Tenthé drifted up from sleep. His nest was quite comfortable today, but, for some reason, he had a headache, which almost never happened. And, as he moved, he noticed other things were wrong. There was too much room.
He sniffed. And a distinct lack of the normal funky smell. Plus… his hat was too tight! He reached up to take it off. Wait, he didn’t have a hat! What was going on? Something was wrapped around his head! Why?
He tried to pull it off. Gentle hands grabbed his, and a soft voice spoke.
“None of that, little master. You’re in a hospital. You had a nasty fall. Be nice and leave your bandages alone.”
Tenthé stopped struggling and opened his eyes. The voice belonged to a lady wearing a uniform with wards stitched into it. He started to eat their magic, and the lady leaped away.
“Oops, young sir. Don’t do that! Those keep me clean so the patients don’t catch anything from me. And you were doing so well, too.”
Tenthé lay back and looked around. He was alone with the lady in a room that had a number of beds with the whitest sheets he had ever seen. Everything was so bright, and he was feeling woozy. He closed his eyes again.
The lady asked, “I suppose you want something to drink?”
Tenthé nodded, then stopped. It hurt to move his head. That explained a lot. He was quite familiar with head injuries, being that it was hard to cast a spell to heal your head when you needed to be thinking clearly to cast the spell.
He cracked his eyes open a little. The nurse had picked up a cup and was holding it close to him. He opened his mouth, and she moved the cup closer so he could drink through the straw. After quite a while, he finished and drew back.
He cleared his throat and tried to speak.
“Whe… ahem… where, uh… where am I?”
“You’re in the infirmary at the College. You fell and hit your head. Don’t worry, it’s okay now, but let me say, it was touch and go for a while. Nobody could heal you for some reason. All the bigwigs were in here fussing over you, and they did some strange things. Imagine, bats everywhere! But it worked, and here you are.”
Obviously, she was a talker. He paid more attention and noticed she was wearing heavy gloves. The lady followed his gaze.
“These? We needed them to touch you so you wouldn’t take our magic. Wait, let me try something.”
She took off one glove and touched a finger to the back of his hand. When nothing happened, she exclaimed, “Oh, good! I bet your head hurts! I am going to cast a little spell. Mind you, don’t do anything!”
Magic fluttered around her and a cloud of it came toward him. He flinched.
“Ah, so, you can see that. Just let it do its work. It’ll help.”
When the cloud hit his head, the headache receded. Tenthé looked inside himself where the spell floated. There was a part of it that would put him to sleep, so he ate that bit. The lady didn’t seem to notice.
“So, does that feel better?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. Uh… I forgot. Where am I again?”
“You’re in the clinic in the Magister’s College. You’ve had a fall. I can tell you, we were worried for a while, but you seem fine now.”
“Is it okay to go?” he asked. “I’m going to miss supper. You have to get there quick or all the soup’ll be gone.”
“Soup?”
“What the Mission serves.”
“Oh, right. Well, don’t worry about it. You aren’t in any shape to travel, and there are people who would like to talk to you. You just wait here. I’ll fetch you some broth and call for the Magister. She’ll want to see you all awake and everything.”
With that, the nurse went to the door, took one look back at him, then left.
Tenthé sat up and began looking for an escape route. This was not the first time he had woken to find himself recovering from some injury, but life had been good lately and it had been quite a while. Normally, he was fairly safe against magical attacks, but had to maintain vigilance to respond to physical ones. Apparently, he’d failed at that.
Even though the spell she’d cast had made his headache better, he still didn’t feel entirely right. Unless it was really important, experience had taught him that doing too much magic too soon would make his recovery time a lot longer.
The simple stuff was okay, usually. He used his green eye and found he was surrounded by clouds of spells and beings watching him. The beings were mostly human-ish except for a few who definitely were not. If he wasn’t mistaken, these were members of the Guardians. Being the closest the City had to a police force, it wasn’t the first time he and they had run into each other. And, lurking as they were, there was no way he could do anything without them knowing.
He could see a bunch of spell trails going through the walls, which probably meant that the Guardians were talking to something outside. This place was as bad as the turtle god’s, with just too much magic for him to eat, even if he were feeling well. Normally, he might be able to fool it, but at the moment, it was too complicated for him to deal with.
There didn’t seem to be anything much wrong with his body, so most likely, his best bet would be to make a run for it. He started to gather some energy, but something must have alerted his audience, because a large figure separated from the roiling mass of watchers and wagged its finger at him in the universal message to stop.
Guess he was stuck here for the moment. Fortunately, to his watchers, looking around didn’t give any indication he was doing anything other than recovering. He switched to his brown eye. Now the room was much emptier than to the green, but he could see through things. He could just make out a vent behind a bedside table, a few beds over. The opening was large enough he could squeeze through.
At that point, Tenthé heard some voices approaching. He went to his usual fallback plan: listen and act stupid.
A crowd entered the room. There was a mean looking lady, some tall guy, a soldier, a cat person, and a bunch of teenagers in the gray and purple of the College uniforms. The nice nurse trailed, carrying a tray. Probably the broth he’d been promised.
A powerful spell smashed into him. It hurt to counter directly, so he let it pass back and forth while he smoothed all the snags it could catch on.
“Humph,” the mean lady said, “he seems ordinary. Not much there. And it looks like you were right. The treatment appears to have been efficacious.”
Tenthé wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
While this was going on, he scanned the crowd. All of them had power. The mean lady had a lot, but the tall man was the one he worried about most. His magic was tightly coiled and very complicated.
At that point, the tall man spoke up, “Well, we know that isn’t true, now don’t we? The nurse said he saw her spell and that he could turn off whatever absorbed all of our spells. I think he’s playing possum.”
Crap! Tenthé hadn’t been at his best when he woke up and the nurse was a blabbermouth. The mean lady prepared something really bad, so Tenthé forced himself to reach out and ate all her magic. She dropped.
Some kind of barrier formed around the room and the tall man yelled, “Everyone out. Now!”
The tall man emitted a pulse and the College magic started to come alive. Tenthé released a massive flash of light and scrambled for the vent while everyone was blinded. He’d managed to pull the screen off before a Guardian grabbed his legs and hauled him into the air. Tenthé ate its magic and fell to the floor.
He flipped over and an instant before he did something drastic about his attackers, he saw the nice nurse hadn’t fled like she was supposed to. She had frozen, holding the tray and staring at him.
Tenthé just couldn’t hurt her. He shut everything down and sat on the floor. He liked a good fight, and certainly would have made them pay, but he wasn’t a monster. A paralysis spell slammed into him. He ate it. Some kind of magical creatures began to manifest, so he ate their magic too.
Just as the soldier pulled a sword, the tall man yelled, “All of you! STOP!”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He must have been important, because everyone, even the hidden ones, quit whatever they were doing.
“I want everybody to exit. Slowly, and in good order. NOW!”
The tall man watched them leave, like he’d ordered. He turned back to Tenthé.
Who was gone. Deep in the bowels of the building, crawling for all he was worth. He had to eat a lot of wards as he rushed ahead. It was likely someone could track him by that, but he had no choice. It hurt too much to cast a stealth spell so he had to make do with speed. As he dealt with another ward, he wished he knew how to nudge them aside, rather than eat them, but that was for later. While he was wishing, he also wished he had all his stuff. The gown he was wearing barely covered him, but it was protecting his knees.
Tenthé was depending heavily on his knack to find an exit. He had been taking ducts at random, and so far, hadn’t been intercepted. He kept going, although he was getting tired. The magic he had eaten had given him a little energy, but it was starting to wear out.
The duct he was in dead-ended at a grate. Tenthé pushed until both it and he fell out.
Hey! He knew this room! It was the one filled with broadsheets he could see from the secret passage! If he could find a way into the passageway, he could get out! It was up near the ceiling somewhere, so he began looking for the best place to climb to the top of the shelves. Walking down an aisle, he came out into the center section where the tables and chairs were, and stopped. The tall man was sitting quietly on one of the chairs. Tenthé wasn’t all that surprised. He’d been leaving a fairly obvious trail.
“Can we talk?” the tall man asked.
“Um… Okay.”
“What’s your name? You’ve been under our care for a week and we don’t know who you are. Nobody has asked about you and no-one we’ve talked to seems to know you, either.”
“I’m Tenthé.”
He figured it didn’t matter, his name was common enough.
“My name’s Tomas. Nice to meet you. Where do you come from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you live?”
“Oh, around.”
“Parents?”
“No, I do all right by myself.”
“How old are you?”
“Everyone says I’m ten.”
“Hm. Your cloak came from the Mission but they say they don’t know you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, then. Tell me, do you stay there? At the Mission?”
“Kind’a… I’m just a kid. Why should they remember me? Kids come and go all the time.”
None of his answers were entirely the truth, but close enough.
“Well, they’re supposed to keep track of children.”
“I guess, but I’m not anyone special.”
“Hmph. After what has happened, I would say that’s not true. You got around some of the best wards ever made.”
“I suppose… some of the gods have better.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep.”
They stopped talking and eyed each other.
When it became obvious Tenthé wasn’t going to say anything more, Tomas asked, “You hungry?”
“I suppose.”
He was starving.
“I have the broth you were supposed to get.”
Tenthé had noticed the cup and its appetizing aroma sitting on the table.
“Do you want it?”
“Okay.”
He wasted no time and reached over to take the cup. He looked at it with his green eye, then his brown, then both. It was full of some spell. He put it down and shoved it to the tall man.
“You drink it first.”
“All right.”
Tomas took a good swig, swallowed, set the cup down, then promptly fell asleep. Tenthé debated his choices. He decided to go for it and ate the spell on the man. Tomas jerked awake and started yelling.
“Those cretins! I told them no tricks. I’ll kill them all!”
“It was the mean lady. Tastes like her magic.”
Tomas settled back and sighed.
“Ah… I’m not surprised.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Tenthé knew more than a few con men, and he could tell that the tall man was telling the truth. Tenthé reached for the cup and drank the contents. It was good.
“That is a handy ability you have.”
“Yeah.”
“Who taught you?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a magic school. We take kids who are setting things on fire, or blowing things up, or making them disappear, and we teach them how to control their abilities.”
“Really? I just do what works.”
“So then, tell me… what can you do?”
Tenthé laughed, then looked at Tomas. He couldn’t be serious. Shockingly, it appeared he was.
Tenthé stared at him without speaking. Eventually, Tomas figured it out it was up to him to carry the conversation. “Alright, then. I guess that’s fair. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. I have a suggestion, if you’re willing to listen. Something that will give us time to look into the issues.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could attend class here and we could teach you how to be the best at what you do.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“I don’t think you have a big fight with every kid that comes in here,” Tenthé stated the obvious. “I thought you’d put me in jail, or something.”
“Things might be different if someone had been hurt, but you showed good judgment when you realized you were outclassed and gave up.”
Tenthé’s estimate of the tall man went down a notch. If he wanted to, he could do a significant number on this place, even though he wasn’t in top form. Actually, because he wasn’t in top form, some of the things he kept boxed up in his head might get loose, and that would be very bad.
What he said, though, was, “Most of the time I do okay by myself.”
“I am sure you do. In fact, after today, I think you have to come here. We need to learn from you as much as you can learn from us.”
“Maybe. What about the mean lady?”
“Yeah. She’s a problem, but she was the one who fixed you up. Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. I’ll keep her away until you’re more comfortable.”
“You know she isn’t going to do what you say.”
“I have ways to make her. I sort of run this place.”
Tenthé thought things over. He was sure it wouldn’t be that easy. He needed to talk everything over with Bear.
“Can I get my stuff back?”
“Does that mean you’ll stay?”
“Can I have my stuff?”
Tomas laughed. “Yes, you can have your stuff.”
He could escape once he knew the College better, and everyone would forget him pretty soon. He didn’t know why, but the forgetting had stopped working while he was conked out. It should start up again now, though.
Tomas was still talking. “I suppose there is no need to make an immediate decision. Tell me, are you still hungry?”
“Yeah.”
Tomas stood up and walked slowly toward the door. Tenthé followed. He didn’t let Tomas know he could see the Guardians trailing behind, phasing through the walls to accompany them down the wide hallway outside the broadsheet room.
There was no-one else present. Tenthé figured Tomas had told them all to clear out. He really must be someone important, but it was strange that he would take the time to talk to him. They followed some more large hallways and a few of sets of stairs until Tomas stopped at a door.
“Here’s the small dining room. They have snacks set out for in-between meals, but if you want anything else, I’ll see what the kitchen can do.”
He opened the door, and they walked into a place out of a dream.
There were tables along the walls piled with food like he had never seen! He saw bananas, but these were all yellow, not black. Some of the bread looked the same, but was mixed in with other things, probably also bread, but the wrong color and shapes. Some cheeses he recognized, but there was a lot more stuff he didn’t know at all.
The rest of the room was just as strange. It was filled with tables all the same size, with sheets thrown over them. The chairs were all the same, and… they looked new! The Mission had tables made of old boards on sawhorses, with long benches constructed in the same rough manner.
“Who is this stuff for?”
“What stuff?”
Tenthé pointed at the fancy display.
“It’s just the snack food.”
“Is it a holiday, or something?”
“What do you mean? What do you usually eat?”
“Well… peasant bread, cheese, potatoes, soup, gruel, and greens. Sometimes apples and bananas. You know, normal stuff.”
“What about meat? Are you vegetarian?”
“Uh… no. We get chicken on the holidays, and people say there’s meat in the soup, then they laugh.”
“Ha-ha. We can do a little better here. You should take it easy, since you just got out of a hospital bed. Things have been so hectic that we didn’t have time to cast a healing on you. I could probably do that now. Then you could eat what you want. Is that all right?”
Tenthé thought it over. “Okay, maybe. But only a healing spell. Nothing else.”
Tomas laughed. Tenthé had the feeling that he wasn’t being taken seriously.
At that point, Tomas started to muster some magic. A complicated spell that was much more than a simple heal. Tenthé’s head started to hurt as he sped himself so he could look at it before the spell landed. It contained an idea of the perfect body and pushed the recipient toward that goal. There was a lot of extra stuff that didn’t do anything, so he got rid of that and began stripping out the part that would feed information back to some other place. He stopped, then decided to keep it, but make it quit working after a while. The rest he let through. Immediately, he felt his headache recede and was even hungrier.
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
“If you don’t mind, allow me to choose something for you. I’ll stick to the basics.”
Tomas brought over a couple of cups of some kind of drink. It was really, really sweet. As close to perfect as he’d ever tasted, so he guzzled it all. Then the food started coming and Tenthé ate one of the best meals of his life. Eventually, even though he tried, he couldn’t stuff in another thing.
“Astounding!” Tomas exclaimed. “Ordinarily, I would take you to Admissions so you can get what you need for class, but we should find you some proper clothing first. What you are wearing will cause some comment.”
Tenthé wasn’t sure what he meant. Where he lived, it didn’t matter what you wore, as long as the important bits were covered, and even then, no-one really cared. Especially if you were a kid.
“I tell you what. It’ll take a while for me to arrange for you to be admitted. In the meantime, you can come up to my office and nap on the couch. There’s a small bathroom so you won’t have to brave the student facilities, yet.
Tenthé knew he meant. He’d learned to stay away from the men’s outhouse at the Mission. Even by his standards, it was disgusting. Maybe the toilets here were just as bad.
He’d never heard of having your own bathroom, but he got the idea that peeing on a handy bush would be frowned upon here. Although that might explain all the potted plants.
On the way to Tomas’ office, he started to flag. He would have been appalled to learn that Tomas had to carry him up the last set of stairs before laying him on a couch.