by Guy Antibes
“If you can’t go to sleep, let’s find out where the army is headed,” Pol said.
“And how do you think to do that?”
Pol smiled in the darkness. “I’ve been to the Abbot’s office before, and we can get in and out unobserved. I’m sure there is no one in the administration building. Do you want to do some Seeking?”
“What is seeking?”
“Spying, in this case. A Seeker finds the truth. Sometimes it’s for the Emperor or a king. This time we are Seeking for the Empire and for Shinkya.”
Pol thought Shro sat up.
“So why don’t you just go yourself?” she said.
Pol wondered why himself. “If I’m taking all the risk, then I’m not sharing what I find with you. We aren’t partners, you know.” That sounded more like Nater, but Pol couldn’t think of another rational reason. “You have done spying before, I imagine?”
The room was filled with silence.
“Maybe,” she said eventually. “As I said, Shinkya is filled with factions.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Then let’s go. People are asleep. If we continue this conversation it will be dawn before we leave the barracks.”
“Lead the way. Is there anything I should know before we approach the wolves’ den?”
Pol smiled. “I can tweak invisibility. So if someone comes and I get a bit intimate, I only do it to save our skins.”
“You can?” Shro said. He could hear amazement in her voice.
Pol didn’t know if she was putting him down. He thought she might be.
“Don’t get too familiar. I can merge with the shadows,” she said.
~
They didn’t wear robes as the pair made their way from building to building. They found the administration building locked. Pol took care of that and led Shro inside. He locked the door behind them.
“Fourth floor,” Pol said. “I found out the location of Abbot Festor’s office during a stint as a maid.”
“Maid?”
“I jest, but first-year acolytes spent most of their time performing domestic duties before you showed up.” He spelled better vision and led Shro up the stairs. She stumbled a few times, but they eventually made it to the top floor.
Pol stopped and tried to locate others in the building. “No one is in the building,” he said.
“I know,” Shro said. “You’re not the only…Seeker, is it?””
At least Shro wouldn’t see Pol’s blush. “The Seeker and the Spy,” he said.
“That’s us until we get caught standing in the corridor talking,” Shro said. “Where is the Abbot’s office?”
Pol began to walk. “Down this way.” He stood in front of the door and reached out towards the latch.
“Stop!” Shro said in a loud whisper. She grabbed his wrist and pulled it away from the latch. “Look at the door with your pattern sense.”
Pol closed his eyes and could see faint lines of energy surrounding the doorframe. “What will that do? I didn’t know anyone could do something like that.”
Shro looked at him with a disgruntled expression. “You really aren’t trained.”
Pol pressed his lips together with embarrassment. “I told you that I wasn’t. Don’t you believe me?”
“I suppose your reckless act just proves it. It’s obvious you’re not a fully-trained Seeker.”
“Hardly. I only learned how to use magic last year.”
Shro snorted. “I thought you were misleading me, but I guess not. You are too powerful for your age and experience.”
Pol considered her words. “I have to agree, but what am I to do? I was drafted to be here.”
She grumbled something that Pol didn’t understand. He had no idea what the Shinkyan meant. “Observe what I do,” she said.
Pol watched as she put her hand up to the top of the door and moved it around the frame. The pattern of energy began to disappear.
“I get it. You are restoring the door to its original state. I can do that,” Pol said. He looked closely at the lock. “This is spelled as well.”
“We call them wards. Protective spells are wards,” Shro said. “Try to eliminate that one.”
“It’s already done,” Pol said as he unlatched the door. He stepped inside and found the floor covered with the energy traces. “I can’t move my feet!”
“Silly boy,” Shro said. “I think we’ve done enough damage for the night. Whoever confronts the door in the morning will expect a monk stuck in magical mud.” She tapped a finger to her mouth. “Should I just leave you here?”
Pol looked at her mocking smile. “Not at all.” He pointed towards the floor and eliminated the ward that held him. Pol had to do the same all the way back to the door. “I suppose our foray has ended.”
“Not quite yet,” Shro said. “Step out.”
Pol did as she said and looked on as she extended the spell on the floor to cover the empty spots. She shut the door and asked Pol to lock it again.
“I don’t know how to manipulate locks,” Shro said, while she worked on the wards so it appeared that they had never opened the Abbot’s door.
Pol heard voices drift up from the lobby.
“A disruption, you say?”
“That’s exactly what I said,” Abbot Festor said. “The perpetrator will be stuck to the doorframe, you wait and see.
“They are coming up the stairs!” Shro whispered.
Pol looked around. His heart beat in his chest reminding him of how it always used to pound like that. He shuffled Shro into a corner and made the both of them invisible.
“Don’t move,” Pol breathed more than spoke in Shro’s ear. He turned his back to the corridor while Shro peeked over his shoulder just as a flurry of magician lights flooded the corridor. Pol noticed that he cast no shadow against the wall. He had never thought that the invisibility spell would allow light to shine through him.
“You said you felt the ward stop?”
“Of course I did. I’m not the Abbot because I have white hair.” The man was very angry.
Pol hoped none of the monks could hear his knees knocking with nervousness. He didn’t want to turn and look at the Abbot’s inspection, but he shook at every pause.
“The wards are still in place,” the Abbot said. Pol could hear the astonishment in his voice. After another pause he said, “I don’t understand. We had to unlock the front door.”
“Should we look inside?” a monk asked.
“If they didn’t get through the door, they’d have to climb up a sheer wall to get in, and then they’d be stuck to the floor. If anyone is in my office, they can rot until tomorrow.” The Abbot didn’t like being awakened in the middle of the night and it showed in his voice.
The same monk spoke up. “Perhaps we should meet now rather than wait until tomorrow.”
Pol’s eyebrows shot up. That would be fortunate. If he couldn’t get in the Abbot’s office, he could use his hearing to listen in.
“Fool! I’m tired and am going back to bed. I want you three with me when I open my office tomorrow. I may need help to confront the intruder.”
The whisperings of rope sandals on the floor moved to the stairs and down to the lower levels.
“You can let me go now,” Shro said.
Pol had forgotten about Shro. All of a sudden he realized that his arms encircled a woman. He jumped back. “Sorry. I didn’t know if they could detect my magic or not.”
“I know I’m not strong enough to hold that spell. Do all the Deftnis monks know it?”
Pol shrugged. “I don’t know. I made it up. Val knows I can do it, but he’s never talked about using something similar.”
Shro put her hand to her chin. “I can camouflage myself. Assume the pattern of whatever is behind me, but invisibility?” He saw her shake her head in the darkness. “The monks looked right at us and just moved on.”
“I’ve used it once or twice before,” Pol said.
Shro smiled. “Just don’t use it while I’m
changing my clothes, all right?”
Pol felt his face heat up. “I wouldn’t do anything like that.”
“Don’t start now. I wouldn’t put it past any man to do it in the future.”
The words struck Pol as too cynical. “I’m not any man.”
“You aren’t a man,” Shro said. “Are we going to stay up here arguing?”
That was unfair. She had brought up the subject. “I’m not arguing,” Pol said.
“No, but I was about to start,” Shro slid past him and started towards the stairway.
~
The next morning’s practice ended a bit earlier than normal. Evidently Abbot Festor wanted a cleaner monastery, so Castall sent them off to spruce up the buildings. To Pol’s pleasure, he wasn’t on any list, so he took the opportunity to head over to the main courtyard. Monks practiced in a much more disciplined fashion than the acolytes. He heard cadenced shouting and the clatter of practice swords hitting at the same time.
He rounded a building to see the monks stripped to the waist going through the same forms. Pol wondered how Shro’s disguise would handle stripping to the waist, and that brought a smile to his face. Maybe he would be tempted to sneak a look at his roommate at an inopportune time. A monk, the leading monk of the three from Pol’s adventure in Gobbleton, called the practice to a halt.
“Time to spar. Pick a partner,” he said.
There were an odd number of monks. Before Pol could hide, the practice leader called to Pol. “Acolyte, you can practice with Bettlor.”
“Me?” Pol pointed to himself, hoping that the monk meant someone else, but the man nodded his head and motioned Pol over.
Bettlor appeared. He wasn’t much taller than Pol, but had more body mass. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, so the man probably knew Coram. He sniffed at Pol. “A measly little acolyte, eh?”
Pol knew a nasty monk when he saw one. There were enough in the monastery. Pol was more experienced in dealing with spoiled brats than he ever wanted to be, even if they were ten years older, like Bettlor. The leader shoved a practice sword in Pol’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder.
“I remember you from when we found Willam in town. Don’t embarrass me,” the leader said with a smug smile.
“I won’t,” Pol said. He looked at Bettlor. “I’m not without training, Monk Bettlor.”
The man leered. “We’ll see about that.” He raised his sword.
“Not a touch first?” Pol said. “Isn’t that bad form?”
Bettlor ground his teeth, but Pol glanced at the practice leader who stayed to observe. Pol detected a faint smile on his face.
After a reluctant touch, Bettlor began to press until Pol jumped back to gather himself. Should he win this match? Pol wanted to teach Bettlor a lesson, but the cost might be too high, so he would win, but not with his normal proficiency. Perhaps he could get by without augmenting his speed, but rather by staying with anticipation magic.
This was no duel, so Pol quickly slapped his sword on Bettlor’s elbow. His opponent’s face displayed a perpetual scowl. Pol let a thrust brush past his side, but then slapped Bettlor on the neck with the flat of his blade. With Bettlor’s snail-like speed, Pol had his way with him.
“He’s getting the better of you, Bettlor,” the leader said, standing with his arms folded.
Bettlor grimaced at the taunt. Pol noticed other monks stopping their sparring and observing Pol’s match. Bettlor began to put all he had in his swings, but Pol slipped his sword along his opponent’s edge enough to lighten the blows that he took.
The monk didn’t share Pol’s superior conditioning, so Bettlor began to tire. Pol didn’t want to inadvertently injure his opponent, so he stepped away.
Pol wiped his brow. “I’ve had enough.”
Bettlor lunged, but Pol was ready. He had been pummeled once before when he stepped back from a match and that would not happen again. Pol slipped to the side and took Bettlor’s wrist and pulled with all his might, this time adding the tiniest sip of magic to let the man stumble past. Bettlor tripped on his own feet and sprawled on the courtyard’s pavement.
“That’s not fair,” Pol said. He tried to keep any hint of mockery out of his voice. “I’m sorry our session ended this way,” Pol said to the trainer.
“You did warn him,” the monk said with the ghost of a smile.
Pol nodded. He gave the practice sword to the trainer and made his way through the monks standing around them, and then headed to the washroom. Bettlor might not have been a great opponent, but trying to keep the man from looking too bad wore Pol out.
Shro threw a towel around her in the empty washroom when Pol quickly turned his back to her.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“I wanted to stick my head in a bucket of water. I was drafted into a sparring match with a monk.”
“You won?”
Pol nodded and poured water over his head. “I won’t turn around until you tell me. Watch, I won’t even turn invisible” He smiled to himself as he grabbed a towel and rubbed it over his head and finished wiping his face.
“Okay,” she said.
Pol turned around while she dried off her shaven head. “Are you always here when it’s empty?”
Shro nodded. “If it’s not, I come back. If you’re wondering, parts of my body are disguised, but that still doesn’t make me comfortable around the others.” Her cheeks turned a little red.
A body disguise? Really? How did that work? Pol shook his head. He really didn’t want to know. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“I believe you,” she said.
Well, perhaps she has a bit of trust in me, after all, Pol thought. “Good.”
They walked back to the commissary.
“Did you show them your magic?” Shro said.
“I showed them that I was quicker, in better condition, and better trained than the monk I fought. I used a sip of magic only once, and then not with my sword.”
“A sip of magic. You used that term before. Is that a technique?”
Pol wondered if he should tell her, but he decided that he would. “You can anticipate your opponent’s moves by tweaking a mental pattern of what you think he, or she,” Pol cleared his throat, “will do. We call it anticipation magic. That is typically transparent. The other part of being a pattern master is to enhance your strength. That’s the sip I talked about. If you use too much magic while you fight, you wear out more quickly, plus it becomes obvious to spectators. You’ve seen that when I fought Menkin.”
“Very, very fast. I know. I used to try to use my magic to jump high. It didn’t take more than two jumps for me to lose too much power.”
“It’s the same principle. The less magic you use, the better. Disguises take a lot of strength.”
“They do, but you can’t use sips, then.”
Pol shook his head. “No, you can’t. Sips work really well with weapons. You don’t need to be lightning fast in a sword duel, just faster than your opponent.”
“I’m sure there’s more to it than that,” Shro said.
“A lot of practice is involved.” That was as much as Pol wanted to say about the subject. “There really aren’t any pattern masters in Shinkya?”
Shro shook her head. “The male magicians who could do such a thing die young in Shinkya. They aren’t physically strong at all. We live in a matriarchal society. Didn’t you know that?”
“Karo confirmed that women were at the top of the hierarchy and you mentioned a Queen. When I learned about your county, I didn’t study it in any detail. I used to be like that, weak. I thought I would die before I reached twenty.”
“Are you going to?”
Pol smiled. “No. I spent the earlier part of this year finding a monk who could fix me.”
“Did he? You look healthy enough to me.”
“He had to do a lot of work to heal me. I wonder. Do you have any legends of where you came from?”
“Volia. A long, long time
ago, we were supposed to have come from northern Volia. The Great Cataclysm, we call it, separated us, and we made our way to Shinkya on the opposite side of the world.” Shro paused in thought for a moment. “That’s all I know.”
“I should have Searl examine one of your sick magicians.” Pol smiled. “Karo Nagoya isn’t very powerful. He looked too healthy.”
Shro looked surprised. “You’re right, he is too healthy. How did you know?”
“I put a few things together from what Karo and you said about Shinkyan magical society. I’m still ignorant of most of it. I’ll share my observations with you another time. We need to get to the assignment room to see what we will be doing once we’ve completed afternoon training.
~~~
CHAPTER TWELVE
~
POL STOOD WITH HIS TEAM when the monk’s practice leader walked up to him.
“You’re promoted,” the monk said. His smile this time was better than the sneer from before. “Don’t worry, I won’t put you with Monk Bettlor. I could tell you were playing with him. Come on.”
Pol nearly interrupted the monk. He scanned the forest, but couldn’t detect anyone as the monk pulled him away from the acolytes. Pol looked at Shro. He knew his eyes were round with panic. How would he communicate with Val? The Abbot would soon announce their destination. He’d always relied on Demeron getting close, but now how could he predict where he’d be?
“Don’t look back. You’ll be playing with the big boys, now,” the monk said.
The monks were back at their group forms when Pol arrived with the trainer. “In the back at the west end.”
He walked to the empty spot in the back and found a wooden sword on the ground. He picked it up and began to move with the others. Now Pol would have to walk around the perimeter of the monastery where he first communicated with Demeron. What a way to ruin his mission.
After going through forms not much more advanced than the acolytes, the trainer said, “Now we spar.”
Pol didn’t move, rooted to his position, when a tall, lanky monk walked up with a bundle under his arm. He was probably in his mid-thirties.
“Nater?”
