by Tricia Owens
Hadrian shook his head. "I do appreciate her. But after my daily lessons—she leaves immediately. I know she’s busy with other lessons, but...I’ve begun to think she doesn’t like me," he finished miserably.
Gavedon hid his satisfaction. He had chosen Hadrian's caretakers well. The boy was being raised by strangers.
He turned on his heel and continued his original course down the hall, confident that Hadrian would follow as closely as a puppy begging after scraps.
"I’ll think on allowing you into my classes," he said, "even though you’ve admitted to being ungrateful and demanding. Prove to me that you are, in fact, a good son and can become an obedient student. Perhaps one day in the future there may be an opening for you to sit in on a lesson or two."
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!"
A small hand caught his in a jubilant grip. Gavedon froze in mid-step and looked down at the pale hand holding onto his. In Hadrian’s shining face, Gavedon could not help but see his wife. A lump rose in his throat. Damn Roisin to the depths of the netherworld for this. She had robbed him of the thrill of fatherhood and smashed his dreams of passing on the Order to a worthy, loyal heir. He could have loved Hadrian. He could have felt pride in him as fathers should.
But it was a terrible risk.
Bestow love upon the one who would one day end his dream? Gavedon couldn’t bring himself to love his murderer no matter how uncertain that prophecy might be. Though Hadrian was innocent still, Gavedon both feared and resented him. Looking upon the comely boy was to see Roisin laughing at him. Here was her revenge against her husband.
"I’ve changed my mind." Gavedon jerked his hand out of Hadrian’s hold. He could practically feel the despair and panic rolling off the boy.
"No! I'm sorry! I’m―"
"I will give you a different sort of lesson. We’ll hold it in your room."
It wasn't a far walk since they were already near the bed chambers. Gavedon was unsurprised when Hadrian jumped in front of him, preventing him from entering inside.
"Let me―let me tidy up first," Hadrian said breathlessly. His large eyes were wider still with obvious fear. "I didn’t have a chance to clean up after myself this morning."
Gavedon studied him. His son was a poor liar. Yet another of Roisin's traits. "Are you hiding something in there?"
Pale hands twisted each other. "No..." Beneath Gavedon's unwavering stare, Hadrian broke. "Yes," he whispered, stepping aside.
"Thank you for not insulting me by lying," Gavedon muttered, sweeping past him and entering the small room. "I already know what it is you’re hiding."
Hadrian's room held nothing of note beyond a bed, a clothes chest, and small table. It made the handmade cage which stood atop the window ledge all the more obvious.
Gavedon stopped before the wooden cage and eyed the small brown bird inside. It chirped merrily at him.
"I didn’t give you permission for this bird."
Hadrian hurried to the cage and squeezed his fingers between the bars. The bird, apparently accustomed to the boy's touch, hopped forward and nipped at his fingertips. "But look!" Hadrian said excitedly. "He’s trained and I keep his cage clean. Please let me keep him. He keeps me company when the Order is in session. He sings!"
"You want to join the Order and you want to keep this creature," Gavedon drawled, watching Hadrian's fingers tremble before he removed them from the cage. "You ask for much, Hadrian."
"I know," his son whispered, ducking his head. "I ask more than I deserve."
"At least you’re not too stupid to realize that," Gavedon said. "Very well, I’ll allow you to do both." He held up his hand when Hadrian's head shot up, full of delight and surprise. Gavedon imagined he almost saw love on the boy's face, though how it could have grown he had no idea. "However, you must first prove yourself worthy."
Staring at the bird and its cage, Gavedon drew upon his power, muttering words of magecraft as he did so. As he and Hadrian watched, the wooden cage sprang thorns. The thorns grew, becoming as long and sharp as claws. They continued to grow until they filled the interior of the cage and hemmed the small bird into its center. The bird chirped and fluttered its trapped wings wildly as a thorn pricked its throat, pulling a bead of blood.
"You'll kill him!" Hadrian exclaimed, raising his hands to the cage of thorns but unable to touch it without cutting himself. "He won't sit still for that. He'll impale himself!"
"Then use the magick you boasted of earlier to free him," Gavedon replied calmly.
Desperation and a hint of betrayal darkened Hadrian's eyes as he looked back at Gavedon. "You know I can’t―"
"I know only what you claim. You say you’re ready to take lessons with the Order. Prove it."
He thought Hadrian would burst into tears or otherwise rail at him to release the bird. Instead, Hadrian turned back to the cage and did nothing. Gavedon waited. As the minutes stretched and the bird became more frantic in its struggle with the thorns, Gavedon began to believe that the old man had been wrong about everything. Perhaps Gavedon would get his heir, after all.
Then he felt magick drift into the room.
Gavedon tensed as raw energy began gathering about Hadrian like a growing storm. It was unchanneled, dangerous magick, but Gavedon knew he would be able to control it if anything went awry. The question was, could Hadrian?
His answer came shortly. The wooden cage erupted into roaring flame. It looked like a ball of fire sitting upon the window sill. Hadrian screamed in horror. Gavedon watched his dreams of an heir burn to cinder before his eyes.
Gavedon extinguished the fire with a few muttered phrases. What was left of the cage and bird looked like blackened sticks.
"No, no, no," Hadrian whimpered, digging through the burnt wood to retrieve the black husk of his bird. "My friend..." Tears slid down his cheeks.
Gathering his composure, Gavedon moved to the door, disregarding the emotional scene playing out behind him. "There is one more thing you need to do before you join the training tomorrow, Hadrian." He waited for the boy to stop sniffling long enough to hear him out. "Eat your little friend for dinner tonight. It will be a symbolic act celebrating the new path you are taking." He heard his son gasp. "I will see you in the morning."
As he walked down the hallway, he listened to Hadrian weep, but his heart had long closed its doors to his son. The boy back there would be the death of him unless Gavedon restrained that wild power. He would not fail to do so.
When he awoke in the morning, he found a pile of bird bones, picked clean, sitting outside his door. Hadrian's desire to join the Order and be closer to his father was stronger than Gavedon had expected. Kicking the bones aside grimly, Gavedon warned himself not to underestimate the power of the boy’s will again.
Hadrian was sitting in the back when Gavedon entered the prayer room. The boy looked pale and his skin carried a faint greenish cast, as if eating the bird had made him sick. But he met Gavedon's eyes squarely and with a slight tilt of his chin. Hadrian was stubborn, Gavedon realized with some surprise. If he didn't mistrust the boy, he would have been proud of him.
Chapter Six
Hadrian's sixteenth year…
"Anew member is joining the Order today."
Hadrian looked up from the text he was writing as his father entered the lesson room with a young man in tow. The quill fell from Hadrian's suddenly nerveless fingers. The newcomer was young―only a little older than himself. Hadrian stared at the other boy with wide eyes. In all the years that he had been on Shard's Point, he had never seen anyone near his own age.
Gavedon paused before the gathered members with a hand on the young man's shoulder. The newcomer was nearly as tall as Gavedon with a shock of brown hair that fell messily over dark, brooding brown eyes framed by thick eyebrows. He had a thin face, suggesting he hadn't eaten properly in a while, and this was emphasized by the loose fall of the new white Order robe hanging from his wiry frame.
Hadrian cared nothing for those details. It was th
e young man's expression that fascinated him. It seemed to hold a mixture of disdain and boredom, as though the newcomer were on Shard's Point only because he had no place better to be. It was a far cry from the usual exuberance―even gratitude―that most new members showed when first admitted into the Order. It raised Hadrian's already feverish interest in the young man. He couldn't stop staring at him.
"His name is Jessyd," Gavedon continued in his booming voice. "He is now one of us. As an introduction to the Order, I thought we would provide Jessyd with a brief demonstration of drawn energy." Hadrian's heartrate sped up. "Everyone to the west courtyard."
Hadrian snapped his book shut and quickly scooped his supplies into his arms.
"Not you, Hadrian."
The words stole the life from his limbs. Devastated, he looked up to find Gavedon’s apathetic gaze upon him.
"You will return to your study room and continue your writing."
Hadrian's attention flicked to the new boy. Jessyd seemed to return his curiosity, and that reflection of interest increased Hadrian's desperation.
"But, my lord, I'd like to attend the demonstration with the others. Please. It would be helpful to me."
"Are you refusing me?"
Hadrian flinched and saw the members nearest to him quickly move away as though he were the scene of a horrific disaster.
"N-no," he stammered as sweat trickled down his sides. He ducked his head. "I'm sorry. I'll return to my studies."
"Yes, you will," Gavedon said coldly.
Wincing at his foolhardiness, Hadrian followed the others to the door. Gavedon had already moved ahead of him, guiding Jessyd to the hall that would lead to the courtyard. As the members peeled away, heading in the opposite direction, Hadrian stared after them wistfully. Gavedon had yet to allow him to sit in on a session in which the members used their magick. Only twice had he witnessed Gavedon calling energy.
Aching with curiosity and frustration, Hadrian turned and began the long trek to his study room. The study room was both Hadrian's favorite room in the castle and the room he dreaded most. At the end of a long cold hallway, he came to a stop before a large tapestry.
As he usually did, Hadrian paused to admire the depiction of his father climbing the great Fieran's Peak. Gavedon looked majestic and powerful as he held a shard of shining white rock aloft in his fist. The look on Gavedon's face, although created with simple thread, was nevertheless awe-inspiring. Gavedon looked triumphant. Proud. It was an expression that Hadrian vowed his father would one day hold for him.
He lifted aside the heavy tapestry and entered the small, circular room within. His eyes immediately shied away from the rack of whips that stood against the wall, settling instead on the worn wooden bench in the center of the room. Until Gavedon returned to begin his lesson with Hadrian, Hadrian could sit on the bench to perform his studies rather than on the floor. Compared to the cold stone floor, the stiff bench was a luxury.
He settled his books across his lap and opened a single volume bound in red leather. He flipped past a handful of pages covered in precise, neat writing until he found a page only half-covered with text.
This was Gavedon's history, as told to Hadrian by his father. Hadrian had been surprised and honored by his father's directive that Hadrian be the one to record The One's story for later generations to read. Hadrian was continually amazed by the exploits Gavedon recounted to him. Gavedon was alternately as strong as a god and as wise as an Elder. The stories he ordered Hadrian to transcribe made the younger ni Leyanon question how it was that they shared the same blood, for Hadrian didn’t feel half as accomplished or as courageous as his father. The more he wrote of Gavedon's history, the more convinced Hadrian grew that he was not worthy of being The One's son at all.
Still, writing down Gavedon's words in this room was the most intimate act father and son ever shared. Hadrian craved the moments when Gavedon's eyes lost their focus as he drifted into memory. Sometimes his father would smile in a way that was entirely unlike him. It would make Hadrian smile, too, as if he shared in the secret. This was the only place Hadrian had ever heard his father laugh. In this circular room with only a small window allowing pale morning light to shaft across the floor, Hadrian saw his father the way none of the other members did, and he cherished it.
But it was also in this room that Hadrian suffered the most pain at his father's hand. The rack against the wall held implements of punishment that Hadrian had experienced on more occasions than he cared to remember. As pleased as some of Gavedon's memories made the older man, sometimes they brought out the worst in him. If Hadrian were slow to understand a point Gavedon tried to make, if he questioned a decision that Gavedon had made in his life―or sometimes for no reason that Hadrian could discern at all―Gavedon sent him to the rack to select the instrument for his own punishment. And it didn't matter which whip he chose—Hadrian had, in his desperation, tried them all. They each caused him more pain than he sometimes thought he could bear.
He set quill to ink and began writing out the last account Gavedon had given him about his fabled journey to Fieran's Peak. After an hour of careful writing, choosing words that he had learned from painful experience to be the ones Gavedon preferred―describing Gavedon as 'wise' instead of 'learned', using variations of 'prophecy' whenever explaining Gavedon's choices―Hadrian straightened with a frown. He had come to the part in Gavedon's history where he and his two companions had reached Corruptor's Cross at the base of the Fanawel Mountains.
Gavedon had vaguely recounted that his two companions had fallen victim to bad luck and died there. But Hadrian was curious. How had they died? Why was the area called Corruptor's Cross? He didn't want to write out a simple version of events if the truth were in any way exciting. Gavedon, Hadrian knew well, enjoyed it when his actions were described as colorfully as possible.
As he considered Gavedon's retelling of those events, Hadrian found his mind drifting to the newest member of the Order. Jessyd. Even the name managed to excite Hadrian. Another boy in the castle, someone who could be his friend. Hadrian had only ever taken lessons with Gavedon or with his caretakers. Perhaps his father would allow him to share lessons with Jessyd now. Hadrian realized he was smiling idiotically.
The tapestry whipped against the doorway, startling him as Gavedon swept inside. The man's intimidating presence made the small room seem even tinier and Hadrian couldn’t help it that his palms began to sweat.
"The demonstration is over so quickly?" he asked, clutching his book and inkwell as he hastily stood up. Though he knew it was impossible, he feared that his daydreaming about the new boy was apparent on his face.
"Lessil is continuing in my place. There are issues concerning the new member that I want to address with you."
Hadrian felt his face heat. He looked away guiltily. "I-issues?" he stammered.
"Don’t think that I missed the way you were looking at Jessyd. He is now a member of the Order just like any of the others." Hadrian cringed at the censure in his father's voice. He clutched the book he held like a shield across his chest. "You’re not to consort with him without my permission. He comes from a questionable background and were it not for his considerable natural talent, I wouldn’t allow someone like him to dirty my shores with his presence."
Hadrian looked up at that statement, its mystery overriding his caution. "W-why? What’s wrong with him?"
Gavedon's eyes narrowed until they resembled chipped ice. He studied Hadrian far longer than he was comfortable with. "If you imagine yourself befriending him, discontinue doing so, Hadrian. The Order of the White Shard is about furthering the knowledge of magick, not for arranging playmates."
Shame brought a sting to Hadrian's cheeks. "I'm sorry," he said submissively, lowering his head.
Gavedon said nothing for a long while and Hadrian feared that his father was looking over at the rack. But eventually he heard his father settle onto the wooden bench.
"Let us continue where we left off," Gavedon
said.
Hadrian dropped to the floor, knees knocking against the hard stones, and silently opened the book. Whatever questions he had held about Corruptor's Cross faded away as he dutifully began to write.
~~~~~
If there was one thing that Hadrian did well, it was heed a warning. Especially one given to him by his father.
Thus when he took his place at the back of the lesson room the next morning, he was careful not to look up when he noticed from the corner of his eye that Jessyd had taken the seat next to him. It was a difficult task. He yearned to look upon a face that was young like his own. Perhaps Jessyd would even smile at him. The possibility nearly broke Hadrian's control over himself.
Until that is, he felt the unmistakable weight of Gavedon's gaze from the front of the room. Whatever urge he'd had to look at Jessyd vanished in the blink of an eye. One did not cross Gavedon lightly. Especially not Hadrian, who knew better than anyone the intensity of his father's wrath. He kept his attention fixed on his father and the books in front of him, studiously ignoring the curious young man seated to his left.
Today's was a difficult lesson on understanding the flow of Life's energy as it pertained to the lay of the land. Hadrian furrowed his brow as he carefully copied down as much of Gavedon's words as he could. Gavedon demanded that Hadrian be an excellent student, oftentimes testing him privately after lessons were over. Since Gavedon hadn’t yet agreed to allow Hadrian to sit in on any of the Order's magecraft lessons, Hadrian had dedicated himself to mastering those concerning energy in the hopes that Gavedon would one day be impressed enough to agree to expand Hadrian's knowledge. Three years of learning had passed without a single lesson in magecraft, but Hadrian remained hopeful that his father would eventually change his mind.
So lost was he in copying down his father's words that Hadrian didn’t notice at first the small ball of parchment that skipped across his writing tablet. The next one hit his quill, smearing the letter he had been writing. Bewildered, he looked to the side and found Jessyd leaning forward, grinning conspiratorially at him.