White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10)

by Donald Wigboldy

  Emerald eyes glanced at him through his triangle looking curiously at the table of boys waiting for dinner time to come. Piotr released his power like she had walked into the trap of a hunter, but he was in turn surprised as he felt something... different.

  A flicker of what the girl saw, Niklaus sitting to his right talking with Job and his own image through the triangle made with his fingers; flashed to his mind before the girl shook her head reaching to touch her forehead before rubbing her eyes. The image disappeared and Piotr felt her stare at him a moment before looking around at the other men and women around them.

  “What are you looking so intent about?” Niklaus asked giving him an elbow in a brotherly way. The larger of the two twins had always liked to roughhouse; but Owden, their older brother, tended to be the one to wrestle him usually when their mother wanted them to behave and settle down. Piotr had always preferred being alone more or working with animals than being with people, even if it was Niklaus. They had their share of roughhousing moments, usually started by the elder twin; but that wasn’t how Piotr preferred to spend his time.

  Slipping his left hand to the table cupping his right elbow as he leaned on the table top, Piotr slid his chin onto his right hand looking at his brother.

  “Just thinking about stuff,” he replied intentionally being vague. Telling Niklaus that he was just trying to place his mind inside of a dragon; was likely to be met with disbelief and the rest of them thinking he was crazy. Even knowing the untold possibilities of magic, the others would never believe him. They hadn’t heard what he had, and even Piotr hadn’t seen her dragon form yet.

  Niklaus looked at the far table and saw what he wanted to see. “Yeah, that new blouse looks really nice on Iris. Are you going to dance with her tonight?”

  Laughing at the twins, Job stated, “He always dances with her. If Piotr doesn’t ask her quick enough, Iris pulls him onto the dance floor. I can’t believe an older girl, especially an apprentice, is so into him. Your brother likes to be quiet so much. Is that how he does it?

  “I’ve seen him with Katya too, but then again...” the boy’s mind drifted to the only night that Piotr had linked them into his vision of the girls changing in their room, “... maybe he’s just thinking of what they look like with their clothes off. He did see both of them almost completely nude. That’s kind of unfair. Normally guys don’t get to see that kind of stuff unless they’re married or something.”

  Niklaus grinned even as Piotr tried not to blush at the implication of the other boy. “Actually, if you get the right type of girl, you can talk them into skinny dipping in a lake or river.”

  “We don’t have a lake or river near Delanne,” Piotr rebuffed his twin wondering if he was just making it up.

  Nodding, the older boy’s grin never faltered and he replied, “Mulley’s stream with Caralys and Gerta... Those were pretty girls even when we were only ten.”

  Rolling his eyes, Piotr could add seeing babies in a bathtub to that kind of thinking. They were hardly women, though they were still just fourteen now, so maybe it was close to being real for their age.

  “Mom could barely keep Mila in clothes until she was like five. They were kids and kids do dumb things without the thinking of a young woman,” Piotr retorted looking at Cheleya and seeing those emerald eyes looking at him with a small frown as if she were trying to figure out if he was the culprit of the use of magic.

  Leaning on her hand like the boy, the dragoness managed to disguise a gesture as her finger pointed to him and then the door to the inn. A moment later, Cheleya excused herself from the table. Katya and Kel’lor made to accompany her, but the girl shook her head saying that she just needed to stretch her legs a moment after all their riding. Niklaus was still complaining that it counted; when the girl disappeared out the door.

  Piotr stood rubbing his rear end and complained, “Ok, before dinner comes I think I need to stretch a little bit too. I’ll just let you believe that you saw girls naked while skinny dipping, even though you were just kids. Now if you can manage it while at White Hall, I will be much more impressed. There is a big river there to talk them into for skinny dipping, so there’s another benefit of going to the school and there will be many girls there, I would guess as well.”

  Walking to the door, he felt Iris look at him more than actually catching her glance; but if she was somehow jealous of his going outside at the same time as Cheleya, he couldn’t understand why. She was older than him and an apprentice as Job had said. While he liked her, being trapped in a group headed to White Hall hardly meant that they were dating. He had heard of odder things from Owden about the oddness of couples in Delanne, but he was just fourteen and barely saw girls that way yet.

  Walking out the door, Piotr let out a little squawk as a hand grabbed him yanking him towards the end of the inn’s wood porch. It skirted the entire front of the building, a common thing for the town inns of Southwall. Unrelentingly, the little girl pulled him around the corner of the building and demanded, “What was that magic? It was you! Wasn’t it? I could see all three of you, but I can’t say that I could be certain which of you. You are the one who knows magic the most though, so I am pretty sure it was you.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked less about being caught than trying to understand how she had known the direction of the spell.

  “I could see through your eyes a moment,” she declared as another thought seemed to shed some light in her mind. “I saw that triangle you make. You sent your mind into mine somehow, didn’t you?”

  Knowing the girl’s secret, Piotr refused to let on that he knew to even try because she was a che’ther in a girl’s body. Her sweet scent seemed slightly changed, he suddenly noticed. She smelled... angry, the boy thought oddly.

  “I shouldn’t be able to connect with you at all. I’ve experimented with other people before and they were always like a wall, except for Katya whose defenses seem more slippery than a wall. Since I shouldn’t have been able to share your mind for even a second,” he paused as another realization came to mind. “Wait, you said that you saw the triangle... from your eyes or mine?”

  Looking uncertain suddenly, the little blonde who still gripped his jacket glanced down trying to remember what she had actually seen. “Both I suppose. I was just looking towards you and Niklaus, when unexpectedly I could see myself and your hands from your view.”

  “I’ve never had an animal switch places with me before,” he mused curiously. His mind quickly reminded him to keep the pressure on Cheleya to keep her off balance. She had caught him using his magic, but he had caught her as well. The dragoness must have more in common with the mind of an animal than a human, if they could share through his magic at all. “So most people I can’t even touch with that spell, why are you so special, Cheleya?”

  The scent changed as had her eyes. The boy held her wrists firmly where they still gripped his jacket. The fire seemed to go out of the girl and he wondered if she was holding onto him to prevent herself from falling more than trying to hold onto him for her questions now.

  Sweetness and a need to protect her was in her scent once more, but Piotr knew it for what it was, so the future nature wizard was almost as immune as Katya had been to Falther’s magic.

  “I... I don’t know,” the girl said looking away from his eyes.

  “Is there something strange about you that would let us share minds even for an instant?”

  “I don’t know,” Cheleya repeated unable to meet his eyes as she let him go.

  His hands held her wrists gently for only a moment longer realizing that the girl didn’t trust him enough to tell him her secret. He wasn’t supposed to know, so Piotr didn’t push further.

  “Just don’t do that to me again, all right?” the girl nearly pleaded and rushed back around to the front of the inn to get away from the boy who suddenly made her afraid.

  Piotr sighed as he stood there wondering if he should have told her what he knew, but that would b
ring other problems too. He couldn’t believe that Niklaus had talked him into using his magic in that way. They had asked since, but he had told the others that there weren’t any birds to use nearby. While he could have found what he needed, it had just felt wrong to peek in on the girls; even if he had to admit that they were all beautiful and he enjoyed what he had seen.

  “Do you think that since we have so many duelists from the tournament here, that maybe you could put on a show for Mera tomorrow morning?” Katya asked standing between the tables where Magnus and Darius had their two factions. “I mean we have the champion after all and Darius, your people did well in the tournament too.”

  The girl had hoped to give the townspeople something else to believe about wizards. Being fearful that their children would become wilders or be dragged away by the wizards to become what many of them feared led to the behavior seen in the town. It wasn’t the first town that had been like this. In fact, every time they passed through one, it was pretty much the same thing.

  With Southwall’s people resistant to wanting to help because they had to give their children to the cause, the division between those who served and those they protected seem to become greater every harvest.

  Darius answered with a slight frown, “We don’t have time to put on a big show, if we hope to make our target miles for the next town.”

  Looking less worried about that, Magnus shrugged and replied, “Would anyone show on such short notice? Like Master Darius said, we don’t want to stay in Mera longer than we need to. It is just a small town after all, so I can’t really see the point of wasting time putting on a show as he calls it.”

  “We could create fireworks this evening, but I’m not sure that is what the girl is trying to achieve. What are you hoping to do, Katya?” Wizard Embrell questioned. He was another fire wizard and a close friend of Magnus, Katya thought from the way they spoke to each other. Even more than the others, Embrell seemed willing to follow Magnus’ lead.

  “I want to show them that being a wizard or being called to be a battle mage isn’t a bad thing!” she started getting louder as her frustration at being rejected by the town grew in her. It was as if the wizards didn’t care how they were seen so long as new wizards and mages could be found and taken to the schools.

  Magnus looked to be thinking on it and Katya looked at the young wizard hopefully. He led his team of five, who were all around the same age. Embrell and the air wizard Wellas along with the two female wizards, an earth wizard named Estraya and a healer called Pierum, were the remainder of his team and all seemed willing to follow the young man. If he said that they would put on a display for Mera, then Katya knew the others would do as he said.

  Unfortunately, his answer was less than she had hoped as he voiced his opinion with some thought behind it, “Having wizards going to the smaller towns to put on smaller tournaments might not be a bad idea, though I don’t think we have the time for it right now. Maybe I can bring it up to the high wizard of White Hall. If the other wizards and maybe the ravens got on board with the idea, it might be a good morale boost for those so far away from the wall and cities.

  “Their children are taken, or sometimes pushed on us if they become wilders; so they see wizard search teams as something frightening and even hated in places. They know that it is necessary, but like Katya says; if they knew how much fun it was to be a wizard or even battle mage, there might be less hesitation about joining or finding out they have magic.”

  “But what about now?” Katya began. “I mean we are here and you are the champion of Winter’s Edge, shouldn’t that be a bigger draw than just sending out wizards they don’t know?”

  He knew that the girl hoped to have the duel for her sake. Not wanting to be hated in your own town or home was a problem for many wizards and battle mages. It was why so many stopped returning home as they grew up in the schools. There was nothing left for them and the chasm between the two groups was only conquered where the wizards felt most appreciated, the guardian castles and big cities of the country, not the smaller towns which felt little of the advances their kind could bring.

  Thinking of the restrooms and baths of most of the inns, Magnus mused, “Maybe sending out wizards to do improvements that only magic can bring would be another good idea. A half frozen water tower feeding individual buildings or outhouses, could be easily converted with both the magic of the wizards and the science that we have achieved. The big cities often have amenities that the smaller towns do not.”

  Shrugging, the fire wizard looked at Katya and finished, “But not for us, right now, Katya. A single event can’t make people like you when their minds and hearts are closed to you. I know that you wish to make these people see you as one of them still, but unfortunately you are not like them anymore.

  “Perhaps once you have learned how to use your magic properly, you can lead a team here to make Mera better and make them love you again. For now, they just choose to fear us or hate us for taking children away from their homes, even though most would likely lose control and destroy them anyway.”

  With a complaining, little growl, the girl turned on her heels and went to go sit with the girls and Kel’lor. She wasn’t happy with his answer; but if he did go to the other wizards to bring change, maybe becoming a trained wizard so she could be the one to bridge that gap was more than worth her time going to White Hall.

  When Katya neared the table, she could tell that something was wrong with Cheleya. The girl looked upset, which meant Kel’lor looked grumpier than ever because he didn’t know how to fix whatever was wrong with her.

  Before she could sit, Cheleya stood up to grab her hand and asked, “Would you mind going up to our room to help me fix my hair? It feels too messy and maybe I should change my clothes as well.”

  Looking surprised, Katya merely nodded even as the other two girls looked like they might stand and want to follow. “Sure, we’ll be right back, everyone,” the younger girl said trying to cover for her friend who obviously had something to say to her.

  When they entered the room, Cheleya didn’t speak right away and instead began to pace nervously.

  “What’s wrong?” Katya asked after a moment. The door was closed and even locked by the girl to prevent being interrupted. Only Iris had a spare key, so it was unlikely to be a problem if the dragoness had something momentous to tell her. If anything could be bigger than telling your friend that you were a che’ther in disguise, the younger girl wasn’t sure that she could take it, however.

  Emerald eyes met green looking flustered. Katya thought of their similar features. Both had green eyes, though Cheleya’s seemed more like jewels with extra sparkle. Both had blond hair and were the same height. While their figures were similar, Katya feared that she would take after her sister and become disgustingly busty with more curves than Cheleya. She actually wished that her figure would remain more like the other girl’s being slender and graceful; which was kind of funny since Cheleya wasn’t a true human girl but what her mind said was correct for her spell.

  “Piotr tried his magic on me and... we switched bodies for a moment, I think. He says that he was just testing how it felt on people. Most have minds that keep him out like brick walls, though he said yours is like slippery steel or something to that affect.

  “We were both surprised that he could contact my mind like that... I think,” she finished looking down as she thought of how Piotr acted. “Actually, he acted more like he expected it to happen though he was surprised that I could see through his eyes also.”

  Looking at Katya worriedly, she asked, “Do you think that he knows about me?”

  “How could he know?” the other girl questioned. “I haven’t talked to him about you certainly and only Kel’lor knows besides me correct?”

  Cheleya shook her head slowly as she answered, “High Wizard Darius might know of it as well. He helped save Kel’lor from poison in Hala. It is a long story, but he knows that Kel’lor is a mar’goyn’lya for sure. He may
have suspicions about me as well, though he has never discussed it with me.

  “You don’t think Darius would have said something to him?”

  “To Piotr?!” Katya scoffed. “First off, I don’t think Darius would give up a secret easily and he certainly wouldn’t be going up to some unknown boy, who isn’t even trained in magic. Besides he has four other wizards with him or even those with me, which he knows better than Piotr.

  “No, if Piotr suspects anything, I am not sure how he could have discovered your secret.”

  The younger girl tapped her lips as her right arm supported the left elbow as she tried to consider their options. Certainly no one seemed to have told the boy of Cheleya’s curse and she didn’t visibly wear an amulet to make a connection between the two for an educated guess if he knew that Kel’lor was transformed by it. What she couldn’t figure out was how he could be on the verge of discovering that Cheleya was different.

  “Would he believe that you have similar magic and that might be why you two might be compatible in that way?”

  Cheleya sat on the bed and shrugged.

  After a moment, Katya sighed in annoyance and decided, “Fine, tonight we’ll grab him and take him to our room to try and figure out what he knows. You can still act mad that he tried to get into your mind. Even I can, if I say that you told me he has been messing around testing his magic on people without their permission.”

  Cheleya leaned forward seeing a plan coming into the younger girl’s eyes, “Do you think that we can make him tell us more of what he knows? I don’t know that I can trust him with my secret. Maybe it isn’t that important anyway. No one can seem to change the fact that I am stuck like this and in all other ways I am just a human girl like you. Well, except for my scent defense or whatever it is called.”

  As the girl lapsed into quiet, Katya shook her head and retorted, “No, you shouldn’t have to tell anyone, if you do want to; and you might be right to keep it secret at least for awhile. It is hard enough to get to know people, especially changing over to somewhere new like White Hall. I am kind of scared of going there too and I am just a human girl.