Chapter three: wood, cloth, and a whole lot of fucking paranoia.

He’d soared the sky on more than one occasion. He’d ridden horses in full gallop that one time his mother had thought it wise to get him one. At the age of eleven, learning how to ride a horse had left him walking with slightly bowed legs for weeks, not because they actually bowed, but because his thighs and groins hurt less when he did. He’d even ridden on one of the contraptions at home over liquids the likes of which his grandmother claimed no child should when he’d told her of it. If he was being honest, that was what gave him the confidence to tell Tut he was a quick study. What else was a ship if not a vastly larger mechanism than the contraption he’d ridden alongside the ferry man. And what more was the sea than a vastly larger substitute for the liquids of mount Trenon.

How wrong he had been. How underappreciated the sea had been in the tales he had read. He had mistaken arrogance for self-confidence.

And though the liquid of the sea was nothing but water that didn’t burn or leave injuries that had an old lady screaming at the insanity of his endeavors, it left a stench and made walking on deck during a thunderstorm next to impossible. How the men under Captain Tut remained on their feet and even crossed distances was a feat he would need more than a week to master.

Just when I was beginning to understand it.

Kilvic’s seven days at sea was coming to an end. Tut himself had claimed they would arrive at the port of Novdrag when morning came. For now, Kilvic busied himself with keeping his grip on the mast firm and his steps focused, which was difficult with all the distractions.

The clap of thunder roared overhead like a ground eagle chasing after its older as it shook the sky after the burst of light that preceded it. The rain didn’t help his plight, its constant insistence to slap against the wooden floor of the ship reminded him of how the children back home had beaten the bully when they had finally summoned the courage to end the big child’s reign of tyranny, each blow descending after the other.

Just as he had wondered of the biggest boy at the time as he had watched, he also wondered now if the ship would break under the pressure. Kilvic blinked away drops of rain from his eyes as he placed a foot solidly ahead of the other, waiting for the ships next tilt before he moved. People were more practical than he had assumed.

The ship tilted, the front section lifting with the tide, and he let go and slid to the entrance that led below deck. Like every step he’d taken since the storm began, this too was accompanied by the booming sound of Tut’s rancorous laughter. The man didn’t seem to mind the storm, and Kilvic understood how he managed to look ten years older than he was.

In three days, he had been able to walk around on deck even amidst troubled waters. He’d seen his accomplishment before the storm came. He wanted to experience more storms; to learn to do the things the men working against the storm could. Not from some misguided sense of want or pride. No. As a child he’d hated learning. Seven years under the tutelage of over ten instructors, including his mother, and learning new things came as naturally as hunting a fire serpent.

Sadly, somethings were more important than what he wanted.

Surprisingly, there was another on the boat on his way to the academy. They had picked the boy at the kingdom’s main port. The way Tut had regarded him and attended to him, as well as the state of the boy’s attire, told Kilvic the child was something of some level of noble blood. An experience he had not expected so soon.

Unlike himself, the boy had no caution of how best money was to be kept. In the brief time they had been in each other’s presence he’d tallied a rough estimate of how much money was in the boy’s possession, and there was no way it was less than his.

Pushing his way through the door, he stumbled down the stairs and into the dry comfort of the compartment below deck. His clothes—the only pair he had—was already soaked through. Luckily, he had a habit of going on deck barefooted. Wet leather boots smelled worse than wet clothes.

As he made his way to his room he passed the boy’s. Aricnol. That was the name he’d heard Tut call him. Master Aricnol. The boy’s door was held slightly ajar as he passed it. Still, not so much that anyone peering in would have gained any information of note, considering the happenings in the room.

It told him that though the boy understood the need for privacy, he didn’t understand the importance of it. You’re here to learn, not teach, he reminded himself as he stumbled into his room and closed the door behind him.

His room was a small confinement the size of the cages in his grandfather’s dungeons where the animals he studied were kept. Despite that, he found a way to be comfortable in it. The bed wasn’t so bad, and seeing as his only luggage was a coin pouch and three letters, nothing took up any of the relevant space.

He took off his shirt and hung it up on a piece of nail he’d requested on his first day, which was currently driven into the wooden wall beside his bed. As the cotton shirt dripped water to the floor, he dropped himself on his bed after only the mildest delay caused by a discarded consideration of taking off his trousers.

He considered going on deck again to battle the storm in his own way but discarded that thought too. Along with not wanting to destroy the only clothes he had before he arrived at the academy, he had the feeling that the workers… sailors, would not appreciate the alternative.

Just outside his room a storm raged, the sky wept, and the waves crashed against the side of the ship with so much force it sounded like two trees locked in the deadliest combat. And while he wondered if the sound he heard was a creaking from the bowing of wood, he asked himself if all this was worth the entertainment of hearing the sailors cuss for the past seven days. Somehow he had a feeling the cusses were the only reason his mother suggested he take a boat to the kingdom, instead of a carriage. The trip helped him gain an appreciation of the phrase his grandmother so used often, ‘to swear like a sailor’.

So was it worth it?

Perhaps.

Kilvic jolted awake with enough time to notice the world tilt around him a moment before he fell from his bed.

The raging had calmed and the constant pounding that echoed from his wall had ceased. Somehow, he’d slept in spite of it. He didn’t know if to clap or suffer self-reproach.

“Rise and shine, boy!” Tut’s voice boomed just outside his door.

Before he could scramble to his feet, the piece of wood kept in its place by metal hinges swung open to reveal the man whose hair was dry and unexpected of someone who’d just weathered a storm.

“We’re here,” Tut announced. “The port of Novdrag. Hand over the other half of your payment and be on your way.” Then with a grin, he added: “Maybe if you beg enough and you’re lucky, you just might get to join the piss blood bastard of a noble in his carriage.”

That told Kilvic two things of relevance; he’d slept through the entire storm, and Tut had no love for those with noble blood.

It wasn’t long before he was standing on the ship deck in mildly dried clothes, looking down the plank that led to the docks with Tut standing behind him more than eager to be free of him. He took one step onto the plank and heard the man sigh in delight, then he stopped.

Looking over his shoulder, he asked, “How did you do it?”

“Do what, boy?”

“Survive the storm?”

Tut gave him a lopsided grin, as if he held the secrets of the seas, then tapped his boot against the floor. “Wood,” he said, then pointed at the sails. “Cloth.” Then with arms spread out and his grin never leaving his lips, he finished, “And a whole lot of fucking paranoia.”

Kilvic responded with a grunt and returned his attention to his exit. Somehow, the answer had been satisfactory…Wood, cloth and a whole lot of fucking paranoia.

Novdrag’s port was more chaotic than the port back at his home. The hustle and bustle of people negotiating prices and deals was so heated Kilvic found himself waiting for a fight. Here, the stalls were of better quality, held together by wood that would not suddenly rot one day and give way. But above all, what held his attention was the number of people. There were so many of them. So much so that it was almost a wonder how they hadn’t already begun an unnecessary stampede. Men, women and children ran through the motions of their daily lives.

A boy ran into him. The impact, a brief jostle to his shoulder, moved him to the side. The boy looked at him and offered a brief and genuine apology. His apology was sufficient, as if practiced every day, and as polite as could be expected from a commoner. Still, Kilvic grabbed his wrist as he moved to continue on his way. People were more like animals than they would dare to agree. Everything laid in the eyes, and most of them never learned how to lie well enough.

The boy struggled against his grip. As skinny and hungry as the boy looked Kilvic found it a wonder the boy thought he could escape his hold while pondering on the appropriate response to what the boy had done.

Pulling the boy against him, he reached for his other hand in one fluid motion and retrieved his coin pouch. His mother always said fear was the strongest human emotion. That its hold could do more than all the others. He found himself inclined to believe her as he watched the boy deflate as the emotion shone in his eyes.

Should I use it? He cocked his head to the side. Perhaps another time. Remember, you’re already a day late.

The thought in mind, he released the boy and turned away. The boy was gone as a storm wind.

Beyond the docks lay another stretch of stalls. Each vendor as eager as the next called to him as if they were old friends who had dealt with each other for years. Their enthusiasm was so grand if he had been a Nazrul, one of the dumber demons, he would have thought he’d simply forgotten his relationship with them.

Often times his attention would be drawn by one of the many trinkets on display at affordable prices. With all the coins he had, he could purchase a few of them without detriment. “If you are meant to be a commoner, why have I given you so much?” His mother’s words came to him. At the time, his answer had been immediate.

“To learn secrecy and control.”

His mother had afforded him one of her many nods for it and he’d known whatever coin he had left was what he would use for his next semester. So he purchased a charmed necklace the vendor had claimed was infused with a shield spell by a great mage who served under the direct command of the king. It made for a good tale but a poor lie because it wasn’t logical; how would the work of a mage of such grandeur fall into the hands of a man who sold goods just by the docks?

The tale mattered naught to him. The necklace was wire thin, a simple silver with a colorless crystal at its center melded within a pendant, and, by all accounts, was infused with a shield spell. It was always in good taste to take a gift when meeting someone for the first time. Perhaps the headmaster of the academy would appreciate it.

When he left the market, he found a carriage to take him to the academy with relative ease. The ride was entertaining and educative. The stone roads echoed with the clacks of horse shoes and the buildings were a lovely sight. Also, he now knew how to get to a market from the academy should the need arise.

It was almost noon when he arrived at the Academy gates. He paid the rider the agreed sum without ceremony and approached the men who stood guarding it. They struck him as more of soldiers than mages, and as he approached them, they regarded him with threatening gazes.

“What’s your purpose?” one of the guards asked. He wore a blue fitted robe, and beneath it, Kilvic caught a hint of chainmail that gleamed under the sunlight. The man looked no more than his thirtieth year, and even then, he doubted he was as old.

“I’m here to enroll,” he answered.

The man laughed. “Enrollment ended two days ago, child. You’ll have to come back next year.”

Kilvic furrowed his brows. It seemed a ludicrous concept that the punishment for lateness by only two nights should be a year. “I have a letter for the headmaster,” he tried.

The other guard shook his head, his blonde hair cut short to rest on his head was unresponsive. “It makes no difference.” His tone was gentler than his accomplice.

He knew he had to obey the rules of the kingdom as best he could, however, entering the academy was more important than that. Besides, how could he know that these were the rules of the school and not the rules of the two men. He’d heard children weren’t the only ones capable of bullying. Even adults often bullied those his age. I fear I’ll have to hear the words from the headmaster.

“So I cannot see the headmaster?” he asked.

“Not until next year,” the louder man replied.

“So if I want to see him today,” he addressed the blond, “I will have to go through the both of you.”

“You wouldn’t want to do that, boy,” the guard advised him.

Kilvic nodded in agreement. Growing up, there were a lot of things he hadn’t wanted to do but had done because they were necessary. This would simply be one of such things.

He stepped forward in a rush. The louder guard’s hand shot out at him immediately, just before he pulled back. The trick to a perfect feint was not to feint at all. Feints worked on a lot of animals, but with a lesser demon, it could get a person killed. The trick was the ability to change one’s decision very quickly. He’d once watched Ariadne execute a series of feints on a greater demon rumored to read minds this way.

Without making contact, he stepped forward again, ducking beneath the guard’s arm and twisting from his reach as the hand followed after him. The blonde guard was sharper and faster. His hand moved and his fingers twitched. Kilvic was forced to make contact. He palmed the man’s hand, echoing an improvised clap, and pushed it away just in time to pivot on his foot. The spin was perfectly executed, like one of those court dances his grandmother had insisted he learn. Actually, it wasn’t like one of them. It was one of them. A move from the royal waltz of the Almada Kingdom. Terrible dance if he’d ever learned one.

Out of reach, he back pedaled, retrieving any change in his pocket and flinging a well-aimed copper coin just below the guard’s left eye, disrupting the man before he could lift his second hand. He wasn’t sure what the man’s intentions had been, but something told him it would be best not to let the man complete the action. He knew enough about seasoned mages no matter how weak to know it was a copper coin well spent.

He took another two steps further into the compound before he turned his back to the guards and ran.

Eight turns and a flight of stairs later, he ran into a man dressed in a comfortable red robe.

“And where, pray tell, did you come from?” the shaven man asked, looking at him through beady eyes.

“Liines,” he answered, not bothering to check if the guards were still on his trail.

“And you are not a student.”

Kilvic shook his head. “But I do have an appointment with the headmaster.”

“For when?”

“Today, three days before, and two days after.”

The man frowned. “Yes, we have been expecting you.” Somehow he didn’t seem pleased to be expecting him.

The man turned around and returned the way he came. “Follow me, boy. I’ll take you to his office.”

Without any objections, he followed, sparing the stairs a glance to see if his play mates had caught up.

The man led him up another two flights of stairs before leading him down a long passage with polished floors enchanted in patterns of artistry, and green walls. Stopping in front of a two-door entrance, the man gave three quick knocks and stepped back. Kilvic looked down the passage as they waited. Still, neither the blond guard nor his companion showed themselves. Not that he’d thought both men would’ve chased him.

Somewhere during his reverie, the doors had swung open and he was ushered in by the robed man. The room was spacious, and it’s walls, which were nothing more than book shelves from top to bottom, were stacked with books so vast he could read two a day and still be reading by his eighteenth year.

The marble floor bore the same patterns as the passage floor outside and before him stood two wide couches facing each other with a wooden table between them. And beyond that sat the headmaster behind a desk with haphazardly arranged papers.

Vanolov Skanriv, the head master of the Novdrag mage academy, wore a pair of glasses from behind which his eyes peered at Kilvic. He was a man at the demanding age of seventy-three and all the age seemed to bear down on his face; wrinkles, freckles and creases. Kilvic doubted there was a sign of age that wasn’t on the man’s face. Even his lips, a pale blue held in a thin line, screamed with age behind a full beard.

The man who sat behind the desk with a pen in his hand and a massive window at his back was a shadow of the Mage Lord and war hero the books Kilvic had read of him described. In his prime he had been one of the few mages to summon and bind a greater demon. Only to lose it at the decline of the war that waged between three kingdoms almost four decades ago.

Despite all that, it was the man who stood to the side of the table that held Kilvic’s attention. Dressed in a black gentleman’s suit, the man stood tall with a skin so pale it could’ve been described as nigh translucent. The hair on his head was pulled back and held in place by something Kilvic couldn’t see. It was long enough to be held back but too short to be held up in a horsetail, he noted. The man watched him with eyes as green as his and an ease that told him he had been in battle even if he seemed nothing more than an attendant.

“And you are?”

Kilvic attention snapped to the headmaster. “Kilvic Rudric,” he answered, while the man who’d led him here took his leave, closing the doors behind him.

Vanolov scratched his short beard. “I believe you have something for me?”

“Oh, yes,” Kilvic remembered, rushing past the wooden table to present the master with two of three letters. “These are my letters of recommendation,” he said as he waited.

The headmaster opened the first slowly, unfolding the paper just as slowly. With a tip of his lens he skimmed through it. The one he held was a letter from a mage in Liines who had penned in fine writing reasons why he believed Kilvic was worthy of studying at the academy. The old man tossed it to the side as though it was irrelevant.

But as he read the second, worry wrinkled his already suffering expression. Kilvic couldn’t blame the man. The words of the letter would worry anyone who knew the import of it. In brief summary—because he had penned it himself under the dictation of his mother—it claimed him to be an important citizen of an ally kingdom that was of great importance to Zeldric, an ambassador of sorts that would learn at the academy as part of the agreement between both kingdoms. The name of the ally kingdom, however, was not stated, but the king’s seal was unmistakable. He was under the kingdom of Zeldric’s explicit protection.

“So you’re the young lad causing trouble at our gates,” Vanalov said after he was done, the letter still in his hands.

Kilvic considered commending him for his effort in hiding his worry, but instead asked, “What do you mean, sir?”

Vanolov scoffed. “Diedrich, here might not look it,” he gestured at the attendant, “but he’s as good a mage as any you’ll find in all twelve kingdoms. He is also the academy’s head of security.”

Which meant, Diedrich had a high mage’s sense and could be telepathically informed of any problem his subordinates faced on the academy grounds.

“The guards tried to prevent me from entering,” he told the old man respectfully. “I felt it necessary that I not be stopped.”

Vanolov and Diedrich nodded.

“Fair enough,” Vanolov said. “We have accommodations for our students. One of the nobles recently arrived and was sent to his. We understand it has been a tiring journey, so while you are shown to your room, you will be allowed absence from the lectures of the day.”

Kilvic nodded.

“I do hope the accommodations are to your liking,” the headmaster added. “Diedrich here will show you to your room.”

“If I may, sir,” Kilvic interrupted, stopping Diedrich who was already moving as commanded. “I am from another kingdom, but my station here is no more than that of a commoner, as my father was. I will request I be given the same accommodations as any other student, not shown special treatment of any form and be free to continue living the normal life of students of this academy.”

Diedrich turned his attention to the headmaster who’d taken off his glasses and was rubbing rheumy eyes with thumb and forefinger. After a while, Vanolov looked at Kilvic. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.” Kilvic nodded. “Although I may seem like an Ambassador, the truth is, the only purpose I have been sent here for is to be educated. And my parents would rather I be given as normal a life as any fitting of my station.”

Vanolov waved his hand with a flick of his wrist. “Then Diedrich will take you to your class.”

Diedrich resumed his steps and Kilvic understood he was dismissed.

The moment they stepped out of the room and the doors were securely closed, he turned to the attendant, because he couldn’t picture him as anything else, and asked, “What may I call you?”

Diedrich paused. Kilvic would’ve thought the man surprised had his face not remained impassive.

“The students call me master Diedrich.”

“Yes. But what may I call you?”

Diedrich’s head inclined to the side. “You wish to know my name?”

“No,” he disagreed. “I wish to know what I may call you.”

“And if I asked you to call me your god?”

Kilvic shrugged. “Then I shall call you god.”

This time the attendant’s face betrayed an expression. A slight upward turn at one edge of his lip. He was amused. “And what am I to call you, young master?”

“Anything you wish. However,” Kilvic held up a finger, “it will be less stressful if you refer to me by my station.”

Diedrich gave him a full smile. “Then I shall call you student,” he said. “And you shall refer to me by my station.”

“Attendant.”

“Attendant?” The man laughed. “I remember the headmaster telling you I was the academy’s head guard.”

“True, but you carried yourself like an attendant while in the room,” Kilvic pointed out. “Even now you seem more like an attendant than a guard. Be it a quite powerful one.”

“And you do not sound like a commoner,” Diedrich returned.

“I never said I was.”

“You claimed your station—”

“My station here,” Kilvic specified.

“True.” The guard nodded, solemnly. “I guess we all have our secrets. Attendant it is,” he finally said, then turned away in the direction Kilvic assumed would lead to his class.