Chris nodded. That’s about all he could do since he was still winded from the run. Niko then had him sit on the edge of the bluff and they worked on meditation and breathing exercises for a couple of hours. If someone had told Chris he was breathing wrong he would have told them they were crazy. After an hour with Niko he wondered how he’d managed to survive this long without her. It turned out he had been breathing wrong his entire life. His whole body felt more energized than it ever had before.
Niko led him on another run back down the steep incline to the dining hall. This time he didn’t get winded at all and was able to easily keep up with her as she loped along on her long legs. He actually felt more energized after the run than before it. He had learned how to focus to the point where he was sending oxygen where it needed to go and hoarding some for when he needed it later. Niko let him know his afternoon instructor would come get him after lunch and then she disappeared.
That left Chris awkwardly standing by the door to the dining hall. Luckily, he was noticed by a familiar face.
“Hello sire. Do you remember me? I came across on the plane with you?”
“Hi Nicole. Absolutely, I remember you. You were the one who said she didn’t think I was the king because she thought I’d be taller and more handsome.”
“I suppose you’ll eventually get taller.” Nicole let her joke sit out there for a few seconds until they were both laughing. Nicole told him to follow her since they normally only got about an hour for lunch and they were already fifteen minutes into it. Chris followed her to the front of the hall where a series of trays of food had been laid out. It was basically a build your own salad, sandwich, and soup kind of deal. Chris stood in line with Nicole to get his plate ready. Politely greeting other students as they rattled off a variety of greetings to him.
“At least everybody isn’t kneeling and all that today while I’m trying to make a sandwich.” Chris whispered to Nicole. She giggled and let him know that most of them had only ever read about greeting a royal. The last one to actually go through the training in the halls had been his mother and that had been decades ago.
“Decades?” Asked Chris. He was trying to piece together as much about his mother as he could and her approximate age seemed to keep eluding him.
“Oh yes. Decades. Another little tidbit for you since you’re just kind of coming into this world. Magic is good for your health. If you don’t get assassinated or die in a war then there’s a good chance you can live to be hundreds of years old. The stronger you are in magic the longer you’ll live. Of course, the stronger you are in magic the more of a target you are for the dark ones so I guess that evens it all out.”
This seemed like a pretty deep conversation to be having while putting together a sandwich. The two walked over to an empty table in the corner of the hall and sat down.
“Another question. The kneeling? You said you read up on the greetings and all of that. Am I supposed to do anything or say anything special? How does bowing work?” Chris asked. He was already thinking he needed to figure out where to get his hands on a copy of the book that had all of those protocols in it.
“Woah there your kingliness. Only thing I remember from the book is the fealty deal is a one-time thing. You don’t need to worry about everybody hitting the floor every time you walk in a room. In a small room or in close proximity we’re supposed to stand up and bow or curtsy for any royalty that wanders in. Every time you meet someone new they will probably do the fealty thing so maybe just get used to it. Then you can do whatever you want to acknowledge it. The book just says for us to sit there until you acknowledge it. So. Acknowledge away. Wave or say thanks or just do what you’ve been doing but try to do it a little less awkwardly? It’s kind of painful to watch really.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the brutal honesty. Last one for you. What are the trials? Everybody keeps talking about them but I have no clue still.”
Nicole cut the crust off the bread of her sandwich and then sighed. “It’s a lot of work eating lunch with you. The trials are kind of like our final exams and rites of passage into adulthood all rolled into one. You basically have to succeed on a mission. The mission is given to you by the leader of your order. In your case, since you are a royal and better than the rest of us at everything, you get three challenges. You have to complete all three trials to pass. In theory, you could die on the missions but in practice I don’t think most of them are that deadly for us regular nobility. In your case you probably are going to want to study pretty hard for those finals.”
That sounded about right to Chris. He didn’t think he needed to worry about the trials for a little while. He was still on the learning how to breathe lesson. A few other students sat down at the table with them. Brittany, Nicole’s older sister, even made an appearance. Everyone who came by asked how he was doing and offered to help if they could. A familiar face showed up at the table. The tattooed and pierced face of Mr. Wessel come to grab Chris and take him to his afternoon sessions.
“Hello your highness. If you’ve finished your sandwich I’ve come to take you to your next lessons.” Chris got up and excused himself from the table and walked with Mr. Wessel out the dining hall doors and into the alcove. In the alcove they took a left turn and walked past the portrait of the queen again.
Mr. Wessel stopped at the portrait. “Your mother was a strong and powerful woman. Beautiful and wise to her subjects and feared greatly by the enemy. She was a powerful sorcerous. She was a noble when your father met her. She was raised up to the status of royalty by marriage to him. The same as some woman will be raised up to the status of our queen and royalty by marriage to you. In case you are wondering why certain people are put in proximity to you just let it be said that in our history we’ve had times when royalty has felt rebellious and gone out and chosen brides from the commoners. It’s never worked out well. Remember that from the day you were born you were born into wealth and privilege. That wealth and privilege comes at a high cost. The cost of serving all your subjects.”
“Mr. Wessel, what clan are you part of?” Chris asked him.
“The clan Emptor your highness. Yes, the clan of the young lady you’ve been put close to. Don’t worry. You’ll be placed with many young women before you reach the age to make a decision. The point is that often people think of nobility and royalty as a pointless advantage of birth. In some cases and cultures that may be a valid point. In ours it means you are a purebred. It means you have the correct combined genetics to excel at all the things we expect in our kings. Any questions or does that make sense your majesty?”
“My mother chose the route of magic when she was in school and my father took the trials for all three?” Chris asked and Wessel nodded in affirmation. “Ok then. What are we up to this afternoon and do I need to be able to find anywhere special myself for tomorrow?”
Schedule-wise Chris was told he’d be spending his mornings with Niko then someone would come to fetch him for his after-lunch sessions. Sometimes he’d be in a group setting and sometimes it would be individual tutors. For today it would be a test. When Chris had asked what kind of test Wessel had just said that he’d see and led him through a side door that took them up into a tall tower. Chris was soon glad he’d learned how to breathe and work his legs this morning with Niko because otherwise he didn’t think he’d have made it all the way to the top. Wessel smiled at him as they got to a large wooden door at the top of the tower.
“I see your morning session with Niko went well. Most of the time we take students up here they have to stop and rest about halfway. That’s one of the ways we weed out the ones who think they’d want to me martial or mixed. If you can’t make it up these stairs you’re probably going to be more successful following the pure magic route.” That said Wessel opened the door and they walked into a large circular chamber. There were people standing around in the chamber already. They stood and bowed as Chris entered with a few of them performing the oath of fealty as they laid eyes on their ki
ng for the first time.
Chris looked around the room. There were four men and three women in the room. Each of them was old. A few of them were dressed very exotically with piercings and tattoos peeking out from their hair and their heavy robes. Wessel explained these men and women represented the seven major magical practices taught at the school. Each of them would test him to see if he had any inherent abilities that made any of the schools of magic a more logical choice for him to pursue than the others.
Chris was asked to sit down at a table in the middle of the tower where a crystal bowl filled with water and one floating candle was sitting. Chris sat down. A tall man with very pale skin and a scruffy looking beard asked him to light the candle. Chris looked around for matches or a lighter and was told they meant for him to light the candle with his mind. Chris focused on the candle. The water began to ripple in the bowl and the candle bobbed as Chris focused harder and harder. The crystal bowl exploded.
Shards of crystal flew in every direction and a couple of the wizards were soon sporting some new piercings. A few of them looked over at a tall woman with a red beret on. She shrugged. Chris began apologizing as he saw the chaos he had caused. At least one of the old wizards had a really nasty gash on his forehead that was causing blood to stream down into his eyes. The wizards and witches all rushed to assure him this wasn’t his fault and that as soon as they pulled the glass out of each other they’d be ready to start the test back up.
The woman with the red beret walked over to Chris. He asked her why everyone had looked to her when the glass started flying.
“I’m head of the abjuration school. Which is a fancy way of saying defensive magic. If you’d thrown some kind of bad mojo at one of the people in here I would have blocked it. Not really so good with a surprise glass attack. I’ve been to a lot of these tests and that’s never happened before.”
“How many people get the candle to light?” Chris asked.
“I’ve never seen anyone do it during one of these tests personally. It’s more about the effort to get it to light and what happens on the periphery because of that focus. Anyway, while they’re busy slapping on band aids would you like to continue testing with me?” Chris nodded at her and she smiled and took a step back.
Chris felt an invisible hand grab him by the shirt and pick him up off the ground. Then the hand let go and he fell hard to the floor. Then it happened again. Chris focused and saw a ray of bluish light that seemed to emanate from the abjuration teachers hands as she bounced him up and down painfully. Once he saw what it was he raised his own hand without thinking and dropped a beam of red light down through the blue. He felt the pressure on him cease at once and the abjuration mistress was the one who was knocked off her feet. She got up smiling and bowed deeply to him.
Another wizard sat down at the table and motioned for Chris to sit back down as well. “Sire, this should be a simple test. If you could avoid knuckling me over or blowing up any bowls I’d appreciate it. Simply tell me what color undershirt I’m wearing.”
Chris looked at the wizard who was sitting there in an ornate robe. Or was he? The question caused Chris to once again direct his focus. He easily pierced the outer illusion which was the ornate robe. He then worked his way around the second illusion that had the wizards robe buttoned and saw that it was unbuttoned. He saw the man’s solid black undershirt beneath it. He was fixing to say the color of it when he noticed it seemed a little insubstantial as well. Pouring all his energy into focusing he penetrated that final illusion. He blinked a few times to clear his head.
“You’re not wearing an undershirt sir. Why do you have a frog tattooed on your chest?”
All the wizards paying attention to the test seemed impressed. They whispered to the others as well. Wessel let him know that no more tests were needed and they could proceed back down the stairs now for dinner. Chris said his farewells to each of the wizards and witches in the tower and began the long walk back down the stairs and across the campus to the hall for dinner.
Chapter 11: If at First You Don’t Succeed
Three months later Chris was easily matching Nikos pace when they ran the trail by the bluffs. Once he had mastered breathing and the stretches and exercises Niko insisted he do every day for the rest of his life it was time to start learning some fighting skills. They began with unarmed combat. Niko was teaching him the basics of strikes and blocks and throws and he absorbed it like a sponge. He had mastered all the kicks and strikes and was learning more and more advanced katas. A kata being a series of movements designed to develop muscle memory for a choreographed sequence of attacks.
His afternoon sessions were going just as well. Someone would come to get him at the end of every lunch to attend different sessions. He was given individual lessons by masters in different magical arts like abjuration, transmutation and illusion. His aptitude was such that he typically just needed to be told it was possible to do something and he would master the new skill within minutes. So far he had not met a challenge he could not overcome. He knew he was still in the early stages of training but he was loving the sheer intellectual and physical challenges of it. He was continually amazed at how naturally it all came to him.
He even enjoyed the traditional lecture style classes he went to several days a week. The topics ranged from history to mathematics to languages. He ate them all up. He typically found himself reading some book or other after dinner until he fell asleep. This schedule didn’t leave much time for a social life. Chris had always been one to be happy whether he was with people or not so this didn’t bother him.
It bothered others though. The students at the school were fine with Chris being a bit of a loner but their parents were not. For millennia the training centers had been where Xandians formed life long bonds. The training centers had been where the children with the most potential were sent. The bonds they formed with each other, especially romantically, were the main reason a noble class and a royal class existed. Whether male or female if a royal married beneath their class then the person they married took the royals surname. In this way certain families had become extraordinarily powerful and gifted due to the advantageous combinations of genetics between people with the greatest amount of potential.
It annoyed the adults that the one royal who was at the school did not seem to have any interest in playing the normal social games. They needed him to form strong bonds with fellow students to give him the network he would need to be successful as a ruler. They needed him to start practicing his people skills. They told one another that Chris was still young and once he entered his teens his interest in girls would pick up and then the rest of the socialization would follow. Omasa heard this talk and while he thought it was very premature to worry about Chris finding a mate he did begin to wonder if Chris was isolating himself a little too much. He had watched Chris and Brent over the summer as they played games so he knew Chris enjoyed company. Where the others worried about Chris being social, Omasa began to worry Chris may be depressed.
Chris woke up one morning as his alarm clock went off and pulled on his boots and armor for the run up the hill. The armor was more for the purpose of getting him used to wearing armor than the actual armor he would be wearing in battle. It had been explained to him that battle armor was a valued prize. Typically passed down through the generations from knight to squire. His fathers had been lost but a new suit had already been commissioned for him. The reason the armor was so valuable was that it took a lot of time and skill to create since each piece of it needed to be charmed. The catch here was that battle armor was made of metal and metal resisted magic. The metal resisted the magic that was used to charm it just as it would resist any other form of magic. This meant each link of chainmail required extraordinary focus to weave the protection spells into. A royal’s suit of armor being even more tedious to charm as the metal needed to allow for magic to flow from the royal while stopping it from hitting him.
Chris had asked early on why the antiquated s
uits of armor and sword fighting. It seemed to Chris that a lot of these fights could be settled much more easily with a pistol. Niko had explained that the suits were charmed to stop smaller objects like bullets and arrowheads from penetrating them. Even though those objects were made of metal the charms could be made strong enough to stop them. The long bowman had pretty much killed the idea of a knight in plate mail in the medieval ages as it made your average peasant just as deadly as a knight since their arrows could penetrate the plate mail. A suit of magically charmed chain mail could repel small masses of metal but larger ones would still overwhelm the charms.
Chris pulled on the practice armor. The leather vest it was attached to was ripe with the sweat of generations of young squires and royals exercising in it. Chris got it strapped on and pulled on his boots. He went and opened the door out to the main chamber and was traversing the great room when he spotted Omasa sitting in one of the large chairs by the fire. There was no one else in the room which meant Omasa must have kicked any stragglers out. This early in the morning there was normally a few students hanging out before leaving for classes. Omasa motioned for Chris to come and sit with him.
Son of the Keeper: Book 1: Principles of Magic Page 9