Birthright-The Technomage Archive (6 page)

“
I believe the phrase he used was
negligence and ignorance
,” Professor Nephil said.

The headmaster laughed. “That was it! He always did have a way with words. Anyway, Ceril, we use Phase II Presentation to vet students’ potential for joining the Charonic Archive. Having a Flameblade materialize at your feet kind of tipped us off to your potential. We had originally thought that you were not up for it, hence the welcome message I gave you yesterday.” He coughed. “I didn’t know what else to say, given your unique circumstances.”

“
What do you mean?” Ceril asked.

“
In due time, son. In due time. I’m sad to say that I have seen nothing in the past five years that makes you stand out, nothing that even remotely indicates you’re suitable for recruitment. However, your affinity to the Flameblade technology cannot be denied.” The headmaster eyed the golden sword on Ceril’s lap, frowned, and then clapped his hands together as he met the boy’s eyes once again. “So here we are. We’ll see how it all works out, yes?”

Ceril just blinked. He was having a hard time soaking all this in. “Are you serious?” he asked.

“
Very much so.”

It was Professor Nephil's turn to speak now. “You will start tomorrow morning, Ceril. I suggest that you take what is left of the evening to get some dinner and rest up. Make sure your belongings are still packed away in your bags, too, though I doubt you’ve had time to do any unpacking just yet.” He rose from the chair and walked to the office's door. “Come along, Ceril. Let’s stop wasting the headmaster’s time discussing things you’ll be told soon enough.”

Ceril got up to leave with Professor Nephil. He looked back at Headmaster Squalt, who sat smiling at him. With the early afternoon sunlight beaming through the window behind the couch, he almost had a halo around him. He said, “Do you have any questions before you go, Ceril?”

“
The sword…” Ceril said. “Where did it go, do you know? I didn’t mean to lose it.”

“
I’m sure you’ll find it eventually,” the headmaster said. “These things have a way of turning up for people like you.” He clapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “I look forward to working with you, Ceril. Oh, and I almost forgot. I’m going to need you to keep your recruitment to yourself for the time being. We strive to keep this part of Ennd’s out of the public knowledge.”

“
Can I tell Gramps?”

“
No, I’m afraid not,” said Squalt. After a brief pause, he added, “I’ll handle that, actually. It’s been a while since the two of us spoke, anyway.”

“
Okay…” Ceril said. He didn’t have much of a choice, it seemed. “Can I tell Swarley, though? He's my roommate. He’ll need to know what’s going on.”

Professor Nephil said, “I would prefer that you keep all of this to yourself for the moment, if you would not mind. If and when the time comes for Mr. Dann to know about your training, we'll let you know.”

“
But he's my roommate! How is he not going to find out what I'm studying?” Ceril asked. He was honestly curious about how he was supposed to keep something like this a secret. “It’ll probably be pretty obvious that I'm not studying agriculture.”

“
I don’t think so,” the headmaster said. “Thank you, Ceril. Professor Nephil.”

And with that, Nephil and Ceril passed through the doorway back into Ennd’s. Ceril's skin tingled again. The early afternoon light in the headmaster’s office was gone. The twin suns had long since set, as though the headmaster's office somehow kept up the illusion of daytime.

“
Is it night now, Professor?” Ceril asked.

“
It would appear so,” Nephil said, unperturbed.

“
But how?” Ceril said. After what they had just discussed, he thought it was okay to ask the professor about Instances now. “Was Headmaster Squalt’s office an Instance?”

“
Yes, it was.”

“
But how can the sun still be up, even if it's an Instance? I thought that they…”

Nephil interrupted him by saying, “The quick answer is that time is not necessarily the same everywhere, Ceril. Five minutes here may be two hours in some other Instance. An Instance’s location in space has very little bearing on its location in time, I’m afraid. I’m sure that's something that will be covered in your upcoming instruction. Suffice it to say, though, that the rumors that fill these halls about Instancing are…underwhelming.”

“
Oh, well, okay,” he said. “And Professor?”

“
Mmm hmm?”

“
Swarley showed me a holovid last night. These people in it, they had swords like the one the headmaster had.” Ceril gulped, unsure if he should continue. “Like the one that I—”

Again, Nephil cut him off. “The incidents over the summer, Ceril, have nothing to do with the Charons. Or more accurately, they have nothing to do with the Charons as you will learn about them and become a part of. Do you remember how the headmaster mentioned the old civil war? The one that preceded the construction of this school?”

Ceril nodded.

“
Well, the people who lost that war have apparently made their way back to Erlon. And they don’t really like the way we do things around here.”

Chapter Four

Ceril opened his eyes. It was dark. He rolled over, pulled the blanket over his shoulder, and tucked it beneath his chin. Dark was good. It meant there was still time for sleep. Ceril rolled over and tried to clear his mind. He wasn’t surprised at being unable to sleep; he was irritated by it. He stared out the window and looked at the stars. The constellations at Ennd’s were different from the ones in Ternia, and he never got used to the change. He watched them slowly drift across the window and eventually felt himself doze off.

When he opened his eyes again, it was still dark. The constellations had moved, but not much. He must not have made it all the way to sleep. He felt himself doze off again, and once again, he woke up with it still dark outside. Time seemed to crawl for Ceril that night, and his body ached from the tossing and turning he had been doing.

By the time his alarm sounded just past dawn, he was already fully awake. He had been for hours. Ceril grabbed the clothes he had worn for Presentation yesterday—Nephil had not given him instructions on how to dress, but he figured he couldn’t go wrong with his dress uniform—and ran to the shower with high hopes that the hot water would ease the ache in his neck and back.

As he left the dormitory, Ceril looked at Swarley’s side of the room. He hadn’t been at home when Ceril had finally made it back, and with his insomnia, Ceril was sure to have noticed him coming in late. There was a curfew for students, and Ceril was worried that Swarley was going to be in trouble for breaking it. More than that, though, he hoped to have a chance to say goodbye to his friend before being ushered off into whatever Phase the Charon recruits got into. Neither the headmaster nor Professor Nephil had given him any solid answer on what was coming next. For all he knew, he would be staying here with Swarley after his orientation period. But he wanted to say goodbye if that wasn’t the case.

After a long shower that did surprisingly ease his muscle aches, Ceril returned to his dorm and found Swarley asleep in his bed, face down and fully clothed. He must have been up all night, too.

“
Swarley?” he said. His roommate didn’t stir. If he had been up all night, Ceril thought he should just leave him alone and let him rest. There were still three hours before normal Phase II classes started, and he figured that Swarley would appreciate every unconscious minute of them. Ceril gave his side of the room a last once over and gently placed the one picture that he had of himself and Gramps in the middle of the largest bag so it would be protected. He zipped up the bag.

Nephil had told Ceril that his belongings would be taken care of as long as he had them packed away, so Ceril closed the closet door as quietly as he could and headed to meet everyone in front of the Library.

“
Bye, Swarley,” he said. “I’ll see you…sometime, man. I hope I get a chance to tell you about all of this soon. I doubt you’ll believe me anyway.” He waited for a response, for any kind of signal that would start a conversation, but the most he got was a muffled snore. He smiled and left the room.

Professor Nephil had given him three specific orders regarding this morning. The first was to shower and make sure he was clean. He didn’t mention clothing, but he had mentioned a shower specifically. The second was to meet at the Library door as soon as possible after his shower. He indicated to Ceril that he must be there two hours earlier than he had been to Presentation.

The third order was the oddest. “Do not, Ceril,” Professor Nephil had said, “eat any breakfast in the morning. Eat what you want before you go to bed, but please, eat nothing in the morning once you wake up. It just makes things easier for us all.” Ceril wasn’t hungry, so he had no trouble fasting. However, he did wonder why he had been asked to.

The halls of Phase II were empty as he made his way to the Library. He had expected as much. No students in their right minds would be out and about this early unless they had to be.

When Ceril arrived at the Library door, no one was there. He opened the door a crack to peek in and to see if Professor Nephil was waiting inside.

He wasn’t.

Ceril did see, though, that the ramped cylinder of the Phase II Library was bustling today—unlike yesterday. Instead of students standing rigidly at attention having interviews, he saw faculty whipping past one another in a frenzy. Despite the chasm in the middle, they seemed to take no precautions not to fall as they darted around each other to get to the shelf space they needed. He gasped when he saw one gaunt young professor, whom he had never seen, take a leap into the empty air in the middle of the room. To his surprise, she bounced across the chasm to the other side as though she were hopping from one side of a fluffy mattress to the other.

As he watched in amazement, a hand came to rest on his shoulder. Ceril jerked backward and hit his head on the door he had been peeking through. He let go of the door to rub his probably-bruised head, and the Library once again sealed itself off from the rest of Ennd's with a
thud-hiss
. When Ceril turned, he saw that the hand belonged to Professor Nephil. Instead of the black dress robes from the day before, he was dressed in slacks and a long shirt that flared out at the waist and ended about a quarter of the way down his legs. The cut of the shirt was not flattering because of Nephil’s overweight midsection.

“
I guess I’m overdressed?” Ceril asked. The formality that Professor Nephil had inspired in Ceril since their first meeting dissipated as he looked at the teacher's casual outfit.

Nephil nodded. “Indeed. But it shouldn't matter. If you need to change, you will be given new clothes. I am not sure what Roman has planned for you all.”

“
Roman? Didn’t Headmaster Squalt mention him yesterday?”

“
You’ll meet him soon enough,” Nephil said.

“
And what do you mean by
you all
?” Ceril asked. “Nobody else is here yet. How many of us are there?”

“
Two dozen total. Though I bet a quarter of you will not make it through the classroom orientation and half of those who do will surely not make it through the physical portion.”

“
Twenty-four? Out of how many Phase II students?”

“
Thirteen hundred thirty-seven from Ennd’s alone, of which you are this institution’s only candidate.”

“
What do you mean?”

Nephil said, “Ennd’s Academy is not the only school on Erlon, Ceril. While we do have a few students from Yagh and Ferran here at Ennd’s, parents in many provinces prefer their children not to attend school half a world away. To accommodate that, the Charons have set up similar institutions in Bester, Yagh, and Ferran, from which we can recruit.”

Ceril smirked. He liked being part of such an elite group, even if it wasn't what he actually wanted to study or do with his life. He'd never really been special before, except to Gramps. But being the only recruit from Ennd’s? A single student out of over a thousand?

Nephil noticed the pride. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Ceril. This is only the beginning. The odds are stacked against you actually making it into the program.”

“
And what happens if I don't?” Ceril asked.

“
You will be placed back into the general population of the academy to study whatever subject you wish. I believe you had mentioned agriculture.”

“
So as big a secret as you and Headmaster Squalt made this out to be yesterday, I get to go back to my daily life like none of this ever happened. And you expect me to keep the secret that the Charons use Ennd’s as a home base? That they’re—we’re? You’re?—not just legends and myths?”

“
Hardly. If that were the case, you would remember none of this. Not a word or a second. All you would recall is having a very pleasant talk with the headmaster at Presentation where you told him that you wanted to study agriculture to help your grandfather in Ternia. You would remember him agreeing and placing you in an accelerated agriculture program, where you would finish your studies in half the time of non-accelerated students. After that, well, I’m sure you would go back to Ternia and make use of what you learned here.”

“
But how is that possible?” Ceril asked. “You’d��brainwash me?”

“
Nothing quite so pedestrian, Ceril. You’ve been watching far too many holovids, I think. I’m sure that your classroom instruction will enlighten you to the finer points of Charonic technology and procedures,” Professor Nephil said.

The Library door opened and attracted both of their attentions. A large man came out of the door. He wasn’t fat or even overweight, but he stood almost a head taller than Professor Nephil. He wore a tunic that matched Nephil’s, except instead of a drab grey, the large man’s was a metallic blue and was embroidered with a symbol Ceril couldn’t quite make out—maybe a feather. Ceril had never seen anyone with such large muscles before, and he couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would need muscles like that. Ceril could barely see behind him, but he was certain that what he glimpsed was not the Phase II Library.