by Lisa Cassidy
“Such as?” Finn perked up.
“Well, for one, they have a very specific grouping of abilities, including elite athleticism and speed. This has never varied, not once in hundreds of years.” A slight smile crossed Howell’s face. “It’s supposed to have been a wondrous thing, seeing the Taliath fight. It was more than a dance, more than just magic.”
“And you said more will be born?” Finn asked.
“Taliath are born just like mages—sometimes from mage or Taliath parents, sometimes not—but far more rarely. We have no reason to believe that will stop.”
Alyx eyes had remained riveted on the blade while the conversation went on around her. There was something about it that called to her.
“Alyx?” Howell’s voice broke her from her reverie.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’d thought you might have more questions for me.”
He was watching her intently, an odd look of speculation on his face. She didn’t know what to make of it, or his question.
“It’s a beautiful sword, sir.”
“All right.” The look vanished from his face and he began briskly ushering them out. “You’ll need to go and report for your classes.”
“Classes, sir?” Finn asked, brightening.
“Yes.” Howell locked the door to the dome behind them. “Schooling is a large part of your life at DarkSkull. Mages aren’t just warriors and magic-wielders. They’re intelligent, educated, and able to think in diplomatic and strategic terms.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve organised for your attendance at all the usual initiate classes, and your instructors will be expecting you.” He eyed them sternly. “I expect you to apply yourselves. There is no point teaching you magic if you can’t think and plan. Any questions?”
“Ah.” Finn glanced at his sister. “Our first class would be where, sir?”
“My favourite.” He beamed at them. “Languages. Go to the long building directly behind the main hall. You’ll find the room at the end of the hall on the third floor.”
Alyx trailed Dawn and Finn as they located the languages class. Sun shone through the large windows along the eastern side of the room, highlighting dust particles as they floated in the air.
Initiates and a handful of apprentices already filled most of the desks in the room, and all of them looked up as the newcomers entered. Alyx sensed the curiosity in their stares, and didn’t fail to miss the hostility in some. The blond-haired initiate from the sparring yard sat at the front, a dark purple bruise colouring his left eye.
“Master Howell’s new initiates, I take it?” A sharp female voice addressed them. Alyx switched her attention to the stern-looking mage standing at the front of the room. Zandian, Alyx guessed, probably about her father’s age, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun.
“Yes, we are. I’m Finn,” Finn spoke. “This is my sister, Dawn, and Alyx.”
“I am Master Prajana. Your master warned me you’d be late today, but don’t let it happen again. I don’t tolerate tardiness.”
They nodded. Alyx was becoming increasingly uncomfortable at the attention of the room being focused on them, and wished they’d all look somewhere else.
“Well, don’t just stand there and gawk,” Prajana snapped. “Find a desk and open the Zandian book you’ll find there to page eleven.”
There were no three desks together, so Alyx sat alone in a back row by the window. The initiate beside her glanced at Alyx before looking back at her book.
“I’m Alyx,” she said, trying to be friendly.
The initiate looked over again, then pointedly glanced at Prajana. “Madgena. Master Prajana doesn’t like talking in class.”
Recoiling at the girl’s icy tone, Alyx hurriedly found the book and turned to page eleven before staring at the unfamiliar words there. She knew from her lessons with Luden that while the kingdoms of Rionn and Tregaya spoke the same language, Zandia and Shivasa had their own languages.
Of course, nobody in Rionn had thought it appropriate for the children of nobles to learn the Shiven language, but Luden had tried to teach them Zandian once. Alyx suddenly wished she’d listened to her tutor, and felt a niggle of guilt when she remembered her father’s unsuccessful attempts to get her to pay more attention to her studies.
“We’ll be working on Zandian vowels for the remainder of today’s class,” Prajana called out. “Who can list them for me?”
Madgena raised a hand and began reciting. Alyx stared at her book, trying to figure out where the vowels were listed. It turned out to be a hopeless exercise—while the script was the same as Rionnan, the letters were pronounced differently, and Alyx couldn’t make sense of any of it.
An hour passed in which Alyx unsuccessfully tried to understand at least part of what Prajana was teaching. When a bell clanged throughout the building, the students gathered their books and rose.
Madgena left without a word, and Alyx waited while Finn asked Prajana where to go next. Then, in somewhat of a daze, she followed the twins to their next lesson—mapping and geography.
This class was held in another rectangular building across a wide field from the main hall. Hanging along the brick walls of the room were colourful maps of all types, shapes, and sizes. A scattering of wide tables large enough to unroll a map on their surfaces served as desks.
The older mage teaching this class—Master Alaria—was friendlier than Master Prajana and spent a good part of the lesson with Finn, Dawn, and Alyx, explaining what they’d missed and suggesting ways for them to catch up.
With some relief, Alyx found parts of what Alaria taught familiar to her. Knowledge of geography, borders, and land boundaries had been one of the focuses of her education in Rionn, so although she didn’t know how to draw or interpret a map, she could understand the concepts that underpinned how they worked.
By the time the bell rang again, Alyx’s stomach was rumbling, and the three of them followed the stream of students to the dining hall where they lined up to collect thick sandwiches and mugs of water.
“Do we get any time off at all?” Alyx scrutinised the full class list Alaria had given them as they waited.
“Just Seventhdays.” Finn pointed. “Look, we get to study political and military strategy, and some basic healing.”
“Sounds great,” she muttered.
“I don’t see any classes in magic here,” Dawn pointed out.
The bell signalling the end of lunch rang then, just as they reached the head of the line. Alyx and the twins ended up shoving bites of sandwich into their mouths as they ran to their political strategy class.
Again, Alyx found some of the concepts in this class familiar to her in a basic way, although she guessed she wouldn’t find military strategy quite so familiar when they moved to that. There were both initiates and apprentices at fourth-year level in this class, and Alyx was confused until she realised the class was split and studied different material. The elderly mage in charge spent most of his time with the initiates and relied on one of the older students, a handsome chestnut-haired young man, to direct the apprentices.
Alyx and the twins were listening closely to the master go over a concept they’d missed earlier in the week when the assistant apprentice came over with a question.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Master Renwick, but there’s a passage in the text you gave us that is causing some confusion. Do you have a moment to go over it with us?”
“Of course.” Renwick pushed his glasses up and abandoned Alyx and the twins to shuffle over to the apprentices, a gleam of intellectual stimulation in his eyes.
“Sorry about that.” The apprentice apologised with an easy smile. “I’ll make sure he gets right back to you. You must be the three that just arrived? I’m Adahn.”
“Finn, Dawn, Alyx,” Finn introduced them. “And that’s all right. We’ll manage.”
“Thanks. Good luck with catching up.”
“Maybe not all the students here are horrible,”
Dawn mused. “There’s a nice one.”
“He did seem nice.” Alyx’s eyes followed the apprentice across the room as he joined Renwick.
“I think I get what Master Renwick was talking about,” Finn said, frowning over the book. “Let me explain it to you.”
By the time that class was over, Alyx had completely lost any focus she’d started the day with. Her lessons in Rionn had lasted two hours a morning, three days a week. She was unused to concentrating her attention for such long periods of time, especially on difficult and complex subject matter.
She felt overwhelming relief when the bell rang for the last time, marking the end of the day. Keeping her promise to her father was going to be much harder than she’d thought.
Chapter 12
On their fourth day at DarkSkull, Howell collected them early from Rothai’s class and took them across the breadth of the DarkSkull fields to the stables, ramshackle buildings that sprawled along the north-eastern corner of the grounds.
One of Alyx’s fingers had been so badly bruised by Jrui she feared it was broken, and she cradled the aching hand to her chest as they walked. Dawn was rubbing a sore shoulder, and they exchanged miserable glances. Though Alyx didn’t know what Howell was planning, she was glad beyond measure that he’d rescued them from Rothai. Whatever he planned couldn’t be any worse than sparring class.
Ahead, Howell pushed open the door to one of the barns, and the three of them obediently followed. Alyx was immediately enveloped by the smell of horses, and glanced around the spacious, warm barn with appreciation. They were lovely enough to remind her of her father’s stables at home.
Stalls lined the straight avenue that stretched ahead of them on both sides, most occupied by horses contentedly chewing hay. None were like the small mares—almost ponies, really—that Alyx was used to. Instead they all looked like the battle-trained stallions the Bluecoats rode, big and strong, with gleaming coats and intelligent faces.
“These three horses need to be groomed and exercised every day,” Howell said, pointing as he spoke to three stalls at the far end of the barn. “They are now your responsibility. You will find grooming tools inside each of the stalls and a large field adjoins this building for you to exercise them in. Are there any questions?”
It was rhetorical. They’d learned quickly that Howell expected no questions, and if he received one, would give so vague a reply as to not help them at all. When they made no response, he favoured them with a benign smile, then walked away and left them in the stables.
“Here, that looks painful.” Finn pulled a strip of leather hanging from a stable door and gently strapped Alyx’s strained finger.
“Thanks.”
“Think you could fix my ankle?” Dawn asked, pulling up her robe to reveal a dark bruise on her right foot.
“We need to learn how to fight properly,” Finn observed.
“Why?” Frustration boiled in Alyx. “I was sent here to become a mage, not a warrior. When are we going to learn this magic we’re supposed to possess?”
“She’s right,” Dawn agreed. “About the magic part, anyway. I think knowing how to fight is part of being a mage.”
“To be fair, Dawn, you’re the only one that’s displayed even a shred of magic so far, and Howell seems to want to let that develop a bit further to identify what exactly it is,” Finn said.
“So why the need to learn anything if we might not even have any magic?” Alyx muttered, mostly to herself.
Finn gave her a reproving look. “Education is a good thing whether you have magic or not.”
The door to the barn opened, forestalling Alyx’s snappy response. Ladan paused as he caught sight of them. Alyx opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, he’d dismissed them with a glance and continued on to one of the stalls. Moments later, two other apprentices walked in and went to their own horses. Rothai’s class had clearly finished for the morning.
“Finn, you sometimes help our father when he’s shoeing horses.” Dawn sighed, looking towards the stalls Howell had pointed out. “Can you show us what to do?”
Finn peered at the huge animals dubiously. “I helped him hold them still. That’s the extent of my knowledge.”
Alyx shared an irritated, but surprisingly satisfying, glance with Dawn, and approached the stall immediately next to the one Ladan was in. The horse inside towered over her. He backed up as she entered the stall, snorting and edgy.
“I’ll take this one,” she called back to the twins.
While Alyx had never actually groomed her own little mare back home, she’d watched plenty of times as Henri had. The grooming kit hung from the wall, so after eyeing it a minute, she picked up a thick brush and started.
The horse snorted, but allowed the touch of the brush. As she tentatively began rubbing it along the stallion’s chocolate-brown coat, her eyes fell on the nameplate above the door.
“Tingo, is it?” she murmured in amusement. “That’s not a very scary name for a big horse like yourself.”
He snorted again at her words, tossing his head in annoyance. She smiled and resumed working on him. His colour was rich and velvety, finishing in clean white socks on all four of his fetlocks. He remained relatively quiet as she worked; the grooming process was familiar enough to him that the fact a stranger was doing it didn’t seem to bother him too much.
Or maybe he just didn’t consider her much of a threat.
Occasionally she heard the sounds of Ladan working in the stall beside hers, or the twins, but none of them spoke. Conversation between the apprentices across the way floated to her in snatches but it mostly revolved around a sparring technique they were trying to perfect and Alyx didn’t understand a word of it. She stifled a laugh when she heard Finn curse and complain about a squashed thumb.
By the time they were done, Tingo wasn’t as expertly groomed as her mare back home, but he looked all right. Alyx was proud of herself; she’d not done a bad job for her first attempt. Tingo had calmed as she’d groomed and murmured to him, and now he stood relaxed in the stall.
“Now we’re supposed to exercise them, right?” Finn called across, peering warily up at the tall stallion he’d been grooming. “How do these buckles go?”
Alyx shrugged and turned to study the saddle and bridle hanging from Tingo’s wall. This she had no clue about, since Henri had always saddled her mare.
“You’ve never saddled a horse before?”
Alyx jumped as Ladan’s cool voice spoke near her ear. He’d entered the stall without a sound. She turned and stared at him a moment, fighting to summon words despite the forbidding expression on his face. “No, I haven’t.”
He moved to grab the saddle from the wall and throw it onto Tingo’s back. “The buckles go here, and here, see? Not too tight, and not too loose. Once you’re in the saddle, if it doesn’t feel right, you can always re-adjust them.”
Alyx watched in bemusement as Ladan demonstrated what to do with intimidating efficiency. Once he had the saddle on, he showed her what to do with the bridle.
“Clear?” He turned to face her when he was done.
“Clearer than before. Thank you.”
He left without another word. She watched him, still bemused, as he mounted a grey stallion and urged the big animal into a trot out of the stall.
Alyx spent a couple of seconds soothing Tingo before leading him out into the wide, straw-covered avenue of the stable. He came willingly enough, still relaxed from the grooming.
She left Tingo tethered to the stall door and went to help the twins. Alyx didn’t quite remember all of Ladan’s instructions, but by frequently checking Tingo’s completed buckles, the three of them were able to get the other two horses saddled. Finn’s teetered alarmingly to the left, and no matter what they tried, they couldn’t seem to right it.
“He just walked in and showed you how to do it?” Finn asked with some amazement.
“It’s something about Alyx.” Dawn looked at her appraisingly. “H
e didn’t bother to help either of us.”
“He’s a mystery to me.” Alyx frowned. “But I’m thankful for the help.”
“Have you done a lot of riding back home? You look familiar with horses, though I suspect from your lack of knowledge you had grooms to saddle your horses.” Finn asked.
“I used to ride a lot. You’re right about the grooms too. My friends and I sometimes spent whole days riding through the palace grounds and down into the city. There isn’t much else to do with our time, really. My mare is much smaller and more placid than these horses though. My father never allowed me anything bigger.”
“You wanted something bigger?” Dawn raised an eyebrow.
“Well, when Dash joined the Bluecoats, he was assigned a big cavalry horse, just like this one. He teased me about it, told me I’d never be able to handle a horse like his.” Alyx smiled a little at the memory. “Of course, I went straight to my father and demanded he get me one, just so I could prove Dash wrong. He said no. I sulked for days.”
“Dawn nagged Father for weeks before her thirteenth birthday for a horse.” Finn grinned. “She cried all day when he wouldn’t give her one.”
“I did not.” Dawn scowled. “It was only an hour, maximum.”
“Neither of you have ridden much?” Alyx knew the conversation was really just an effort on all three of their parts to postpone actually having to ride the horses, but that was fine with her.
“The gardens scattered throughout Alistriem are so lovely,” Dawn said wistfully. “There’s a big one only two blocks away from where we live, and we mostly played there as kids, so there was never a need for us to ride. Plus, we live within walking distance of everything our family needed in the city, like the markets.”
“Have you seen the palace gardens?” Alyx asked. “There’s nothing like them in this world.”
“You spend a lot of time at the palace then?” Dawn asked with interest.
“Yes, in fact, I hear you’re betrothed to the Crown Prince of Rionn.” Finn said, a teasing note entering his voice.
