White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10) (28 page)

“Do you just share with animals like cows and horses or can you work with birds as well?”

“Both,” Piotr replied in a word.

There was a door at the end of the hall and Zieran turned the knob leading into another room. Noise as if from a barn carried to his ears immediately.

The older wizard smiled and said, “You probably thought that the stables were the only place where we kept animals around here. Nature wizards work with plants, stone and even other elements in our courtyard; but for novices like you, this might become your favorite place in the school.”

To his surprise, there were cages with various kinds of animals lining the walls. Birds chirped or squawked, dogs, cats, mice and other small creatures were in cages stacked over some larger animals.

Piotr frowned seeing one of the smaller mountain cats in a cage. It was a creature of the wild. While the lynx wasn’t as large as the bigger mountain lions, the boy was surprised to see wizards who were supposed to be close to nature caging such a creature.

A strange grunt and growl from a larger cage drew his eyes next. A brown bear, most likely a few hundred pounds, was there rooting through the dried grasses at the base of the cage.

“Why do you have a bear or lynx in a cage like this? Aren’t these supposed to be in a forest or in the mountains living like they are supposed to?” he asked feeling a bit of anger at the treatment of such creatures.

Snorting at the boy, Zieran scoffed, “Are you really looking at the creatures or just putting your beliefs in the fore of your mind, novice? We tend nature and can train your skills with mice, cats and dogs, which would be comfortable in our care true, but we don’t just bring in creatures we want to work with selfishly. Look at the lynx closer before you judge.”

Piotr squatted before the cage looking at the big cat. In turn, the lynx looked at him suspiciously giving him a warning growl. It paced back and forth. While it had a small stub for a tail, it looked natural to the creature. He looked to its paws and face trying to see what the wizard meant.

Finally, the boy sat with crossed legs and looked through the triangle formed by his fingers. His mind crossed to the lynx as he looked for the reason closer. A pain from its rear leg made Piotr wince in his body. His mind tried to understand what was wrong with the cat and realized that its leg was trying to mend from an injury.

Releasing the link, Piotr looked up at Zieran and asked, “How was it hurt?”

“One of our wizards found him last fall with his team while searching the mountains. They were there making sure that nature was managing to care for itself, but sometimes we need to use our magic to help things along.

“Lyras here was found at the base of a cliff. Apparently the rock had given way on him. If our team had found him much later, he would have been a corpse. Unfortunately Lyras had been suffering for days. Though no other animal had happened upon him, he couldn’t walk to find food and water either.

“The wizards took care of him and did what they could to tend his injuries, but magic used so long after an injury requires a longer healing time. Magic can do many things, but we couldn’t just send him back out on his own right away.”

“His back leg still has a lot of pain. Couldn’t a healer fix it by now?”

Giving the boy a sad look, Zieran shook his head, “Even healing magic has its limits. Hopefully in a month or so, Lyras will be well enough to return to his mountain home; but for now he is our patient and a subject of study for novice wizards like you.”

Piotr stood and pointed to the bear asking, “And what about her? Was she injured too?”

Shaking his head, Zieran moved closer to the cage and the boy felt some of the wizard’s magic reaching out to the bear. “Bo lost her mother as a cub. We’ve tried releasing her into the woods, but she always winds up trying to come back to the school.

“Not every animal we help is helped the way we hoped. She’s been half raised in White Hall for five years now, but Bo refuses to leave for good,” he chuckled as the bear moved close to the door of the cage and blew some grass onto his boots. She whuffed and seemed ambivalent to his presence, so Piotr wondered why Zieran needed his magic.

“What are you doing to her?”

Zieran looked at him in surprise, “I thought I was being too subtle for a novice to notice. Well, I am just trying to eliminate some of my scent. Reducing it and sending out neutral waves of emotion will hopefully help keep her from bonding on me as well.

“She’s very social with humans, and that is kind of the problem.”

Piotr sat to try his magic on Bo and sent his mind to the bear. Exerting a little pressure, he made the bear turn and move to the back of the large cage. She sat for him and the boy thought that the animal would do whatever he wished. While the bear was bigger and intelligent to a point, his will could certainly make her go away if he needed to.

Releasing his magic, Bo continued to sit and looked at him as the novice stood back up again. “She’s pretty easy to control. I’m surprised no one used their magic forcefully enough to make her go away.”

Zieran shook his head. “Sending her away from the safety of the school isn’t the point, Piotr. She needs to have the instinct to survive out there on her own. Bo simply isn’t aggressive enough to catch her food and doesn’t know enough to stay away from humans that might want to kill her. She doesn’t understand things like that, so basically she has become a resident of White Hall.

“We’ll try releasing her again in the spring, but she’s pretty obstinate. I would expect you’ll have years to get to know her as well,” he laughed.

Aside from the handful of wild animals he would not have expected to see caged in the school, many of the other animals were more common to the humans of cities and towns. “Do you let them out for exercise somewhere?”

Zieran led him to another door and opened it letting in cold air. The wizard led him into a snow covered courtyard and Piotr noted the high walls around them. Trees without leaves, coated in snow and waiting for spring to bring back the warmth of the sun; dotted the courtyard in surprising numbers. Needled pines were represented in smaller numbers, while a couple ponds broke up the area in a different way.

“This is our courtyard. The animals get brought outside regularly to enjoy the weather, though most prefer the warmth of our zoo area right now. Winter just doesn’t want to end around here. The Dimple Mountains tend to extend it a little longer than Delanne.”

“Aren’t they days to the west?”

Zieran nodded, but added, “True, but the winds they create affect us here still.”

Rubbing his arms, the wizard gestured towards the door they had exited. “Well, unless you want to get your coat, I think maybe we had better get back inside.”

Piotr followed the wizard and wondered what activities they used the large courtyard for or if it was mainly for the animals’ exercise. He figured that he would learn more in time, but rubbed his arms as the boy agreed with Zieran about the cold.

Chapter 15- Shaping Dirt

The warmth of the dining hall and school in general was quickly lost even wearing his coat gathered from his room after lunch. Niklaus and the other battle mage trainees were brought to a courtyard attached to the mage quarters where just a handful of other boys and a girl were dressed in gray and sparring with wooden weapons.

“Catch,” his mentor, Falcon Elijah, called his attention back to the immediate area of the courtyard. A hardened leather breast plate was thrown to the boy and the mage nodded to him saying, “You’ll want to put that on.”

The others in his group were being passed similar protective gear brought from inside by the falcons. Niklaus nodded to those across the way and noted forearm guards and gloves, but no other protective gear.

“They’re not wearing armor,” he noted, but Elijah didn’t even turn his head. The falcon had a large sack and was already pulling the next piece for him.

“They’ve also been here since last summer, so they have six months to a year of practice on you. We all start with gear or you’d wind up giving the novice healers a lot more practice than we want. Stop wasting time and put it on.”

The leather chest plate had straps to go around his neck and waist to hold it in place. There was no backing. It wasn’t like they were truly gearing up for battle after all.

Thigh guards, wrist guards, gloves with hardened plate for the backs of their hands and fingers, two more upper arm guards, and finally a leather helmet filled with extra padding were all passed to the cadets to put on for training. It was heavy and felt restraining by the time the helmet was put on his head and the boy asked, “Is this really necessary? I can barely move.”

“It isn’t that bad,” Elijah replied as he patted and pulled on the pieces making sure everything was firmly bound to his charge.

Like leather plated tanks, the five mages stood ready to learn how to fight.

A woman wearing black with silver bars on her shoulders came out from the barracks and noted the falcons who stood across from their students. She drew her steel sword from its sheath and said, “Ok, new recruits, it is time to learn what it is to be a battle mage. Notice that our title consists of two words unlike the wizards, who spend time in their school just casting spells all day long.

“We too use magic, so we are called mages; but now you will learn the beginnings of battle.”

She looked across the five noting their looks. Xara and Uliya looked a little fearful while Niklaus and Jeraan were more resigned. Both had played soldier as kids. They had swung sticks imagining them to be weapons like the woman holding the sword before them.

Krevahs smirked looking confident. This was what he had been waiting for since being left behind in the practice of magic by the others. While Niklaus didn’t doubt that the older boy might one day have talent for it, his preference to make others do his work had already penalized him after just one session. His look must have annoyed the teacher and she pointed to him with the sword before gesturing with her off hand to step forward.

“I am Falconi Martina. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the ranks of battle mages, I will list them for you. First there are cadets, who train and learn to become falcons like your other mentors. For those who excel and become leaders, they will graduate to falcondi. Falcondi serve the falconi as our lieutenants, while we in turn work for the highest of our ranks, the ravens.

“In order for you to ever hope to become a falconi or raven, first you must become a cadet.”

Krevahs looked perplexed and replied, “I thought we were cadets.”

“You are dirt at this point. A cadet can fight, but lighting a lamp with a little flame has hardly prepared you to face a real cadet let alone fight the emperor’s soldiers and monsters.

“So dirt, it is time for us to make you into a cadet. Lift your wood sword. It is weighted like a real sword and, if you weren’t wearing your leather armor, it could still break bones and skulls. Do not forget that even a simple piece of wood can be a weapon in a fight, but we will worry about that when you can actually stand properly.”

The woman’s foot slashed in kicking Krevahs’ lead foot from behind causing the boy to stumble and fall onto his back, a side not padded well compared to the rest of him. Struggling to right himself, Krevahs was ignored as Martina moved to the next in line, Jeraan.

“Place your lead foot just beyond your shoulders. You need a wide enough stance to protect you from being knocked over, but do not throw it out to be cut off by a sword.”

Jeraan took a more conservative stance and the woman made him swing the sword. Catching his wrist as she deftly avoided the weapon, Martina tugged hard sending the boy sprawling onto his face.

“Wider, boy, there is no stability to that stance. If I can dodge and catch your weapon, you need to be able to bring your sword back into position to block the next attack.”

Uliya was wide eyed and fearful as Martina made her take a pose. Her sword caught the girl with the flat of the blade until Uliya was in a satisfactory stance. She swung her sword on cue, but the attack was slow as if the girl was afraid to hit the older woman. Niklaus had a feeling that Martina would have no worries over the thought of one of them even coming close.

After sending the girl into a sprawl, Martina barked, “Have more confidence than that, girl. Your stance was fine, but anyone can take advantage of someone too worried that they’ll hit someone.”

Xara was next and just as fearful as the other girl. Treated similarly to the first, her legs were positioned to the falconi’s satisfaction. Uliya swung hard, but was dodged and the arm was pulled by Martina’s offhand sending the girl sprawling similarly to Jeraan.

Swallowing hard, Niklaus learned from the others and took a proper stance without much coaching from the master. He could feel the solidity of the wider stance. As a child, the novice would have been dealt with like Krevahs. Testing his footing before attacking, Niklaus realized that he could shift forward and back easily. Side to side required a bit of a pivot, but he could see where the woman had been pushing them.

Martina’s eyes revealed nothing to him, whether she approved or not of the boy’s initial practice. She nodded for him to attack and Niklaus swung like he would have at someone he needed to hit.