Beck clapped Airron on his back as he returned. “Well done.”
“Over done if you ask me,” the fatigued Elf whispered out of the side of his mouth. Beck smiled and turned his attention back to the circle.
“Rory Greeley!” Dismore shouted out. “Ability?”
“Fireshifter, sir!”
Dismore produced his second smile of the day. “Ah, a fellow fireshifter. Very well then, Master Greeley, show me some fire.”
Poor, unfortunate Rory was unable to produce more than a single flame, but Beck found himself quite taken by the small fireshifter and shouted encouragement to him from the sidelines. Soon, the other legionnaires joined in and the atmosphere changed from one of rivalry to camaraderie. By the time it was Rogan’s turn, the entire Legion was crying out for their fellow shifters in a show of unity.
Beck watched as Rogan amazed Dismore and the rest of the Legion with his ability to create and manipulate fire. When Dismore asked him to create enough light for a candle, he created flame for a torch. When asked to create a campfire, he created an inferno that shot twenty feet into the sky. He sent fire careening through the air in a multitude of shapes and sizes. His fiery arrows drew applause and then astonished gasps when they hit a small storage shed on the grounds of the Academy and it burst into flames.
It was clear that the Northwatch Legion was awed by the extraordinary magic they were witnessing.
Finally, Dismore called Beck’s name to the circle.
“Yes, sir,” he said as he stepped smartly forward.
“I will admit that I have heard the stories, legionnaire, and with the remarkable displays of your friends, I am not sure where to start with you. That is why I called you last. Do you think you can uproot that maple sapling over at the north end of the school?” asked Dismore pointing.
Beck looked at the sapling and immediately thrust out his hand palm down. The air vibrated with the hum of magic and instantly the earth started to churn at his feet in a violent roil. When Beck cast his hand out sharply toward his target, the turbulent earth formed into a ball and shot forward like a catapult under the ground resembling an enormous worm borrowing at unbelievable speed towards the sapling. Not only did the maple sampling uproot, but every tree within twenty feet of where Beck gestured.
A loud cheer rose up from the Legion.
Dismore nodded. “I take it you can adequately perform a shieldwall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A sinking?”
“Yes.”
“Armor?”
“Of course.”
“Nicely done, legionnaire,” Dismore sniffed, “but I think we better stop here to preserve the rest of the grounds of the Academy.”
Beck walked back to the line.
“That concludes the testing, gentlemen. As I said, we must leave immediately. Collect your uniforms on the first floor of the Academy from Mistress Button, the school administrator. Once you have changed, your horses are waiting down at Mincer’s Stables. Collect your packs and meet me at the North Trail. Do not be late!”
Alarm filled Beck. “What? We are leaving right now?” he asked Rogan and Airron urgently.
“What is the matter?” asked Rogan.
“I am supposed to meet Kiernan at the lake before we go. I don’t want to leave without seeing her.”
“She will understand, Beck. She’ll have to because there is no way that you are going to have time to go to the lake,” said Airron.
Beck sighed, more despondent than he cared to admit even to himself.
As they started walking toward the Academy doors to retrieve their uniforms, Airron, oblivious to Beck’s angst, looked behind him, sniffing. “Does anybody smell smoke?”
Rogan burst out laughing.
The morning air was still cool, a light mist swirling around the ground in shadowy wisps that appeared and disappeared at random. Not long after they left the Academy, the newly uniformed Northwatch Legion stood ready to depart, mounted with packs, bedrolls, and provisions secured behind their saddles. The horses stamped their feet, impatient to be moving after the confines of the stable.
Commander Dismore gave the signal and they moved slowly ahead onto the road that would lead them through the town square and then north toward the Balor Mountains. A few people, mostly the parents of the departing legionnaires, lined the streets to wave and shout out farewells to the passing company. Beck nodded to them as he walked his horse and smiled affectionately at his parents when his mother enthusiastically called to him and waved a handkerchief his way.
He tugged at the uncomfortable collar of his uniform chafing roughly against his neck. Turning to scour both sides of the throng of well-wishers, he searched for Kiernan, but could not find her. Where was she? He knew that she was upset about being left behind, but it was very unlike her not to be here now. He would not see her again for two years. Surely, she would want to see her best friends off on such a long journey? Shaking his head, he tried to clear the unexpected emotions surfacing again. Yes, he expected to feel sad about leaving Kiernan, but not this overwhelming sense of loss. Not this painful knot in his stomach that threatened to double him over. Instinctively, he knew he would discover the term for his ailment if only he allowed himself to pursue that thread of thought.
He did not.
He resolutely pushed aside all thoughts of Kiernan and focused his mind instead on the ride ahead and his life as a legionnaire for the next two years. Thankfully, Rogan and Airron rode up beside him and captured his attention with their usual teasing banter.
As the procession continued out of the city, Beck could not stop himself from glancing behind one last time, but there was still no sign of Kiernan.
Between the mist, and the shouts from the crowd, and the excitement of the morning, Beck did not notice that there was an extra legionnaire riding in the line that morning.
He noticed neither him nor the flashes of white keeping pace off through the trees on the left.
Chapter 5
A BID FOR FREEDOM
Lucin glanced up wearily from the pile of plans and maps strewn across the table in front of him as the tent flap pushed aside and his son, Titus, bent his considerable frame to enter through the doorway. A wrench of grief assailed him as their eyes met. He knew where Titus had been this evening. The lecherous Avalon Ravener had finally noticed his young son, and the boy was now caught up in the midst of her voracious appetites and games. He also knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. Their gluttonous captor had moved on from the father to the son.
Lucin broke the gaze first, so as not to shame the boy further and bent back over his maps. He shook his gray head as he despaired not only over Titus, but also of the plight of all of his people. As Captain of the Cyman Army, he was entitled to comforts that the others lived without—a canvas roof over his head and food to eat. The soldiers were not so fortunate. They slept without benefit of cover out in the rainy, cold weather and trained for hours each day with little sleep and inadequate nourishment.
However, even they had it better than the women.
Living the lives of slaves and forced into hard labor, the females toiled in drudgery hour after hour at every trade and craft required to keep Nordik functioning properly. As the farmers, blacksmiths, cooks, maids, cobblers, tailors, fletchers, masons, and carpenters, the women worked day and night to keep the city, soldiers, and Ravener Keep outfitted and operational.
The House of Ravener had been built solely on the backs of the Cyman women of Nordik.
Even so, it was not the hard work that stripped the women of life—of spirit. It was the separation from their husbands and children. In Nordik, children were taken from their mothers at birth and cared for by the women who ran the orphanages. If the Cyman women performed their duties adequately, Ravener permitted them time once per month to visit with their offspring, but it was not nearly enough for a mother who longed for her child.
Lucin thought of his wife Maree and the look of utter torme
nt on her face the last time he saw her. He did not think she could last much longer. Her dress hung on her shrinking frame from lack of food, and the dark circle under her eye told him she was not sleeping. He clung to her tightly that day and could not help himself from whispering in her ear that he was close to finding a way that would one day soon free her and their people from the malevolent grasp of the Raveners. He knew it was wrong, that he should not have raised her hopes so, but he would have said just about anything to her at that moment just to see a spark of light back in her troubled eye.
To his shame, it worked.
She smiled the first real smile he had seen in months and embraced him fiercely murmuring that she had always believed in him. Always believed he would be their savior. She told him how brave and smart he was and how much she loved him. Then, she hurried away to give the news to their daughter, Miah, who was one of the more fortunate females and worked inside the Keep.
Without a word, Titus walked over to his cot in one corner of the tent and laid down, turning his back to him. The boy felt humiliated by the acts forced upon him, Lucin knew. He suffered the same emotions when it started for him so many years ago.
Lucin closed his eyes and clasped his hands to his forehead, silently beseeching the Highworld to deliver his people from evil. It had been a very long time since he had turned to prayer. The angels had unquestionably forsaken the Cyman people to their own devices long, long ago.
Yet now, there was a minute ray of hope. Deathbed ramblings of an old woman that Lucin was now counting on to turn into a lifeline for the Cyman people.
Abruptly, he pushed away from the table and stood. Now was as good a time as any to find out if his plan would work. With a last look at Titus, he ducked out of the tent, his boots instantly sinking into the mire that surrounded the camp.
It must be early spring, he thought, although it was hard to tell the seasons apart in Nordik. Every day was greeted with the same gray, dull overcast, and today was no different as the clouds overhead bulged with unreleased rainwater.
The mud was everywhere. Continual rain and lack of green growth on the ground to soak the excess water made the land a virtual mud hole. The heavy boots of the army moving through the camp churned the soil until every step sank ankle deep in sludge. Everything and everyone lived with a perpetual covering of mud. It covered bodies, clothes, blankets, and equipment. Many of the soldiers walked for a league or more in the evenings in search of a dry piece of hard ground to sleep on.
He sighed in disgust and ran a hand through his short gray hair and strolled purposefully through the camp. Soldiers stopped what they were doing, whether mending tools or cleaning weapons, to quickly stand and offer him a salute. He did not return them. His mind was on his destination and his meeting with Adrian Ravener. If all worked as well as he hoped, he would at last have Ravener’s promise to release the Cyman people from their bonds.
Despite the foolishness of the act, he had made a promise to his wife and he intended to keep it. His children, Titus and Miah, were too young to know the joy of life that he and Maree had experienced in their early years together when Ravener allowed families to live together in relative peace. It was only in the last forty years or so, as the Mage became more and more obsessed with training and developing the army that the living conditions deteriorated to nothing short of torture.
Life had always been difficult, but in the earlier years, the Cymans were content with the small possessions and minor comforts they were permitted. They tilled the land and planted their own food. More importantly, they had their families together under one tented roof, which fulfilled their basic human need for love, touch, and companionship. By isolating the men, women and children into three unconnected groups, Ravener stripped the Cymans of life as surely as he already stripped the land of life. It was just taking longer for them to wither and die.
Lucin closed his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he walked toward the first checkpoint at the outer wall of the Keep. It was harder to ignore the miserable cold than it was his soldiers. His hatred of cold, he knew, came from his Desert Troll ancestry. When the Mage War rent the land of Massa in half over three hundred years ago, the entire race of Desert Trolls, who made their home in the Sandori Sands, was swept away with the cleaving.
As a reclusive, tribal race, this separation from the other races was not initially viewed as disastrous. They still had their beloved sands, and the Trolls felt fortunate to be free of the plotting Mages, who they often found themselves at war with and the subterfuge and infighting of the Council of Races. It was not long, however, before Ravener made his presence known and enslaved the Desert Trolls and the humans unfortunate enough to be on the wrong piece of land when Massa was divided.
Ravener’s many experiments over the centuries with humans and Trolls resulted in the Cyman race of today. Their imposing physical stature, strength and quickness inherited from the Troll ancestry and their intelligence, determination and empathy from the human side. Ravener had invested years trying to breed empathy out of his Cyman warriors to no avail. Without question, the Cymans would be fierce fighters in the protection of their people, but they would never be evil.
The single eye was a manifestation of the dark magic that maligned the genetic traits of Ravener’s subjects.
As Lucin neared the wall to Ravener Keep, the gate immediately opened for him. He returned the salute this time to the soldiers at the gate and crossed the courtyard to the black iron doors that led to the lower level kitchens.
The Cyman women cooks glanced up as he entered and smiled. “‘Ello, Captain,” said the scullery boss, Ame.
“Ame,” he greeted with a nod of his head. “‘Ave you seen Miah?”
“Aye, Captain, she should be just returnin’ from the Master’s chambers with ‘is dinner tray.”
“Good. I am on my way there as well, so our paths should cross.” He started to leave and then paused and turned back to Ame, settling his large hand on her shoulder. ‘Ow is your back, Ame? I know you ‘ave been ‘avin’ problems.”
“O’ tis alright, Captain,” she replied. “’En old bird like me should expect some aches and pains now and agin.”
Lucin laughed for the first time in a long time. “You and me both, Ame,” he said clapping her back affectionately. “You and me both.”
He took the stairs to the third floor of the Keep and the private chambers of Adrian Ravener. He was surprised not to have run into Miah along the way, but was unconcerned. She could have been anywhere in the Keep, despite what Ame told him.
Lucin stepped out of the stairwell onto the carpeted hallway and strode to the wooden doors of Ravener’s rooms. He knocked loudly and, after a moment, the door was opened slowly by his daughter, Miah, who was carrying a dinner tray in her hands.
“‘Ello, darlin’,” he said, reaching out to hug her.
Miah shied away from his embrace.
He narrowed his eye inquiringly at her. “What is it?”
Miah tried to hide her face and said quickly, “‘Tis nothin’, Da,” and then completely broke down and started to cry quietly. Lucin pulled her out of the room and set the tray on the floor. When he lifted her chin and parted her hair, he saw the swelling on her cheek from the blow she received from Ravener.
“I will kill ‘em!” he said, rage burning in his eye.
Miah put her hands on her father’s shoulders and turned him around. “Please, Da, don’t!” she pleaded, grabbing his shirt. “‘Tis nothin’, Da, truly ‘tis nothin’. It was my fault. I was not listenin’ to the Master as I should ‘ave. You will only get a whippin’ if you confront ‘im!”
He shrugged away from her grasp. She was right. It was pointless. His shoulders sagged and all of the fight visibly drained from him. How was he supposed to save an entire race of people when he could not even protect his own daughter?
Turning back to Miah, he pressed her face into his shoulder. “Believe me, Miah,” he said, his voice soft yet filled with
resolve. “The dark Mage will get what is comin’ to ‘im.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Da?” she asked anxiously, looking both ways along the hall to be sure they were alone. “Ma said somethin’ to me yesterday. She said you ‘ave a plan.”
“I do, darlin’, and after this whole affair to the south of us is over, we will be back in the desert sands where we belong, livin’ our lives.” He grabbed her face tightly. “I promise you that!”
Miah nodded her head and then bent to pick up the tray. She looked at him with all of the unconditional love and confidence of a child for a parent. “I believe you, Da.”
As she walked away, Lucin, turned and yanked open the door to Ravener’s suite. The anteroom was empty so he continued into the living area where he spotted the source of his fury sitting in one of two armchairs facing a large stone fireplace tall enough for a man to stand upright inside.
He was not alone. In the other chair sat a young seer named Saige. The poor creature looked as if she had not slept or eaten in days. Her eye was glazed over and terror and pain etched her face. It was only when Lucin continued around the furniture did he see why. Adrian was holding a sharp knife and one of Saige’s fingers in his hands. The seer held a bloodied bandage to her wound as she sat in her chair trembling and trying to stifle her cries.
“What is the meanin’ of this?” he demanded, forgetting his place in his revulsion of the spectacle in front of him.
Adrian casually inspected his grisly trophy. “You know, Lucin, I do not remember inviting you into my chambers, and I certainly do not remember allowing you to question my activities. Now, get out. I have business to conduct.”
The panic-stricken seer shrank back into her chair.
“You cannot torture visions from this seer, Master! “’Er predictions come when she least expects it, and you cannot expect to draw it out of ‘er at your will!”
Island Shifters: Book 01 - An Oath of the Blood Page 5
