White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10)

by Donald Wigboldy

  Looking at the apprentice, he replied, “They put on pretty dresses and made up their hair. I’m sure that any girl seems fancier that way.”

  Iris took both of her hands and pulled her hair into a ponytail and asked, “You think I should do that too?”

  Other eyes and ears had caught the exchange and expectant smiles were covered by hands quickly. Most probably wondered if the young boy would answer incorrectly with such a dangerous question.

  “You would look nice either way. On a hot summer night, it would certainly keep you cooler while you dance. Isn’t that why girls tend to do that?” he asked playing at his inexperience with girls.

  Iris’ smile didn’t change with the answer, but his question made her think. “I guess that would be a good reason. So you’re saying to wait until its warmer then?”

  Wizard Qeyr intervened and said to his apprentice, “Come on now, girl. Don’t tease the boy like that. He’s only thirteen...”

  “Fourteen,” Piotr corrected with a shrug, but didn’t know why he bothered to remind them other than that the wizard was wrong.

  “Ok, fourteen then and I am thirty and still can't answer questions right for a woman.”

  “I am not surprised,” the girl replied sarcastically making those around the table start to laugh before they could think to try and avoid embarrassing the wizard.

  Groaning, the wizard looked to Piotr and asked, “See? Women will try to trap you with their words. Even those without magic are spell casters of a sort. Her type,” he gestured to Iris who frowned being called a type, “are the most dangerous. They actually do have magic.”

  “Thanks, Master Qeyr,” the girl managed to complain despite the words she used.

  Piotr could see the problems girls could cause, but if it was the right one, his father would probably tell him that it was worth it.

  Chapter 7- Change of View

  Piotr half surprised Iris, by asking her to dance almost as soon as the musicians began to play.

  “Are you getting braver so soon?” the girl teased leaning close enough to his ear to feel her breath with each word. He didn’t know if it was on purpose or not, though she was an air apprentice and could certainly have factored such a thing into speaking with him so intimately.

  Maintaining their closeness to hear without having to shout over the music to be heard, Piotr tried to aim at her ear in a similar fashion to see if she would notice. “I’ve known you for a day and a half. You’re also my dance instructor, so why do I have to be brave to ask you to dance?”

  Iris pulled back and pursed her lips before complaining, “So I am just your dance instructor now?”

  He tried to shrug as they moved and nearly messed up the flow of their dance. “Well, if you are fishing for compliments, I might add that you are a pretty, dance instructor; if that helps?”

  Getting the girl to blush for his effort made him smile looking satisfied with himself. Iris was older and liked to tease him, which made Niklaus and Job think that she liked him. The more he interacted with the apprentice, the more Piotr had to admit that he liked her too. He might be willing to say that to her, but the boy refused to give his twin the satisfaction just yet.

  “Well, I like it better than just a dance instructor, I guess,” Iris said with a little frown.

  Deciding to push his luck a little further, Piotr stated, “My brother thinks that you like me.”

  Turning even redder, Iris had to take a moment to answer as she became flustered by the direct question. After a moment to try and calm her mind, the girl replied, “Of course, I like you. You’re a nice boy and it’s my job to be nice to new recruits in turn.”

  “Oh, so would you like to go dance with Job and Niklaus next then?” he continued to test the older girl. While his brother had always been the one to be able to talk to the girls in Delanne, Piotr had less contact with them even before he had realized that he had magic. He had been a watcher, but something about the apprentice had made him bold as she had first mentioned as they danced.

  A slight frown wrinkled her brow and then she realized that the boy was just teasing her. “I take it back. You are not a nice boy. You are a tease.”

  He laughed at her frustration and shook his head. “Sorry, but I couldn’t resist.”

  One dance ended and the next began. Piotr spied Katya dancing with some older man and looking unhappy whenever he wasn’t looking. He guessed that the girl had hoped to find somebody younger to dance with instead, but even her pretty dress wasn’t enough to avoid some of the older regulars. Of course, being just thirteen, she was unlikely to find many boys around her age in an inn to dance with outside of the ones brought by the search team.

  Cheleya had been talked into a dance by his brother. Though the twins were not likely full grown, still Niklaus looked massive compared to the petite little girl. Piotr clarified in his mind thinking ‘dragoness’, but she was also a girl too, he thought.

  “Is there someone else that you want to dance with?” the girl asked looking a little disappointed that Piotr was looking around instead of at her. For Iris, the thought was almost embarrassing being older than the boy by a few years, but she couldn’t help liking Piotr and wanted him to like her as well.

  “Just keeping an eye on my brother. If you think that I am a tease, he can be far worse.”

  Noticing Iris tense at his words in worry, Piotr laughed trying to ease her mind. “Not anything bad, but he does like to have fun. Sometimes he gets into trouble though.”

  “You don’t paint a very good picture of your twin. Maybe I need to let Qeyr know to keep a close eye on him?”

  He shrugged trying to play it off and replied, “Well, no more than any other teenage boy, I suppose. Myself excluded, of course, because I am nice. Remember?”

  “Right,” she retorted looking less and less like she believed him. “So I need to remind Master Qeyr to keep a closer eye on all of you.”

  “Well, you have your eye on me right now, so maybe just the other two,” he laughed.

  Groaning at him while shaking her head, Iris tried to pay attention to the dance and avoided giving him a chance to tease her more for awhile. The girl still couldn’t understand how easily Piotr managed to get under her skin.

  After several dances, they retreated to drink from their mugs and he noticed Katya freed up long enough to sit beside Vord. The girl looked like she wasn’t enjoying her night and Piotr was surprised that Niklaus hadn’t found a way to dance with her as well as Cheleya.

  At the festival dances in Delanne, the boy had often changed partners to dance with as many pretty girls as he could; though perhaps releasing Cheleya for even a moment would cost him any more dances with the stunning blonde for the rest of the evening with all the men watching her.

  “If you don’t mind, I think I will ask Katya for a dance. She looks like she has had a bad night.”

  Iris looked confused as to whether she should feel disappointed that he would want to leave her and happy that he would try to make the other girl feel better. Still she had to ask, “And you think dancing with you will make it better?”

  He shrugged and replied, “We danced last night and she seemed to like me better than dancing with an old man.”

  “Well, that settles it then. I guess you are a slight step up for her,” the apprentice nodded with a grin as she took a seat beside Qeyr.

  Piotr took his leave to go check on Katya. The younger girl looked up at him with a warm smile. “So you finally came for a dance?” she asked hopefully.

  Nodding in turn, the boy offered her a hand up even as the song was starting to wind down. “Well, you are dressed so nice, that I thought I would hate myself if I missed a chance to dance with you tonight.

  “I am kind of surprised that my brother hasn’t scooped you up already.”

  Katya frowned and gestured with her head towards his brother still dancing with Cheleya. “He seems to have found a partner that he likes.”

  “I think that Cheleya
might be a partner everyone tends to like,” he stated without humor as the boy thought on what he had heard listening with the sparfinch. “She seems to have a way with people that is almost magical.”

  Looking at him questioningly, the girl appeared unsure of what to say in response to that. Katya thought of Cheleya’s secret and wondered if the perfume of her human form was a large part of why Niklaus had been enrapt with the dragoness the whole evening. Of course, she couldn’t take away from the girl’s beauty and the fact that she was very nice and sweet as well.

  He wanted to tell her that he knew the dragon’s secret as well, but that would mean telling her how he had found out. Using his magic to peep in on the two girls undressing to nearly the point of being completely naked was unlikely to go over well with any girl. Piotr was no expert on young women, but even he could figure that out.

  “So you like Iris?” she asked changing topics to his partner for the early evening up to this point.

  “Sure, she’s nice; but so are you,” he nodded. “We had time to talk while riding here all day. Unfortunately, you went with the earlier group so we never saw each other until we reached Calamira.”

  “Your brother found the time to talk to us before dinner at least,” she countered.

  “And you two ran to your room leaving him all alone,” Piotr chuckled in response turning it around on the girl.

  Katya frowned at him and responded, “It wasn’t like that. We needed to change rooms and get dressed for dinner and dancing.”

  “Well, still I think he was traumatized by you two leaving him like that.”

  Looking at the glint of humor in his eyes, the girl looked over to see Niklaus grinning at Cheleya as the two talked in hold. “Yes, I can see that. I guess that Cheleya has found a way to nurse him back to health.”

  Katya looked to the other side of him as if using her partner as a shield to snoop on the others. “The other two recruits seem to be getting along pretty well.”

  “Job and Briahnna, yeah, I think Job really likes her. He may have a crush on her from being in town and going to school together. Niklaus and I had to stop going regularly a couple years ago to help around the farm. I don’t actually remember her giving him the time of day when they were younger, but then again Job has actually started slimming down since being a kid.”

  Katya evaluated the other boy as he danced and thought that Job wasn’t nearly as lean as Piotr or his brother. If he had slimmed down, she wondered if the boy had been much larger or just slightly heavy for his age. Of course, she refused to be rude enough to ask, but the thought was in her mind.

  “So your magic can make people do whatever you want them to do?” he asked trying to change the topic. Having seen the demonstration the night before, Piotr wondered how similar his ability to make animals do what he wanted differed from working with humans. Kel’lor and the other men he had tested had all been like stone walls to his thoughts.

  Katya winced at the question and replied, “I’m not sure exactly. I used to get my way with my parents and brothers most of the time even as a child. While it may have been magic recently working on them, I shouldn’t have had the power when I was younger. Still, when I accidentally told my father to go jump in a snow bank, and he did; it really scared me.

  “Thankfully my brother Sebastian was there with his friends. He took me to see the tournament and was supposed to bring me to school himself, but he had to go on another mission with most of his tournament team.

  “I had another episode when I found out he was leaving me behind. That was even more frightening. There were wizards, mages and sailors echoing my thoughts moving towards Bas and me. Putting a shield around us, my brother protected me from everyone who had been nearby. They told him to take me with him, but they kept coming trying to crush us as they kept pushing into his magic shield.

  “Darius used his magic to stop it all and placed a spell on me to prevent it from happening again.”

  “You pushed Falther though.”

  “Darius loosened the chains and my power slipped out with a little more control this time. I only affected the person I meant to push at least, but he also started it by trying to manipulate me. That jerk actually tried to use his magic to make me like him and dance with him.

  “If he had just asked first, I would have danced with him; but he had to go and be a jerk.”

  Piotr couldn’t help laughing as the girl started to pout without realizing it. Taking her hand from his shoulder to give him a little thump as she frowned, Katya complained, “Don’t laugh about that.”

  “I’m not,” he replied still sounding amused. “Your face is just so cute when you pout.”

  Pursing her lips a moment, the girl couldn’t stop from sticking her tongue out at him briefly before looking away to the swirling crowd around them. Trying to be funny in turn, Katya warned him, “Don’t try buttering me up now.”

  Again he chuckled at her, but as the music changed to a slower song, the girl leaned her head against his shoulder as they mostly swayed back and forth with the music. Looking over the girl as he turned, he noticed Iris being pulled to the dance floor by one of the men from Magnus’ team of wizards. A man named Wellas, he wore the light blue clothing of an air wizard and Piotr wondered if being a fellow air wizard meant that the two would have more in common. Of course it didn’t really matter, he realized, since it wasn’t like he had known her for long or had any claim on the apprentice.

  The evening continued and he danced with both girls off and on, until Piotr decided to head up to the room he shared with Niklaus, Job and Wizard Qeyr. Being a little smaller town, this inn was only two stories tall with less rooms even on each floor, so he guessed that the wizard probably had little choice but to room with his new recruits here. That and he was probably there to keep an eye on the young boys to make sure that they stayed out of trouble.

  Instead of moving to the bed, Piotr opened the window looking to the building across from the inn. Lights were on there on the second floor of the shop. He guessed that the shopkeeper and his family lived above the town grocery. With Calamira being relatively small, both the inn and grocery were simply named for the town they were in with no other creativity needed for the only one of either business there.

  Simulating the call of an owl, the boy was rewarded with a flapping of wings breaking the darkness of the sky with light from the room reflected on the creature’s wings as it landed on the sill. Though Piotr wondered if he should try his magic again, he was curious to see if Cheleya would be willing to tell the other girls her secret. If enough people knew, then at some point he could acknowledge it by accident without the girls turning on him. They would likely think one of the other girls had accidentally said something in case he should ever bring it up.

  His magic linked him to the bird and he sent it across to the other building once more. Finishing undressing for bed, Piotr dimmed the light for the others to enter; but lay in the bed closing his eyes to send his mind to the owl.

  No one had gone to the girls’ room so far, he could tell with the owl’s excellent eyesight as he strengthened their link to see through its eyes.

  Time passed and Piotr simply traveled where the bird wished to go. A mouse in a nearby field was caught and eaten. While the boy didn’t enjoy seeing this part of nature, he wasn’t squeamish either. At that point, he exerted control enough to bring the bird back to the inn.

  The music had ended and feet could be heard in the hall and voices kept low talked as the various guests went to their beds. Lights were turned on and extinguished, but finally the one he watched for was lit.

  Iris led Briahnna into the room and began to pull out their night dresses. It was still too cold to think to sleep in less, but he was slightly surprised to see that Iris’ night dress was simple white and just a little shorter than her apprentice robes. If that was all they provided for their apprentices, he thought that the school allowed for little individuality.

  Thinking that he shou
ld ask the girl what White Hall was like tomorrow, the owl noticed the door open again letting the two blondes in before the other two had even began to change.

  Another door opened, but this one he could hear.

  “Are you already asleep, Piotr?” Niklaus asked in surprise.

  Shaking his head, Piotr mumbled a response to his brother, “Not yet.”

  Sounding more excited, his twin asked, “Are you using another bird to watch the girls?”

  “No way,” Job added in surprise.

  “Can you link us in?” Niklaus asked even as boots were kicked off to get into bed.

  Moving the owl back to see their room, he said, “Just look out the window.”

  From the owl’s vantage point, he could see both boys looking out the window and used his magic to link their sight with the bird.

  “Now be quiet and don’t say anything to Qeyr that will get us caught,” Piotr warned thinking once more that he should just let his link go and get some sleep.

  Instead of heeding his own advice, the owl took flight to land in line with the girls’ window. All three gasped seeing Cheleya naked except for her bottoms again, but the other three were in various states of undress. The boys got their wish to see the girls topless as they changed into comfortable sleepwear, though the owl could only see some of them through the two windows at once.

  Knowing that there was a building across the way, he supposed they were avoiding giving anyone an easy look at their bodies as they changed.

  Piotr had hoped to pick up some of what they were saying, but the owl’s vision was better than its hearing and voices didn’t carry well in the cool air of early spring. Winter might be over on the calendar, but northern Southwall was still feeling the affects of a winter that wasn’t ready to end.

  The owl was too big to risk landing on their window sill, Piotr thought in disappointment.

  A nudge to his arm from Niklaus, alerted his brother of Qeyr’s approach and he released his magic before rolling away from the door. As the light from the hall shone into the room, his eyes remained closed, but the wizard asked, “You boys are worn out already? Man, they do not make recruits like they used to.”