She stared at Conryu as she said that last bit as if he didn’t plan to give it his best. He might not be the most enthusiastic participant, but damned if he was going to hold back and let the team down.
“That book of yours going to be a problem, Koda?” Coach asked.
Conryu looked at Prime. “Are you going to be a problem?”
“No, Master.”
“Prime says he won’t be a problem.”
“I meant wizards with familiars tend to have them targeted by the opposing team. You’re only a sophomore, but I assume you know how to share defensive spells?”
“Don’t worry about us, Coach. Prime and I have been through some rough situations and come through okay.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
The train arrived at the Department warehouse in just under half an hour. A gray passenger van with a black pentagram on the side waited to take them the rest of the way. To where, no one felt the need to explain.
Conryu grimaced when he sat on the hard seat and dropped his bag at his feet. Outside the tinted windows the city grew ever closer. Department headquarters was on their left, but the van bore right. The plot thickened. Maybe they had a super-secure, secret facility arranged for the practice session.
The van pulled up beside the stadium where the Central Yellowjackets baseball team held their games. So much for a secret facility. At least the venue was appropriate for the event.
Beside him Crystal was practically bouncing with excitement. “Are you a Yellowjackets fan?” Conryu asked.
“No, where I’m from we bleed Cardinal red. I’ve just never been to a pro stadium before. I wish we could get some hotdogs and popcorn, but I’ll bet the concession stands are shut down.”
Conryu glanced around at the huge piles of plowed-up snow. “I’m afraid you might be right. Why don’t you swing by after the tournament this summer and we can take in a game at Sentinel Stadium? I don’t think Kelsie’s ever been either.”
“That sounds great.”
The group followed Coach Chort through the gates, down a long tunnel that caused their steps to echo, and out onto the field. Even Conryu had to admit as he looked around at the empty seats that being out on the field was kind of cool.
“Reveal.”
All around him wards sparkled in his arcane vision. The potent protections should keep any errant spells from damaging the stands. He’d have to be careful not to dispel them.
Malice Kincade watched this year’s team march into the stadium from one of the luxury skyboxes. All the lights were out so no one on the field would notice her. She ignored the plush leather chairs around her, preferring to stand near the window.
Despite her age, Malice had perfect vision thanks to enhancement spells cast over the years by her wizard doctor. In that perfect vision she spotted a familiar figure in black. The arrogant boy that had turned down the honor of donating his genetic material for the betterment of wizardkind. And by that she meant the Kincade family. If Malice believed one thing with all her being, it was that what benefited her family benefited the world. That the world was often too stupid to see that didn’t concern her.
Malice’s subordinates, along with the network people, huddled together in the box next door. The public relations department was doing their best to hype up the team. Of course, just having Conryu on board did much to pique the reporters’ interest. If he put on a good show, everyone should be well pleased. Though whether they were or not didn’t concern her any more than the budget cuts did. The Kincade’s private research interested her far more than anything the Department had in development.
The lights in the box came on and she hissed. “Turn that off.”
“Sorry,” a smooth, feminine voice said. “I finished early and decided to see how my team was doing.”
“The show is about to begin.” Malice glanced at the young, firm figure of Heather James and knew a moment of envy. She snarled it away. The days of her youth had come and gone long ago and she refused to mourn them. “Have you begun your mission?”
“I’ve laid the groundwork: hints dropped, and initial contact made. I plan to begin phase two after school ends for the year.”
“As you think best. Seduction isn’t my area of expertise and wasn’t even when I was your age. As long as the job gets done, the means don’t interest me. How was his initial reaction?”
Heather tossed her hair over her shoulder and her lips curled into a sneer. “It was the same as every man’s when they see me for the first time. He recovered faster than most and seemed comfortable after the initial surprise wore off. That was unusual. Most men can barely string two sentences together when they’re with me.”
“I can imagine.”
Out on the field the Department team strode out of the opposite tunnel. The training committee had chosen a pair of relatively simple challenges for the first day of practice. Something the inexperienced team should be able to handle well enough to impress the network executives. That was the theory anyway.
They started with a group casting. The Department team went first and to the surprise of no one Conryu blew their creation away. His strength terrified and intrigued her in equal measure. Was there even an upper limit to his power? There had to be, but she doubted they’d seen it yet. Sooner rather than later she would have to bring him more fully under the Department’s control.
His teammates conjured their construct, but it fared no better than their opponents’. The first round ended in a draw.
Heather made a noise that was half sigh and half purr. “He certainly is impressive. You can’t tell from here, but he’s not bad looking either. I might have taken this job for free if I’d known ahead of time.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re a money-hungry slut who wouldn’t lift a finger for free, even if it was in your best interest.”
Heather laughed. “You know me better than I thought. I’d better go down and cheer on my team. I’m sure having me there watching will spur them on to greater efforts.”
“No doubt.”
Heather left and she put the conniving whore out of her mind. As long as she got the job done it didn’t matter how much she disgusted Malice. And she’d better get it done or she could kiss her precious modeling contract goodbye along with her payment.
Conryu rolled his shoulders and tried to relax before the next round. There had been a moment when he thought their construct might survive the test, then the dark magic sphere had crashed through and blasted it to bits. They’d still managed a draw so it could have been worse.
An amplified voice came over the loudspeakers. “Round two will be a melee. The battle will end when one team is unable to continue. Lethal force is obviously forbidden. Light magic healers are on hand should there be any accidents. You have five minutes to plan your strategy.”
Coach motioned them over and they huddled around her.
“Wait for me!” Heather came running out of the tunnel in her aqua robe. “I finished early and hurried to join you.”
She smiled in Conryu’s direction and ignored Coach Chort’s look of annoyance.
“Okay, now that we’re all here,” Coach said. “We need a plan. I hadn’t expected them to call for a melee so I didn’t think much about it. Not that it would have mattered. Basically, you need to react to what your opponents do. The team that adapts the quickest wins. The best advice I can give you is to back each other up and don’t be afraid to use your strongest spells. Koda, it’s your job to create openings for the others so the pressure’s on. Don’t screw up. Good luck.”
The huddle broke and he stared at Coach Chort. What a lousy pep talk. He turned to find Heather a few feet away. She pecked him on the cheek.
“What was that for?”
“Luck. It’s your first match, don’t be nervous.”
“Thanks.”
She joined the coach on the sidelines. The voice on the loud speaker counted down from ten. The others cast defensive spells and Conryu joined in, co
vering himself and Prime with Cloak of Darkness. That would stop any but the most powerful spells.
He glanced at the others as magic crackled around them. He was the youngest one here yet he knew the easiest way for them to win was for him to cast Reaper’s Cloak and wade into the enemy. A few solid blows would end the match in a hurry.
“Two.”
“Are we allowed to fly?” Emily, the wind wizard, asked.
“One.”
“No one said we weren’t,” Leslie said, a fire aura crackling around her.
“Fight!”
Conryu raised his hand. “Break!”
While they were debating the enemy fire wizard had launched a fireball at the gathered team.
“Spread out so they can’t hit us all with a single spell.” Conryu suited his action to his word and darted right.
A lightning bolt crackled past him and fizzled on the wards.
“Earth magic, Master.”
Conryu leapt over a pair of hands that erupted out of the ground. The girls were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, dodging spells, and making the occasional weak counter.
The Department team looked totally at ease, their dark wizard negating anything that got close. Maybe he should give them something to think about.
“The chill wind of Hades blow and slay. Death rides in the blackened air, Reaper’s Gale!” Conryu waved his hand at the enemy wizards and a wind kicked up. Black, barely visible threads rode the breeze. One strand grazed the ground and turned the snow to brackish water.
The Department’s dark magic wizard hurled a Dispel sphere at the approaching gale, but it only erased a small portion.
“Run!” the enemy team’s earth wizard shouted.
They scattered and ceased the barrage of spells that had been pelting his team. Conryu left his spell to run its course and ran over to the others. “That bought us a minute, but we need to hit them before they recover.”
“What did you have in mind?” Crystal asked.
“How about we send a pair of stone behemoths after them? That should create enough chaos to let the others pick them off.”
Crystal looked around. “Who’s going to cast the second spell?”
“I will. I know Stone Behemoth, though I’ve only cast it twice.”
The others were muttering amongst themselves. On the far side of the field another section of his spell collapsed.
“We’re running out of time,” Conryu said. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now.”
“I say we try it,” Karie said.
The moment one person agreed the others fell in behind her. Conryu looked at Crystal and nodded.
She chanted first.
While her behemoth was forming Conryu cast, “Understanding is the true path to peace, Perfect Translation.”
Once he could speak to his construct, he cast a second time. “Oh Mother Earth, give birth to a child of stone to serve this unworthy wizard, Stone Behemoth.”
The ground trembled and soon a twenty-foot-tall giant stood in front of him. He pointed at the regrouping wizards across the way. “Crush them!”
His behemoth stomped towards them, shaking the field with each stride. Crystal’s smaller creature fell in beside it and everyone else got behind them.
“Prime, give me a bird’s-eye view.”
“Yes, Master.” Prime flew up and peeked over the construct’s shoulder just in time to see a lightning blast streak in and slam into Conryu’s behemoth.
The earth was so dense it barely flinched. Using Prime’s sight as his own Conryu watched the distance close between them and the Department team.
He tapped Karie on the shoulder. “Their wind wizard is on the far right. When I signal, jump out and blast her.”
The fire wizard nodded and began murmuring a spell. It wasn’t one Conryu knew, but he hoped it would get the job done.
Three more steps then… “Now!”
Karie leapt out and hurled a stream of flames. The blast slammed into a wind barrier and knocked the wizard into the stadium wall with enough force to knock her out.
One down, five to go.
The enemy water wizard spotted Karie in the open and vulnerable and began to cast.
Conryu darted out, grabbed Karie by the collar, and yanked her back just ahead of a barrage of ice blades.
Karie swallowed hard. “Thanks.”
He nodded and returned his focus to Prime. The behemoths were only a few strides from the enemy wizards. Their dark wizard was chanting and building power. If her Dispel hit, they’d lose their cover.
Conryu grinned. “Crystal! Have your behemoth fall forward.”
She stared at him for a moment then her eyes widened and she nodded.
At Conryu’s mental command his construct did a belly flop toward the Department wizards followed a moment later by Crystal’s.
As they fell, he ended the spell that held the construct together. The dense humanoid form collapsed. It looked like a dump truck had backed up to the wizards and emptied its load on them. A couple heads popped out here and there, but everyone else was totally covered.
“The Academy team wins,” the voice on the loudspeaker said. “Now dig them out of there before they suffocate.”
Looked like they’d won their first match. Conryu and Crystal shared a high five and chanted in the language of earth. The Department wizards probably wouldn’t like getting rescued by their opponents, but at least they’d be able to breathe.
So much for a night in the big city. The van bounced its way back to the train depot. The sun hadn’t even set yet and the team was returning to the Academy. On one hand, it was kind of a drag, but on the other they’d won their match.
After they finished freeing the last Department wizard it became clear that they were in no shape to have another match the next day. Every one of them had broken bones, and their unfortunate light wizard got dirt in her lungs so she could barely breathe.
In the front of the van Coach Chort stared out the window, watching the city go by. The tendons on the side of her neck stood out as did a bunched muscle in her jaw. She looked pissed about something and he suspected it was him.
Conryu took a breath and steeled himself for a thorough chewing out. “Sorry about the match, Coach. I didn’t realize how much dirt was in the behemoth I created.”
“Don’t worry about it. This sort of thing happens in the tournament all the time. What’s got me angry is that the suit I talked to while you were cleaning up only said we did okay. Okay! Did he not see the biggest Stone Behemoth ever? In my thirty years as a wizard I’ve never seen one that big. Do you know what the son of a bitch said when I pointed that out?”
Conryu shook his head.
“He said it would have been nice if it was created by my earth wizard instead of my dark wizard. I said you were on the same team and as long as we won, what difference did it make? He shook his head and said wizards should stick to their specialty. Can you believe that? This putz that doesn’t know wind magic from flatulence is telling me what wizards should be doing on my team. I nearly decked him.”
“What stopped you?” Crystal asked.
“He’s the one that hired me and I figured if I punched him I wouldn’t get paid. A wizard’s got to eat after all.”
That brought a chuckle from the team and some of the tension drained away. Maybe Coach Chort wasn’t so bad. Intense, certainly, but not bad.
The van pulled up beside the train and they transferred over. The half-hour trip passed in near silence as everyone digested what had just happened. They’d had their first match ever and won.
He’d feared they might think he overstepped his bounds when he took control of the battle, but no one seemed to, not even Caroline, the light magic wizard that was supposed to be this year’s team captain. In fact, they almost seemed relieved someone had taken charge. They didn’t have a single person returning from last year’s team and, frankly, even if they did he wasn’t sure a proven f
ailure would have been welcome as leader.
The train approached the Academy and Conryu got an idea. No one expected them until tomorrow. This would be a perfect time to surprise Maria. They hadn’t been alone in forever.
They piled out of the train and Coach told them they’d resume regular training next Sunday. Conryu waved to the others and hurried toward the dorm. He strode through the cafeteria and over to the kitchens.
Twenty pots bubbled on the stove, stirred by invisible spirits. Three women in red robes oversaw everything. The oldest-looking of the group marched toward him waving her hands like she was shooing a cat.
“Dinner will be ready in half an hour. You’re welcome to wait in the cafeteria.”
“I was hoping to get two plates early so I could surprise my girlfriend with a romantic dinner.” He flashed his best smile. “Couldn’t you help me out?”
“It’s against school rules.”
“I won’t tell anyone, I swear. Please? Maria and I haven’t had a quiet dinner together in ages.”
Her stern expression cracked and he knew he had her. “Don’t think this is going to be a regular thing. Hold on.”
She moved back into the kitchen and spoke to the others who broke into a fit of giggling. Between them they soon had two plates filled and covered with cloths. A pitcher of water and two glasses joined the food on the tray and she brought the whole thing over to him.
“Have fun.”
Conryu grinned. “Thanks. You’re the best.”
He made off with his prize and hurried to his room. The moment he arrived he set the tray down and jotted a quick note. “Are you there, little one?”
The pixie swirled around him and materialized on his shoulder. She hugged his neck and he smiled.
“Can you take this to Maria? You know her, she’s come to see me before.”
The pixie nodded, took his message, and flew away. Hopefully she didn’t just ignore it.
Now to get ready. He used earth magic to enhance his strength and moved the table in front of the bed. Next the chair went on the opposite side. A burst of will summoned two flickering flames that floated above the table. Not exactly candlelight, but it would do. He flipped the lights out and nodded. Not bad.
The Four Nations Tournament: The Aegis of Merlin Book 6 Page 5