Thornbear (Book 1)

by Michael G. Manning

  Matthew appeared anxious. “It’s definitely unusual. Your emittance is very low, which is normal for most non-mages, but your capacitance is very high, like a wizard’s.”

  “I’m not even sure what those two terms you keep using mean,” admitted Gram. “Is it good or bad?”

  Matthew shrugged, “I’m not sure. Heck, we don’t even know what normal is. No one has ever studied the capacitance of normal people, it might not be that unusual, though I somehow doubt that.”

  “But what does it mean?” asked Gram, with extra emphasis.

  “Well, you can think of it like a wine bottle,” said Matthew, using the same analogy his father had years before. “The wine in the bottle is aythar, the magic, the energy that we all use. The mouth of the bottle is your emittance, it determines how fast the wine can flow into or out of the bottle. Your capacitance is how big the body of the bottle is, how much wine it can hold.

  “Your emittance was very low, probably typical for a regular person, but your capacitance was very high, too high to safely test like this. I stopped because I was starting to get tired, and I was beginning to worry that we might go too far,” explained Matthew.

  “What happens if you go too far?”

  Matthew lifted his shoulders again, “I dunno. You might catch fire, or explode, or lose your mind. It would probably be similar to what happens when one of my dad’s iron bombs is broken.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Oh,” said Gram.

  “Now that I know your relative abilities, I can start planning out the sword’s enchantment,” offered his friend.

  Gram nodded, “So I’m guessing you want me to go then?” He knew Matthew too well. His friend was already ready to return to his solitude so that he could start working on his project.

  Matthew smiled.

  “How long will I feel like this?” asked Gram. His body felt incredibly light, as though he were floating above the ground.

  “A few hours, or possibly a few days,” said Matthew, already looking down at his journal, his mind starting to drift. “Just be careful. It’s sort of like when someone gets an earthbond, except that this will wear off as the extra aythar dwindles away.”

  Gram nodded before crossing to the door. He reached out for the handle, and then things went to hell. Pulling gently, he was astounded when the door handle came away in his hand. The door itself shot back and struck the wall, rebounding to hang loosely in its frame. The sudden lack of resistance caused Gram to lose his balance, and he reached out to catch a low hanging beam to steady himself. Somehow his arm over shot its mark though and instead of his hand catching the beam, his forearm went through it.

  Pain shot through his arm, and he finished falling forward. He almost caught himself, but he stopped before his reflexes could cause any more trouble. He forced himself to remain still until after he had settled firmly onto the floor.

  “Holy shit!” exclaimed Matthew from across the room. “Stay still!”

  I figured that out already, thought Gram. In the back of his mind, he could remember a cold day, years and years past. His father had been training a newly minted Knight of Stone. “Imagine that everything is made of paper. Move slowly and touch everything as if you think it will fall apart. You’ll start to adjust in a day or two.”

  Matthew was examining the ceiling crossbeam that been broken. Wide-eyed, he glanced down, “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  “My arm,” said Gram. The limb in question was bent at an impossible angle and blood was dripping from several cuts. A long piece of something jagged and white was poking through the skin.

  “Oh, damn!”

  “We’re going to have to call your dad,” said Gram, remembering the first time that Matthew’s father had had to fix a broken arm for him.

  His friend stared into his eyes for a long moment while his mind struggled to process the situation. “No,” he said at last. “I can fix it. If we call him, he’s going to ask a lot of questions.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “Well, I’m nowhere near as good at it, but I can fix a bone and seal the skin,” said Matthew. “I think the rest will heal on its own. Dad tried to teach us as much as he could about healing.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Gram uncertainly. “I don’t want to be crippled.”

  Matthew’s confidence was gradually returning. “Yeah, I’m sure, and if I’m wrong, we can get Moira to look at it in a day or two. She’s got a better touch with this sort of thing.”

  “And if she mucks it up too?”

  Matthew gave him a wild look, “Then we’ll make you a new arm, a magic arm, forged from the finest steel and enchanted to have the strength of a dozen men!”

  “Oh lord,” groaned Gram. “Kill me first. Just do what you can.”

  “Alright,” said Matthew, biting his lip as he started using his senses to sort out what he would do first. “This is going to hurt.”

  “It didn’t hurt when your dad did it,” responded Gram with a mild sense of alarm.

  “Yeah,” nodded his friend. “He knows how to block the nerves to stop the pain. I still haven’t mastered that part.”

  “Why not?!”

  “It isn’t as if I get people to practice on every day,” said Matthew defensively. “…and some people seem to have an instinctive feel for it—unlike me,” he admitted.

  “Shit,” said Gram.

  It hurt a lot more than he expected, but Gram didn’t make much noise, keeping his teeth clenched and his mouth closed to muffle his involuntary grunts and cries. It took all his will to keep himself still until Matthew was done.

  Chapter 4

  Lady Rose Thornbear sat in the front anteroom of the family apartments she shared with her son, Gram and her daughter, Carissa. It was early, the sort of early that even morning people regard as rather extreme, but for Rose it wasn’t unusual.

  She sipped at her tea carefully, to avoid burning her lips. Some preferred to take their first tea near a window, to enjoy the morning sun, but she never bothered. The sky had barely begun to lighten with the first false dawn when she rose each day; there would be nothing to see. By the time the sun made its full appearance, she would have already finished her tea, dressed, and begun whatever tasks awaited her.

  “Morning, Mother,” Gram said quietly as he entered the room.

  He had come back late the night before, after she had taken to her bed, and now he was leaving before the dawn. That struck her as odd.

  “Good morning, sweet son of mine,” she replied. “Where are you headed so early?”

  “I thought I’d take a morning ride,” he said after an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation.

  Her expression never wavered, but Rose’s attention focused sharply on her son then. His prevarication was unusual, and it brought the rest of her mind away from its casual thoughts. Why is he lying?

  She had come to make certain allowances for his age. He was fifteen after all. Unlike most teenagers though, he had yet to try to hide much from his mother. He had inherited an abnormally strong streak of honesty from his father, which was probably for the best, since he was a terrible liar.

  It wouldn’t have mattered, though. Few people managed to slip a lie past Rose’s scrutiny.

  “Give your mother a hug before you leave then,” she told him. “I may not see you for the rest of the day.”

  Gram stopped and turned back, changing direction with a faint jerk in his step.

  He was hoping to get past me without getting too close, she realized, setting her cup on an end table as she rose to embrace him. Her son put one arm around her, keeping his right side away from her.

  She let him escape the hug, but his action had told her where to look. As he stepped away again, she took note of the bruising near his right wrist, almost hidden by his shirt cuff. Now that she knew what to look for, she also noted that the hand itself seemed to have some swelling.

  He was in a fight.

  Her mind leapt into action then, reviewing the
past day, and then the day before that. Before he had gotten more than a few feet distant, she had narrowed down the window of time in which his injury could have occurred. Yesterday, after midmorning, that was the last time I saw him, she thought, marking the time. He was off to see Matthew.

  She had seen the other boy later, and he had been fine. He wouldn’t have come away unmarked if he had been in a fight with Gram. She knew that for certain, wizard or not. It had to have been someone else, sometime after that. Mentally she reviewed everyone she had seen at the evening meal the day before.

  Gram’s left hand was on the handle when she finally spoke, “Do I need to be concerned about Master Grayson?” Her son twitched as the name left her lips.

  “Pardon?” he replied innocently.

  His reaction had already confirmed her suspicion. “Don’t play dumb, people might start to believe the act,” she responded, letting her irritation begin to show. She regretted the harsh words immediately, but didn’t let her weakness show. “I merely want to know if you need help with whatever you’ve gotten into. Do I need to do something about Master Grayson? Should I be concerned about your injury?”

  Gram’s face fell visibly. He had long ago learned it was nearly impossible to hide anything from his mother’s keen eyes, and he had known the moment she stopped him before he left that there was a good chance she would figure out he had been hurt. The fact that she had opened with Chad Grayson’s name was surprising, but he had grown accustomed to her deductions. He didn’t even bother trying to understand how she had made that connection.

  “No, Mother, I don’t want you to do anything about Master Grayson,” he answered, letting his bitterness show.

  “Watch your tone,” she warned.

  “Why bother, Mother? I could never hide anything from your intellect!” he shot back, letting his voice rise.

  Rose’s face was calm, featureless, a sure sign that he had roused her ire. “You might not want to bother to try fooling me, but if you don’t learn to control your emotions, you will someday find your enemies using them against you.”

  “And that’s important, right Mother?! The entire world is full of nothing but enemies? Do you ever listen to yourself? Is that how you like living, continually fearful, constantly watching the shadows?” Gram’s face had gone red, and he had thrown caution to the wind. In his short fifteen years, he had never spoken to her that way, now that he had crossed the line, he felt he might as well speak his mind.

  Her eyes narrowed, “Yes! It is important, very important in the world of politics, the world of diplomacy! Someday you’ll be the Hightower. Do you realize what that means?”

  The Hightower was the most important of Lady Rose’s titles, inherited from her father even though her own last name was now Thornbear. In function, it meant she was in charge of the city guard for the city of Albamarl as well as being primarily responsible for logistics and supply to the entire army of Lothion.

  “Of course I do! That’s all I hear from you and the tutors! And yet I hear nothing about learning to use a sword! Don’t you think the man in charge of so many soldiers should be taught at least the rudiments of swordplay?”

  “Are you suggesting that I would do a better job of it if I trained with a sword?” she asked coldly.

  “Certainly not. You’re already far too perfect, Mother,” he replied sarcastically, “but even Grandfather trained as a soldier before he came of age.” He was referring to her father.

  “And look what good it did him,” she spat, her fury beginning to erode her calm façade. “He was poisoned! His skill with a sword did nothing for him when the assassins came to finish the job! The finest weapon you will ever possess, is the one inside your thick skull.”

  “I’m not like you, Mother, don’t you understand? I will never think like you do. I can’t, no one can. As smart as you are, when will you realize that I am not a genius like you? I can’t read people’s minds the way you do, or play chess the way you do. The whole world is a game board for you, and you’re always three moves ahead, but someday you’ll be gone, and I’ll be left. And when I screw it up, which I will, the only thing that will be between me and a bad end, is going to be this!” He punctuated his statement by raising his clenched fist.

  A low growl came from Rose. “You will not grow up brawling and bleeding. That’s not what I want for you, and I promised your father as much.”

  “I don’t care!” shouted Gram. “He’s dead! This is my life to live!” Unable to contain himself any longer he pulled the door open and stepped out, slamming it behind him. His strength was still greater than normal, and it was all he could do to keep from breaking it.

  Once he had gone, Rose spent a long time staring at the door. Her face was wet and her normally organized mind was a tempest of raw emotions.

  ***

  He was almost to the stables when he crossed paths with Cyhan in the castle yard. Gram was moving with frantic energy evident in every stride. Whatever Matthew had done to him the day before still hadn’t dissipated, and though he tried to move slowly and gently it still gave his movements an element of violent energy.

  “Whoa! Where are you headed so early this morning, young Thornbear?” asked the large warrior as Gram passed.

  He stopped for the briefest of moments, struggling to rein in his anger. “I feel like a ride,” he answered curtly before continuing onward.

  Cyhan’s hand reached out, as if he meant to place it against the younger man’s chest, but Gram was no longer there. Moving almost too quickly to be believed, Gram sidestepped and pivoted, neatly avoiding the hand in his path and putting him beyond it. He kept walking.

  “I’m not in a mood for delays this morning, Sir Cyhan,” he said, using a distinctly unpleasant emphasis on the knight’s honorific.

  “We need to talk,” said the older man.

  “This isn’t the time,” said Gram, fighting to contain his frustration. Did she send him to talk to me? he wondered. Surely not, I came straight here.

  “The sun isn’t even up yet,” observed Cyhan.

  Gram had to stop to undo the latch on the gate that led into the interior of the stables. The momentary pause allowed the other man to catch up to him, and as he started to open the gate he felt Cyhan’s hand on his shoulder. Rolling his shoulder down, he spun, swatting the other man’s hand away with his injured arm. At least that’s what he had intended to do.

  Despite his injury, his arm moved far faster than he desired, and what had been meant as a brush off became a rapid swing. If his forearm had connected, the pain would have been memorable, but somehow Cyhan wasn’t quite there. The knight moved almost leisurely as he stepped to one side and took his torso out of Gram’s reach.

  “Easy boy,” he said calmly. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

  “Sorry,” said Gram, chagrined by his unintentional attack. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Cyhan’s eyes were steady as he watched the young noble. The older warrior’s imperturbable demeanor often gave the impression that somewhere inside, his heart and other vital organs had been carved of stone. “I know that,” he answered, “but as you are right now, it’s easy to make mistakes. You need to relax. Move slowly.”

  “I’m not drunk,” argued Gram.

  “Did you break that arm?”

  Startled by the question, Gram stared at him suspiciously. Though he was only fifteen he was nearly eye to eye with the man. “My arm’s fine.”

  “Really?” said Cyhan, reaching toward Gram’s right forearm.

  He jerked the limb back, almost striking the gate with his elbow in his haste. “It’s just a bruise,” he said, looking away.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Not the arm, the bond,” clarified Cyhan.

  “What?”

  “How many men do you think I’ve trained? I know the signs when I see them. You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin. You can barely keep yourself still. L
et me see that arm. You probably broke it and didn’t even realize.”

  “I don’t have a bond,” stated Gram truthfully. As far as he knew, no one had an earthbond anymore. Even Cyhan had eventually given his up when the side effects began to catch up to him.

  Cyhan considered and discarded several courses of action in the span of a few seconds. He didn’t want to make the situation worse, or spook the young man into hurting himself further. That left him with only one option. Words.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” he said slowly. “I’ve been there. Right now, your body is so full of power and strength that you feel like the world itself isn’t as real as you are. It’s always that way, until you get used to it. But what you may not realize is that the power can cause you to hurt yourself. Your muscles could rip themselves completely apart if you don’t stay calm.”

  “I don’t have a bond,” repeated Gram.

  “Show me the arm.”

  Gram stared at the knight, uncertain. Cyhan’s face was calm, and he exuded an aura of implacability, the kind of certainty that made him difficult to argue with. His once dark hair was now a mixture of dark and grey, which only served to reinforce the iron in his dark brown eyes. Gram carefully began to roll up his sleeve.

  He expected a hiss or an intake of breath, even a whistle of amazement, but Cyhan just studied the swollen limb without a word. Gram’s forearm was an ugly black and blue, and the swelling had doubled its size, making the skin look shiny in the early dawn light.

  “Fingers work? Make a fist,” ordered the knight.

  Gram did as he was told, doing his best to ignore the pain.

  “Turn your hand at the wrist,” commanded the older man, demonstrating by twisting his own fist back and forth.

  That hurt even more, but Gram managed it anyway.

  Cyhan’s eyes narrowed, “The bones are whole, but you broke it not long ago, didn’t you? Who fixed it, the same one who gave you the bond?”

  Gram closed his mouth.

  Cyhan almost smiled at that. The look of silent determination on Gram’s face reminded him so much of Dorian just then. Stubborn, just like his father. “You need to get someone who knows what they’re doing to look at that arm. As it is now, it will take weeks for you to recover proper use of it, assuming you don’t wind up with some permanent damage. I’d recommend Elaine or the Count.”