Chronicles of Galadria II - Encounters

by David Gay-Perret

  Finally, as the week ended, Kezthrem announced that he would be tested again on Monday. The news exhilarated the young man, though he knew that this time, he shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatched! That evening, he made no attempt at a final check to make sure that he was prepared. He was content with simply going to bed, calmly. He felt as though he had gained some level of wisdom through all of this.

  As usual, Kezthrem awaited him in the garden, his back to the entrance. Glaide took immediate note of the baton he held; it was much smaller than those he had seen up until then. He was prepared for a surprise of that sort, though. He was starting to understand his master, and knew he would not have repeated a trick twice. The young man was not surprised when the man launched the object into the air, rather than resting it on the ground as he had done before.

  Glaide remained calm. He waited for the right moment to draw; the baton was still too high up. Suddenly, his armed moved, and he abruptly drew his weapon from its sheath. The blade leapt towards the piece of wood, which had just begun its descent. The young man managed to stop his blade just before impact, and just as with the leaves under the trees, he let his sword follow behind the object as it made its way towards the ground. Only when it touched down, did the young man return it to his sheath. Kezthrem did not give the baton a single glance. His gaze fixed on his disciple, and a smile lit up his face.

  “It’s time to move on to something more substantial,” he declared.

  Glaide smiled back. The day was off to an auspicious start.

  Chapter 19

  THE master and his disciple moved into the dojo as Kezthrem began his explanation.

  “As I told you before, we’re going to begin developing your power. You know now how to draw rapidly and precisely, but we need to work on your efficiency. To do that, we need to cut out some steps in the process.”

  The young man shot a glance at his master, who added, “You waste time by drawing your blade from its sheath. I want to teach you how to make your sheathed sword appear directly in your hand. Then, it will be easy to move on to making the blade itself, without the sheath, appear in your hand. Now, listen carefully: before, you told me that your weapon felt like another limb to you.”

  “I did,” agreed the boy, impatient to move on, and learn something new.

  “So, you are now able to make your weapon appear and disappear as easily as you would move an arm or a leg.”

  “Right.”

  “So now, tell me this: what will allow you to become faster, more precise, and less limited?”

  “You mean there is a way to make my sword appear that is more efficient that feeling it?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  The young man delved into his brain, but he could see no better way than what he was already doing. Before the silence of his student, Kezthrem spoke.

  “The mind, Glaide. You don’t need to feel the blade, but rather, to simply think of it.”

  “Erm... I’m afraid I don’t follow,” the young man responded, feeling perplexed.

  “It is very simple; what instructs your limbs to move?”

  “My head... my brain.”

  “Certainly, at least on a mechanical level. In reality, it is your mind that gives the order to execute this movement, or that movement. If you want to move forwards, you have to walk. If you want to be full, you have to eat.”

  “And that applies to my sword, then.”

  “It does. In actuality, nothing is stopping you from removing your belt and making the sword disappear. The difficulty comes from the fact that you can’t make it reappear, because you wouldn’t be able to feel it at your side.”

  “I think I’m starting to see what you mean...” murmured the young man.

  “So, first of all, you need to be able to imagine and feel your sword in your mind. If you look at an object, one that you can see in its entirety, such as a stone in the middle of the grass, you will notice after a few moments that you can almost measure its weight without touching it. You can feel its weight, and its form.” Glaide hung on the words of his master. “Then, it is only necessary to lift the weight in your head, and magic will do the rest. It's much the same as if you had the ability of telekinesis. In your case, it is a bit different, because the object is not before you, as you’ve made it disappear. But you can visualize it, and more than that, you can touch it with your mind. What follows, then, is relatively easy: once you can reconstruct your sword in your mind, you only need to make it go where you want it.”

  “So if I understand you right,” the young man said tentatively, “to make my sword appear directly in my hand, I just have to picture it as though it was in front of me, as if I could grasp it, and then project that image into reality. But how do I do that?”

  “When you have the image of your sword in mind, making it reappear is no different than in the method you use now: you choose to make it appear, the same way you choose to make your arm move.”

  “So at that stage, it is just the same as if it were attached to my belt. In the end, the only difference is that when my weapon is at my side, I don’t have to think of where it should appear. It arrives directly in the sheath that is at my side, whereas if it isn’t attached, it has to appear in a specific place.”

  “And it is up to you to decide where,” added Kezthrem. “You can make it appear at your back, behind a bush, in front of your enemy, or so forth.”

  The young man began to imagine all of the possibilities that that offered, and was soon impatient to try them all out.

  “As I said before, we’ll first work on making your weapon appear in its sheath. From there, it will be child’s play to make just the blade appear.”

  “Right. So, where do I start?”

  “It’s not complicated,” responded the man with an enigmatic smile. “You should start by simply looking at your sword and its sheath. You have to memorize them, until you know them like the back of your hand.”

  Glaide nodded abruptly, then waited for whatever would come next.

  Nothing did.

  “And... Is that all?” he asked, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.

  “That’s all,” confirmed his master. With that, he left the room, leaving his disciple alone, and more than a little perplexed.

  The young man took a seat, settling in comfortably on the ground, his legs crossed in front of him. He placed the naked blade across his knees, then began to look at it. In reality, though, he had only his eyes fixed on it; his mind was elsewhere, torn between disappointment and joy. He was joyful to have passed his test, of course, and he was thrilled to be progressing. What he had managed to do with the baton Kezthrem threw at him appeared incredible to him. It was hard to believe that it had indeed been him, and that he had been able to stop his movement just before touching the target, and that he’d managed to follow its path without once damaging it or drawing too far away from it. He could not deny that his master’s training had born fruit.

  On the other hand, though, he was disappointed, and even annoyed, to once again find himself doing something boring. It had now been like that for two weeks, and he’d about had enough. He’d thought it would be over once he’d succeeded in the test, but that success had, in the end, led to nothing but a new schedule that was just as monotonous as the old one. He tried not to think about all of that, and to instead fortify himself with patience, but that was becoming more and more difficult, and continually doing the same exercises was becoming more and more unbearable.

  The young man let out a deep sigh, then resigned himself to memorizing the form of the weapon that belonged to him.

  First, he set his gaze on the hilt. The strips of leather that crisscrossed the surface ensured a firm grip, and prevented the hand from slipping, even if it became sweaty, or covered with blood. The handle came to a point at the bottom that was long enough to be used as a dagger. His gaze shifted towards the guard. It was wide and solid, and efficiently protected the hand that carried it. Th
e young man noted the design of it: the metal changed colors in certain places, becoming lighter, and designs were drawn out there. Glaide had never noticed them before, and as far as he could tell, they appeared to be the work of a great master. He was curious to know if the same swirls existed on Kezthrem’s weapon, since he’d mentioned that the two blades had been forged by the same man.

  The adolescent remained focused on the hilt and the guard. He passed the morning looking at them from different angles and, strangely enough, in the end, he never actually felt bored. He was discovering his sword as though he’d never seen it before, and soon realized that he knew very little of the secrets it contained. When the guardian had given him the weapon, he’d assumed it was an ordinary blade, purchased in a weapons shop. After discovering that protectors’ blades were forged by the protectors themselves, he’d wondered where his had come from, and now that he knew the answer, he wished he could learn more about its history.

  When Kezthrem returned to the dojo, he found his disciple hunched over his weapon, absorbed in contemplating it. He didn’t even hear his master approach. The man leaned forward, and it was only then that the young man noticed the benevolent face, reflected in the blade. “Oh, master, I didn’t hear you come in!” he exclaimed.

  “How are things coming?”

  “Oh, good, very good. I’ve studied the hilt and the guard, and I think that I know them by heart.” To be truthful, Glaide had really just memorized the form of the handle itself, but he secretly hoped he could accelerate things by making his master believe he was learning quickly.

  “We’ll see. Whatever the case, I think that is enough for today. Start your usual stretches.”

  Glaide grimaced, but replied, “Of course, master.”

  That evening, as he climbed the stairs to go to bed, the young man had no real desire to go to sleep. When he reach his room, he wanted only one thing: to breathe in the night air. He went into his room and moved towards the sliding walls at the back, which he opened. The eaves before him, with their gentle slope, seemed perfect for gazing at the stars. The young man lay down, taking care not to get too close to the edge. He gazed up at the night sky and let his mind drift. Soon, he fell asleep.

  The next two days passed in exactly the same way: studying his sword in the morning, exercising his muscles and stretching in the afternoon. And that was how the month of October began.

  Glaide still hadn’t managed to have a conversation with his master. His master left him to train alone, only passing through from time to time to give a correction or bit of instruction. It had now been three weeks since the man and his disciple had met, during which the two had lived under the same roof, but the boy felt as though he lived with a complete stranger.

  Added to that, everything that he had done in that time seemed so boring, that he was beginning to wonder if he would ever learn to use his sword properly. The young man was counting on finding his friends once his education was finished, and he didn’t want to push that reunion several years into the future. Of course, he did not know the extent of what he had to learn, but he hoped that it would not take more than a few more months.

  He realized that it had now been more than a month since he’d left his companions. The month of October had begun without the adolescent really even noticing. Of course, it was difficult to notice, since there appeared to be no seasons here, but rather, an eternal springtime. Glaide had a sudden desire to concentrate his thoughts on his three friends, on what they’d become, on what they could do, and on what they’d learned, but he forced himself to instead concentrate on the task at hand, deciding to simply be optimistic; already he felt as though he could precisely picture the blade and hilt of his sword. He was even starting to be able to feel them, to weigh them with his mind, like Kezthrem had told him. Memorizing his weapon had become almost an obsession, and he saw it even in his sleep, no longer thinking of much of anything else.

  That Wednesday night, since he was particularly annoyed at having stared too much at the sheath and the guard, he threw his weapon towards the floor in his room. However, he had no more than let it go, when the image imposed itself in his mind. He could see it clearly, sheathed. The weapon never reached the floorboards, instead disappearing as it fell. The young man froze for a moment, taken aback. The image blurred, then disappeared from before his mind’s eye. He tried to force the image back into his mind, but it didn’t work. His weapon had disappeared, and he didn’t have the means to make it reappear.

  Somehow, he didn’t become concerned; in that brief moment, he had understood what his master had explained to him, when he’d spoken of visualizing the object to control it. He didn’t need to picture a photo, he needed to see a real, but immaterial sword. Strengthened by his success, he felt his frustration flee. He would explain everything to his master the next day; he would certainly know what they should do.

  For the time being, he took out his map of the Known Lands, and by the light of the moon, he added his encounter with Tyv and Paeh, as well as meeting Kezthrem. He added the name of the mountains of the dwarves, Oclin-Fer, and finally, he added the information Ayrokkan had given him. However, he hesitated to mark down the Forgotten Ocean, and finally chose to do nothing. To him, it didn’t seem as though that part of the world belonged to this time, and he preferred to save it as his own secret. He took a moment to look at his work, and thought to himself that the map that he now possessed was certainly the most complete map that existed, because it brought together the knowledge of the dwarves, the dragons, and humanity. Beyond that, he hoped he would soon be able to add the knowledge of the elves and the barbarians.

  Chapter 20

  THE next morning, when the disciple announced to his master what had happened, his master couldn’t help but smile.

  “So, you’ve managed to make your sword disappear without having it attached to your belt. Did you feel your weapon? Did you visualize it in the moment when it disappeared?”

  “I did master. But I couldn’t repeat the phenomenon to make it reappear.”

  “And why not?” asked the man.

  “The image was blurry. When I try to picture my sword, I can tell that there are parts that I don’t remember precisely enough.”

  “Good, good,” murmured Kezthrem. “Glaide, we’re advancing more quickly than I could have hoped!”

  The young man smiled widely. Finally, good news.

  “I can help you recover your sword. Listen carefully. You know now what I mean when I say that you have to feel your weapon, and to not simply master it at the speed it takes to move a limb, but at the speed it takes to think of moving a limb. However, you can’t instinctively adopt the frame of mind that would let you make your sword reappear, even if you’ve already caught a glimpse of what that looks like.”

  “So, then, how can I get it back?”

  “Don’t worry, it is not lost forever. For the instant, the only thing you can do is to try to picture the parts that you remember the best, such as the hilt alone, or the sheath. That will have to be enough. Don’t try to make your sword appear in your hand, or in a specific place. Just try to get it to return, and nothing more specific. That’s all.”

  “I think I understand...”

  The adolescent closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate. The handle with the strips of leather crisscrossing the surface appeared first, then the tip of the handle of the sword. Then, he slowly worked his way up, towards the blade, though he had problems when he reached the guard. He couldn’t picture the designs drawn there. He didn’t push it, and instead moved further up. The sheath began to appear, bit by bit. First, it was just a vague, dark shape, then the contours became clear, and finally, Glaide could make out the studs that held the metal reinforcements to the sheath. As he pictured the weapon in his mind, it seemed to give off a weak glow, and the young man could feel the weight of it. He almost felt as though he could reach out and touch it.

  He opened his eyes abruptly, and for a moment, the image o
f his sword and the image of reality before him were superimposed on another. The magic of Galadria did the rest. His blade, drawn, appeared out of the void and came flying forwards, the sheath falling to the ground at the same time.

  Kezthrem found himself in the trajectory of the projectile. Everything happened so quickly: the man, seeing the sharp steel casting a shadow on him, reflexively made his own sword appear. With a rapid movement of the handle, he struck the weapon of his disciple, which went on to bounce against the wall, before coming to a standstill in the center of the dojo.

  Glaide had not moved; everything had happened too quickly. His master sheathed his sword.

  “Take back what is yours,” he said in a neutral tone.

  The young man hurried to obey. “I’m so sorry, master, I...”

  “What exactly happened?” interrupted his master.

  “I succeeded in visualizing most of the sword, and it even seemed as though I could feel it. So, I opened my eyes, and for a moment, the image in my mind, and the reality before me mixed, and...”

  “Your blade appeared without its sheath. Why?”

  “It’s because... in the moment when I opened my eyes and looked in front of me, and incidentally in your direction, I imagined my sword unsheathed,” replied the young man, his gaze dropping to the floor. “I was wondering if I knew the blade as well as I knew the sheath...”

  “Well, it seems as though you do.” The voice of the man was not hard; it contained not even the slightest nuance of reproach. He actually seemed pleased, more or less. “At any rate, now you understand that the technique lies in being able to superimpose your mind over reality. With the level that you have now, it will always be possible to make your sword reappear, but as you can tell, that takes time, and can be dangerous. You will have to master this power until you no longer have to close your eyes, and until it no longer takes so much time and concentration.”