A Scholar Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  The administration clerk pointed the professor over to another department close by, while she worked on Sam’s room.

  “I see you’ve already paid your deposit, so we can finalize your choice. Sign here.”

  Sam signed two copies of a document.

  “There. You will have to see an advisor to register for your First and Second courses of study.” She examined a list clamped to a pollen clipboard. “Whelm Drak should be available. He is in Office 317 on the third floor. If Professor Plunk returns, I will tell him where you are.”

  “I know the way back to where I am staying. You can tell him that he doesn’t have to wait.”

  “Good luck with Professor Drak,” the clerk said.

  Sam took that to mean Drak might be a trial to work with. He climbed the central stairway and found Office 317 on the far end of the left wing. He knocked on the door.

  “I am with another student. Please wait,” an impatient voice called from behind the door.

  Sam waited for half an hour before an older student exited the office, closing the door behind him. He waited another quarter hour before Drak called for Sam to enter. He knocked once and entered a room crammed with books and papers. Sam sat in a little alcove created by the stacks.

  Drak stared at him, holding out his hand. Sam handed over his folder.

  “Foreigner, eh?” Drak said, flipping through the folder’s contents. “I imagine your Vaarekian is abominable. I hate it when I have to wade through an accent.”

  “I don’t think you will, professor,” Sam said. “I learned from a Vaarekian woman in Baskin, Toraltia, and worked with another Vaarekian tutor on my voyage to Tolloy.”

  Drak grunted as he worked his way through Sam’s folder. “First?”

  “First what?”

  Drak grunted again. “Course of Study.”

  “History for my First and Mechanical Sciences for my Second.”

  “What makes you think you can survive in Mechanical Sciences?” Drak asked, leaning forward.

  “My father was a blacksmith. I understand materials and how things work. I like working with real materials.”

  “Not pollen? It looks like you are touted as a pollen expert,” Drak lifted Sam’s folder. “You worked for constabularies, even on your voyage. Why not take law classes at the university?”

  “I’m not sure my pollen skills are up to it. I am good at detecting pollen, but mediocre at manipulating it. As for law, I don’t know where I will eventually settle. Why learn Vaarekian laws as I could just as easily end up in Norlank or Wollia?”

  Drak nodded his head, the first encouraging thing he had done during the interview. “I can see how a good historical perspective can help a snoop. Any other interests?”

  “I want to work out since I’ll be staying in the south dormitory. Is there a swordsmanship class?”

  Light filled Drak’s eyes. “Fancy yourself a swordsman? Are you any good?”

  “I am against sixteen-year-olds, but I imagine plenty of grown men would soon put me in my place.”

  “Good. I have to ask that question anyway, university policy.” Drak looked down at the form he was filling out. “Mediocre,” he looked up at Sam, “That means you might not have to worry about being drafted during your schooling.”

  “Drafted? I’m a foreigner,” Sam said.

  Drak shrugged.

  “I dabble as an assistant coach on our dueling team, so I will see if you are lying about your skills or not. Still go by what you said?”

  Sam could feel the edge coming off Drak’s attitude.

  “I do.”

  “Very well. Let’s choose your classes.”

  While they discussed Sam’s courses of study, Drak was surprisingly helpful in not only suggesting classes but also scheduling them so Sam wouldn’t be running from one end of the campus to the other.

  “There is a slotting session for the dueling team tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. We have different skill levels at the University of Tolloy and put our swordsmen and swordswomen with others of the same level.”

  Sam nodded. He thought back to his being placed with the constables rather than with the apprentices back in Baskin. It helped him become better.

  “I’ll be there. Do I need to bring my own sword?”

  Drak’s eyebrows rose. “You have your own?”

  “I bought a Wollian sword on my way here.”

  “We don’t allow hacking blades like soldiers use.”

  “This one is thinner and lighter, similar to the dueling swords that are used in Carolank, but I don’t know what other countries use.”

  “Bring it. Professor Grott will determine if it is suitable. That is all.” Drak kept a few pages from Sam’s folder and returned it to him. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Sam nodded and left. He couldn’t dispute that Drak hadn’t rushed him like he thought he would when he first met the man. Perhaps the talk of swords eased their discussion. He returned to the lobby, but the professor was nowhere to be seen, so Sam returned to Plunk’s house.

  The professor was up in his bedroom, but Desmon was reading a news sheet, made out of pollen, of course. When Sam read them, he had to lay the sheet on the table and then quickly turn it before the paper began to disintegrate.

  “Dinner? I know it is a little early, but I’m ready to eat something,” Sam said.

  Desmon sat up. “I can read this later. I’ll go up and see if Professor Plunk will join us.”

  “Then I will go to the back garden and see how Emmy is doing.”

  Emmy ran when she heard Sam’s voice calling. Sam picked up a wooden rod and tossed it out to the middle of the grassy area in Professor Plunk’s garden. They played for a bit until Professor Plunk called to him from his room.

  “Dinner right now will suit me, if you can tear yourself away from your dog,” Plantian said.

  “I’ll be right in to wash up,” Sam said. He scratched Emmy’s ears for a bit before washing his hands and face at Plunk’s large kitchen sink. The house was entirely too large for a single man, but Plantian had a housekeeper and a gardener, so he guessed the professor could maintain the thing. It was just across the street from the western gate, the main entrance to the University of Tolloy.

  Desmon had brushed his hair, and Plantian wore a different outfit by the time Sam was finished. They stepped onto the sidewalk and waited for the professor to hail a hired carriage.

  Sam looked out the glassless window as the carriage clattered across the cobbles to the north. They wouldn’t be going to Hilsa’s Zogazin restaurant. He narrowed his eyes and began to pick out the differences between Vaarekian architecture from Toraltian buildings. His original perception of more stone buildings in Tolloy and more wooden buildings in Baskin was borne out. There were more frills in Baskin, and everything was a bit more severe in Vaarek.

  The people didn’t look much different except for clothing styles, of course, but noble styles were more in line with what he saw on the streets of Tolloy. He had expected soldiers marching in the streets and people scurrying around, nervous about martial law, but there was no martial law in Tolloy, according to Professor Plunk, not yet, anyway.

  The carriage stopped at a large, covered entrance.

  “The Grand Market,” Plantian said. “You will enjoy this. Many cuisines from around the world are represented in small dining stalls, as well as imported goods to buy.”

  He led them into a vast indoor market. The aisles were full of people looking at wide arrays of merchandise.

  “There are Toraltian shops?”

  Plantian nodded his head and looked at Desmon. “Wollian, too.”

  They strolled down the aisle. Sam stopped at a stall filled with what was billed as Toraltian jewelry. He recognized one of Tru’s creations.

  “Antina sent these to sell, didn’t she?”

  The professor grinned and tipped his hat to Sam. “You are a sharp one. How did you so quickly recognize that the works came from Antina Mulch’s shop?”
/>   “This sculpture was made by my brother, Tru Smith. Everything he makes is an original.” Sam was tempted to buy the thing until he looked at the price. Everything was sold for a much higher price than what Antina had charged. “These are much more expensive.”

  “The good merchandise is,” Plantian said. “Enlightened customers recognize that imported goods have shipping costs added in. There is a small piece of this type of decoration back at my house. I was going to give it to you when you moved into your dormitory room.”

  Sam couldn’t repress smiling. “That makes me a bit homesick.”

  “As well it should,” Desmon said. “Where are the Wollian shops?”

  Plantian frowned. “On the other side of the market. Let’s eat first.”

  He took them to a stall selling Carolankian food. “I am partial to the Carolankian style.”

  “Everything is much too spicy,” Sam said, “until you find out you can remove the little pepper pieces.”

  “A secret that I have had no desire to know,” the professor said. He looked at Desmon. “Did you agree?”

  “I learned the hot way,” Desmon said.

  Sam laughed. “He did. I was there,” he said.

  They bought their meals and ate at a collection of tables and chairs not far from the stall. Sam and Desmon spent a few moments pulling the largest red peppers from their food, putting them on a pollen napkin that Desmon had created.

  Plantian eyed them. “Do you mind?”

  Sam nodded. “Go ahead. They are yours.”

  They ate their dinners in relative silence. Sam watched all the people pass by them. He spotted Smallbug’s son, who Sam always called ‘Smaller’ leading a few of the professor’s students along the aisle. Glory’s eyes lit up when she saw Sam and Desmon.

  “I didn’t think Captain Darter allowed her sailors to jump ship,” Smaller said with disdain.

  Desmon barely smiled. “She made a gracious exception, just for me.”

  It was plain neither of the two was happy to see the other.

  “We just moved into the North Dormitory,” Glory said. “Will you be joining us there?”

  Sam shook his head. “I’ve been accepted to join the university’s finest athletes in the South.”

  Tera and Glory both frowned. “That is at the other end of the campus.”

  “My First is History and my Second is Mechanical Sciences,” Sam said.

  Glory grinned. “I have a First in Pollen Science and a Second in Mechanical Sciences, too. We might get the same class.”

  “Maybe,” Sam said. “What about you, Tera?”

  “We have the same First curriculum, and my Second is Pollen Science. The Professor said I need to know more about the world.”

  Coming from the isolation of the clan-oriented Lashaku Rift in Wollia, he could see how Tera might not have much training in the rest of the world. “We will certainly meet each other from time to time,” Sam said. “I’m glad for that.”

  “So are we,” Glory said, looking at Tera. They giggled.

  Smaller grunted. “We have to be getting on our way.” He walked on ahead, effectively ending the impromptu meeting.

  “I imagine that is Ziggy Smallbug’s son?” Plantian asked.

  “He is. I call him Smaller,” Sam said. “It fits.”

  The professor chuckled. “Indeed it does.”

  “There are entertainments here?” Desmon asked.

  “A few. Would you like to inspect them on your own? I think I’d like to take Sam back to my house to talk to him a bit more about what he can expect at the university.”

  Desmon rose from the table. “I think that will work out.” He nodded to them both and left them, heading across the market.

  “I suspect he will see if there is a possible contact at the Wollian shops. There are a few clustered together,” the professor said.

  “I think you are right.”

  Chapter Three

  ~

  S am stood in the light morning mist, along with a dozen other students, waiting for the fencing hall to open. The university bells had struck nine in the morning a quarter of an hour before. Sam noticed the quarter-hour bell ringing and began to warm up, alone among the others. He intended the activity would warm him up, as well as put off the anxious thoughts that probably ran through all the students, eleven males and three females, standing in the cool air.

  He stretched for a bit before he pulled out his sword and practiced his version of Lashak forms. A tall, brown-haired girl approached him.

  “What kind of sword is that? It looks Wollian, but it isn’t, is it?”

  “This is a Lashak sword, made in the Lashaku Rift in eastern Wollia. I bought it at Port Hassin.”

  “Old and dull,” a boy said, joining them.

  “Old, certainly, but not dull,” Sam said.

  The boy produced a pollen sheet. “Cut this with it.” He held the sheet stretched between his hands.

  Sam obliged him, and the blade tugged a little at first and then parted the pollen fibers with ease.

  The boy looked amazed. “I’m not going to spar with that blade. I’ll be a bloody mess if I do.”

  “I put some care into the sharpening,” Sam said, and he certainly had once he learned the proper way to keep the blade honed from Mito Nakara, a Lashakan Sam had worked with in Wollia and who had joined The Twisted Wind on its voyage to Tolloy. Banna and Nakara had left the ship at Bliksa, the last port before Tolloy.

  Two men walked up. Sam recognized Whelm Drak, but he didn’t know the other very tall man and hadn’t expected to. He sheathed his weapon.

  “Only one of you had the sense to warm up,” the unknown man said. He unlocked the door and let the students file in.

  Sam noticed that most of the students looked older than he did, maybe Winnie Bentwick’s age, thinking of Faddon Bentwick’s daughter. He wondered if she would ever take up sword practice. It seemed like something the independent girl might do.

  “I am Professor Grott,” Drak’s companion said. “Line up, tallest to shortest.”

  Sam thought he’d be next to the girls, but he was surprised he was about average in height. He must have done some growing.

  “We have four levels at the University. Our duelists come from Level One, the highest level. Novices end up in Level Four. How many of you are novices?”

  Four hands went up. All but one of the girls raised their hand. She was the one who had looked at Sam’s sword. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she looked very, very fit.

  “How many of you have sparred regularly with full-grown men?”

  Sam raised his hand along with three other boys and the girl.

  Grott grinned, but there wasn’t any humor in his face. “Our Level One candidates. The rest will be tested for the middle levels. I generally have one or two students out of ten test into Level One, sometimes none, so don’t be disappointed. Professor Drak will help me classify the lower levels while I work with the four brave ones.”

  The man sounded more and more like Commandant Ahman in Rakwall, Wollia. He nearly matched the Wollian in arrogance, but somehow, Sam guessed the man was posturing on purpose.

  Grott started with the woman. She had brought her own sword, and it was more like Captain Darter’s dueling weapon. Sam watched Grott closely, for he might be his only opponent during the sorting. The other two prospective Level One’s chatted while Grott talked to the girl about the test.

  They stepped farther out onto the wooden floor of the practice hall. Sam noted that both of them lifted their swords upright, blades facing to their rights. They took two steps back and began.

  Sam had to admit the girl was very fast, but, like Captain Darter, her blows didn’t have as much power behind them, and Grott easily slapped her blade away time after time, until she made a double feint and penetrated his defense.

  “That is enough. You passed.”

  The boys were still chatting.

  “You,” Grott pointed at Sam with his swo
rd.

  Sam removed his coat, putting it on a chair next to the wall. He stood in front of Grott who was much taller than Sam.

  “What style do you want me to use?” Sam asked.

  “Style? You know styles?”

  Sam nodded. “Baskin brawling, Carolank dueling, and Lashak style, which is actually my own invention. All Lashak styles are. I never got the hang of pirate fighting, throwing pollen objects in your opponent’s way, but I’ve seen it.”

  Grott grinned. This time his face lit up. “Carolank dueling.”

  Sam’s spirits sank. Of all that he learned, he had practiced that mostly with Captain Darter. When he practiced with Desmon, it just wasn’t the same. Maybe Grott wouldn’t know it.

  Sam drew his blade.

  “You have a blue blade, and it hasn’t killed you yet?”

  “I made peace with it,” Sam said. “I had a Lashak teach me for a while.”

  “Impressive. It has been honed?”

  “I will try not to cut.”

  “If you would,” Grott bowed to him.

  He lifted his sword with the tip pointing to the ceiling and the blade to his right. Sam mimicked him. They took two steps back and began.

  Grott’s attack was different with him than it had been with the girl as he drove him backward. Sam tried to respond the way Captain Darter would and kept it up for a minute of furious battle, but Grott nearly penetrated his defense, and he had to use a Lashak move to stop his advance. The sparring match went on for another minute before Grott overpowered Sam with a parry that left him wide open to Grott’s thrust to his midsection.

  Sam waited for the blade to enter his stomach, but Grott was able to pull back his sword.

  “Interesting. You passed.”

  “But he lost,” one of the boys said.

  “It was the way he lost,” Grott said. “You are next.”

  Neither of the other two boys lasted more than five strokes. They hadn’t paid attention, and even Sam could tell they were attacking Grott with predictable moves.

  “Both of you sit down over there.” Grott pointed to where Sam’s coat was.

  The swordmaster continued to work with the lower level boys, fighting the two boys who didn’t make Level One. Sam could see he used a different technique in assessing the other students’ capabilities. One of the boys who identified as a potential Level One was assigned to Level Three and the other to Level Two. The final allocation was two Level Ones, two Level Twos, a boy and a girl, three Level Threes two boys and a girl, with the rest classified as novice Level Fours.