The Games of Ganthrea

by Andy Adams

  After they’d eaten, Brenner and Finnegan joined a group of other similarly dressed apple-green conjurers. As they walked, Brenner noticed that the students around him were all holding things in their hands: some carried sticks, some had small scepters, and a few had carved antlers. Brenner thought for a moment before concluding they must all be mircons. Although different in style and thickness, most were about the size of an orchestra conductor’s baton.

  The group meandered through the well-lit passageways, then exited the wide castle doors. The warm morning sun lit up their faces, causing Brenner to sneeze, and they strode down a large grassy hill. Finnegan directed him to one of the fields at the bottom, with towering trees forming a natural wall on the eastern periphery. To the west, beyond the castle, the roar of the city he had walked through yesterday was reduced to a hum.

  “Conjurers, take your positions,” an adult voice came sternly from behind them.

  Brenner turned to see a well-built man with brown, parted hair walking along the path towards them. He wore a long, silver robe, and strode confidently to the front of the class, who hastily assembled into four rows, each with about a dozen students. Brenner fell in next to Finnegan in the second row.

  “Fair morn, young spellcasters,” the man said.

  “Fair morn, Sage Shastrel,” everyone except Brenner echoed together.

  “I hope you have been practicing your Apellatum spell,” the sage said, taking a large black rock from his pocket and placing it on the ground next to him. “To see who has, we’ll start with a challenge: who will be the first person to summon this rock to them?”

  Shastrel’s sterling eyes swept over the whole assembly.

  His voice rang out, “Begin!”

  Brenner noticed as all around him, the forty-plus students stretched their arms forward and pointed their mircons towards the brick-sized rock, muttering “Apellatum,” apparently attempting to channel their desire for it to come to them. Brenner would have liked to try, too, but realized that without a mircon, it would be pointless.

  Shastrel walked through the ranks, giving advice. “Travarius, use the mircon to summon, not your arm…Witkins, enunciate the spell… Maureen, think about what the rock wants, not just what you want…”

  The rock began rolling slowly one way, then seemed to change its mind and swivel the other way. When Shastrel saw Brenner, a look of curiosity came to him.

  “Ah,” Shastrel said. “You must be the newest member of Valoria. Brenner, I believe?”

  “Yes,” Brenner said quietly and nodded, not wanting to stand out as the straggler of his classmates, who were all loudly muttering in concentration.

  “You’re not attempting to get the rock,” said Shastrel, “Why?”

  Brenner awkwardly held up his empty hands.

  “Ah, that would make it hard to summon,” said Shastrel, turning to walk briskly over to a leather satchel. He pulled out a sapling stick about an inch in diameter and the length of a hammer. It had a spiral carving running down its back, and a faint glow against Shastrel’s hand. Without missing a beat Shastrel turned and flicked the dark, wooden mircon over the first row’s heads, and Brenner shot his arm out, catching it.

  “Good,” said Shastrel, “Your reflexes are still intact after yesterday.”

  Brenner smiled, and gripped the mircon firmly with his right hand. The surface of it was smooth, as though recently polished, and Brenner’s arm tingled as he took a few practice waves with it. His chest felt strange. It was as though someone pressed a hot mug of cocoa against it, and looking down, he realized the amulet underneath his tunic was glimmering brighter: one moment red as a ruby, the next, a dazzling green emerald. The dark heartwood mircon in his hand hummed contentedly, creating something like a strong magnetic force between the amulet and itself.

  When Brenner turned his attention toward the stone in front of the class, it was too late: another student manifested a forceful spell and the stone flew threw the ranks, narrowly missing a girl’s head, before it stopped, hovering midair in front of a smallish boy in the back row.

  “Batterby, well done!” Shastrel called from the front of the class toward the boy, who managed a smug smile. “However, that three-minute spell needs to be wheedled down to a three-second one.”

  Batterby’s smile waned. Shastrel turned to the rest of the class. “Some of you have been here quite long, and I do wonder why you can’t perform a simple Apellatum spell with such a straightforward object as that rock.” He pointed his mircon at Batterby in the back row, and immediately the rock zipped back to himself. He flicked his mircon down, and the rock landed at his feet.

  “You have all mastered your amulets by understanding how your body moves, breathes and thinks,” Shastrel said. “Now to master the first stages of physical magic with your mircon, you must understand how an object thinks.”

  Brenner wondered if he had heard correctly. How an object ‘thinks’?

  “Conjurers, tell me about rocks,” Shastrel continued. “What do they want?”

  “To be big,” said a girl in the front.

  “What if they are already big?” Shastrel questioned.

  “To not be crushed,” said Finnegan.

  “Good, Finnegan, closer to our goal,” said Shastrel, “but how often do rocks get crushed? Unless there is a Montadaux Dragon nearby, not very much. What else?”

  “To be aloof?” ventured a girl in front, whom Brenner remembered as Kendra.

  “Not necessarily, Kendra,” said Shastrel. “Think of mountains, aren’t they composed of giant ledges stacked on top of one another?”

  When the class was silent for a long moment, Shastrel let out a sigh.

  “Think of rocks in terms of human qualities. They are big, come in groups, are frequently admired for their ruggedness…”

  Brenner’s mind lit up. They don’t want to change. Rocks love constancy and predictability.

  He looked up, but no one else seemed to share his excitement.

  “Think about that,” said the sage, “as you do, I will prepare your next challenge.”

  Some students craned their necks to see what Shastrel was getting out of his bag, while others whispered “Apellatum!” to sticks and pebbles nearby, giving out whoops when they succeeded in making small rocks jump over to them.

  Shastrel turned back towards the students, holding something blue in his hand. “Follow me,” he said, then turned and jogged across the field into the trees in the distance, his silver robes rippling against the light breeze. The large group followed, first over green grass, then to the mouth of the forest, which funneled them into a single file. If an eagle happened to be looking down at them from high in the sky, it would have seen what looked like a segmented, green-yellow snake chasing after a gray mouse.

  A moment later in the trees, Brenner heard splashes of river water lapping and fomenting through rapids. Sage Shastrel stood waiting for them on a large limestone outcropping next to the dark blue river. The students fanned out into a large semicircle, with Brenner and Finnegan climbing up a caravan-sized boulder for a better view. In his left hand, Shastrel held out a shimmering, cobalt blue stone.

  “This stone,” he said, “is rare, and not like most others. Can anyone tell me what it is?”

  “A compass-stone?” a girl next to him asked.

  “Good try, but no,” Shastrel said.

  “A flame-starter,” Sorian said, on the ledge below Shastrel.

  “Does it look red to you, Sorian?” Shastrel admonished. “No, it’s not a flame-starter.”

  Sorian muttered something and looked away. Finnegan elbowed Brenner and grinned.

  “Well, I don’t want to waste the whole lesson on guessing. This,” Shastrel said, holding it high above his head, “is a repulsion-stone.”

  Many of the students let out impressed ahs.

  “Allow me to show you how it acts upon water,” Shastrel said, then he leaned back and cast the repulsion-stone far into the middle of the roaring current. Whe
n it should have hit the surface, it instead plummeted down to the bottom of the riverbed entirely untouched by the current. A wall of impenetrable air engulfed the stone. The water that would have gushed over it was instead driven straight up into the air like a geyser, flowing ten feet up before streaming back down the curved sides of the air radius.

  “Now,” Shastrel said, “this type of rock thinks very differently than ordinary ones. Let’s see who can work a summoning spell on it. I would be surprised if you can budge it, especially when it is engaged with another element.”

  The teenagers brought their mircons in front of them, and Brenner could faintly hear their cries of “Apellatum!” over the din of the rapids.

  Different than ordinary ones, Brenner thought. Stones love constancy…so this one must thrive on solitude and different levels of unpredictability…and the water wants to cover it up, which it won’t allow…it must prefer openness and transparency.

  “Apellatum,” Brenner said calmly, pointing his wood mircon at the middle of the river.

  In a flash, a thin ray of blue light streamed from his mircon towards the frenzy of the water geyser in the middle of the stream. The ray of blue hooked onto the stone and pulled it back; the waters frothed and parted with a splash as the repulsion-stone plowed through them and flew to Brenner. Finally, an arm’s length in front of him, it stopped, hovering expectantly.

  The class lowered their mircons to their sides; some gaped at him.

  Brenner reached out with his left hand and made a cup with his palm; the repulsion-stone landed obediently in it.

  “That’s how you do it!” said Shastrel, beginning to clap, “Well cast!”

  Brenner looked over at the teacher, then at the other students, who did not join in the sage’s clapping.

  “Now, how did you summon it, Brenner?” Shastrel said. “Explain, so that your peers can see your line of thinking.”

  “Umm,” Brenner began, not knowing exactly what to say, “I just figured the stone would prefer solitude and openness—not wanting to be covered by the water.”

  “Right,” said Shastrel, “repulsion-stones hate being smothered, and desire elevated vantage points. Now then, each of you pair up, and with your partner, select three stones here ranging from the size of a bird’s egg to a dragon’s egg. Then practice your summoning spells back on the field.” When it was apparent the whole class was still staring at Brenner and hardly stirring, Shastrel raised his voice and added, “Get on with it, then!”

  Only then did Brenner feel the eyes of the class leave him, and the tense atmosphere slowly dissolved into a more casual one as boys and girls scrounged the wide banks of the river for stones.

  “That…was…sublime!” Finnegan said to Brenner, leaning over to get a stone. “Now I suppose you’re going to tell me that was your first time handling a mircon, too?”

  “Well…” said Brenner lightly, smiling to himself, “Yes.”

  “Buckets of balderdash,” Finnegan said, eyeing the gray stone in his hand before deciding it wasn’t quite big enough and pitching it into the stream. “What are they feeding you at home? Elixir-soaked spinach?”

  Brenner laughed and tried to deflect the praise. “I’m sure you could do it, too,” he said. “Just imagine what the stone wants.”

  “Right,” Finnegan said sarcastically, “As soon as you start fixing my meals.” He grinned and tossed a stone to Brenner. “That one big enough?”

  “Fine by me,” Brenner said.

  They worked together to pry a melon-sized rock free from a crevice, and walked back on the trail through the woods. By the end of the lesson, Brenner had summoned all three of the stones from short ranges of five feet to as far as a block away. Finnegan was getting the hang of controlling the egg-sized stone, and could fly it to himself from as far as ten feet away, but further than that and it flopped around erratically like a newborn chick.

  Peals of iron bells rang out, and Brenner looked up high above the academy ramparts to see one swaying in Valoria’s high towers.

  “Together then,” Sage Shastrel called the students, who congregated around him. “I want all of you to take the time to practice your summoning spell this evening.” He looked into their eyes before continuing, “And if more of you can cast your Apellatum spells as well as Brenner, so much the better. Class dismissed.”

  Students turned again to look at him, some with respect, many with jealousy, and then the squad ambled across the grass toward the castle doors. As they did, Sorian strode past, and Brenner briefly caught his eyes. Sorian threw him a withering glare, muttering, “Lucky start, rookie.”

  “Forget him,” Finnegan said. “let’s get some lunch.”

  “Hold on,” Brenner said, going up to Sage Shastrel and holding out his mircon.

  “Thanks for letting me use this,” Brenner said.

  “Not a problem. It’s the standard one I lend to all students,” Shastrel said, picking up his leather satchel. When he turned, Brenner was still holding the mircon out towards him. The sage waved him away. “Hold onto it until you get your own. Point it away from people’s faces,” Shastrel said, then added, “And if you break it, you owe me two.”

  “Deal,” said Brenner.

  Shastrel smiled at Brenner, then disappeared through a smaller, camouflaged castle entrance, which Brenner judged must be just for the sages. Finnegan and Brenner made their way back to the Banquet Hall, where platters filled with stacks of honey ham and roast beef sandwiches lay waiting on the buffet table. Throngs of students joined the Banquet Hall, and Brenner looked more closely at individual groups: they were clustered in pockets of different shades of greens. The girl who had originally asked him about his level was walking with a group of younger looking students, whom Brenner guessed to be around ten or eleven years old; with their bright green robes, they looked like a brood of startled chameleons. Apart from their identical robes, a handful of older ones had belts of silver, fewer still, gold.

  His group all had the more subdued, apple green robes; looking closer, he saw that none of his group had belts, while four tables over, the whole lot of pupils had silver ones. So, the older the students are, the darker their robes. He noticed now that the Banquet Hall was mostly organized by age: the biggest group in the hall was composed of the youngest students, clad in bright chartreuse green and easily filling a dozen tables, then the apple-green colors of his own squad seated across eight tables, then four or five tables of students wearing rich, forest green clothes, smaller still a group clad in jade green, eating sandwiches at three long tables, and when he looked to the furthest side of the hall, he noticed one solitary, round table with the most experienced students. All wore deep, bottle green robes.

  “Finnegan,” he said, grabbing a sandwich, “why do some students have belts?”

  Between mouthfuls of roast beef Finnegan replied, “Mmm—ranking.”

  Brenner nodded. “So, if someone has our same color robe on with a silver belt, that would denote level five or level six?”

  “Five,” Finnegan said. “Gold’s level six.”

  “So, robe color represents the different stages…what are their names?”

  “You skipped over the three apprentice levels where we mastered our amulets; our level four—and the next two—are at the rank of conjurer, the level sevens and eights are mages, then two levels of magician. If students get to level eleven or twelve, then they have earned the highest title of sorcerer.”

  Brenner looked again to the small group of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds in bottle green robes eating together. “Why aren’t there many sorcerers?”

  “Easy,” said Finnegan. “Some students quit early; some go work abroad; some hit their 18th summer and have to leave; many discover they are not talented enough to get past being a level five or six conjurer; and some spellcasters,” he looked at Brenner and shrugged as if he was explaining a fact about the seasons changing, “die trying.”

  Brenner remembered his Agilis examination. “They s
ure make it easy to get killed around here.”

  “It’s what the academy was founded on,” said Finnegan nonchalantly. “It takes real danger and courage to create conditions for valor. Students decide how far they are willing to go. The pay-off is once they’re out of the academy, trained spellcasters have more prestige and earn significantly more golders than non-magical citizens.”

  While he liked that factor of self-determination, Brenner wasn’t sure if he agreed with the all-or-nothing trial of Agilis, where a minor slip-up would be the end of you.

  A loud voice from the end of the table interrupted his thoughts. “Conjurers!” Sorian said, standing at the head of their table. “Finish your lunch. We are meeting in the Arena for our Agilis regimen.”

  Brenner glanced over to Finnegan.