To Be Grand Maestro (Book 5) (4 page)

The small break in the crystals above allowed more energy to enter the vault, yet Tarin could not sense the spells holding him captive being strengthened. Most of his effort was focused on the immobilization spell, yet he dare not take his eyes off the granite skewer. Sure enough, the lance shot down and he brushed it aside as one would a gnat, albeit one that would have killed him had he not swiped it away. This pattern continued for about a quarter of a mark and then came a pause.
Perhaps Daniel was foolish enough to believe he could catch the greatest Accomplished of all time off guard
, Tarin laughed at the notion.

The delay stretched on until finally the granite shaft shot down faster than at any other time, but not nearly fast enough. Tarin chuckled, almost casually swinging at the skewer and it shattered on impact, while at the same time the immobilization spell burst apart. He quickly rolled off the slab, landing in a pushup position, and then sprang to his feet. The spell, Flex had done its job well at keeping him physically fit. The fist of potential vanished instantly, but not by his choice. There was now a shield on Tarin’s potential and he could not project life force energy beyond his own body. He also sensed a new link to his mind, a familiar one from the recent past, except that connection had been formed by him and this one was the other way around.

“You are as powerful as I feared you would be,”
Daniel’s thoughts came faintly through the link along with a projected image of him, head and shoulders only
.
The young Aakasear was so weak he could not send a full image and even in this he appeared to be spent.

Tarin knew he would be free soon and so felt he could be magnanimous here at the end of his rival’s life. “You were not ready to confront me and soon will be dead. That was a clever trick but the shield you placed on me will not last much longer. You should have accepted the invitation to join my guild.”

The image projected into Tarin’s mind had faded out half way through his reply and although he could still feel a link, he knew Daniel’s mind was beyond projecting or receiving thoughts. The only question remaining was onto what had the tricky mountain-born Accomplished tied the Da Capo?

During that brief communication Tarin felt thousands of minds being cut off from his and decided it was time to accept his personal victory and stop the losses his guild was taking at Serpent West. Daniel and his allies won the battle but have failed in their mission and those associates and allies would soon be fighting a war without their Chosen Vessel to lead them.

The links already established were not affected by whatever shield Daniel managed to place on him but would prevent Tarin from establishing new ones, at least for a while. Rather than imagine a setting and drawing the person in, he chose to send thoughts so as not to distract her from whatever task she was in the middle of performing. “Serena
,
I want you to relay a message to Maestro Cummin. Tell him, Daniel Benhannon has succeeded in establishing a shield on me of his own making. I will soon find a way to overcome this new barrier to my potential. Shantear is lost for now and you are to cease sending teams.”

“I hear and obey, Great One,” she replied through the link. Her mind blanked for a few moments while she no doubt sent the missive. “He confirms that the order to stand down will go out immediately,” her thoughts resumed

Tarin knew by the sudden lack of deaths that his order was being followed. “For the moment I cannot project potential beyond my body but that does not prevent me from removing the gems keeping me from teleporting. In the course of time I will overpower Benhannon’s shield or have destroyed whatever he tied the Da Capo onto. You know where to approach me at that point. I have decided to teach you the spell, Ties That Bind, when we do meet. Cast this Melody on people and it will allow you to communicate with their minds whether they are awake or asleep and dreaming. I will leave it to your discretion when to use this new spell and when to use, Join Me.” He always rewarded loyalty.

A wave of emotions, reverence, ambition, love, and lust foremost among them, came through the link along with, “I wait anxiously to be in your presence, Great One, and serve in whatever capacity I can. You have but to give the command and I will obey.”

Tarin had no doubts concerning her loyalty and motivations. She was the first person in over eleven hundred years to think, and more precisely dream, of him not only as being godlike, but also as a man. Serena, with her red-blond hair and petite form, was a stunningly beautiful female and there was no denying her physical appeal. Even so, he did not love her, no being could claim that much devotion from him, yet he did love the fact that she was in love with him, and knew he could make good use of her passion and devotion. “I trust that you will obey and for that you will be rewarded,” he replied and then ended the communication.

Tarin Conn suddenly found himself standing within the Great Crystal in front of a fully recovered Daniel Benhannon. The younger Maestro stood equally tall, wearing blue silks with silver trim and the hood of his cloak had seven golden lightning bolts with the center one being the largest. The former mountaineer was clean shaven, pale-faced, dark haired, and his nearly black eyes were filled with intensity and a hint of amusement. This was clearly a projected image and likely did not reflect his actual physical condition. “I’m not dead yet,” he declared and then the link was gone and Tarin was once again alone in his mind within the vault beneath Kelgotha.

Fury seethed in him, he closed his eyes, and summoned potential through the spell, Free Me, until all thirty bolts of life force energy was blasting at the shield. A nimbus of blue light, the color of Daniel’s potential, bright as the sun, filled the chamber. Tarin could see the intensity through his eyelids, and raised his arm for greater protection, knowing the increased radiance would have blinded him had he not done so, yet the shield did not break. He held the potential for nearly half a mark, draining moisture from his body in order to maintain the flow of energy, yet because of the new shield, Nourishment, no longer functioned, and still the shield held. He had no choice but to cease his efforts soon or risk being mummified.
How much potential had Daniel used to make this shield?
More importantly,
how many more lightning bolts will it take to overpower this new obstacle to full functionality?

He gradually lowered the amount of potential flowing from him and the power in the shield seemed to lower correspondingly. He raised and lowered the potential in, Free Me, several more times and realized Daniel must have composed a shield that not only varied, it absorbed and fed off the energy directed at it. No such Melody had been written before. Tarin began to form a grudging respect for his immature rival, but that would not keep him from crushing the young Aakasear.

For now, his task was to remove the thirty-six gemstones within his flesh. With chapped lips, a dry tongue, and no water to drink, he realized the undertaking would take much longer, requiring time to recuperate after removing each and every one of the stones. Teleporting to freedom would then be possible since the energy would be focused within rather than outside of his body. Eliminating Daniel’s shield would take quite a bit more thought, but would not hold the mighty Tarin Conn for long. “Count on it,” he warned the world, untroubled by the fact not a soul could hear him from the depths of his prison.

Chapter Two: The Health Wing

Jennel Obenport, a three-bolt Accomplished of the Atlantan Guild, and Lead Healer, observed the activity around her. Talenteds in their tan-colored silks, shirt, pants, and hooded cloaks, brought in the wounded, levitating them on solidified cushions of air and placing them wherever Bernard Kleopis, a former Aloe, her deputy in this undertaking, directed. The Two-bolt Accomplished, a clean-shaven man of medium build and height, was good at quickly observing everything going on in the room, assessing the needs of the patients, and sending them to the healer currently specializing in that particular injury, or whichever associate was available, and occasionally performing a quick healing when none else could. The needs of the patient always holds the priority, was a tenet he and Jennel shared.

This was one of four large rooms, all of which were filled to capacity, dedicated to healing those injured in the battle taking place at Mount Shantear. Light was provided by glowing spheres floating near the ceiling. Hundreds of wounded Accomplisheds and thousands of Sentinels were in need of treatment with more arriving by the minute. Each of them was under the influence of the spell, Sleep Time, cast upon them either by whoever conveyed them to the holding area beneath Center Court, or the Talented assigned to bring them into one of the four treatment wards, and some of them by the Maestro before he went on to conduct the Grand Symphonies. Jennel had been going from wardroom to wardroom, making sure her standards were being maintained, and taking the time to stop and heal patients as the situation warranted.

Fifty associate healers and every available Talented in the guild, currently one hundred eighty-three, were helping her with the daunting task of healing the mass casualties, yet only six of those Accomplisheds were former members of the Aloe Guild, four of which were working in the three other wards. Each Accomplished was familiar with the relevant Symphonic spells composed by Maestro Benhannon and was therefore competent to render aid, but only the few trained as Aloes had the experience of dealing with healing on this scale. They all wore, as did Jennel, silver on blue silks and a silver belt and buckle with the falcon in flight clutching a lightning bolt emblem in the center of the oval, and a spelled-silver canteen filled with water. The Talenteds’ belts, buckles, and canteens were spelled-copper. The spelled-metals would never tarnish or need polishing. Jennel’s hood was laid back, held by a braid twisted from her long saffron-colored hair, revealing a fair Lobenian complexion, and most importantly her hazel eyes.

One hundred-three years of her life had been devoted to the healing arts as an Accomplished of the Aloe Guild, two years as an Intern, twelve as a Practitioner, and eighty-nine years as a Senior Practitioner. That was until a little over seventeen years ago when she was captured by several Accomplisheds of the Serpent Guild and turned into an Aakademned. Her location, she would never call it a home, from that point until recently had been in whatever tunnels or caverns required her presence within Mount Tirana.

Although she was now many cubits underground in the Health Wing of the Benhannon Northland Holding, near the border Ducaun shared with Pentrosa, she could hear the animals that had been linked to the mind of the Maestro let out a cacophony of howls, roars, screeches, and other sounds of outrage and fear echoing through the halls from up above. She had only bonded, her word for the process, six cats and six owls, leaving two pairs at each of the Maestro’s holdings. With enough concentration focused on one of the animals, she could see, feel, and hear everything the creature sensed, and all of them in turn could feel her presence. That being the case, it was as obvious as a smiling child’s missing front tooth that Daniel’s creatures experienced the same feeling as she concerning him and therefore knew something to be wrong.

Jennel’s thoughts flashed back to the recent past, all traces of gender had been ripped away, leaving open sores that never fully healed. Her skull had been flattened, eye sockets extended out like a pair of long distance opticals, and the vertebrae in the neck had been fused so she was forced to turn her entire body just to see what was beside her, on legs shrunken and made thicker than they had been prior to the assault. The spell, Condemnation, had made her nothing more than a passenger in a ruined body that did not respond to her wishes, but could only do what the caster of the spell demanded of it.

Who would ever believe a person could start a new life at one hundred twenty-one years of age?
Against all odds she now had that new life and as of several moments ago a new horror threatened take it away,
This is unacceptable,
she spoke inwardly, not wanting to add to the growing fear permeating the room.
There must be some other explanation,
she told herself.

Not even the incredibly powerful harmonic waves washing through the world, ripples that had come to a sudden stop at the exact moment the Maestro’s presence vanished, had interrupted the healings taking place, but this new horror brought all activity to a standstill.
No wonder I am remembering the unpleasantness of the past,
Jennel thought as she quickly brought her emotions under control.
He cannot be dead,
she told herself, refusing to accept the possibility.

“I can’t feel the Maestro’s presence,” Balic Cassosoon Kon was the first to give voice to what everyone who had been restored from Condemnation knew; the one who brought them back from a living death might well be dead. Bali had almond-shaped eyes and dark silky hair like most of the people born in the kingdom of Zune. Those eyes were as wide open as they could be.

Jennel pointed to the Sentinel whose entire right arm appeared to have been cooked like a roasted beef. “You have a patient. Heal him first and worry about our Maestro afterward. That goes for all of you,” she spoke firmly, especially since each healer was staring at her instead of doing their jobs. Bali, being a former Aloe Practitioner, should have known better than to stop in the middle of a healing.

Beside her stood Beta Curran, a fellow former Aakademned whose long brown hair was pulled back ponytail-style, and who had light blue eyes that sometimes appeared to be gray, depending on the lighting. She was discovered as a Potential at thirteen years of age by Accomplisheds of the Serpent Guild and later Condemned by Balen Tamm after being labeled, “Uncooperative.” She spent forty years in that condition and was finally restored about the same time as Jennel. The fifty-three year-old possessed a sturdy frame, was in perfect physical condition, and appeared to be about ten years younger than her actual age, both a side effect of being restored from Condemnation. Beta commanded two lightning bolts of life force energy. The Talented was on her way to mastering that potential and not far from being elevated to Accomplished. She volunteered to help, and expressed the desire to continue on as a healer after graduating, which was why she was now working with Jennel, and no doubt experiencing the same fear.

Jennel went to work on her own patient, a Four-bolt Accomplished of the Zephyr Guild, Rondara Kapes. Her black silky hair was matted and caked with blood and her eyeballs punctured as if by shards of glass. The scarlet on black silks of the Senior Cyclone were riddle with holes and covered with blood from collar to knee. Jennel could do nothing for the Maestro at the moment, but healing this person was well within her skill set.

“Beta, watch what I do,” Jennel called the would-be healer’s attention to the matter at hand. She parted the scarlet on black silk blouse covering the Accomplished’s lower abdominal region using the spell, Beak Strike, taught to her by First Accomplished Leah Barryn, second in command of the Atlantan Guild. Jennel had come to prefer this over a scalpel made of solidified air used by her former associates in the Aloe Guild. The tiny razor sharp fuchsia-colored beak vanished as she released the potential and placed her right hand on the patient’s forehead and the left on the abdomen with her palm covering the navel. “I am about to cast the spell, How Do You Feel, allowing the Symphonic to play in my mind, thus summoning the potential. I will then focus the life force energy into Rondara thusly,” she said while the spell immediately revealed every injury, internal and external. Beyond the obvious injuries, the citizen of Aakadon had three cracked ribs and a broken ankle, no doubt from a fall. The solidified shards of air peppered her body, lacerating organs, piercing nose, lips, eyes and ears, but at no point penetrated bone, and then vanished, leaving behind punctured flesh all over the front portion of Rondara’s face, legs and torso.

Beta squatted down on her knees. “It is my understanding the spell, How Do You Feel, only requires us to place a hand on the patient’s forehead, yet you also cut open her blouse and are touching her tummy, why is that?”

“The damage to her flesh, cracked ribs and broken ankle were things that could be determined without the casting of spells, and yet we use, How Do You Feel, in order to speed up the assessment of the patient’s needs. Even so, that does not mean we cannot use our visual senses to analyze the situation and save a few steps,” Jennel explained without taking her hands off the patient. “Our patient has many punctures and though some of her wounds were superficially closed by whoever transported her, she is still losing blood due to lacerations in her organs, so I will be employing our most advanced internal healing spell. That is why my hands are where I have placed them.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Beta promised.

Jennel glanced at her team, each member glowing with the particular hue of his or her potential, caring for their patients, and some of the Accomplisheds were individually in the process of healing horrific injuries in people that in Aakadon would require an entire operating team, each member performing a particular single line Melody, rather than the exclusive Symphonics composed by the Maestro. No one could heal death but Jennel and her people could heal a person so long as a spark of life remained in the patient, provided the spells were cast fast enough.

“Beta, take heed. The Atlantan Guild alternative to cutting a person open is to become one with the patient and it is also the fastest way to heal a body riddled with this many wounds.” Jennel braced herself and said, “I am casting, Hearts Beat As One,” and soon her heart and that of the patient were in sync with each other, they inhaled and exhaled in unison and she could feel the injuries as if they were her own. The aches in the ankle and ribs were nothing compared to the hundreds of nerves screaming their protests at being punctured, particularly the eyes. Jennel focused through the pain and said, “I am placing a Da Capo tied to my own life force to sustain the spell.”

She took a deep breath, cast upon the patient, Easing the Pain, a spell of the Aloe Guild, numbing the irritated nervous system, and spoke with an even tone, “I will now cast What Is This, thus allowing me to see what the object I am touching is made of. If I concentrated long enough the spell would show me the little planets with tiny moons that seem to make up everything in existence. If I did so and chose to pull back on my perception, from that point, the spell would form elements interpreted as pictures of chemicals and substances easily recognizable to my mind.”

Beta nodded her understanding and so Jennel continued. “I am only concentrating to the point where the vat containing Rondara’s life force energy, which lay at the center of her being, is now coming into view. You must understand neither image is physical in nature, this is how the spell relates the metaphysical reality.”

Rondara’s vat was larger than Jennel’s and contained a pale green liquid, the color of the Senior Cyclone’s life force energy. The reservoir was three-quarters of the way full, giving the patient plenty of vitality for the time being, but was decreasing due to the loss of blood. Life is in the blood. “Our patient does not need strengthening so I am going to cast the spell, Heal Wounds,” she informed and then summoned the potential.

Jennel focused her fuchsia-colored energy into her patient and could feel the bone of the ankle and the cracked ribs mending along with organs closing and flesh filling in the numerous remaining punctures. Rondara’s almond-shaped eyes were once again whole and not a single wound remained on her body. It was as if she had never been injured. Jennel released the potential feeding the spells, satisfied with the work she had done.

A familiar presence returned to her awareness.
Daniel is still alive!
The knowledge caused her lips to form a brief smile. Jennel was surrounded by dead silence. The entire roomful of people stopped what they were doing, some nodded affirmatively while others smiled with relief. She opened her mouth, about to order them back to work, when they all did so without needing to be told. She nodded approval and focused on her helper.

“Beta, use the spell, Refresh, to cleanse our patient, use, Immaculate, to mend and clean her silks, and then prepare her for conveyance to the staging chamber within Mount Shantear,” Jennel instructed and then walked right by three Talenteds and Bernard. “I am going to check on the other wardrooms,” she informed her deputy and stepped out into the hall.

“Sir Daniel is alive,” announced Jaim Cutler, seventeen, thin, and full of eagerness to fulfill his duty as keeper of the Maestro’s door. Being clean shaven with his dark hair cut short, and dressed in his topaz-colored uniform with the broad silver stripe on his shoulders and pant legs, and the emblem of house Benhannon embroidered on his jacket, there was no mistaking his being one of the Chosen’s Sentinels. The office door did not need keeping at this time so he had come below to be of service.