The next morning saw Ezril alone with Felvan in a segmented part of the forest. They had walked over a mile to get there before Felvan bestowed him with his first words of the day.
“Here,” Felvan looked around, inhaling the fresh forest air, “you will learn what it means to be a true archer. Here, I am your master, your father, your king, and your priest. We are not here to play games. I have no doubt Em must have taught you well at the seminary, but here I will teach you greater things. Here, you will learn more uses for the bow, as well as forge your very own. One that like a warrior’s blade will follow you to the end. But unlike a warrior’s blade, it will follow you beyond. A bow can be gotten anywhere, but a bow forged right by an archer is better than any bow they can ever be given. Forge it well and it will serve you well. Forge it poorly and your skill with it will never grow beyond mediocrity…”
What’s mediocrity? Ezril could hear Olufemi’s voice in his head, and he held back his laughter, keeping his face expressionless. Since joining the seminary, lying with his facial expressions had become an easier thing. He could understand why it was hard to read priests.
“The seminary teaches you to fight for the kingdom and the Credo,” Felvan continued, “here I will teach you to fight for your brothers and sisters as well as yourself. It is known that archers fight from behind the battlefield, but you will learn to fight on the frontlines…”
The seminary already teaches me that.
“…With a bow,” Felvan finished. “Because that is what it means to be the First Bow.”
It was the first time Ezril was hearing the term outside of Father Ulrich’s stories of the seminary’s history. From the stories Ezril had deduced the title of the First Bow was rare, and only very few answered to it. Being the best archer in a group did not make one the First Bow, and Ezril was beginning to understand why.
He had heard of almost everything from the older children, or at least gotten an idea of everything. But this was entirely new to him. He found himself wondering if maybe there was something he could learn from this place that the seminary could not teach him. Still, he doubted it. The priests were the strongest fighters in the kingdom, after all. If these people were as great as they seemed to claim, he would’ve heard of them by now.
The rest of the day was spent learning the art of aerial movements. Felvan taught him the art of flips and vaults. There were front flips, side flips, back flips. There were more flips than Ezril had even thought possible. Some had his body twisting in the air even as he threw himself into a flip. To his surprise, Ezril took to it with relative ease, like a fish to water, or a bird to the sky, or a thief to the night. All he needed was to see the nimble old man perform the act and he found himself sailing through the air as best a child his age could.
There were errors and hard falls but Ezril learnt in time.
In a few days, Ezril was running through the forest, performing aerial maneuvers at command. At times he would trip when Felvan would give the order for a flip while his legs were placed at odd angles. Such instances found him running into branches at times and vaulting into trees at others.
The nights saw Ezril exhausted and alone in the tent. His muscles ached from the bruises of the days, but his legs and waist ached the most. He ate his night meals and turned in for the nights, always noting Ellenel’s absence as he slept. He would regain consciousness only when the mornings came.
Time went by and Ezril found himself making flips, turns, and vaults at command with ease. Soon Felvan had him doing it on tree tops, moving from branch to branch. The pain that came with failure for this was grand, however, Felvan always proved present to catch him whenever he fell from too great a height. Sometimes it reminded Ezril of aunt Teneri. Aunt Teneri had always had an uncanny way of being wherever she had to be in the house. In the same way, Felvan had an uncanny way of being wherever he had to be in the forest. Ezril was at least thankful for that. Some of his falls from the trees would’ve probably killed him if the man wasn’t there to catch him.
Thus, Ezril would wake at the crack of dawn and begin his training. Felvan would allow him only breaks for meals, and he would retire at night. Alone
……………………..
“Good,” Felvan complimented as he walked up to Ezril one afternoon, carrying belts. “You learn fast, maybe you do have a talent for it after all. You have learned it, but now you must perfect it. So even in your sleep you can execute it.”
The belts proved of significant weight and Ezril was made to wear them as he ran and executed the same routines he always had. He was to do this until he perfected the art of aerial movements with the weights on. But rather than command him on which technique or flip to execute, Felvan randomly tossed objects at Ezril or attacked him. Each time, Ezril was always expected to evade in any way possible while he kept moving.
After this, Ezril was then taught to catch arrows shot at him from various distances. The tips were blunted and wrapped in paddings of cloth. It left the arrows unable to pierce him but they remained painful on impact, nonetheless. In the beginning he was required to catch them while standing. In time, he was required to catch them while in motion.
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Ezril felt small senses of accomplishment with each success, but it paled in the presence of his strain and the pain of being hit by arrows and running into the occasional trees.
“Do you still do this?” Ezril asked Felvan one afternoon.
Spending time with the old man, he found he had the urge to talk to him. And despite the man’s petulance, Felvan was rather approachable.
“No,” Felvan answered. “But at your age I was better.”
For some reason Ezril believed him. “How often do you get children from the seminary?”
“Before you, there was Em. But she was from the convent.” Felvan paused, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “I’ve only met two in my life time,” he continued. “You and her. But my sister has seen three. She says the one before Em was also from the seminary.”
“Why, though?” Ezril blurted. There were very few that helped the seminary. Then again, there were very few that could help the seminary.
But watching the inhabitants of the Elken forest for the time he had been here proved that they rarely associated with the rest of the kingdom. If anything, it was almost as though they were not even a part of it.
“Why we help the church?” Felvan asked.
Ezril nodded.
“We do not help the church,” Felvan continued. “The use of the bow is a noble art consumed by war. We are not helping the church; neither are we helping the kingdom. We are helping you: those with a gift for the bow. Amongst us everyone knows how to use the bow, but not everyone has the gift.”
Ezril frowned, puzzled. “How do you know those with the gift, then?”
“It is in the way they wield the bow,” Felvan replied, unconvincing.
“You’ve never seen me with a bow,” Ezril informed the man.
Felvan leaned forward so that he looked Ezril in the eye. “It’s also in their eyes,” he said.
“Their eyes?”
“Yes. People look at what they see. They watch what is put in front of them. Those with the talent watch everything. When those of us with the gift look them in the eye, we see it even if they don’t know it.”
“So it’s like a Hallowed thing?” Ezril asked.
“Hallowed?” Felvan scoffed. “The gift of the bow is accessible to all. Not just the Hallowed.”
There was a touch of disdain in Felvan’s voice and Ezril made the conscious effort of dropping the subject. Between his dreams and his past, he was beginning to realize he was looking for anyway to be told he was Hallowed. At this rate it was beginning to seem like a form of paranoia on his part.
“So even the Tainted can have it?” he asked, hoping he kept his worry from his voice.
“Even the Scorned,” Felvan answered with a frown, before returning Ezril to his training.
After another few days Ezril found himself spending an hour or two of his afternoons with Ellenel. It was the only time of the day he spent with her, and it was spent in training. They followed a routine as if they were still at the seminary, using each weapon as was required of the days, save the bow.
Ellenel proved not as Adept as the various Fathers of the seminary but, at the least, she was considerably better than Ezril, and it was more than sufficient.
In time, Felvan provided Ezril with a bow and he found he had missed the touch of one. Ezril took to it with a longing, as though he was a child returned to his favorite toy.
“Releasing arrows while moving has always proved to be challenging for archers,” Felvan told him. “Releasing from horseback will be taught to you by your priests, for they will suffice in it. Here, however, I will teach you differently.”
What followed was a series of demanding lessons where Ezril was expected to hit stationary targets as well as moving target while running, flipping, and vaulting amidst the tree tops of the forest. In time they were replaced by moving target, and Ezril found himself understanding how useful what he had experienced with the deer during the winter test would have been in such a situation. Sadly, he hadn’t experienced it again since the test.
“As an archer, the moment your enemy gets within striking distance, you have failed, but…” Felvan plucked a stray piece of falling leaf from the air as Ezril barely stuck the landing of one of his running flips. “As a first bow, you are an exception to this rule, for you are more than just an archer.”
What followed was a number of sparring sessions where Felvan used every weapon at his disposal while Ezril was only permitted the use of the bow, perfecting how best to spin it to achieve the best defense or to parry an attack, as well as strike a blow.
Eventually, Felvan introduced new members to their training. They were children of Ezril’s age group and seemed mildly fearful of Felvan. Regardless, they proved skilled in the art of fighting. They weren’t as good as Ezril and his brothers but they were better than what would be expected of children their age. Ezril found himself fighting with the bow against the children all at once. He found this art of combat kept him the most at ease when compared to the weapons of the seminary.
By the end of his first month in the Elken forest Ezril was taken deep into the forest by Felvan. He was taken to a cavernous chamber that smelled of smoke and soot. The smell reminded Ezril of his brief meeting with Father Nemael.
“Here you will forge your bow,” Felvan told him with an air of ceremony.
“But bows are made of wood,” Ezril objected, a picture of the metal bow he’d seen in aunt Teneri’s room dominating his mind.
“Yes,” Felvan agreed, but said nothing else.
Ezril was introduced to the blacksmith in nothing but a simple hand gesture. Felvan waved a hand quietly in presentation of the blacksmith who wasn’t even looking at them and took his leave. Not even a name was given.
Alone with the blacksmith, Ezril stood in silence as he carefully worked out what seemed to be a tiny metal string. The blacksmith was the same size as Father Nemael with molten scars of his own, but he did not exude the same strength.
“Here.” The man offered him a large piece of wood and a sharp knife. “Carve out your bow.”
Without thought or questions he was willing to ask, Ezril went to the task of carving out what he hoped would turn into a pleasing bow with as much hope as there are stars in the sky, each scrape revealing the inner parts of the wood. For some reason, he gained no satisfaction as the piece of wood, rather than taking an appealing shape, seemed to take up a worse form than when it had been handed to him. Somewhere in the hot smithy, as Ezril struggled with the discomfort of perceived failure, the blacksmith pounded away in a light rhythm.
This was the pattern they followed the entire day.
“Leave everything and return tomorrow before first light,” the man instructed Ezril as night fell.
When the night darkened and Ezril crawled into the tent he shared with Ellenel, he experienced his first nightmare in a month.