Soul Fire

by Legacy, Aprille

  “White sands stretching for miles,” Rain said with her eyes closed, a thousand years away. “Water so clear you can see the bottom of the ocean. And the Paw Islands have the most magnificent wildlife-“

  She was cut off by a bell.

  “I take it that means dinner is over,” Dena said, standing up. “Thank you for talking to us. This is all a bit new.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Our pleasure,” Petre said pompously. “See you tomorrow in class.”

  “I’m going to head to the stables,” I told Dena and Theresa. “Do you want to come with me?”

  Turned out they wanted to head to the library, which I was yet to investigate and so I headed to the stables alone. They were alight when I got there, soft light glimmering with no visible source.

  Echo was waiting for me as though she remembered my promise. Her ears flicked forward when she saw me, and when I produced the two carrots I’d stolen from the mess hall, she reached over to lift them neatly out of my outstretched palm. As she crunched on them, I let myself into her stall, pulling my hood off of my head and finger combing my hair. I was glad Larni had found me a cloak; the night was brisk with a taste of frost.

  Finished with the carrots, Echo began inspecting me to see if I had any more secreted on my person. I giggled as she whuffed my hair, nibbling bits of it.

  The sound of the stable door opening and closing made me remove Echo’s teeth from my hair. I peered around her, curious as to whom this visitor was.

  It was Phoenix.

  For some inexplicable reason, I hid. Because we were soul mates, his horse’s stall was right next door to Echo’s. I heard him pass the stall, inches above my head. Echo snorted at him as he passed.

  “Validus,” he murmured, and I frowned for a second until I realised that was what he’d called his horse. “It has been a strange day.”

  His horse whickered in reply. I heard the stall door open and close, and glanced up fearfully. Between each stall were wrought iron bars; I could see Phoenix standing next to his horse. If he looked down and saw me...

  I could just stand and announce my presence, I thought. But then it was weird, because I’d hidden. I decided it would be best to remain in the straw. Echo lowered her head to sniff me curiously.

  Phoenix remained there for the better part of an hour, murmuring to Validus, sometimes in English and sometimes in a language I didn’t understand; for the first time I noticed he had an accent unlike Ispin or Rain. I curled up in the straw, pulling my cloak over me. Beside me, Echo was beginning to go to sleep, bored with me. I felt my eyelids drooping, and after a while I noticed that I was alone in the stable with only slumbering horses for company.

  ~

  “No, the energy comes from the heart,” Yu snapped at us. “Your whole diaphragm. Use it!”

  I focussed once again on the target that I had been assigned. Yu was teaching us how to project our magic. This involved standing in a stance that was making my legs wobble and ache. I breathed deeply, feeling the magic in the air and strengthening my core.

  “From the heart!” Yu said, and gave the signal.

  I threw my right hand out towards the target, and in the final second before the magic left my body, infused it with all of the frustration I was feeling towards Phoenix and the whole situation of this world.

  A tongue of emerald flames erupted from my fingertips, roaring towards the target. It reached further than anyone else’s, and before I could blink, had reduced the wooden target to ashes.

  “Excellent,” Yu said, bouncing on the balls of his feet with his hands behind his back. “Just excellent. What’s your name again?”

  “Sky,” I replied, feeling the sheen of sweat on my brow. Wielding magic was just like exercise; it was exhausting.

  “Well, everyone else has homework but not you. You just continue your breathing exercises. Everyone else will report to this hall after your dinner tonight for extra classes.”

  Everyone groaned just as the bell rang to signal the end of class. Yu left quickly as everyone began to migrate towards their bags, and some of the other servants of the castle had come in to begin cleaning up. I had almost reached Dena and Theresa when someone spoke to me.

  “So... that was pretty impressive.”

  I turned around to face Eleanora.

  “Thank you.” I said stiffly.

  She tossed her hair, tilting her head on one side.

  “You know, you could almost be from this realm,” she said pensively. “You’re much better than any of the other humans.”

  “We’re not humans,” I said before I could stop myself. “We’re mages just like you.”

  “But you’re from the human realm.”

  “So?” I challenged. “Just because we’re from another realm doesn’t make us any less powerful than you.”

  The whole class was watching now. Any pretence of friendship that Eleanora had been projecting was gone.

  “Oh really? I bet you don’t even know what continent you stand on.”

  I inwardly thanked Petre for last night’s geography.

  “We’re on the continent Lotheria, in the state of Stanthor. The capital city is Castor, just south of us. To the west is Gowar, to the east is Abdoor and to the north is Orthandrell. From your accent, I’m guessing you’re from...” I recalled Ispin’s clipped words and swallowed vowels. “Gowar.”

  Silence had filled the hall. I saw Phoenix out of the corner of my eye watching along with everyone else.

  “So you found some books, big deal,” anger flashed in her violet eyes. “You’re still from the human realm and you’ll never ever be a true mage.”

  “Well if that means overlooking slavery, then I’m glad! I don’t want to be a true mage if that’s the case!”

  The servants stiffened, but they didn’t look up. The mages from the human realm were looking confused, whilst the local mages from Lotheria were puzzled that I’d even brought it up. I decided addressing the human mages would be best.

  “The servants who come to your room and wait on you, they don’t get paid,” I was looking around at the students, my hands outstretched and my heart beating frantically; I hated public speaking. “They get one day off every two weeks and no pay!”

  I heard a few outraged murmurs, and the servants left as quickly as they’d come. Phoenix wasn’t reacting at all; he just kept watching me.

  “It is our way of life,” Eleanora snapped, echoing Ispin from the night before.

  “It’s disgusting!” I replied angrily. “What makes you think that you’re better than everyone else? The fact that you can create fire and magical stuff? Please.”

  I turned around to leave, my palms slick with sweat. I was shaking with anger at Eleanora and the other Lotherian mages.

  “Sky!”

  Dena’s shout was the only warning I had before something hit me hard in the back. I went sprawling on my face.

  “You think you can just waltz in here and tell us how to live?” Eleanora was shouting. I picked myself up slowly from the ground. “This has been our way of life for thousands of years and one little brat from the human realm isn’t going to put a stop to it!”

  “You can bet your life that I will,” I said, and then lashed out.

  My magic hit her before she had a chance to block it. She fell back, onto the practice mat. Our class gave us a wide berth, and I could hear Dena trying to break it up. “Come on, guys, this isn’t good.”

  We both ignored her. Eleanora staggered to her feet, a snarl marring her perfect features.

  From the core.

  I hit her with everything I had and she went down again.

  “And now you think you’re oh so powerful because you’ve learnt that one move,” she snarled as she climbed to her feet again. I bounced on the balls of my feet, ready for whatever she had to throw at me. “I’ve been training ever since I was five years old to come to the Academy!”

  “Good on you,” I replied, watching her carefully.
“I haven’t trained at all.”

  Something lashed through the air. I saw something that looked like a whip made of violet fire just before it lashed me across the face.

  Pain, white hot pain burnt across my skin from where the whip had touched me. I fell to the ground, blinded. Eleanora was still yelling, but I couldn’t hear her properly through the ringing in my ears.

  Hands gripped my shoulders, pulling me back upright. I struggled, thinking it was Eleanora, but then they spoke into my ear.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Phoenix’s low voice made me freeze. That was three more words he’d spoken to me now.

  “Can you open your eyes?” There was no mistaking the concern in his voice.

  I cracked open one eye experimentally, but the other refused to open, already swelling. I could see that Eleanora had been restrained by three other mages, and Theresa and Yasmin were standing between us.

  “Ow,” I winced as pain shot across my head.

  “Sky!” Dena was at my side, supporting me. I felt Phoenix take a step back.

  “What is this?” I groaned as Iain strode across the practice mat. “Who is responsible?”

  I raised my hand cautiously. Eleanora did nothing for a moment but then did the same.

  “Detention this evening. Both of you!” he snapped furiously. “We do not tolerate any kind of misbehaviour in these walls.”

  He left as quickly as he’d arrived. I felt something run down my face, and when I lifted my fingers to touch my skin, they came away red with my blood.

  “You need to go to the infirmary,” Dena was saying. “You need to be treated.”

  “No, I’m fine. I’ll just head upstairs and wash off.”

  I shrugged her and Rain off, and then grabbed my satchel and left the hallway. I passed Phoenix on the way out, but he made no move to talk to me.

  Up in my room, I’d just started dabbing at my face gingerly with a cloth when Larni entered. She gasped and promptly dropped the stack of clean linen she’d been carrying.

  “Miss, are you alright? Why are you bleeding?”

  “A disagreement with a local mage,” I gasped with pain as the cloth brushed the open wound. Strong, cool fingers took the cloth from me and Larni took over cleaning the wound.

  “Sit,” she commanded, and I sat at the table. She dragged the other chair around close to me and began cleaning. “What was this about?”

  I fixed her with my one good eye.

  “Your wages.”

  The cloth stilled immediately.

  “Please don’t make a fuss about me, miss.”

  “Don’t call me miss,” I said, screwing up my face against the pain. “Call me Sky.”

  “Unscrunch your face,” she told me, and I did so. “Ok then... Sky. Please don’t make a fuss over the other servants and me. We’re perfectly happy as we are.”

  “Are you really?” I asked her.

  She dabbed the cloth in the water jug sitting on my table.

  “We are non-magi. We don’t get a say.”

  My stomach clenched as nausea rolled through, but whether it was from the pain or not, I couldn’t tell.

  “Please let me help you, Larni.”

  She didn’t reply and instead replaced the cloth on the table. She placed one finger on my jaw, near where the whip weal ended, and another finger just above my left eye, where the weal began. She closed her eyes, and a second later, the pain vanished altogether.

  “What did you just do?”

  She looked at me in disbelief.

  “I... I healed you,” she whispered, like she didn’t quite believe it herself.

  I touched my face, but any mark of the injury was gone.

  “Larni, you’re a mage!”

  “No, I’m not,” she stood up quickly and backed against the door. “My parents tested me when I was four! The tester said I didn’t have a trace!”

  “He got it wrong then,” I approached my mirror and examined my face. My skin was as unmarked as it was before.

  Larni fled before I could stop her.

  ~Chapter Six~

  I kept touching my face as I descended the stairs. My skin was as smooth as it had been before Eleanora’s whip. When I reached the bottom of the steps, my classmates were filing out of the doors. Dena and the others saw me coming down the stairs and waited for me to catch up.

  “Your face!” Ispin said when I got closer. “What about it?” I asked, trying to reign in all kinds of sarcastic responses.

  “It’s healed!”

  “Well I hope it’s an improvement on before,” I said, and then, eager to get off of the topic, “Where are we headed now?”

  “Riding lessons,” Dena said, still examining my eye suspiciously. “Should be interesting.”

  It was. The sun was burning down, and the stables were even hotter. We spent the first half an hour in there, learning how to take care of the tack and our horses. After polishing leather for what felt like half of my life, aching with muscles I didn’t know I had, we were allowed to lead our horses to the paddock beside the stables, and mount.

  I managed to get my left foot in the stirrup, but I was too short to hoist myself off of the ground. After a few seconds of struggling, our teacher, Professor Alena, gave me a leg up, and I sat up proudly in the saddle. To my dismay, I realised that I’d been the last one to achieve this, and everyone was having a laugh at my struggle.

  Everyone except Phoenix, who stared blankly ahead. I pulled a face at him when he turned away, and then immediately felt childish.

  Once we’d managed to get lined up, Professor Alena began to instruct us in how to communicate with our horses. When we began to negotiate a course made out of old barrels at a walking pace, I noticed everyone else had to dig their heels in to convince their steed to move. Echo seemed more than eager to move off, and I adjusted my weight as I needed to. We manoeuvred the course with the most ease out of everyone and I was feeling a little better about myself when we were told to dismount. I did so, not very gracefully, my legs almost buckling when they hit the ground. The sun was beginning to set, but even so, we groomed our horses and cleaned the tack and then limped back to the Academy for dinner.

  Classes didn’t really end when dinner did. My classmates set off to the practice hall to redo their lesson with Professor Yu, and Eleanora and I were assigned to the kitchens.

  “Wash these,” the red faced head cook told us, pointing us towards a staggering stack of dirty dishes. “Clean enough so you can see your reflections. I’ll be the judge of whether they’re clean or not. No magic.”

  She bustled off to yell at someone else, and Eleanora and I set to cleaning the dishes, avoiding looking at each other. After an hour, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Do you really think yourself above them?” I asked her quietly, beginning to dry the plate she handed me.

  “It is how we’ve lived,” she repeated. “For thousands of years.”

  I didn’t try to speak to her again. I knew it was pointless.

  ~

  I was just opening the door to my room when I heard my name being called. “Sky!” I glanced around and saw Dena poking her head out of her room. She waggled a cloth covered parcel. “I’ve got food!”

  I grinned and closed my door. After a gruelling two hour detention in the kitchen, I was starving.

  We spread the cloth out over the floor of her room, which was a carbon copy of mine. Rather than sit at the table, we sprawled out on the rug. Dena lit the fire and we chewed pensively on cheese and bread rolls.

  “How was detention?” she asked, tearing a bread roll in half.

  “Boring. I tried to reason with Eleanora again but she just ignored me.”

  “It’s understandable,” Dena said, and I glared. She sighed. “Sky, if they really have lived this way for thousands of years, they’re not going to change their minds overnight.”

  I sighed heavily, picking a bit of cheese apart.

  “Where’s Theresa?” I asked f
inally.

  “Asleep. She didn’t much feel like staying up.”

  I began to build something out of the cheese.

  “What’s it like having a soul mate?” I asked quietly.

  “It’s fantastic! Have you ever had a really good friend that seemed to know everything you were thinking?”

  “No.”

  “Well it’s like that. We never fight,” she leant back on her hands. “It’s great. It really is.”

  My heart sank and the cheese structure in front of me crumbled. Dena noticed my expression.

  “He was worried about you today.”

  “Yeah, for a split second. Then he just went back to normal.”

  Dena didn’t reply, and we sat together in silence until I left, unable to take the silence any longer.

  ~ The next morning, instead of sitting with Dena and the others, I put my tray down in front of Phoenix and sat down.

  “Hi, hey, hello,” I said, beginning to eat. “Remember me? I’m your soul mate.”

  He observed me for a few moments and then went back to eating.

  “Of course I remember who you are.”

  We ate in uncomfortable silence for a few moments.

  “Look, have I done something wrong?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “So why don’t you talk to me then? You’ve hardly spoken a dozen words to me!”

  He continued eating. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to reply at all, he said:

  “I don’t make friends very easily.”

  “So why don’t you even try?” I asked, giving up all pretence of being interested in my food. “You’re giving off a pretty bad vibe.”

  “Leave me alone, Sky.”

  That stung. To my surprise, tears burnt in my eyes, and I stood up hastily, lest he spot them.

  “Fine. Wish granted.”

  The next week passed with little change. Phoenix still ignored me, Eleanora remained cold and Larni still refused to let me speak to Netalia or Iain on her behalf.

  I continued getting fitter and my magical skills continued to be honed. It was a relief when Iain announced that this weekend we’d be allowed into Keyes.

  “You’ll ride into town and spend the day exploring the local culture. Of course, you’re welcome to stay here if you wish.”