It was an arena.
Rows of benches filled with Mage instructors surrounded an open field of bare dirt. More bright lights mounted on poles glared down on the center of the arena.
He followed Arias out to the middle.
“Your final tests in defense will not be easy. Prepare yourself for a fight to the death. You will face many opponents. Do not hesitate, do not feel remorse. Your adversaries most certainly will not.”
“Will I have a weapon to use?”
Arias shook his white head. “You are the weapon.”
He looked around at the seated audience. “Can I die here in this world?”
“Yes.” The Mage paused. “It does not happen often, but it does happen if an apprentice is especially weak. Are you ready?”
Beck nodded, and the Mage turned and walked away, leaving him standing in center of the arena alone. Immediately, a grating sound echoed behind him, and he turned as an iron grate he had not noticed previously lifted open.
Beck narrowed his eyes at the black opening. Who would he fight first? Would it be another Mage?
No.
It was not even a man.
A beast dressed in an armored chest plate and a battle axe in each fist stepped out into the light on two hooves, and the grate clanged shut behind him. The animal resembled a bull with two curved horns, and a blunt snout with wide nostrils through which a gold ring dangled. Tufts of coarse black fur peaked up around its face and a full coat of wooly hair covered its body.
As soon as the bull saw Beck, it strode forward confidently, arms and legs bulging with muscled power as he advanced. Throwing its head back in a challenging roar, the beast hefted one of the axes in its hand and hurled it through the air at Beck. The blade tumbled end over end, unerringly on a path for his head.
Beck instinctively threw out his hand. “Divergia.”
The axe swept away out of his path and landed in the dirt. Wanting to end this quickly, Beck started running forward to close with the beast, and the animal picked up its pace in response. The other axe flew from its hand, but Beck easily sent that weapon flying wide as well.
As he ran, Beck methodically sorted through his mental cache for the best way to dispose of his opponent. That was when the bull struck first.
“Bindeno,” it bellowed in an almost unintelligible growl.
Beck cursed when he felt his arms and legs snap to his sides and he fell into the dirt, unable to move. It had been a disastrous error to believe his opponent a simple animal when in fact it had the gift of sorcery. It was too late to issue the counterspell, and Beck could only lie there helpless while the bull thundered across the field. Skidding to a stop in front of him, the beast lowered its head and flipped him onto his stomach with one horn. Then, with a violent thrust, the bull speared him through the back and lifted him into the air.
Beck screamed out at the pain. The beast shook its head victoriously and Beck, impaled on the tip of one horn, felt his back break, and his body went completely numb below the waist.
He almost blacked out from the agony, but fought to retain consciousness as his vision began to darken at the edges of his eyes. His arms still pinned to his sides, he found that he could move his hands and stretched them toward the large head beneath him. His fingers were just long enough to grab onto the bony protrusions over the bull’s eyes. The beast must have known what Beck intended, because it let out a desperate howl and tried to shake Beck loose.
It was too late.
“Morbendi.”
The bull-like animal fell to the ground dead.
Beck gritted his teeth in misery when he hit the ground alongside the fallen animal. The binding spell now released, he used the strength in his forearms to drag his body off the horn embedded in his back. Panting from the exertion, he pulled himself free with a nauseating sucking sound. None of the instructors in the arena rushed to his aid, and he knew they would not. He was on his own.
Reaching out with his healing sorcery, he probed his back for the injury. Fortunately, the spinal cord was unharmed, but two vertebrae had become dislocated from the stress of the bull’s gouging maneuver. Forcing the pain away, he went to work realigning the vertebrae and knitting together the ligaments and sinew that held the bones in place.
When he was finished, he was soaked in sweat, but the pain was gone.
Beck flinched when he heard the grate open again.
He turned around and sat up.
A tiny, blonde-haired girl in a short tunic walked toward him.
He got to his feet quickly and tested his injury. It felt completely healed.
Beck was unsure what to do. What kind of threat could this little slip of a girl cause to him?
She continued to approach and bounced a ball in the palm of one hand. He waited. If the instructors expected him to simply kill a small girl out of hand, he would have to disappoint them.
By the time Beck realized that the ball in the girl’s hand was actually an orb of fire, she had already launched it at him. He sidestepped out of the way but, just like his earthen missile at Odawa, the ball circled around behind him and struck him in the back. His shirt immediately caught on fire. Instincts led him to fall to the ground and roll instead of using a spell to put out the fire, but it worked equally as well.
The little girl was upon him now and looking down at him with large blue eyes. She smiled innocently, and he hesitated with the spell that was on the tip of his tongue. In that brief pause, the girl’s face transformed into the visage of a demon and she opened her mouth wide in a hideous scream, unleashing a stream of lethal fire blazing out of the opening.
Beck screamed as the fire engulfed his face. Using his legs, he kicked the girl and sent her small body sprawling to the ground.
He cast a spell to put out the fire this time, but his face still felt as if it was on fire as he crawled on hands and knees to the girl. The demon countenance gone, she smiled at him again as she lay on her back and blinked her eyes adoringly.
Beck did not use the killing curse. He wanted the little girl to serve as a reminder to him to never again hesitate in the face of evil. Reaching out, he encircled her tiny neck in his hands and twisted, killing her.
He fell back down on the dirt once again. His face felt like it was sloughing off his skull in shredded, smoldering pieces.
This time when he went to work to heal his injuries, a single tear fell from his eye and rolled down his blackened cheek. He did not cry from the pain or for the death of the girl or in anticipation of the next fight. He cried because the training was taking too long. He cried for a different little girl that he loved desperately, but feared he would never see again.
CHAPTER 23
An Oath of the Mage
For Beck, the fighting arena became an endless, brutal contest of wills and strength. After defeating the bull and the girl and healing his atrocious burns, he faced an array of deadly threats—vicious creatures, simulated natural disasters, and even the disease of his own body. His instructors expected him to defeat them all.
And, he did.
But, amid the success in the arena and always in the forefront of his mind were thoughts of his incredible failure as a parent. Oh, how Kiernan must despise him! She had been right the entire time and instead of listening to his wife, he abandoned her, forcing her to go after Kenley and face Avalon Ravener on her own. No amount of victory in the ring could assuage the self-loathing he felt.
When the last challenge ended, the instructors in the stands commended his efforts with thunderous applause, and Arias walked out to greet him.
“You did well, Beck,” the Mage commented with a smile. “Your healing skills are remarkable. The best I have ever seen in an apprentice.”
Beck looked up at the silver-haired Mage. “But, I hesitated with the little girl.”
“Yes, but one time only and you learned from your mistake. Do you know that many apprentices stay in the arena for hours suffering burn after burn because they cannot bring th
emselves to harm a child? Evil comes in all disguises and you knew not to be fooled by an innocuous cloak. You have the heart of a warrior, Beck. I am not suggesting that you enjoyed killing the girl, but you are seasoned in battle and are intelligent enough to know not doing so would only have painfully prolonged the inevitable.”
His tall guide pointed to a teepee that had somehow materialized behind him. “You are ready for the journey of observation. Go to your death bravely, apprentice.”
What did that mean? Beck shook his head and scrambled into the second tent, the impatience of a man still within him. Inside, he noticed the same circle of stones and tin cup as the first teepee. Sitting, he drank the potion and fell into a deep sleep.
When Beck awoke and exited the tent, he was surprised to find that he was standing in the city of Iserport. He had not been to the city in many years, but recognized the buildings from his previous visits with Kiernan. A woman passed by and he smiled at her in greeting, but she looked right through him.
Arias Sarphia glided up to him and answered his unspoken question. “No, the people cannot see you. This journey is for observation only.”
Together, Mage and apprentice walked through the streets, unnoticed, and Arias pointed out the things he wished for Beck to see. They studied the behaviors of men and women in countless settings and circumstances. The strengths and weaknesses of humankind were laid bare for him to observe-greed, envy, apathy, hatred, racism, and jealousy mixed with altruism, love, compassion, resilience, curiosity, and intelligence.
The strongest motivators for the actions of people Beck observed were the most primal, basic desires for love and family and freedom. Conversely, he witnessed the devastating effects when these desires were not fulfilled.
He walked at Arias’ side for leagues over the land of Massa as his Mage guide imparted all of the wisdom he had gained over the centuries. As in the first world he visited, he did not eat or sleep.
Beck learned of man’s ethical responsibility toward the earth. He discovered what the destruction of the island’s natural resources does to the quality of the air and the ability to sustain life. He glimpsed the possibility of futuristic technologies for harnessing the wind and sun to create power.
Through observation, he studied the languages of all the different races—including the Malakai. He learned of the existence of other islands in the Arounda Ocean, some three times the size of Massa, and the people that populated them.
For days and days, he walked beside his educator and witnessed the effects of disease and how it spreads among unsuspecting people. They traveled to the rural areas of the island and Beck observed the results of poverty, famine and drought.
At the end of the journey, he understood human existence on an intellectual level that far surpassed his previous awareness and even commented on this to his guide.
The man held up a finger. “Yes, to learn and observe is critical to personal growth. However, you must also be able to feel what others feel. True power is the miraculous by-product of our experiences.”
When at last the third teepee came into view, Arias uttered the now familiar, but still bewildering, phrase. “Go to your death bravely, apprentice.”
Beck entered the tent numb with heartache. The parallels were not lost on him. For all of his achievements here, he was a disappointment in his own world. For all the power he gained, he would be unable to use it to save his family. Too much time had passed. Weeks now. Far too long for anyone to be in the presence of evil, but especially a little girl.
There was always the chance that Kiernan, Rogan, and Airron had found a way to save Kenley. He clung to that hope, but still tears of helplessness fell from his eyes as he lifted the third cup to his lips with shaking hands and drank.
When Beck came to, Arias waited for him outside of the tent. This time, he walked the earth at the side of his guide not as himself, but as the personas of others.
He was a woman giving birth for the first time and suffered through the excruciating pain of labor followed by the poignant wonderment of bringing a new human being into the world. He cried in pain when a child of his own body died in his arms, and cried with joy when another child was brought back from the brink of death with his healing arts.
He was a middle-aged man gravely ill with sickness and filled with worry of how his family was going to survive without him as chronic, debilitating pain pulsated through his body.
He was a young boy and experienced how it affected the human spirit to be ridiculed and bullied.
He was a Cyman warrior, oppressed to the point of listless stagnation from having fundamental freedoms stripped from his life.
The months passed. Then, the years.
Beck’s beard, sprinkled now with gray, reached to his chest. In all that time, he never once forgot Kiernan or his children. Were they all still alive? Were his boys, strong strapping men now? It may even be that Kiernan had remarried by this time.
Even though in the end he had been unable to save Kenley, he did not regret his decision. It took a very long time to acknowledge, but he now understood that he made the only choice available to him under the circumstances. It is the responsibility of a parent to protect their young, and he never could have lived with himself or looked Kiernan in the eye again had he not tried everything in his power to save Kenley.
When the last teepee came into view, he almost turned away from it. His education was at long last at an end, but what did his old world hold for him? Did he still have a family to return to? How would people view him now? Would they even recognize him?
He finally understood the phrase that Odawa and Arias Sarphia said to him repeatedly.
He had experienced death.
At every phase of his journey, old beliefs and assumptions were discarded for new awareness. What he had been had died, but what he was now had been born.
He was Mage.
“Deliver the oath.”
Beck knelt before Arias Sarphia, took his hand and, even though he had never been taught the words, they rolled off his tongue. “I vow to employ the teachings of the Mage for the greater good of humanity. I vow that all actions will be conducted in good faith and without deceit. I vow never to use the arts to cause harm to the innocent, and I vow to destroy evil utterly and without remorse. I am now and forevermore, Mage.”
Arias nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You are a young Mage and still have much to learn, observe and experience, but I am very proud of you. You did well.”
Beck bowed his head in deep respect. “My sincere gratitude to you, Mage Arias.”
“Please stand.” The centuries-old Mage looked directly in his eyes when he stood before him. “Use your power wisely, Beck. With the exception of the Oracle, you now have insights and knowledge that none in your world possess. Your understanding of life’s truths is integral to your ability to serve the people of Massa. You are expected to be patient and compassionate, a teacher, and a protector. You are a master of all, Mage Beck.”
“I will do my best.” He paused. “You mention an Oracle. Who is the Oracle?”
“A woman who lives on the island, although she does not stay in one place for long. She has the unique ability to see events in every dimension. In her mind, she can travel all of the worlds and this capacity bestows on her divine power and acumen. Seek her out if you ever need a patron.”
Beck raised his eyebrows. “I think I did meet her in the village of the Malakai, but did not get the impression that she was very friendly.”
“She is your friend, Mage. On that you can depend.” Arias handed Beck a black robe similar to the one that Galen Starr wore when Beck last saw him in Nysa.
“Black?” Beck questioned.
“You have not yet earned the white,” he said with a wink. “And, let us hope that it is a very long time until you do. Farewell, Mage. Until we meet again.” Arias Sarphia turned from him then and was gone.
Overwhelmed with unexpected emotion, Beck entered the tent. I
t had been many years since he last had done so, but he remembered what he was required to do. Sitting down on the floor, he picked up the tin cup and drank for the last time.
Beck’s eyes fluttered open, and he felt exhausted and hungry, all of his human needs clamoring to be met for the first time in a very long time. Exiting the tent, he found that he was back in the village of Torg where he started his journey, but it was empty. The tents were gone, the children, the villagers.
He started to wonder. Had the Malakai picked up and moved elsewhere or had they never really existed in this world and simply been placed in his path to serve as the portal for access to the Mage’s world?
A bundle on the ground caught his notice, and he looked down. Digby’s old backpack was lying in the same place he left it long ago. It was still here, untouched. He thought for sure someone would have taken it by now and used its contents. He picked up the pack and threw the black cloak around his shoulders. Turning for one last look behind him, he noted with amusement that the teepee was gone now also.
Picking his way through the village that was no more, he suddenly stopped when his Mage senses detected another person nearby. He scanned the area carefully. “You there, by the tree, you may come out now.”
An old woman walked out from behind the tree. It was the Oracle.
“A Mage walks the earth again,” she observed in a gravelly voice.
Beck nodded. “Do you need help? Is there anything I can do for you?”
She shook her gray head and smiled. “No, but there is much I can do for you. The Oracle will be your eyes when the time comes.”
“When will I need you and where can I find you?”
She nodded in satisfaction. “Now, you ask the right questions.”
Island Shifters: Book 02 - An Oath of the Mage Page 24