call him, but that is not the case."

"During the initial summoning-or tying-of a familiar, the wizard in question must, during a certain gap during the spell, have his familiar on his person. When the spellcasting is resumed, the particular physical position of the wizard, and the corresponding position of the familiar, are thereafter set as the calling gesture. This is not alterable later, and considerable inconvenience has been caused by wizards who inadvertently chose postures they might use in day-to-day life or in casting spells."

A student raised a hand, and Ar Kithen called on him. "How do you get your familiar to sit in the right place while you're setting up the calling gesture?" he asked.

"At that point in the spell, the animal in question is only partially conscious," he said. "Enough to be able to sit or stand upright - or in Semel's case, perch on my arm - but not enough to object to being picked up and posed."

Another kid had a question. "Does the familiar being 'on your person' mean that you have to totally support its weight, or can it just be touching you?"

"The former," he said. "Which means that people are generally ill-advised to choose very large animals for their familiars."

Rhysel raised her hand, finding herself with a question.

Ar Kithen smiled slightly and pointed at her, inviting her to speak.

"Are there any animals that, despite being an appropriate size, simply don't work as familiars?" she asked.

"Sentient creatures in general," he said. "And there are several animals that have never been tried as familiars. Also, kitras and other larval fey, despite being very small and nonsentient, cannot be made into familiars."

The class eventually came to an end, and about half of the students swarmed around Ar Kithen's desk to pepper him with questions about Semel. The most frequent one was, predictably, "Can I pet him?". Ar Kithen eventually consented to this and handed over the bird to the eager crowd, which subjected the animal to many eager but careful hands stroking his feathers. After they had all petted him and had their questions answered they followed the rest of the students out of the room.

Having spent a good portion of the period admiring the bird herself, Rhysel watched this process with amused interest as she packed up. She waited patiently for Korulen to leave, nodding farewell to Ar Kithen when she followed the girl out. In the hallway she called out. "Korulen, do you have a few minutes?"

"Sure, why?" the thudia said, stopping and turning around.

"I've got a few questions I'd like to ask you - more or less privately, if that's okay. I won't keep you long, as I've got to hurry home myself."

"Okay. Saasnil's in a class now so if we need to be someplace private we could go to my room," she suggested. "Or outside or whatever."

"Either one is fine."

"Let's go to my room then," Korulen replied. "I can put down my books." She walked to the lift.

Rhysel followed her. "It's a pretty bird, isn't it?" she asked, making small talk until they reached the privacy of Korulen's room.

"Yeah, stratus-chasers are awesome," the girl said. "Do you have them on your world?"

"No. I've never seen its like. Although it does sort of remind me of the descriptions of firebirds - except the coloring is all wrong."

"I think they're related," Korulen said, "except stratus-chasers are sort of the air version of firebirds."

"So you have firebirds here, then? Curious."

"Oh, you mean you've got them at home? I thought you meant somebody told you about our kind of firebirds."

"We have them at home, yes. I've not seen one, myself, as they nest in volcanic areas, and I've never lived near a volcanically active region."

"Ours hang out by the sun," Korulen said.

Rhysel nodded. "Your sun is rather easier to reach than mine are."

"Guess so. Fire mages like them. They keep them as pets sometimes."

"Are there water and earth related equivalents to stratus-chasers and firebirds?"

"Yeah, currenters and dustbeaks," Korulen said. "Neither of them can fly in the air at all, though."

Rhysel nodded again. "Interesting."

Korulen unlocked the door to her room, dropped her bookbag onto her desk, and flopped back onto her bed with a mighty yawn. "So what did you want to talk about?"

"Well, it's sort of two-part, I guess. What're the dangers involved in getting a familiar?"

"Well, it's a high-CC spell so if you botch it it's more likely to kill you than a littler spell," she said. "And it stings like the dickens but that's not really a danger so much as an annoyance."

"So the only danger is if you mess it up?"

"Same as any spell. Unless you have a low enough CC that you can't cast it at all but I don't. Well, that and sometimes your familiar will go nuts and attack you, but I'm getting a little drake, so if that happens I can turn dragon and stop it."

The kama nodded, leaning idly against the doorframe. "The reason I'm asking is this. If I do go through with setting up a program to teach kamai here, I'm committing myself to spending at least the substantial majority of my time - if not all of it - here in Esmaar, until I feel comfortable leaving the program in the hands of those who'd be fully trained. At the barest minimum, I expect that to be ten or fifteen years. So, while it will be nice to be able to make trips back home when I want, it's not so urgent as to put undue pressure on you to try to get a familiar as soon as possible. If there's danger involved, I'd really feel more comfortable if you waited until you knew you were ready. I don't want to see you risk hurting yourself just to get me home."

"I was going to get one anyway," Korulen assured her. "And I already know what kind I want, so there's no reason not to go ahead and get one as soon as I can."

Rhysel nodded. "If it's something you feel ready to do for you own reasons at the time, that's another matter entirely, of course. Just as long as you don't feel like you have to do it just for my sake."

"Of course," the girl said. "But yeah, I'd summon one right now if it was legal and Mom and Dad would let me."

Rhysel nodded, feeling a little more relieved at that. "Well, that was basically it."

"You said it was two-part."

"The first part was wanting to know what the dangers were. The second was wanting to let you know that I was planning to be here for a while so you didn't have to rush."

"Oh, I see."

"I'll leave you to your own amusements now. I've got to get to my tower by five, and it's a bit of a trip." The kama opened the door and waved on her way out.

"Okay. Bye, then, and see you later."

"Probably Fenen, I'd imagine," Rhysel called back as she waved. She headed down the hall and entered the lift, asking it to carry her to the entrance hall.

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