“Magic colors the threads as part of the spell,” said Lark. “And there’s something you should know. While she does this, Sandry will need your magic.”

“All of it,” added Sandry. “You won’t be able to use any.”

“For how long?” Tris wanted to know. She didn’t like the idea of her power not being there if she needed it.

“For a day or so,” replied Lark. “Once we see how the magics have mixed, Sandry has to separate them again so each of you will have your own power back, and completely under control.”

Lark drew his bobbin from Briar’s fingers. Daja handed over hers. Tris had to think about it for a minute, before she too surrendered her thread.

Once Lark had all four bobbins, including Sandry’s, she put them beside the backstrap loom and drew four new bobbins laden with thread from her pocket. “Carry these until we ask for them,” she instructed, giving one to each of the four. “After Sandry maps the problem, she has to weave it right again. That’s when we’ll need fresh silk that’s attuned to you.”

The four young people tucked the new bobbins into their pockets. Sandry then gathered up the bobbins that Lark had put beside her. Taking the ends of all four threads, she twisted them together and began to wind them onto a shuttle.

“Lark, why aren’t you doing this?” inquired Tris. “Is this the kind of thing a new weaver ought to be doing? No offense,” she added to Sandry, who only grinned.

“Except that this particular new weaver has already spun magic, if you recall,” said Lark. “I’ve never done such a thing. I can’t manipulate someone else’s power. And though I’ve woven maps on a loom, it’s been for something physical—searching for the location of a lost child, once, or finding out where robbers had their lair. In tracing things of power, I would be helpless.”

Daja, Briar, and Tris thought this over. Sandry continued to wind thread onto her shuttle.

Lark fiddled with a piece of scarlet thread, then continued. “The mages I’ve known either shape a physical thing to carry their power or they just wield magic as part of their own bodies. I can place a spell of invisibility in a cloak as I weave; Niko sees magic with his real eyes. Rosethorn’s power grows with her plants. Frostpine builds in spells as he works metal. And most of the time that’s how you all do magic—most of the time, but not always. We know Daja put magic onto iron so thoroughly that she changed its nature. Tris sprouts lightning—she doesn’t need to wait for a storm. Sandry was able to spin a thing that did not exist in the physical world, your magics. Briar—”

“Me, I just cook things in the ground,” said the boy glumly.

“Where did the fire to cook with come from?” Lark wanted to know. “Like Tris, you sprouted it.” She hugged him around the shoulders with one arm and let him go. “We should have done this mapping weeks ago, the moment we knew that Sandry had combined your magics during the earthquake.”

“But then the pirates came,” said Tris.

Lark nodded. “And then we were cleaning up in Winding Circle and Summersea, and then the duke wished us to go north with him. Well, I don’t believe we can put it off anymore. This may not be the best time or place, but it has to be done. Are you nearly ready?” she asked Sandry.

The girl nodded. Almost all of the thread from the bobbins was now wrapped around her shuttle.

Lark went to the archway. As the young people took seats near Sandry, Lark hooked one end of the crimson thread she’d been toying with on the right side of the arch. Her lips moved while she drew the rest of the thread across the opening, as if to bar it. Using her thumb, she pressed the free end of the thread to the opposite side, where it stuck. She put her palms together and rested her hands against her forehead, as if she prayed. To the eyes of the four, the archway thread began to glow, then burn with a fierce, white light. Lark sighed and returned to them, settling cross-legged onto the ground.

“That should spare us any interruptions. Now. Close your eyes,” she ordered. The four obeyed. “As you meditate, pass a thread of your power to Sandry. She will add it to her weaving. Once you know she has it firmly in hand, you can go about your tasks.”

“Is this going to hurt?” Tris wanted to know. “I’ll hate it if it hurts.”

“You’ll feel a tug,” replied Lark. “It shouldn’t hurt.”

I wish she hadn’t said “shouldn’t,” Tris grumbled magically to the other three.

Oh, hush, Sandry retorted.

“Breathe in,” commanded Lark.

Counting to seven as they inhaled, the four closed their eyes. Each time they did this exercise, it got easier to track their powers to their sources and to gather them up. Reaching into her magic, Daja obtained a pinch of it. Slowly and steadily she drew it as a wire, twirling it a bit to make it as thin as silk. Tris grabbed a miniature lightning bolt, one that trailed a cord that ended in the blaze of her power. Briar teased out a vine, the thinnest, most threadlike tendril. With her own power wound, one end trailing, around a bright thing that looked like a distaff at her center, Sandry waited for her friends to give her what she needed. She took Briar’s first and joined it to her thread. Next came Daja’s, then Tris’s. Gently she twirled the four cords until they melted together to create a single length.

They felt Lark now as a shimmering presence that offered the shuttle to Sandry. As Sandry wound their power onto the shuttle, Daja, Briar, and Tris retreated into their own bodies and senses, coming out into the real world again. Even with their physical eyes open and all their senses returned, they felt the gentle tug as Sandry drew their magic away.