The Axe and the Throne (19 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crella stood, dumbfounded, looking at her husband who lay unconscious on the floor, blood slowly pooling from the broken skin on his head, pieces of a large vase scattered around him on the porcelain tile of their anteroom.

He was no Sir Stormblade, the dashing knight fawned over by all Adeltian girls prior to the war. Yet when held up against the other Rivervalian invaders, when held up against the men—Adeltian or otherwise—who remained alive after the best had been culled in combat, Alther was perhaps the least offensive. Fault him though she may for his timidity, she could hardly have wished in earnest for him to be a more assertive man. And forced to contemplate a life without him, she realized this man did not deserve the death she'd secretly prayed would befall him since they had been married. That he had taken her baseborn daughter, Ethel, as his own and kept her safe from harm should have been reason enough for Crella's appreciation, an appreciation she had never shown.

Crella knelt at her fallen husband's side and was relieved to hear his breathing was regular. The bleeding from beneath his hair was just a trickle.

“What were you thinking?” Crella demanded under her breath.

Lank and noble, her son stood before her. Her unyielding nature toward Alther had seen its way even into the heredity of their only offspring, as the young prince was almost her twin in appearance.

“I was thinking of your safety. I—”

“This could be seen as treason,” she interrupted. Things had escalated with such immediacy she had no time to think. Moving to Westport suddenly seemed like it would not have been much trouble at all.

“He was going to kill you,” Stephon replied, much too loud.

Crella knew her son to be hot tempered and defensive of her, but she had never expected him to be witless enough to strike the heir to the throne. She thought she'd raised him with more sense than that.

“Lower your voice.” Crella let her anger be heard in her voice as she rose to face her son. “He was not going to kill me.”
Though that may be the story of necessity.
“Now what can we do about this?” Crella posed the question to herself. She fought back the worry that was consuming her from the inside.
I must be strong for Stephon's sake.

“Is he dead?” Stephon asked.

“No, his chest still rises and falls with strength.”

“Should we kill him?”

Crella slapped her son across the face for his idiocy, though the blow seemed to illicit more shock in Stephon than discomfort as he recoiled.

“He is your
father
!” Crella felt as though the world she had constructed had shattered along with the vase that struck her husband. All of the posturing, all of the effort to always look her best and act in a way that would not draw the ire of these Rivervalian invaders, but also not allow them to think that they could do with her as they pleased—all of it was being undone by one action, made by the one she strove most to protect. “I will say that it was a burglar or a jealous woman or some like.” A moment's reflection revealed she much preferred the former. “We will hide you until this misunderstanding is resolved.”

“Mother, that is foolish.”

It did seem an outlandish story, but less plausible things had happened within the walls of the kingdom, and she could think of no alternative.

“Just do as I say,” she said.

“Cassen trusts me. I will go seek his aid.” Stephon boasted as if she would be impressed that he had made Cassen an ally.

“Absolutely
not
.” The thought that he would seek Cassen's assistance over hers nearly drove her to slap him again. “Cassen is the king's vile pet, and you have just struck the king's son. Have some sense. Cassen will only use this to his own advantage and to our detriment.”

Crella paced, the hem of her dress catching pieces of the broken vase, making a scratching noise on the tile that threatened to wake Alther. She forced herself to stand still.

“I have friends who bear no love for Alther or his father, Adeltian nobles who are still rich and powerful. I will send you to them for safekeeping.”

Stephon frowned, still not grasping the seriousness of the situation. It seemed he was still thinking only of the punishment that would come from his father when he should have been concerned far more about the king. Lyell would not tolerate the half Adeltian prince striking Alther, no matter the story.

“I do not wish to go live with those I do not know.” Stephon rubbed his brow as if exhausted by this unnecessary exercise.

Crella scowled at him. “How many people do you know in the dungeons? You will be living with them and for much longer if you do not obey me and do so with haste.”

At the mention of the dungeons Stephon's demeanor changed. His face became more serious.

“Pack some things. It must look as though you had been staying with them since yesterday. Make a note of anyone that may have seen you here today—I will need to know. I will write a letter for you to bring to my friends, and you will travel to them in secret as soon as can be arranged. Now hurry!”

Stephon snorted the last of his defiance and obeyed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Focus, Toblin, focus.”

A stout boy of eight years stood at the front of the class facing away from the other students. He was focused intently on a candle. It floated on the surface of the water in a glass bowl atop an old wooden table. Beyond the table was a massive hearth with a fire ablaze. Beads of sweat formed on the boy's brow as he trembled. His luxurious violet cape with yellow embroidery, which he never was without, swayed with his efforts.

“Do not strain. Use neither muscle nor strength. Only seek to guide the power from one source to the other, you the conduit.” Derudin encouraged without allowing his expression to change from that of complete stoicism.
This boy does not belong.

He knew Toblin had little chance of achieving this menial task. The boy simply had no natural focus. But his parents had influence, and with it they had insisted he be trained in the ways of a mage. Most of Derudin's class was filled with those whose parents had enrolled them in an effort of last resort, desiring to see their children rise from mediocrity. No visions were required to know this boy would never heft a sword with any grace, and unfortunately, the same could be said for his potential for magecraft. In decades past, Derudin may have rejected the boy outright, but in these times he was lucky to be able to fill half the seats of his small classroom, even with the butts of non-potentials. Interest and faith in the abilities of mages had diminished greatly over the years, and so too had there been a decline in those with the natural predisposition for conductance. Of his seven apprentices, only two had any true natural focus that he knew of, and they lacked promise in other areas.

Finally, Toblin let out a pathetic whimper and allowed his body to relax. His eyes turned downward with dejection, away from the unaltered wick of the floating candle.

“A noble attempt, young Toblin,” lied Derudin. “Let us try to determine the cause of your failure so that your next shall result in brilliant flame.”

Derudin floated in his robes toward the table—a mere trick of the eye due to proper starch levels in its grey fabric, but in a world where magic was all but absent, even simple artifice was a powerful tool in achieving respect without wasted effort. Derudin's days of performing parlor tricks to convince nonbelievers were long and gone, however. He had the ear of the king, won by years of sound guidance preceding the conquering of the Adeltian Kingdom, and that was currently all that concerned him.

Derudin submerged a sealed glass tube containing a grey liquid into the water and waited patiently, as did the six apprentices in attendance.

“Two and a half degrees,” Derudin announced. “A fair amount of power to have transferred over the course of several minutes, albeit to the wrong destination. You may sit.”

Toblin waddled back to his chair, cape swinging, and sat with the others. There were two rows, each of eight chairs, with no table or surface in front upon which to write. Derudin told new apprentices that any lesson they sought to remember should be stored in their minds and not upon paper. Mindlessly transcribing words, he found, was a good way to ensure the writer had no time to discern their meaning. Nor was there much to remember, in fact. Of the countless Ancient Laws, only the first three pertained specifically to mages.

“And who would like to try next?” Derudin did not need to look up to know whose fingers would be raised. As he added cold cellar water to the bowl to equalize its temperature with that of the surrounding air, he envisioned what he would see when he turned to face them. Sture and Signy, he predicted, would both have their index fingers raised as high as they could stretch them to show their over-enthusiastic zeal for demonstrating their talents. Both could light a candle within a few moments, and both were eager to show that they could do it more quickly than the other. The same noble blood coursed through the veins of the two cousins, each twelve years of age. They looked more like twins than cousins, both with their bright blonde hair and air of authority—learned from their noble parents no doubt. Neither was particularly impressive, in Derudin's opinion, but they at least had focus, which was more than he could say for the remainder of the students. In Derudin's day, a child of twelve would be expected to be able to call lightning—not that any actually met those expectations.
Save for one
, Derudin remembered with unabashed pride.

“Flow the heat from the hearth into your eyes and throughout your body. Let it fill your veins or lungs or stomach. The path each mage uses is different, but it must flow both in and out again, directed to your intended target…
Directly
to your target. Focus is the goal of this exercise as it takes very little power to light a wick.” Derudin let his gaze linger on the pewter pot that held the cellar water. The engravings were impressive, but it was the condensation that captivated him. With the fire burning, the warm Adeltian fall felt more like the mouth of a volcano.
A dip in the Rivervalian springs would do these old bones well
, he thought, but that was not to be.

Turning to face the class, Derudin saw that both Signy and Sture had their fingers raised as far as possible without separating from the hand.

“A mage is a conduit of power, nothing more, nothing less. This is the first of the Ancient Laws. You are not the creator of the power, only that through which it flows. Remembering, no,
understanding
this will help you maintain focus.” Derudin had certainly said as much before, complete with his self-correction, but repetition was the only tool he seemed to have left at his disposal.

An odd flicker caught his eye as Derudin moved to accept Signy's request. He shifted his gaze toward the end of the front row where the girl in the plain dress sat. Nine or ten years in age, she had attended classes for over a month now, never having volunteered for an exercise. Since Derudin was not in the habit of forcing such things upon a student, he had never seen her demonstrate her abilities in any way. She was a peculiar thing to him, with her stark-white hair which reached just past her shoulders and was worn always down, never up in the way most girls were doing lately. But fashion, it seemed, was another thing she did not exercise, as her clothing appeared oddly plain even to a man who wore nothing but grey robes. Her index finger was slightly raised, her hand still resting upon her lap.

“You may stand and attempt to light the candle,” Derudin told the white-haired girl. He was not in the habit of acquiring names of students until they showed some form of ability, or at least failed enough that he felt compelled to regardless.

She rose and walked toward the table.

“Have no fear of drawing too much power from the fire in the hearth. If you transfer more than the candle can contain, the water will absorb the rest. You can only draw that which you can dispense—you mustn't worry about excess energy being left in your body and burning you to ash. That happens very rarely.”

Some of the children laughed quietly at Derudin's humor.
Perhaps that joke was not appropriate before her first demonstration.

“Just focus on the smallest bit of fiber at the very top of the wick, not the full breadth of it. And do not be discouraged when nothing happens at first. No one is expected to light a candle on their first attempt.” Feeling a bit guilty for having caused her peers to laugh, Derudin attempted to ease her mind more than he was apt to on a pupil's first effort.

The girl faced the candle, but Derudin could see her eyes were closed. It was common for some to close their eyes to achieve better focus, but he figured it was more like to be due to her embarrassment. He could not tell if she attempted anything, but after a moment a few bubbles came out of the water, a thing noticed by all.

“She projected a fart into the water!” While Derudin tried to make sense of it himself, Sture had been the first to wager a guess.

The five seated children burst into laughter, especially Toblin who seemed to be relieved that there would be a new person for his classmates to harass instead of him.

“Silence.” Derudin did not need to speak loudly to get their full attention, and the laughter ceased. “You have done well, though I believe you have managed to boil some water rather than light the candle. In any case, it was a fine first attempt. Please have a seat.”

The young girl, now thoroughly humiliated, returned to her seat. Tears looked as though they would burst forth at any moment.

“Boiling water is perhaps more difficult than lighting a wick,” Derudin explained. “In fact, it is quite more difficult when attempting to boil but a small portion in such a large bowl. What is your name, young apprentice?”

The girl took a moment to calm herself, and Derudin remained busy with his thermometer so she would know she had the time.

“Eaira,” she finally responded.

“Well, Eaira, you have a good deal of natural focus. And what is more, you showed incredible restraint in taking so long before demonstrating your natural gifts. Sture, would you be so kind as to remind us what the second of the Ancient Laws is?”

Sture looked befuddled at first but regained his composure as he stood, reciting the second law with his usual authority. “A mage's conductance comes from focus and is amplified by continence.”

“Before you sit, let everyone know exactly what that means.”

Sture's look of confusion quickly returned, and his eyes wandered around the room as if looking for the answer.

“It means,” said Derudin, “that without both focus and continence, or, in simpler terms, concentration and self-restraint, you will not be able to transfer power effectively. One is born with focus, but restraint must be practiced. Some of you probably saw it as a weakness that it took Eaira a month to finally do an exercise, and you could not be more mistaken. Restraint should be practiced in all things if you are to truly be a mage.”

Derudin glanced at his thermometer to see how much heat had been transferred into water, but the level of the grey liquid inside refused to budge.
That is odd
, he thought. Even practiced mages would have transferred some heat into the surrounding water. He then noticed water pooling around the bottom of the glass bowl and looked toward the pewter pot to see if the condensation had run from the sides, but it had not. He noticed, instead, a tiny trickle of water leaking down the back of the glass bowl itself, out of what must have been a pin-sized hole. His attention snapped toward Eaira, and he hoped he was hiding his amazement better than he was feeling it.

“But even with extreme restraint, a mage is useless without natural focus,” Derudin continued. “The Dawnstar radiates more power than we could possibly fathom, but because it does so in all directions, devoid of focus, we can bathe in its rays for hours with no more ill-effect than some reddening of the skin. A true mage must have the ability to direct power toward the smallest of targets, in the smallest of rays.” He looked at Eaira and gave her half a smile as he noticed her spirits had been lifted.
I now have a theory as to why you always wear your hair down.