5
Useful Skills
As Sonea waited for the class to begin, she opened her book of notes and started to read. A shadow crossed her desk, and she jumped as a hand flashed in front of her and grabbed one of the sheets of paper. She made a desperate grab for it, but was too slow. The paper was whisked away.
“Well, what do we have here?” Regin strolled to the front of the class and leaned back on the teacher’s desk. “Sonea’s notes.”
She stared at him coldly. The other novices were watching him with interest. Regin scanned the page and laughed with delight.
“Look at this writing!” he exclaimed, holding it up. “She writes like a child. Oh, and the spelling!”
Sonea stifled a groan as he started to read, and made a great show of his “struggle” to decipher words. After a few sentences, he stopped and puzzled aloud over their meaning. She heard several half-smothered laughs and felt her face beginning to burn. Regin grinned and began exaggerating the spelling mistakes on the page by pronouncing each word literally, and the room began to echo with unrestrained laughter.
Placing an elbow on the table before her, Sonea rested her chin in her hand and tried to look unconcerned, while her entire body turned hot, then cold, over and over, as anger and humiliation overtook each other.
Regin straightened suddenly and hurried back to his seat. As the laughter faded, the sound of footsteps could be heard. A purple-robed figure appeared in the doorway. Lord Elben peered down his long nose at the class, then moved to his seat and placed a wooden box on the table.
“Fire,” he began, “is like a living creature and, like a living creature, it has needs.”
He opened the box and lifted out a candle and a small dish. With a quick stab, he speared the candle onto a spike in the center of the dish.
“Fire needs air and food, just as all creatures do. Don’t assume that it is a creature.” He chuckled. “That is foolish, but do keep in mind that it often behaves as though it has a mind of its own.”
Behind her someone choked back a laugh. Sonea turned her head. In the corner of her eye she saw Kano pass something to Vallon, and her stomach turned. Unseen by Lord Elben, her handwriting was entertaining the entire class.
Slowly, she drew in a deep breath and sighed quietly. The second week of lessons showed no improvement on the first. All of the novices—except Shern, who had disappeared completely after a strange outburst in which he claimed to have been seeing sunlight coming through the ceiling—now gathered around Regin at every opportunity. It was clear that she was not welcome in this little gang, and that Regin intended to make her the butt of all his jokes and pranks.
She was the outcast. But unlike the boys who had tried and failed to be accepted in Harrin’s gang, she could not find somewhere else to go. She was stuck with them.
So she had adopted the only defense she could think of: ignoring them. If she didn’t entertain Regin and the others by reacting to their jibes, they would eventually grow bored and leave her alone.
“Sonea.”
She jumped and found Lord Elben frowning at her in disapproval. Her heart began to pound. Had he spoken to her? Had she been so engrossed in self-pity that she hadn’t heard him? Would he chastise her in front of the class?
“Yes, Lord Elben?” she said, bracing herself for further humiliation.
“You will make the first attempt to light this candle,” he said. “Now, I’ll remind you that the production of heat is easier when...”
Relieved, Sonea focused her will on the candle. She could almost hear Rothen’s voice as his instructions repeated in her mind. “Draw a little magic, extend your will, focus your mind on the wick, shape the magic, and release it...” She felt a sliver of her power jump to the wick and a flame spluttered into life.
Lord Elben blinked at it, his mouth still open. “...thank you, Sonea,” he finished. He looked around the rest of the class. “I have candles for you all. Your task this morning is to learn how to light them, then practice lighting them quickly, with as little thought as possible.”
He gathered candles from the box and set them in front of each novice. At once they began to stare at the wicks. Sonea watched, her amusement growing as she saw that no candle, not even Regin’s, began to burn.
Elben returned to his desk and took out a sphere of glass filled with blue liquid. He brought it to Sonea’s table and set it down.
“This is an exercise that will teach you subtlety,” he told her. “The substance in this container is sensitive to temperature. If you heat it slowly and evenly, it will change to red. If you do not, bubbles will form, and it will take several minutes for them to dissipate. I want to see red, not bubbles. Call me when you have achieved that.”
Nodding, Sonea waited until he had moved back to his desk, then concentrated on the sphere. Unlike lighting a candle, this needed only a warming energy. Drawing in a deep breath, she shaped some magic into a gentle mist so that it would heat the glass evenly. As she released it, the liquid darkened to a deep red.
Satisfied, she looked up and found Elben in discussion with Regin.
“I don’t understand,” the boy was saying.
“Try again,” Elben said.
Regin stared at the candle in his hand, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“Lord Elben?” Sonea ventured. The teacher straightened and began to turn toward her.
“So it’s like focusing magic into the wick?” Regin asked, drawing Elben’s attention back to him.
“Yes,” Elben said, a note of impatience entering his voice. As Regin stared at his candle again, the teacher turned to look at Sonea’s sphere. He shook his head.
“Not hot enough.”
Looking down at the sphere, Sonea saw that the liquid was cooling to a purple. Frowning, she focused her will on it again, and the purple brightened to red again.
Regin jumped in his seat, and uttered a bark of surprise and pain. His candle was gone, and his hands were coated with molten wax, which he was frantically trying to peel off. Sonea felt a smile pulling at her lips, and covered her mouth with her hand.
“Are you scalded?” Elben asked, concerned. “You can go to the Healers if you wish.”
“No,” Regin said quickly. “I’m fine.”
Elben’s brows rose. He shrugged, then collected another candle and set it on Regin’s desk. “Back to work,” he snapped at the rest of the class, who were staring at Regin’s reddened hands.
Elben moved to Sonea’s desk, then looked down at the sphere and nodded.
“Go on,” he said. “Show me.”
Once again, Sonea concentrated on the sphere, and the liquid warmed. Elben nodded, satisfied. “Good. I have another exercise for you.” As he returned to the box, she saw Regin watching her. A smile pulled at her lips again, and she saw his hands clench. Then Elben rapped on the boy’s table as he passed.
“Back to work, all of you.”
Leaning back on the deck railing, Dannyl breathed in the salty air with relish.
“Sick belly not so bad outside, yai?”
He turned to find Jano approaching, the little man walking along the rocking deck with ease. As Jano reached the railing, he turned and braced his back against it.
“Magicians not get sick on boats,” Jano observed.
“We do,” Dannyl admitted. “But we can Heal it away. It takes concentration, though, and we can’t keep our minds on it all the time.”
“So... you not feel sick when you think about not feeling sick, but you not be able to think about not feeling sick always?”
Dannyl smiled. “Yes, that’s right.”
Jano nodded. From high on the mast, one of the crew rang a bell and called out a few words in the Vindo tongue.
“Did he say Capia?” Dannyl asked, turning to look up.
“Capia, yai!” Jano swung around and stared into the distance, then pointed. “See?”
Dannyl gazed in the direction his companion was pointing, but could see nothing but a spray-clouded line of nondescript coast. He shook his head.