by DB King
The House of Doors. It had to be.
A glance at Uriel confirmed it. The old Archmage grinned at the floating stretch of land, as if it were his true home rather than the splendid, majestic castle. “I told you that you wouldn’t be able to miss it,” he said, jostling Alec gently.
“By the Gods,” Alec whispered, watching as the airship descended to the landing pad. “It’s wonderful, Archmage Diamondspear.”
The man stood back a bit, bracing himself as the airship landed. “You’ll get to know the place intimately,” he assured the group. “Until you and Eleira are prepared to take the Academy’s entrance exam, you will be staying in the manor for the foreseeable future.”
That sounded just fine to Alec. More than fine, actually. Though Eleira didn’t see it that way.
“How long will that be?” the elf maiden asked. A worried look cut through her scowl.
Uriel shrugged. “Until the two of you are ready. It could be days, or weeks. Gods forbid it takes years—we don’t have that much time, but it could happen. Both of you have lost many years of training by only discovering your magic now.”
“That’s hardly our fault,” Eleira protested. “I didn’t know I was a mage. Alec didn’t, either.”
“I wasn’t blaming you,” Uriel assured the young woman. “This is no fault of your own. Mages typically begin the practice of magic as soon as they can walk, and as soon as they learn to read, they begin researching the process of learning spells. There are students in the Academy as young as eight years old, to give you an idea of how much potential instruction you’ve missed.”
Thomas was just about that age. Alec imagined what his life would be like if he’d been taken into the Academy when he was as small as the boy. Would it have been wonderful, or would he have been bullied the way Thomas used to be from the older boys?
“Magic,” Uriel explained, “is a gift best learned while young. It is a language, at its root—and children pick up new languages with much greater ease than adults. You will both be very far behind in your training, but hopefully we’ll be able to correct that.”
As he said it, Tanuin gave Alec a nod. They’d known each other long enough that he didn’t need to have the meaning of it explained to him. Tanuin was wishing him good luck.
“Training will begin in two days,” Uriel announced. “Until then, the pair of you should rest and make yourself comfortable in the manor. After your first week of studies, I’ll have someone show you the rest of Northmund. Until then, I believe it’s best you remain within the manor’s walls.”
That was alright with Alec. The manor seemed splendid enough to keep him happy for quite a while.
“I’m ready,” he told the group proudly. He felt excitement at the prospect of learning to become a mage.
As the airship settled, his gaze rose to the floating island overlooking the castle. Although he wouldn’t have dared admit it to anyone in the group, he was also looking forward to seeing the House of Many Doors for the first time. He knew Uriel wouldn’t give him a tour of that for quite some time, though. Maybe in a few years, once he’d begun to understand the ways of magic.
He had no way of knowing he’d be taking his first steps through those doors a lot sooner than he expected.
Chapter 14
Alec had thought nothing could be nicer than the suites on Archmage Diamondspear’s airship. After the first night he spent at Northmund Manor, he realized how wrong he was.
What luxury! Even kings didn’t sleep this well. Alec’s room was near the top of the manor’s easternmost tower, overlooking the mountains and the valley far below. The carpets were so thick his toes nearly disappeared as he walked; he would gladly have lain down and slept right on the floor. A roaring fire blazed in the fireplace, keeping the space toasty and warm. He’d only tested the bed for a moment—as light as a feather and softer than silk, he’d felt his eyes begin to grow heavily almost immediately as he laid down. He didn’t want to fall asleep too early—luxury like this deserved to be savored.
Night had fallen outside of his window. The stars lit up the summer sky, twinkling like diamonds in the firmament. A chilly wind blew in, raising goosebumps on his flesh in a most pleasing contrast to the warmth of the fire. A fellow could get used to this, Alec thought with a smile, turning away. He moved to the oaken writing desk in a corner of the room, where a half-finished letter to the boys at the Archon Temple waited for his hand.
He’d started the next paragraph a half-dozen times, only to blot it out and start again. How could he even explain the things he’d seen to boys like Marcus and Thomas? They’d seen the hag down in the crypt, so they knew that monsters existed, yet the things he’d seen in the storm on the way to the Manor defied all description. He was having enough trouble believing the last few days were anything other than a daydream.
With a sigh, Alec placed his quill sideways across the paper and climbed into bed. Just as before, he felt tiredness tug at him the moment he slid beneath the blankets. It felt as if someone had attached heavy hooks to his eyelids, tugging them downward the way Archmage Diamondspear’s crew had hooked the airship to the Manor’s landing pad. He barely had time to lay his head to the pillow before sleep overtook him.
He rose early the next morning, awakened by a beam of sunlight streaming through the room’s window. Alec was used to rising before the rest of the Archon Temple to attend to dawn chores, and the habit proved difficult to break. For several minutes, he simply lay beneath the covers watching motes of dust dance in the morning light, enjoying the sensation of having nothing to do and no one to be accountable to.
What would he be doing today? Archmage Diamondspear had promised there would be lessons, surely, but also that they’d have time to take in their surroundings before the serious work began. Watching dust float across the room gave him an idea.
Perhaps I could get an early start on my lessons, he thought, sitting up. I’ll have a lot of catching up to do, as Uriel said. Eleira knows so much more than I do already.
He’d hardly thought of the girl since his arrival. As he threw on a dressing gown, discarding his travel clothes in a neat pile next to the bed, his thoughts traveled to the strange elven woman. Her rooms were in the tower as well, just down the hall from his own, yet he’d heard not a single thing from her side of the floor since they’d arrived. She hadn’t come over to wish him good luck with his lessons, or to share any more information about what she and Tanuin had been up to while the elf was away from the Archon Temple for so long.
Probably for the best, he told himself, looking around the suite. That woman is… prickly. I definitely wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.
Alec moved to the window, his feet sinking into the plush carpet with every step. Next to the window, a potted plant stood against the stone. Its fragile fronds stretched toward the sunlight entering the suite, reaching out like a gesture of praise. If Alec concentrated for a few moments, he could sense the energy radiating from the flower.
It wasn’t the flower he intended to touch, however. The last time he’d done that, he’d been sick. He remembered the crawling sensation of vines inside his body, nearly as disorienting as the flames he’d pulled inside of himself when defending Marcus from the hag.
His gaze traveled to the dirt surrounding the plant. Perhaps he could draw a little bit of earth into himself without getting sick? It seemed a safer bet than absorbing something living.
Heedless of the potential danger, Alec sat cross-legged on the floor before the potted plant. This put the angle of the sunlight directly in his eyes, so he had to shift a bit and move the plant to the side as he prepared to do what he’d done while fighting the bandits. Then, he’d been moving on instinct—now he reached for magic consciously, careful not to pull more of it into himself than he could handle.
Rather than absorb the flower itself, Alec pressed his fingers into the dirt surrounding it. If he’d been a student of the Academy already, trained in the ebbs and flows of magic, he
might have thought of it as the Earth Element —as it was, he merely thought about absorbing the dirt rather than the plant.
His fingers pushed deeper, dirt getting beneath his nails. I’ll have to wash them later, he thought, then forced himself to stop thinking. He needed to feel. Quieting his mind, he concentrated harder. The world shrank around him until there was nothing but the faint give of the squishy, hard-packed earth beneath his fingertips.
There. He felt it. The energy, waiting just beneath the surface.
The urge to pull as much of it into himself as he could was nearly overwhelming. He felt like a man stranded in the desert who’d just come upon an oasis—he longed to shove his head beneath the surface and drink deep. Remembering what had happened last time, he held back, allowing just a mere trickle of the energy to flow through his fingers.
It tingled, as if he’d touched something ice cold. Pins and needles erupted from his fingers to his wrists as the energy flowed into his body, filling him with a not at all unpleasant sensation of fullness.
He realized the mistakes he’d made before. The magic hadn’t made him sick—it was pulling too much of it into himself that caused the awful sensation of his insides being on fire or covered in vines. He recalled how Marcus had once gotten into the Temple’s storerooms and eaten a month’s ration of cookies in a single night. The boy had been sick for a week.
Alec’s body told him when he’d had enough magic. He pulled his fingers from the dirt with a gentle sigh, opening his eyes. The plant in the pot didn’t look wilted in the slightest; he hadn’t taken enough energy from the dirt nurturing the flower to threaten it. Balance, that was the key.
Unlike the previous times where he’d absorbed magic, there was no urge to immediately fling the overcharge of energy into a fireball or a charging unicorn made of water. Rather than knocking at his insides demanding to be freed, the magic seemed content to remain inside of him, at the ready.
I could hold this all day, he thought, standing up to test his supposition. He made a quick circuit around the room, then jogged in place a bit to see if exercise would loosen the hold of the magic inside of him. When it failed to, he considered his next move.
Should he hold onto the magic all day? Would Uriel notice it immediately, or could he do it without the Archmage noticing? And if he did, would there be any adverse effects to keeping the magic within him?
It didn’t feel as if there would be. If anything, it felt strangely right to hold so much power at the ready—
The door to his suite opened.
It happened so quickly that he lost control of his magic. What motion and exercise had failed to dislodge was knocked out of place by the surprise. For a horrible moment, Alec threw up his hands as if at an intruder, then thought better of it at the last moment. He flung the magic at the only thing he could think of on such short notice—the same pot it had come from in the first place.
He missed. Rather than sink back into the dirt, the earth energy saturated the plant. The leafy fronds extended to the sun froze in an instant as they petrified, turning the tall flower to stone. Alec’s mouth dropped open at the sight, his eyes bulging at the brand-new floral statue he’d just produced.
A servant stood in the doorway, looking even more surprised than Alec. “Young master,” the man stuttered, his eyes traveling nervously to the stone plant standing by the window, “Archmage Diamondspear sent me to fetch you for breakfast.”
Gods, Alec thought, feeling awful. If I hadn’t turned around at the last second, this poor fellow…
He didn’t want to think about it. Turning his manservant into stone would be a surefire way to get on Uriel’s bad side.
“Thank you,” Alec said, tucking his hands into the pockets of his robes. “Please, lead the way.”
The man relaxed. Still, there was a certain tension in his stance as he turned his back on Alec and led him down the hallway. As if he expected a burst of magic between his shoulder blades at any moment. Alec tried to ignore it as the manservant led him down the winding steps of the tower.
“Did you come to fetch Eleira, too?” he asked, trying to distract both himself and the manservant from the scene he’d come upon when entering the suite. “Or is she already down at breakfast?” He hoped so. He’d hate for her to choose now to pay a visit to his suite and see what he’d done.
“Mistress Eleira requires a bit more time than you to prepare herself in the morning, young master,” the man said. Now that Alec wasn’t quite so preoccupied with the near-petrification of the manservant, he realized the man leading him down to breakfast was barely older than some of the Archon Temple’s foundlings. Had he lived with the monks, the two of them might have been friends.
Just as much attention had been paid to Archmage Diamondspear’s dining hall as the rest of the Northmund Estate. The servant led him to a wide, rectangular hall, large enough to fit a hundred men but now occupied by only two. A liveried servant wearing an apron finished placing plates on the table as he entered, while a maidservant in a short tunic filled glasses with water and various juices. Alec’s stomach rumbled as he took a seat at the table, and he realized just how long it had been since he’d had anything to eat but the foodstuffs on Uriel’s airship.
At the Archon Temple, breakfast was a fairly sparse affair. Alec had been raised on simple meals of bread and porridge, so as the servants brought the first course (just the first course!), he felt as if he’d fallen headfirst into Fairyland. There were rolls, scones, and breaded treats galore, along with eggs cooked in every conceivable fashion. Bacon was available in both long, crispy fried strips and thick cuts like the ham the Temple served near Yuletide. The smells alone made Alec groan with need.
He dug in. Clearly the servants were used to such behavior—they merely chuckled and placed more food in the center of the table, ready and waiting for anyone who arrived at breakfast to devour. The whole thing had been set up like a banquet or a buffet, large enough for a regiment of soldiers. But for the moment, Alec was alone at the table.
Just then, the door to the great hall opened. Alec glanced up, a strand of bacon sticking from the corner of his mouth, and caught his first sight of the elf girl Eleira since Archmage Diamondspear’s airship disembarked.
He immediately removed the bacon from his mouth and swallowed. Rising from the table and dropping into the smooth bow the monks had beaten into him, he said, “Good morning, my lady.”
Eleira snorted and rolled her eyes. How could she be unaware of the effect she had on those around her? The simple dressing robes Alec had found laid out for himself in his dresser at the manor were rags compared to the dress the elven woman wore. It was a deep forest green, with a wide golden sash tying it closed at the front. It contrasted most pleasingly with her dusky skin, and Alec found his heart skipping a beat.
“I’m not a lady,” Eleira said, taking the seat across from him at the table. “I’m a student, like you. Since we’re going to be attending the Academy together, you might as well just get used to calling me Eleira.”
Good advice. But all of a sudden, Alec found it difficult to concentrate on the food in front of him. The rest of the room seemed strangely muted compared with this woman’s beauty. She made the rest of Northmund Manor feel drab by contrast.
Alec shook his head and returned his attention to his plate. If we’re going to be attending the Academy together, he thought, echoing Eleira’s phrase, then I’m going to need to get used to you wearing such splendid gowns. Otherwise I’ll never get any learning done…
He was glad he hadn’t held onto the magic he’d absorbed from the pot. The sight of the elf girl would certainly have driven it from him. Thinking of that made him remember the petrified plant in his suite, and the heat in his cheeks began to cool.
Eleira filled her plate with smaller, daintier fare. The elven woman ate like a bird, picking at her eggs and spiced potatoes gingerly as the two of them made small talk. Although, Alec noticed she did have a rather large apple scone s
itting untouched on her plate. Perhaps the girl had a sweet tooth?
When the door to the hall opened again a few minutes later, the other two members of their breakfast party arrived. Uriel and Tanuin entered, practically arm in arm as they argued vigorously about something. Despite the intensity of their debate, both men were smiling and laughing like old friends. Uriel wore his splendid robes like he’d been born in them, while Tanuin still dressed as if he were ready to go off on a forest adventure at any moment.
“It’s a Stormbreaker,” the master of Northmund Estate had been saying as the pair entered. “The house of Diamondspear has always had what you might call a contentious relationship with their clan, young man. A prank like that is exactly what I’d expect from such a classless group of magicians.”
Tanuin laughed. “A prank? Uriel, those shrikes were out for blood. The might of Diamondspear cannons and magic might be able to treat creatures like that as little more than a nuisance, but in the Outlands monsters like those could wreak some serious havoc.”
Uriel stopped mid-stride, sizing the elf up beneath his bushy eyebrows. “You think this has to do with your travels, then, do you?”
Alec had rarely seen Tanuin on the defensive. The elven ranger crossed his arms over his chest as he met Archmage Diamondspear’s eye. “I’ve spent five years traveling this continent,” he said, one of his ears twitching the slightest fraction. “The things I’ve seen stirring lately, Uriel—they worry me. Creatures we thought had died out or remained in captivity forever, powers that have only been written about in the legends… some of the things I’ve seen would shock you, Uriel.”
“I expect you know very little about what it takes to shock a man like me,” Uriel said wryly. “Perhaps we should table this discussion for now, Tanuin. We seem to have upset both of our students’ appetites.”
