by P. D. Kalnay
“That got out of hand quickly,” she said. “It seems your mastery of the winds grows with your anger. Have you ever called down lightning before?”
“No, it just sort of happened.”
“If you survive the day, I shall look forward to continuing your lessons.”
At the next intersection I turned toward Alak’s house, and Lyrian went the other way. Alak woke before I got him home, and he gave me a bloody, toothless grin. Satyr children were definitely tougher than human ones. Aleen wasn’t home when I dropped him off. He looked like, and said, he was well enough to leave on his own.
***
I only stayed in the workshop long enough to grab my hammer and shield. The snake guys were fast. I could tell from the way they moved. Both hammer and shield bordered on weightless, and I didn’t bother with any of Marielain’s armour. Speed would serve better than the partial coverage the armour could give. Maybe later I could make some big holes in the back plate for my wings. That would be another day.
More than one of my hours had already passed. It was time to get to the Hall. My anger had cooled, and if it had just been me, I might not have bothered showing up. What did I care about their opinions? The memory of a little boy’s bloody smile added a spring to my step and kept my rage at a low boil. I had frustrations to work out, and a pair of doushey snake knights were about to be the recipients.
There must have been twenty knights standing out front of the Hall on the wide boulevard. I only recognised a few of them. The island had been filling up while my focus was elsewhere. Sir Andriel left the group and came to meet me. He raised both hands in a placating gesture.
“Prince Jakalain, I think a peaceful resolution is possible and preferable. Sir Rathal and Sir Rathan didn’t know who you were. They only just arrived on the island. Both regret any disrespect they showed you.”
I was skeptical.
“What about the little boy?” I asked.
“Little boy?”
“Yeah, the kid whose teeth got knocked out?”
“His mother has forgiven the transgression, and compensation was offered.” Sir Andriel said.
I wondered how much choice she’d been given.
“They paid her off?”
“Technically, she’s in the household of Sir Balar, so…”
“They paid him off?”
“It’s how these matters are typically resolved.” Sir Andriel had the good grace to look embarrassed.
“I’d hoped for better from the Order,” I said. That was the simple truth.
“We aren’t what we once were. I joined when I was a lad, in the time of Janik, when the Order was a shining beacon, and Knight’s Haven…” He looked down for a moment. “Those days can yet return, Prince Jakalain. My brethren have been spread across the world. There is a lack of consistency and–”
“Decency,” I offered.
“I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to improve the situation.”
The knights I’d met didn’t seem the sorts to change their spots.
“I guess if they apologise to Alak, and help his family, I’d let it go,” I said, loud enough for my voice to carry to Sir Rathal and Sir Rathen.
“Apologise to gutter trash? I think not. You have an impressive reputation for a largely untried boy, Prince Jakalain. My brother and I will meet your challenge together. If you yield, we shall grant mercy.”
Sir Rathal looked to Sir Rathen, who nodded.
“Some people only learn the hard way,” I told Sir Andriel.
“As you say, Prince Jakalain.” He looked sad and tired as he left to rejoin the other knights. “Please remember that the Order has few enough members already.”
I shrugged and moved the meet the brothers in the middle of the street. Hundreds of people from the city watched the show at the side of the road. Havensport had little in the way of entertainments. We’d already said our piece, and the fight began without further delay.
Sir Rathen attacked first while his brother held back. Each carried two blades; long curving swords, sharp on the one edge. Sir Rathen was even faster than I expected. I caught one blade on the haft of the hammer and blocked the other with my shield. The second blade broke where it met shield and he danced back with a sword and a half. Then they attacked together.
I might have been in trouble because both were fast and skilled. My biggest advantage was the shield. The knights were forced to actively avoid hitting it, or they’d soon find themselves unarmed. I led with the shield more than I would have otherwise, and held back with the hammer, hoping to surprise them with its speed. Nothing so large should have moved with my hammer’s speed, or been able to change direction as quickly. It also gave me two extra feet of reach.
When Sir Rathen broke his second blade on my shield, he jumped back out of the fray, temporally providing me with a single opponent. I swung the hammer low, in a wide arc, letting the handle slide through my grip until I held it by the last inches. Sir Rathal’s legs barely slowed my swing, and he flew into the air in a broken-legged cartwheel. He landed with a shout of pain and didn’t rise. I’ll give him credit; he kept his swords and rolled over in an attempt to fend off my follow-up.
I took a few quick steps back. Unless I came close, he was no longer a threat. Sir Rathal impressed me again. He threw his unbroken swords to his brother who caught them neatly and came on without skipping a beat. Now, it was one on one.
Our fight became more of a fencing match. Sir Rathen tried to stab past my shield, and I tried to disarm him with it. The hammer made the difference. I don’t think Sir Rathen had accepted its speed, even after I’d used it on his brother. I couldn’t blame him. The giant hammer seemed impossibly fast to me, and I was swinging it. I finished my second opponent with an attack I’d learned from Mr. Ryan before we’d left fencing behind. When Sir Rathen stepped back out of reach of my swing, I lunged. Normally, it would have been a ridiculous attack with anything other than a delicate sword. My hammer packed a lot more punch than a fencing foil, and my wings drove me forward with extra speed. I hit the knight square in the middle of his breastplate. The armour buckled inward, but it saved his life. Sir Rathen flew across the road and landed with a clatter. He didn’t rise. I walked over to him, and saw he was unconscious, but still breathing.
“We yield,” Sir Rathal called out.
“OK,” I said.
Hurting the two of them wouldn’t take away any of Alak’s pain. I’m ashamed to admit that I felt better for the exercise. My hand burned from holding the hammer for so long, and I was peckish. I nodded once to Sir Andriel before heading home. I was sure I caught sight of shimmering green hair disappearing into the crowd at the side of the road.
Chapter 20 – Love Letters
Lyrian made no comment concerning my duel at the start of our lesson the next morning, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. She awaited me on the grass when I descended the long flight of stairs. Possibly, she’d been waiting there every day that I hadn’t shown up. When she asked what I wanted to learn next, I went with message moths. They sounded like a nice, relaxing, and useful type of minor magic.
“I’ve brought no paper with me, Jakalain,” Lyrian said. “The making of a moth is a practical lesson.”
I was way ahead of her.
“Here,” I said, pulling a small handful of blank sheets of paper from an old leather satchel I’d found. “I’ve got charcoal, a pen, and an ink bottle too.”
“You’ve given this thought? Very well, observe.” She took a sheet and the sharpened charcoal. “The content of the message is irrelevant, but a message must be included.”
“Why?”
“The enchantments do more than animate the paper and let it fly. They seek the recipient, wherever they may be, and a blank page requires no recipient, leaving the enchantment incomplete. It is enough to write: Hello Jakalain. Now, observe the rest of the enchantment.”
I watched while she wrote around the edges of the paper. It consisted
of instructions written in the language of the Fae telling the paper to fly to me.
“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all there is to it? You just tell the paper to fly?”
“This is an enchantment any winathen child can accomplish. Even the least talented. Did you expect more?”
I definitely had. I just shrugged.
“Now, I shall fold it.”
She performed some nimble-fingered origami and soon held a paper moth. It might have been a paper butterfly. The shape was different from the ones I’d made for Ivy’s hair; I was no expert.
“Does the shape matter?”
“No, as long as it has wings and is generally in these proportions. Moths are traditional. Now, I must give it a trickle of my strength and it will fly.”
I sensed her putting a little of what I thought of as air magic into the paper.
“Walk over there and hide behind that wall,” she said.
I walked a ways down the road and squatted behind a low stone wall. A few seconds later, the moth was fluttering around my head. I held out a hand, and it landed on my palm. When it touched my skin, the paper returned to ordinary paper. I returned to the grass.
“Can I try?” I asked.
“How else will you learn?”
I took another of the sheets and the charcoal from Lyrian and wrote: Hello Lyrian. Then I repeated her instructions around the outside of the paper and folded it. She watched me like a hawk.
“Is that OK?” I asked.
“Flawless. Give it a small measure of your strength.”
I tried to put a small amount of Jack into the paper. My moth burned with a flash, leaving only fine ash on my fingers.
“Do it again. Use a smaller measure.”
I repeated the steps and tried to release only the tiniest bit of power into the enchanted paper. The moth fluttered across the grass to land on Lyrian’s hand. Then it caught fire. She snuffed it out in an instant by thinning the air around the paper and creating a partial vacuum.
“Why did it do that?” I asked.
“You gave too much energy to the moth. When it landed it wasn’t able to release it quickly enough. This moth could have crossed the sea.”
“How far can they go?”
“Across the world, if they are well made by a strong enchanter and quality paper is used. You must learn to restrict how much you infuse your message with, or all you will do is burn the recipient. For most, it isn’t an issue. You will send me a message every evening before you sleep, as practice, until they arrive in good condition.”
“Can you make them ahead of time, without a message?”
“Yes, it is common practice when folk correspond. A smaller moth may be carried inside a large one. An ungifted recipient must only reply on the second sheet and refold it for the reply to come back to the sender.”
Magic return postage!
“This is a thing you can practice alone, shall we move on?”
“Fine by me, what’s next?”
“What I observed yesterday proves you are powerful. You must improve your sensitivity and control if you wish to safely harness that power. We will play another children’s game, and you will learn to see with your wings.”
“Like sonar?”
“I don’t know that word.”
I explained how submarines sent out pulses in the water and measured how long they took to bounce off of their surroundings and return.
“Interesting, and this is accomplished with machinery?” Lyrian asked.
“Complicated machinery.”
“The principle is the same, but the interpretation is instinctive. Close your eyes.”
I closed them.
“Now give a strong flap and follow the air that leaves your wings.”
I gave that a try, but the slightly denser air went in all directions and I lost my sense of it as it dispersed. I told Lyrian.
“You are too new to this. We must start smaller.”
She had me sit opposite the mountain slope a few paces back. I was probably sitting right under the workshop. Then she had me flap my wings and try to feel air when it bounced back from the mountainside. By the end, I thought that maybe I was feeling it. I might have been a blacksmithing prodigy—a master of the winds, I was not.
That night I sent my first message moth to Lyrian, and five days later, she pronounced me competent. Then I started sending them to Ivy. I apologised, told her that I missed her, and wanted her to come home. I sent moths nightly for several weeks until Lyrian told me to stop.
***
“Jakalain, I have spoken to Princess Ivangelain on your behalf.”
She’d started a morning lesson with that. You could have knocked me over with a feather.
“I thought you didn’t like her.”
“I have no feelings regarding her whatsoever. Your sulking is another matter. I am committed to teaching you until you reach an acceptable level of competence. The sooner you accomplish that, the sooner I can leave this place. She informed me that you have been harassing her with moths.”
Harassing was a bit strong. I missed her.
“Is she OK?”
Two and Three watched Ivy from the shadows, so I knew she was alive, but they weren’t very helpful when it came to the details, like her happiness. It occurred to me that I’d become a bit of a stalker. I’d had only the best intentions. Stalkers probably say that kind of thing too.
“She is in good health. I advised you to give her space. Your actions have only exacerbated the situation. For the time being, I think you should focus on your studies and take my advice. Neither of you will leave this island, and you have centuries to win her back. Patience, Jakalain.”
My heart said to go to Ivy, but if she’d found my messages creepy… I decided to do what Lyrian suggested. I didn’t understand girls, and there was no shortage other of things I needed to learn.
***
After weeks of tedious practice I was able to get a rough sense of objects around me. I could only do it inside where there were no air currents, and not with any reliability, but I did manage it. Lyrian was equally bored by my slow progress. When I told her that I’d navigated the apartment successfully with my eyes closed, she said we could move on. She added that I should keep practicing until I was able to do the same thing outside on a windy street in a thunderstorm. That would be a long way off.
“Next, I will draw on the skills you have acquired,” she said. “You will use your eyes for now. Should you learn to read the winds properly, these skills will become more useful.”
I was relieved to do anything else.
“Now what?”
“Go out onto the road and gather two handfuls of small stones.”
I wondered what we’d do with stones. Havensport may have lacked some amenities, but it was rich in rubble. Finding two handfuls of pebbles took me no time. Lyrian indicated that I should drop them on the ground in front of where she sat.
“Sit on the far edge of The Green, Jakalain.” She waited for me to get comfortable before continuing. “Now, I shall throw rocks at you.”
“What!” How was that going to teach me wind magic?
“A skilled enchanter can deflect small objects away from themselves with a gentle touch. A powerful enchanter can create a shield of thickened air to stop them. If you learn to sense the world around you, you can keep an archer’s arrow from your back, even when you cannot see the archer.”
That sounded like something I wanted to learn.
“Ah, you are interested. Hopefully, you’ll reach the point where your eyes become unnecessary. Until then, try to push the stones to one side as they fly. A gentle touch is all that is needed to make a large change in their path.”
Lyrian proceeded to throw the stones at me, and she had a pretty good arm. Every stone hit me in the centre of my chest. I’d have a bruise for sure. It’s not that I didn’t try to deflect them, but I couldn’t call the wind fast enough.
“You look upset, Jakal
ain.”
“This is impossible,” I said.
“Throw the stones back at me.”
I know you shouldn’t throw rocks at girls, or at centuries-old fairy women, but I threw them back hard. None of mine touched her. At the midway point, Lyrian gave each stone a gentle nudge to the side with a thickened paddle of air and then used a second one to drop each stone into a neat pile in front of her. Show off.
“I have accomplished the impossible, like many small children before me.”
“Go again,” I said.
It was harder than she made it look. They all bounced off my chest again and fell between my crossed legs. Hours of that followed, and the centre of my chest went from painful to numb, which, experience had taught me, meant it would be very painful later. I wasn’t willing to give up. Not only was this something that might come in handy, I also wanted to wipe the superior smile from Lyrian’s face. Afternoon arrived more slowly than usual.
“One last time, Jakalain, and we shall stop for the day.”
I decided to try something different. Lyrian used bits of quick-moving solidified air like invisible ping pong paddles. I’d tried that and had found the stones impossible to hit. When she threw again, I thickened a larger patch of air on a sharp angle in between us. The pebble didn’t bounce off. My shield wasn’t that solid, but it did deflect the pebble away to the right. The pebble bounced off my shoulder and didn’t hurt.
“Giving up so quickly? There are disadvantages to the heavy-handed approach,” Lyrian said.
She threw the next stone with more force and it hit my chest, right of centre.
“Or, if you face a skilled opponent…”
She threw the next stone off to the side of my shield and then redirected it back towards me, hitting my chest dead centre on the bruise. It came harder than the others.
“Ow!”
“A solid shield uses vastly more energy, and it will only protect from a few angles, leaving you exposed elsewhere. That is why learning control and developing a deft touch are the marks of a master of the winds. You would do well to remember it.”
