Of Ice and Shadows
Page 19
The door had barely fallen shut behind them before it opened again, and this time an older man and woman strode through. The woman’s salt-and-pepper hair was done in a neat braid coiled into a bun at the base of her neck, and she carried herself with the confidence of authority. If memory served, she was probably Saia, the guardian of Corovja. Her companion followed half a step behind her. He looked somewhat younger, with a bare slash of skin at the base of his jaw cutting through his brown beard.
Eryk quickly jumped to his feet, and Aela and Ikrie turned to face the pair. The man stopped in the center of the room, but the woman continued walking until she’d disappeared through a door in the opposite wall.
“Pair off, everyone,” the man said, apparently unconcerned with pleasantries. “Let’s see what you know about shielding.”
Ikrie rolled up the sleeves of her yellow tunic and approached me with a smirk on her face. Nausea gripped me. I thought there would be some kind of instruction, not just a command to do something I didn’t even understand. I wanted to disappear into the floor.
“Do you even know how to shield yourself?” Ikrie asked, scorn in her voice.
“I—no,” I admitted.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. You can be on offense first.”
“What?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Instead, a bubble of hazy air formed around her.
“Hit me,” she said. “Your mistress wasn’t brave enough to take me on. Maybe you’ll be different.”
Anger flared in my breast. She didn’t know what I’d sacrificed to stand in front of her, and she certainly didn’t know what Mare had sacrificed to be with me. I took a deep breath, then struck hard and fast, just as Aster had shown me.
Ikrie’s shield of air parted around my arm as my fist rose toward her throat. Her eyes registered surprise for only half a second before my fist connected with her neck.
She stumbled back from me, choking, and the shield around her fell away.
“By the Six!” I cursed, and clutched my fist. Aster hadn’t warned me that punching someone would hurt quite that much.
“What the sarding Hell!?” Ikrie finally coughed out as she caught her breath.
“You said to hit you!” I said, still clutching my hand.
“With magic, you lowborn fool, not your fist!” Ikrie said. She coughed again, and the sound reverberated through the room.
The instructor approached, a smirk on his face. “Pause your exercises, class. Lia here has just reminded us of an important lesson. Magical defense isn’t everything. Make sure that you shield against physical blows as well as magical ones.”
“That’s not the point of this exercise, Brynan,” Ikrie snapped. “This is what happens when untrained peasants sard up our routine.”
I couldn’t believe the way Ikrie spoke to him. There was no respect in it at all—though surely she didn’t consider her instructor an equal.
“Which is apparently exactly what you need in order to be at peak performance,” Brynan replied. “If you want your choice of apprenticeships, you need to be at the top of this class.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry.” Brynan whirled to face me. “Never be sorry when you’ve found and exploited an enemy’s weakness. Those in power are never sorry when they mete out justice to those who deserve it.”
I shut my mouth, biting back the words I wanted to say. The memories of what had happened to Sigvar were still fresh—I knew what Zumordan justice looked like. But I was sorry. I didn’t consider Ikrie an enemy, even if I hated the way she’d treated Mare and had been insulted by her jabs at me. If anything, I wanted the other trainees to be my friends. This was the first time I’d ever been around other magic users. I had so many questions that only they would be able to answer.
“Lia is behind all of you in training,” Brynan explained.
A fresh wave of embarrassment rose in me. Of course I was. This wasn’t what I’d spent my life training to do. I hadn’t learned to use the Sight before I could read or had anyone to teach me what to do with my fire magic. I’d been hiding that part of myself and trying to become a queen—not a fighter, not a magic user.
“What that means is that you should expect some fumbles, yes, but also expect the unexpected. You aren’t going to always be able to predict what she’s going to do, because she hasn’t had the same kind of practice drilled in as you have. She’ll get there in time, but in the meantime, she’ll keep you all on your toes.”
Five sets of eyes ranging from darkest brown to lightest blue stared at me—with distrust at best and loathing at worst.
“Back to practice,” the instructor said. “And switch partners. Lia, Eryk, and Tristan, move over to the next person.”
I hurried to my next opponent, Evie. She gave me a pitying smile, her tightly curled hair framing her pixie-like face and amber eyes like a halo.
“You shield first,” she said.
Before I could say anything in response, a chunk of rock broke loose from the floor and hurtled toward my head. I ducked and yelped, but it still clipped me in the temple. A bolt of shock and pain lanced through me. A warm trickle ran down my face, and when I wiped at it, my hand came away red.
These people were completely insane. It didn’t matter who I fought with—any one of them could destroy me in a second. Panic started to rise, and with it, my power. Evie continued to hurl rocks at me that I was barely able to dodge.
In desperation, I reached for my own power. Fire burst out of my hands and formed a burning whirlwind around me. Still, Evie’s missiles flew right through, only slightly deflected by the twisting flames. Fear whispered in my ear, telling me that I needed more power. Sigvar had used mind magic to control his cult, but he’d also been able to make the earth obey. Perhaps I could do the same and turn Evie’s magic back on her—I’d had to use more than one kind of magic when I summoned the star fall. I opened myself fully to my power, bracing for the pain that rippled up my arms. The stones Evie had hurled at me rose from the ground, joining the swirling maelstrom of fire.
In spite of the chaos racing around me, I felt strangely at peace. No one could hurt me at the center of this storm. Shouting from others in the room was little more than vague noise. I didn’t care what they were yelling about. I had the magic, and it was doing what I wanted.
Before I could fully revel in the power, the draining started—my limbs growing heavy as energy was sucked out of them to feed the fire. I had to let go of the magic or it would consume me. I balled my hands into fists and shoved the whirlwind away from me with a scream of anger that tore through the room along with my magic.
When the dust settled, I was the only one standing. I blinked in confusion, breathing heavily, trying to make sense of the bodies lying flat around me. As the last of the magic slipped away, fear edged back in. My whole body shook with sudden fatigue. Around me, a few of the trainees pushed themselves up, coughing on dusty, smoky air, but others lay still. A cold horror washed through me. What if I’d killed them? Hazy memories of blackened corpses flashed behind my eyes. I couldn’t tell if the smell of burning flesh was real or a fabrication of my mind. Was I remembering Duvey or hallucinating something far worse?
I staggered toward the edge of the room, hoping to make it to one of the chairs along the wall. The edges of my vision turned red, then black, and my legs gave out. I crashed onto the stone floor, breaking my fall painfully with one arm before the darkness closed in.
A pounding ache in my head woke me, accompanied by a strange but comforting feeling in my right arm, as if warmth were flowing into it.
“That should be enough,” a voice said nearby. “She’s coming around.”
I opened my eyes to see Evie touching my arm. Brynan and the woman with salt-and-pepper hair stood over me on my other side.
“Thank you, Evie,” the woman said. “You can go.”
I pushed myself upright, watching Evie vanish through a nearby door. I was on the floor in
a small room with a desk on the far side and bright light streaming in through the window behind it. By the slant of the light, I’d been unconscious for at least three sunlengths.
“Lia,” the woman said, her voice stern. “What happened?”
I blinked at her, still feeling disoriented and confused. What had happened? “Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Saia,” the woman said. “I’m the guardian of Corovja and head instructor here. Tell me what you did in the training room.”
I sat up cautiously, not trusting my legs just yet. My head spun as soon as I was upright, and it took a moment for my vision to clear again.
“I . . . protected myself,” I said.
“Did you take power from others?” Saia’s eyes were narrow and fierce, and I shrank away from her. “Did anyone help you?”
“No,” I said. None of those people would have helped me, and it was baffling that she might think otherwise. “It was just me.”
Saia and Brynan looked at each other. Brynan appeared wary, while Saia’s face was impossible to read. If the queen’s best trainers didn’t know how I’d knocked everyone out earlier, getting my magic under control would be even harder than I’d thought. How was I supposed to learn if they couldn’t explain my powers to me? There didn’t seem to be a classroom component to the instruction here, which would have made everything so much easier.
“But fire is your only Affinity,” Saia said. “Correct?”
“As far as I know.” But how was I supposed to be sure? It was the first gift to come to me. Whatever ability I had to pull on other magic was probably just caused by my lack of control.
“You came from Mynaria, yes?”
I nodded.
“It might be hard for her to articulate her powers,” Brynan said. “She’s had no formal training. Ikrie said she doesn’t even have the Sight.”
He knew I was untrained and he’d thrown me into fighting exercises with the other trainees. How did he expect me to learn anything that way?
Saia looked at me for a moment. “It hardly matters right now.” She shot an annoyed look at Brynan. “You should never have been sparring with the others when you don’t know how to See or shield yourself.” She spoke to me, but her words were clearly a rebuke of Brynan, and I felt a pinprick of vindication.
“What should she do, then?” Brynan said. “If she doesn’t learn to fight, she’ll never be prepared for the Revel.”
“What is the Revel?” I asked.
“The Midwinter Revel is an exhibition and a competition for the trainees,” Brynan explained, clearly exasperated by my lack of knowledge. “The winner has first choice of apprenticeship and so on down the line.”
A wave of fear crashed over me. “But I don’t want to fight.” There had to be other things to learn. I’d caused enough harm with my powers already.
“Fighting is the whole point.” He spoke as though I were stupid. “We fight to defend our kingdom.”
“But . . . Evie is a healer,” I said, remembering the warmth that had spread through my arm and shoulder before she left. “Isn’t she?”
“Among other things,” Saia said.
“Maybe there are things I can learn from the other trainees if—”
“You’re not here to make friends,” Brynan said, his voice sharp.
“You’re here to compete,” Saia said.
Before I could ask any more questions, the queen swept into the room. Both Saia and Brynan nodded to acknowledge her.
“Accidents already on the first day of training don’t speak well for your instruction,” the queen commented.
Brynan’s jaw tightened. “No one told us she didn’t have the Sight until—”
“If you had read the briefing papers I provided you with yesterday, I think you would have found that information enclosed.” The queen took a step closer to him, her white robes whispering over the rug.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” he said, flinching as she drew closer.
“Lia—come with me,” the queen said.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, fearful of becoming the next source of her displeasure.
Her guards moved in to flank us as soon as we exited Saia’s small room. She led me through the halls until we reached the throne room, which was in a part of the castle that seemed much older based on its architectural details. The queen turned to face me as her guards quietly dispersed to the perimeter of the room. It felt empty of magical power, except what I sensed from the queen and, strangely enough, a patch of the marble floor that was red as blood.
“Please show me what you know of shielding,” she said.
“Here?” I looked around, suddenly aware of how many burnable and breakable things there were in the throne room. Vases perched on stone pillars, tapestries hanging on the walls, and wooden beams that looked several centuries older than me. “Well, we didn’t get much time to work—”
“Show, not tell.” Her hands lit up in the space of a heartbeat, glowing with brilliant white light. Magic gathered in her hands, and the flame grew until she flung a fireball at me with absolutely no change in expression. I screamed and leaped to the side but wasn’t nearly quick enough to evade her. The ball of flame smashed into my chest and knocked me to my knees, the stone floor rattling my teeth. My breaths came raggedly, and I skittered away on all fours like a frightened animal.
“Evidently Saia and Brynan haven’t taught you anything today.” Queen Invasya sighed. “Come along.” She held out her hand and stepped toward me.
My hand shook with nerves as I reached up. Her grip was cool as marble, a strange contrast to the fire she’d held in her hands just moments before. As soon as I was on my feet, she paced away from me toward the middle of the room.
“Try again,” she said. “Try to engage your Sight to anticipate my next move.”
Her hands began to glow again, and my throat immediately constricted with fear. The queen’s magic slammed into my chest. I stumbled a little, and the edges of my sleeves smoldered. Before I could recover, a second fireball hit me, and I fell over backward with a grunt of pain. I now lay over the line where the white marble met the bloody red. I crawled back to my feet, trying to hold back the tears stinging the corners of my eyes.
“No one has ever knocked you down, have they?” the queen asked, her tone and expression puzzled. “I wouldn’t have expected that of a commoner.”
I took several steps back, my arms held out defensively in front of me. She wasn’t wrong. In my life as a princess, no one had ever tried to physically harm me. Fighting had never been in my purview. I held her gaze this time, scared to look away.
“Are you afraid?” She stepped forward and flicked her fingers at me. I recoiled, expecting another blast of power. Instead there was nothing, and I looked like a fool. A traitorous tear slipped down my left cheek and my lip trembled.
“You are,” she said. “You’ll have to get over that.”
My head buzzed like a hive of bees. She knew I wasn’t trained enough to hold off the kind of attacks she was throwing at me. My anger and my magic swirled inside me, and I felt the familiar wave of rising power that meant bad things were about to happen. I no longer cared about trying to stop them.
Queen Invasya raised a hand.
“No!” I balled my hands into fists. The emotions churning through me shot out of me at once and in every direction. A wall of fire bloomed from my fingertips, expanding to twice my height in mere seconds. I shoved it away from me with a feral yell. Invasya’s fireball dissipated against the shield, which swept toward her. My heart stayed in my throat as the flames parted harmlessly around her and then hissed out with a flick of her hand.
The queen’s surprise quickly turned to a small, knowing smile.
“No,” I said again, more softly this time. I took a few steps back. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be pushed to lose control.
“That was interesting.” She stepped toward me, this time keeping her arms by her sides.
“Stop trying to run from your abilities,” she said, her voice commanding. “Those thrice-damned Mynarians have made you afraid of your own power.”
“I don’t know how not to be afraid,” I said. It wasn’t the Mynarians’ or my family’s fault that they hadn’t known what to do with me and my powers.
“Be afraid if you must,” the queen said, “but fight anyway.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” I didn’t know how to do what she asked.
“First you need to find your Sight,” she said. “Do you play an instrument?”
I lost focus, caught off guard by the random question. “Yes, the harp.”
“Then I might have a technique for you to try,” she said. “Come with me.”
She led me into an adjacent room that appeared to be her study, then released a mechanism in the wall to reveal a narrow corridor. I followed her in, uncertain. The corridor was dim, though there was light at its end. When we reached the end, it opened into another chamber. In one corner of the room stood the most magnificent pedal harp I’d ever seen. It towered over me, standing even taller than the queen. Flower-covered vines climbed the column of the harp, the crown glittering with gold leaf and inlaid sapphires. Similar designs had been wrought in gold filigree that had undoubtedly been inlaid in the sides of the soundbox by magic.
“Play for me,” the queen said.
“What?” I stared at her with wide eyes.
“I want to hear you play.” She settled herself in a broad leather chair and gestured for me to go to the corner.
“All right,” I said, swallowing hard. There was no way to back out of it now. I pulled the harp out of the corner and found a matching stool tucked behind the shelf. After a few minutes of adjustment, I managed to get the stool to a comfortable height. The instrument was still going to be a challenge to play—I was more accustomed to playing on a semi-grand due to my small stature.
“Do you play as well?” I asked. The instrument was in such fine shape and so carefully and lovingly maintained that it would surprise me if she didn’t.