Wartorn: Resurrection (7 page)

"How can that be?"

"The people have good Uves here in Petgrad. We've had generations of reasonable prosperity. We like things stable, grounded. Why upset a good thing? This war, these Felk... they'll upset it. Most certainly. But the people won't face it."

"So"—her hand glided out, her finger tracing a vein along his firm shoulder—"I've wasted a journey here."

"Wasted?" He gave her a wry, mock-injured look.

"An unhired mercenary is somebody walking about with a sword and nowhere to stick it."

"Where
is
your sword?"

"Public Armory." She felt a yawn overtake her. The bed was ethereally soft and comfortable.

"You'd better go retrieve it, then." Deo's gaze pulled her drifting eyes back open. "I wish to hire you. I should also tell you who I am."

"Someone with the money to afford a mercenary, I hope."

"Yes. That. I am also Na Niroki Deo." He hadn't expected her to recognize the full title. "I'm the nephew of the premier of Petgrad."

"WELL, GO ON. Walk through it."

Raven recognized the bullying tone even before she identified the voice's owner. This wasn't the first time she'd been harassed.

The mocking command was followed immediately and inevitably by a firm hand backed by a strong arm that shoved her face-first into the corridor's stone wall. The stone was cold. It was always cold, even in summer. This was Felk, after all, the Isthmus's northernmost city, and its climate wasn't as gentle as it was rumored to be in the south.

There was nothing gentle about this place in particular. This was the Academy.

Raven didn't try to turn her head. She heard laughter and counted at least three among her assailants.

"I can't," Raven said, slowly and deliberately. She knew it did no good to show either fear or defiance.

"Of
course
you can," said the girl who now had her tightly pinned. The girl was called Hert, and she certainly lived up to her name. "You're a wizard, aren't you?"

"She sure thinks she is," said one of the others. More laughter followed.

"I'm not," Raven said, as steadily as before, keeping control over her fear. Discipline was key to everything. "I'm in training. Just like you."

"Oh, but you're so smart," said Hert. "So talented. You're the one who always wants the toughest exercises. If it was up to you, we'd all spend every watch studying and practicing. No sleep, no food. Not even a piss break."

It wasn't true. But Raven didn't expect the others to share her zeal. Many of the Academy's students behaved like undisciplined children. She behaved like a student who meant to graduate to greater things. Much greater things.

The hand pressed her harder. Raven's forehead and nose were now being mashed against the wall.

"I said, walk through the wall."

"I can't." Raven could barely get the words out. She tasted the wall's stone on her lips.

"Oh, come on," Hert said. "It's just a transport spell. You can do it. And we want to see." The

laughter that followed was louder and crueler.

Raven sighed. She didn't have time for this. The long day's lessons were done, but she had studying to do in her room.

Just a transport spell.
That was laughable, though Raven certainly didn't join in the laughter. The Far Movement magic that opened the portals through which people and even military equipment (so the gossip went) could be moved was very powerful. Only highly skilled and specialized mages could work it, and it required more than one wizard to do it. A mage had to be present at both ends of the transport corridor; the two had to be working in perfect harmony; they had to call upon powers far beyond Raven's present abilities. And even with all these efforts, they could only open portals that were very narrow—just enough, say, for a wagon to get through—and those portals could only be sustained for a limited time.

There was no point in mentioning any of this to Hert, however.

"Do it," Hert was saying, and now her tone turned darker with the promise of impending violence. "Do it!"

There were monitors who patrolled the corridors, but none were nearby at the moment. Of course.

Raven was going to have to do
something.

She sighed again, then started gathering herself. She focused her mind and reached for those forces that aided in the acts of magic. Those forces, she'd been taught, were natural and always present. It was just a matter of tapping them, though it required a certain inherent talent and a great deal of discipline. Raven possessed both those ingredients.

She felt the power move through her in a kind of giddy rush.

Suddenly a discharge of sparks burst around her head. Her unbecoming dark hair rose up on end.

The hand left her back. Someone gasped sharply.

Raven let the minor spell dissipate. At last she turned, being careful to wear an apologetic look on her somewhat homely face.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I tried but I couldn't get through the wall."

Hert, who was as large as Raven but far more muscular, retreated a step, then caught herself. It wouldn't do to show any weakness in front of her cronies. Probably she would punch Raven now, just for good measure.

But luck, finally, was on Raven's side. A monitor came around the corner at that moment, waving one of those paddles they so generously used on students' backsides. Everyone scattered. Raven made straight for her quarters.

RAVEN LEANED BACK on her stool and rubbed her burning eyes. She had no idea what time it was or how long she had been poring over her studies, and she really didn't care. She was determined not to sleep until she had mastered the lesson they'd spent the day studying.

Though there was no test scheduled for tomorrow, that was no guarantee that there wouldn't be one. Unannounced tests were the norm, not the exception for magicians in training. What was more, since the tests were often of a practical rather than a theoretical nature, failing one could be injurious, if not actually fatal.

Rising to her feet, Raven stretched and walked a few steps, all the movement her cramped cubicle would allow. Students' cubicles were designed to be utilitarian, not comfortable. Hers was barely large enough to accommodate a sleeping pallet, her study desk and stool, and a chamber pot.

There was no mirror. The Academy didn't provide one, and Raven had seen no point in purchasing one for herself. She already knew what she looked like.

Her mother had named her Raven in hopes that the girl child would grow to match her own grace and beauty. The truth was, her mother had always been very proud of her own good looks. It was her beauty that once caught the eye of a rich and powerful man of the city of Felk and moved him to relocate her from her small village home into his bed as his mistress.

She had fulfilled that role willingly and with enthusiasm for many years, until she had become pregnant. At that time, her lover "retired" her, but with a stipend that enabled her to return to her old home and set herself up comfortably without having to work.

As her looks began to fade at last, she had hopes that her daughter would blossom and follow in her footsteps.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Raven had been a chubby baby, and rather than melting away when she matured, her baby fat solidified and grew. Despite her mother's admonishments to "stand up straight" and "arch your back, don't sit there like a lump," Raven grew from being a plump, awkward girl to being a plump, awkward young woman with stringy dark hair. She had also never grown beyond a very modest height.

Friends might have made her situation bearable, but she didn't have any. Her mother always held herself aloof and apart from the other villagers, feeling her years among the rich made her better than the rustic, rural folk she had grown up with.

The villagers responded to this attitude with undisguised scorn, which their children emulated in their own fashion by taunting, teasing, and socially debasing the young Raven every chance they got.

Denied any affection by those around her, Raven had retreated into her fantasies. Her mother had insisted that she learn to read, believing it was prerequisite for anyone hoping to someday move among the nobler set, and Raven proved to be an eager student. Quickly mastering the basics, she devoured any text or writing that came her way, and took to writing her own when the limited supply of new material was exhausted.

Turning a blind eye to her actual surroundings, Raven fashioned a dream world she could retreat to at will, a world built from bits and pieces she had heard or read about, other lands and the Isthmus's various city-states. The nearest city to her little village was Felk, where her mother had once lived with her father. It was an old city, and a large one, and thus fascinating to the lonesome, homely girl.

There was one fantasy in particular that she cherished and held dear: Someday she would seek out her father, and he would shower on her the affection and approval that her mother never gave her.

That fantasy had particular allure, because, if her mother were to be believed at all, her father was none other than Lord Matokin himself.

As early as Raven could remember, the mage was known as one of the most powerful men in Felk. Now the entire city-state belonged to him. He had risen to power rapidly, promising great things for Felk's future, promising to expand the state's territory.

The people had embraced him, investing him with the power to build up the military. Matokin was a magician and did nothing to hide his prowess at wizardry. In fact, he displayed it boldly, despite the Isthmus's cultural tradition of shunning the art. Magic, he had promised, was the key to Felk's ultimate triumph. The people believed his promises, and look how mighty Felk had grown! The army had gone southward, capturing other cities, swelling Felk's borders.

The very thought of being accepted by this potent man as his daughter was enough to give Raven added determination to see her dream come true.

When she had finally announced her intention to travel to Felk and apply to the school for magicians that Matokin had founded, there was surprisingly little resistance. Her mother had long since given up any hope of her daughter becoming a beauty and was increasingly at a loss to envision a role for her in life.

Raven's idea, though something her mother had never considered herself, had no small merit. Even if her daughter proved to have little or no talent for the magical arts, there was a far greater chance of her meeting someone to take care of her in Felk than if she remained where she was. As such, she sent Raven off with a small but respectable purse of silver that she had been saving, and far more enthusiasm than Raven had ever seen her display in the past.

Folklore had it that natural magical ability tended to appear most often among the nobility. This was supported by the fact that Matokin's closest political underlings were almost entirely picked from Felk's aristocracy. However, hidden talents turned up in odd places, and this seemed particularly true of magic.

Raven rested her head briefly on her arms and smiled at the memory of her own naïveté when she had arrived in Felk and first presented herself at the Academy for testing. She recalled being puzzled when

the testers showed surprise at her voluntary effort to enroll.

Of course, at that time, she was unaware of the rumors that were now virtually accepted as fact. Specifically, that those having some capacity for magic, but of insufficient degree to invest training in, had a way of disappearing or suffering fatal accidents shortly after they were rejected.

It seemed that Matokin was disinclined to have unaffiliated magic potential wandering the lands he controlled, however minor that potential was deemed to be. As a result, the number of those willingly submitting to the testing dwindled to a trickle and finally all but ceased entirely, requiring the implementation of roaming testers to find new students for the Academy. These feared individuals traveled the countryside encompassing Felk.

Far from being repelled by these methods, Raven was struck with awe. How powerful a man he must indeed be, how sure of his vision, to act so drastically and decisively.

The Academy itself was a grim affair, a campus more resembling a fortress or prison, than a school. A high stone wall circled it, and the buildings within those walls that held classrooms and living quarters had a dull sameness about them.

The growing empire needed magicians, and students were hurried and badgered through their lessons and tests to fill that need. Felk was growing. The war had begun its southward push to take all of the Isthmus; for that was Matokin's goal. It was a heady thought, an exciting time to be alive ... if one could remain so.

What was more, as they were learning to manage and control the powerful forces of wizardry, they had to also constantly affirm and reaffirm their loyalty to Matokin.

Students were bound to the Academy by blood vows, literal ones, where blood was taken from a deliberately pricked finger, labeled with the student's name, and stored. It was said the blood could be used to bring harm or death to its source from then on, no matter where he or she was. It was a fine means of encouraging loyalty.

Raven, of course, had gladly surrendered her sample. She was already bound to Matokin by blood, she thought secretly, or at least, so she believed. Let her mother have been right about that one thing!

The students were also encouraged to inform on each other and even on their instructors, reporting any comment or action nonsupportive of empire policy, no matter how innocent or jesting. If it was learned that a student had failed to report such a comment, they were judged as or more guilty than the person offering the original offense.

At the age of nineteen, after two years of training, Raven was adept at dealing with the wariness and backbiting that was so pervasive in the Academy. If anything, her childhood had given her a head start at adapting. She didn't have to unlearn the habits of friendship. The bullies at the Academy weren't especially different from the ones in her home village, so they were fairly easy to ignore when they weren't directly harassing her.

She certainly had no difficulty devoting herself entirely to Matokin and the empire policies he set forth through his administrators. Before arriving at Felk, she had decided to keep her belief that she was his daughter a secret. To announce it upon her arrival would appear too much like she was trying to curry favor.

Instead, she sought to be noticed for her devotion and growing skills. When and if she was ever singled out for his personal notice, that would be the time to mention her kinship. More than anything, Raven wanted her sire to be
proud
of her. Keeping her relationship to him a secret until she had proven herself could only intensify that moment.

Raven's head came up with a start. There was predawn light showing in the corridor outside her cubicle! Against all her good intentions, she had dozed off.

Panic and self-recriminations were useless. Her disciplined mind swung smoothly into dealing with this new set of circumstances. She had yet to master yesterday's lesson, a slightly more powerful version of the static electricity spell she'd already learned. If a test were sprung upon the class, she would perform poorly.