Heirs of Prophecy
Page 14
“You three can head back home,” Throll said as he grabbed the boy by his hair and started dragging him toward the village. “Sling and I are going to have a long talk about attacking people, and the type of compensation he’ll offer to the citizens of Aubgherle for his behavior.”
Ohaobbok felt a pang of guilt. Something about this moment reminded him of his mother.
“What do you think will happen to him?” Ryan asked his father.
“Throll says that since he’s still young, he can be reformed,” said Jared. “From what I understand, the punishment for these kinds of things is usually a sentence of several weeks in a forced-labor camp.”
Ohaobbok didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“Sling will learn what a hard day of farming is really like,” Jared said.
“He’s large enough that maybe they’ll use him to pull the plow,” Ryan quipped.
At this, even Ohaobbok laughed.
Training
Aaron squared up into his fighting stance, his sword held gracefully at an angle before his face, and stared down Ohaobbok.
“Without mastering the proper sword movements, you might as well be wielding a metal club,” Throll barked, waving his hand before Aaron’s face to get his attention.
“Even a club is an effective weapon if you’re strong enough,” Aaron retorted.
Throll laughed derisively. “You think strength counts for anything? I could teach your mother to disarm you without her even having to break a sweat.”
Ohaobbok laughed heartily, but Aaron remained doubtful, and it must have shown on his face, for Throll cocked his head to one side.
“Don’t believe me?” the ranger said. “Then allow me to demonstrate.” He picked up his sword and waved to the ogre. “Ohaobbok, you’re far stronger than me. Attack me with your sword. Do not hold back. Attack with your full strength.”
Ohaobbok looked worried, but he did as he was told. He took a swing that Aaron was sure could have cut an ox in half.
Throll deftly sidestepped the swing, made a quick circling motion with his sword, and sent the ogre’s weapon flying.
Aaron felt his jaw drop.
Ohaobbok was no less surprised. “I wouldn’t have believed that possible,” he said, staring down at his hand as if it had betrayed him.
“You must practice the proper techniques in order to master them,” Throll said. “Only then can you hope to defeat a skilled opponent.”
“So strength means nothing?” Aaron asked, feeling defeated.
“Of course it helps,” Throll said. “If you’re stronger, you’ll wear out your opponent quicker than he’ll wear you out, even if you have similar skills. Fighting is like a box of smithy tools, Aaron. There are many tools that can do similar jobs, but there’s always one that is best for certain things. Strength is one of those tools. So is endurance. So is speed. And skill. And knowledge. You have but one of those tools: strength. Endurance, too, will come to you easily with time. But you must equip yourself with a full toolbox if you hope to become the best.”
Throll paced the floor between them. “Slashing, scooping, raising, circling, swinging, penetrating, throwing, stabbing, piercing, chopping, snapping, scraping, and whipping. These are the basic motions you’ll learn before I’ll call you acceptable swordsmen. You must master each and every one. You must, and you will. I intend to drive the two of you until you drop. Every morning at dawn, our day will start. And you won’t stop until I give you permission to do so.”
Aaron took a deep breath and nodded.
“Good,” said Throll. “Now allow me to demonstrate a proper slash…”
As Ryan and his mom walked into the smithy, his father looked up. “Oh good, you’re both here,” Dad said. “Close the door. I have an idea I want to test out, and we don’t want anyone seeing this.”
Ryan closed the door and set the crossbar in place. Dad took a seat at the worktable, where several piles of metal scrap had been arranged, each a different color.
“We’ve seen that iron can hold a magical charge,” Dad began. “And we know that if you strike a charged metal object, it releases a fraction of that charge. What I want to know is how that property extends to other materials.”
Dad picked a coin-shaped piece of iron. “Let’s start with iron to establish a baseline. What I’m thinking we can do is measure how long it takes before the metal stops accepting energy. But to do a proper comparison, that means you need to use precisely the same size energy thread for each of these exercises. Okay?”
“Okay.” Ryan prepared himself for a long effort.
“Start whenever you’re ready,” Dad said.
Ryan poured a barely visible thread of bluish-white energy into the iron coin, and Dad began counting aloud. The coin glowed, and the glow increased in intensity. Just as Dad hit the count of four, the coin sparked, indicating that it would hold no more energy.
Dad set the coin down and picked up another coin. “Copper,” he said. “Let’s do it exactly the same.”
Ryan poured the same level of energy into the coin. This time it sparked on the count of five.
They moved on to silver and gold. The silver coin held out until the count of ten, and the gold coin to the count of sixteen. When they were done, they had four glowing coins, each with its own hue and intensity.
“Okay, so what?” Ryan said. “What good does this do us?”
Dad smiled in that way he did when something was going according to one of his plans. “We’re gathering data. We’re learning. You never know where knowledge will lead you.”
Ryan nodded, unconvinced.
“Now let’s see if you can cut an energized coin,” Dad said with a grin.
“Cut it? Dad, you remember what happened to the chisels, don’t you?” They’d previously discovered that energized iron was practically indestructible.
“You’re not a chisel, son. Just try. I suggest you aim for the thinnest stream you can manage with the highest possible energy. But just in case we have an issue…” He used a set of small tongs to set the glowing iron coin on a furnace brick, then grabbed a bucket of water. “I’ll stand by with water.”
Ryan concentrated as hard as he could, sending a strong thread down the middle of the iron coin. When the thread touched the coin, an intense shower of sparks appeared. Ryan immediately stopped.
“Why’d you stop?” Dad said. “It looked like it was working.”
“Jared…” said Mom. “I don’t know about this.”
“It’ll be fine, Aubrey. Go on, Ryan.”
Ryan attempted the cutting process once more, ignoring the sparks. It didn’t go quickly, but it did work—he managed to slice the coin right down the middle. Dad used the tongs to dunk the fragments into the water, then handed them to Ryan and his mother. They still glowed as before. They were just two halves of the same coin.
Mom turned her half of the coin over, then tapped it with her finger and shrugged.
“Wait a minute!” said Ryan. “Mom, do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Tap the coin.”
She thwacked the coin with her fingernail—and Ryan felt the piece of the coin in his hand vibrate.
“What is it?” Dad asked.
“The coin,” Ryan said. “When Mom tapped her half, I felt it in my half.”
Dad motioned for them to give the coin pieces to him. His fingers tensed over one piece, then the other, and a smile spread across his face. “You’re absolutely right, son. When I squeeze one half, the other half vibrates the entire time I’m putting pressure on it.” He laughed and handed one of the halves to Ryan. “Let’s test it at distance. Stand on the other side of the smithy and give your coin a tap.”
Ryan walked across the room. “Tapping… now,” he said.
Dad laughed again. “I felt that!” He unbarred the door and let in the light. “Jog past the hill,” he said to Ryan. “Make sure you can’t see the smithy anymore. When you get up there, squeeze the coin.”
Groaning inwardly, Ryan jogged to the hill. It took him a good ten minutes to reach the top, and he was annoyed at having to get all sweaty and short of breath. He went down the other side a bit, so he couldn’t see the smithy, then squeezed the coin. Finally he sat down in the grass to rest. As long as he was here, he might as well take a moment to appreciate the view. The Lancasters’ barn, the rolling hills, the charming little town with its many cookfires rising into the blue sky. Greenery and stone draped across everything.
And then his coin vibrated. The sensation was so sudden and unexpected that he almost dropped it. He looked down at the coin in his palm—and it vibrated again.
It worked! Dad was squeezing back!
With a grin, Ryan started back toward the smithy, squeezing his coin from time to time, and occasionally getting vibrations in return.
Dad looked even more excited than he was as he came through the door. “How far did you run?”
“Just over the crest of the hill.”
Dad’s grin widened. “Wow. Okay, tell me what you feel now.” He held his half of the coin behind his back, and Ryan felt two vibrations—one short, one long.
“I felt a short vibration, then a long one.” Ryan smiled with understanding. “Dad… we can do Morse code!”
“Exactly.”
“Do either of you actually know Morse code?” Mom asked.
Dad looked offended. “Of course I know Morse code.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”
Dad adopted his lecturing mode. “In Morse code, each letter is formed of a combination of dots and dashes. For instance, even amateur boat captains know how to communicate the letters SOS, which stands for ‘Save Our Ship.’ In Morse code, the letter ‘S’ is three dots—or in our case, three taps on the coin—and the letter ‘O’ is three dashes—that is, three long squeezes of the coin. So…”
Dad demonstrated by squeezing his coin.
“Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot,” Ryan said.
“That’s right. We’ve got our own little magic telegraph, allowing us to communicate instantly over some distance.” He paused, considering, then eyed Ryan curiously. “I wonder. If you split one of these halves again, could we get three communicating pieces?”
Ryan smiled. “It’s worth a try.”
Dad set his coin on the furnace brick and stepped back. Ryan repeated the process he’d used before, and carved the half-coin into quarter-coins with expert precision. Dad swooped in, took up the new pieces with his tongs, and dipped them into the water. But then his excitement faded.
“No,” he said. “Look. They’ve lost most of their glow. And when I squeeze one, nothing happens in the other.”
Ryan still held the other full half. “I don’t feel anything either. Sorry, Dad. It was a good idea, though.”
Dad stared at the ground for a long moment. Then he looked up at Ryan and smiled. “Let’s try the gold coin. Remember what I said about data? How you never know when knowledge might be useful? Well, if gold holds more energy than iron…”
“Then its pieces might be better at holding energy, too,” Ryan finished.
“I bet it’ll work,” Dad said, excited again. “In fact, go ahead and split the whole thing into quarter pieces this time.”
It didn’t take long for Ryan to finish the cutting. He was getting better at it with practice. Dad cooled the pieces, and sure enough, all four quarters of the coin still glowed.
Dad picked up two pieces, and Ryan and Mom both picked up one. Dad held out a piece and squeezed it. The piece in Ryan’s hand vibrated, and judging by Mom’s reaction, her piece vibrated too. Soon all three of them were sending vibrations back and forth and laughing.
After that, Dad designed a whole series of experiments. He was totally in his element. And after another hour of tests, they had managed to determine a mathematical relationship between the metal used and the number of pieces it could be split into without losing its glow. It seemed that for each two seconds of energy infused into the metal, as measured by Dad’s counting in their original experiment, the glow would hold on one piece. So an iron coin—which had taken four seconds to be “full”— could tolerate being split into two pieces. A silver coin could be split into five pieces, and a gold coin could theoretically be split into as many as eight pieces—though Ryan was unable to create slivers that small.
“We’ll probably want to develop our own standard of Morse code,” Dad mused. “And everyone will have to practice it until we have it mastered.”
Ryan groaned. “I’m never getting out of school, am I?”
“Hey, Mom,” Ryan said as he looked over the lunch she’d set out. “I have an idea for another experiment we could do. Involving you.”
Mom glanced uncertainly at Dad.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “First I’ve heard of it.”
Mom studied Ryan’s face for a long moment. “Explain.”
“Okay, well, I was thinking that since I’m capable of transferring energy into things and trapping it there, you might be able to do the same with your energy. But whereas I can infuse energy into metal, maybe you can infuse your energy into food.” He gestured to the items his mother had laid on the table. A loaf of bread, a hunk of roast beef, some pickles, a jug of water, a flagon of milk, and a small tub of butter. “What if you could create ‘healing food’? Or at least healthier food. I’m not really sure how it would work—or if it would work. But if it did, it might help us all recover more quickly from the exhaustion we all experience after using our powers.”
Mom was interested now. “I’m game. What do you have in mind?”
“Let’s start with the bread,” Ryan said. “Just try pushing your energy into it.”
Mom looked doubtful. “You want me to heal a loaf of bread.”
Ryan laughed. “Not exactly. Honestly I’m not sure what I’m asking you to do. Just… try routing some of your energy into the bread. Though…” He smiled. “If you want to think of it as healing the bread, it couldn’t hurt.”
Mom still looked doubtful, but she concentrated on the loaf. Ryan and his dad looked on with great interest.
“It doesn’t work,” Mom said almost immediately.
“How do you know?” Ryan asked. “You barely even started.”
Mom shrugged. “I just know. When I’m done healing something, I get a feeling, like a return vibration. It’s as if my healing is bouncing back at me. And the very second I tried to heal the bread, I got that feeling.”
Ryan was disappointed. “Well… it was worth a try.”
“It was worth a try,” Dad said. “And still is. I think you might be onto something, Ryan. Let’s not give up so quickly.” He poured out a cup of milk. “Let’s try this. Maybe if it’s liquid, we’ll get a different result.”
“Why would that matter?” Mom said.
Dad shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re experimenting.”
Mom frowned, but took a deep breath and stared at the cup of milk. Then she closed her eyes and held her hands over the cup. And she smiled. Another minute passed before she opened her eyes and stepped back.
“It worked!” she said, beaming. “I was pushing energy into the milk the entire time.”
“It doesn’t look any different,” Dad said, kneeling down to examine the cup.
“Is that what you expected, Ryan?” Mom asked.
Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know what I expected. Like Dad said, we’re just experimenting.”
“Let’s try the other items,” Dad said, ever the scientist.
The experiments continued for the next twenty minutes. They found that the bread, roast beef, and pickles had no capacity to accept Mom’s energy. A cup of milk accepted her energy for roughly a minute, whereas a cup of water held for ten seconds. The greatest performer, however, was the butter. It accepted an amazing five minutes of charge. The magic-infused items looked no different than before, but Mom was certain she’d done the trick.
With a smile, Ryan reached for a piece of kindling from the woodpile beside the table. Concentrating his energy on the end of the kindling, he made it burst into flame. Then he blew out the flame and fanned the tip into a glowing red ember. Finally, without giving his parents any warning, he pressed the ember to his finger.
His Mom shrieked. “Ryan! Stop!” She snatched the stick away from him.
Ignoring the pain, Ryan examined his finger. As he’d intended, he’d burned it to the point of blistering.
“Let me heal that,” Mom said, holding out her own hand expectantly.
Ryan shook his head. “Wait a second. I want to test something.” He took up a knife, loaded it with butter, and spread it over his burned finger.
The pain vanished almost immediately.
“Well?” Mom asked breathlessly.
Ryan looked at his father, who was beaming. As the butter finished its magic, Ryan held up his finger for them both to see. Gingerly, Mom wiped the butter away.
His finger had been healed.
Dad clapped his hands. “My dear, I do believe you’ve created a healing lotion!”
“Now let’s see what the liquids do,” Ryan said, grabbing the cup of water.
“Wait, you can’t be sure—” his mom began, but Ryan was already drinking.
Ryan set the cup down and frowned. “I had a headache, and I thought this would cure it. And… I guess it’s better now, but it’s not gone.”
Mom pushed the milk toward him. “Okay then, Mr. Guinea Pig. Try this.”
Ryan drank, and within seconds, his headache was gone. “It worked!”
The three of them shared a look and grinned.
Branching Out
Jared despised crowds, so it was with some discomfort that he shoved his way through the marketplace, trailing Throll. Even under normal circumstances, the streets in the middle of Aubgherle would be crowded with makeshift stands selling a variety of goods and services, but it was now caravan season, Throll had explained, and so a much larger than usual assembly of merchants had congregated in the central market. All Jared could think about as he weaved through the throng was how easy it would be for a thief to pick someone’s pocket.