The Games of Ganthrea

by Andy Adams

  “It’s more crowded here on the air-via, but there’s less birds and animals to run into, and we’re nearly there,” Gemry said. “Velvo, to the village square please.”

  Brenner decided the rug must have an affinity for the grassy lawn that lay ahead, because it flew forward with renewed energy, darting like a puppy this way and that. Now that he wasn’t intensely focused on gripping the sides for self-preservation, Brenner ran his hands across the top of the rug. It felt plush, not unlike the coat of a shaggy, silky terrier.

  “This is a nice carpet you’ve got,” he said. “Softer than I anticipated.”

  “He is one of the finer carrier carpets, thanks. And just what were you expecting? Sandpaper?”

  “Haha, no,” Brenner said, running his fingers across the fine material. “But most rugs are a little coarse, that’s all.”

  “I see. When I bought it, I thought it felt almost like velvet, but firmer, so I named him Velvo. He’s held up very well over the years.”

  “So, it’s a ‘he’ then, is it?”

  “He took longer to tame than the average carrier carpet—spellcasters usually refer to these stubborn types as males.”

  “Male and female rugs?” Brenner said with amusement. “Do they date then?”

  “It’s just an expression,” Gemry said, shoving him lightly. “Don’t make me flip this carpet upside down.”

  Brenner’s fingers reached to the edge for safety. He knew—or thought he knew—that Gemry was joking…but just in case.

  The two of them coasted down to a grassy stretch illuminated by waning rays of golden sunlight, and Brenner noted how their surroundings felt like a campus mall area: manicured green grass, meandering walkways; ornate stone buildings on the outer perimeter, most of them artistic restaurants, pubs and bakeries with names like ‘Tasty Delicacies—done by Marie’, ‘Forest Foragings’, ‘Drink-o-the-Woods’, and a peculiar shop called ‘Greater Ganthrean Game Supply’, with a sign beneath that boasted ‘from Agilis to Zabrani.’

  “Have you been in that one before?” Brenner pointed to the game shop.

  “Several times,” Gemry said. “Some of the best strategy books came from there. One summer I spent so much time with one, I could recite full pages of Dietrich Dashmettle’s The Zen of Zabrani by heart. The way I figure it, if I’m going to play the sport, I better learn how to be the best.”

  “Cool,” Brenner said, trying to guess the cause of a flashing purple lights flaring in the store. “Dietrich Dash…who?”

  “Dashmettle. You know, the famous Zabrani player of the last century? Who’s won more professional Zabrani games for Silvalo than the next two highest players combined?”

  “Right. That’s the one. Just wanted to make sure.”

  “You know,” Gemry said, giving him a look like he had just used his mircon to pick his nose, “you are surprisingly good at Zabrani for having no clue what is going on.”

  “Hey, I have some clue,” Brenner defended. “And I learn as I go.”

  “Let’s hope so,” she said. Gemry directed her mircon at the mat, “Thanks, Velvo, you may land.” The carpet obligingly hovered onto the ground beside a bubbling fountain and fell still.

  Gemry and Brenner stepped off the carpet. She flicked her wand at Velvo, which curled up by her side, then she turned to him, hands on her hips.

  “Alright, show me what you can do.”

  “Okay, but it’s not much,” Brenner said. He pointed his mircon to a fist-sized rock nearby the fountain, said, “Aperio,” and the stone zoomed over to him.

  “Not bad. Now, try to move this.” She stepped over to a fountain, channeled some of the water out with her mircon, and directed the stream to the ground. She spun her mircon in a small circle, and the water mixed itself into the brown dirt, making mud.

  “You want me to move that?”

  Gemry nodded.

  Brenner tried the spell again, but only solid flecks of dirt grudgingly lifted from the mixture and flew to him. The watery mud stayed put.

  “Okay, that tells me what you’re capable of,” Gemry said. “If you can get a mixture of mud moving on its own, you’ll have a chance at flight.”

  “That means I have to think like a liquid, right?”

  “Sort of—liquids and solids. For starters, how does water think?”

  Brenner imagined himself drifting along a river, always moving, always changing, gathering new parts as it moved along, being able to change into gas or solid, but did it want to? Maybe it just wanted to stay as a liquid. He directed his mircon at the mud and tried again: this time, a little of the watery mix flew up from the ground.

  “Better,” Gemry said. “What were you thinking about?”

  “Curiosity. And playfulness.”

  “That is part of a liquid’s essence, yes.”

  “What am I missing?”

  “Think of the fountain. If it could talk, what would it say?”

  Brenner watched the jets of water spurt up from the centerpiece, creating rivulets of water that splashed almost cheerfully on the water surface.

  “It’s saying: ‘Look at me’?”

  “There you go. What’s that quality?”

  “Attention seeking? Flashy?”

  “Right. A key part of water. Along with that ostentatious desire for attention there is also a confidence: it knows that it is vital for life, and enjoys being sought after.”

  Brenner was trying to mesh all these qualities together in his mind.

  “Okay, so I have this idea of what water wants, now what?”

  “Now you need to combine that with your knowledge of solids.”

  “Does it matter what the solid is?”

  “Of course. Broken-down compounds like dirt have small desires and are easier to understand and move than more complex, organic objects. With living creatures, the level of knowledge needed to manipulate, or levitate, is increased again.

  “Start by trying to lift just water.”

  Brenner directed his mircon at the pool of gently purling water, pretended that he was an attention-seeking performer, and thought silently to himself: Levitulsus.

  To his surprise, a thin jet of water jumped over the outer stone wall and splashed onto the ground and his boots.

  “I did it!” he whooped.

  “Good,” Gemry said with a slight nod and smile. “Now, try moving the wet mixture of mud.”

  Brenner directed his mircon and channeled his mental energy at it. As though carried by an invisible frog, a small portion of the mud slopped forward.

  “That’s it,” encouraged Gemry.

  Brenner steadied his mircon and applied more thought: the portion of hopping mud grew in size and now jumped a few feet at a time. As he continued his spells, Gemry’s voice carried to him, “Once you understand how airborne creatures work, and can move mixtures, levitating them wherever you want, then you can fly. At your pace, I’d be surprised if you don’t manage personal flight before the Games in June.”

  The words energized Brenner. He smiled, looked up from his work, and caught Gemry studying him. Redoubling his efforts, he tried spell after spell, driven in no small part by the fact that a cute, confident girl was working with him, actually interested in helping his spell and flight development. What had Finnegan been so worried about?

  He kept at the training until Gemry mentioned that the sun had set. She stood up from the side of the fountain.

  “Nice work tonight,” she said. “We’d better be going back to the academy.”

  “Okay,” Brenner said, looking up, now noticing the cooler tones of the evening shadows. “You know, you’re good at teaching.”

  “Thanks,” Gemry replied. “I doubted it at first, but you do seem to pick up on things fairly quickly.” She pointed her mircon at the carpet. “Velvo, float, if you please.”

  The carrier carpet unfurled, lifted itself up from the ground, and approached her knee.

  The two of them stepped onto it, with Brenner again taking extr
a caution to avoid stepping on the tassels; once aboard, Gemry rotated the carpet so that they sat side by side, looking over the shops that had extinguished their inner lights. Scattered high above them, yellow flickers of light dotted the trees.

  “Ready?” Gemry said, with a growing smile that Brenner didn’t quite trust.

  “As much as I can be,” he said, reaching for the outer tassels of the rug, the reins of this wild horse.

  Gemry nodded, and the carpet zoomed ahead, speeding with what could only be pleasure. Brenner used one hand to stow his mircon inside his shirt, then gripped the sides firmly with both hands. The faster they traveled, the louder the air current whistled in their faces. Soon a great wind was blowing against his face and chest, causing Brenner to squint. Gemry’s hair flew wildly behind her.

  “Do we have to go at a breakneck speed?!” he shouted to Gemry over the air whipping past them.

  “Of course not!” Gemry yelled back to him, “Just like we don’t have to do barrel rolls!” Then she laughed and called out, “Velvo, barrel spin!”

  Brenner flattened his forehead against the carpet and prayed for the best. As he did, he felt a warm sensation briefly envelop his body, and then the carpet spun hard. He hung on tight as the rug rolled three times, like a roller-coaster shooting along a corkscrew track.

  When the carpet finished the last spin and righted itself, Brenner was—miraculously—still on.

  He chanced a peek at Gemry: curiously, she sat calmly upright. Her hands and mircon lay nestled neatly in her lap; she looked over at Brenner and giggled. Without warning, the carpet barrel-rolled again—and while Brenner clenched the carpet with all his might, he saw Gemry didn’t use her hands at all, and yet, apart from her long hair dangling straight down like a brown curtain, she wasn’t in the least bit affected by gravity.

  “Wha—?” Brenner said in bewilderment.

  The carpet returned to right-side up.

  “How are you doing that?” he asked with a flabbergasted expression.

  “What?” she said coyly. “Sticking to the carpet?”

  “Yes!” he said, gaping at her.

  She gave a shrug. “It’s easy.”

  “No, it’s not! I was falling off before!”

  “Here, let me show you.” She tucked her mircon under her leg, then reached over and removed his hands from the carpet edge, holding them with her warm hands. She looked him in the eyes.

  “Velvo, barrel spin!”

  Her eyes glinted devilishly; his expanded wide with terror—too late.

  The carrier carpet spun, and as it flew upside down, Brenner sucked in a gasp of air to scream as he fell to the forest floor, but instead of plummeting, he remained stuck to the carpet, as though super-glued.

  Riding upside down through the night air on a magic carpet, Brenner found himself more dumbfounded than he had ever been.

  Gemry’s soft hands squeezed his twice, and she said gently, “Remember, keep breathing.”

  Then the carpet finished the rotation and they sailed along right-side up.

  With considerable difficulty, Brenner forced himself to speak: “What—just—happened?”

  “We barrel-rolled,” said Gemry cheerfully.

  “Thank you,” Brenner said sarcastically, as she continued to smile bemusedly at him. “I gathered as much myself. Why didn’t I fall out?”

  “I placed a spell on you.”

  “You what?”

  “Put a small counter-gravity spell on you, or rather, a sticking spell. Sure makes carpet flying a whole lot simpler.”

  “But I nearly fell off before, and this time, I didn’t budge at all!”

  Slowly Brenner started to piece together what had happened, remembering the warm feeling that swept over his whole body when he had put his head down.

  “You mean you could have put that spell on me the whole time?!” Brenner’s eyes flashed at hers.

  “Well of course.”

  “But you didn’t?!”

  She smiled at him. “You wanted to know how flight feels, right?”

  Brenner shook his head at her slowly, his mouth open.

  “Oh, relax,” Gemry said, trying to diffuse the tension. “I wouldn’t have let you fall—too far, that is.” She pushed his shoulder. “Part of being introduced to carrier carpets is having a learning session at the expense of your image—and to the delight of the pilot.”

  As the victim of a potentially lethal practical joke, Brenner said, “Not so funny.”

  “Sure it is! And now that you know you’re securely fastened, flying is a blast! Velvo, show us some tricks!”

  The carpet twirled suddenly and loop-de-looped. This time, Brenner’s heart didn’t leap into his throat—still, it beat twice as fast. The carpet veered on its side and they flew past a cottage built onto the middle of an oakbrawn; their heads almost brushed against the wooden deck rails jutting out from the house.

  Brenner didn’t want to admit it to her just yet, but Gemry was right. Now that he knew he was safe, he was actually starting to enjoy this. Velvo soared under some thick branches, and then over a flock of bright orange birds.

  “See?” Gemry called to him as the carpet pulled out of a dive.

  “Fine. You’re right.”

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  They flew along the giant trees, passing yellow orbs of light floating at different heights.

  “What are those?”

  “Elixir Lanterns, or Elixterns. You didn’t have them back home?”

  “Uh…no.”

  “You really did live in the boondocks. They’re everywhere in Arborio. The city permanently puts a spark of elixir into the lanterns, casts a long-term hovering spell on each, and as twilight sets in, the guards ignite the evening spell to illuminate them.”

  The little lanterns, yellow and white, flickered all over the city, looking to Brenner like hundreds of fireflies. They made him feel at home, like he was back in his tower. He looked at Gemry.

  “You know,” said Brenner, “apart from the whole trying-to-kill-me-thing, I had a good time tonight.”

  “Me, too. And don’t worry, there’s still plenty of time for that.”

  Brenner found himself laughing at last. Gemry joined in.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the one healing people?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” said Gemry, “but I’m just as good at stunning.”

  Brenner wanted to say something about her looks also being stunning, but something told him that that was what a dork would say. “I getcha. Either way, I’ll just hope you’re on my team.”

  “Smart choice.”

  They rode past the giant trees, toward the outer perimeter of the Zabrani stadium.

  “Hey,” Brenner said. “Why didn’t we just practice on the hillside next to Valoria?”

  “Silly, you would have missed the whole flight simulation.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And you never know who’s watching at the academy. Some people are more receptive to personal lessons, others resent them, or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “It’s not often a magician helps someone so low in rank, like a conjurer.”

  “So, why did you?”

  “You’re not a regular conjurer then, are you?” she smiled.

  “I suppose not.”

  He thought about her comment as they rounded the edges of the stadium, and then hovered over the treetops, back to the eastern ramparts of Valoria, where the carrier carpet brought them in for a soft landing. The night was coming to a close, and Brenner knew he had to ask a question before they went back to their different quarters.

  “Gemry,” Brenner said, stepping off the carpet and then holding his hand up to her to step down.

  She took it, even though he knew she didn’t need to, and stepped gracefully off Velvo. “Yes?”

  “Would you mind teaching me again?”

  There was a moment of uncertainty, or appraisal, that, to Brenner, seemed like forever.
Gemry gave him a curious look.

  “Even after the whole nearly-killing-you-thing?”