Chapter 45

Greet each morning with kindness, both toward yourself and to those around you. You never know in advance what mysteries, wonders, or adventures might come your way before sunset. Waking up well will help make you ready.

Life Advice , Glenna Whiterock, First Consul of Harani

It was sunrise in Willowick, in Sunderland. As sunlight streamed into the roo, and touched his face, Haran woke up. He found himself in an strange bed and sat up quickly, mildly confused for a moment.

“Where?” he said, throwing off the unfamiliar covers, a fine sheet covered by a spread emblazoned with a flying dragon breathing fire. He looked around the room, saw his bag sitting on a chair waiting to be properly unpacked and it came back to him, how at Bryony’s insistence, Rust had found him a small cottage not far from DIC headquarters.

“That was a pretty wild meeting yesterday. Master Investigator sure allows his underlings a lot of leeway,” ha said, stepping up and grabbing his pants. “It’s just so different than how either the Birch or even the Oldest would have handled it. I guess that proves there’s no military organizing behind how they do things. I think the Oldest will be glad to hear that. Somehow, I doubt the Birch will believe it.”

He rummaged through his bag, pulled out a shirt for the day, and put most of the rest of the contents of his bags into the dresser that dominated one wall of the room. There was a washstand in one corner with fresh towels hanging next to it. He washed up, got dressed, and was looking for a tea kettle in the little kitchen in the cottage when there was a knock at the door.

It was Bryony.

“You’re here mighty early,” Haran said, rubbing the back of his head.

The Dragonkin shrugged. “I thought you might find being alone in a strange city surrounded by people who aren’t Aos Si or Jinn might be a bit...uncomfortable on the first day. So I decided to drop by early. Plus,” he said, holding up a bag, “I brought some breakfast.”

Haran let him in. “You wouldn’t happen to have any tea in that bag, would you?”

“Man after my own heart,” Bryony said. “Alas, no, but I know where they keep the tea making things here,” he replied.

“My savior,” Haran said, and the two moved into the kitchen.

After a quick meal of egg muffins, a local speciality, the two men relaxed with their second cup of tea.

“So what’s going to happen today?” Haran asked.

“I think the plan is to put lead investigators in charge of filtering through the different areas we have suspicions on, with you and I keeping an overview of everything.”

“Are the meetings always as lively as the one yesterday?” Haran picked up his tea mug.

“Well, we are all top in our fields and allowed a lot of freedom,” Byrony said. “It’s different for your people?”

“Well, we have a lot of military influence, I guess. The White Circle isn’t exactly military, although we work with the King’s Guard a lot, and train the people who use military magic. Hierarchy and chain of command and all that, and it works well with the type of magic we teach. It’s not true for everybody on the White Island. You should hear some of the raucous noise that comes out of the Alder Branches and the Goosequills.”

Byrony sipped his tea. “And we are a people who are given to a high degree of individual action. Autonomy to the point of destruction, sometimes, if greed gets involved, which is probably behind our current crisis.” He shrugged. “All peoples have their ways.”

Finishing their tea, the two men headed for DIC headquarters.

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On the White Island, a new school session had started on the grounds of the White Circle chapter house, and the grounds were filled with new fresh faces that were both full of excitement and nervousness. As her custom, the Oldest sat beneath a spreading maple tree where three paths met, to greet and help the lost, the confused, and the overwhelmed.

A large map of the grounds lay on the table in front of her, with each of the buildings, gardens and other structures the school used indicated on them. A small group of aides, mostly year two students, clustered nearby, chatting and sitting on a low stone wall, waiting to guide students to their proper location.

A young redheaded girl, barely old enough to be at the white circle walked up shyly up to the table, wearing the white robe of her school uniform a little awkwardly. She hiked a bit of the fabric up through her belt, where it had been dragging in the back.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said in an anxious, tiny voice. “Can you help me?” She looked down at a paper she was clutching in her hand. “I’m supposed to be with Mistress Enide’s class, but I can’t figure out where she’s meeting.”

The Oldest was about to say something, but Arriane, who had been sitting next to the older woman, stood up. She gave the girl a bright smile.

“You’re almost there!” Arriane said. “Look!” She pointed to a gate in the stone wall. Beyond it, a group of White Circle students were sitting out of doors in the open meadow the wall enclosed. All of them were young people, barely out of their secondary schools, full of fresh new eyes, a little excitement, and at least a touch of adolescent silliness. Six of the students were female, four of them were male. Two of the students were Bauchan, one was surprisingly a Hyter, one of the bird shapeshifting people, with shimmering red feathers in lieu of hair.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the redhead said, then ran to join them.

“So,” Arriane said, turning back to the Oldest, but not yet sitting down, “one thing I always wanted to know. Why do you come out here every new term? There are plenty of other people who could give newcomers directions, or find out whose class they’re in, or deal with first day disasters. Why you?”

The Oldest gave her student a large smile of her own. “Well on the first day, almost none of the students know who I am. We haven’t had our big welcoming party where I get to interrupt the food and drink and conversations and hijinks of the first year students by getting up in front of them and make my boring “Welcome to the White Circle” speech.”

“It is not boring,” said Sammisa, who sat in a chair next to the Oldest. She pushed a lock of green hair out of her face.

“It is when you’ve given it as often as I have,” the Oldest rebutted.

Arriane laughed at that. “I know I wasn’t bored. I was excited by everything, being here, being able to study something I wanted to learn for the first time, and by not being in the Alder Branch’s school. I was just another student, not the Lady Arriane, and it all felt like freedom to me.”

“But you also got lost your first day,” the Oldest replied.

“Yes, I did. And a kind woman helped me figure out where to go.”

“And more than that, I like to see the students act without artificial constraints. Sometimes, I can tell when a person is particularly gifted or might not be a good fit for our school.”

“Sometimes, when we’re busy dealing with all the other things we’re dealing with,” Sammisa said, helping herself to one of the sweet cakes that Ethne had left behind when he set up before the school day began, “I forget we’re also a school. And we have been so busy with the other things.”

“We are first and foremost a school. Actually more than one school,” the Oldest said. “Preparing each generation to cope with living in our world has long been my first goal, ever since the Sundering. So many things to prepare for, to learn, to deal with. Where would we be if we didn’t bring the young along with us?”

“A good point,” Arriane said, nodding.

As the three women watched, Enide, one of the White Circle’s inner circle closest to the Oldest, and also one of the instructors of new students walked across the yard to the gate to the meadow.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She was a small woman, with long gray hair even though her face was young. Unlike the young students, and most of the staff who were dressed in identical white robes marked with a white circle outlined in blue, the mark of their school, she wore a robe of fine gray silk, with a white tabard, her hair and her clothing a mark of her Silkie heritage. She walked purposefully, although she did look lost in thought, her gray-blue eyes focused somewhere far away.

“I have to watch this,” Arriane said, and walked up to the wall, sitting on it not far from where the aides were waiting.

Enide moved to where the group of young people were sitting. Evidently, at first they didn’t realize she was their instructor, and they continued chatting among themselves. She coughed.

“May we help you?” asked one of the students, a blond boy who was obviously Daoine.

The Silkie looked at the gathered students. “I am Mistress Enide, your instructor in Basic Magic Studies.”

The students looked at her with various reactions – surprise, consternation, pleasure.

“But she’s just a Silkie,” one of the boys whispered.

Enide heard that remark. “Yes, I am a Silkie, and a member of the Inner White Circle. It will be my role to guide you on the first step of your studies. Here in the White Circle we honor ability, not race.”

She walked around the group of students, taking each one in as she walked, fixing their look, and maybe something deeper as she circled around.

At the wall, Sammisa joined an amused Arriane who was watching the Silkie with close attention.

“They don’t understand her abilities,” Sammisa said. “I know better than to get on her wrong side.”

Arriane nodded in agreement. “She was my first teacher here, too. Better to watch it from here than to be in the class learning for the first time!”

Sammisa laughed.

Enid finished her circling around the group of students.

“Let us begin today’s lesson with a review of some basics, which we will then build from. Each one of you has a center of magic inside of you,” she said. Her voice, as always, was soft, but held a note of iron in it. “It is your heritage, passed down from the Lifegiver at the beginning of it all.”

“We learned that in elementary school,” one of the boys in the class said. “Didn’t we come here to learn more than that?” He pushed a lock of red hair out of his forehead. A girl sitting next to him covered her mouth with her hand while she snickered.

“Yes, I’m sure you did, Jassin,” Enide said, without a change of expression. “And yes, you shall learn more than this while you are here.”

She raised her hand, blew on her fingertips, and a glowing ball of gray light arose from them, drifted over to Jassin, and then, expanding, enveloped him in a large ball. He touched the wall of the light. Sparks flew where his fingers touched the light. Evidently, he called out with pain, but no sound passed the barrier.

Several of the students moved away from where he sat.

“Now, to continue. Student Jassin’s barrier will evaporate in about a quarter of an hour. He can hear all we say, but his questions as regarding the suitability of my presentation will be blocked until the end of that time.”

A very soft murmur went through the group, and more than one nod.

“As I was explaining, you all have inherent magic, given to you as your heritage. Some of you have learned to use aspects of it, some more than others. The basis of the White Circle’s education is to teach you to learn how to tap into it through hard work, knowledge and discipline, and then focus it to work with you or others to accomplish things, without the use of tools or touchstones.” A couple of the students squirmed when she said hard work. “When you have finished your studies here, you will be prepared to go into higher studies, perhaps here at the White Circle, or working with the Magic Guard, or any of the other disciplines you might choose to follow – but whatever path you take, you will have a foundation in using your magic in ways that many other of the Aos Si will not have.”

She looked at each of the faces of her students. “This is not the place to play, or mock or do anything but learn. The school provides plenty of time for that. But when we are together, we work.”

Several pairs of eyes glanced at Jassin and a couple of the other students.

Enide continued. “We are here in this meadow to begin our exploration on purpose. Your magic connects you to the world, and the world is the source of the energy that feeds your magic. Today we will begin a series of exercises to help you heighten your awareness of this.”

Arriane kicked her feet on the stone wall she was still sitting on and snickered a little when Jassin was encased in Enide’s barrier bubble.

“Does that bring back memories?” Sammisa asked.

“Oh yes. After the first day or two, we were all terrified of Enide. In my class, it was three students who got put in the barrier.” She turned her back to look at Sammisa, who looked back at her, amused. “We were all amazed how such a soft voiced little woman could have such a will of iron and who spared none of us when we acted up.”

“That’s Silkies for you,” Sammisa said, nodding. “They look soft and shimmery, but once they have a job to do, they make sure it’s done. And Enide is great with first year students. I tried for awhile, but I’m too easy, and my classes were always getting out of hand. It can take something hard to get kids fresh out of school to settle down and turn towards their adult selves.”

The Oldest walked up to join her two companions. She touched the Lake woman’s shoulder. “I seem to remember your first year, Sammisa,” she said. “Arash was doing the first years then.”

“Ah, don’t remind me!” the Lake woman said. “Sometimes I swear he grins at me like he remembers what a silly little thing I was back then.”

“It’s possible,” the Oldest said, nodding. “But he thinks of you fondly, like a daughter. You should be pleased. He doesn’t take to everybody.”

“If you say so,” Sammisa said, nodding. “We have generally worked well together.”

The Oldest gave Enide one last look. The Selkie had gotten her students to sit in a circle, with eyes closed, the first position in learning to draw earth magic. She returned to her chair, followed by the two women. She picked up her now cold tea, and drank some of it any way.

“So tell me, Youngest,” she said, turning to Arriane, “how long are you here for? I was rather surprised how quickly you returned.”

“Well, Gweir came home for the first time in months. I thought I’d get out of the way for a little while. I would have brought Tam with me, too, to visit his grandmother, but Elaine wouldn’t hear of it.” She shrugged. “He’ll be home for a couple of weeks. And Gan and I are supposed to start our studies about then, so I guess I’ll be here another ten days?”

The Oldest nodded. “That’s kind of you.” A student came up, and looked at the map on the Oldest’s table.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the young man said. He was slight, blonde, and had the beginnings of a scraggly young man’s beard beginning to come in, and stared at his feet while he talked. Carrying a bag over one shoulder, he fumbled in it for just the right paper, and half a dozen things fell out and hit the ground.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, bending to pick them up. Luckily, one of the papers on the ground was just the one he was looking for. “I am looking for…” He stared at the paper, as if he were having trouble making sense of the writing on it. “Master Arash. Do you know, please, where I can find him?”

“Of course!” the Oldest said. She looked at the group of aides. “Sisi, if I can have a moment of your time?”

One of the aides looked, up, a kind faced, short girl with big ears and brown eyes, pure-bred Bauchan. She gave the Oldest a nod, and hurried to the table.

“Yes, Mistress?” the girl asked.

“Take this young man -” the Oldest started.

“Harit. Harit Mossbourne,” he said, then flushed at his audacity of giving his name, and dropped his eyes again.

The Oldest gave him a benevolent smile, and nodded. “Take Student Mossbourne to Master Arash. He should be over at the Green Pavillion.”

The girl nodded, and gave the young man a big smile of her own. “Come on, Mossbourne. Let me tell you, when I first got here I got lost all the time. Don’t feel bad about it.” The two young people walked off, leaving the three women alone.

“So tell me your impressions about Gan Thistleberry,” the Oldest said to Arriane.

“She is very kind, I believe. Most people who have contact with her seem to find her a positive thing. I’ve never seen anybody who gets along with Pixies the way she does. There are always at least a small group of ten who follow her around all the time.”

“Pixies? She lives with them, in the same house?” Sammisa asked. “How does she get any rest?” She snagged another one of Ethne’s sweet cakes, and snaps it in half. “I’ve always found pixies to be so...inane, silly, in everything they shouldn’t be…”

Arriane shrugged. “She shares food with them every day, talks with them, and, outside of her bed chamber, which she’s warded off, they have the free run of the place. She told me it’s like when she was the headmistress of the younger grades at the school. Small children are always often silly and inane, and ask odd questions, don’t they?”

“True,” the Oldest nodded. “And Pixies are as innocent as young children usually are, with little malice, and anger that blows up like a thunderstorm and blows away just as quickly.”

“She has made friends with Cullin the Tree Shepherd, or at least he has come to visit her a few times without any problems.” Arriane put her tea cup on a touchstone heater and activated it. “Also, Leila, a nymph who lives in Cullin’s forest, has befriended her. They evidently share similar tastes in books, from what I am able to learn.” Taking her cup off the heater, she sipped it. “Ah, just right.”

“I am familiar with Leila,” the Oldest said, nodding. “She has been Cullin’s...companion would be the wrong word. Adviser? Assistant? Anyway, she has been there a long time. I hear she is very good at reading the hearts of people she meets. The fact that she and Gan have become friends says a lot. The fact your sister is so fond of her also says a lot.”

“Do you still think she might be the person the Brightening Day prophecy talked about?” Sammisa asked.

The Oldest took a deep breath. “She seems to fit the foretelling. A scholar with no school. Surrounded by a cloud of innocents. And she knows people who have been caught up with the situation that we are investigating, Master Gwaher to start with. And she’s connected through Elaine to Gwair, who has gotten drafted into the response. And you, too, Arriane, even if you don’t think you’re part of what’s going on. And now, I have word that yet another school friend of hers, who worked for Briarwood and Flysch, doing work on jumpstones for them, has gone missing.” The Oldest drank the last of her tea. “Is she at the center of something yet to unfold? We will have to wait for things to unfold. But it’s possible, what she is being fated for might have nothing to do with that.”

“That’s the thing with prophecies,” Sammisa said. “You really don’t know what’s going on until it’s fulfilled.”

“Very true,” the Oldest said, nodding.

“Well, I put a couple of watch wards on the edge of the farm where she lives,” Arriane said. “And I encouraged Elaine to have a young man go daily to the property to be a handyman. I just thought it would be better if she wasn’t left with nothing but Pixies in case of emergency.”

The Oldest nodded. “And I’ve asked Cullin to keep an eye on her. We don’t dare do any more. We certainly shouldn’t tell her we suspect she was caught up in a prophecy from the Well of Fate. I guess we just have to be patient.”

She stood up. “I need some hot tea. Shall we go find Ethne?” Motioning to one of the aides to man the information table first, she led the three women back to the chapter house.