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

by Donald Wigboldy

  Another day brought them to the white walls surrounding a city created beside the wizard’s school known as White Hall.

  Chapter 10- The Crystal Necklace

  Thirty foot high walls, with towers reaching fifty feet studding its length, seemed to bend and bow as if mirroring the Cadhalla River; if Katya had to guess. Roughly two miles long, the white wall appeared to begin and end meeting the river to use it for defensive purposes. She wondered how well the city would hold up if an army arrived to attack it. The river was wide and deep enough for large ships to be anchored at their docks, so she could assume that it would be difficult to take White Hall from the river side.

  Entering through the heavy gate near the center of the outer defense, the girl was surprised to see only about half of the inner area was built up with houses and other buildings. If she had to guess, the area was close to the size of Hala’s outer city, but looked to have half of the population or less.

  The girl had been impressed by the size of the capitol having come from a farm outside of the small town of Mera. If she had come to White Hall first, Katya thought that she would have been more impressed. Hala had ruined her, she thought humorously to herself.

  While the city proper occupied several blocks mirroring the river’s bends near the center of a turn; it was the shorter walls of what looked to be a good size castle from her vantage point which drew her attention. The other youths appeared impressed aside from Cheleya who had come from the massive che’ther built Mar’kal and Katya. Even the younger girl could see that the walls lifting over twenty feet high made of the same white stone, would be a decent defense if an enemy could make it into the city.

  More towers ringed the castle walls, and inside of that defense rose what looked like a single three story castle with more towers.

  “That is the real White Hall,” Iris said for her new friends.

  “It’s a castle?” Briahnna asked apparently thinking the same as Katya. It was nearly a mile from the south gate to the nerve center of White Hall, the fortified school, and it truly appeared to look like a castle on a scale with the king’s castle in Hala, but it was much shorter.

  Shaking her head, Iris answered, “White Hall, the school, is actually surrounded by that wall, but is broken up into six main buildings. As we enter, we’ll pass between the soldiers’ barracks and that of the battle mages. After that, the mage dorms are attached to the dining hall, while the blacksmith and armory are across from it. Both of those connect to the school, where most of you will also be housed in the dorms on the third floor.”

  Niklaus noted a missing building and asked what most of the others were wondering, “That is only five buildings.”

  “The sixth is the stables. It is in the right hand corner behind the soldiers’ barracks,” the girl said with a nod before gesturing to her mount. “We need to keep these somewhere, don’t we?”

  Most of the others smiled at her teasing of the young man. Iris had been true to her word about determining that the two were even, though Katya thought she had let him off pretty easy with just the slight humiliation of knocking him over while going to the bathroom; but that had been her decision. Since Cheleya didn’t care about it and Briahnna still didn’t know what the boys had done, it left just Katya and Iris to meet out the punishment.

  Still, she noted that Iris hadn’t fully stopped as the apprentice would tease the boy from time to time.

  “You said most of us, will stay in school on the third floor...” Piotr said though inferring his question as he ended his sentence.

  “Novice wizards usually are kept on the third floor. Upper classmen and some of the teaching staff stay on the second floor while the first floor is mostly for classrooms. Battle mage cadets like Niklaus will sleep in their dorm on the south side of the school grounds. If we had any soldiers with us coming for training, they would be kept in the building connected to the mage dorms,” the apprentice continued to try and educate them on what they could still not see.

  Two large doors eventually appeared before the column of travelers. They were wide open as if inviting the newest students, even though guard towers loomed to either side looking on them from nearly forty feet high.

  Entering the school grounds, Katya began to pick out what the apprentice had been trying to tell them. Two three story buildings rose to either side of the entry with about fifty feet between them and the outer walls. There was perhaps thirty feet of empty space between them to pass between, but the second story and third were connected to each other starting about ten feet above the ground.

  “During the winter,” Iris said gesturing to the bridge between the buildings, “most of the men will walk across the enclosed walkways to the mage building. Since only the stables are separated completely, you could walk around the inner buildings from the soldiers’ barracks all the way to the armory and blacksmith without having to put on a jacket.

  “It isn’t the most direct way around, but it is warmer,” the girl finished with a smile.

  Piotr nodded to the building on the left, and said to his twin, “I guess that is where you will be.”

  The older boy nodded looking from one building to the other wondering how many soldiers he would get to know by being in the way, if nothing else.

  Passing between the two large buildings, they entered an expansive courtyard. They faced a massive three story building spread from one side of the courtyard to the other and looming over the two smaller buildings closest to it. A single story building was built as an attachment between the mage building and the dining hall, if she recalled Iris’s words earlier. There was a door in the smaller enclosed walkway’s side as well as a large central door facing them from the dining hall on their left.

  “There is a door in the walkway?” Katya questioned curiously.

  “The larger buildings have at least three or four exits to the outdoors, but even the walkways have more than one doorway. There are courtyards behind most for training. That door has an opposite to lead to a courtyard for the battle mages to use for practice. Only the courtyard behind the dining hall is kept for a garden. You can study there or simply rest,” Iris stated as they turned to the right following the soldiers’ building.

  A stable was beyond the flattened ground that looked like it might serve as a place for the soldiers to train, since it was next to their building and showed signs of a lot of foot activity. Katya was no tracker, but the tracks were easily seen as the dirt was a bit damp from melting snow or frost. The horses’ hooves obscured only some of the booted footprints as they passed through the open ground.

  Boys supervised by a gray haired man took their reins and helped the girls down from their mounts. A couple had to be reprimanded as they pushed and shoved each other trying to get to be the ones who helped the prettiest girls. While Katya thought the female wizards with Magnus were pretty enough, their wizard colors were cause for respect.

  The younger girls were fair game apparently since the boys knew they would know little of the school and hoped to be among the first who might become their friends. From what Iris had told her, most nights had dancing in the hall where the recruits from the soldiers, mages and wizards could all mix.

  Those who came to train at White Hall to become soldiers did so to become the best. Many of them were sons of nobility, though those in the stables were more likely the men of lesser means hoping to become trained to be officers and elevate their standing. Though those who got into trouble could find work in the stables for their punishment, even if their families were rich.

  Since most soldiers were male, they threw off the ratio of men to women nearly two to one depending on how many were attending at the time. Apprentice wizards were also very picky and even guarded about the men that they let get close, so finding girls still used to the way things worked in the towns and farms of Southwall was the easiest way to find a date for the evening dances.

  Katya had a nice looking young man help her down. He had managed to slide in front
of the others to have a chance to meet her first. While she might be a favorite, it was Cheleya who had boys nearly fighting over her.

  Noticing her eyes glancing to the dragoness, the young man said “She isn’t as pretty as you, but the other guys know that I would beat them if they didn’t let me have the pick of the prettiest.”

  Not sure if it was confidence or him being the leader of the boys, Katya was unsure if she could like such a man. If he was a bully, she definitely wouldn’t want to know him. Saying nothing, but giving him a polite smile; the girl took her two packs for only a moment as Darius came to take one from her.

  “I will come with you to make the introductions,” the high wizard said all but ignoring the stable boy. “Unlike the others, we will need to meet with who will in charge of you, since your case is rather special.”

  She nodded dismissing the boy from her attention to join the procession walking back through the open field between the soldiers’ barracks and the armory or smithy depending on one’s need. The second building was unlikely to be someplace the girl would ever have a use for since she was going to become a wizard.

  At that point Qeyr became their guide. As the leader of the search wizards, he would be the one to file those who had been brought to the school, while Magnus and his wizards separated to find their current living places.

  Entering the massive school building, Katya was surprised to see so many young people in white sitting on couches or benches reading books. Some seemed to be trying to cast spells as well, while others were merely socializing with their friends.

  “This way, recruits, to the admissions office,” Qeyr stated gesturing for the rest to follow. Darius’s wizards looked at him questioningly and he gestured for the men to find seats to wait for him.

  Entering an apparent office with those who had magic and those who did not, Katya was surprised at the mundane look to the entry office. There were more rooms which could be entered from there, though some had closed doors preventing her from seeing where they led. People looked over stacks of paper, more paper than the girl had seen in her life in one place, and others took the sheets and folders to the file cabinets placing them in the proper drawers.

  Qeyr was handed a board with several sheets that looked like the most precise of penmanship that she had ever seen. She wondered who could write so exactingly and noticed with each flip of a page, that the next sheet was exactly the same.

  As the wizard noted down the name for each of the new recruits from Delanne, he handed the individual their sheet to hold until he came to Cheleya. The girl handed him a protected piece of paper and Qeyr leaned over telling the woman to call some other wizard to come to the office. A small tube took a message and disappeared into the wall, but Katya wasn’t sure that magic was involved. The woman who had sent it had none at least.

  He had Cheleya sit with Kel’lor, who was the girl’s continual shadow, before asking, “Who is mentoring diplomacy mages right now?”

  Eyes widening, the woman thumbed through a few sheets before she answered, “Wizard Ylena for the girls.”

  The woman looked like she wanted to ask more, but apparently it wasn’t her place so the woman tried to go back to the work she was doing. Qeyr filled out another form and Katya noted both her name and that of the Ylena person. When he was done, more canisters were sent through other tubes.

  One by one, the others began to disappear from the little waiting area in the office. Finally, a boy in white with a gray stripe came to call for her and Darius. Looking closer, she thought that the stripe was too shiny to be gray. Silver, she decided and wondered if the apprentice before them was from the same school of magic as Falther had been.

  They were told to sit and wait in another room. Finally alone and thinking that it would likely be the last time she would get a chance to speak to the high wizard alone, Katya began to talk of something that had been bothering her for days. She had been unable to get the man alone either at the inns or on the road. His grandson and other wizards always seemed to be his shadows.

  “Master Darius, can I ask you a question about something?”

  “Of course, Katya, and you can just call me Darius. You will have mentors for you here now,” the man said with a fatherly smile.

  “Have you heard of amulets that let people transform into other creatures or other creatures into a human?”

  Looking a little surprised, the wizard nodded and said, “It is a rather rare type of magic, but I have known a few different people to make use of such things. Why do you ask?”

  “Have you ever heard of someone breaking their amulet or having it broken and then becoming stuck in their new body?”

  Darius didn’t even bother to look at the girl as he replied, “For most, if the amulet is broken or separated from them for a long time, they will simply revert to their original form. Sometimes that change is quick and other times it takes a little while.

  “To force a change to be permanent, there is usually a second spell that prevents the change from happening,” he replied surprising the girl with both his apparent knowledge and his being candid in the sharing of such information.

  “If an amulet was say, broken and magically bonded to the person’s bones, would that be something that is reversible?”

  Glancing to the girl, Darius got to the point surprising her, “You know someone caught in this spell?”

  “She calls it a curse. Apparently another wizard broke the amulet and placed the pieces inside of her to prevent that change.”

  Sighing, the wizard looked thoughtful and somehow slightly annoyed. “I know that Kel’lor is a mar’goyn’lya, so that means that Cheleya is most likely the one cursed then. Without knowing the spell which was cast on her, especially if it is a curse level spell; I am not sure that I could help the girl.

  “I could duplicate the magic to achieve the affect, but without the original spell or the caster who did it, it might be impossible. Can the man responsible still be found to make him release it?”

  “I believe that he is dead from what Cheleya has said,” the girl said as candidly as the high wizard. If her friend would be mad that Darius knew of the problem, she could no longer help that. Even though she had tried to be vague, the ancient wizard had seen through her easily.

  Letting out a low whistle, he replied, “Yes, that sounds like a curse spell. The Dark One has been known to use such spells and his warlocks as well. They would need to be powerful or use blood to seal the spell.

  “To hear that he is dead means it was very potent magic since many spells disappear with the caster’s death.”

  Katya sighed at the bad news, but Darius continued, “I will be here for a little while before heading out to Windmeer. Maybe the girl will let me examine her to see if I can discover anything. Until I can look at her closer, I can’t do anymore than guess.”

  “I will try to let her know. Since I have no idea what kind of schedule they will have us on or if they will have a schedule even, I’m not sure when I will see her either.

  “But you said that you plan to stay in White Hall for awhile?”

  Darius nodded, “I plan to have an exchange of ideas between our two schools. I also have letters of introduction given me by the high wizards of Hala.” The immortal wizard smiled and added, “I will see what I can do about talking with the girl before I go as well.”

  Feeling a little better, Katya lapsed into silence as they waited for someone to come speak to her.

  The wait wasn’t overly long, though it had felt like ages to the girl who was nervous about all the unknowns of a wizards’ school. A dark haired woman wearing black with silver banding on her collar and sleeves nodded to the pair. With a practiced smile that still managed to feel warm, though Katya wasn’t sure that it was; the wizard introduced herself, “I am Wizard Ylena Werlon. I am a teacher of diplomacy and its magic. The office sent word that we have an exceptional new wizard about to join us.”

  Katya smirked and replied, “When she gets h
ere I would like to meet her too.”

  The older woman seemed amused and nodded even as Katya wondered why she had said that. She wasn’t normally a girl who would throw out humor in such a tense situation. Still the woman didn’t seem to mind that much and she looked from Katya to Darius. Surprisingly for a woman who taught diplomacy, Katya caught her smile drop for a moment and her eyes widened as she looked at the older wizard.

  As brief as it was, the smile returned and Ylena said, “So she is Katya Trillon, a surname that has become quite well known of late, if Sebastian is any relation.”

  “He’s my older brother,” the younger girl acknowledged with a little surprise that she would know him, since he was a mage and not a wizard.

  Looking to Darius again the woman found that she had to lead the introductions as the high wizard had remained silent as the two women began to get to know each other.

  “I am Darius Eremia, High Wizard of Eirdhen, the Enchwold school if the name means anything this far north,” the silver haired wizard stated with a slight bow of his head.

  The introduction brought another frown to the woman’s forehead as she said, “That is a long way off for any wizard to be bringing a recruit or wilder to our school. How did you find yourself so far from home..., High Wizard Darius?”

  “Well, we were invited to the games of course, but a friend asked if I would bring his sister here for him. Since he is doing a favor for me, I felt that it was only right to do one for him,” he said with another warm smile for the wizard. It was as if the immortal was teaching Ylena the art of diplomacy instead of the other way around.

  “I am afraid that, unlike Falcon Sebastian, Katya has both more power and less control. As you might have noticed, I had to cast a restraining spell on her magic temporarily. Her emotions already trigger her magic, though I would say that it takes fairly extreme swings to create an accident.”

  Taking in the clinical observation of the young girl, Ylena looked at Katya and nodded. Producing a necklace with a clear white gem attached to the silver metal, the wizard placed it over the girl’s head with her assistance.