“Tuck that wonder back behind your slack lips, boy,” The Collector said. “Or you’ll only last a week here.” He kicked his heels into his mount and started down the hill.
Brom hurried to catch up. The giant portcullis, made of interlaced riveted bands of iron, began to rise. The metallic thunking of enormous chains reverberated as the two of them rode beneath thousands of tons of stone wall.
Brom drew in a breath. As they passed beneath, he felt a tingle over his scalp and then over his entire body. The lightning in his belly danced about. It was as though something in this place identified the lightning inside him and touched it.
It was as though Brom had been living in a dark prison cell and hadn’t known it until he’d stepped into the light. Every part of him felt alive.
Cy’kett had been mistaken. In fact, Brom couldn’t even remember the specifics of the old man’s warnings. The fear Brom had felt, the foreboding he’d had, all of it fluttered away.
By the time Brom came through to the other side, he could barely recall the old man’s name, let alone his warnings, and he didn’t care to do so. All possibilities opened up before Brom, and he knew he could do anything.
He looked from one vast, pillared, white-marbled building to another. Were there no normal houses in this place? His father was a talented builder, sought after by lords and commoners alike for his skill, but Father had never built anything like this.
Of course, the only villages Brom had seen outside of illustrations in books were his own hometown of Kyn and once in nearby Seldyn. Both towns could easily fit inside the walls of the Champion’s Academy, with room enough for three more towns just like them. Most of the houses and shops in Brom’s town were made of granite or wood, but here, everything was marble, and most of the buildings were two stories tall or more. The academy grounds were exactly square, and the northwest, southeast and southwest corners each had a white marble towers that reached to the sky. But none were even half as tall as the giant tower to the southwest. Everything was made of marble, and it made the city seem filled with light, that this was where divinity had come to live. It felt eternal, like these marble structures had stood for centuries and would continue to stand long after the kingdoms of Keltovar and Fendir crumbled into the sea.
The Collector led Brom down a crushed gravel path between manicured lawns and toward an enormous four-story building. Brom followed him up wide steps and through columned archways that had to be three stories tall themselves, and into an open room that was as long as Kyn’s main street. Brom caught The Collector’s supercilious smile, and he suddenly realized the man wanted Brom to be awed. His gruff dismissals and haughty stares were all meant to make Brom feel small.
Brom paused inside that grand hallway, struggling not only with the grandeur, but also with a ringing realization: The Collector was trying to scare him. Suddenly, it all seemed staged, from the scene at Brom’s house all the way to this moment, designed to make Brom feel smaller.
But would such a powerful person try to intimidate a fresh student?
The only answer was that The Collector was simply cruel. But why would The Four, the benevolent demigods who looked after the two kingdoms employ someone cruel to bring new students to the school?
The second and only other reason Brom could imagine was: Brom was somehow a threat. It was ludicrous, but it was the only other reason one person might try to intimidate another. Could Brom somehow be a threat to The Collector?
He couldn’t answer that question, but just knowing it, sensing deep in his belly that The Collector was intimidating Brom on purpose completely changed Brom’s view of the man.
He decided he would take The Collector’s advice—the only real words the man had spoken on their long journey. Brom clenched his jaw and put his wonder away.
The Collector paused, as though looking for that awe on Brom’s face. When he didn’t find it, he turned away and opened a door just off the main hall.
They both entered a noisy room with dozens of boys and girls who looked roughly the same age as Brom. There must have been more than a hundred, but the enormous room still didn’t seem even half full.
The din of conversation died as The Collector entered, deposited Brom at the threshold, and left, closing the door behind him.
The young people in the room were as varied as they could be. The Collector had said neither a person’s birth nor their allegiance, Keltovari or Fendiran, had significance in this place. Brom saw some young people dressed in little better than rags, and some in expensive gowns and doublets.
One tall girl, who stood apart from the throng like a disapproving older sister, had the indigo eyes of high Keltovari royalty. Cy’kett’s eyes had been a faded lavender, but this girl’s eyes were deep and dark. She was exquisite, with flawless pale skin and meticulously braided silver and gold hair. She was the kind of woman artists would paint portraits of. Her finely embroidered, cream-colored gown had actual pearls as buttons, stacked up to her throat, stopping at a stylized rose created from clever folds of stiff fabric just below her chin. She wore an elaborate bracelet on her right wrist and a golden headdress, each studded with rubies and purple gemstones. Each of those stones had to be worth more than Brom’s father made in a year. The display of wealth was staggering.
But it wasn’t her wealth or even her beauty that held Brom’s attention. He found after his initial survey that his gaze went to the girl’s hands. They were...large, out of proportion with the well-displayed symmetrical perfection of the rest of her. He found himself staring at those pale, long-fingered hands, and he realized that the girl was making no effort to hide them, and that suddenly struck him as unusual. Other boys and girls his age often went out of their way to conceal their oddities. This girl did not. For a moment, he dared to imagine that she found her unusually long-fingered hands beautiful.
His heart warmed, and he fell in love with the haughty girl just a little bit.
The girl turned an icy glare upon him, as though she’d known he was staring, thinking about her, looking at her, and that she’d waited quite long enough—out of sheer tolerance—to allow him his fill. The glare struck him like a blow, promising a headsman’s axe if he didn’t find another place for his roving eyes. Brom jerked his gaze away.
His nervous eyes immediately latched onto the next-most-obvious person in the room, the way eyes were drawn to a mountain in the distance. Gods! The boy had to be seven feet tall, and his shoulders were twice as wide as those of any other boy in the room, and he was obviously a Fendiran.
He towered over the rest of them like a giant. Brom would have thought him an adult, some guard left behind to keep an eye on them, except the young man had no whiskers on his chiseled face. His muscles were already big, but they promised to swell ridiculously as he aged. He wore a woodsman’s garb, soft leather breeches and quality black boots, and a green tunic belted at the waist. On his belt was a sheath that had once held a dagger, but the dagger was missing. The Collector had told Brom no weapons were allowed in the academy until students had been divided into their Quads, but obviously this boy was used to carrying one.
He had the swarthy complexion most Fendirans had, the light brown hair that all Fendirans had, and he bore a thick Fendiran face tattoo that looked like two lines, one thick and one thin, that swept up the left side of his face. The tattoo looked like a stylized tree trunk with one branch angling out from the trunk then pointing straight up. Both trunk and branch crossed his left eye and forehead before vanishing beneath his hairline.
Everything about the giant boy was pure Fendiran except his dark blue eyes. Like the lowborn Keltovari, all Fendirans had brown or black eyes. Brom had never even heard of a Fendiran with blue eyes. He wondered if it signified noble birth, like purple eyes did in the Keltovari.
The giant Fendiran glowered at the Keltovari girl in the stunning dress. She studiously ignored him. Keltovari and Fendiran nobility were immediate mortal enemies. If these two had stood this close to each other
on the street of any town outside the academy, they'd have attacked one another. Obviously, this was the reason no weapons were allowed here.
The Collector had said the Keltovar/Fendir war wasn’t supposed to matter in the academy, but quite clearly it did.
Brom’s gaze went next to a cluster of three boys who had become particularly loud. One of them pitched an insult at a girl standing against the wall, teasing her for her ragged clothes. The other boys laughed.
The girl was obviously poor—some urchin The Collector had snatched off the streets. She was wrapped in clothing one could expect to find in a dirty alley or rubbish bin. Or perhaps stolen from someone’s laundry line. She had short black hair, cropped with sheep shears, apparently, and her eyebrows were thick and black like Brom’s. She was so much smaller than the rest of the group that at first Brom thought she was a child. But as he looked closer, he realized his mistake. She wasn’t younger; she was just small. And those fierce, angry eyes held suffering Brom could barely imagine. In her own way, the girl was probably older than everyone in this room.
She wore a skirt that might once have been white, but was now dingy with dirt and dark smears, worn threadbare in some places and torn in others. A nicked, lopsided belt had been wrapped twice around her hips, obviously far too large for her, and three mismatched pouches dangled from it. She wore a leather bodice with puffy half-sleeves that revealed her dingy peasant shirt through the slits. The bodice looked like it might have been a garment of quality once upon a time, had probably been worn by a woman of standing when new, but it had been so scarred and used since then that it looked comical on the girl. Several rips in the leather had been stitched together with different colors of thread. Bright yellow laces pulled the hardened leather together in the front. Brom guessed the laces had been a find for the girl, a splash of color to add to her dingy garment. She was probably proud of those laces.
It was the laces the boys were mocking.
The tallest of the three had just finished his disparaging comment and was laughing with the stockiest of the three.
“I thought girls were supposed to know about clothes,” Tall said.
“That’s a girl?” Stocky said with an exaggerated disbelief.
The third kid, a skinny boy nearly as small as the girl, laughed nervously.
The urchin’s hateful gaze burned, fixed on Tall, like she was about to leap on him and bite his neck.
He took an involuntary step back, then realized he had lost face in front of his little gang. He flicked a glance at them, embarrassed, then turned a deadly look on her.
“No...” Brom whispered, guessing what was about to happen. He’d watched bullies before. A challenge to authority couldn’t be borne. Tall had flinched, and he needed to make up for that; he needed to show his bully friends who was really in charge. He’d need to cow the girl, by whatever means necessary.
“What are you looking at, trash?” Tall demanded, clenching his fists and stepping toward her.
Brom started toward them, knowing he was already too late, too far away. The tall boy would strike the girl down before Brom could ever get there.
But the bully pulled up short as the giant Fendiran stepped between him and the tiny girl. The bully was nearly six feet tall, much larger than Brom, but he wasn’t anywhere close to the size of the giant Fendiran.
“I don’t like your jokes,” the Fendiran said. His deep voice cracked in the middle, jumping into a high-pitched boy’s voice, then dropping back down to that deep baritone.
The bully looked up, open-mouthed, then shut his mouth with a clack. His face reddened. He glanced back at his friends, Stocky and Skinny, perhaps hoping for help. But Skinny was already backing away, pretending he hadn’t been part of the trio. Stocky seemed stuck in indecision. He looked at the Fendiran, glanced at the bully, then back at the Fendiran. Stocky gave a sickly smile to his friend and shrugged, then backed away.
The bully swallowed, looked up into the unforgiving blue eyes of the Fendiran.
“I wasn’t...talking to you,” he managed to say, as though that would make the Fendiran go away.
“You’re talking to me now,” the Fendiran rumbled, and this time his voice stayed a baritone. He looked deadly.
The room had fallen silent, and all eyes were on the two, except the highborn Keltovari girl, who still focused on some unspecified spot in space as though everyone in the room didn’t matter.
The bully opened his mouth, perhaps to say something snide, but he obviously thought better of it. Instead, he took a step back.
“Fine,” he said lamely, trying to recover some scrap of dignity. He backed away like a wounded animal.
Fast as a squirrel, the urchin girl darted forward and drove a tiny dagger into the giant Fendiran’s calf.
The Fendiran roared in pain and collapsed to one knee. He twisted, looking incredulously at the girl, who darted back, out of reach.
“Why did you stab me?” the Fendiran roared. Rage flashed over his face, and confusion.
She crouched, bloody dagger held tight, as though she was ready to attack again. She ignored the Fendiran’s plaintive cry and pointed the red blade at the bully, who stared at her, open-mouthed.
“If you ever touch me,” she whispered lethally, “I’ll put this in your neck.”
“You’re crazy...” the bully said in a hushed voice, backing away.
The giant Fendiran stood up, his face rigid. Bright red blood leaked onto the back of his boot. “I was saving you!” he roared.
“Saving me?” The urchin spat, a snarl on her face. “Try to save me again, and I’ll take your balls next time.” She did a slow turn, showing the red blade to the rest of the room.
The big Fendiran looked even more confused. He didn’t seem to know whether to crush the girl with his giant fists or back away. After a moment, he retreated. Brom was impressed to see that the huge Fendiran didn’t limp, not even a little. The boy wasn’t just enormous, he was tough.
Still staring defiantly at the room, the urchin raised her stiletto and licked the blood on one side. She let that image sink in for everyone who continued to sneak glances at her, then she licked the other side.
She was crazy...
Or...
She’s doing this on purpose.
The tiniest person in the room had just backed down the largest, showing everyone she was deadly, unpredictable, and probably crazy.
That little street urchin had just made herself safe in a room full of hostile strangers. Who would threaten her now that she’d sent the giant of the group shuffling into a corner? She was ruthless and brilliant, a survivor.
Brom fell in love with her then, just a little bit.
The door opened suddenly, and The Collector entered. He looked around, perhaps feeling the tension, then he said, “Some of you may know that you’ve been gathered here until the masters have chosen your Quads. For those of you who don’t know, your Quad is your life here at the academy. You will live by them, you will die by them. The three other people in your Quad will determine whether you learn your path to magic or whether you will eventually be pushed outside these walls.”
The Collector surveyed the room, perhaps waiting for any questions, perhaps looking for any dissent.
There were none of either.
“After I leave, other masters will come with lists of who is to be grouped with whom. We will match you with those who fit your specific talents, who will merge with you most easily. Your Quad mates will be hand picked according to who will best encourage you to grow, and with whom will be easiest for your to bond. Understand we will do our best for you, but in the end, the bond you make will be up to you and your Quad mates. This bond will be one of the most difficult things you will achieve here at the academy.”
The young people in the room looked around at each other, each no doubt wondering, as Brom did himself, who was going to be part of their Quad.
“Now...” The Collector said after a long pause to let his informat
ion sink in. “Most of you will fail. Get that through your hopeful little heads right now and you’ll save yourself pain later on. Exactly half of you in this room will be sent home as one of the Forgotten. You’ll leave here as a normal and you’ll never practice magic again.” He paused. “For the half of you who will remain, I wish you luck.”
Murmurs broke out across the frightened young people in the room. Brom watched The Collector, realizing that Brom hadn’t been the only one the man was trying to intimidate. He’d just tried to do it to the whole room.
More and more, Brom was finding a strong dislike for The Collector.
“The first Quad has already been chosen. By me. When I speak your names, follow me. I will show you to your respective dorm rooms, then I will show you the practice room where you will spend most of your time this first year.” He gave a wolf’s glare to the room. “Whether that time will be useful or wasted, we’ll yet see.”
Brom glanced around the room, wondering who would be first.
“Vale of Torlioch,” The Collector said. “Brom Builder of Kyn, Royal Peronne of Gille...”
With each name, he felt a crackle of lightning in his belly, like when Cy’kett had first spoken the words: Motus, Impetu, Mentis and Anima.
“…and Princess Oriana Siffeyn Keltodanta of Keltan, come with me,” The Collector finished.
Princess! Brom watched, stunned, as the daughter of King Leventius turned her indigo gaze on The Collector and glided across the floor as though she wasn’t even touching the ground. Brom had known she must have been highborn, but he’d assumed a duke or baron’s daughter, not the crown princess of Keltovar!
The giant Fendiran frowned when he saw the princess move, and he resolutely stumped toward The Collector. Brom hesitantly went to join them and looked over his shoulder at the remaining group. He didn’t search for the fourth, because he knew who it had to be. Somehow he knew that the first three people his gaze had been drawn to would be his Quad mates.
Sure enough, the little urchin with the hidden knife flashed a hateful gaze at The Collector, then started forward.
The Quad Page 5