First Year (19 page)

“As you know,” Barclae continued, “this week marked the end of your orientation. Tomorrow you start anew with your chosen faction. Masters Eloise and Isaac will continue to lead your sessions on magical theory, but your new faction will dictate what time of the day you report to the library to do so. Sir Piers will still direct your physical conditioning, but again, your sessions with him will depend on the same.

“Master Cedric here will be leading the magical application portion of your studies for Restoration. Due to a recent resignation, Ascillia has been promoted to Master leading the section on Alchemy. And, last but certainly not least, Master Narhari, our returning master for first-year Combat. Between the three of them, I am sure you will be kept more than busy.”

The Master of the Academy gave a broad wave of his hand. “Now you are all dismissed. Make sure to report to the constable before curfew with the name of your chosen faction—without it your time here will be considered a resignation.”

“Are you ready for the biggest mistake of your life?” Ella nudged me as we trudged up the training hill for our first session with Master Narhari. There were already rumors going around that the master of Combat sent first-years packing faster than Sir Piers himself.

“It is the only one worth making,” I replied bravely.

“I hope you still feel that way when practice is over.”

I was about to respond but found myself speechless. Ella followed my gaze with her own, and her jaw dropped.

“In the name of the gods,” she breathed.

Before us stood the most handsome man either of us had ever laid eyes on. I hadn’t had much time to study Master Narhari during Master Barclae’s introduction the night before, but now the impression was unmistakable.

Over six feet of sheer, towering muscle greeted my awestruck stare. The master of Combat had well-oiled black hair pulled sleekly back behind his ears, smoldering eyes of icy blue, bronze skin, and a short, rough stubble that lined his upper lip and chin suggestively. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years, and there was an unmistakable air of confidence to his stance.

Ella and I stood dumbfounded on the side of the field. Soon we weren’t alone, as more and more girls approached the dais they seemed to filter off one-by-one in a state of confusion. I counted the number of students.

There were far less girls than boys to our faction, seventeen amongst the forty or so young men. Most of my gender had chosen Alchemy or Restoration. They’d been under the impression that we were disadvantaged for Combat—after all, most boys had grown-up playing at knights, but few girls had done the same.

Now, we were proving exactly how foolhardy our sex could be as the seventeen of us stood frozen in place at the commanding presence of ideal masculinity. It was a pleasant surprise.

We soon realized our mistake when the shirtless training master ordered everyone to line up and begin the same casting drills as the week before. Unlike Master Cedric, Narhari did not allow weakness, which became evident the moment we ran out of stamina.

“This is Combat!” the new master of Combat shouted. He paced up and down the lines as we attempted to conjure enough force to distance our targets.

Try as I might, I had no magic left. The barley sack would not budge. The prince’s group was still going strong, but the rest of the class was faltering. Badly.

“You chose my faction because you wanted to be pushed, not coddled! Don’t tell me you have used up your magical reserve. No one has unless they are face-down on the ground without a spasm left. The
only 
way you will build up your force is if you challenge yourself. Easy will 
never
be good enough.” Master Narhari bent down to meet the darting eyes of a nervous boy to my right. “Now!”

The boy fumbled, and we all tried to summon enough magic to make the sacks move. Nothing.

“Harder!” the training master shouted.

I tried again, visualizing the force I needed to cast, and launched the proj ection with all my might.

“You are fighting for your life. Is this all you can give me?”

My arms were shaking badly and I was light-headed. But I held on, feeling as if I were slipping away in the process.

Several bags, including my own, shuddered and tipped back. A girl to my right fainted.

Straining, I ignored the burning sensation in my lungs and carried on, willing the sack to complete its fall to the ground. It shuddered again, and I threw the mental image with every ounce of energy my body could hold.

I felt myself fall as the bag dropped back, and a second later I too hit the ground. My eyes shut involuntarily, and I was dead to the world until someone splashed cold water on my face.

Sputtering, I sat up while Ella gripped my arm, holding me in place. The moment I tried to stand, my knees gave out, and an unpleasant sensation hit my stomach. Gasping, I quickly turned my head and threw up the contents of my lunch.

Similar sounds were happening all around me, and I realized that there were at least ten others on the ground, retching away. Looking up at my friend, I could see how clammy Ella’s skin had become, and there were dark lines under her eyes. Her hands shook as they held onto my shoulder.

“Now you see what it is to push yourself,” Master Narhari told our class somberly. “I expect each of you to reach this hard
every
time. If you have a problem with my approach, then you should resign immediately as you will not last long in my faction.”

Fifteen minutes later we were dismissed. Ella and I could barely stand, and it was all we could do to hold onto our staffs as we walked down the long training hill for our evening meal.

Between the increased workload of Eloise and Isaac, the new weapons drills with Piers, and practices with Narhari, we were quickly acclimating to a ritual of misery and little else. After the first month of Combat it became a daily joke between us that we would “last the year or die trying.”

Alex didn’t seem to be faring any better, either. According to my twin, Master Cedric had been holding out on us, and now, despite his old age, had turned his two hours of healing into the “stuff dreamt only in nightmares.”

“He tried to have us animate a corpse the other day,” James piped up, who was also in Restoration with Alex. “Never seen anything more disturbing in my life.”

“How is Alchemy going, Ruth?” I turned my attention to our other friend.

Ruth snorted. “Terrible.”

I could barely see the girl. She was buried beneath a stack of manuscripts that took up the entire space in front of her.

“It can’t be worse than Master Cedric,” Alex said quickly.

Ruth shoved the pile of books and parchment across the table. “You try carrying every herb lore manuscript known to man and then recite it for me.”

My twin laughed. ” You have Master Ascillia. She used to be one of us a couple years ago.”

Ruth rolled her eyes elaborately. “It just means she has more to prove. You know Cedric is an old softy. You’re just afraid to admit you’re beat.”

“You can trade stitching up animal carcasses with me anytime, sweetling,” he replied flirtatiously.

Ruth made a face and went back to reading her books while Ella and I quizzed Jordan and Clayton about their own experiences in Combat. We never had an opportunity to catch up in class, so we spent most of our meals critiquing each other’s performance.

It wasn’t always the easiest conversation, to have someone else point out your flaws, but it was something I had decided was necessary after my run in with Darren weeks back.

Better to hear truth, he’d said, than false flattery. I couldn’t believe I was actually following the hypocrite’s advice, but it had made sense and stuck with me long after.

I had to admit it was helping, though I’d never be able to pinpoint the exact degree of success it warranted. I still struggled day to day in each and every activity in which I participated, but struggle had become a regular condition. If I weren’t struggling, if I weren’t keeled over in agony, if my muscles weren’t screaming at the end of a long day…then I wasn’t trying hard enough.

Master Narhari continued to test our breaking points. At first I had thought his methods cruel and unrelenting, but as the weeks wore on, I realized he was just a man who saw the sky as our limit. Narhari expected the world of his students because he expected the same of himself. He wanted us to succeed, even if his definition included shattering our magical boundaries on a daily basis. It didn’t mean I resented him any less for pushing. It was impossible to remain positive during continual rounds of mental and physical torment—but I did recognize what he was trying to do.

It was beginning to pay off.

One month ago I would have been thrilled to see my magic’s stamina outlast the previous week by a couple of minutes or an extra block during my jousts with Ella. Now my castings carried on a half-hour most of the time. My reserve wasn’t guaranteed, but even if it failed to increase right away, I was usually able to conjure more powerful castings in the weeks that followed.

First-years were beginning to slow down, or quit. By the end of the second month in Combat, eleven more had withdrawn from the Academy. They had left not because they ran out of drive, but because they hadn’t improved their castings in weeks.

All my life people had stressed the importance of “potential.”
The amount of magical stamina one was capable of building.
We all had a limit. You could have some magic, but did you have enough? Only time would tell which of us did.

The hype was beginning to make sense.

The Academy gave me a year. I hoped it
would
be enough. I’d seen Darren and his close-knit following. Each one of them had yet to falter. They remained at the top of each class and carried on long after the last of us fell.

Some of us were still improving, but we were all fearful how much longer our stamina-building would continue. Sure, I had magic, but eventually I would reach the end of its limits. As long as Darren and his friends were improving, there wasn’t much hope for the rest of us.

Fortunately, as the third month of Combat commenced, some of the prince’s friends began to falter, though I was loath to admit neither Priscilla nor the non-heir himself was a part of it.

The two burly brothers, Jake and William, had stopped gaining in stamina, and they were beginning to struggle in the increasingly difficult assignments Eloise and Isaac assigned. The only area those two still excelled in was Piers’s drills, but it was common knowledge that would not be enough. The brothers hadn’t left yet, but Ella and I had a wager going for how much longer they would remain. Neither of us had a fondness for the wealthy brutes.

A week later, our friend Jordan resigned, and a couple days after, one of the lowborn boys from Darren’s group of twelve. There was no shortage to the resignations taking place, and I wondered how many more would follow. Master Barclae had warned that half the class would leave by winter holiday. I had a nagging feeling he was going to be proven right.

On the third week of our fifth month at the Academy, I walked into my session with Master Narhari expecting nothing more than the same routine that had been drilled into us for the past two and a half months.

Instead I found Piers, whose session we had just came from, leaning against the edge of fencing that encompassed the boundary of our training field. Masters Barclae and Narhari stood beside him. The three of them looked particularly formidable.

I shivered and wrapped my arms around my chest, eyeing the masters with apprehension. The three of them together was not a good sign. Considering the last time Sir Piers had teamed up with a master, I feared for today’s outcome.

Glancing down the line, I saw Eve smile, albeit uneasily, and Priscilla and Darren exchange knowing looks. They knew something. The rest of the class seemed unsure, but it was clear that the prince had not been kept in the dark.

“Don’t they look just lovely?” Ella muttered.

“I feel like they put on those disturbing smiles just to mess with our heads,” Clayton whispered back.

I laughed. My friends and I could not be more alike.

Moments later the humor was gone when Master Narhari explained exactly why the visitors were present.

“They’ve come to check your progress,” he announced. “We will be staging a duel between each of you and another student in this class. This will be a chance to demonstrate what you have learned thus far. This is not a test. There are no winners and losers today, and this will in no way influence your trials at the end of the year.”

I breathed in a small sigh of relief and heard Ella at my right do the same.

“That said,” Narhari noted, “I want each of you to remember today as the day you gained confidence in yourself. I know how hard all of you have been training, and the next two hours should be the culmination of your efforts.”

I glanced at Ella, and she at I. We knew who our partner would be. We had sparred so many times in class, as well as after. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses almost as well as we knew our own. Between the two of us, we could easily impress the masters without embarrassing ourselves.

Several other students seemed to be thinking the same thing. First-years began to pair up almost instinctively.

“Children, children,” Sir Piers chuckled loudly, stepping away from his post to stand closer to Narhari. “You are sadly mistaken if you think I will let you pick the same person you have been practicing with all these months.”

My stomach dropped.

“I believe Master Narhari and I have a better understanding of your skill set than your pea-sized brains acknowledge. The two of us will choose the one who is…shall we say,
best-suited
for your abilities.” His words made my skin crawl, and I was even more wary from the way his eyes had lit up mischievously during the phrase “best-suited.” Something told me Piers had been looking forward to today for far too long.

As the sets played out, one-by-one, I came to understood exactly why. There were only a couple of us left by the time my name was called, but I already knew exactly who my opponent would be.