Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) (37 page)

Calder went next. His pattern made Bayan grin: a firedust explosion of red, white, and yellow against a dark blue background.

Eward’s flag held an open white hand against a blue background.

Tarin pulled her flag out to reveal the image of a brick oven, bursting with curling orange flames.

Then Bayan, last in line, revealed his flag. Murmurs shot around the room, and the flag maker snorted.

Bayan’s flag was completely black.

“Did he forget to make a pattern?” someone murmured.

Bayan stepped forward, aiming his black flag at the broad purple ribbon on the wall, with its three gleaming metal-and-jewel seals while he raked the muttering audience with angry eyes. Darkness pulsed at the edges of his eyes, and he reveled in its strength even as he mastered it, tamed it to his will.

“The black represents my Void; the seventh color in the Elemental Seal. Without it, I wouldn’t be an Elemental Duelist; I’d be a potioneer. Everyone places so much importance on doing the motions and casting the spells.” He dragged his gaze across the seated audience. “But until I mastered myself, I couldn’t master any of the elements. Not one. Just ask my hex. So don’t look at me like I’m still the confused backwater muckling who slopped up the nice clean steps of this building over a year ago. I’ve earned my place, and you
will
respect that.” He thrust the stave into the air, letting the small black banner wave. “You
will
respect this flag. Even if you don’t respect me.”

Meditation Instructor Greer stood, clapping, and gave Bayan a deep bow; Jurgen and Rina followed suit. Rina looked like she was tearing up despite her wide grin; Bayan figured they rarely saw any black on the graduates’ flags. The crowd clapped sporadically, their faces ranging from confused to thoughtful to dismissive.

“That was very insightful, Bayan,” the headmaster said.

Bayan turned to glare at the taller man. “I’m sure I wouldn’t think so unless you’d mentioned it, Headmaster. I’m not here for you. I’m not here for any of them, either.” He slashed his stave toward the audience.

He turned and caught concerned looks from Calder, Kiwani, Tarin, and Eward. His darkness thrummed with the beat of his heart, lifting him outside himself, making him see how very small everything was, how petty and artificial and unnecessary.

“I’m here for them.” He pointed to his hexmates. “They are my empire.”

He leaped off the dais and strode up the aisle. Once outside, he got a dozen strides from the building before his magic began to reach a critical pressure inside him.

He drove the stave into the ground and dropped to his knees, its black flag stiff above his head. Squeezing his eyes shut, he thrust the darkness into the stave and deep into the ground, shaking as immense power coursed through him, more than he’d ever channeled before. The ground beneath him trembled and split around his knees, but he clung to the stave and kept emptying himself, desperately clinging to his anger, forcing it to submit.

I want this! I want to be an Elemental Duelist! But I hate it at the same time. Why can’t I make up my mind? Is it wrong to want to have the power to make a difference, to change my destiny? It can’t be. But what if all the magic in the world isn’t enough to free me from the emperor’s grasp?

“Bayan!” Eward shook him by the shoulders as the earth trembled beneath them both.

Bayan opened his eyes, not wanting his magic to hurt a hexmate. That little shot of caution was enough to drag his darkness back where it belonged, leaving Bayan shaking and panting, but firmly in control of himself.

A pale, rough wall of wood blocked his gaze. Looking up and around, Bayan saw that his magic had taken its cue from the stave in his hands, creating a towering eucalyptus tree at the spot where he knelt. His hands and the stave itself were sheathed in trunk wood, with the flag flying free through a gap in the bark.

“Bayan, what are you doing? Are you all right?” Eward knelt beside him, leaning against his own stave.

Bayan looked over at him, then up at the fully-leafed eucalyptus tree he’d created on the Academy’s wintry mountain campus. “I guess I still have some issues with where I belong, and where I want to belong.”

Tarin squatted down on his other side, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You belong with us, Bayan.”

Kah landed on its lowest branch and bobbed his head as if in agreement. “Kah!”

“Aye, and we belong out of sight before someone comes out and sees what he did,” Calder hooted, darting by with Kiwani and grabbing Tarin’s arm. Eward helped Bayan tug his hands out of the holes that had formed around his wrists, then Bayan slid his flag from the tree. They ran after the others, pelting up the wooden steps and into the covered walkway, trying to smother their laughter.

“What do you think they’ll do when they see the tree?” Kiwani panted, once they had run all the way to the Chantery steps.

“They’ll name it after him, o’ course,” Calder said, catching his breath. “’Bayan’s tree. Not for convenient urination. Attempt, and it will snap your twig off.’”

Tarin squealed with laughter, while Eward and Kiwani held their sides and laughed silently so as not to lose the breath they’d just regained.

Even Bayan laughed. “You see? This is why I love you people. You understand me.”

Calder placed a consoling hand on Bayan’s shoulder. “Bayan, laddio. No one understands you. You’re far too weird. We’re just the ones who like you that way.”

Bayan grinned at the sight of his friends’ smiling faces. Something old and tight eased in his chest. “Let’s go steal some pies from the kitchen and eat them up at Esme’s sint tree.”

“Aye, that’s the way,” Calder agreed heartily.

As they headed toward the kitchens, Bayan finally thought to ask, “Did you all leave the ceremony before it was over?”

“Aye,” Calder said, jogging beside him. “The headmaster seemed too surprised to say whatever else he had planned, so we just thanked everyone for coming and walked out.”

Bayan puffed a short laugh. “I’m corrupting you all.”

“It’s not corruption,” Kiwani called over her shoulder. “I hear swamp mud is very healthy.”

~~~

To Surveyor Philo Sallas,

Warm greetings from Tuur Langlaren, Duelist Academy Headmaster.

Your sponsored student, Bayan Lualhati, has passed his Elemental Duelist exams with excellent skill. I hold high hopes for his ability to master avatars as well, but as always, such things are in the care of the sints. In the meantime, let me inform you that I shall be contacting the Duelism Office for the next available Talent Tournament locations. Bayan’s remaining hexmates have passed their exams, so they’re all eligible to travel to a duel den and showcase their skills for potential clients. I will inform you of the location when I hear from Duelism, so that you may have the opportunity to attend and see your sponsored duelist in action.

Philo stared at the letter. A fatuous grin spread across his face, and he leaned back in his chair and pattered his silk-slippered feet with delight.
Thank you, Bayan! And thank sints. This is exactly what I need.

“Good news, Philo?” Kipri asked from his small mapping table.

“Yes, my boy. Yes, indeed.” He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and reached for his quill. “Now, I need you to take a break and run this short note over to the Duelism Office.”

Qivinga heard the cry from the wine cellar, but thought nothing of it until Uunaq ran upstairs, bloody to her elbows, and grabbed an armful of clean towels from a kitchen shelf. She dashed down the chilly stone stairs into the broad room below, with Qivinga striding at her heels.

The wine racks had been moved into the next chamber, leaving the floor bare for combat practice. Hahliq crouched at Kuvi’s side and stripped towels from Uunaq’s hands as quickly as she could offer them.

“What has happened?” Qivinga approached the men’s circle gathered around their fallen member.

“Knife accident.” Hahliq kept his eyes on Kuvi’s leg, where he layered another towel. “At least he missed the artery.”

Qivinga saw one of her Aklaa warriors hang his head in shame. She lifted her eyebrows in surprise; Caspar would have been her choice for a clumsy attacker. “Will he live?”

“
Aa
, if I can stop this bleeding. I think it’s slowing, finally.”

Qivinga frowned. “He won’t be able to go south with you now, will he?”

Hahliq sighed. “
Naa
. Tuq’s will all along, then, that Caspar trained with us.”

“He what?”

Hahliq turned to her. “You didn’t think we’d bring a plump, pale aristocrat on this journey, merely to lift him over our heads and carry him so he didn’t get dirty, did you?”

Qivinga blinked. The idea was both absurd and humiliating. “
Naa
, of course not.”

“We are still twelve strong, with Caspar at our side. Our mission cannot fail.” A curious look, full of inside knowledge Qivinga did not possess, passed among the uninjured warriors, but she made no comment. The success of her mission was her only concern.

Turning to Caspar, she asked, “So, Waarden. Have you the stomach, now, to raise your hand against your brother and his people? To strike a blow for our freedom, against your own?”

Caspar looked uncomfortable. “It’s why I’ve come, isn’t it? To get back what is rightfully mine.”

Qivinga’s lips twisted. She turned aside and strode toward the stairs. “Make sure Kuvi lives, Hahliq. He can remain here until we make our way out of Waarden lands during the uproar.”

“
Aa
, Starflower.”

“And, Hahliq.”

He looked up at her.

“Don’t let this happen again.”

~~~

Bayan sauntered into his room with Calder, while Eward took a detour to the campus mail depot. “Is it me,” Bayan asked, sprawling on his new, third-floor bed, “or are these new Avatar classes seven times easier than the Elemental classes we just finished?” He sighed and admired the new tattoo that spread across the back of his left hand.

Calder executed a spinning leap that centered him perfectly atop his thick new mattress. “I was going to say ten times easier. But then, I am better than you are.”

Bayan threw his pillow at Calder, who ducked and laughed. “If that were really true,” Bayan said, “you’d have manifested an avatar by now.”

“Or all six.”

Eward opened the door and came in bearing two letters.

“Any chance one of those is from Odjin?” Bayan asked.

“Sorry, no,” Eward replied.

“Wish we could tell him we all passed,” Calder said. “Maybe they’re not letting him write to us.”

Bayan frowned. He had no idea what sort of retraining Odjin had endured to become a potioneer; maybe letter-writing to former hexmates was deemed too distracting.

“One of these is for you, Bayan.” Eward handed him a thick cream envelope sealed with matching wax.

“What’s this?” Calder sat up on his bed at the sight of Surveyor Philo’s trademark envelope. “No taffies?”

Bayan sat and opened up the envelope. “I should just tell Philo to send the candy directly to you.”

Calder agreed and flopped on Bayan’s bed. “What’s he say?”

Bayan scanned the first few lines. “He’s congratulating me on earning Elemental rank. The Academy sent him a letter when I passed because he’s my sponsor. Wait, what is this?

“‘I’ve been informed’,” Bayan read, “‘that your hex’s Talent Tournament is scheduled to occur in Muggenhem three days before Low Spring. You’ve got the luck of the sints in securing such a prestigious town to advertise yourselves. By happy chance, my assistant Kipri, whom you will recall from our journey north, will also be there at that time. I’ll send him some extra trifles for your consideration, in accordance with your last letter. Please look for him without delay at the Gyre’s Breath Inn on the main square.
Bhattara na
.’”

“‘In accordance with your last letter’? The one about the half-digested assassin?”

“That’s the one. It sounds like he learned something important, but he doesn’t want to write it down. I guess I’ll have to wait and hear it from Kipri.”

Eward finished his own note from home, then dragged a chair over near Bayan’s bed and straddled it. “Did I hear you say something about our Talent Tournament?”

“Aye. It seems Bayan’s sponsor is psychic. We haven’t heard the decided time or place, ourselves.”

“Maybe it’s prearranged, and the headmaster mentioned it to Surveyor Philo as a courtesy,” Eward guessed.

Bayan folded up the letter. “I guess we’ll find that out too.”

~~~

“Focus!” Mikellen shouted over the roar of shuddering sand.

Bayan tried, but he wasn’t sure what he was trying to focus
on
. He thought he was holding the Earth avatar invocation pose correctly, with his right wrist pressing against the inside of his left, at perfect right angles. But visualizing an avatar for the first time? He didn’t know where to begin.

Avatars, his instructors had informed him, were physical manifestations of a single element, and they could take any form the duelist gave them. But once chosen, the form was permanent, an aspect of avatars that led duelists to give them names.