Only the wrought iron and carvings of twisted vines on the doors gave it a more refined appearance. But the door flashed past even more quickly than the large courtyard had done, so I had no opportunity to examine the carvings in any more detail.
In the corridors of the Academy, young people hurried past us dressed in the white robes of trainees. I tried not to stare at them. I had never felt so out of place, despite most of them looking close to my age.
Jasper had been the only Kingslee resident in living memory to be accepted to the Royal University, but no one from our mage-less town had ever become a trainee. Because while perfect recall could—with great effort—allow you to keep up in academic studies with those who could actually read and write, nothing but blood could bestow on someone the ability to control the flow of power.
Impossible. The word still echoed through me. I was impossible.
All of the trainees watched our passage with interest, but only one stood out to me. Perhaps because he looked uninterested compared to the rest—haughty, disdainful, above curiosity. I had never seen anyone who so perfectly fit my mental image of a mage.
And perhaps that was why his dark, almost black, hair and intense green eyes remained seared in my mind after I was tugged out of his path. Even the loose waves of his hair held themselves perfectly in place, as if they wouldn’t dare to cross his will. They stood out beside the more close-cropped style that the other boys we passed seemed to prefer.
The mage with me showed no interest in the trainees with the exception of the green-eyed boy. He received a nod on the way past which only heightened my curiosity. But all thoughts of others dissipated when I was propelled into what appeared to be some sort of waiting room and told to sit in no uncertain terms.
“And don’t move.” The mage disappeared through a door on the other side of the room. He didn’t bother to close it completely behind him, so snippets of voices floated out to me, although I could see nothing. I tried not to shake as my mind raced through all the unknown possibilities of what might happen next.
“My dear Romulus, I didn’t expect to—”
“Student? I don’t think…”
“…not my problem…keep a tighter rein on them, Lorcan…”
The door swung back open, and the red-robed mage reappeared. He moved quickly across the room, his stride pausing briefly as he passed me. But he apparently decided I wasn’t worth any words, only shaking his head before continuing on.
“Come,” commanded the second voice from inside the room, sounding weary despite the still-early hour of the morning.
I looked around, but there was no one else in sight. I couldn’t pretend he didn’t mean me. Rising shakily to my feet, I drew a deep breath and walked through into the next room.
A magnificent study at least four times the size of the waiting room appeared. It had tall windows that looked out over the rear of the Academy and bookshelves that lined two of the walls. Despite the anxiety that gripped me, my eyes were drawn to them instantly. So many books. So many words. I couldn’t even imagine…
“You are not one of my students.” The astonished voice snapped my attention to where it should have been from the start—the man behind the broad mahogany desk.
He wore a black robe, as did the instructors at the University. I could only assume he must be the head instructor here at the Academy. Lorcan, I thought the other mage had called him. His gray eyes gave life to his lean frame and face, assessing me with a curious expression.
I forced myself to stand straight and tall. My family was relying on me. If I stepped wrong here, we could all suffer the consequences. If the mages decided our family had been reading, they wouldn’t hesitate to execute us all.
“No. I tried to tell the other mage that, but…”
Lorcan frowned. “Romulus has never been one to listen much to others. I remember when he was a trainee here himself, and—” He cut himself off. “I’m not surprised he wished to be done with you at the first opportunity.”
He stood suddenly, bracing himself with both hands on the desk and fixing me with a look that caused me to fall back a step, despite my intentions.
“But he has always been more than competent with his compositions. He told me he used one, and that you were the source of that surge of power we felt last night. Your age made him assume you were a runaway student of mine.” He shook his head. “No student has ever run from the Academy.”
His look turned calculating. “And you are no student of mine. Nor have you ever been. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.” I refused to back down again. I needed to make this man understand that I had done nothing wrong…That I had certainly not intended anything wrong, at any rate.
“Sixteen? Then you should be here. Who are you?”
“I’m Elena. Elena of Kingslee. My parents are shopkeepers there, and—”
“Impossible!”
I gritted my teeth. I was fast becoming sick of that word.
“Impossible,” he repeated. “There are no mage families in Kingslee. Do not lie to me, girl.”
“I’m not lying!” The words came out more heated than I had intended. “I swear to you that I have never set foot beyond the bounds of Kingslee in my life. I am no mage. Nor do I know anything of reading or writing.”
Lorcan held my eyes for a long moment and then collapsed back into his seat.
“Perhaps Romulus has grown lax now that he is no longer under my tutelage, and you were not the source of the working, after all. I suppose I shall have to work a composition of my own.”
He withdrew a tiny scroll from the top drawer in his desk. It looked much like the one Romulus had produced hours earlier, although I couldn’t see the words. He ripped it with tidy precision, letting the pieces fall into a small receptacle on his desk.
I expected to see the same glittering dust as Romulus had produced, but instead a gust of wind swept from Lorcan across the room. It bore down on me with eerie precision, swirling around me and whipping out my hair, so that the long brown waves danced around me.
Lorcan’s eyes widened, and he stirred restlessly. Then, muttering under his breath, he produced a key from a chain around his neck and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. For a moment his fingers flicked through the hidden contents, and then he withdrew another small scroll and another, each no taller than one of my fingers.
He picked up one of them but paused with it in his fingers, his eyes once more on me.
“This is a valuable truth composition, Elena. I will be most displeased if you cause me to waste it.”
I swallowed. “I’m telling the truth. My Lord.” He probably had a more lofty title than the generic one awarded to all mages, but I still didn’t know his official position.
His eyes narrowed again, and then he ripped the scroll in one clean movement. This time, instead of discarding the pieces, he let them fall to the surface of the desk. A golden glow surrounded them, and his eyes fixed on it rather than me.
“Your name?” he asked, although he had called me by it.
“Uh…Elena.”
The glow didn’t change, and he nodded once. “Now I need you to lie. What is your age?”
Lie? But he had just told me to tell the truth. “Sixteen? My Lord. I don’t…”
He shook his head impatiently, his eyes still on the torn scrap of parchment. “A lie, I said, girl. A lie.”
“Oh. Um, fifteen?”
This time the glow darkened, turning a sickly, oily black. I shuddered. After a moment it returned to its previous gold, and I realized we had been conducting a test of the enchantment itself.
“Well then, all seems to be in order.” Lorcan looked up and pierced me with a curious look, as if I were a phenomenon he had been called upon to study. Which, I supposed, I was.
I licked my lips. That had been the test of the enchantment. Now began the test of me.
“Who are your parents?” he asked, his eyes flicking back to the glow.
“My
parents are shopkeepers in Kingslee,” I said, my own eyes fastened on his desk. “As were their parents before them. Shopkeepers and farmers.”
When the light remained golden, Lorcan drew in a sharp breath.
“Do you have any mages in your ancestry of which you are aware?”
I shook my head.
“Out loud, girl.”
“No.”
He frowned at the still-golden glow. “That you know of,” he muttered to himself. “It only proves that you speak the truth as you know it.” He looked up. “But that raises a more important question. If you were raised the daughter of a village shopkeeper, how did you learn to read and write?”
I drew myself up. “I cannot read or write. I have never attempted to do so. I have never had more than a passing glimpse of words in my life. I am not so treasonous—nor so foolhardy.”
The glow remained a steady gold.
“It cannot be. It cannot.” Lorcan fell back into his chair and raised a hand as if to sweep the scraps of parchment from his desk. A hand that shook.
But he stopped himself and looked at me again.
“Both Romulus and I worked separate compositions. The power cannot lie. It clings to you. Perhaps we were wrong when we felt control within the working. Perhaps…” His eyes fastened on the second parchment still tightly scrolled on his desk. “I had hoped not to use…But this…This is…”
He scooped up the second roll and ripped it with shakier hands than previously. I only just stopped myself from stepping backward again. It must be a powerful and valuable enchantment if he was so reluctant to use it. Or was it merely a painful one?
But no sooner had the terrifying thought crossed my mind than a bright light shot out and enveloped me. For a moment I couldn’t see anything amid the brightness, and then it faded—or rather moved—from me to an empty part of the room.
Images appeared in the light, and I swayed, gasping. Lorcan gestured me to one of the chairs facing his desk without taking his eyes from the scene playing out before him.
The figures were insubstantial and smaller than in real life but clear all the same. I watched in horrified fascination as my father grappled with Murphy, and I stood off against the crowd. I could see the flicker of the flames on their torches and see the anger and fear in their expressions. No sound accompanied the images, but the scene didn’t need sound to make clear what was happening.
I saw the man stretch back his arm to throw his torch, and I saw my own mouth form the word, “Stop.” And then I saw a silvery wave—the power visible as it had not been in real life—burst out from me and sweep over the men, freezing them in place. It held for a long moment while the image of me looked around in astonishment, and then it shattered, blowing back against me and sending glass shards flying.
I clenched my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms. It looked different from the outside. I looked confused and scared, as I remembered being. But I also looked…powerful. I could think of no other word for it. I stared at my own image until the light faded and the room around me returned to normal.
“That was incredible,” I said softly, forgetting for a moment where I was and who I was with.
“No.” And now it was Lorcan’s voice that carried fear and confusion. “It was impossible.”
I looked across the desk, and our eyes held.
“What I just saw was completely impossible. I was watching your hands the entire time. You wrote nothing. Neither did you release a stored composition.”
“I told you.” Somehow his confusion made my own voice more certain, more sure. “I have never written a word in my life. All I did was say stop. I have no idea how it happened.”
“Impossible,” he muttered again. “It is impossible to access the power without the written word. Just as it is impossible that you—a non-blood shopkeeper’s daughter—can control it at all. And yet…”
His eyes wandered the room before fastening on the golden glow that still hovered above his desk. His gaze sharpened and steadied.
“Have you ever accessed power before? Have you ever done a working of any kind?”
I shook my head and then remembered I had to speak aloud.
“No. I have never dreamed of such a thing.”
“What about your family? Have any of them ever—”
I cut in before he could finish. “No. No one in my family can read or write. No one in my family can compose. No one has ever even considered it.”
He swept up the still glowing fragments of parchment into his fist, crushing them and the glow with them. He dropped them into the same receptacle as previously, and then ran a hand across his eyes.
“And you are sixteen. The age at which our ability to control power finally stabilizes. A coincidence? Perhaps. Further study will be needed.” He gave a hollow laugh. “ A great deal of further study. They shall wish to know of this at the University, of course. Perhaps there are ancient records.” He sat up straight. “And the palace. I must—”
He broke off abruptly when he noticed me still sitting in the chair across from him.
“But first, what am I to do with you?”
“Let me go home?” I asked because I couldn’t resist.
He actually laughed. “If only it were that simple. No, you are a marvel, Elena. Something unseen, something…” He shook his head. “You cannot understand what this could mean. But while you may be something new, you are also something I have seen many times before. An untrained sixteen-year-old with the power to destroy a great many more people than just yourself. You must be trained, taught to control the power.” He drummed his fingers against the desk. “And this is the role of the Academy. No one can dispute it. Oh, I have no doubt the University will try…”
He looked up suddenly, a twinkle in his eye. “No, your place is here. Welcome to first year at the Royal Academy of the Written Word, Elena of Kingslee.”
Chapter 5
I still hadn’t properly processed his words when I found myself in a large room on the opposite side of the ground floor, being handed a pile of white material.
“If you need more robes, come to me,” said the girl who had delivered them into my arms after taking my measurements with her eyes. “This should be enough, though.” She smiled at me. “We don’t usually have any late starters, so you’re fortunate I have so many left. But it’s an unusually small intake this year, so I have more robes than I know what to do with.”
Unable to form words, I managed to nod an acknowledgment before the male servant who had led me here gestured me back out of the room.
“It’s true enough,” he said as we approached a broad staircase and began to climb. “There are only eleven first years, if you can believe it.” He paused and glanced at me apologetically. “Twelve, sorry. I was forgetting for a moment.”
“I’m not…”
“Not a first year?” He chuckled. “Well you’re certainly not a second year. None of the years are that big, I assure you. I know all the students by name.”
I tried again. “I’m not a mage.”
That earned another chuckle. “Well, not yet, of course. That’s why you’re here, after all. My name is Damon, and I’m the head servant here at the Academy. You need something, you come to me. I’ve been watching over trainees for two decades now, and I’ve never encountered a problem I couldn’t solve.”
He winked at me, and I attempted a tremulous smile in return. No wonder he was so relaxed despite believing me to be from one of the mage families. But how would he react when he learned the truth? I couldn’t imagine it would take long for word to sweep through the Academy, despite its size.
“So, being a small year,” he continued, “you can have your pick of rooms. Well, not quite that, of course, since the other eleven are already settled. Ten, I should say. His Highness gets a suite in the fourth year wing.” He winked at me. “Have to be some advantages to being royal, I suppose.”
His Highness? My already whirling mind spun further off c
ourse. He could only mean Prince Lucas. But…
I clutched my bundle of robes tighter. I thought I remembered the prince being a year older than me. Surely he wasn’t a first year. Surely Lorcan was not expecting me to actually join the ranks of these mage children. To pretend I was one of them. To study alongside the prince.
But Romulus’s veiled threats still whirled around my mind, along with Lorcan’s promise that the most powerful among them would wish to study me. Who knew what fate I might bring on my family if I refused to comply with their plan—however insane it might be?
And for now I was alive. Which meant I still had a chance of reaching eighteen and enrolling for the army. I still had a chance to save Clementine. So I needed to smile and nod and comply.
I swallowed. I had never been good at that. Shock had helped me so far, but I knew Jasper would laugh at the idea that I could keep up the mask for any length of time. I could almost hear him in my mind and feel his hand ruffling my hair.
As soon as you see some injustice, you won’t be able to bite your tongue. I know you.
But I refused to believe his phantom voice. I could do this. I had to do this.
Apparently Damon had continued to speak because he fixed me now with a questioning look.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t catch…”
“Don’t worry,” he said, lowering his voice. “You’re not exactly the first nervous newcomer I’ve shown to their room, though most of them try to hide it. The mages have yet to compose a working that will get rid of nerves.” He chuckled again. “And a good thing, if you ask me. Best to be on your toes at the Academy.”
I swallowed, and my eyes must have widened, because his lips twitched.
“You’ll be fine, My Lady.”
I shook my head quickly. “It’s just Elena.”
He smiled broadly. “That’s the spirit. Now would you prefer a larger room, or a room with a view? The back ones are on the smaller side, but the windows look out over the rear of the Academy.”
Voice of Power (The Spoken Mage Book 1) Page 4