First Year

by Rachel E. Carter

  Joining the two, I noticed that Ella seemed to be more entertained than enamored. I held onto the hope it would last.

  “Welcome first-years,” a booming voice roared.

  Immediately everyone stopped talking and looked to the entryway of the armory.

  Out stepped the most intimidating man I had ever seen. Extremely tall with bulging muscle, the man seemed to crunch the ground with each step that he took. His hair was cut short, and his eyes were an almost disconcerting green. His dark skin was glistening, and he had several white scar lines that reached down across his arms.

  The man wore the livery of a knight, not a mage.

  Was there some sort of mistake?

  “No, I am not one of your masters here,” the man boomed, registering the crowd’s shock.

  “But don’t you be getting any ideas. I will still be involved in every step of your development this year. I served on the King’s Regiment for twenty years, and the last ten I have spent training young mages here alongside Master Cedric.” I noticed a thin, wiry man in red robes that had stepped out behind him. “I am Sir Piers, and I will be leading you in the physical conditioning needed for your factions.”

  “I thought we were to be sorcerers, not pages!” someone hissed behind me.

  A chortle of quiet voices voiced the same irritation.

  Sir Piers heard them and glowered. Instantaneous silence.

  “Many of you might wonder what use I am to your precious studies. Can I have a volunteer please?” No one moved. “I have my pick then,” he announced almost gleefully, dragging forward one of the boys that had been whispering behind me. The boy was shaking, and I really couldn’t blame him. Sir Piers was a big man and clearly enjoyed scaring his charges.

  “Now, what is your name?”

  “Ralph.”

  “Well, Ralph, it’s your lucky day. Which faction do you want to end up in?”

  “Combat,” Ralph squeaked.

  “Yes, always with you first-years.” The man laughed.

  “Now,” Piers continued. “Show me what you can do.”

  “It’s n-not much,” Ralph stammered, snatching a twig off the ground. He began to stare at it intensely, and I knew almost instantly what he was going to do. Seconds later, the familiar sprout of tiny flames encompassed his stick.

  Great, I thought darkly. Ralph didn’t even need to hurt himself to get it burning. A twelve-year-old showed more promise than me.

  “Now,” Piers said after the twig had turned to ash, “I want you to run a mile—the course of the stadium’s circumference.”

  Ralph’s face fell.

  “What are you waiting for?” Piers barked.

  Ralph took off like a jackrabbit, but about two minutes into the run, his pace slowed. I could sense his discomfort. None of us had dressed with a strenuous workout in mind. I was still wearing my dress.

  For the next seven minutes, poor Ralph ran around the track huffing and puffing as the rest of the class watched, careful to avoid meeting eyes with Piers and becoming his next “volunteer” victim.

  Eventually, a sweaty, shaking Ralph returned to take his spot in front of Piers.

  “Light fire to another stick,” Piers ordered him.

  “I—” Ralph choked, “—need… a moment…”

  “NOW!”

  Ralph scrambled to find another branch and tried to repeat the same casting, to no avail. He was too busy taking deep gulps of air to concentrate.

  “You just gave the enemy an opening, boy. You are now dead on the battlefield. Take your seat.” Piers eyed the boy unhappily and looked around. “Do I have another volunteer? Someone with more prowess in mind?”

  Everyone looked to the ground quickly, except for the non-heir who seemed unperturbed as he met Piers’s eyes dead on.

  “Alright, princeling, have at it.”

  Darren stepped forward and picked up a twig. I breathed out a sigh of relief. He was normal like the rest of us. It would have killed me if he put on some sort of supernatural display.

  Darren clenched one end in his palm, eyeing a nearby tree.

  You’ve got to be—

  The entire trunk exploded in a blaze. Branches with crackling leaves crashed to the ground as the tree became a charred black torch.

  The non-heir cracked the twig in his palm.

  The fire instantly abated.

  Dead tree limbs scattered the grass. Darren looked to Piers for instructions.

  I glanced at Sir Piers as well to gauge his reaction. Both the commander and the wiry Master Cedric had approving smiles on their faces.

  “Well done,” Piers boomed. “Now, do the same to that tree— there.”

  We all looked to see where he was pointing. A similar oak stood half a mile off at the other end of the stadium.

  I braced myself, knowing better than to hope the prince would fail miserably.

  Darren reached down to grab one of the small charred branches from the first tree he had lit fire to. Part of the stick still looked red-hot beneath its gray exterior, and I wondered if it burned. Still, Darren showed no sign of pain as he rolled it back and forth between his palms, keeping his stormy gaze on the target.

  Moments later the tree caught fire. Not as dramatic as the first, but still impressive, I noted dryly. The fire quickly died out on the trunk, but continued on in most of the higher branches.

  “You may take a seat now,” Piers told the non-heir in a much friendlier tone than he had addressed the previous boy.

  Darren nodded curtly and then made his way over to the bench where Ralph sat.

  Piers addressed the rest of us. “What did those two have in common?”

  Nothing.

  “The dynamics of war,” Piers continued when none of us spoke up, “show us what may not be openly obvious to you magic folk. You think you can blast your enemy with sheer force, and maybe you can. But the further you are from your opponent, the less power you are able to exert. We can’t waste all this time training you to be powerful mages and have you faint at the first sign of battle. Not one of you will be sitting in an ivory tower pointing your finger and making your enemies crumble. You will need to be close to your enemies to do damage, but you need to be able to maneuver in and out of battle to safely engage.

  “By building up your physical reserves, we will be increasing your tolerance to pain and your fortitude. By strengthening your prowess, you will be more capable of focusing during moments that test your will.

  “Early on, the Council learned that they were losing too many mages’ lives on the battlefield. In response, we developed a training program that incorporates the physical conditioning we put the pages in the School of Knighthood through. While none of you will be as successful as a full-fledged knight, this program will better prepare you for the realities of battle. It gives you more endurance, whether you are a Restoration mage going from one wounded to the next, or an Alchemist helping with dangerous flasks. For the faction of Combat, it is a little easier to picture the battlefield, but even if you were to never participate in a single war, endurance and fortitude can only help, not hurt.

  “So for the rest of the day I will be gauging your physical competence. When you walk away today, I will have a thorough understanding of how badly out of shape you are, and then from tomorrow on, we will be attempting to fix that.

  “Oh,” Sir Piers added, almost gleefully, “and if you are wondering when we will train with any of the fun weapons you may have seen a knight handle, keep in mind you have to get through two months of my class first…

  “Now, we have a change of clothes for the lads and ladies in the building behind me. Those will be your attire for the rest of your time here at the Academy. After today you will no longer be wearing personal garments or insignia. You will notice the garb is old, ill-fitting, and not particularly attractive. That is to be expected. Year one is not a cause for celebration, and so the masters do not waste coin financing your personal fashions. We will go ahead and let the ladie
s go first. Lads, while you are waiting your turn, I advise you to start stretching. It’s going to be a long two hours.”

  Two hours into the pain and agony that was Sir Piers’s idea of light conditioning, I found myself dry-heaving at one of the wooden benches on the side of the field. I heard Alex off to my right making similar noises. All over the stadium, first-years were dropping one by one.

  Piers had decided we would run five miles. Five miles, he had added, interspersed with twenty lunges and presses each time we completed a lap. That would have been fine, hard -but fine, if that were all he had asked of us. But it had only been a warm-up.

  Once we had completed his first demand, Sir Piers had barked new orders for everyone to line up across from one another. When we did that, he had heaved heavy wooden staffs at us and instructed us to “proceed.”

  Since most of the girls and a couple of the lowborn boys had never held a weapon in their life, Piers then had to show us how to hold the poles, where to stand, and which way to lean our weight. We spent just as much time rapping each other’s knuckles as we did the staffs.

  When one girl had dared to quietly ponder the usefulness of the drill to her partner, Piers snapped: “You think you’ll never need to use a weapon, girl? What happens when you have used the last of your magic and you are stranded in the middle of a battlefield? When a mage is powerful enough to send daggers cutting through the air, do you think he randomly decides their course? No, he studies and practices exactly which cutting blows are needed to hit those precious arteries. Nothing I teach you here will be pointless!”

  For the remainder of our lesson, no one dared to brave a single complaint. Even when he decided to introduce a new routine involving the many flights of stairs surrounding the field.

  But that still didn’t stop our bodies from reacting to the horrible circus of exercises Piers was putting us through.

  Taking a deep breath, I told myself that it couldn’t get any worse.

  We were on a fifteen-minute break before our session with Master Cedric, but for most of us, the fifteen minutes was spent trying to crawl or limp our way to a display of water pitchers on the other side of the stadium. Refreshments had been brought courtesy of Constable Barius’s staff, all of which had decided to take a late afternoon break.

  I think the water was just an excuse for their entertainment.

  Still, entertainment or not, water was what I wanted. As luck would have it by the time I reached it there was almost none left.

  Greedily, I downed what remained and then scanned the bench for any unattended glasses I could finish off. None. Had I really expected anything different? Deciding I had only a minute or so left, I sat down to observe the rest of the student body from my resting place.

  Ella stood a little way off, red in the face and a little clammy, but somehow still charming in her disheveled state. She was talking to my brother as he attempted to stretch his calves. The two of them were chuckling at a joke he had just made. I winced. I couldn’t even imagine laughing. My lungs were still burning from those stairs.

  Shifting my gaze to the left side of the field, I spotted a group of five that appeared much better off than the rest of the class. At their center was the newfound bane of my existence. Admittedly, the non-heir wasn’t that hard of a poison to swallow when he was far away. He looked so casual, leaning against the fence post, surrounded by laughing companions.

  Whether or not he was a prince, Darren had clearly spent a large part of his lifetime in the sun and immersed in some sort of physical engagement. Far from being out of breath and drenched in sweat, the prince made Piers’s drills appear as if they actually were an intended warm-up.

  Even his hair seemed unaffected. While most of us, myself included, had hair sticking to all sides of our face, Darren’s had somehow maintained its natural, slightly tussled state. Short, choppy, side-swept bangs and jaw-length locks that could trick a girl into thinking he was attractive.

  That is, if you could get over his charming personality. Because no matter how alluring he might seem from afar, up close Darren’s hostile eyes would undoubtedly tell a different story.

  Still, as I watched him now, I was not seeing anything remotely unreceptive in them. Possibly, very likely, because of the beautiful girl on his right: Priscilla.

  Ah, yes. The one young woman who had out-distanced, out-lunged, and out-pressed the rest of my gender. How someone from such high lineage was able to best those of us who had had to actually forage and hunt for our food, I will never know. With her long, silky brown hair, violet eyes, and sinewy curves, I could understand Darren’s interest but not her status. Priscilla looked the part of a highborn lady, and I wondered why she was here at the Academy. Usually, girls like that went to convents. They didn’t bother with magic or knighthood. They had no need.

  Priscilla was older than most nobility in attendance too, and I vaguely wondered if it had anything to do with Darren since he seemed to be around the same age. Maybe she had followed him.

  The rest of the non-heir’s group consisted of the two burly-looking brothers and a young girl whose skin was so pale it seemed translucent.

  The girl was so tiny and fragile, I wondered how she had made it into their little following. She didn’t talk much, and she seemed more interested in something on the ground than her companions.

  “Alright children, let’s gather round!” Sir Piers barked.

  We all came together slowly, regretfully acknowledging the end of our break.

  “Well, well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  None of us dared to contradict him.

  Sir Piers chuckled at his own joke, knowing very well what our silence really meant. “Well, you always have tomorrow. I will go ahead and leave you in Master Cedric’s capable hands.” With that, Sir Piers left the field, and we found ourselves waiting anxiously for Master Cedric to begin his own introduction.

  Master Cedric nodded to his audience and spoke with a much softer inflection to his tone. “Well then, for the next two hours I am going to be leading some basic exercises that are conducive to all factions.”

  I glanced at Alex and Ella excitedly. Finally, actual magic.

  “This first month will be spent emphasizing magic’s most important foundation: focus. Without the proper application, you will not be successful in your chosen practice.”

  My enthusiasm died. Focus. So we wouldn’t be learning how to heal a dying knight or cast a lightning storm. Not today. I had to say I’d had enough “meditation” practice during my time on the road. Two hours of coarse physical activity might actually beat the boredom induced from focusing on a blade of grass for the same length of time.

  I heard someone groan to my right.

  “You might have great potential,” Cedric interjected loudly over his disgruntled audience, an incredible feat for such a timid-looking man. “But if you can’t concentrate long enough to will the magic you wish to enact, you will never find yourself beyond the basics. The more advanced castings require a greater dedication that cannot come from acts of whimsy.

  “Mages die quickly on the battlefield when they can’t summon proper focus. As Sir Piers said, you will not be hidden away in a tower. You will be immersed in an atmosphere full of distractions waiting to tear your concentration apart.

  “You will also not be performing simple steps. If you go into Restoration, you will be expected to understand the anatomy of an individual when you are caring for a deep flesh wound. Collapsing a tower in Combat would require you to understand its structure and materials. It’s important to know where to make your magic touch count. You could blindly devote your magic to the entire attack you want to enact, or you could learn to focus your magic on specific components so that your castings are precise and don’t exert any needless energy.

  “Now, let’s not waste any more time and begin your first exercise.”

  I grudgingly joined the rest of the class in forming a giant sitting circle that spread out across the gra
ss at Master Cedric’s instruction. From this angle we could see not only the master and his four assisting mages, but everyone else in our group as well.

  At least I’ll finally stand out, I told myself. I may not have had practice fighting with staffs or learning the names of Jerar’s eastern seaports, but at least meditation was something I was good at. Years of failed magical attempts could attest to that.

  The next two hours seemed set aside to prove me wrong. I wasn’t horrible, but I was at best a little better than the norm.

  Master Cedric and his assistants walked around our giant group, each carrying a heavy satchel filled with small, white pebbles that they distributed each time one of us failed the exercise.

  For the first half hour we had simply been instructed to close our eyes and keep still. We were to maintain an “air of calm” and to focus on a moment of peace and tranquility. That was easy enough.

  But then I realized the role the instructor and his assistants were playing in our meditation—pouring hail one second, thousands of angry bird cries the next. I tried not to flinch when I felt the slimy, wiggling body of a snake against my skin, but I could not suppress the tiny whimper that escaped my lips when I felt thousands of tiny, bug-like wings on my face. I opened my eyes just in time to see one of the assistants set two stones by my feet.

  Luckily, most students had a small pile forming next to them as well. Unfortunately, there were still those without a white rock to bear.

  For the second part of our exercise Master Cedric had the class keep their eyes open while continuing to practice the same meditative state. Of course, sight only made our practice harder.

  It was not easy to remain calm when you realized a hoard of angry rodents was headed in your direction.

  Whenever I made a mistake, I’d take a quick peek to see how everyone else was faring. Most had as many as I, but there was still a small portion of our class that hadn’t collected any stones yet—Darren and his group of four, plus seven others.

  As minutes ticked by, the exercise got increasingly difficult. The small piles began to resemble mountains. My forehead pounded, my muscles ached, and sweat stung the corners of my eyes. I was trying hard not to give in to the distractions Master Cedric and his assistants were casting, but fear and surprise were not easy reactions to ignore. When a small stampede of spiders took over the field and proceeded to climb up several students’ arms, mine included, I lost it, screaming and shaking the vile insects off.