01 - The Price of Talent (38 page)

              When I opened my eyes the room spun a little, like when you’re drunk. It took me a few minutes of deep breathing to steady myself. I really had been tapping quite a bit of power. I didn’t want to pass out, or worse, accidentally start tapping into my own life energy. I had been in enough comas in my life already.

              Still, I was impressed. The practices with Claudius and my private practices were increasing my capabilities. If I managed to be able to fly, Meredith and I might well be able to escape without hijacking a merchant’s horse and cart. Well, that was my hope anyway.

              A few minutes later there was a fairly hard knock on my door.

“Uh, come in?” I said.

              When the door opened I saw Meredith was standing on the other side with her hands on her hips and a perturbed expression on her face. If this had been my mother, I would have recognized it as the “I’m about to get a good scolding” face.

“Tyr, what the hell are you doing?”

“Um, would you believe just sitting on my mattress in the middle of my floor?” I asked.

“Not with all the power I felt you channeling in here,” she replied. “What the hell were you doing that needed you to gather what felt like enough power to blow up half the castle?”

“Just practicing,” I replied. “Now if you’ll shut the door, I’ll tell you more.”

“I can’t believe you would be so dumb,” she said while simultaneously shutting the door. “To channel that much magical energy could have put you in another coma, I don’t want to have to nurse you back to health for a third time you selfish idiot!”

“Meredith, if you’d just calm down and listen, I’ll tell you what…” I said, but got cut off mid-sentence.

“And to channel that much power INSIDE a building?! You could have blown this place up and killed or injured everyone inside it. And who would have to spend all night healing everyone? Me that’s who. So what’s your excuse for being so dumb?!”

“I can fly,” I said simply.

“WHAT?!” She spluttered.

“Well, technically, right now it’s more like floating,” I said.

“Tyr, no one can do that,” she said. “At least, no one since ancient times when the mages ruled this part of the world; and records from then, that we’re allowed to read anyway, are sketchy at best.”

“Here, let me show you,” I said.

“You want me to sit here and watch you try to blow up the dorms again?” She said.

“No, trust me, I know what I’m doing,”

“I’ll carve that on your tomb stone if you hurt yourself,” Meredith said, frowning. “But fine, show me.”

              So with that, I focused my mind. This took a bit longer with Meredith around as I was not used to having an audience. When I was sufficiently focused, I started to draw in power. I drew as much as I could, and then drew in more. Then, when my head was practically bursting, I let it out. Unfortunately, in order to show off for Meredith, I decided to use all my power. I rose off the mattress quite quickly and had enough time to open my eyes and smile at Meredith before slamming my head into the ceiling.

              When I came to, Meredith was standing by my bed still looking quite angry.

“I don’t know whether to be impressed or furious with you,” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

“You both managed to do something no one has seen in 500 years,” she said. “And do it in so incredibly stupid a manner as to make me question your sanity.”

“But I did do it,” I said with a smile.

              Unfortunately, that smile turned into a wince as I realized how much my head hurt.

“And you deserve every ounce of that pain too,” she said. “Honestly, how you didn’t managed to crack your head open on the ceiling or the floor I’ll never know. I’ll just chalk it up to you having an incredibly thick skull.”

“So, no permanent injuries?” I asked.

“No, but you’re going to have a hell of a headache for the next few hours,” she replied. “Also, if you start feeling dizzy, like you’re going to faint, get yourself to the hospital.”

“Oh, why is that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Because concussions can be dangerous,” she said. “The impact bounced your brain, what little there apparently is of it, against your skull. This can have long term effects. If you have any internal bleeding it can be fatal.”

“Oh…” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“Obviously not, or you would have been more careful,” she said. “Though even an idiot would have realized that slamming your head into the ceiling is not good for you.”

“But I flew, didn’t I?” I said smiling again.

“Yes, fine, for a brief few seconds you flew up,” she said. “But then you hit the ceiling, knocked yourself out, and then plummeted to the floor. At least you had the sense to put the mattress down to protect you. Still, I hope the bruises on your ass pain you for a week as a penalty for being stupid.”

              I smiled again. Hearing her admit I was right made it all worth it. I was feeling so smug that I almost missed an important detail in that last sentence.

“Bruises on my ass?” I asked. “Wait, how did you see…”

              And then I realized I was lying in bed naked. My eyes got wide and my head started pounding, not in a magic induced way, just in a bashed my head really hard way. Once the pain passed I sat up and looked at Meredith.

“Meredith, why am I naked?” I asked.

              She had the good grace to look embarrassed briefly.

“You smashed your head into the ceiling and then fell to the floor in a limp pile,” she explained. “So, I hauled you off the bed, put the bed back on the frame, and then pulled you back up onto the bed. I then stripped you of your clothes and gave you a thorough inspection for broken bones in your hips and legs, since you landed on your ass. I’m surprised you didn’t break anything honestly. You must have fallen like 6 feet. Anyway, that’s when I saw the bruises on your ass.”

“I see…” I said, both embarrassed and confused. I may have been blushing too.

“Tyr, I see men and women naked all day at the hospital,” she said. “You have no reason to be embarrassed. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t make it any better,” I said.

“Regardless, I think you’ve had enough fun for the day,” she said. “I want you to lie in bed and take it easy. If you feel at all dizzy or disoriented, don’t be afraid to come wake me up.”

“Alright, Doctor Meredith, bed rest it is…” I replied.

“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow, if work allows. And in the meantime, try not to do any further damage to yourself, you big dummy.” And with that, she turned and headed for the door.

              Hearing the door close behind her, I was happy that I didn’t have to get up and fasten it. First, because I was naked. But secondly, because I realized I was really tired. Still, all in all, I decided I had made wonderful progress, even if my control was a bit off.

Chapter 22.

              I woke up the next morning with quite a headache. Meredith had not been lying about that. I also had quite a knot on the top of my head, something she had failed to mention. Lastly, from what I could tell, my butt had quite a bruise growing on it. All in all, I should have felt miserable. But instead, I was energized and looking forward to the day’s activities.

              My morning lessons with Claudius went well. He had me running through a series of exercises that involved me channeling power in multiple ways at the same time. The first was creating a snowball with power, launching it into the air, and then hitting it as it fell with a blast of fire to melt it. When I got good at it, he made me do it directly over my head, then use telekinesis to keep the water from falling on my head. He had many good laughs at my expense when I failed and got a face full of water.

              My afternoon was spent drilling with the inquisitor initiates. Alfieri had them trying to take me on in groups. It was like a giant game of tag on the practice field where the initiates tried to tag me while I ran and used telekinetic blasts to keep them away. It was fun to send them tumbling. Only when they all worked together to distract me with feints from multiple fronts could they get close enough to tag me.

              By the time dinner rolled around I was feeling quite full of myself. Dinner was the most boring part of my day though, as Meredith was busy in the Hospital. Still I had a good meal of roast mutton and vegetable stew, and then decided to head off to the library. It had been a while since I had spent any time reading up on my histories, and this time I had a purpose. My goal was to learn about trading routes between Nordshire and Sudchester. I figured that if Meredith and I were going to hijack a merchant’s cart and pose as merchants when heading to Caer Nord to find her father, that we should at least know something about what was traded between the two towns.

              Unfortunately, after spending quite some time perusing the shelves, I didn’t find much of interest. The best I could find was a discussion of how the northern parts of the kingdom relied on trade with the south to get certain vegetables that only grew in the southern plains and luxury goods that were traded along the southern coast from the southern kingdoms. The most interesting part was a long discussion about how the church limits foreign merchant access to the Holy Empire to a few licensed traders.

              It turns out that the reason the Holy Empire does not see much trade from the south is because the church purposefully limits access to its ports to only certain licensed trade companies and limits the amounts of goods that they can sell. All trade from the south goes through the southern town of Dunesburg and its ports are protected by the castle Caer Oceanus. All traders sell their goods directly to church officials for a pre-negotiated price. The church then turns around and sells these goods to the lay people and domestic tradesman through their own network of merchants in the markets of Dunesburg and further north in the capital at Neucester. This serves both as a means of guarantying a steady income for the church, and gave it the opportunity to control what foreign goods were sold in local markets and how many were available. It also likely ensured that the church secured a steady supply of luxuries for itself at below market rates.

              Still, this didn’t help me figure out what sort of goods we should be pretending to peddle so that we were convincing in our roles. Perhaps the fact that we were young would excuse some of our ignorance to the guards in Nordshire, but it probably wouldn’t fool them if they were warned ahead of time to look out for us. So it was looking like, if we were going to escape and head north, we would have to move quite quickly to outrun any messengers. Either that, or when we got to the town, we would have to find another disguise. Further investigations did not give me any greater insights into the intricacies of trade. The best I could come up with was to procure a bunch of root vegetables that would not perish easily, like potatoes, squash and carrots, and pretend to be a vegetable merchant. My thought was that this would at least be boring enough to keep us from being memorable to any guards we might pass.

              The next few weeks passed in similar fashion. My lessons with Claudius steadily increased the difficulty of the magic I was attempting and increased the number of different applications I was trying at the same time. My attempts at flying were getting better. I hadn’t knocked myself out on the ceiling of my room since the day Meredith had stopped by and watched me knock myself out. I could now levitate myself off the ground and hover for a few minutes before becoming exhausted. Unfortunately, my attempts at moving while floating were more difficult. This was because I had to both maintain the force necessary to keep me off the ground while simultaneously using a telekinetic push from a different direction for me to move. I had managed to move from a seated position on the floor to a seated position on my bed, a distance of less than five feet, only after lots of practice and effort. Still, progress was progress.

              Lessons with Alfieri and the initiates were heading in the other direction. After having concentrated on group fights, sparring and hide and seek the magic user, he had gone back to drilling the initiates on the basics of swordsmanship, archery, and the like. He seemed to find great pleasure in pointing out all the bad habits we had gotten into over the past few months. He didn’t completely give up on sparing matches, but they were now mostly used to ferret out mistakes. He especially liked stopping a match and pointing out how individual’s bad form had led to their guard being open on a particular exchange.

              My visits to the library became infrequent as well. As we were approaching the winter solstice, and our time for escape got close, I redoubled my efforts in the practice field after lessons. I worried my time spent in the library had let me get out of shape. So, I started every practice with a run around the castle grounds. Then I would run through all my basic forms, strikes, blocks and parries. After that I would throw fire, ice, electricity and telekinetic blasts at the practice dummies. Lastly I would practice hitting multiple targets at once. It was easiest when I could see all the targets at once, but hitting anything that required me to change my field of vision proved more difficult.

              Meredith and I met frequently during these weeks. We would spend hours discussing our plans for escape. But in the end, it seemed that our best course of action was to meet at the stables during the exam and use the confusion of testing to aid our escape. We were still set on posing as merchants and pilfering a cart and horse from someone making a delivery at the castle for the post exam celebration. The reason this remained the best plan was that at every step of the way our actions were easily explained away. What I mean is that, should we be caught in the stables, we could claim to have been getting amorous away from prying eyes, or that I was hiding from the initiates who were trying to catch me as part of their testing. It was only once we were dressed in traveling clothes pilfered from the castle stores and on the cart that, if caught, our real intentions would be obvious.

              Two days before the winter solstice, when I met Claudius for my morning lessons, he let me know what was going to happen for the initiates’ exam.

“Tyr, if you don’t mind, I think we’re going to skip normal lessons,” he said. “Instead, I’m going to tell you about this year’s exam procedures.”

“Oh?” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“The reason I’m taking this time to tell you this is that you are going to be part of the exam,” he said.

“I thought that might be the case,” I replied. “Alfieri spent too much time having the initiates chase me around the practice field for it not to be part of the testing.”

“Well, that served two purposes,” said Claudius. “First was to prepare them for their eventual exam. Second was because, after the failure of his former pupils in capturing you, he wanted to make sure that the new class of initiates were familiar with fighting a talented individual who had some use of his powers. It’s rare for someone untrained to be able to do much more than light a candle or push small objects around, but you showed how unprepared we were to deal with someone who had more control over their powers.”

“So, the exam is going to involve me and my magic?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” he replied. “This year’s exam is going to involve you, and a few of the regular initiates skilled in using their powers to defend themselves, being hidden around the castle grounds. The goal of the inquisitor initiates is going to be to find you and capture you.”

“Isn’t that what you do every year?” I asked.

“Yes, but we try and put a twist on it every year to keep the students guessing,” he replied. “This year’s twist is that we are not going to hide you outside, and each of the initiates are going to be given a goal.”

“What sort of goal?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.

“In previous years, frequently the student that stayed hidden the longest was simply the one who found the best hiding space,” said Claudius. “While this was a good test of the inquisitor’s ability to find a hidden target, we felt it was a little unrealistic as most people found by inquisitors are not aware of their powers and are just going about their daily lives. Also, a moving target is much harder to track down than a stationary one.”

“So, you want to make sure the inquisitors can track someone who’s trying to evade them?” I asked, seeing the obvious parallels to my own capture.

“Yes, and to further up the difficulty, you are allowed to use your powers, and improvised weaponry, to avoid capture,” he said.

“Improvised weaponry sir?” I asked, again genuinely curious.

“Yes, sticks, blunt objects, and other non-lethal weaponry you find while trying to evade capture,” said Claudius. “Note my emphasis on non-lethal. I don’t want you grabbing cleavers from the kitchen or raiding the weapons stores for swords and the like.”

“So, no summoning my sword then?” I asked.

“Precisely,” said Claudius. “We want it to be challenging and to involve some amount of melee combat, but not to actually endanger anyone’s life.”

“So what’s my role in all this?” I asked. “Aside from being the bait.”

“I thought it would be fun to start you in the bowels of the castle,” said Claudius. “You should recognize the area quite well, you spent your first few weeks with us living near there.”

“I’m going back into the cold room?” I asked.

“You will start near there,” he replied. “Starting in the cold room defeats the purpose as no one would be able to sense you using magic there. I want you to escape the bowels of the castle, and make your way to the back of the practice grounds.”

“And where will the inquisitors be starting?” I asked.

“Hah, it wouldn’t be a challenge for you if you knew,” he replied. “They won’t start close, but they will have the run of the entire grounds to find you.”

“So, I’m going to have to sneak out of the bowels of the castle and out onto the practice field without being caught by the initiates?” I asked, just to be clear.

“Exactly,” said Claudius. “And along the way, you are to use your powers to help you accomplish this, providing you don’t kill or maim anyone.”

“So lighting them on fire is out,” I asked, trying to be humorous.

“I had hoped by now you would have had that out of your system,” said Claudius, not at all amused.

              The afternoon with Alfieri and the inquisitor initiates was a little more routine. He did spend a minute to talk about the exam.

“I assume your instructors have told you generally about the exam this year,” said Alfieri. “So, don’t bother me with questions about how it’s being run. Instead, we’re going to make sure you know how to use the weapons you’ll have available to you for the exam.”

He had us gathered out on the practice field, as was normal. But he had an unusually grave expression on his face.

“Since we don’t want you to actually hurt each other,” he said. “We are going to be giving you an array of relatively safe weaponry to use. I want you all to spend the rest of practice working on them because you will not be very familiar with all of them. The truncheon I hope you are all familiar with, as it’s essentially just like the wooden staves we use in practice to mimic swords. The bolas and the man-catcher, on the other hand, I don’t believe you have spent as much time with.”