“Just readying for an early ride tomorrow, sir. There’s no one too wait for, I’m guessing?” Niklaus questioned as if nothing had been happening.
“Well, we don’t have to wait for you anyway,” the wizard retorted and quickly was ready and in the other bed.
Piotr couldn’t stop his mind from trying to replay the pictures from the owl as he tried to fall asleep. Though he hadn’t meant to be a peeping Tom, his hope of hearing Cheleya confess her secret to the other girls hadn’t happened. He would just have to do his best to remember to say nothing of the dragoness’s secret.
With the weather continuing to cooperate, the large group heading to White Hall stopped in Mera only two days later. Katya rode into the town with a smile on her face. She had friends here and hadn’t spent time in Mera since the previous fall.
“My home is less than an hour that way,” she told Cheleya who was riding beside her. Briahnna was riding on the other side of Katya after the two girls had begun to bond on their trip. It was amazing how close people could get when they were stuck together for a long journey. From Mera, the girl knew that they were less than three full days' ride away from White Hall.
Cheleya smiled back and replied, “How long has it been since you were home?”
“Sebastian and his wizards stopped at our farm a little over a week before the tournament started.” Katya paused to think and realized, “Wow, that was about a month ago already. We passed through Mera early before anyone was really up and the last time I really talked to anyone in town was last fall at one of the town dances.”
As they rode into Mera, people seemed to scatter before the procession of wizards. With them all disappearing inside their stores and homes, Katya barely had a chance to see anyone she knew.
“Leyra, hi!” she called to a girl with brown hair. They were the same age and Katya had known her all her life, but the girl barely made eye contact before disappearing through the doorway of her home.
As her friend turned away from her like she had some disease, Briahnna confided, “People were already shunning me as soon as they found out the wizards had chosen me to go to White Hall. Don’t take it too personally. They just don’t want the wizards to find out they have magic as well.”
“They’re acting like magic can rub off on them as if we have a cold that we can pass to them,” Katya complained. The girl fought the urge to jump off her horse to pound on Leyra’s door. She couldn’t believe that her lifelong friend would shun her as Briahnna had put it.
The other girl nodded, while Cheleya looked confused. “Your people hide from wizards?”
“Just during the harvest time, as they call it,” Briahnna replied looking at the nearly empty street. “When a large group of wizards comes through in spring, people expect the worst. Wizards look for children and take them if they have magic like we do. So people tend to fear the wizards coming to take their children.
“Of course, if a child does have magic and they accidentally start casting magic; they’re the same people pushing their kids into the street when they see a wizard to have them taken away too.”
The leaders stopped in front of another two story inn. It seemed like most of the towns were willing to build to two stories for travelers’ needs, but there hadn’t been larger since Delanne. While Magnus, Qeyr and Darius all went inside, most of the rest rode around back looking for the stables.
Called the Miller’s Inn, based off the original owner’s profession, the two story building was about as large as the one in Calamira. Being on one of the main roads from White Hall to Hala, most towns on the route would have at least one decent size place to stay for travelers. With the rate of travel on horseback figured in, Mera was also a town at a comfortable place for travelers to ride between the more popular stopovers like Calamira. Even so, the town wasn’t very large, though Katya had felt like it had a lot of people growing up on her family farm well away from Mera.
After the girls had brought their packs to their room, Katya sat on the bed looking determined about something and Briahnna asked, “What’s wrong?”
Tapping her chin as her feet kicked against the side of the bed the young girl mused aloud, “I wonder if Leyra will talk to me if I walk over there without all the wizards surrounding me. I suppose we did make a pretty daunting looking group with all the wizards in their colors riding along with us.”
Iris looked to question the idea and said, “It might be best just to stay by the inn and avoid testing that, Katya. You are going to be a wizard now. You may as well get used to the idea that you’ll probably rarely come back home and see these people.
“There are regular people in the fortress cities that welcome wizards and battle mages. We protect them and they appreciate that. Mera probably grew up after the early raids ended with the wall. Most of these people just think of wizards as the people who come to take their children away.”
Cheleya brushed at her long blond hair and shrugged, “If she wishes to see her old friends before she goes off to the school, this would be her last chance for awhile though, wouldn’t it, Iris?”
Sighing, the apprentice replied, “Well, you three can go, but I only have apprentice clothing with me.”
Cheleya grinned and said, “I can change that, if you want to come along.”
Worry crossed the red haired apprentice’s face. Iris was a few inches taller than any of the other girls and figured to be a little larger in the torso as well. The younger girls were slim and still filling in as they moved from girlhood to young women save for Cheleya who was petite and of a size with Katya.
The blonde haired girl pulled a green dress that would be more like a tunic on the taller girl and looked too tight as well. Cheleya ran her finger along the back of the dress drawing her magic to her fingernail. It seemed to cut the material like a warm knife through butter. There was no sound of tearing. The dress simply seemed to split from top to bottom.
“Pull off your apprentice tunic and pull this on,” the little blonde ordered with a smile waiting for Iris to pull off her outer layer of apprentice garb. As Iris drew the front of the dress onto her arms and to her breasts, she could tell that it fit the other girl too well to fit her build. While the apprentice was taller, she hadn’t realized that she was that much bigger than Cheleya, though the girl was going to be considered small if she was full grown.
Cheleya’s hands rubbed at the sleeves and tugged at the dress from the split sides. As she tugged, Iris thought that her shoulders could draw back more comfortably and the expanse of her chest seemed to suddenly fit including her breasts. When Cheleya pulled the dress together, Iris expected to have to hold her breath to make it come close to getting the pieces together.
Though she expected it, the problem never occurred and quickly the cloth tied together around her. Looking at the length, the dress seemed to have shortened slightly and had become more of a blouse. The sleeves were the right length now as well and Iris moved to the mirror on the wall to see what had happened.
“Green,” she said wincing slightly. “Not the best coloring to go with my red hair.”
Cheleya appeared behind her looking around her shoulder into the mirror and nodded. “True, we should change that too. What color would you want it to be?”
“Well, air wizards wear light blue, but if I weren’t a wizard maybe red or a dark pink?” she asked wistfully. The cloth was already green so there was no way to change it short of throwing it in bleach or dying it another color.
“Hmm, dark pink, that might work,” Cheleya agreed and slid her hands along the girl’s back covering each inch of the new blouse.
Iris could see the other two girls in the mirror go from looking surprised to starting to giggle and pointing at her. If they didn’t like the blouse, they didn’t have to laugh at her. It was Cheleya’s dress after all.
Cheleya took both hands and encircled her left arm pulling from shoulder to wrist. As the girl did, Iris watched as the green disappeared and became pink. The other
arm received the same treatment before Cheleya began to slide her hands along the front of the dress. As her hands passed over the apprentice, she began to blush at the awkwardness of the process.
“There, now you no longer look like an apprentice,” Cheleya nodded.
“Nice!” Katya said clapping and was joined by Briahnna in cheering the other two.
“How did you do that?” the apprentice asked. “Is that nature magic or...? I don’t even know what else it could be,” she finished looking stunned by the display of unknown magic.
Suddenly looking a bit self conscious as Cheleya realized that she was supposed to be hiding her unique magic. She finally shrugged and answered, “My people call it alteration, though I don’t know of anyone else actually practicing it.”
Nodding as she held out her arms marveling in the changes of the dress into a nice blouse, Iris replied, “It might not be great for combat, but I wonder what other things you can do with it. If you can alter things, are you limited to just changing colors?”
Cheleya smiled and pointed to Katya, “Perhaps we can talk later. If we take too long, it will be too late to let Katya talk to her friend. Once dinner starts, we will be unlikely to get free to leave.”
The other girls looked to the window and noticed the light was beginning to change with the falling sun. It wouldn’t be light out for much longer.
Hurrying, the four girls, who were all dressed like most girls might be even in a small town like Mera, nearly ran out of the inn drawing curious looks from their escorts. No one stopped them as Katya led the others back down the street to the house that her friend lived in and soon knocked on the door.
A drape was drawn back quickly and let go, but eventually they heard the turn of a lock and watched the knob rotate to open the door. The brown haired girl they had seen earlier looked out through a crack that would have been hard for a foot to slide into to keep the girl from slamming it in their faces.
“Leyra, it’s me, Katya. Why is everyone hiding?”
“It’s spring and all those wizards are here. Haven’t they come to check us all for magic again? They weren’t here last year, so everyone knows that they will likely return this year.”
Katya shook her head. While they had a search team with them and a few were new recruits, she didn’t lie as the girl answered, “The wizards’ tournament is over. Most of them are wizards who competed in the tournament.”
A sudden thought made Katya smile as she said, “The champion is in that group, if everyone wants to see him! Magnus from White Hall, a fire wizard, is staying at the inn for the night. He won a contest with hundreds of wizards from around the world.”
The girl opened the door slightly wider and looked surprised as she asked, “The champion is here? Why is he in Mera? We are just a little town.”
Katya shrugged and said, “Mera is along the route and has an inn, so it just happens to be where he plans to stay for the night.”
Looking past the little blonde, the girl asked, “Who are you friends?”
Noticing Iris looking a little cold in the new blouse and her light brown traveling skirt, Katya asked, “Would it be all right if we came in a moment? It’s a little cold outside.”
Leyra opened the door and the girls saw several other people inside looking worried. The girl’s grandfather, her little sister and brother, her mother as well, were all there looking at the door fearfully.
“It’s just Katya and a few of her friends. Don’t worry. The wizards are just returning to White Hall from the tournament. The champion is staying at the inn even!”
Repeating much of what Katya had said, the girl asked again, “So who are these girls?”
“Well, we all met in Delanne and have been traveling together ever since. Riding from town to town, everyone seems to wind up in the same place, you know?”
Leyra, like Katya before this trip, had never left the town; so she didn’t know in fact. She smiled but shook her head slightly.
“Anyway, Leyra, this is Cheleya, Briahnna and Iris,” she said gesturing to each girl in turn. Looking at her new friends Katya said, “Leyra and I practically grew up together. Ever since I started going to school in town, we’ve been friends.”
Leyra nodded but was curious as she asked, “I haven’t seen you in school since last fall now that you mention it.”
“When the weather gets bad, it is hard to get into town. You know how it is for us poor farm folk,” the pretty blonde said with a smile that feigned embarrassment. While she was never ashamed of where she lived, the young girl had often wished that she lived in Mera where her friends were. Now it didn’t matter anymore.
“But you’re here without your parents or siblings?”
Katya nodded and edited her answer, “My brother, Sebastian, is a battle mage and took me to see the tournament. It was kind of a present since he hasn’t seen me in awhile, but now I need to go to White Hall for him too. I’ll probably be away for awhile.”
Looking a bit leery, Leyra had a new question that made her frown slightly, “Do you have to go to that school now?”
Wincing at the question which had fear behind it, Katya sighed before nodding slowly. “My brother noticed it and has set it up for me to go there.”
Looking over Katya’s shoulder at the rest, the girl asked again with greater fear. “And are they going there too? Do I have to go too, Katya?”
The last question wasn’t fear for her friend or even for the thought of wizards coming for her. She was afraid of what she might become.
Iris answered, “You are just a normal girl. If you are thirteen like Katya, then it is more likely that you will never exhibit any magic, so there is no need to be afraid.”
“How do you know?” Leyra questioned warily.
“I was trained to search for wizards. You aren’t one, so you don’t need to hide.” The apprentice sighed and shook her head at the antics of the townsfolk, “Even if you were one, you can tell the others it doesn’t matter if you hide in a house. A wizard sent to search for other wizards can sense them through these walls and for greater distances. You’re only being rude in running from them.”
Katya frowned at the girl and said, “Not helping, Iris.”
Turning back to her old friend, Katya shrugged, “So many people fear having magic and it’s really a silly notion. Having magic is fun and not something to fear. I guess I wasn’t that afraid of it, since my brother is a battle mage after all.”
Leyra frowned again and said, “No one wants to be a battle mage. If you have to have magic, don’t you want to be a strong wizard?”
“My brother competed in the wizard’s tournament too,” Katya clarified. “He finished in fourth, but had to pull out before his next match. I think being a battle mage might be just as good as being a wizard actually.”
With little more to say to Leyra, who had begun to look suspicious of her once more, even though Iris had already confirmed that she wasn’t magical; the girls turned to leave the house. Katya gave her polite goodbyes knowing that she was unlikely to see these people ever again, and the future wizard wasn’t sure that she would miss them after this either.
Chapter 8- Through Another's Eyes
Piotr watched as the girls returned to the inn looking a little disappointed. While he wasn’t sure what they had been up to, the boy had seen Katya’s face when the townsfolk had turned their backs on the wizards' visit. Since few in Delanne were much more accepting of the search teams' visits, Piotr could guess that she was feeling alienated by the people she had known for so long.
Katya had talked with the others before reaching Mera telling them that this was basically her home town, though she actually lived on a farm a few miles away. The girl had gone to school here and knew most of the children, if not as many of the adults of Mera.
Cheleya moved to sit with the girls at the table Kel’lor had kept all to himself. The big man put out an aura that seemed to keep most people away, but Cheleya wasn’t turned away by the gr
uff giant in any way. In fact, she called him brother, though Piotr still doubted that they were in anyway related. Of course, if the pretty little blonde was just a facade for a dragoness, then he supposed the two could have changed to look more alike using the amulets the boy had overheard about when he had been eavesdropping with the sparfinch.
Ever since then, the boy had planned to try the mind link that every human, and whatever Kel’lor was, had been shielded against. It wasn’t surprising that his magic didn’t work on humans, if his spell was meant for animals. His power wasn’t right for it.
Katya was sitting looking his way, so Piotr looked through his triangular form and was rebuffed as expected. Not only was the girl human, but she had proved her defenses against an actual diplomat wizard. His coercion had failed and the untrained girl had left him stunned for an hour with just one little phrase. Her mental defenses felt less like stone walls as greased metal to Piotr in his attempt. Like sliding off a sphere of steel, he could feel his spell unable to even pretend to grasp hold of any of her mind.
Unlike the novice with great, natural defenses, Cheleya’s ability to always be surrounded by people or her ability to always seem to avoid making eye contact with the boy was her greatest defense. Since he didn’t want to make what he was doing obvious, Piotr had yet to be able to try linking with the girl. She was very pretty and he had managed to talk to her a few times noticing an unnatural scent to her. It was pleasant as he took in the sweet smell, but unlike the others, Piotr didn’t feel it coloring his impression of her.
Niklaus couldn’t get enough of the dragoness and his younger twin hadn’t told either of the other boys what he had heard that first evening. They saw her as a beautiful girl verging on being an adult, not a monstrous che’ther hidden by magic.
White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10) Page 11
