Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 140
time and again, but he could provide nothing new for her. He
often saw her meditating with her eyes closed, and often after
these sessions she had new questions for him about the
landscapes he had glimpsed: “was there a tall rounded hill in
the distance? Did the forest extend in three tongues near the
horizon?” He had no answers.
On the third day, on one of his infrequent breaks, Jordan
went to the roof to stretch. The Boros estate sprawled out
below. People went to and fro about duties that were all
familiar to him. He could tell what was happening by watching
the servants, though the purposes of the Boros' themselves
were impossible to read.
Though politics as such was beyond him, Jordan could
read the story of the Boros family home from its very stones-could
tell what was added when, and in what style. If you went
by the boasts of the visiting family members, the clan had
always been prominent. But this tower was ancient, and the
manor house new, and in between were traces of buildings and
walls in styles from various periods. Jordan could imagine
each in turn, and he saw large gaps between the apparent razing
of one set of buildings and the growth of the manor. If this
were the Boros' ancestral home, it had lain unoccupied for up
to a century at a time.
This exercise was a good way to take his mind off things.
And, he had to admit, he was starting to relax despite himself.
Over the past days he had constantly practiced the skills
Calandria May had taught him. He'd never known he should
breathe from the belly, not the chest--or that his body carried
tension in tight muscles even when his mind was relaxed. He
scanned his body every minute or two, and every time he did,
he found some part of it had tightened up, usually his
shoulders. He would concentrate for a second, relax them, and