“Wait a minute,” Justan interrupted. “What do you mean by ‘the look’?”
“You know, the look. It’s what a girl gives you when she likes what you’ve got.” Justan’s puzzled expression didn’t change, so Zambon explained further. “Like the looks that Vannya girl gives you.”
Justan’s eyes went wide with surprise, but Zambon didn’t give him any time to think about it. The guard leaned forward. “Justan, the princess is perfect. She has these deep, sky blue eyes and red hair that shines like fire in the sunlight. It totally took my breath away.
“Now I didn’t make any moves on her. I mean, even though she was giving me the look, I didn’t want to get hanged over it. But then she started talking to me whenever we were alone. Things progressed until we were friends and I didn’t feel nervous around her at all anymore. Then one night, out of the blue, she kissed me.”
“You kissed the princess?” Justan’s jaw dropped.
“It was only a kiss, Justan,” the guard reprimanded. Then his look softened again. “But at the same time it was the most . . . marvelous experience I have ever had. After that everything went crazy. Suddenly I was nervous whenever people were around us, worrying that they would find out. I wasn’t even scared that I might be hanged. I just couldn’t bear the thought of being taken away from her. Anyway, this went on for months, stolen kisses in alcoves or on balconies, murmured promises . . .” The guard’s voice trailed away for a moment, caught up in memories. Then he shook his head.
“As time passed, I knew that my tour of duty was going to end soon. What could I do? Even though I am an academy graduate and member of the Sword Wielders Guild, I am still just a commoner and there is no way that I could ever hope to win her hand. I spoke with Elise about it, but she didn’t seem worried at all. She just assured me that everything would be okay.”
“Whoa.” Justan said. He thought back to his budding relationship with Jhonate, his trainer and best friend and realized that he didn’t have it so bad. Zambon’s situation was one he wouldn’t envy anybody.
“Yeah, well just about a week before I was to be transferred back to the Academy, King Muldroomon died. Everything was chaotic at the castle and there wasn’t any time when I could be alone with her. She was devastated and I couldn’t hold her or comfort her or anything.
“Then, out of nowhere, I was taken off duty as her personal guard and replaced by some other guy. I was frantic. I couldn’t get to her at all after that. It was then I realized that I was really in love with her.
“Now I have had feelings for girls before, but this was different. Justan, it wasn’t her body that I missed, but her heart, her mind!" Zambon stopped for a moment. He looked tired. His voice was thick with emotion as he continued. “The day before I was to leave was Prince Andre’s coronation. I was desperate. I knew that if I didn’t see her before the coronation ceremony, I wouldn’t get another chance. So I scaled the wall outside of her room.”
“You scaled the wall outside of her room?” Justan tried not to smile. “That’s like something out of a story.”
“Well, it’s true.” Zambon snapped, irritated by Justan’s interruption. “I climbed onto the balcony. She was being tended by handmaidens. I could hear their chatter. So I slipped into her chambers and hid behind the drapes until they left. I don’t know what I was thinking. That she would run off with me perhaps and live a life of danger, constantly running from the king’s wrath? I don’t know. But I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be with her forever.
“But the moment I looked at her standing in front of her great mirror, I knew it couldn’t be.” He looked up at Justan with red-rimmed eyes and Justan saw such deep sorrow that he could almost imagine what Zambon had been going through. “She was the perfect picture of a princess, Justan, her regal frame enveloped in a black mourning dress, her hair done up flawlessly. As soon as I saw her standing in the room with her back toward me, I knew it was over. She could never truly be with me.”
Justan could hardly believe the flowery prose coming from the soldier across from him. The man had barely spoken more than clipped sentences in the past. He opened his mouth to say something, but Zambon continued his tale.
“I decided to say goodbye to her, but before I could speak out, I heard another voice in the room. It was that sniveling advisor to the prince, Ewzad Vriil. I always hated that man with his condescending looks and greasy way of speaking. None of the guards could stand him. And the way he leered at her . . . I wanted to slit his throat.
“With that man in the room, I couldn’t speak with Elise. I couldn’t even leave a note, because someone else besides the princess might find it. So I didn’t know what to do. I just left. I was transferred the next day and I haven’t seen her since. I was never able to say goodbye.”
Zambon laid back in his bed with an exhausted sigh. “So there you are, Justan. My sad story.”
“I’m really sorry.” Justan said with sincerity. Zambon’s mopey mood during their trip made a lot more sense now. “One thing good could come out of it though.”
“Like what?” Zambon moaned.
“You could become a bard,” Justan suggested, a slight smile curling his lips.
Zambon chuckled. “It would make a great ballad wouldn’t it?”
“Sure it would. There were three times during that story when I was convinced you were about to break into song.” They both burst out in laughter.
“Ah! It hurts!” Zambon wheezed, clutching his freshly healed abdomen, “Stop laughing, I won’t be able to stop until you do.” Soon, their chuckles subsided and Zambon collapsed in exhaustion. “Thank you, Justan. I feel better now.”
The door to the room slammed open. Matron Guernfeldt’s cinder block head peeked into the room. “Ah, so the guard’s awake. Stay put! Don’t you move until I get back with the water basin!”
The door slammed shut behind her and Justan shuddered. He turned to Zambon. “If you ever want to have a pleasant dream again, you had better run.”
Chapter Two
The rest of the week passed by like a strange dream. Justan was forced to stay in the infirmary room with its blinding white walls while a parade of professors and scholars came through to teach him some of the basic rules governing magic. Most of it had to deal with how to clear his mind of anything but the magical energies inside of him. Justan found the process similar to what he did while shooting his bow, but he couldn't sense the magical energies that they were talking about.
The only thing he had success in was training his mind to shift back and forth from normal sight to mage sight. By the end of the week, he could switch into mage sight at will. The professors seemed impressed that he was able to gain this level of control so fast.
When using mage sight, Justan found that the world had a different texture to it. He could see a bit of energy in every living thing, especially in people. They always had swirling colors around them.
The professor told him that certain wizards had the talent to interpret the swirling colors around a person and know something about who they were, or what their future might bring. Justan couldn’t interpret anything. It all just seemed like blurring lines to him. Maybe his talent didn’t run in that direction.
Justan spent a lot of time talking with Zambon. Telling his secret seemed to have taken a great weight off of the guard. His spirits were improved and by the end of the week, they were good friends.
On the last day of Justan’s stay in the infirmary, he and Zambon were sitting in their beds playing a lazy game of catch with a sponge, when the double doors at the end of the room creaked open. Justan glanced back to see two very welcome visitors; Qyxal and Vannya.
Vannya waived and flashed a gorgeous smile as she crossed the room. The mage was pretty to an almost uncomfortable degree. Blond and buxom, she was also intelligent and witty. She and Justan had become good friends during the journey from Justan’s home town of Reneul to the MageSchool.
Qyxal, the elven mage, was just as handsome
as Vannya was pretty, with long black flowing hair. Justan had met him upon his arrival at the school. The elf had been given the task to show him around and Justan had liked him immediately. Qyxal was a rarity among elves. Most did not have the ability to cast spells. Their magic was internal, each elf being imbued with so much life essence that they lived extremely long lives. Qyxal had explained to Justan the reason for his gift. One of his ancestors had married a human.
The elf had brought him a clean set of robes and shoes. Justan put them on with gratitude. As he removed the white linen shirt, he heard the elf gasp in surprise. Justan looked up to see that both Qyxal and Zambon were staring at the frost encrusted rune on his chest. Justan hurriedly pulled on the robes.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.” He tried not to think of the hideous Scralag tracing the icy rune on his chest, its claw leaving his skin puckered, scarred, and frozen. He hoped to find a wizard at the school that could help him find out what the rune meant.
They stepped out of the infirmary onto a street paved with white brick. It was a sunny day and the air was crisp and clean. Justan stopped to take a deep breath, a wide smile on his face. It was good to be out of that building.
As he followed Qyxal and Vannya down the street, Justan was again taken by the beauty of the MageSchool grounds. On either side of the street, trees and bushes were planted to provide shade and aesthetics. Ornate buildings that served as shops and classrooms lined the road, every one of them unique in design and every one of them bustling with activity. Students poured in and out of them talking animatedly. Justan figured that it must be between class times.
He looked up at the tower that rose from the center square. It was twice as tall as any of the other buildings that lined the road. At the top of the tower was an enormous cube with a clock face on each of its four sides, placed so that students could keep track of the time no matter where they were on the grounds. Beyond the buildings, towering in the distance the RuneTower rose above it all. This was the pride of the school. The tower covered a full quarter of the grounds, and rose seemingly endlessly, disappearing into the clouds far above. The tower housed the library and the wizard’s quarters and many other rooms and countless secrets Justan knew nothing about.
“Justan,” Vannya called, jolting Justan from his reverie. She and Qyxal were halfway across the square from him. Justan realized that he had been standing there, his mouth agape, lost completely in the grandeur of the school.
“Sorry!” He trotted to catch up.
As they walked down a side street, Justan could feel the eyes of the students watching him. Many whispered to each other when he walked by. “Vannya? Why is everyone staring at me?”
Vannya smirked. “Don’t you know? You are a big hero here now. All of the students are in awe of the warrior Justan and his epic battle with a horde of orcs. I’m afraid that the story has grown quite a bit over the last week.”
Justan stifled a smile. It wasn’t that he enjoyed the limelight, but he did want everyone to remember that first and foremost he was a warrior. His time at the MageSchool was a sentence imposed upon him by others. He did not want that forgotten.
“Speaking of the orcs,” Justan said. “What have the wizards learned from the prisoners?”
“They won't tell us much,” Qyxal said. “Though, evidently one of the orcs is unable to speak because of damage to its brain.”
“Yes, thanks to your guard friend, Riveren,” Vannya added. “The Professors aren't too happy about that.”
“Actually, I doubt that they have learned very much at all from the orcs,” Qyxal said. “They seemed really irritated when I asked them.”
“Can't they use magic to make them talk?” Justan asked.
“In some cases,” Vannya said. “But it is a delicate process. I will ask around. Maybe I can learn something.”
Justan expected his mage friends to take him directly to the dormitories, but they had another destination in mind. They took him to a building not too far from the RuneTower; a squat, round building with a sloped roof. It seemed a bit out of place with the more angular buildings that filled the rest of the school grounds. They stopped at a large door covered in intricate runes.
“What is this place?” Justan asked.
“This is the Hall of Elements.” Qyxal proclaimed and opened the door with a flourish.
The inside of the building was one huge room easily half the size of the library itself. The whole place was packed with tables and chairs. The Hall of Elements was split into four equal sections, like pieces of an enormous pie. Each of these sections was a different color. One section was red, one black, one gold, and one blue. Everything from the tables to the rugs were saturated in color. Justan had to blink his eyes at the stark contrasts between the sections.
Qyxal took Justan and Vannya down a small set of steps to the floor of the hall and led them to a table in the blue section. “Have a seat,” the elf said.
Justan sat in a chair near the line between gold and blue and he noticed that as he moved the chair, part of it crossed the line and turned gold. Out of curiosity, Justan stood and pulled the chair completely over the line. The entire chair turned gold.
“Amazing.” Justan switched to his mage-sight and saw that the entire building was bathed in the faint glow of magic.
“This whole room is enchanted. That way, we don’t have to keep track of which chairs go with which table.” Vannya said.
“What is this place for?” Justan asked, taking a seat again. In answer, Qyxal pulled a small box out of a pocket in his robes. In the box was a deck of cards. “Not the card game again,” Justan moaned. All that the mages had wanted to do during the journey to the school was sit and play cards. “Don’t you mages have anything better to do?”
The mages laughed.
Vannya put a hand on Justan’s arm. “There is a reason that we all play the game. This game is a learning tool. Figuring it out is one of the steps to becoming a wizard. It's called the Game of Elements.”
Qyxal shuffled the cards.
“But that’s just the Universal Deck,” Justan pointed out. The Universal Deck was used to play just about every card game in the lands. Laborers in the taverns used the same deck to gamble that the nobles used to entertain their guests.
“That’s true,” Qyxal said. “We use this deck as everyone else does. But did you know that the Universal Deck originated from the MageSchool?” Justan shook his head. “The wizards have been playing the game of Elements from the very founding of the school. The early wizards gave decks out to the ruling monarchs and nobles at the time as gifts to help teach them some of the principles of magic. Soon the commoners copied the deck and now everyone uses it.
“But what has been lost throughout the rest of the kingdoms is remembered here. We play the original game of elements,” Qyxal said. He pulled several cards out of the deck and placed them face up in front of Justan. “Look at these cards. Describe them.”
The Universal Deck consisted of four suits, or colors: Blue, gold, red and black. Each suit had cards of varying worth. The worth of the card was designated by the letter painted on it. The normal cards were lettered ‘A’ through ‘F’. High value cards were double lettered ‘AA’ through ‘EE’, and the low value cards were designated by two six legged symbols with ancient meanings. The peoples of the land just called them “bug” and “double bug” because the symbols looked like insects.
Justan sighed. He had played many games with the Universal Deck as a child and knew what the cards were. He just didn’t see the point in playing a game when there was so much else more important he could be doing. “These cards are the ‘double A’ of red, the ‘F’ of black, the ‘A’ of gold, and the ‘double B’ of blue.”
“Okay,” Qyxal said. “Do you know what they represent?” Justan shrugged in response and Qyxal explained. “Now I can’t tell you everything. Some of this you are going to need to learn for yourself in order to progre
ss. But each color represents one of the four elements. Can you figure out which colors represent which elements?”
Justan thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose that red would be fire and blue would be water . . . So I guess that would make black earth, and gold air.”
“Correct,” Qyxal said. “Do you see these symbols under the letter designation of the card? These are the elemental runes. They are used in all items of magic. The fire rune is a triangle, the water rune is a circle, the air rune is a crescent moon, and the earth rune is a square.”
“I see,” he mumbled. Justan fingered the icy symbol on his chest. The wizards had called it a frost rune. It was a circle with a curved line through it; a mixture of the water and air runes. “So if the runes and colors represent the elements, then what of the infinity cards?”
There were two infinity cards in every deck. On the card was a symbol that looked like a number eight with a large loop on the top and a small loop on the bottom.
Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) Page 2
