The Reign of Magic (Pentamura Book 1)

by Awert, Wolf

  He had waited a moment too long. Brolok slid his left hand further down the staff, giving it a long and a short end again. The long end went up, the right hand followed the left and brought the staff down with all Brolok’s might.

  The swordsman leapt backwards and avoided thus having his shoulder crushed, but his hand was not so lucky. It received a painful blow.

  Brolok had repositioned his hands towards the middle of the staff, crossed his arms and put his left hand under his right armpit again. This time the posture did not make the boy laugh, for Brolok’s enraged face spoke a clear message. With a short turn of his rump he swung the staff upwards, knocking the sword arm away. The staff twirled around his head, knocking back an attempted attack and came down onto the enemy’s ribs. Another swing and his left hand was back under his armpit. A quick twist back to the right gave the blow more strength and hit the other side of the noble’s ribcage before his attacker knew what was happening. Brolok now had the upper hand, able to attack from both sides as though the ends of his staff were two separate weapons, now that his opponent could only shield himself from one side. Although the staff was very long, Brolok was able to switch between the long and short ends to speed up his attacks. After a few rapid-fire movements he left his enemy standing there and began to walk away. The noble fell to his knees, his arms around his ribs. Brolok knew that every breath he took was like a knife plunged into his lungs.

  As he left the battlefield he trod on the red-gold feathers of the wide-brimmed hat that lay forgotten on the ground. “Oh, how clumsy of me,” he said.

  When Brolok finally reached the caves his sleeve was drenched in blood, and it began dripping onto the floor. Nill and Tiriwi stared in shock at his white face.

  “Probably just a flesh wound,” Brolok mumbled. “But it does hurt a bit.”

  “What happened?” Nill asked in distress, as Tiriwi tore open the sleeve and folded it up.

  “No time for stories. Hold up your arm for a moment, Brolok. I need hot water. Nill, get me a bowl.” Her tone of voice was so commanding that Nill did not think to disobey and ran off immediately.

  Tiriwi gazed into the bowl he brought and held her palms above the water. The surface began to froth and around the edges of the basin, where Nill was holding it, he noticed small bubbles escaping to the surface. He thought he felt his hands grow hot. What had Tiriwi done?

  She washed Brolok’s wound. It was not so much a stab wound as a gash, and at both ends the blood had begun to clot. She re-opened the wound carefully, washed it out and let the blood flow freely. She nodded, satisfied. “Nill, I need icy cold water now. Take the fire out of the bowl.”

  Nill shook his head in anguish. “I can’t!”

  “Shut up and do it.”

  Nill found that he did not even have to cast a spell. All he needed to do was make the heat flow through his body and release it again. He could do that, he knew how. Throwing little balls of cold was one thing, taking the fire out of something quite another. He felt confident, and was rewarded when the water calmed down and went silent again. Around the edges and on the surface tiny ice crystals began to form.

  “Nill, I need water, not ice.”

  Nill raised his head, confused.

  “So then, that’s the most important things taken care of. Brolok, can you hold the edges of that wound together yourself?”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” asked Brolok, who had let Tiriwi do her work with a stoic expression on his face.

  “Just press them together and close your body at that point for a moment.”

  “Close… my body?” Brolok wondered.

  “You can open it, you can close it. Here, I’ll help you.”

  Tiriwi guided Brolok’s mind to his arm and to the fingertips that were holding the wound together. “You feel the way it feels? Can you hold it?”

  “I think so. I’ll try.”

  Nill stood next to them in amazement.

  Tiriwi began to sing. She pushed Brolok onto the bench and signaled him to stay there without interrupting her song. Nill wondered whether there was anything for him to do, but Tiriwi did not spare him a second glance. Either she was looking at the wound, or her eyes were closed, Nill could not tell. She sang. She sang for a long time. Nill could not have said how long she had sung for, but it seemed to erase any sense of time. After a long time her voice became a little hoarse, and she stopped. “You’ll have to let that arm rest for the next few days. If it doesn’t become inflamed – and I don’t think it will – it’ll be all but gone in about three days, apart from maybe a small scar.”

  “Thank you, Tiriwi.” Brolok hugged her with his good arm, and Tiriwi allowed it. “How did you do that?”

  “Later. Now tell us what happened.”

  Brolok explained in short words how he had tried to avoid the conflict, and how the injury had forced him to defend himself.

  Nill looked thoughtful. “It looks like it’s war, then.”

  Tiriwi shook her head. “No, it’s not war yet. But the clouds that carry the storm are gathering. I hope the mages can mediate, but I’m not sure they will. We can’t let them provoke us. On the other hand, we can’t run forever.”

  When Tiriwi, Brolok and Nill entered their classroom, they were simply ignored. Only when the Fire Mage cleared his throat loudly the chatter died down.

  “It’s time for your first duel. Split up, and one side will attack with fireballs, the other will block them with ice spheres. Chest contact only, I don’t want any injuries today.”

  The mage gave Tiriwi and Nill a disdainful look. “I told you to wear a breastplate for today’s lesson.”

  “Oas have no armor,” Tiriwi said quietly.

  The mage’s lips thinned in annoyance and he had two leather harnesses brought in. They looked as though until recently they had been used whilst gutting game. The students took their places. Brolok stood opposite Nill.

  Brolok was scarcely better than Nill when it came to Fire magic. They did manage to create a red and a blue ball each. They drifted slowly towards each other and vanished with a slight plop as they collided.

  On the other side of the room there was a loud bang. Prince Sergor-Don, whose face revealed his foul mood, had knocked down his opponent. “This is child’s play, a waste of time. What sorcerer uses simple fireballs?”

  The Fire Mage brought the prince another opponent, a noble from Metal World. This one was already proficient at rapidly conjuring well-shaped elemental balls. Prince Sergor-Don said nothing and cast a fireball at the other, who barely managed to parry it. The prince lifted his hands into the air and shot one ball after the other at him. While the one from his right was still flying, the one in his left was already forming. He cast with such speed that the other students felt dizzy just watching. One or two of his attacks were blocked by blue spheres, but most of them hit their mark. The force with which the prince had shot them at him made him stumble backwards, until the prince took both hands together and shot a double ball at him. His opponent was flung backwards and barely managed to roll away from the next double ball. His leather harness was blackened and burnt. The duel was over.

  Tiriwi did not use balls of cold to defend herself. Instead she made small hailstones, throwing them at her opponent’s fireballs before they had even reached halfway. After roughly three hailstones the fireball would be extinguished.

  “You’re supposed to defend yourself properly!” the opponent scolded Tiriwi. He was a thin boy in dark red clothing – evidently from the Fire Kingdom.

  Tiriwi said nothing and cast more hailstones from her fingers. Occasionally she would put a finger in her mouth and suck on it a little. “My hands are cold,” she said apologetically.

  The boy felt ridiculed. Angry, he began to throw larger balls in faster succession. They would have been quite dangerous had the boy managed to properly aim them, but in his fever Tiriwi stopped casting altogether and just watched the balls fly past her.

  The mage clapped his hands. �
�Change roles!” he called out.

  Sergor-Don chose not to defend himself with ice spheres. Instead he countered his opponent’s fireballs with his own, and when they touched they melded together, the greater force of his attack sending the whole thing back towards his enemy. The boy across from him managed to dodge the first one, but the second hit him squarely in the chest. With a yelp he limped away from his spot. The prince’s expression was unchanged.

  Tiriwi used small blazing clouds to attack, but her opponent stopped them all with ice spheres. As they were only for parrying and he gave them little power, they managed to stop the clouds but then stopped dead in mid-air. Before long he was surrounded by a wall of ice spheres and could only extricate himself from them with some difficulty.

  “Can’t you attack properly?” he yelled at Tiriwi in anger.

  “We’re just practicing,” Tiriwi replied innocently.

  Nill had a different problem. His opponent got bored waiting for Nill to attack and decided to throw fireballs at Nill instead of defending. He had some practice with them and threw them far quicker than Nill could react. Nill did not manage to block a single one of them, as he was spending far too much time dodging, which damaged his concentration.

  Luckily, no matter how ugly it was, his harness was made of thick leather and took the brunt of the attacks without issue. His opponent noticed this and began, in direct violation of what the mage had said, to aim for Nill’s face. The first ball hit him on the forehead, singeing his eyebrows and reddening his face. He managed to dodge the second one by ducking.

  “Where are you throwing those things?” Nill shouted, irritated.

  “Sorry. I think I need to practice my aim, muckling!” the noble laughed.

  He increased the speed of his attacks and Nill gave up his feeble attempts to stop them using the cold. All he could do now was physically block them. He raised his arms and began to catch the fireballs in his hands. He forced the fire through his body and out into the ground, but a part of it remained inside him. A blistering wave of heat expanded through him from his chest, and with it came an uncanny rage. His aura turned bright red, and his muscles became stronger.

  “STOP IT!” he shouted. His voice was so loud that everyone in the room twitched. He walked slowly towards his opponent. All the other students had stopped casting spells, gazing transfixed at Nill. Tiriwi saw his incredible red aura fill the room and her mouth fell open in shock.

  Nill grabbed the noble, who was almost twice his weight, by the straps of his harness, lifted him up and threw him bodily against the wall. There was a slapping noise and the boy slid down the wall with a dazed expression on his face. Upon reaching the ground his knees gave way and he sat like a sack of rice on the floor.

  “The lesson is over. Rules are meant to be obeyed.”

  The mage gave Nill a stern look and said, “Never do that again. We fight with magic here. Physical attacks are a misdeed that I will punish you harshly for if you repeat it.”

  “But,” Nill stammered, “he was aiming at my face.”

  The mage turned on his heel and left.

  “You don’t honestly believe in justice, do you?” Brolok gave him an appreciative grin. “You sure showed him. I’ve never heard that magical energy can be turned into actual strength, but it looks like anything’s possible with you. I don’t think it’ll work with orbs or bolts though. You’ll have to think up another trick for that. Now let’s get out of here, the show’s over.” He made his way to the caves, and Nill followed. The two had not noticed that Tiriwi had followed the nobles into their quarters. At first unnoticed, after three fast steps she was standing in the middle of them and attracting all their attention.

  “Go away. You’re in the wrong part of the city, go back to your hole where you belong,” a vicious voice rang out.

  “I want to talk to you.” Tiriwi stood, tall and confident in the middle of all these young men and women who had clearly nothing but animosity towards her. Her eyes were looking for Prince Sergor-Don, but the prince was not here.

  “And who says we want to waste our time talking to you? We only converse with people of standing. Not filth like yourself.” The girl put as much contempt into her voice as she could.

  Tiriwi remained calm. “I just want one question answered. Why do you hate us so?”

  The question stunned the nobles. For a moment some of the faces forgot to scowl as they tried to work out an answer. But then their expressions hardened again.

  “I haven’t heard a question so foolish in a long time. Don’t you realize how you’re staining and corrupting the sacred halls of Ringwall? For hundreds of years this place has been the capital of thinking and culture. And here we have a few wild children with no education, no jewelry and probably no hair-comb wanting to be inducted into the secrets of magic. We have been degraded, insulted and besmirched. You ask why we don’t want you here?” The black cloud of anger around their heads was steadily gaining strength.

  Tiriwi answered calmly, “I can understand your feelings. But did the mages never mention why we are here?”

  Some of the students exchanged questioning glances, but most of them carried on staring at the Oa, their arms crossed in front of their chest or else resting on their hips in disapproval.

  “There have always been unexpected gestures of generosity. That doesn’t mean we have to approve or accept the archmages’ behavior,” a boy from the Waterways said.

  “So you know nothing of the coming Change, the songs of strange things, the words that have so discomfited the archmages. You have not been told why Brolok, Nill and I have come here. You don’t know, you don’t understand. I wonder, as should you, why such important news has been kept from you. Might they be toying with you? Or do the archmages always keep Ringwall uninformed? You should know the answers, not I, because Ringwall is, after all, your ‘capital of culture.’ Not mine.”

  Tiriwi vanished as quickly as she had appeared, leaving a lot of confused people behind.

  Nill and Brolok had only noticed that Tiriwi was missing once they had reached the Hermits’ Caves. There they had waited for a while, and had just decided to get up and look for the Oa when she arrived in the main cave.

  “I was in the nobles’ quarters,” Tiriwi responded to their questions. Since Brolok had been wounded the three of them had grown quite close.

  “You won’t believe it, but the mages have left the students in the dark. They know nothing of the legends. It seems that only we three know about it. Even the normal mages don’t know much, or just don’t care. I wonder why the archmages are keeping it such a secret, if truly the fate of Pentamuria hangs in the balance, and with it the future of all the nobles. As long as the nobles don’t know why we’re here, they will keep trying to throw us out or have us leave of our own accord.”

  “How do you know that the other mages don’t care for the legend?” Nill asked.

  Tiriwi blushed and considered how to answer the question without mentioning her visit to the common rooms, when suddenly Brolok saved her from the uncomfortable situation.

  “Those who know do not pass on what they know. Knowledge is power, particularly here in Ringwall. That is ingrained so deeply in their minds that the archmages couldn’t confide if they tried, and the teachers only say as much as necessary. Just look at our lessons. A few sentences, maybe a hint or two. The rest is up to you to find out. I don’t think it’s a grand plan at all.”

  “I’ll speak to the Magon,” Tiriwi said.

  Nill’s and Brolok’s mouths fell open.

  “Speak to the Magon. Just like that. You’ve got nerves, I have to say!” Brolok chuckled. “He’ll never receive you.”

  “Does anyone have a better idea?” Tiriwi asked.

  Tiriwi was scared. The fear had grown with every step she had taken towards the Magon’s tower, and the question whether her idea had been as good as she had pretended in front of the boys kept nagging at her. She now stood before the large door that led into the to
wer and her heart was beating somewhere in the region of her mouth. She calmed her breathing until her pulse had slowed to a normal rate. She knocked on the door, but although she applied considerable force, the knock was very quiet. This door seemed to swallow the noise, like some others in Ringwall too. More out of curiosity than conviction she pushed against the door, and to her surprise it swung open.

  A single step brought her into a hall whose walls were hidden in darkness. A feeble light came from a small window high up in the wall. It was barely enough to make out the steps of a wide circular stairwell that led up the tower.

  “Is anyone here?” Tiriwi’s quivering voice echoed through the room, sounding oddly empty. She sighed, faced the stairs and began her ascent. The steps came straight out of the walls. They were not connected to each other and there was no banister along the inside. It looks like it’s easy to fall down here, she thought with a shiver.

  She resolved to stay close to the wall and climbed the stairs step by step. After a while she stopped. Her breath was shallow and the stairs seemed to go on endlessly. She looked back. Three steps below her the hall’s floor lay unmoved. She took three more steps and looked back again. She had not moved.

  I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy to reach the Magon, she thought. But if lifting the spell is a requirement to talk to him, I’ll have to think up something else. I can’t break a spell I can’t even sense.

  She leapt down the three steps to the floor and called, as loud as she could, “Magon! I must speak with you!”

  This time her voice reverberated around the hall like a huge bell, coming back to her amplified tenfold. She managed to make out a small bead of light twitching nervously up beneath the ceiling.