White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10) (6 page)

The auras were mixed for three out of the four of them including another battle mage like the one inside. One of the girls had an aura of magic that felt similar to the other two wizards working the search team he thought. It wasn’t a certainty with the girl, but it was definitely the least muddled of the four.

“Were those the other team members you’re working with here?” the boy asked as they disappeared inside.

“The tournament ended not too long ago. Maybe they are wizards returning home, but they aren’t from my team.”

Standing up from the step, Piotr offered the apprentice a hand up and missed her blush as his eyes looked to the closer door. “I guess that everyone is returning for dinner then. Maybe we should see if Qeyr has saved a table for us.”

“Pfft,” the girl responded before catching herself. She wasn’t supposed to put down her mentor after all, though doing something like that was a rarity for Qeyr. He preferred drinking and remaining apart from the others. His aloof attitude made it easy for the other wizards to ignore him, but the girl had to deal with him more as his apprentice. “We’ll most likely need to save a table for the others. I don’t think Qeyr will have left the bar yet.”

Grabbing the boy’s hand spontaneously, the red head managed to not blush as she reached for the door handle as well to go inside.
 

Like most large inns of the towns of Southwall, the Traveler’s Rest was a center of the community. Though there were a few other taverns and smaller inns in town, it was where much of the nearby townsfolk went for music and dancing. Such a community helped keep Delanne a popular spot to stop and rest on a journey through the northeast.

When the music began, Cheleya looked happy to see Ardost come over to ask her to dance.

“I didn’t want to miss the opportunity or waste time asking you to dance this time,” the mage stated as he took the pretty girl in hold. The smell of her was intoxicating to the man, but he didn’t realize that was a property of what Cheleya really was.

Her new friend’s protector must have felt Katya safe enough with the other men of his group around as he had been quick to catch Cheleya before any other man could. He had failed to try and dance with her once and been fool enough to admit it. When the girl had said that he should have been brave enough to cut in the first night, Ardost had realized that he had missed out on dancing with the prettiest woman he had ever met.

Cheleya on the other hand found the man interesting, but was too young to fully understand the relationships of a man and woman. Being sheltered in the Academy of Mar’kal as a wizard and dragon mage, the girl had little contact of that kind. She had also not always been human.

One of the race known as che’ther, the petite human girl had been born a blue dragoness, as humans often referred to them. An amulet had been gifted to her by the Academy to use to turn into a human. It was an essential part of how to learn to fly as a dragon mage. Che’ther didn’t have wings like the legendary dragons and were much too heavy for magically created wings to lift their bulk.

She had only been a twenty foot long che’ther, which was about half the size of most of her people as adults; but even that was too large for the wings she could create. Then Cheleya had been betrayed by the man she had looked to as a mentor and friend. Malaketh had been a spy of the emperor and needed to cover his trail by making the girl a scapegoat. Breaking her amulet and disrupting her magic, he had thrown her from the Academy’s tower and nearly killed her in the process.

After weeks of being hunted and trapped in this human body, she had all but given up on believing that she would ever be able to break his curse to return to her old life. Cheleya had enjoyed turning into a human once, but now it was a prison and her new permanent form. The pieces of amulet trapped inside her body could work together to still let her change into a dragon, but only for a short time as the distance between the pieces grew too much to maintain the spell.

The perfume Ardost and all humans seemed to enjoy was a byproduct of her personality and the form she had created. Cheleya had been small as a dragon; but even for a che’ther, her personality had been decidedly sweet. Her smaller form made people want to protect her and she made friends easily as much because of her personality as from the scent she gave off.

“Well, I can’t say that you didn’t learn your lesson then,” the girl smiled at him. She was only seventeen and a mere child in che’ther years, but Cheleya was human now and learning more about them each day. Her emotions were very human and her feelings were more natural to her every day she remained a human.

He nodded at her verdict. “Well, I’ve been working to expand my knowledge with Sebastian after all, so I guess it’s rubbing off,” Ardost chuckled. “Learning my lessons is very important, but I would have to be a complete idiot to not ask to dance with you again.”

Smiling at the man, Cheleya replied, “That is very flattering. It is also nice to dance with someone I already know and like. Magnus and his friend Embrell have been particularly insistent about getting a dance in during our travel together. Luckily, I have Kel’lor around also if they get to be too much.”

The man frowned at her words. “Too much in what way? Have they been insisting on going to your room or something? That would not be very gentlemanly of them. I would help Kel’lor in putting them in their place, if you need me to do so.”

Cheleya knew little of the concept of being a gentleman from her lessons, but she knew men that qualified if the definition were given to her. The friends who she had met along the way had two men who were definitely gentlemen and she missed them as well as the two women who were like sisters to the younger che’ther.

“Nothing like that, though I am not completely sure what seeing my room would have to do with being a gentleman as you say. No, Magnus in particular just seemed to act like he was owed a dance. He likes to say how he was the champion of the tournament and brags about his accomplishments.

“I do not find such a lack of modesty very flattering, but I can’t say that they are horrible men either. Perhaps I don’t have the best groundwork to base such judgments on, but compared to some they aren’t that bad.”

He wasn’t completely sure what she meant by her lack of judgment based on a limited groundwork, but it was obvious that Cheleya meant that she could put up with whatever attention she was getting from the men. Ardost had often wondered at how sheltered the girl must have been in her former school to know so little about the world and the people in it.

Still, Cheleya was a sweet, young woman and charmingly beautiful. She was smart, but also quite naive.

Not wanting to get stuck on such unhealthy talk, Ardost said, “So you are an untrained healer as well?”

Holding Katya’s hand and using her magic to relieve saddle sores had worked. It was one of a few spells she had tried relating to healing, but it was during the flight from Mar’kal that she had discovered that she could heal. The magic was similar to another that few others understood. Alteration magic had been mere words in a book with just a few comments on how the spells were cast. More like thinking her way through them, Cheleya had created clothes, mended them as well, and turned stone to water amongst other things. Healing had a similar feeling, but she was still a novice at that kind of magic.

That she had been able to alleviate her new friend’s soreness had been a happy event. Cheleya liked helping others and caring for them felt right, though perhaps it wasn’t very che’ther like.

“I used my first healing spells only a few weeks ago. Since then I have had a need to heal a few more times, though my true skill comes from being able to change things. Altering cloth to make clothing has been my favorite spell, even if it is kind of useless for battle.”

She stopped her dismissal of the magic thinking of how her alteration spells had been used in a few fights and realized that perhaps it wasn’t so useless. The dragon mage had escaped being trapped by changing rope and stone or even destroying amulets forcing their owners to change back to their original forms. Unlike Malaketh, no one she had needed to perform that magic on was left stuck in some other body other than their original one.

The mage looked at her questioningly. “You can alter clothing? That does seem like an odd area of study for most wizards. They always seem to want more power and knowledge.

“I’m sure battle mages have that weakness to a point, but not like some wizards I know.”

The girl shrugged and said, “I could show you, if you want; but not in a crowd like this.”

Taking the hint, Ardost led her from the floor. Cheleya led him in turn to a table occupied by just Kel’lor. The big man had been approached by a few daring women, but he had informed them politely that he couldn’t dance and didn’t wish to step on them. Beneath his human guise, the big man was actually a mar’goyn’lya or gargoyle, one of two races which had come to Alus from a burning world long ago brought here by sorcerers of an old kingdom.

The two races had once been enemies, but as their world died in flame, they had become allies and remained so even after the last of their people arrived in this new world. Being outnumbered and surrounded by the humans of Alus, it was mostly self preservation at work, since they were stronger together than apart.

Cheleya and Kel’lor had a stronger bond than just allies; but as the girl sat down with Ardost and asked the mage to tear the sleeve on her shirt, he didn’t look like he approved of her revealing her powers.

“Are you sure that you want me to tear this? It looks very expensive,” he noted the yellow fabric of her blouse tentatively. Not wanting to ruin something so nice, the mage was hesitant. After all, they had been talking about him protecting her earlier and that wouldn’t be his idea of taking care of her properly.

The girl giggled and it sounded prettier than the music of the small band playing on the far side of the room. “It was made from a wizard’s cast off shirt. Trust me. I know what I am doing.”

Taking an unused knife from the table left over from dinner earlier, Ardost managed to create a cut before tearing it further with both hands. Exposing her slender arm beneath the cloth, the man noticed the smooth soft skin and thought even that was incredibly beautiful about her.

“Is that enough to show me what you meant?” the man asked looking at her emerald green eyes as they seemed to glisten in the light of the lanterns around the room.

She nodded and placed her hand over the rip. Seeing her eyes appear to glow slightly, the mage knew that the girl was using magic. Unfortunately, Ardost wasn’t strong enough at seeing magical strength to know more than that.

In seconds, Cheleya removed her hand and the cloth was mended without even a stitch looking out of place on the sleeve.

“There’s not even a mark on it,” he stated.

“I can also do things like changing color. This was once an ugly brown research wizard’s shirt.

“Even something like changing the color of my hair,” the girl said by starting to take a lock of her hair and sliding her fingers along the strand toward the tip. Suddenly the lock was pink setting it apart easily from the rest of her blond hair.

“I like it better blond,” he replied with a slight frown. Pink wasn’t the color of any normal hair though he supposed Cheleya might still find a way to look beautiful with the oddly colored hair.

Taking the hair in hand, the girl ran her fingers along the pink coloring returning it to blond once more. Though it wasn’t because Ardost had disliked the color, Cheleya had to agree that she didn’t want to have pink hair other than for the demonstration.

“No one in Mar'kal really uses this kind of magic, but it can still be used in entertaining ways,” she said with a smile. “For the record, I also like blond the best, but I have changed the color of my hair numerous times over the last year to see which I liked the most.”

Katya enjoyed dancing normally, but there were almost no boys here around her age. There was the young boy she had seen sitting on the porch with the tall wizard’s apprentice. Though she never noticed him move to dance. His girlfriend was swept away by another wizard’s apprentice with silver stripes on his uniform. He had come in a group of four after she and Cheleya had finished their walk as well as the healing of her saddle pains.

An older bearded wizard in green sat with his apparent apprentice. The younger man was larger than his master and more muscular, but they had sat near the farm boy and seemed to be answering his questions. She wondered what could keep them so busy rather than dancing with the music.

Her guards also seemed busy dancing. Ardost had broken from the dance floor to sit with Cheleya and Kel’lor for a little while, but Katya had been drawn to the floor by some gray haired man. She tried to be polite and he wasn’t the only older man that had asked her to dance.

After a little while, the girl was missing Mera and the dances with her friends there.

Retreating to the table with the nature wizards, Katya asked, “Is it all right if I hide here with you?”

She smiled and received warm smiles from the men.

The apprentice asked, “Are you too popular that you need to hide with us?”

Wrinkling her nose in mock distaste the girl replied, “For some reason, every old man thinks dancing with me is reliving his youth or something. Since there are few boys my age here, it is kind of hard to find a partner from my generation.”