by Guy Antibes
Dinner was very good, Ricky thought. Bespa said that Applian cuisine was superior to Tossa or Sealio. Ricky wouldn’t know, but he did notice he cleared his plate while the two adults talked to each other as if he weren’t there. That was fine. Ricky relished the tastes, for soon he’d be back to institutional fare.
He sat back after finishing dessert and noticed a power-link slip into place. He looked up at Bespa who smiled as he savored a large frosted pastry.
Be careful. My dear Siria is over her head at the Juvenile Home. You remain in peril. Protect Siria if you can. I’m sure we will meet in the future. I apologize for leaving Tossa so abruptly; I had good reasons.
The link with Bespa blinked out.
“It is time we returned,” Siria said. She turned to Bespa, “Thank you Mirano,” she took his hand, “for helping Valian and for listening to me.”
“My pleasure.” He stood while they left him in the restaurant.
Ricky looked back and nodded to the sorcerer-healer. Bespa just added to the mysteries continuing to accumulate in Ricky’s life.
“You aren’t done with me, yet. You spend the next two days in the Home’s infirmary. We will meet again after you are free from the Juvenile Home.”
“Thank you,” Ricky said as they left the hotel.
Once they returned from the excursion, Siria rousted the healer from his little flat next to the infirmary and reported their day spent with Mirano Bespa. The healer assigned Ricky to the same room he had had before. He didn’t have much trouble sleeping after the healer made him down a potion.
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
~
“I UNDERSTAND YOU WERE MORE ILL than we thought,” Master Mattia said on Ricky’s first day back to classes.
“Whatever Mirano Bespa did, it fixed my problems,” Ricky said. Indeed he felt better than he had since Frank’s attacks.
“Are you a better sorcerer?”
“I’m stronger. I haven’t learned any new spells,” Ricky said. “Everything I did after Siria’s healing took a toll, even the carriage rides.”
“You must have a remarkable tolerance. I like the fortitude you’ve shown.”
“I guess I acted in spurts, but like using a lot of one’s power, it always took a toll. I haven’t tested myself, but I feel that I’m finally on the mend.” Ricky took his seat when others entered the classroom. It seemed like it had been ages since he last attended the military strategy sessions.
Master Mattia stood, and the classroom hubbub disappeared. “I’ve had to save this discussion for when young Valian returned to our midst. We will be talking about the uses of battle sorcerers in any scale conflict.”
Mattia looked at Ricky. His eyes narrowed a bit. Ricky tensed at the discussion that was to come. He figured he’d finally learn more about Mattia’s actual plans.
The teacher began with a history of the use of battle sorcerers in major conflicts. Ricky could tell the man had an open perspective as he debated with himself on the effects of sorcery during the fighting. Mattia gave the impression that battle sorcerers were more important from a morale standpoint than from actually helping turn the tide of a battle.
Ricky would have agreed with him before he had read some of the battle sorcery books. He also thought that Siria would have a different opinion, but he could see why Mattia might discount Siria’s perspective as biased.
“What is your opinion, Valian?” Mattia asked.
“I think it depends on the strength of the sorcerer, sir,” Ricky said. “A competent performance sorcerer has many illusions at his or her disposal that can add confusion or distraction to the battle. I’ve never experienced a battle, so as far as real results with spells that aren’t illusions, I can’t give you a validated opinion, but I still think it depends on the sorcerer’s unique capability.”
Mattia took a moment to consider Ricky’s statement. “Have you ever used sorcery to kill?”
Ricky didn’t expect such a direct statement, but he was prepared. “Why would I do such a thing? It is illegal in Paranty. As for other countries, I don’t know.”
Mattia narrowed his eyes and nodded. “Good answer. Have you ever used sorcery to distract anyone?”
“Yes,” Ricky said. “That might not be perfectly legal, but I’ve been attacked in Tossa before and had to use a few tricks to get free.” So far he hadn’t had to lie.
“What kind of tricks?”
Ricky took a deep breath. “I will respectfully decline to answer that, Master Mattia. I don’t want to incriminate myself admitting to a specific instance.”
“There you have the opinion of an actual sorcerer,” Mattia said, his eyes lingering on Ricky. “Now we will discuss specific strategies.” Mattia nodded to Ricky. “We will project the outcomes assuming sorcerers with different strengths.”
Ricky took a deep breath when Mattia wrote a strategy on the blackboard with his back turned. He clenched and unclenched a fist. He didn’t know how much Mattia knew, but those questions were too pointed to have come from a person who had no suspicions.
The rest of the class worked on various battlefield strategies. Ricky could tell that none of them had any applicability for a small force of inmates with a couple of semi-competent battle sorcerers. He wondered if Mattia would demand that Siria take the place of the boys that didn’t measure up.
Ricky made sure he left the classroom as soon as he could. He stood in front of the doors to the dining hall when Kela walked up.
“Are you really feeling better?” Kela said.
“I am.”
“Good, then I won’t have to wake you up this afternoon. We have to work on what to do about the five battle spells Mistress Lonsi wants us to master. Maybe we can put Henni to sleep.”
Ricky laughed. “It doesn’t take a spell to do that.”
The doors opened, and they went their separate ways, with Kela eating with her roommates. No one ventured to sit next to Ricky until Gil Bisacci plopped his tray across from Ricky’s.
“I have to talk to someone, and I think you are the best person,” Gil said.
“About what?”
“The night Master Poppi died. I was there for part of it.”
“You guys went on a night march. I don’t know the details.” Ricky said.
Gil quietly told him the entire episode at the farmhouse. He gave Ricky the whole story. He admitted he wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable with what Poppi had forced them to do.
“Do you think I’m a coward for feeling that way?”
Ricky shook his head. “What else could you have done, as long as you didn’t participate in the violation and death of anyone?”
Gil lowered his head. “I didn’t, but I was there.”
“You had no choice. A few inmates against two hundred or more and Master Poppi?” Ricky said. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
“There are rumors that you killed Poppi just like you killed Pestella.”
“How did Master Poppi die?”
Gil shook his head. “None of us know.”
Ricky snorted. “Someone should. Pestella died because his heart stopped or something. No one touched him. I was asleep in a tent the night of your march. I was very sick,”
Gil took a deep breath. “I suppose you’re right. I don’t believe such nonsense anyway. Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime,” Ricky said as he began to eat.
Gil looked down at his food as if he debated eating anything or not. Either he was a master actor, or the event truly disturbed him. He ended up downing his food.
“I’m not all that hungry, but I swear Master Mattia is running us ragged now that Poppi’s gone.”
Ricky figured that he’d be sent to the training hall in the afternoons before long.
~
Three days later, Ricky stood with a wooden sword in his hand facing Gil in a sparring match. Mattia had seen Ricky spar before, so he had no reason to give Gil any chances.
Ricky looked around for the boy he had defeated the last time he stood in the basement, but Ricky thought he might have killed him in the farmyard. The three boys that Poppi had ordered behind had all participated in the worst of the depredations inflicted on the family. Ricky remembered them laughing about it as they covered their tracks.
He should have felt bad about their absence, but Ricky didn’t. They weren’t the only ones who deserved severe punishment as he looked at the inmates practicing in the hall. If anything the midnight trek made the inmates train with more swagger. The change repulsed Ricky.
“Let’s go at it,” Gil said. A tiny shield covered the back of his left hand.
Ricky nodded. He instantly thrust his sword slowly towards Gil and let the older boy bat away his blade. Ricky quickly fended off Gil’s slash with a backhanded parry as he brought his sword back to a ready position.
As they went through the motions, their match began to speed up. Ricky was much faster than Gil, but he didn’t want his opponent to lose too quickly. It was thrust, parry, slash, parry.
“Speed it up,” Mattia said after observing the match for a moment.
Gil didn’t have much more speed in him, but Ricky did, and he ducked underneath a slash and connected with a thrust into Gil’s midsection. Even struck through the padded jerkin, Gil lost his breath and backpedaled a few step. Ricky followed up with a slash, hitting Gil’s little shield and backhanded another slash to Gil’s midsection before the youth could even react.
“That’s enough,” Mattia said. “Come with me, Valian.”
He dragged Ricky aside. “Why do you bother with sorcery? All you have to do is grow your body more, and you’d be an excellent swordsman.”
“Aren’t I an excellent fifteen-year-old swordsman?”
Mattia glared at Ricky, but his lip curled into a smile. “I can’t deny that. How do you feel?”
“I’m tired, but that happens after every match. It’s not like it was before Marino Bespa treated me. Tired is different from the drained state I was in.”
Mattia grunted. “I’ll find another partner for you, and then you are dismissed.”
Ricky nodded and saw Gil look as if he wanted to talk to him by the table that held practice weapons. He walked over.
“You played with me, didn’t you?”
“It was a practice match, Gil. I’m tired, and you're tired. I had a good session, didn’t you?”
Gil nodded. “I didn’t see you fight when you were down here before. I suppose you’re the best for your age.”
“I trained for a full year with two ex-royal guards before I came here. If you had the same training, you’d be better too.”
“What is your trick?”
“Conditioning. If you are in good physical condition, you learn better. I was much weaker when I started training. I was even a bit faster before I came here, but I’ve been sick for days.”
“You seem better now.”
Ricky smiled. “I am better. I wasn’t healed at all until the sorcerer-healer Marino Bespa worked on me. Tomorrow, I’m going to get back to training. Feel free to join me.”
~
Ricky ran around the outside of the training hall for twenty minutes after half-an-hour to get his lunch settled. Gil tried to keep up but only ran for ten minutes before he dropped out.
When Ricky finished, he had to sit down. He hadn’t run so far since that awful night in the woods. He found Gil so he could show him better sword forms than Ricky had seen the inmates practice.
The next day a few more boys joined the run and more of them worked on the forms. The day after, Mattia had the whole group running laps around the training hall and working on the forms, with Ricky leading. When that happened, Ricky began to wonder if he should be training these inmates.
They had participated in an awful attack on innocents, but Ricky needed to build his conditioning up and found himself in an awkward position. Mattia didn’t give him a choice. One benefit was the conditioning sessions wore the boys out, and that cut the training sessions down an hour.
Ricky quickly washed up and headed to the library to study sorcery books with Kela, who had continued to work with Henni on her Parantian diction.
“How is everything?” Ricky asked Henni.
“Too quiet without you,” the guard said. “Kela is in the back if you want to join her.”
“I will,” Ricky said.
Kela looked up from mouthing words in an old history text. He noticed a dictionary open, as well.
“History?”
She shook her head. “The sorcery books are too technical. A lot of the terms aren’t in this dictionary. I can’t practice my Parantian using magical terms all the time. I like the history books better, anyway.”
Ricky put his hand on his heart. “I am disappointed.”
“You are?”
He nodded. “I wish I could hear your diction improve.”
“Ask Henni. He says I’m much improved. I know I am because I can now read anything.” She looked at the old text. “I’m having a bit of trouble with this one because it is so old.”
“I’ll listen for a while,” Ricky said.
He listened to her pronounce the archaic Parantian words nearly as well as Ricky could. Her Fisttian accent still came through, but she had no problem reading the words. More than a few of the terms stumped them both. Ricky’s vocabulary wasn’t perfect, not at all, so they both learned as she read aloud.
Ricky worried about the sorcery books, and they finished up their session by putting them back in the hidden library.
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
~
S IRIA LIFTED UP A PAPER WITH GRIDLINES. It looked like the progress list Betti made up for the performance last summer. “These are eight spells that I think both of you can do. We will work on these.”
“I won’t kill from a distance,” Kela said.
“You’ll both learn on chickens that the cooks can use for meals,” Siria said.
Kela turned red with embarrassment. “I can do that.” She straightened the gray smock the girls wore.
“I knew you would both be squeamish about using your powers to kill.”
“Not to mention it’s illegal under Parantian law, especially for us, Mistress Lonsi.”
“I’m aware of Parantian law, Valian. It is illegal to use the spells against humans, but it is legal to learn them.”
“Then let’s get started,” Ricky said. He had no intention of stalling the process since he wanted to learn the spells so he could compare them to the equivalent one in the battle sorcery book.
“What spells or similar spells to the ones on this list do you already know?”
“I can do four, to some extent,” Ricky said. “Fire, Fainting, Building demolition in a small way, Killing using more will with the fainting spell.” He figured he knew enough to kill in more than two ways. “I do not know how to change a missile in flight. I can create wind, but it takes too long to develop a force sufficient enough to blow something off course.”
Siria smiled. “At least there are a few things you do not know how to do. We will see if either or both of you are up to shouting. That is the best technique to use.” She looked at Kela.
“I can do fire, fainting after a fashion, but not good enough.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose I can learn.”
“I have some ideas,” Siria said.
Ricky didn’t doubt she did. He did remember that the battle sorcery text didn’t even mention shouting, so he was very interested in learning Siria’s technique.
“I will test you both as we go, and then we will work our way across this page.”
Kela and Ricky made short work of fire. Both could send a stream of fire six feet or more across the room that burned a paper Siria attached to a brick wall.
“Now fainting.”
Ricky put Siria to sleep before she had a chance to ask him to since she was seated behind her desk. The teacher was only under for
the briefest moment.
“Your turn, Kela,” Siria said. “You will put Ricky to sleep.”
The girl looked at Ricky apologetically and sang loudly to power her resonance. Ricky could feel his neck constrict and then he blacked out.
He blinked his eyes open. “Good!” he said. “How long was I out?”
“A few minutes,” Siria said. “I know a few other spells we can try out that will put a person out longer, but we won’t do that in class, since Ricky attends the training hall. How about removing mortar?”
Ricky found the song quickly and exerted his will enough to see grains of mortar fall from a few bricks in the wall. “I could do more, but” he shrugged.
Siria nodded and scribbled something on her sheet before explaining the visualization Kela should use.
The girl nodded and closed her eyes. She ran up and down the scale until she came to a much higher note than Ricky used. She sang and obliterated a few bricks along with the mortar. She swayed after she stopped.
“Experimentation is dangerous,” she said, looking at Ricky.
He expected she meant attempting spells in their as-yet-unused practice room in the basement. “Don’t want to bring the building down around us,” Ricky said.
“Impressive, Kela,” Siria said. “That is enough for today. I’ll bring a crate of chickens tomorrow. I’m sure you both need a bit of recuperating time before your next class.”
Kela rose a bit uncertainly to her feet. “I shouldn’t have done so much.”
“Practice makes you stronger, girl,” Siria said. She walked out before both of them.
“I’m going to rest a bit before my next hour,” Kela said. “Please make sure you go to the library later this afternoon.”
Ricky nodded. Kela looked unsettled. Ricky surmised that she had overdone to please Mistress Lonsi.
~
Ricky didn’t have a chance to wash up before he headed to the library. He walked past Henni.
“There is a reason there is a washroom in the basement. Use it,” Henni said.
Ricky did what washing up he could. There wasn’t a towel in the washroom. He’d have to ‘borrow’ one from upstairs.
