“Theren,” said Kalem. His voice held a tone of warning. But Ebon leaned towards her, his interest piqued.
“I do not wish to invite the instructors’ wrath for fighting,” he said.
“Fighting,” said Theren with a quick shake of her head. “Sky above, nothing so crass. Only … she has the best of you in magic, yes? Yet you have strengths. Your family name is stronger than hers, and your pockets are deeper. And you have me.” Her teeth flashed in a grin.
“Ebon, this is a terrible idea,” said Kalem.
“You have not even heard it,” said Theren.
“Say on, then,” said Ebon.
“Not here.” Theren looked about as though someone might be listening. “But let us gather after the day’s studies, and we shall see what might be done.”
“Why?” said Kalem, narrowing his eyes. “Why would you help him fight Lilith?”
Theren only shrugged. “She and I have had our own tussles in the past. Surely you can imagine how a girl like her might have more than one foe.”
A bell clanged, reverberating about the dining hall. “Well, let us go to our classes,” said Kalem. “This afternoon I shall do my best to help you learn your spells, and mayhap you will forget all about this foolish plan of Theren’s.”
“Fare well,” said Theren. “I shall see you this evening. And know this, Ebon: I have not forgotten my plans for you. Some day soon you will speak to the dean on our behalf.” She fixed him with a stern look and turned to go.
“She left her dishes,” grumbled Kalem, scooping them up from the table.
Ebon realized later that he had not the faintest idea where to find Theren after their studies. But he need not have worried. When he and Kalem left the library at the end of the day, they found Theren waiting for them in the hall just outside. She stood on one foot and leaned against the wall, arms folded, but she straightened as soon as she saw them.
“There you two are. It took you long enough. Do not tell me you are bookworms as well as goldbags. I can only forgive so many flaws.”
“Theren, I have been thinking,” said Kalem. “Mayhap all that is required here is a calm, measured conversation with Lilith. I am certain that she and Ebon can work out their differences if only—”
She ignored him, falling into step beside Ebon and speaking so abruptly that Kalem fell to silence. “Allow me to instruct you in the manner of your revenge. I am quite proud of this idea. It relies for its success on the general prudishness of most goldbags, and particularly those of the family Yerrin.”
“Prudishness?” said Kalem.
“You royal types are so concerned with concealing yourselves. The family Yerrin have adopted the affectation as well, mayhap because they aspire to your station,” explained Theren. “Any commoner in the city or the forest thinks nothing of shedding some clothing on a hot day. But you would rather sit sweating in your carriages than reveal so much as your chest. In the highest circles, I am given to believe that being caught half-naked is the height of embarrassment.”
“Well, certainly!” said Kalem indignantly. “You cannot tell me you would enjoy walking about naked. Our bodies are for spouses and lovers.”
“Spoken like a true goldbag,” sneered Theren. “And so does Lilith believe.”
Ebon himself was not overly fond of being seen disrobed, except when it came to servants. But he said only, “I am listening.”
“You should be watching instead. Lilith will be in the common room by now.”
So saying, she led them on through the halls and up the narrow staircase towards the dormitories. When they reached the door leading to his common room, Ebon balked. But Theren gripped his shoulder with an easy smile.
“Now, then. All you must do is enter the room and speak with Lilith, and I will take care of the rest.”
“You want me to attract her attention?” said Ebon. “I think she dislikes me enough as it is. She will set my robe on fire, if she thinks she can get away with it.”
Theren shrugged. “Mayhap. But you will not have to suffer her torments long. I promise you that.”
“Why will you not come with us?” said Kalem.
Theren’s eyes hardened. “Because if she sees me enter with you, she might be less inclined towards torment.”
“Oh, well, that is reassuring,” said Ebon. “You mean to use us as bait.”
“Come now. You may be a goldbag, but you do not strike me as a coward. Go, brave warriors! To battle!”
She opened the door and shoved them inside before slamming it behind them. The room was filled with students, some sitting in the chairs and couches, others standing beside them. The sharp noise of the door drew every eye, and for a moment the room was filled with perfect silence.
“Er …” said Ebon, his cheeks flushing. “Good evening.”
“The jester has arrived!” Lilith’s already too-familiar voice sang out from the other end of the room. “Fellow students, our evening’s entertainment is here, and not a moment too soon.”
She sat in a broad leather armchair, resting upon it as though it were a throne. Oren and Nella completed the picture, standing to either side of her like attendants. At her words, every student averted their gaze. Lilith was clearly on the hunt, and none of the others wished to become prey.
“Well met, Lilith,” said Ebon. He wondered if he should go to her, or if he should act as if he were going towards his dormitory. Theren wanted him to speak to Lilith, but would it not be suspicious if he did so directly?
“And you have brought another plaything,” said Lilith, nodding towards Kalem. “You must promise to keep him around. Two jesters are twice the fun, after all.”
With a sigh, Ebon made his way across the room to her. Until Theren made her move, they would have to keep Lilith’s attention. As they drew up before her, Kalem stepped forth and offered his hand. “Er, ah … well met. We have not been introduced. I am Kalem, of the …”
“Away, whelp. I saw enough of you last night—or at least, what little there is to see.” Lilith waved a hand dismissively, and Kalem stepped aside as if she had moved him with mind magic. Her eyes fixed on Ebon. “So. Here he is. The jester of the family Drayden.”
She said the name loud enough to be heard throughout the room. From the corner of his eye, Ebon saw that the few students brave enough to look at him quickly turned away.
“I am no jester.”
“Yet I find you laughable. And what other purpose does a jester have?” She smiled at him, and then at Kalem. “The two of you are a remarkable pairing. A royal son whose family has great power, and no coin. And a merchant son whose family has great coin, but whose power wanes across the nine lands. What a sight.”
“You know nothing of my family,” said Ebon, surprised at the fervor in his words. Anger made his stomach clench and the back of his neck prickle. He almost did not hear the sound of a door opening behind him, and then closing again quietly as Theren snuck in.
“Who does not know of the family Drayden?” said Lilith. “So dark and terrible a clan. Yet what have you lot done lately? You sit in your desert halls, planning trade routes and scrimping your coins. How the mighty have fallen. It is said that your grandfather ruled Idris with an iron fist, the royal family serving as his puppets. Your dear aunt must not have the spine for power.”
“Do not speak of her,” snapped Ebon.
At Lilith’s side, Oren and Nella tensed. But Lilith only smiled. “I shall speak of what I wish. After all, we are friends here, are we not? Or at least, we are young people joined in mutual endeavor. To learn our magic. How fare your studies, by the by?”
Ebon’s hands balled to fists. Were it not for Theren’s command, he would have strode away to find comfort in solitude. Though Lilith sat and he stood, the scorn on her face made him feel as though she were looking down on him.
And then suddenly, she was. Without warning, Lilith’s chair rose into the air. At first Ebon thought it was her doing, some trick of firemagic he had never heard
of before. But the look of shock on her face soon told him it was otherwise. With a glance over his shoulder, he noticed Theren lurking in a corner, half-hidden behind a couch. Her eyes were glowing.
“What are you doing?” said Lilith. “Put me down at once!”
Ebon spread his hands, stifling a smile. “What do you mean? I know no magic. And I am a transmuter besides. Is this transmutation? If so, I have never seen its like before. Mayhap I have turned you into a bird.”
The ceiling in the room was quite high, and now Lilith was very close to it. Then, the chair began to tip. Very, very slowly, it tilted forwards. Now every head in the room was turned towards her, watching as she scrambled to keep her seat. For a moment, Ebon was afraid she would fall to the stone floor. It would not be fatal, but surely it would injure her. But he reassured himself; Theren must know what she was doing.
“It is mindmagic!” cried Lilith. “I can feel it! Oren, stop them!”
“I cannot!” said Oren, whose eyes were glowing now. He ground his teeth in frustration.
“Which one of you is it?” said Nella. She went from chair to chair, seizing students by the front of their robes and looking into their eyes, searching for a glow. “When I find you, I will melt the skin from you!”
Then the chair flipped all the way over. Lilith barely held on to one of the legs, dangling there in midair. But then her feet lifted up, and suddenly she hung upside down in midair. Gravity did its work, and dragged her robe down around her shoulders, exposing her underclothes and a great deal of skin. Kalem yelped and averted his eyes. Throughout the room, reluctantly, students began to giggle. The laughter swelled, and soon was reverberating throughout the room and off the walls.
“What an audience I have tonight,” said Ebon, turning to them all with a smile. “It pleases your jester very much to have brought you such mirth.” He placed a hand to his waist and bowed, as fine as any courtier. The students only laughed harder.
“Put me down this instant!” cried Lilith. “Theren! Theren, I know it is you!”
She stopped moving through the air at once. Then, swiftly, she came back down. The chair turned over in its descent to land right side up. Lilith was not so lucky, landing hard—but not too hard—on her head. She shot to her feet and replaced her robes, her face a mask of fury. Quickly she made for Ebon.
Theren appeared as if from nowhere, standing beside Ebon with hands balled into fists. Kalem stood to his other side, though Ebon saw the boy gulp in fear. But fright, it seemed, was baseless; Lilith stopped a pace away, staring at Theren with … not hatred, nor even anger. Ebon recognized the look with a start, for it was the last thing he would have expected to see: sadness, along with a deep pain.
“You have a forked tongue, Lilith,” said Theren softly. “And I care not what you do with it. But you will not use your magic against my friends again.”
Oren and Nella came for Theren, but Lilith stopped them with outstretched arms. Her jaw spasmed again and again, but she spoke no word to Theren. Instead she turned her gaze on Ebon, and familiar hatred reappeared in her eyes.
“Until the morrow, jester,” she hissed. “You find yourself in fortunate company.”
She spun on her heel and swept from the room. Oren and Nella followed after only a moment’s hesitation.
The other students in the room turned quickly away. If Ebon had thought to earn more friends, those hopes seemed dashed. But Theren was smiling, and even Kalem wore a nervous little grin. That seemed enough, at least for now.
“I have not had such fun in months,” said Theren, grinning. “Come, goldbags. Let us see if we cannot get ourselves a drink before nightfall.”
THEY SPENT THEIR TIME IN the library the next day reading Kalem’s hidden tome on the Wizard Kings. Or rather, Ebon read it while Kalem sat by and worked on his own lessons. Often Ebon would have some question about the text, and would ask Kalem. The boy’s knowledge was incredible, and he would always answer Ebon with some tale from another of the library’s volumes. Often Ebon would take down the names of other books that Kalem thought he should read, and soon his parchment was full of them. He looked upon the list with some dismay; it seemed half a lifetime’s worth of reading.
When he tired of study, he would take out his wooden rod, and Kalem would try to teach him how to turn it to stone. But try as he might, Ebon could not summon the magic to do it.
“Take your time,” Kalem told him. “It is only your third day.”
“You do not understand,” said Ebon. “As long as I am in Credell’s class, my time here is wasted.”
“I passed his class early, and yet still it took me half a year,” said Kalem. “You cannot expect to do it in a week, especially when you have never been allowed to practice before.”
That day passed, and the next, and the next. Soon Ebon found himself settling into a comfortable routine—comfortable, at any rate, outside of Credell’s class, although even that became more tolerable. The instructor still looked at Ebon with wide-eyed terror whenever he spoke or moved. But the other children seemed to forget their fear of him, since he did not do anything particularly frightening, and Ebon began to learn their names. The wild-haired girl he had seen on his first day was called Astrea, and she seemed to take a particular liking to him, though she still feared to speak with him. Often he would catch her staring from across the room, but she turned and blushed whenever he looked her way. Though Astrea looked nothing like Albi, his sister, still something in her manner reminded him of home. Whenever he could manage it, he would catch her gaze and stick his tongue out at her. She would giggle behind her hand and turn quickly back to her lessons.
Every afternoon, he would huddle in the library with Kalem. He would find tidbits from the history of the Wizard Kings that prompted him to start a catalog of other books to read. But in those tomes he would often come upon something that gave him some question, and then he would refer back to the great blue tome. He and Kalem spent as much time trying to learn spells as they did reading, though Kalem warned him often that they were supposed to use the time for studying, and Jia would be cross if she found out.
After two weeks, Ebon began to feel at home. When he thought back to his first two days, they seemed to have happened to someone else. Even Lilith’s torments had lessened, though she still gave him an evil look whenever they passed each other in the hallways, and sometimes she jostled him in the dining hall when she walked by. But she gave him a wide berth whenever he was with Theren, which was often, and if Theren ever caught her nearby, she stared until Lilith scuttled away. Ebon suspected there was some history between the two of them, but when he asked Theren, she only shrugged and said, “Some, yes. She knows better than to create any more.”
On some days, Ebon would sneak out of Credell’s class and into the training grounds. The instructor could not possibly have failed to notice his absence, but mayhap he was relieved not to have the young Drayden in his classroom. Ebon knew he would get in trouble if he were ever discovered, but there were many hedges that ran along the Academy’s wall, and he could go there to hide himself and watch the other students practice their spells.
Sometimes he watched the classes of the other three branches, the mindmages and firemages and weremages. But most often he went to the smaller grounds to see the alchemists practice. Their spells were less spectacular, not the sort of magic he often heard of in tales and the like. Yet Ebon knew, or hoped, that this magic lay in his future, and so it kept his interest better than any of the others. He did not see the student who had turned her instructor’s arrow to dust, but he saw the others performing similar spells with the cloth balls they threw between each other.
When he watched the weremages, one instructor often caught his attention. He was a somewhat older man, black hair dusted with grey, and he wore his beard thick but trimmed close to his face. Ebon thought he had the look of one from Selvan. There was something familiar about him—but mayhap it was only because he looked so kindly. Always he spoke to hi
s students in a calm and measured tone, and Ebon noted how he would show them a spell over and over again until they had learned it. Then he would leave them, but keep watch carefully from the corner of his eye. Ebon often thought wistfully how he wished Credell were such an instructor—but this man was a weremage, and could not have taught Ebon even if he wanted to.
One day he was in the library with Kalem. His wooden rod rested in his hands, and he tried to see into the wood, to change it. But he could not make it swell in his vision, the way a cup of water did when he cast the testing spell.
“Instead of seeing it, try to feel it,” said Kalem. “Sometimes that works better.”
“Of course I feel it,” said Ebon. “I am holding it in my hands, am I not?”
“I do not mean feel it, I mean …” Kalem waved his hands about vaguely. “Feel it,” he finished lamely.
Ebon’s nostrils flared. “That makes it all much clearer. Quick, run to fetch Credell! I am ready for my test.” He shoved the rod back into his robes. “Enough of this. I have found a book written by a member of my own family, many hundreds of years ago, and today I meant to start it. I will return in a moment.”
He stood and strode away from their table, among the bookshelves that stood tall about him. The right section was easy enough to find, for he was now well practiced in seeking out the library’s many works. Slowly he scanned the spines, looking for his book.
“How go your studies, goldbag?”
Ebon nearly jumped out of his skin, and he gripped the bookshelf to steady himself. When he turned, he could not believe his eyes for a long moment. Before him stood Mako. The man leaned casually against the bookshelf behind Ebon, the wicked knife at his hip shining as bright as the sparkle in his eyes. His thick, tattooed arms were folded over each other, but in one hand he held a book, which he had opened to the middle and appeared to be reading. With a start, Ebon realized that it was the very book he had come here to find.
The Academy Journals Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 3) Page 12