by ML Spencer
Markus let go of him, and Aram forced himself to kneel in the center of the room. As he went down, a terrible fire shot up his leg, but he bit his lip to keep from whimpering, squeezing his hands into trembling fists.
Someone came up behind them and drew a sword, sweeping it down before their necks in a threatening gesture that made Aram go rigid with fear. His breath hitched, his eyes widening. Suddenly, the pain in his leg was forgotten.
“Who comes here?” asked a woman.
The first man responded, “Markus Galliar and Aramon Raythe, if it pleases the Synod.”
Another voice rang off the harsh marble walls, “Why do they come?”
Silence.
None of the other voices responded. A bead of sweat rolled from Aram’s brow, trickling down his temple. He wanted to look at Markus but didn’t dare turn his head. He knelt there for long moments, his heart racing faster every second. It took him a long time to realize they were waiting for him to speak.
Raising his voice, Aram said, “Great Masters, we have come before you to request that you welcome us into your company as ones who wish to be bound to this mighty Order.’”
He said the words without faltering, his voice composed and steady. It was the first time in his life he remembered being able to speak without stuttering in front of a group of people, and he was so relieved, he felt like falling over backward.
The sword retracted. Behind him, he heard the rasp of the blade sliding back into its scabbard, then the door to the chamber closed with an echoing thud.
The man standing before the altar wore a look of severe authority. He was of middle years, with a thin, hawklike nose and dark hair that receded back to a high widow’s peak. He stood facing them with his back to the altar.
Aram waited, gazing down at the smooth white marble of the floor, shivering in the dreadful cold of the chamber. He could feel all their eyes upon him, boring through the thin shirt he wore. Silence suffused the chamber, one moment bleeding into the next. He waited, dreading what was to come, all the while longing to just have it all done and over with.
The man before the altar spread his hands. “It is a grave thing you ask, for if you bind yourselves to this Order, know that it is for the duration of your lives. Do you wish to be, all the days of your life, a serf and slave of this Order?”
Aram wanted to follow his father’s advice and tell them the truth: that he didn’t want to join their Order because all he ever wanted was to become a sailor. But the words of Ando Nambe gave him pause. The memory of the evil old man he had met in the infirmary sealed his decision. He did not want his wings plucked.
“Yes, Lord,” Aram said at the same time Markus did.
“And will you leave behind your own will and do what your masters order?”
“Yes, Lord,” they answered together.
“Do you swear that, henceforth, all the days of your life, you will be obedient to the Revered Master of the Exilari and whatever masters be put over you?”
Aram drew in a deep breath and glanced at Markus. “Yes, Lord.”
The man before the altar intoned, “Then we, the Eternal Order of the Exilari, welcome you both as brothers to our household. And we also promise you much pain and suffering.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The doors to the Synod chamber closed behind them. Aram stared straight ahead, sweat dripping from his forehead, holding onto Markus’s arm like a drowning man clinging to a branch. His leg throbbed horribly from kneeling on it, almost as though it were festering again. He clenched his jaw and bore the pain in silence, though it took every scrap of willpower he had.
Ando Nambe stood before them. “You are now both servants and slaves of the Order. There are many things you must learn, and you have been assigned a mentor to teach you. Every moment of your life now belongs to him. Everything he tells you to do, you must do, no matter how taxing or repugnant the task. You will think only what he tells you to think and have no further thoughts of your own.”
Aram was only vaguely listening, for his leg hurt too much to focus on anything else. It throbbed in time to his pulse, every other beat sending a spike of pain into his thigh bone. All he wanted in the whole world was to return to Small House and lay down in his cot. Or at the very least, sit on the cool tile floor.
“It is now time for lunch,” Ando Nambe continued. “After lunch is training in the practice yard. After that, you shall work with your mentor.”
“Who’s our mentor?” asked Markus.
“I am,” said a voice behind them.
Startled, Aram turned to find Sergan Parsigal standing behind them, and Aram’s stomach twisted at the sight of him. The sorcerer was carrying a wooden crutch, which was little more than a knotty tree branch with a curved piece of wood fitted to one end. He walked toward them smiling one of his contemptuous grins.
Aram turned his face away, unable to look at him. Sergan stopped in front of them and set a finger under Aram’s chin, directing his gaze up and into his own. Aram looked away, unable to tolerate the dizzying colors of his aura, which made his skin prickle.
“It’s considered respectful to look someone in the eyes when they speak to you,” admonished Sergan.
Aram groaned audibly, for the request gave him more discomfort than the pain in his leg. Nevertheless, he forced himself to stare straight ahead into the sorcerer’s face—although he relaxed his eyes on purpose, letting his vision go blurry, which helped a little.
“That’s better.” Sergan nodded, stepping back. Crossing his arms, he appeared to be considering both boys. “Markus, I’d like to work alone with Aram today, so go ahead and start your classes. Go with Ando Nambe. Aram will catch up with you later.”
“Yes, Sergan,” Markus said, glancing worriedly at Aram before walking away.
“Stop,” the sorcerer called after him.
Markus glanced back.
“I know I told you to call me Sergan, but that’s not going to work anymore. Now that you’re my apprentices, a certain amount of decorum is required. From now on, call me ‘Lord Parsigal’ or ‘Exilar.’ Either will suffice.”
Markus gulped. “Yes, Lord Parsigal.”
Sergan smiled. “That’s better.”
As Markus left with Ando Nambe, Aram felt his chest grow cold, for he didn’t want to be left alone with the evil man. Stepping forward, Sergan offered him the crutch.
“Put this under your arm.”
Aram obeyed, shifting his weight onto the crutch.
“Your other arm.”
“Oh.” Aram transferred the crutch to his other side and nearly fell over.
The sorcerer caught him quickly. “Now, try to walk.”
With Sergan’s help, Aram took a couple of unstable steps before realizing that he had to move his bad leg at the same time as the crutch. When he finally had it down, Sergan let go and motioned toward the hallway.
“Normally, I’ll be conducting classes in my quarters, but since it would take too much effort to get you up three flights of stairs, for now, we’ll meet down here in the study rooms. Follow me.”
He set off down the tiled corridor. Aram came along behind, following him as quickly as he could, swinging his leg and leaning heavily on his new crutch. It didn’t take too many steps before the piece of wood under his arm started to chafe. But the sorcerer didn’t slow for him, instead making Aram push himself faster to keep up. Fortunately, they didn’t have far to go. Sergan opened up a door halfway down the hallway and motioned him inside.
The room within was almost cozy, lined with bookcases and warmed by its own hearth. There were three chairs along the walls, and Sergan pulled two out into the middle of the room, motioning Aram to sit.
He went to a table beside the hearth, upon which two ceramic mugs and a plate of cheese awaited. Selecting one of the cups, he moved to the fireplace and removed a poker that had been resting within the spread of glowing coals. Without preamble, he plunged the red tip of the poker into the mug, holding it there un
til steam rose from the liquid within. Then, with a cavalier smile, he handed the steaming cup to Aram, repeating the act for a mug of his own before replacing the poker and sliding into the chair across from him.
Aram stared down at the frothy white mixture in his cup, considering the liquid dubiously. He lifted it to his lips and almost gagged from the sweetness of it.
“What is it?” he asked, screwing his face into a twisted grimace.
Seeing his expression, Sergan grinned. “Just drink it. It will help with the pain. Now. Let’s get down to business. First, I want you to understand that you’re lucky to be sitting here in front of me. Normally, the Order doesn’t take in people like you. Instead, we use them for other purposes. Terrible purposes. And I don’t think you’d like that. So. I need you to work harder than any other initiate has ever worked before and impress the hell out of everyone here. I need to prove to the Synod that you’re worth more than your weight in essence. Understand?”
“Yes,” Aram whispered.
“Yes, Lord Parsigal.”
“Yes, Lord Parsigal,” Aram muttered, staring deeply into the mug full of awfulness.
“Better.” The sorcerer took a large gulp of his own beverage, as though to drive home a point. “Keep drinking. It’s better while it’s warm.”
Aram lifted the cup to his lips, taking another sip of the toe-curling concoction. His gaze wandered around the walls of the room, which were softened with dark tapestries of battle scenes. The stones and ceiling above the hearth were darkened by soot, and the whole room had an aged smell to it that wasn’t unpleasant, like a combination of dust and old leather.
“Let’s talk about the dragon.” Sergan sat back, draping one leg over the other. “It’s what we call a void walker—or void dragon, in this case—because, at some point, it got trapped in the void between this world and its converse.”
“The counter-world?” Aram asked, remembering a line from the bard’s ballad.
Sergan nodded, his eyebrows rising as though he were surprised that Aram would know anything about it. “Yes. It’s called the World Below. There are dragons down there. Real dragons. The one you encountered was just a memory of the real thing.”
“It was hungry,” Aram muttered.
Sergan’s face took on a pinched look that Aram couldn’t interpret.
“Yes,” the sorcerer said carefully. “It was hungry. You gave those creatures what they needed, and that’s why they went away.”
Aram took another sip of his drink, more to avoid the sorcerer’s eyes than any desire to taste the liquid.
“You have an exceptionally rare talent,” Sergan went on. “You are what we call a True Savant. You have the natural ability to see the fibers that make up the world in color, and you can bend them to your will. The last person who could do that—that we know of—lived four centuries ago.”
Aram realized he was trembling. He didn’t know when he’d started, but the longer the sorcerer spoke, the harder he trembled. He’d known all along that most people couldn’t see the colors he could, but he hadn’t realized that no one could. No wonder he brought heartache to everyone he knew. He was born different—and it wasn’t a good kind of different. It was a dangerous kind.
Sergan went on, “Usually, when we find a new initiate capable of becoming a sorcerer, we partner them with a mentor who can teach them what they need to know. Unfortunately, there’s no one alive who can teach you magic, because you’re not a sorcerer. You see, sorcerers can perceive the aether, but we lack our own essence, that necessary spark which makes touching it possible. You, on the other hand, have been Gifted with both sight and essence—and even more than that, you can see the threads of aether in color, which I cannot. You’re a very rare thing, and that’s why they gave you to me. I specialize in finding rare things. Like you, for instance. But also the information we need that might help you learn your craft.”
Standing, he walked across the room to the small table in the corner. From there, he picked up a large leather-bound text with loose pages and a cover that had split from the rest of the binding. Sitting down with it in his lap, he took the worked leather cover off and gently set it aside.
“A long time ago, when I was studying in the College’s libraries, I came across this old book. It’s an excellent primer on nodomancy, which is what we call the type of magic you do—basically weaving the filaments of aether.”
He opened the text to the first page, upon which was a masterful illumination depicting rows of interwoven knots. Every knot on the page was woven from one single gold strand, elaborately crossed to form swarming designs, each knot set against a panel of brilliant colors. Aram’s gaze traced the page, his eyes drinking in the beauty of it.
“To understand nodomancy, we need to understand the nature of a knot,” explained Sergan. “It’s simply a bend in a string. The more you bend the string, or cross the string over itself, the more complex the knot becomes. Theoretically, the power of a nodomancer is limitless, given that there are infinite knots, and each knot can have several permutations. The only thing that limits a nodomancer is his vocabulary of knots and his fluency at tying them.”
Sergan gestured at the decrepit tome in his hand, its parchment riddled with worm traces. “This book is a study of the only other Savant we have good records of. His name was Daymar Torian, and he lived four hundred years ago. We captured him and kept him confined here at the College for over a hundred years. Some of the members of our Order found him a fascinating subject. This manuscript was the result of their ‘conversations.’”
He turned the heavy book around in his lap and tilted it so that Aram could study the handwritten manuscript. “It says here that the fibers of the world—Torian called them ‘strands’—can be distorted by stretching, twisting, crumbling, and bending.”
He scooted his chair around so that Aram could look on as he traced the strange, elaborate script with his finger. “It’s a lot like tying knots with cord. There’s always one, best knot for every job. Same thing for magical knots.”
Hearing that, Aram sat forward, his mind spinning. He felt a profound stirring inside, for everything Sergan said was hitting home. For the first time in his life, he had an inkling as to why he was the way he was … and it was a powerful revelation. A vindicating revelation.
Sergan turned the page, pointing to a large, artfully-penned diagram of many different types of knots. Aram leaned forward, entranced, staring at the diagram with a growing feeling of exhilaration that tingled his skin. The parchment that had been used was not the best, for it still retained dark hair follicles from whatever animal it had been cut from. It made the delicate ink strokes harder to read. But even still, that diagram of knots was the most beautiful piece of art that Aram had ever seen.
“This is a table of knots,” Sergan went on. “It categorizes aethereal knots by function, likening them to knots made with cord. This first picture shows knots that are like rope hitches. Like this one here”—he pointed at one of the tediously composed diagrams.
“An anchor bend,” said Aram, his eyes swimming with joy. The book had classified the knot correctly for, technically, it was a hitch and not a bend. His stomach twinged with excitement.
Sergan smiled. “That’s right. Only, it’s not made with string. It’s made with filaments of aether. But it accomplishes a similar purpose: it anchors something to something else.” He leafed through the next several pages. “From there, it goes on to classify different knots and breaks them down by purpose.”
He looked at Aram and smiled. Then, closing the book, he handed it to him. “I’m going to leave you in this room for an hour with this book and a ball of twine.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Do you have any questions before I leave?”
Aram stared down at the poor, dilapidated book in his hands, wishing he could mend the worm traces. “No, Lord Parsigal.”
Sergan smiled and produced a handful of twine from a pouch at his belt. He handed it to Aram. “Oh—do you know how to
read?”
Aram shook his head.
Looking disappointed, Sergan said, “We’ll add that to our list of studies, then.”
He rose to leave, moving the chair back to its former position against the wall. “I’ll be back in an hour. In the meantime, I want you to tie as many different types of knots from that book as you can.” He nodded at the plate of cheese. “And eat something.”
When he left, Aram heard the sound of the door locking behind him. But rather than the noise making him feel frightened, it made him feel relieved. He was alone. Smiling, he took the length of cord in his hand and started leafing through the text. He had a burning tingling in his stomach, the way he always got whenever a new ship tied up to the wharf with a crew of sailors he’d never met before—men of great knowledge, who might show him types of knots he’d never learned.
New knots.
An entire book of new knots.
If the book in his lap were food, then he would be salivating.
Tingling with anticipation, he scanned the pages, looking for knots he didn’t know, his fingers itching to bend the twine in his hands.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Markus followed Ando Nambe down a long hallway to the dining hall, which was filled with people eating on long trellis tables covered with expensive linens. Markus stood in the doorway, looking around, and saw that many of the people in the room were staring at him. He glanced at Ando Nambe, uncertain. The eunuch motioned him toward the front of the hall, where there was a short line of people waiting for food.
Markus walked across the room and got in line, glancing nervously around. For the most part, people had turned their attention back to their meals, though he was still the object of a few curious stares. The line inched forward, and it took a few minutes to reach the man serving barley porridge out of an iron kettle. Markus received his bowl then looked around for a place to sit, at last spotting an open seat at the end of a long bench.