Heart's Darkness

by H D A Roberts

  The lecture hall was more of a sitting room, with a number of chairs around the walls and some brightly coloured cushions on the floor; there was also a wide set of windows looking over the square, and an empty fireplace in the corner.

  The professor was a good ten minutes late and barrelled through the door at a great rate of knots. I liked her on sight. She was a little shorter than me, with a mass of curly brown hair, big brown eyes and a gentle face with a frazzled expression on it; her gown was askew over her shocking-pink, calf-length dress. She tripped over the carpet on her way in, and her pile of books went flying as she fell head-first into the room. I managed to catch both her and the stack with my Will before they could hit the ground.

  I set her back on her feet and reassembled the stack before returning it to her hands. She blushed scarlet from chin to crown, it was actually rather cute.

  "Thank you," she said a little sheepishly, straightening her outfit, "Good reflexes!"

  I grinned back and waved off the compliment. She looked me over, and saw my eyes. She didn't recoil, though, which made a nice change.

  "Ooh! You're Graves, aren't you? My cousin, Vanessa Knowles commended you to me, it's a pleasure to meet you!" she said, taking my hand and shaking it very vigorously.

  Vanessa Knowles worked for the SCA, I had a lot of time for her. It seemed that Telepathy ran in her family.

  "How's she doing?" I asked, "I haven't seen her in a few months."

  "Oh, very well, she got a raise, she's chuffed. Oh! I forgot, Amy Porter," she said, offering her hand again, which I took, and she shook just as vigorously, "Your professor, I suppose!"

  I really liked this woman. She was so obviously enthusiastic that her energy was practically contagious. And her rather ditzy personality was quite adorable, reminding me of a hyperactive puppy.

  She introduced herself to the others and set her books down on the one desk in the room. She outlined the course, which was to be about improving on basic Telepathic skills, firstly with an eye to improved mental defence, followed up with a series of psychology classes that would allow selective manipulation of a subject's mind (in a healing way, not a 'You obey me, now!' sort of way... I hoped). It all sounded very interesting. Again, I'd been doing a lot of this stuff the hard way, relying on power and creativity to compensate for a lack of proper training (though my mental shields were quite well made, I'd been told).

  "Okay, any questions?"

  There weren't any.

  "Good! Alright, let's everyone partner up," she said, "and we'll run through basic defence strategies."

  Naturally, I was the odd one out and Porter came over with a wry grin on her face.

  "Vanessa told me you weren't much for playing with others," she said, dropping onto the floor next to me, and dragging me off the chair with her.

  "Okay, nice and simple first lesson, mental defences and their weaknesses," she said, "I trust you wouldn't mind volunteering, Mister Graves?"

  "You say that like I have some sort of choice," I said with a raised eyebrow that drew another grin from her.

  She pulled a small round object out of a pocket and settled it on the floor between us. She directed me to place my hand on it and erect whatever defences I felt appropriate. I shrugged and did as I was told.

  An image of my mental defences appeared above the class. They were based loosely on the Lonely Mountain from 'The Hobbit', only bigger, and with a far more complex interior. The mountain made up my innermost defence, and was surrounded by a massively complex maze and a chasm that dropped deep into the imaginary earth.

  "Wow, Van wasn't kidding when she said you knew what you were doing," Porter said.

  "I get by."

  She smirked.

  "Okay, everyone, I was intending to tell you all about weaknesses in Mental defence, but I think that might be a bit tricky with this much detail. Still, we'll give it a bash! Now, every mental defence is based on certain rules, determined by the defender. Generally speaking, it's a three dimensional world with gravity, because that's the easiest thing to picture."

  "Now, your average intruder will have to follow those rules themselves, which puts them at a disadvantage on a defender's home ground. But your more competent Telepath will know better, and will change those rules on you. I'll ask you not to actively defend, alright, Mister Graves? This is just a demonstration."

  I nodded, and suddenly a mental probe dropped straight out of the 'sky' and right onto the top of my mountain, completely bypassing the maze and the outer defences! I blinked, rather impressed, actually. I didn't know one could do that...

  "See? Gravity is a construct of the defender, but your trained opponent can attack from any direction she chooses," she said, her probe beginning to burrow.

  "Yikes, you build to last, don't you?" she asked after a few minutes of futile digging.

  "I try," I replied.

  "Okay, I'm going to push a little harder, don't take it personally, alright?"

  I nodded again.

  She retreated a bit and added a solid chunk of power to her probe. Her construct expanded and multiplied before attacking from multiple angles, each probe was about ten times as powerful as her first, and they went ploughing into my mountain like lightning, making me wince a little.

  "Easy, that's my brain you're poking!"

  She giggled and lost concentration. Two of her probes vanished and she scolded me for my interruption. She eventually made it through the outer slopes of my mountain and into the corridors, where she spread out, trying to find the spark of my mind.

  "Um, Mister Graves, would you mind pointing me in the right direction?" she asked sheepishly.

  "Down. Very far down. And there are no stairs on your level."

  "Bollocks. Alright, you get the idea," she said, pulling out and letting the image vanish, "the point is that an attack can come from any angle, and a good defence must take that into account. I'd like you all to take a few minutes to adjust your mental architecture, and then we'll practice."

  She left me for a while and handed out more of those little round projectors to the students before circling the room, watching the other in actions. I went to work, carefully adjusting the image of my shields, using the mnemonic device I'd learnt for this express purpose.

  The other students' defences were quite impressive, I have to say (which I should have expected from practiced Telepaths in an advanced class). One had a massive floating sphere suspended over a rushing river, another's was a colossal monolith protected by row upon row of razor wire, a third looked like his spark was constantly moving about the inside of a pinball machine; impossible to nail down.

  Impressive though they were, Porter demolished them one by one, taking her time and showing each person what they were doing wrong, giving them pointers and helping them come up with better strategies. She was patient and good-natured; I don't think anyone felt patronised or put out.

  She came back to me.

  "You ready, Mister Graves?" she asked, settling back onto the carpet.

  I nodded and erected my adjusted shields.

  She dove in from above again and squeaked as she hit the mist around my mountain.

  "Oh, damn, Graves, that's hardly sporting!" she said as a weight of sticky mess adhered to her probe, compressing it and slowing it down. She split again, and her other probes hit the same problem, the whole mass of fog squeezing in on the intruders.

  She darted and ducked into easier paths through the murk, only to get hopelessly turned around, by design. Two probes collided and she grunted as they cancelled each other out. Two more flew out in the wrong direction and the last one was simply squeezed to a stop.

  "Okay," she said, rubbing her forehead, "it appears that you've understood the principles I was getting at."

  Sotto voce, she muttered something about braining her cousin for not warning her adequately.

  I smiled at the praise and shut down my shields.

  She looked at the clock, and I was surprised to see
that the whole hour had passed already, and I must say that I was quite sorry about that. This was the first class where I didn't feel like a complete outsider.

  Porter dismissed us, but held up a hand for me before I could leave.

  "Vanessa said you really pissed her off when she first met you," she said with a smile once the others were gone, "I'm starting to see why."

  "Sorry," I offered with a smile of my own.

  "Oh, don't be. It's nice to meet a student who can grasp my lessons without a constant struggle. Where'd you learn your Telepathy, by the way?"

  "Mostly I'm self taught. I had an unpleasant Uncle I used as a guinea pig."

  "She also said that she never knows when you're joking or not. She said that when I'm hoping you are, you're usually not."

  My smile became an open grin.

  "She seems to have mentioned me quite a bit."

  "Don't tell her I told you this, but she's had a little crush on you since that whole Arianna Hellstrom duel. SCA types like a man who can take care of himself," she said in a sly whisper.

  "She would stab me in the face if she thought I knew that," I said, which made her laugh. But then her face took on a more serious expression.

  "I hear that you've not been getting on too well with the other professors. Don't worry about Hadleigh, she's just a little jittery, but she'll come around. Nothing we can do about Aldwich, I'm afraid, he's a mean old bastard and hates Shadowborn. Your other Professor is Mark Law. He's a good egg, but a little gruff and impatient. You and he will probably get along fine, and I'll put in a good word."

  "That's very decent of you. I appreciate it."

  "You saved my favourite cousin's life," she said with a shrug, "and even if you hadn't, I don't like prejudice. We'll do what we can, I promise."

  "Thank you," I said genuinely.

  Day Two... not really so bad at all, as it turned out. Woke up well, good first lecture, and now that Porter had promised to put in a good word for me, I could actually look forward to the High Magic introduction that afternoon. So, it was actually turning out to be a damned good day and- oh, crap there's Jocelyn Faust again...

  She was standing outside the front doors of the Magic School, looking distinctly ruffled. It was actually a cute look on her. Her normally perfect hair was in disarray, her clothes were rumpled and she was wearing mismatched socks. I couldn't help but grin a little.

  "What did you do?" she asked, trembling a bit, "He... he just sits there, wailing and spitting, mumbling about 'the monster'. We had to bring in nurses to start feeding him!"

  "Oh nothing much, we just had a little chat, nothing strenuous."

  "Nothing strenuous? You terrorised him!"

  "And this is a problem because...?"

  "Because it's wrong, Mathew! You can't just invade someone's house and assault them!"

  "How much do you want to bet that I won't even spend one day in jail over this?"

  She glared at me, "How are you this confident? He's a Faust. He has contacts everywhere. He has dirt on everyone, from the Conclave's janitor to the Primus inter Pares!"

  That's the Magicians' version of the Prime Minister, by the way.

  "I'm not without the odd contact of my own, don't worry."

  She glared at me, hard. Say what you like about Jocelyn Faust, and I could say quite a few things, that girl was nobody's idiot.

  "What aren't you telling me? You lived in mortal terror of the SCA; what's changed?"

  "Maybe I've already gone bad, and have nothing to fear anymore?"

  She burst out laughing, which made me frown.

  She continued laughing as she walked away, saying that she'd see me later.

  Okay, she probably knew that I wouldn't hurt a fly (unless it grew to the size of truck and tried to eat me), but she didn't need to laugh quite that hard.

  Chapter 9

  I won't bore you with the specifics of High Magic theory. Suffice to say it was complicated. Simply, casting High Magic Spells required at least a limited ability to feel the energy in question; I couldn't make a Portal without being able to 'see' Space Magic, for example. That meant that the course was, by necessity, mostly about learning to harness those energies, initially through meditation (which I was terrible at. I had immense trouble even staying awake; when I relaxed, closed my eyes and started breathing regularly, it was because I was ready to sleep!)

  The professor was decent enough, though, didn't even scream once.

  The rest of my day passed quietly enough. I caught up with Tom, who was now thoroughly down in the dumps because the Naiad girls had stopped making engagements with him, for reasons he wouldn't go into (and went bright red over). Given his professed fondness for alcohol, I decided that a trip to the Student Union might be just the ticket, and he did perk up while he drowned his sorrows. Well, he tried to drown his sorrows. He was such a lightweight that I doubt he even got his sorrows' feet wet before he passed out.

  The Union was quite a large space, long and not too thin, with faux-leather covered benches along one long wall, the bar against the other, with large windows and doors at either end, and tables throughout. At half past one, it was maybe a quarter full, mostly with the robust, sporty type of student, like my snoozing friend, who I was thinking about waking up.

  I'd never been the biggest fan of pubs. My more evil grandmother always took Des and I to one of them during our days out, and never wasted the opportunity to compare and contrast her grandsons (to my cost and Des' gain). As a result, even the smell of the places triggered my flight or flight response, and the ambiance of boisterousness, addled by booze, only made it worse.

  I started preparing the Spell that would wake up my idiot friend when a loud voice barked in my direction.

  "Hey! It's that Magician!" said a strong-looking young man, dressed in a heavy jacket, sweater and dark trousers. He strode over to our table, looking down with some amusement at my snoozing comrade, who might have actually had the social skills to deal with our current predicament without starting an argument...

  "Is it true you killed a Demon?" he said, looming over me, his expression saying how likely he thought that would be.

  Incidentally, where were people getting this information?

  "No," I said with a smile.

  He grinned in an 'I thought so' way; the two girls with him already looked bored.

  "You can't kill a Demon up here, you can only banish them back where they came from," I explained.

  He had been turning away, but he stopped and looked back at me.

  "And how would you know?" he sneered.

  "I read a lot."

  I'd decided to abandon my Illusions, but had taken up wearing sunglasses in places where I might meet strangers (no need to cause too much terror-induced screaming unless I had to), as a result, my new acquaintance couldn't see the mischief in my eyes.

  He frowned, and seemed to realise that I was being evasive; he wasn't the only one.

  "Are they scary?" one of the girls asked, moving past the guy to sit next to Tom, staring at me intently. She was pretty, tall with sharp features and nice lips. Her black hair fell in a curly wave over her shoulders, reminding me of Tethys.

  "I wouldn't recommend them," I said with a wince at the memory of the last lot of Demons I'd met face to face (not counting Gabrielle). I'd nearly died. Horribly.

  "What did they look like?" the other girl asked, a pretty young thing, maybe a little older than I, dressed in tight and revealing clothes.

  "Depends on the type, I guess. But nasty is a pretty common trait," I said with a smile, not wanting to scare anyone. I could have told them stories that would have kept them awake for a month.

  "Does that mean there's a heaven?" the first girl asked.

  "I hope so."

  "Come on girls, we're going to be late," the guy said, sounding miffed, tapping his foot irately, no doubt realising that his initial attempt at looking superior for the ladies was backfiring rather spectacularly.

  "You
mustn't mind Laurence," the blonde said, "we talk to any guy who's not him, and just like that he's jealous, even though he hasn't even managed to ask one of us out yet."

  Laurence spluttered, his face going red. The blonde grinned alarmingly. It didn't take a genius to figure out that I was being used as a prop to annoy her potential boyfriend.

  "And you are?" I asked.

  "Missy, and this is Mila, my sister," the blonde said.

  "Mathew," I replied, "and this is Tom."

  Tom snored a bit louder.

  "So, Mathew, you have a girlfriend?" Missy asked, batting her eyes at me while Laurence went an interesting shade of vermillion.

  "Laurence, for heaven's sake, ask one of them out before this one goads you into fighting for the privilege. That's what she's after, you know, I've met the type before," I said.

  Several girls at Windward fell under this category; one recognised them by their boyfriends' bruises.

  "What?" Laurence managed.

  "She wants you to ask her out, and she wants you to fight for her amusement, not necessarily in that order. I'd point out that this particular type of bunny-boiler is bad for you, but I doubt it would make a difference."

  Mila looked like she was desperately trying to hold in a smirk, and was failing dismally. Missy had gone white with rage.

  "You going to let him talk about me like that?" Missy said, turning to Laurence.

  "Um... no?" he said, taking a hesitant step forward. Poor fellow, too many ideas had jammed his brain...

  I slowly and very deliberately pushed my sunglasses down my nose a bit before looking right into Laurence's green eyes. He stopped and stared for a long moment before backing away, white as a sheet, his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Missy squeaked and Mila looked a little curious, but otherwise unworried.

  I pushed my glasses back up and put a smile back on my face.

  "Careful what you set up as bait, Missy," I said cheerfully, "not everything long and slithery is a worm."

  Missy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times in mortification and then simply darted away, taking a flummoxed Laurence with her. Mila stayed behind.