The Sorcery Code by Dima Zales, Anna Zaires Read Free Book Online

she opened her eyes, looking at Blaise expectantly.
    He shook his head regretfully. “I don’t think it worked. What did you try to do?”
    “I wanted to make my own version of that beautiful flower you created in the garden.”
    “I see. And how did you go about doing it?”
    She lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “I don’t know. I replayed the memory of you doing it earlier in my mind and tried to picture myself in your place, but I don’t think it works like that.”
    “No, you’re right, that’s probably not how it would work for you.” Frustrated, Blaise ran his fingers through his hair. “The problem is I don’t know exactly how it would work for you. I was hoping you would simply be able to do it, just like you did the math problem earlier.”
    Gala closed her eyes again, and that same look of concentration appeared on her face.
    Again nothing happened.
    “I failed,” she said, opening her eyes. She didn’t seem particularly concerned about that fact.
    “What did you try to do?”
    “I wanted to raise the temperature in this room by a couple of degrees, but I could feel that it didn’t work.”
    Blaise lifted his eyebrows. Her unusual temperature sensitivity aside, it seemed that Gala did have a good intuition for sorcery. Changing the temperature of an object was a very basic spell, something that Blaise could do just by saying a few sentences in the old magical language.
    While he was pondering this, Gala jumped off the bed and came up to one of the windows. “I want to go out there,” she said, turning her head to look at him. “I want to see more of this world.”
    Blaise tried to hide his disappointment. “You don’t want to try any more magic?”
    “No,” Gala said stubbornly. “I don’t. I want to go out and explore.”
    Blaise took a deep breath. “Maybe just one more try?”
    Her expression darkened, a crease appearing on her smooth forehead. “Blaise,” she said quietly, “you’re making me feel bad right now.”
    “What?” Blaise couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice. “Why?”
    “Because you’re making me feel used, like that object that you intended me to be,” she said, sounding upset. “What do you want from me? Am I to be some tool that people use to do magic? Is that my purpose in life?”
    “No, of course not!” Blaise protested, pushing away an unwelcome tendril of guilt. In a way, that had been exactly what he had originally intended for Gala, but she wasn’t supposed to be a person, with the feelings and emotions of a human being. He had been trying to build an intelligence, yes, but it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. It was to be a means to an end, a way to address the worst of the inequality in their society. All he had thought about was getting the object to understand regular human language, and he hadn’t considered the fact that anything with that level of intelligence might have its—or her—own thoughts and opinions.
    And now he was a victim of his own success. Gala could certainly understand language—maybe even better than Blaise, given her reading prowess. However, she was no more an object to be used than he was. His original plan of creating enough intelligent magical objects for everyone was sheer folly; if successful, it would just transfer the burden of inequality from one group of thinking beings to another—provided that Gala or others of her kind would even go along with something like that.
    Besides, it wasn’t like she could even do magic at this point. Or maybe she just didn’t want to, Blaise thought wryly. He would certainly be hesitant to display any kind of magical ability in her situation.
    She was still looking upset, so he tried to reassure her, “Gala, listen to me, I didn’t mean to make you feel like an object. What I told you about my original intentions for you is obviously out of the question now. I know you’re not a thing to be used. I’m sorry. It was thoughtless of me not to realize how