by Guy Antibes
“What do the colors mean?” Trak said. He knew about yellow, but past that he hadn’t learned the rankings.
Malena gave him a diffident look but held up her fingers: “Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue, Red, Purple, Black. The darker robes indicate more power in each color. Green and above are referred to as Masters.”
“I’ve seen brown before,” Trak said.
Malena spoke directly to him, now. It seemed that as his status had risen, her opinion of him rose. “That is a high-ranking yellow. I’m about to be tested for dark Yellow, but that’s actually brown.”
The master had said he could be on the way to Black. If that were true, that meant that most magicians were a lot weaker than him. He saw people of all ages wearing yellow robes.
“Most are yellow?”
Malena nodded, but then straightened her robes when an older woman entered wearing a deep purple robe. From her description, Master Borega was only on a rank up from green and not yet red. Trak had seen a darker blue robe.
Master Borega didn’t sit when the woman did. “This is Mistress Nullia. She will want to see your pose progressions.”
Trak didn’t want to disrobe again and Mistress Nullia intimidated him even worse than Master Borega. He looked at the woman and at Malena.
She smiled. “You don’t have to take off your robe, young man. Proceed.”
With this larger audience, Trak took a bit more time composing himself before he began. He moved a few chairs out of the way and positioned himself so he could do the posing forms with his eyes closed. Then he told a deep breath, the way someone had told him to in his past. He ignored following that thread and concentrated on the poses in the book that he could now clearly remember.
After his recent performance, Trak felt his posing went more smoothly and lost himself in the progressions right until the end. The silence mirrored the lack of sound after his last performance.
Trak ended up facing Malena. She looked astonished. He turned and bowed to the two Masters, Borega standing behind Mistress Nullia.
“Green, you said? Unless those robes hid massive mistakes, I’d rate him higher than you Borega.” She turned her gaze on Trak. “Perform the Lukee pose.”
Trak did as she said and was able to calibrate his concentration this time. He moved the ball up and down in the air.
“You could throw that ball, if you wished. Am I correct?”
Trak blushed. She seemed to know more than Master Borega. “I think I can.”
“We controlled him with ten Yellows,” Borega said.
Ten Yellows? Trak instantly caught a thread being captured inside of a familiar house. He had wanted to run away, but why? The Magicians Guild was where he belonged.
Nullia narrowed her eyes. “What were you just thinking about?”
The statement flustered Trak a bit. “That I belonged in the Magicians guild.”
“Fair enough.” She raised her hand. “Borega, dress him in mid-blue.”
“Like me?” The Blue Master sounded indignant.
The woman nodded. “That will do for a starting place. I will take on his education until he has progressed beyond my ability.”
Trak noticed the fear on Borega’s face and the admiration on Malena’s. He didn’t know if he could reconcile the two, but he would have to think on it.
He followed Master Borega after bowing to Malena and Mistress Nullia. He knew that would likely be the last time he would bow the younger woman.
They made their way to another building. “You will be living in the Master’s Building in your own apartment,” Borega said as they passed the edge of the brick maze. Trak had never been allowed in this part of the Guild, although he had seen the three-story building often enough.
Borega conferred with an older Orange sitting behind a counter in the lobby of the building. He was handed a key and began walking up the stairs. “Room Four on the Second floor. Come this way.”
Trak was shown into a small sitting room. Borega showed him a bedroom. The bedding had been stripped from the mattress.
“The bath and, uh, necessary is at the south end of the hallway,” the master said. “You won’t be called Master until a panel has seen your pose procession. I wouldn’t worry about your ranking. It will change.”
“My meals will still be in the Commissary?”
“Yes, but if you wear blue robes, you will sit with the Masters, even before the panel. We maintain a certain amount of decorum in the guild.”
Trak nodded.
“Here is the key. Should you lose it, the Orange at the reception counter will open your room for you. Now let’s see to your robes.”
~
It felt rather odd to enter the Commissary from the Master’s Door and sit at the section allocated to high-ranking magicians. Trak looked for the woman in the dark red robes and didn’t see her. What was the word? Worry. He wouldn’t forget, but he’d like to remember why he shouldn’t forget it.
Borega trundled in. Trak didn’t have to call any of the masters by their title. Less than ten percent of the guild had achieved Master or Mistress status. Yellows and Oranges were the true functionaries and the Masters devoted their time to teaching and working on outside projects for the Guild.
“You will follow me around for a bit. Master Riotro, our only Master of the Black and leader of our guild, needs to sit in on your panel and won’t return from his assignment until next week.”
“The leader goes out on assignment?”
“He is gone more than he is here.” Borega laughed as a Yellow presented them with cards that listed available meals. Evidently the Masters ate much better than the rest of the guild. Trak was unsure that he deserved such privileges for performing little more than a dance for Mistress Nullia.
“He does, as will you. I expect you’ll be in high demand. You’ll need the training that Nullia can provide and the practical guidance of an Orange. Some of our Orange guild members are equivalent to engineers on the outside. They know how much and what kind of magic to use on our assignments.”
“What are these assignments?”
Borega shook his head. “Sometimes it’s inconvenient to eradicate memories, isn’t it? Improving a farmer’s crops, building a road. Sealing a building from the elements. Lifting large objects for various tasks.” He shrugged. “I’m sure your imagination can fill in even more possibilities.”
Trak drew in his eyebrows. “Do we fight in wars?”
The master shivered. “Not if we can help it. The last war we fought was against the Colcanans. It was a draw. They have fewer magicians, but all are more powerful except for perhaps our Purples and Master Riotro.”
Trak noticed that Borega gave their leader his honorific.
“What do I need to know?” Trak asked.
“For one thing, I’ll make sure we review the qualifications for each level in our order. It’s not just a matter of pose knowledge, but also one of power. Something you might not need to worry about.”
“I have plenty of power?”
Borega smiled at the server who just served them. “Plenty,” he said. “Like a Toryan.”
“Why like a Toryan? I seem to remember they live in the forest.”
“Toryans are powerful magicians, but they love nature and live in forests. When other races came to Cokasan, they were pushed back, since they aren’t warlike, into the mountain forests of border lands. They don’t like visitors in their lands and keep Santasia’s borders secure except for a few roads permitted to cross over the mountains. There are no Toryans in the Guild. Our absorption spell doesn’t work on them, so for centuries, we have been content to ignore each other. The saying ‘like a Toryan’ has persisted to mean any magician with extraordinary power.”
Neither of them said another word as they began to eat. Trak took back his thoughts about the poor food. The Masters ate well…very well, as evidenced by Borega’s size.
~~~
Chapter Twenty-One
VALANNA STOMPED HER FOOT O
N THE WOODEN floorboards of Asem’s cabin. “I’m so tired of this!” She said it, but she didn’t mean it. The work made her feel more than worthless, more than a simple pawn. Well, perhaps she was physically tired.
“It’s for your own good. How did Bluntwithe—“
“I called him Trak.”
Kulara smiled. “How did Trak perform his poses?”
“Hmmm.” Valanna thought back. She remembered that he sort of flowed into them at the end. “Smoothly. He went from one to the next as if they were one movement.”
Asem’s eyes grew round. “How novel!” He jumped off of his bed and grabbed a knife from a light meal they had eaten in his cabin for lunch. “Like this?” His body moved quickly and silently as he went from pose to pose.
“Those aren’t poses that I know, but he did something like that.”
“Interesting, the boy has been taught military forms. If he does them with precision—“
Valanna couldn’t help but nod a few times. “Always with precision. Honor complimented him on it, as much as she complimented us on anything.”
“If a person could flow through magical poses, he would be unstoppable in a Magician’s duel.” Kulara said. “No one would know what he would throw, they’d have to hide behind a shield.”
Asem nodded. “And those aren’t permitted, are they?”
His wife met his comment with a snort. He turned to Valanna. “It happens often enough, but the person found to use a shield automatically loses. At least that is the case in most countries. In Pestle, both would lose their lives.”
Asem turned again to look at this wife. “And in war? You know more about these magical things than I do.”
“If he has the power, he could throw spells to confuse the enemy. What does a confused enemy do?” Kulara said.
“He dies,” Asem said, making a fist.
Valanna shivered at the thought of a war. “Is that what you want me to learn, how to make the poses flow?”
“Do you think you can?”
Honor had complimented her on her dance steps. Perhaps she could combine the two. “I can try.”
“Try?” Kulara said.
Valanna took a deep breath. “I will learn how to do it.” The woman continued to scare her, but Valanna had to persevere. She did not want to be sent back to Prince Nez, not that the pair of them had threatened her with such a thing. Just thinking about the prince still made her sick.
~
The shoreline of Colcan looked wonderful to Valanna. The captain had assured Asem that they would reach the city of Tachium within two days. She had sought some respite from Kulara’s incessant drilling, but she had to admit that combining poses into dance forms had been easier to do that she thought. All she needed to figure out were appropriate connecting moves.
She now had learned to connect all of eight poses. Kulara had said that would be enough until they could resume practice on land, where she would randomly invoke the power words and actually do something with her magic. None of them forgot the day she ripped the sails.
“Are you looking forward to moving on?” Asem said to Valanna as Kulara and he joined her at the railing.
“I’m not sure what ‘moving on’ means for me,” she said. “Do I want to learn more poses and power words? Yes. Am I fit to be a battle magician like Kulara and you talk about? I’m not ready to use magic against another person.” Except Prince Nez, Timor Saddlebug and Podor Feely, she thought. “Will we be seeking out Trak?”
“I don’t know if that’s your purpose, but it is mine,” Asem said. “If we have to help him get out of Santasia, are you willing to help your boyfriend?” Asem said.
She could feel the blush creep up her face and into her cheeks while she spoke. “I hardly know the boy, but somehow we are connected. Is that what you think, that we are romantically involved?”
“Not involved, Valanna. Maybe complementary, if you worked together.”
She didn’t know what Asem meant about that. In fact, she was afraid that Trak would expose her puny abilities. Valanna knew the pair of them thought otherwise, but they hadn’t met Trak yet. Did she feel jealous? No, not jealous, but perhaps anxious and a little afraid the situation.
Those thoughts were thrown out of her mind as the swells of the sea began to increase and her stomach began to churn a bit. She wanted to walk upon those stable shores more than anything else, at the moment.
~
All Trak learned in the week before his rating panel was that none of the magicians in the guild matched his abilities. The fact surprised him and he didn’t know how to handle the information. In the past, he vaguely remembered that had kept the extent of his abilities a secret and that had served him well, but now none seemed to know as many poses as he did. He wasn’t comfortable with the notoriety, especially since he was years younger than most of them.
He didn’t quite know how to hide what he knew, other than hold back on his concentration when he said a power word. However, it wasn’t hard not to give the words his full power. Trak didn’t want to bring the buildings down on him and that also meant the brick maze. He tried a stronger fire spell when he walked alone in the maze the previous day and burned all of the vines off of the side of one brick wall.
Perhaps he needed to practice outside the city in the countryside, but the thoughts of leaving the Guild scared him and that made him worry about the future. Worry. That word again.
He knew it meant something. Trak went back into the practice area of the maze and sat on a stone bench. He looked at the scorched vines. He polled the poses in his mine and remembered the spell that enhanced the growth of plants. Master Borega told him of magicians helping farmers. He stared at the ivy and saw the green of a stem towards the bottom of the wall. Trak made the pose that he remembered and pointed at the tiny bit of living ivy and shouted out the word ‘Pemel!’
Trak could feel the power flow through him and into the plant. He sat back down and watched the runners emerge from the stem and the plant covered the wall once more and grew halfway along the gravel on the ground towards him.
He stared at what he had done. What ranking would they give him for that? He turned his mind back to the word, worry. A thread popped into his mind associating the word with the concept of a shield. No pose, just the word. Trak looked around and no one had come to investigate his gardening effort. He just stood on the edge of the carpet of new ivy and wondered if he should try to use the word.
What would it do? What if using the word destroyed those who used it? He shook his head and rolled the word over in his mind. He had used it before, but he couldn’t remember where or why. The Red Master wouldn’t have mentioned the word to him a few times if she wanted to destroy him, would she? It didn’t feel like it would. Trak inhaled deeply and thought of himself, and then he focused on the word and said it aloud, “Worry!”
Nothing happened. Trak shrugged his shoulders and began to walk towards his room. As he walked to his room, his head felt light. He unlocked his door and lay down after locking himself in his room. His mind began to whir, as more threads seemed to work their way into his consciousness until it seemed that there were more threads than blockages. All of them began to connect!
He remembered the name of the woman in red, Honor. Had she betrayed him? Then he remembered a recent memory where she had reminded him of the word. Somehow she had wanted them to be captured by the Magicians Guild, but then why give him the means of escape?
He felt frustration mounting and his hand curled involuntarily, as if grasping the handle of a sword. He remembered the face of Misson Dalistro, of Gio, Bepiro and the rest of the students. The myriad of lessons in history, geography, politics, and manners flooded into his memory. His mind seemed to play his own history backwards in his mind. Ozitza and other places began to show up.
Trak put his hand to his head as his mind continued to spin. At one point he thought his brain would explode. He remembered his time in Pestledown, the trip from Greenbrook. The expe
riences of being a stableboy serving his father, Neel, Astun, Terry, watching them as they often drank themselves to sleep. Those were memories of boyhood. He looked up and saw his mother looking down at him. How long ago was that? He didn’t remember that memory, but there it was.
Finally he saw his mother through blurry, unfocused eyes and then the man next to him. He gasped when he recognized the face of a much younger Neel Cardswallow at his mother’s side. Able Bluntwithe was nowhere in those earliest of memories. Neel spoke the truth! Trak cried like the baby he remembered and then opened his eyes. He couldn’t see! Trak flung himself to the floor and realized that it was late at night. He stood up and went to his window. Relief struck him as he saw the faint lights of Espozia, showing above the dark rooftops of the Guild.
The experience had exhausted him, but he now had a grasp of himself. He walked to the water pitcher in his room and drank right out of the pitcher. His robe and underclothes and sheets were all soaked in sweat. What a night! He padded down the hall and drew himself a bath. He used a pose and a whispered power word to warm up the water and sunk into the cradling warmth of the tub.
While he soaked in the hot water, he tried to link those long-forgotten memories in his mind. His mother’s face had long ago faded into nothing specific. Her beauty would have drawn a rogue like Neel like a moth to a flame. He smiled as his body soaked up the warmth.
He remembered Valanna. Val. She was pretty too. He’d done a good job forgetting how cute she looked, for a slightly older woman. He regretted that she was one of his enemies.
Now he’d have to figure out what to do. Perhaps he would find a way to let Honor know that he had broken the guild’s hold on him. His skin began to crinkle, a sure sign that it was time to get out, even if he could feel the water begin to cool. He rubbed the towel over his body, reveling in sensation. Now he knew why Dalistro worried about the Santasian magicians and he also knew why his tutor didn’t want him discovered by them. Dalistro had lost him to the guild. Had Honor sequestered him as protection to avoid teaching him too much?