The Maelstrom Page 8

  “So he’s there, too,” Max remarked. “The Archmage is showing you these things?”

  But Mina didn’t appear to have heard him.

  “You have to look deep in the circle’s center,” she continued dreamily, taking his fingers once again. “And you can’t look too hard or you won’t see it. I try to picture the skinniest space between the chalk and the floor and then—oh, Max! There are so many places! Some are like a forest of shimmering towers so tall they make Old Tom look like a toadstool. Others are smaller than my thumb and close like a flower as soon as I look at them. But they’re not flowers—they’re little worlds made of water and mist and light. When I look deep down in the circle, everything’s bending and moving and overlapping. It’s like seeing all the places at once through a curvy glass that won’t stay still. It makes my head ache, but they’re so very pretty and thin and far, far away. And everyone in them wants to see me, Max. They all hurry out to see little Mina!”

  Max pressed Mina on exactly who wanted to see her, but her only response was to laugh and repeat the statement with a shy but unmistakable pride. Throughout their conversation, Max kept his voice and manner calm, but inwardly he was reeling. It was unconscionable to involve a child—even one so obviously gifted—in such risky endeavors. He needed to speak with David.

  “What if I asked you to stop taking these lessons?” he said quietly. “What if you went back to living with Isabella and Claudia and the rest?”

  Mina’s smile vanished. Letting go of his hand, she stopped to stare up at him. “We must be what we will be.” There was a Rowan seal embroidered on Max’s shirt, and Mina reached up to touch each of the sigil’s symbols with her finger. “Wild Max must be Rowan’s sun and wise David her magical moon, and Mina must be a bright little star that shines far above all.”

  Max gazed down at the standard. For years it had seemed little more than a charming bit of heraldry. But did the celestial symbols above the Rowan tree represent something else? Did the sun, moon, and star stand for three children of the Old Magic? There were so many strange portents of late and none stranger than this little girl he’d rescued in Blys.

  “Did the spirits tell you that?” he wondered.

  “Uncle ’Lias,” she replied distractedly. Her attention had now shifted across the Sanctuary lagoon, where refugees and Rowan students were popping in and out of the Warming Lodge. Mina watched them with quiet, attentive curiosity. Max knew what she was thinking.

  “A charge will choose you,” he assured her.

  “I know,” she sighed. “He is searching for me. But he cannot come to me yet—he is not strong enough. I must be patient.”

  “You already know what your charge will be?”

  “Oh yes,” Mina whispered. “I saw him in the circle. He’s wilder than you, Max. Even terrible Prusias will fear him! When the gulls cry out and the waters run red, he’ll rise from the sea to find me.…”

  She grinned and clapped but would say no more. As the pair walked, Max reflected upon how much Mina had changed. The shy, nearly mute child from the farmhouse was gone, consigned to a past that might have been another existence. There was something of David in her now, an abstracted quality that made Max feel as though his questions were intruding upon a mind feverishly preoccupied with weightier matters. While David bore Max’s queries with weary patience, Mina was still young enough to believe that sheer enthusiasm was sufficient to explain the wildly complex concepts that she apparently mastered with instinctive ease. She might have been speaking another language; Max simply could not conceive of more than four dimensions or send his spirit on shadow walks or perceive the pervasive, Brownian buzz of ancient incantations. When she noticed that his nods were a polite appeasement rather than a meeting of minds, she ceased her breathless discourse and talked instead about her favorite bakery.

  “You sound like you’re hungry.” Max smiled, spying the shop in question. “Let me get you something?”

  “No thank you. Uncle ’Lias will have food waiting and I mustn’t be late.”

  “Listen,” said Max. “Why don’t you come to the training grounds with me? I’m meeting my friend Sarah. You’ll like her.”

  “But the Archmage is waiting.”

  “I don’t care who’s waiting,” Max retorted. “I don’t want you doing such dangerous things.”

  Mina glanced at him. “You once saved me from a monster and chased it down its well. Was that dangerous?”

  “Of course,” said Max. “But I’m older. You’re only seven, Mina.”

  “I might be seven, but I can go on shadow walks and make out the secret places. Can you?”

  Max shook his head and acknowledged her point with a rueful smile. “No, I can’t do those things. I don’t even understand them.”

  The little girl hugged him, her cheeks pink from their long walk and the cold. Already streetlamps were glowing with witch-fire, bathing nearby windows and awnings with a golden light. Turning her face up to his, Mina gazed at him with fierce adoration.

  “I’m going down a well, too, Max. It’s just a different one than yours. But don’t worry about your little Mina. She knows the way out.”

  Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek and ran off down the central lane, her shoes smacking on the cobbles as she cried hello and goodbye to the baker’s wife. Max watched her go, resolved to speak with David and Bram and do what little he could to protect her. What’s been seen cannot be unseen. Mina is seeing too much, too soon.

  It was nearly dark by the time Max exited the hedge tunnel. His breath frosted in the night air as his boots crunched on brittle leaves. Curfew would be in several hours and the paths were crowded with students hurrying off to libraries, their magechains glittering by the light of lamps and lanterns. He said hello to a few but kept to the edge of the path and never passed within close reach. In the dark, it was not easy to determine if an approaching figure carried a book or a knife. Bram’s words echoed in Max’s mind: When they come for you, they will not come as a stranger in the shadows. The Atropos will be someone you know.

  He skirted the orchard and the Manse, hurrying down to the sea where the xebec lay anchored in Rowan Harbor. There’d been no word of Cooper or Ben Polk, and Max itched to speak with the hunched figure sitting near the xebec’s prow, silhouetted against the green witch-fire. The witch was just a weather worker, but she might have heard or seen something of value.

  Turning away, he veered north along the coast and toward the training grounds that Sarah had mentioned. As he walked, the elegance of the academic quad gave way to a wilder setting. Here the trees grew thicker and the smoke of a hundred cooking fires scented the air. Up ahead, there were shouts and laughter, punctuated now and again by the ring of steel striking steel.

  Through a gap in the trees, Max glimpsed a broad clearing that resembled both a military post and a gypsy camp. Long, low buildings and colorful tents lined the perimeter, surrounding archery ranges, sparring pits, and open-air smithies. It was chaos within; thousands of refugees huddled around bonfires and waited in long lines to hone their skills at archery or hand-to-hand combat. A small army of hogs, goats, and dogs scampered atop mounds of garbage, sifting through the waste for scraps of food. A shrill ring rose above the din. A crowd by one of the sparring pits gave a throaty cheer.

  “Don’t go in unless you plan to burn your clothes,” warned a nearby voice.

  He turned to see a boyish creature with curling brown hair and the hind legs of a deer. It was a Normandy faun, stepping gingerly through the underbrush before stopping to sniff at the base of a shaggy oak. Max recognized him at once; he was the twin brother to Connor Lynch’s former charge, Kyra.

  “Kellen,” said Max. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Truffles,” replied the faun, scraping at the soil with a hand shovel. “A cruel joke that they grow so near this abominable camp with its dogs and their reek, no? If the pigs should find them”—he shuddered at the thought—“I will throw myself into th
e sea.”

  “A bit dramatic,” said Max.

  “Monsieur has clearly never tasted truffles.”

  “How is Kyra doing?” inquired Max. “Has she heard anything from Connor?”

  “Non,” replied the faun testily, probing another patch of dirt. “And do not mention his name. Two years have passed and poor Kyra is still so ashamed. A human leaving a faun? It is not done!”

  “They weren’t dating,” Max chuckled. “He was just her steward.”

  “Tell that to my sister,” Kellen grumbled, prizing out a beloved truffle and sniffing at it rapturously. He waved Max away. “Go swing your silly sword and thump your chest with the flea-bitten commoners. And when you itch, don’t say Kellen didn’t warn you.”

  “Always a pleasure,” said Max, stepping into the clearing.

  But as he strolled through the camp in search of Sarah, Max had to admit that the faun had a point. The clearing was very large, but it was packed with people dressed in filthy leggings, shirts, and jackets. Most were unwashed and some looked ill, gazing at him with rheumy eyes from within their tents. Why Sarah had chosen such a place to train was beyond him—Rowan offered pristine facilities for its students to hone their skills.

  He finally found her in the midst of an exercise area, hanging by her fingertips from a crossbar.

  “You’re late,” she chided. “I started without you.”

  Without the slightest tremor, she raised her chin above the bar. Her sculpted arms were bare, the firelight gleaming on each muscle as they twitched beneath her ebony skin. At thirteen, Sarah Amankwe had only been growing into her considerable looks and athleticism. At eighteen, her beauty had blossomed in spectacular fashion. She had a dancer’s carriage and her close-cropped hair only seemed to accentuate her long neck and elegant features. Max was hardly surprised by her crowd of spectators.

  But Sarah took no notice of them. Exhaling slowly, she completed another repetition and then another. Each was as smooth and effortless as the last. At fifty, Max stopped counting. The crowd of spectators grew. Some grinned with disbelief at the display, but others appeared sullen and almost resentful. None looked away until she had finished.

  “Your turn,” she said, dropping from the bar and shaking out her arms.

  “Where are Cynthia and Lucia?” Max asked.

  “Studying,” Sarah laughed. “We have an exam tomorrow and they want to be Mystics, not Agents like yours truly. You couldn’t coax Cynthia out here for anything. Now, if you’re finished stalling …”

  Max grinned and jumped up to take hold of the bar.

  “What’s your best?” he asked.

  “One hundred forty,” she replied coolly. “One hundred and forty perfect ones. No cheating.”

  “Renard must love you,” Max grunted, spacing his hands.

  He stopped well short of Sarah’s staggering number, doing only enough repetitions to get loose. The onlookers chuffed, some disappointed and others apparently pleased. Several catcalls rose above the clatter of training swords and laughter. Max turned his head and eyed a gang of young men and women warming their hands by a fire as they waited their turn for the sparring pits. That they were a tough-looking set was no surprise; anyone who made their way to Rowan from outside was bound to have seen more than their share of fighting. What surprised Max was the unmistakable hostility stamped on each and every face. Sarah wheeled at them.

  “Watch your mouths,” she snapped.

  “I’d rather watch yours,” quipped the leader with an insolent lift of his chin. He looked to be nineteen or twenty, a wiry youth with jagged brown hair that poked from beneath a leather cap. One eye was nearly swollen shut from a recent blow and his nose had been broken several times. In his eyes, Max saw the hard, hungry look of a scavenger.

  You’ve killed before. And more than once.

  “Cretins,” Sarah muttered. She took Max’s arm. “Let’s go to the sparring pits. I need you to help me with my footwork.”

  “Don’t we have to wait?” asked Max, eyeing the snaking lines. “We get priority,” she explained. “If we had to wait behind them, we’d never get anything done. A thousand arrive every day, and most are no better than criminals. You’d think they’d be grateful for a bit of food and shelter, but all I hear are complaints about them being second-class citizens. They’re already pestering Ms. Richter. As if she doesn’t have enough to do.”

  “Why don’t you just train on campus?” asked Max.

  “I usually do,” she replied, “but Renard’s overworked and has asked Rolf and me to help with the First and Second Years. A few of my prized pupils wanted to see the camp and so we brought them here tonight. There they are—by the archery range.”

  Max saw Rolf Luger standing behind a score of Rowan Second Years, conspicuous among the refugees. That Monsieur Renard would choose Sarah and Rolf for such a task came as no surprise. Since they arrived at Rowan, the two had been at the top of their class and captained many of the athletic teams. At Rolf’s command, the students notched their arrows and drew their bowstrings taut.

  “Loose!” Rolf cried.

  Twenty arrows thudded into their straw targets fifty paces away. Most were admirably centered.

  “Pretty good, aren’t they?” said Sarah, smiling. “Weapons training has been intensified tenfold since Gràvenmuir was destroyed. Anything but a bull’s-eye is considered a miss, even for the First Years. What do you think?”

  “I think they’d be better off hunting,” Max observed candidly. “Or shooting on the run. I don’t like this kind of training. You get too used to perfect.”

  Sarah appeared crestfallen. “I—I thought you’d be impressed.”

  “I am impressed,” Max assured her. “It’s no easy thing to consistently hit a small target. But we’re not training for an archery contest. We’re training for war. These kids are getting accustomed to taking their time and shooting with a steady heart rate at stationary targets. What happens when they’re too scared to breathe and a vye is closing at ten yards a stride? I doubt two in twenty would hit their mark.”

  Sarah listened carefully to the feedback. “I want my group to be tops,” she said. “You’ve got real experience, Max. We’ll make whatever changes you suggest. What would you do in my place?”

  “Stress training,” Max replied, watching the group loose another perfect volley. “Have them shoot while fatigued. Use blunted arrows at multiple live targets—targets that are attacking. Do they know how to restring a bow in the field or fletch an arrow?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so,” Max continued. “We may not have the course anymore, Sarah, but we need to mimic real combat as best we can. If Prusias attacks, his soldiers are not going to wait at fifty paces until we’re good and ready to shoot them. If Agents and instructors are spread too thin, ask some of the refugees for help.”

  “What are they going to teach us?” wondered Sarah. “How to spit, swear, and gripe?”

  Max shrugged. “Your students have technique but no experience. The refugees have experience but no technique. Maybe you have things to teach each other. These people have survived some of the worst stuff you could ever imagine.”

  Sarah nodded but looked doubtfully at the lines of ragtag youths and adults crowded around the sparring pits. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got an exam tomorrow and told Cynthia I’d meet her in Bacon by nine. Besides, I owe you a bruise or two for critiquing my perfect little archers.…”

  For nearly an hour, Max tested Sarah’s skills in the sparring pit while Rolf and the Second Years gathered around to watch.

  Sarah had chosen a naginata, a Japanese polearm whose steel blade had been blunted and wrapped with leather strips coated in phosphoroil. The wooden gladius Max was using was considerably shorter. With Sarah’s catlike quickness and balance, it was challenging to get within ten feet of her. Whenever he darted in to attack, he found Sarah’s blade waiting—poised and ready in her skilled hands.

  Bu
t Max was skilled, too, and experience had taught him patience.

  “Are you giving your best?” Sarah panted, laboring to ward off another attack. Despite her conditioning, she was growing fatigued. At last Max saw an opening. Feinting a lunge to the left, he spun around on his heel and rapped her sharply across the knuckles with the gladius. Hissing with pain, Sarah dropped the weapon. Snatching it out of the air, Max swept her legs out from beneath her. With a thud, Sarah fell onto her back, the gladius poised at her throat.

  Breathing heavily, she glowered at him. “So you’ve just been playing with me.”

  “Not at all,” said Max, helping her up. “You’re just tired. Your initial attack was excellent—legitimately superb—but you expended almost all of your energy. An experienced opponent will play possum and let you wear yourself out. Focus on your breathing, Sarah. Don’t think of me as an adversary; think of me as a puzzle. Find the patterns and solve the puzzle. If you haven’t spent all your energy, you’ll be able to capitalize when opportunities arise. Your problem isn’t your skill or strength; you have both in spades. Your problem is pacing.…”

  “Go on,” said Sarah, catching a towel tossed by one of the Second Years. “You were going to say something else.”

  “Well, it’s more than pacing,” Max finally conceded. “You’re afraid to actually hit me.”

  Sarah laughed and tossed the towel at him. “Of course I am! Who wants to ruin that face?”

  “I’m serious,” Max replied. “You have all the skill in the world, but you strike at your target when you should be striking through it. You’re holding back because you’re afraid you’ll hurt someone. That’s a habit that will get you killed. In the Kingdoms, they play for keeps.”

  “That’s what I keep telling her,” Rolf called out, sounding superior.

  “Hmm,” said Sarah, pivoting on her heel. “Seems like someone’s forgetting that I’ve beaten him the last five matches. And since when have you been in the Kingdoms?”

  Rolf reddened but cracked a reluctant smile as the Second Years began to needle him. But another voice broke in, rough and raw. Max turned to see the tough-looking youth from before. He and his friends had gathered around one end of the pit and were looking down at them.