by Amanda Twigg
Screams erupted from the darkness, partnered with thumping sounds that Landra imagined as bones on stone. She felt hollow, and when Gertha reappeared with Gail’s Templer robe over his arm, her legs weakened. Had the bastard really thrown a naked, old woman down the steps to the underlevel? Hardly an administrator. Gertha the Bully. Gertha the Enforcer. Shelk.
She swallowed vomit, not daring to show emotion. At least her own murders had been… compassionate? Justified? Unavoidable. The incident clarified two things in her mind. Her existence balanced on a blade’s edge, and she could never align herself with these shelking Templers. They were not her people. What did you get me into, Thisk?
“It’s your turn, Bexter,” Chanda said. “Proceed.”
Landra pretended. She made a show of touching the artifact, but she gripped her aura tight rather than form a true connection. After selecting one of the boxed chains at random, she returned to her seat and hunched over her desk.
“Now, we can start,” Chanda said. Everyone paid attention.
Landra sighed when she heard the underlevel exit clink shut.
Sixteen.
Chapter 28
“Rest your chain across your palms, close your eyes, and reach for positive memories,” Chanda said. “You’ve suffered traumatic times, but go further back than recent misfortunes, to when family loved you and you lived better lives. Enlightenment thrives on happiness, contentment, and joy—love, if you like. Recall those good moments now to find your magic.”
That’s rich, asking for love when you just sentenced an old woman to death.
Jex tugged Landra’s sleeve and pulled a face. “D’you know what to do?”
What made him think she had answers? Shrugging, she lifted her chain to examine the links. Grey metal. Duller than the Collector in Preston’s hands. Oops. Can’t go there. Not when I need positive thoughts.
Her survival plan involved treading a difficult path, refusing magic whenever possible but training enough to avoid expulsion. The chain in her hands posed an obstacle too vital to circumvent, so she considered the test like it was a puzzle. Chanda’s aura had encased the artifact, so she took that as a starting point.
Blue aura shades floated about her hands. Thinness reflected depleted vigor, but it didn’t affect her Soul’s shade. If anything, her color had deepened from juvenile paleness to adult mid-blue. But what’s this? A pink stain? Oakham had said I had red. She’d believed the old man’s assessment. How could she not? But faced with evidence of her magical power, her stomach flipped. As her attention turned toward the smudge, it dissipated to nothing, leaving only blue.
Well, good. Or not. Ignore the color. Landra willed her boundaries to engulf the chain but nothing happened. Shelk. Can that be right? She’d adjusted her aura before, drawing her limits close on an instinctive level, but she’d only spread the edges wide in desperate circumstances, like during the fire attack on Warrior Hall. Okay, aura, I’m desperate here. Grow. Spread. Thin out. Push. Widen. Really, aura? Will you shelking move before we both end up in the underlevel? She was talking to herself and knew it.
Nothing happened, so she pulled the chain inside her limits and hugged it to her chest. Failure.
Shelk. This is what you did, Chanda, so why isn’t it working for me?
Landra suspected that clamped emotions had built a block between her Soul and the artifact. Dismantling it felt dangerous, but an image of her naked body tumbling into corrosive mud sold her on the need.
She forced her breath into an even rhythm and closed her eyes in search of joy.
Mother? No. Not enough to cling onto. Definitely not you, Father, not after you ordered my arrest. Maybe Bexter? Bah. Lost chances won’t help.
She didn’t want to think of the life she’d lost in Hux Hall, but it all came down to Dannet. Pushing away memories of their last painful meeting, she recalled her brother’s face covered in engine oil and his strong arms offering comfort when she fell. The more she hunted success, the harder her breathing rasped and the colder the chain became.
She swapped the links from one cupped palm to the other, the clanking jarring her nerves. The thing’s broken. Has to be. Do you give candidates lifeless items to make us fail? Or is it just me? Don’t suppose wearing a Hux face and claiming Soul sight makes for good Templer material.
Quick as Landra’s doubt surfaced, logic poked holes in her fear. Why bring her up here, only to force failure? She questioned her magical strength as never before. What if indulging my magic proves too great a compromise for my Warrior Soul? Can’t think that way.
She settled back to her task, finding the diligence of a swamper who’s run out of options. Lifting the links to her nose, she sniffed. Nothing unusual there. She pressed the metal to her ear and listened. If the chain made a sound, she couldn’t hear it, but her skin tingled from a faint vibration along the artifact’s length. Resonance played across her senses like a mystical tune.
“The chain already has magic,” she said aloud. Not a question. A statement.
Chanda closed a book over his thumb and pinned her with a stare. “No, candidate. They don’t. Certain metals act as magic depositories, but Soul traces are wiped from these items before the test. Nice try, but you’re guessing.”
Landra didn’t argue, but she hadn’t guessed. She’d felt the magical vibrations as clearly as if she’d connected with Gallanto’s Soul in the Collector. If she could just…
“Done it!” one of the group said.
Everyone turned. A big man called Popple hoisted his wasted arm in triumph, showing off the knotty remains of muscles. A manual worker by trade, from the look of him, with a lopsided smile and dimpled cheeks. A grey chain dangled from his fist.
“Looks dead to me,” Dennark said. “Shouting out doesn’t mean it worked.”
“You calling me a liar?” Popple asked.
“No one’s calling you a liar, but I’m the judge of success,” Chanda said. He set his book aside, and skeptical glances followed his inspection of the swamper’s artifact.
Landra didn’t doubt the outcome. Although Popple’s chain didn’t glow with heat, pink shades played at his aura’s edges and continued into the links. She wanted to feel happy and encouraged, but bitterness made her teeth grind. How can you succeed when I struggle? I’m supposed to be the one with magic.
The Lord Templer stroked his index finger down the swamper’s chain, his eyebrow arching when a magical ripple ran down the links. The artifact’s edges started glowing red from energy rather than pure magic, and a repeat of the exercise brought a satisfied nod from Chanda.
“Gertha, this one’s passed. Take him through to the temple.”
Now Gertha the Savior? I don’t think so.
“It’s unusual for anyone to succeed at the first try,” Chanda said. “I had decided this group was hopeless, but maybe it won’t be such a disaster after all.”
Popple puffed his wasted chest out with pride and accompanied Gertha toward the door on the left. A rich glow greeted his arrival, along with a joyous melody, which soothed the Soul.
“I know which door I’d rather go through,” Jex whispered.
Landra suspected the difference had been emphasized for symbolic effect. But probably the truth of our existence. Salvation or death. The final click of the door shutting behind the swamper broke the glamour, leaving her bereft, hollow.
“Enough testing for now,” Chanda said. “You can try again tomorrow. Be sure to read the lesson schedule for what to do next. It’s posted on the food hall bulletin board.”
That’s it? Landra sat there, shocked to have failed the test. She watched the others drop their chains in the box and hurry away. Gertha’s glare prompted her to follow, and she departed the testing chamber with new lead in her shoes.
I’d have never come to the temple if I’d thought… Holy shelk. Fifteen.
Chapter 29
The candidate group assembled in the garden room for their next lesson. Shrubbery-covered staffs and instruc
tional posters lined the walls. Everyone found a spot behind one of the arcing workbenches and glanced around, as if wondering what to do.
“Planting,” Jex said, reading the class title from a chalkboard. “Strange thing to learn in the temple.”
“Yeah,” Dennark said, rapping his stick against a bench. “I came to be a Templer, not a gardener. What’s this shelking nonsense about?”
“Don’t know,” Jex answered. “But after the fuss Templers made over timekeeping, I can’t believe our teacher’s late.”
Landra found the schedule more annoying than odd. I could be in the testing room now, trying to escape from this floor. Calming her mood, she performed her usual head count and then repeated the exercise to make sure she’d added right. “Just as well the teacher’s not arrived. We’re still four swampers down.”
“Tracking the competition, Hux?” Dennark asked.
She refused to correct her name this time or grace him with a reply.
“Hey, Felik, you up for a spot of gardening?” tattooed Lindart asked.
The brutish swamper called Felik rumbled, “Not likely. I thought the garden room was a place for wimps to commune with flowers. What’s next? Shelking pottery?” The two men’s auras bounced off each other, with every touch exciting streaks of rebellion. Felik’s hard face, stained aura, and mean spirit brought out the worst in those he touched.
“At least we can work in hydroponics after flunking magic,” Jex said.
Ah, Leeman, always an optimist. Do you believe we’ll make it out alive? Or are you cheering us up? She bent down to search beneath her bench—pots, soil, and tools. “I don’t think this is hydroponics. Does anyone see a water supply?”
Lindart hoisted his bell sleeves over his shoulders, smirking at the artwork rippling over his tensing biceps. “I don’t see shelk.” He launched a frustrated kick at a soil sack, and the tie pulled open.
“There’s no decent light source, either,” oldster Haydis said. “Every plant in this room should be dead.”
“The garden room relies entirely on Soul power,” a deep voice bellowed.
The tone ran through Landra in an unsettling wave. She jumped up from behind her bench to see who’d spoken. The contradictions of the man in the doorway made her pause. His bulk came from training. His close-shaved head, two-bar insignia, and gardening specialization mark declared him a soldier. Yet his robes matched the red of the blooms on his staff, and his seething aura shaded pinker than most.
A Templer at the core. Not just for show.
“Make way for Gardener Ossek,” Gertha said, his staff looking like a functional stick next to the gardener’s silver-green stem, latticed tendrils, and budding shoots.
“Maybe now we’ll find out what the shelk we’re doing here,” Felik whispered.
Icy blue eyes stared out of the gardener’s weathered features, and a glow from his staff’s foliage bled color into his aura, as if it were joined with his Soul. As he clipped his staff to a wall, his boundaries grew enough for the connection to hold, even when he took up a position behind the front bench. He folded his bell sleeves back, showing off rolled-up shirt cuffs, strong hands, and the broken fingernails of a working man.
“I’m planting,” he said to Felik, as if he knew who’d spoken. “You can do what you want, but I’d be happiest if you went back to the underlevel.”
Even aura, no shades of jest. You mean it, bastard.
“But for my sins, I’ve been ordered to teach you swamp rats how to grow elba plants.” Blue bubbles mingled with the gardener’s cerise shades in a seething mass.
Like liquid boiling in a pan. Let’s get out of here before you spill over the rim.
“Gertha, lock the door, would you?” Ossek said. “Don’t want any swamp slugs running off with my plants.”
“We still have missing candidates,” Gertha said. “Shall I return them to the underlevel?”
“Gods, no. They’ve more sense than any in this group. I’d have been happiest if no one had turned up.” He lifted an apron from a peg and draped it over his neck. “Well! What are you swampers waiting for? Do I look like a junior barracks supervisor? I’m not your mother.”
Ossek’s disapproval raked over Landra like spike plant prickles. She claimed an apron from beneath her bench and fumbled with the tie.
“Copy me,” he said, selecting a pot from beneath his workstation. He filled it with soil, levelled it off, and set it down for everyone to see.
Landra stowed her frustration and set to work. With her pot half-filled and dirt covering her bench, the frail swamper woman to her side slammed a pot down. Infirmity and knotty joints hadn’t impeded her skill, and she’d finished first.
Ossek glared at the woman’s pot and then at her face. “Name?”
Careful, old girl. This man’s not your friend.
“Pitts, sir.”
“You’ve had garden training?” Ossek asked.
The oldster beamed. “Yes, Templer. I worked for Brenson out in Second City and did remote land trips in search of herbs.” Hope bloomed through her aged aura.
“Bah, you’re the worst,” Ossek said. “Think you know what you’re doing. Forget everything you learned, Pitts, because it’s no use here. The soil gives elba seeds somewhere to rest, that’s all. You could keep them in boxes and have the same success. Traditional gardeners never understand the process.”
Pitts’s face flushed, and her aura returned to desperate paleness.
Upending a packet, Ossek tipped a collection of seeds onto his bench. To Landra’s magic, the silver-white husks showed no signs of life, but the gardener’s Soul caressed them with pink shades of love.
Bet you’d swap any number of swampers for a single seed.
“The fools here think you have what it takes to wake elba plants,” Ossek said. “More likely, you’ll kill them.” The rumble in his throat came out as a growl. “Well? What are you waiting for? Come up and take a seed.”
As each swamper approached Ossek, his agitated aura brushed their boundaries. Several candidates trembled at the touch, and most returned to their spots with bleached-out auras and lax features. Only Felik’s shades deepened. Either the man hadn’t the sensitivity to absorb the gardener’s disdain or he relished the prospect of a fight.
Landra hardened her boundaries when it came to her turn. She darted in, finding it hard to block the Templer out completely, and disregard bombarded her Soul. The man didn’t hate swampers; she knew that now. He felt outrage, yes, and a little disgust. But wow, Ossek. We’re nothing to you. She staggered away, clasping the seed between two hands for fear she’d drop it.
Back at the bench, she turned the lifeless husk over in her palm, wondering why it was special. Ossek had called it an elba seed. Like… the portal trees? Surely not. How could something tiny grow so big? As her gaze tracked over the staffs displayed on the walls, the link seeped into her Soul. Elba staffs? The silvery seed color matched them perfectly.
“Your job is to make your elba seed germinates and grows shoots with nothing more than magic,” Ossek said.
“That’s imposs—” Jex started to say, but he gaped when a shoot broke through the soil in the gardener’s pot.
“How?” Jex asked.
“Freaking weird,” Dennark said.
For once, Landra agreed. She watched Ossek’s aura caress his young shoot with love.
“Proceed,” Ossek said, still admiring his new plant.
Landra pushed her seed into the soil and covered it. Hmm, what now? A quick glance at the other candidates saw them performing similar actions. Many stared at their plants, but others gazed around the room, confusion narrowing their eyes. She chose to join the staring group and glared at the spot where she’d pushed her seed into the soil. Grow. Hrmph. Sprout. Germinate. Just grow, will you? Shelk! Why isn’t it working? She needed to succeed, not least because failure threatened eviction. That was what she told herself. The rightful chief elect of the Jethran army couldn’t be interested in germ
inating a plant with magic and eventually growing it into a staff, could she?
The old fight awoke in Landra. She still resented magic, more than Ossek resented swampers, but survival depended on accepting its existence and even indulging it. What had she thought? That she could enter the temple with false intentions? That she could pretend or get away with minimizing her involvement? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. All in or death. She stopped thinking at her seed and lifted the pot up until it sat inside her aura.
Crashing sounds jerked her attention upward. Lindart chased his skidding pot over his bench, but a final lurch couldn’t stop it from falling over the edge. Soil and seed spilled. Lindart hurried around to rescue it, but his careless approach crunched his foot down on the seed.
“No,” Ossek bellowed.
To Landra’s Soul vision, the gardener’s bubbling aura burgeoned. It wasn’t controlled and looked more instinctive than deliberate, but that didn’t help the unlucky swampers caught inside his boundaries. They cowered and trembled as if besieged by a beast. Only Landra knew the source of their terror, and only she recognized the potential danger. She set her pot down and retreated to the wall, dragging Jex at her side.
Ossek’s aura glowed white hot as he danced in fury. It tinged to crimson and then erupted in an explosion of red. Landra barely had time to absorb the scene as swampers fell. She focused on her own limits too late, and the energy surge buffeted her aura. Her back thumped against the wall with teeth-rattling force. As if boneless, she slid down the wall.
“Get out!” Ossek shouted. “This is bad for my seeds. Gertha, send them all back to the swamp.”
Landra had to move. If there was any chance of eviction, she had to be ready for a fight. She couldn’t face that again. Going back to the underlevel was…horrific. And they’d send us naked. She’d barely survived when she went there fully supplied.