Adrin
Adrin was determined to get an early start on his training with the Ethereal Guard in the morning, so he put his dreams aside and dressed in the soldier’s tunic and leggings that had been provided for him. Should he take Isuld’s sword with him as well? Yes. Wearing it made him feel more like he belonged in the palace.
Most of the lighting in the hallways had already been repaired, but a lamp flickered near the bottom of a flight of stairs. Now that he could see the ambient field, the reason for that was obvious—it wasn’t connected properly. The current only grazed the entry point, and most of the power spilled out instead of flowing through the proper channels. It only took a moment’s effort to make the adjustment, and the flickering ceased.
He’d known in theory that the currents were everywhere, but knowing and seeing were two entirely different things. Intersecting currents in constant motion composed a matrix of ambient power that suffused everything, invisible to most, and still a mystery even to Adrin. What caused the currents to follow certain paths? Why did some merge like tributaries into a river, while others seemed to flow right through each other without any interaction at all?
The training room was nearly empty when he arrived. One candidate was there, doing some sort of slow-motion exercise at the back of the room, under the supervision of the silent man from the Ethereal Guard.
The quiet was a welcome contrast to the activity of the previous day, and Adrin did his best not to break the silence. He had thought all of the candidates were close to his age, but the girl going through the motions was younger than he’d expected, maybe twelve or thirteen. Despite her youth, she moved with a smooth, practiced grace that Adrin doubted he could ever match, even if he trained for a dozen years. There was something so fluid about her motion, broken only by the occasional flutter of her hand.
She was moving with the currents of the ambient field. He couldn’t tell if she was shaping it, or if the flow was directing her movements, but the connection was unmistakable. Even the fluttering motions weren’t errors, but reflected bits of turbulence that disrupted the current that she’d been following. She came to the end of her routine and faced the guardsman.
“It’s still different,” she said. The guardsman nodded once, then turned to look at Adrin, and the student followed his gaze. Neither one of them exhibited any surprise at his arrival.
“You can see it?” Adrin asked. He kept his voice quiet, but he was unable to contain his curiosity.
“It’s not seeing,” the girl replied. “It’s sensing. Listening and feeling.”
“How?” Adrin had thought it impossible—at least, without the help of a supernatural Ocean.
“You cannot do it. I do not mean to be rude, but you must dedicate yourself completely to cultivate the deep quiet. There is not room for much else left.” The cadence of her speech was unusual, even when he listened with the benefit of the Current.
“Except . . .” The Ethereal Guardsman spoke only a single word before he rushed at Adrin with lightning speed, in stark contrast to his previous stillness. But his movement followed a current that passed around Adrin, so Adrin stood still as the man’s fist passed inches away from his face.
“That’s . . . not fair,” the girl said.
“You are able to see the currents. Could you do so before you entered the Ocean?” The guardsman took a step back to leave a more comfortable distance between them. He and his student must have come from the Pardrials—Adrin had met a few University students from that mountainous region at the southern tip of Elorhe, and they spoke with that same accent.
“No. It’s something that the Ocean gave to me, I think.”
“But the king couldn’t do it,” the apprentice said.
“The Ocean does not change everyone in the same way.”
“Do you think you could teach me to use that ability to fight?” Adrin asked. The sort of practice that the girl had been doing looked far more appealing than joining in with the ranks under Suzari’s instruction.
The guardsman was quiet for a long moment, and Adrin waited patiently for him to answer.
“Tsachrian is right. You would not be able to achieve the deep quiet and fulfill your obligations as Prince Ethereal,” he said at last. “But you are able to sense the currents without the quiet, so you may benefit from some of the lessons of corsynity nonetheless. It is not usual, and I will need time to consider how to approach this. We will be here tomorrow, an hour before the others, and you may join us then. In the meantime, you should not neglect what Suzari has to teach you.”
“Thank you,” Adrin said, though he was a bit disappointed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Farn Somescal,” he replied.
Other candidates had arrived while they were talking, and soon after the time came for Adrin to get in line with the others, including Tsachrian.
After the confrontation the day before, Adrin had expected Suzari to be a harsh, stern taskmaster. Instead, she joked with her students as she put them through their paces, laughing when they sassed back at her. That just made her vendetta against Adrin in particular all the more confusing.
The other students took their cue from her and kept their distance from him. Clumsy as he was, that was probably a wise decision. Adrin gave it his best, but he could hardly expect to keep up when it seemed every other candidate in the room could have taken a circlet in the New Year’s Games. The only thing that kept the warmup from becoming a complete disaster was the reserve of power that the Ocean had given him to draw upon. Without that, Adrin would have been lying on the floor, exhausted. He might look like a duck with a broken wing mimicking the dance of cranes, but at least he managed to stay on his feet.
“Gabril, you’ll be sparring with His Highness today,” Suzari called.
“Why me?” Gabril demanded. Gabril was roughly Adrin’s age and height, but with rather more muscle to his build. It was hard to tell from the haphazard growth of hair on his chin whether he had just forgotten to shave for a couple days, or was trying to grow a beard.
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“You think you’re ready to face a construct? That’s not all it takes to join the Guard. Once you’re one of us, you’re going to have to teach.”
“Yeah, but not raw beginners. I mastered the seventh form of the Elgri before you even admitted me as a candidate.”
“We don’t get to pick the Prince Ethereal. The Ocean does. I’m sure she has her reasons, even if I haven’t any idea what they are. Maybe you can bring it out of him. Give him a taste of what he’s up against. No need to hold back, he’s got the Ocean pumping enough vitricity into him to heal any injuries.”
Adrin braced himself for what was likely to be a painful experience.
“Fine,” Gabril muttered, glaring at Suzari out of the corner of his eyes as she moved on to assign more sparring partners. “Go fetch us a couple of practice swords, Highness.”
“Can’t you just call me Adrin?”
“Only reason you’re here is because you’re Prince Ethereal. You want me to use your real name, you’ve got to earn it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Adrin muttered, but he went and got the practice swords anyway. He offered one to Gabril, but for some reason Adrin couldn’t fathom, the candidate snatched the one from his other hand instead.
“You have no idea what you’re up against, Prince. Start by taking the worst nightmare you can imagine, then multiply it by a thousand.” Gabril held his sword in some kind of ready stance.
“I’ve seen them,” Adrin replied. He tried to mirror his opponent’s posture.
“Oh, so you think you’re ready, do you?”
“That’s not what I—” Adrin began, but Gabril struck before Adrin could finish the sentence.
Adrin tried to anticipate the blow by watching the ambient currents, the way he had with Farn, but that was a mistake. Gabril’s movement had nothing to do with the currents, and Adrin’s moment of distraction left him completely unprepared for the strike. Gabril must have expended a good bit of vitricity to augment his strength, because the blow to his chest sent Adrin sprawling backwards. At least the floor was padded, so he wasn’t knocked out when the back of his head struck it.
Gabril let out a whoop of laughter. “You think a monster is going to wait around until you’re ready?”
“No, I think you’ve just demonstrated that he most certainly would not,” Adrin muttered.
“What was that, Highness?”
Adrin didn’t answer. The acute pain faded quickly, relief flooding in through the conduit between himself and the Ocean, but a deep, dull ache stubbornly remained in his ribs where the practice sword had struck him. He’d lost his grip on his own sword when he went down, and he looked around for it. Not far—
Gabril kicked him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him.
“A construct won’t give you any time to recover,” he bellowed down at Adrin. “You’d be dead, Prince.”
Another influx from his lifeline, and Adrin could breathe again.
“A convenient excuse for kicking an opponent when he’s down,” Adrin said. “I thought that martial artists were supposed to learn honor and discipline, not just how to fight.”
“Honor and discipline matter on the tournament grounds. Those words don’t mean a thing to a construct.” Gabril was gracious enough to allow Adrin to return to his feet.
“They ought to mean something to you. Did your master kick you down the first time you faced him?”
“I trained for eleven years before I was allowed to set foot in this room. We don’t have time for that sort of luxury with you.” Gabril took his fighting stance once more. He wasn’t the first bully to paint a target on Adrin’s back, and his excuses were just as flimsy as the rest of them. But what could Adrin do about it?
“Tell me what to do,” Adrin said. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
“You’ve got eyes, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Turn your foot and bend your knee more!” Suzari bellowed at him. She’d come back around to observe their progress. “No, not like that—come on! You can do better than that. Damn it, you ought to be the best of us, because otherwise, why the hell are you even here? Why would the Ocean choose you?”
For a moment, Adrin thought that she might strike him, but apparently Suzari drew the line at attacking a student just because she’d lost her temper. The look she fixed on him was full of such deep loathing and contempt that Adrin would have preferred another physical blow. At least he could recover from those quickly, but that look chilled him to the core. What had he done to make her hate him so much?
“You’re going to have to start from the very beginning, Gabril,” Suzari said. “Start with the first form sets.”
“But—”
“Consider it a lesson in patience. That’s all that’s keeping you from joining the Guard now. I can’t have you losing your head out there—especially when we’re going to need all the help we can get to keep this one alive. I’ll let Dacrine know it’s time to start crafting your armor.”
Adrin seethed through the rest of the session. Gabril instructed him in a tone that one might use with small children, and mocked him when he made a mistake. Adrin didn’t rise to the bait. He had to learn to fight. He didn’t have a choice. He’d show them, he’d keep his head down and work hard enough to earn their respect.
Besides, he doubted that even the best teacher could have changed the fact that it was boring, grueling, repetitive work. There was nothing to engage his curiosity, nothing but training his muscles to do as they were told. In spite of the endless spring of energy that refreshed his strength, he was still deeply weary at the end of the exercise.
And tomorrow, he’d have to go through it all again.
Adrin couldn’t stop himself from peeking into the workshop of Professor Wyess before he left. She was in there with Sangar Laul, the Ethereal Guardian who had delivered the message to the assembly the day before, checking over his armor. Was she angry at him for failing to show up for his appointment, the one she’d made a special exception to allow? Could that have anything to do with her wife taking an immediate dislike to Adrin?
Adrin jogged back to his room, washed up as quickly as he could and changed into a fresh outfit. He found his portfolio and returned to the training room with it, following the perimeter around the mats to the workshop. Sangar and Dacrine were still talking, so he hovered in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt. Or rather, Sangar was talking and laughing at his own jokes, while Dacrine listened with a tight smile on her face.
Adrin’s eyes drifted across the rows of shelves that lined the walls. So many drawers and bins, each neatly labeled, for tools and materials. He watched one assistant take something from one of those drawers to weigh it on the scale, while another sat inscribing channels into a slab of clay with a fine-pointed stylus.
“You need something, Prince Ethereal?” Dacrine asked stiffly. Adrin started—he’d been trying to make out the diagram the assistant was following—and stepped forward.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry I didn’t show up yesterday. I was honored that you would give me a chance to study with you, and it meant a lot to me.” Adrin put his portfolio down on her desk. “You don’t have to read it, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I just wanted to show you . . . that I did take it seriously. And I suppose I don’t need it any more. So, thank you. And, I’m sorry.” Why did it hurt so much to say the words? By the time he got to the end of his speech he was holding back tears.
“I understand that there were extenuating circumstances regarding your failure to appear at our appointment, but I appreciate your coming to apologize all the same. Good luck, Adrin. I think you’ll find the path you’re on is far more challenging than any assignment I could give you.”
Adrin couldn’t trust himself to speak, so he nodded and left the room. It wasn’t merely an apology he’d delivered; it had been a farewell. A final goodbye to the future he’d planned for himself, and to the person he used to be.