“Toren!”
I came back to myself with a jolt.
Serea was shaking me by the arm. She repeated my name, calmer now that I looked back into her eyes. She was holding the lamp up and peering into my face with a look half of interest and half of concern on her hauntingly beautiful face. We still stood side by side in the cramped little room. My hands gripped the shaft of the Standard, and there was a feeling as if serpents were writhing under my fingers.
“What happened?” she said. “You were gone for a moment.”
“Only a moment? It felt like …”
I trailed off. It felt like hours had passed.
“You saw something, didn’t you?” Serea said into the silence.
I nodded, the full weight of what I had seen in the vision hitting me. The power to command armies with a touch of my will alone! What a man could do with such power!
Something surged in my chest. This was mine. I knew inexplicably and indubitably that what I had just experienced was a taste of the power of the Standard, wielded by a master. Serea had said it was my birthright, and I knew deep in my bones that she had spoken truthfully. It wasn’t just that I trusted her anymore; there was an inner source to my knowledge now—or an outer one, the Standard radiating its unwavering certainty.
I thought of accounts I’d read of battles, written by strategists and historians, even the generals themselves. I knew well from these accounts that in a battle, the general had a choice: he could try to stand on a high place and view the battle from there, sending commands by swift messenger to different parts of the battlefield; or he and his bodyguard could move from place to place among the fighting, lending their aid and providing the boost in morale that came with their presence, but also having to rely on messengers if they wanted to know what was going on in different parts of the battle.
Battles had been won and lost on the strength of a messenger who did not get through, or on one who did. Imagine what an advantage it would be for a general to have an overview of the field at all points, directing his troops at will as if they were extensions of his very hand! Who could stand against him?
“Look!” Serea breathed, recalling my attention.
Whose imagination wouldn’t run wild when such power was revealed to them?
Serea was pointing at my hands. The metal shaft of the Standard was glowing with a cold white light where my hands gripped it. The light was brighter than the lamp, illuminating Serea’s eager face, the door, and the wall of the corridor beyond. A deep feeling of rightness flooded me, and I straightened my arms out, holding the furled Standard up. The dusty, matt finish of the metal had changed to a lustrous sheen, and there was a pleasant sensation of heat against my hands.
“It’s true,” Serea whispered, as if to herself. “I so wanted it to be true, but there was still a twist of doubt—but listen, what’s that?”
She lifted the lamp and blew out the flame inside, and at the same time, the light emanating from the Standard flickered out. In the total darkness that ensued, we stepped swiftly to the door and peered out. Amazed again by how light the Standard was for its size, I leaned it against my shoulder with my right hand and held my left out in the darkness to find the wall. Before I could touch the wall, however, Serea’s warm fingers found my hand and held it.
Around the curve of the corridor, at the hidden hatch where we had made our entrance, the flickering light of a lamp reflected off the wall, and the sounds of voices echoed down the corridor toward us.
“Down here,” said one voice, gruff and uncouth. I recognised it as the voice of Ogruk, the Head Mage’s Orc bodyguard. “How could he have found this on his own?”
“He must have had help,” replied a second voice. This one was austere and crisp, and I recognized it, too: it was none other than Mage Aurus, the Head of the School.
“Who could have helped him, though?” the gruff voice of Ogruk replied. “Who else knew?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” replied the Head Mage. “All that matters is finding out if the Dragon Standard is still in place.”
The Dragon Standard. The words flitted across my mind, weighted with meaning. A light pulsed and flickered throughout the metal shaft and the wrapped cloth of the Standard in my hand, then went out.
“Come on,” said Serea, her hand on my arm. “He doesn’t know it was me who helped you, and for the moment I’d like to keep it that way. Follow me.”
I didn’t follow at once. A feeling of anger was rising in me. I could think of words I would like to say to the arrogant Head Mage, but I put Serea’s safety above my own pride and followed her when she tugged on my hand.
We groped our way along the curving corridor in the thick darkness, away from the little chamber, away from the entrance and the flicker of the Head Mage’s lamp.
“Light the way for me,” said Serea, after we’d put a little distance behind us.
There were four major classes of Magic taught at the School: Diversion, Kinesis, Combustion—and Light. The divisions were very broad and different elements of each could be combined to create an almost endless number of effects; some of the magical bindings a skilled mage could use were made of elements of Light, Kinesis, and Diversion, for example. But only the exceptionally skilled could master such complex spells. For the novices among us, mastery of the most basic elements of each class—the so-called “Common Magics”—was all that was expected. There was an additional implicit expectation that older pupils would begin to specialize in one class or the other.
As an under-average student, the complexity of Common Magic spells was challenge enough. Spells were like recipes, we were taught: they were made of different ingredients. You added words for some, gestures for others, and for still others a combination of the two. Some rarer spells required particular items to be present before they would work—a silver dagger, for example, or a human skull—but the one element that was common to all was the requirement for the caster’s will to be focused enough to channel the magic. Magic was, fundamentally, a physical thing, channelled from the earth and the air through a skilled caster, and then focused into effects by the gestures and words. It was not easy, as I knew well. Any fool could be taught gestures and words, but unless the will could be taught enough focus to “cook the ingredients,” then the student would never become a mage.
I could use the Combustion class to cast a Fireball which would fly across a room and explode, and also to conjure and maintain a small patch of flame which could be placed on a surface. I could conjure a ball of light which would remain stable until I dispersed it. I was hopeless at Diversion—the class of magics which allowed the caster to conceal themselves from the view of others, among other things. Under Serea’s tuition, I had been getting somewhere with Kinetic Force magic. But I could never quite match the achievements of my fellow students. There always seemed to be something in the way, some block that I came up against when I really started to put the effort in. I tired more quickly than the others, and my spells lacked their focus and stability. Unlike the others, I had never developed a specialism.
For all that, when Serea asked me to light the way for her, I was able to make the stylized motions and speak the words required to summon a globe of ethereal light to ride along beside us. As usual, it wasn’t as big or as bright as I would have liked, and the light flickered. I suppressed the familiar feeling of frustration and paid attention to my companion.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Through here,” she said urgently, ducking under a low gap in the corridor wall.
I followed, and found myself in a wide-open space bathed in moonlight. I gestured toward the floating globe of light which had followed me through the gap. It vanished with a faint “pop.”
Blinking rapidly after the stuffy darkness of the corridor, I saw we were on a big lawn which dropped away over a low wall on one side, and ended abruptly at the soaring curve of the outer wall of the grounds on the other. This gigantic stone wall shone and glittered with frost in the light of the moon. The whole wide lawn was covered with a crisp blanket of frozen virgin snow.
To the north and east, we looked out high above the snow-dusted but shadowy canopy of the Blackwood forest. To the west, the frozen waters of the inland sea lay even blacker, broken by ice-locked islands. Around the whole horizon, the snow-capped peaks of the Great Guardian range, the insurmountable fence of the land of Enril. The icy land of Enril, whose ever-present wind now bit my cheeks and stirred my cloak.
“This is amazing,” I said, feeling any words but the simplest would be inadequate to describe my awe. “I’ve never been here before.”
“It’s a secret reserved for the staff,” she replied. “A place where they can come and look out over the lands—a place for meditation and sometimes a place to practice magic that would not be safe indoors. Come on, we don’t have much time. Aurus will find us here, outside the only exit to the chamber where we stole the Standard.”
She had taken her hand from mine when we had come out from the passage, but now she took it again and began to jog steadily across the grass.
“There’s a way out over there,” she said, pointing in the direction we were running. “Toren, they may imprison you now the deed is done—and they’re not above killing either. You absolutely have to make it out before they see you.”
I nodded and glanced back. No one out with us—yet.
Her grip on my hand tightened and together we sprinted across the snow, keeping low and close to the deep shadow cast by the great curve of the School wall. Abruptly, we came to the two sets of stairs, one climbing up the side of the wall and disappearing back through it into the School, and the other plunging straight downward into darkness.
“That’s your way,” said Serea, pointing at the downward stairs. “You must take the Standard, Toren. It’s your birthright and your destiny. You must take it away from here and learn its power. Go on, fulfill your destiny!” She pushed me toward them impatiently.
I glanced back in the direction we had come. There was still no sign of the pursuit, but something told me it would not be long now.
“This is too much, Serea! Where should I go? Will I see you again? Are you sure you can’t come with me?”
Serea suddenly stepped in toward me and stopped the confusion flowing from my lips with her warm mouth, planting it firmly on mine. I wasn’t expecting it, but I responded in kind, accepting the deep kiss and drawing her toward me. I could feel the lush curve of her waist through the rough fabric of her robe.
In that kiss, I felt the full extent of the change that had come to my life. Never before had we succumbed and so brashly flouted the prohibition of relationships between students and tutors. Now, she did not see me as her pupil anymore, but as a man.
I embraced the change. She was a woman, and no longer beyond my reach. After a few moments, she drew back and looked into my face, both her hands resting on my cheeks.
“I wish … I wish I’d known about this sooner,” she said. “I wish I could have guided you to the Standard sooner, and maybe we could have …”
Her eyes shone with emotion as she gazed into my face. I kissed her again, pushing the hood of her robe back to expose her hair to the moonlight.
“I have to flee back to the School,” she whispered in my ear.
“Can’t you come with me?” I asked again.
She shook her head, her shining dark-red hair dancing around her face. “My position in the School is too valuable to the Order. I need to stay within and continue to learn what I can, while I still have the opportunity to gather information. But, Toren”—she leaned in close to place her forehead against mine, her dark eyes filling my vision and the fresh scent of her hair filling my nostrils—“this is not goodbye. I will see you again, there is no doubt.”
“How can you know?”
“It …” She hesitated, as if unsure whether to divulge a secret. “It is written.”
That was all she could say before I heard voices coming from behind me. I glanced over in the direction we’d come. There was no doubt about the identity of the two newcomers by the wall—the cold light of the moon illuminated them. One was the tall, dignified figure of the Head Mage, dressed in the sparkling white robe that was the privilege of his rank, his snow-white hair flowing in the freezing wind. By his side, the squat but powerful leather-clad figure of Ogruk, the Orcish battlemage who acted as Aurus’s bodyguard and right-hand man.
The pair had not seen us yet, but it would only be a moment. They would notice our tracks.
Serea pulled away from me, her doubtful eyes searching my face.“Farewell, Toren,” she simply said. “Until we meet again.”
Her hand left mine, and she turned and fled up the stairs. I looked after her for a moment. There was too much going on here that I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t going to hang about to ask questions. The other stairway plunged steeply down into the darkness, carved out of the very rock that the towering School was built upon.
“There he is!” roared a voice behind me before I could take a step. “Stop him!”
Too late.
Heavy feet crunched speedily toward me in the snow. I whirled around, just in time to see Ogruk, the Orc Mage, charging toward me across the big open lawn. He was a huge, broad-shouldered creature with red eyes, dressed in furs. Behind him, Head Mage Aurus was crouching over something, but as I backed toward the steps he stood up and made a throwing motion. A crackling ring of blue fire about three feet across flashed through the air toward me, blasting past the charging Orc and slamming to the ground at my feet.
I tried to take a step but found to my horror that my feet seemed melded with the ground. Ogruk, seeing what had happened, pulled up short and began to laugh. Aurus strode toward me, his hands outstretched and flickering with blue magic. His eyes blazed with power, anger, and … something else ... fear?
Without thinking, I raised the Standard and drove it into the ground beside me. I felt resistance, as if I’d slammed the spike into some kind of springy surface, and yet it hadn’t penetrated the ground. The Standard hovered upright in the air, the base of the spike hanging about a foot from the surface of the snow. Something happened. It was as if a giant hand had slapped the air next to us—the world seemed to shudder on its axis. The cold night air shifted. The Head Mage pulled up short, and the Orc stopped laughing.
On my wrists, I could see something glowing. It looked like two broad, heavy bracelets of shimmering metal, woven with interlacing characters. They shone like moonlight through deep water.
With one part of my awareness, I was surprised and shocked by the sight—, but with another, deeper consciousness, I knew that they had been here for a long time, these magical bindings. In a moment of almost painful clarity, I knew that they had been placed there, very deliberately, and that magic had been used to fog my mind so I wouldn’t notice them.
“What is this?” I shouted to the Head Mage, extending my hands.
“He sees the bindings, master!” cried the Orc, stepping back in fear.
“Quiet, you fool!” hissed Aurus, but it was too late.
Ogruk’s reaction confirmed what I had supposed. For some reason, I had been magically bound with invisible manacles. Of course—the wall I came up against when studying the Common Magics, for no reason that anyone could discern. The weariness that came on me when I used magical power, and the unreliability of my spellwork. Could it be? I knew it must be. They had bound me, deliberately limited my power, and stunted my magical education. Why they had done it I could not tell, but the Orc knew about it, and so did the Head Mage, and they had wanted to keep it a secret.
They both hung back, waiting to see what I would do.
I focused my attention on the glowing manacles. There was a spell I knew, a simple one for opening doors and locks, and for freeing stuck parts in metal or leatherwork. A humble spell.
I spoke it.
The manacles on my wrists felt cold, and now that I could see them, they felt heavy, too, for all the world as if they were made of ice rather than steel. I knew, of course, that they were made of neither, but of pure magic.
As I focused the spell on them, they seemed to tighten, until they suddenly shone out brightly. Changing runes flickered across their surface. They became painfully cold and tight, and at a distance, I saw Aurus muttering and gesturing as if manipulating a spell himself.
The manacles shifted, and there was a crawling sensation against my wrists, as if bugs squirmed between the metal of the manacles and my flesh. I pushed more energy and will into the spell, and as I did so, a sudden flash of movement to my left caught my eye.
It was the Standard.
The leather cords that had wrapped it were nowhere to be seen, and the rich, dark fabric which had been wrapped around the pole now floated heavily on the freezing wind. I caught a glimpse of the image, red on black. The vision of the battle came back to me, and I remembered the standard flying there, along with the dragon motif on the tabards and armor of the men I had controlled. At that moment, the magical manacles on my wrists burst into a million flaring shards of blue fire and disappeared.
The Standard glowed with sudden bright light.
Without stopping to wonder at the power that suddenly surged through me, I rode the momentum, focusing my will now on the flickering ring of blue fire that Aurus had placed at my feet. Before I had even begun to speak the unlocking spell, the blue ring, too, flickered, flared, and burst into a million pieces with a sound like ice shattering.
I had been shackled, my true power kept caged like an animal. But I was free now, my potential unleashed.