Chương 38: Chapter 37: The Imperial Bloodline (13)

The next few days settled into a restricted routine. Teren woke in the guest room, ate whatever the servants brought him, and spent his days inside the palace under guard. He was free to go to the east garden and could walk through some of the inner corridors with an escort. Whenever he had nothing else to do, he read. The old palace clerk brought him books from the palace collection when he asked, and Teren was taken to one of the smaller libraries more than once in case Edras was busy that day.

He searched for anything useful about the Corvadryn bloodline, magical training, the old empire, and the dangers he might face outside Karthane. Most of what he found was history or general information, and none of it gave him anything immediately useful that Edras had not already told him. Whenever Edras could spare an hour, Teren trained. They used the same warded chamber each time.

The sand square in the center was swept smooth before every lesson, only for Teren to cover it with footprints again while he practiced. Ordinary fire came more easily with each lesson. He moved from producing brief sparks to lighting the candle reliably, then to holding a small flame above his palm. By their fourth lesson, he could gather enough mana to create a fist-sized flame if he stood still and concentrated for a few seconds. The first time he managed it, his hand began shaking from the effort.

The flame spread wide before breaking apart in a harmless wash of heat.

"Again," Edras said.

"And this time, stop feeding mana into it before your control starts slipping." Teren wiped the sweat from his jaw and raised his hand. Most of the lessons went much the same way. Edras repeatedly made him slow down, use less mana, and stop the moment his control weakened instead of trying to force the spell to continue. Teren found the constant restraint frustrating, but his failures became less frequent each morning. Purple fire was much harder.

He could call it more reliably now, and the tiny flame above his fingertip had grown thicker than on the first day, perhaps an inch across when he managed it well. Edras tested it against thin iron, pieces of copper etched with simple runic lines, and blocks of practice stone. The purple fire burned a hole through the iron, damaged the etched copper, and left small pits in the stone wherever Teren held it steady. Using it still exhausted him much faster than ordinary fire.

Within ten breaths, his forearm usually began to ache. If he forced himself to hold the flame for longer, his shoulders grew heavy and his head started to feel light. During one lesson, after getting frustrated at his slow progress, Teren tried feeding more mana into the flame to make it larger. The purple fire widened above his hand, and for a moment he thought he had managed it.

Then it suddenly bent sideways and burned a black line across the stone block before Edras struck his wrist and smothered the mana with a sharp gesture.

"Release it!" the mage ordered. Teren cut off the mana. The purple fire vanished, and he stumbled back far enough that Edras had to steady him by the arm.

"Don't try this again. You are not ready to increase its size yet."

"I thought I had it under control!"

"You had control of a much smaller flame. The moment you pushed more mana into it, that control broke down." Edras waited until Teren was steady before releasing his arm.

"So far, you have been working with flames small enough that your mistakes have not injured you. The old records describe experienced Corvadryn mages using far bigger purple fire without harming themselves, so you should eventually be capable of the same. But you are nowhere near that level of control yet." Teren looked at the damaged stone block. The black line was barely longer than his finger. It was progress, but not enough to change much if someone attacked him.

Brakka would still have crossed the pit and broken him apart long before Teren could do any serious damage with that flame. In the dungeon, the boar-creature would have reached him before he burned through one tusk. Rulven would have laughed and cut him open anyway. He flexed his hand until some of the ache faded.

"I need way more training than this."

"I agree." Edras began gathering the practice crystals and pieces of metal from the table.

"You have learned remarkably quickly, but these short lessons are never going to be enough. I can keep helping when I have the chance, but I cannot give you the hours and hours of practice you need every day because of my various other duties. Only the Academy can give you daily instructions, supervised practice, and instructors whose only duty is to teach." Edras sat on a chair after he had packed his satchel.

"They might not be able to help train your purple fire, but as long as you keep progressing your control in making ordinary fire, you should be able to use the same idea to practice your own bloodline magic. Perhaps you might even find some old scrolls in the Academy's library about how the Corvadryn mages practiced. The purple flame you have been trying to make is only a small part of your bloodline's powers. But to go any further you need to get a much better control over your purple flames.

And that is not going to happen if you can barely get a single hour of practice in a day." Teren plopped down on the floor and sighed.

"I know... I realize that going to the academy is the only way for me to progress. But I've been worried about all the other dangers and assassins I would have to deal with at the Academy just because of my bloodline. As slow as my progress is here, getting up in the morning and not having to worry how I am going to die today has helped far more than you can imagine." Edras stared at him at the mention of dying but didn't comment on it.

"You do realize that Karthane is not any safer for you, right? I have a feeling that you haven't told me everything about what you had to go through before coming here, but staying in the palace with the hope that your enemies would not find you here is a futile thought. Before seeing that runic trap in my basement, I would have laughed at anyone who said this palace wasn't the safest place in this part of the kingdom, but now... I'm not sure anymore."

"How is that investigation going anyway?"

"Slower than I thought, but I will continue looking for whoever was responsible for it." Edras closed the satchel.

"But if they are still operating somewhere in Karthane, remaining here does not put you farther away from them." Teren had no answer to that. The palace certainly looked secure. Guards stood throughout the inner corridors, and Yaros had added more precautions since learning about the threat. Teren had seen his men questioning servants before they entered the guest wing, checking food brought to his room, and accompanying another palace mage while he inspected the wards on Teren's door and window everyday.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. But someone had managed to hide a trap beneath Edras's own research hall without the archmage knowing it was there. All the guards and wards around Teren did little to make that fact less worrying.

"I need some more time to decide..." Edras nodded.

"I understand. You can take more time, but you'll still have to tell me within a few days or it will be too late to enroll for the coming term. I'll speak to the duke and start making the necessary arrangements in case you decide to go to Othmir with the others." Teren smiled gratefully after hearing that. He already knew what his decision was going to be, but he just couldn't bring himself to say yes and leave the safety of the palace and venture into the unknown, after dying again and again before arriving here.

The next day, Teren saw Cassian, Duke Ordaan's son, talking with the red-haired elf Elaryn in a small garden next to the west colonnade. He was returning from another lesson with Edras, accompanied by his two guards, when voices carried along the open walkway ahead. Teren recognized Cassian's before they rounded the next pillar. The colonnade overlooked a lower garden where fallen orange leaves had gathered beneath trimmed trees.

Elaryn stood near the stone railing in a dark green dress, her red hair tied back with a simple ribbon. Cassian faced her a few steps away, dressed more formally than when Teren had first seen him in the duke's chamber when Cassian had returned there from a dungeon. Beyond the garden, the palace hill fell away toward the rest of Karthane. From this height, Teren could see the city spreading out below them, tens of thousands of rooftops packed together between broader roads and scattered stone towers.

The outer walls were visible far beyond them, enclosing a city that seemed even larger from the palace than it had from the road below. Neither of them had noticed Teren yet.

"I heard your father still hasn't answered mine," Cassian said. Elaryn's expression barely changed.

"My father has a lot of other matters to deal with." Cassian tilted his head.

"He has had plenty of time to answer a simple letter."

"And he will, when he is ready." Cassian frowned.

"You know the match makes sense. Our lands already depend on each other, and an agreement between our families would only strengthen that." Teren slowed. So that was what they were talking about. One of his guards glanced toward him but said nothing. Neither seemed particularly eager to interrupt the duke's son, so Teren stayed where he was. Elaryn folded her arms.

"If our fathers want to discuss relations between their duchies, they are perfectly capable of doing that without deciding who I should marry."

"You would hardly be getting a poor match with me." Cassian's tone remained controlled, though some of his earlier arrogance had crept into it.

"There aren't going to be many better choices for you than the future Duke of Karthane." Elaryn raised an eyebrow.

"From what I hear, everyone expects your older brother to become the future Duke of Karthane. Not you." Cassian's face tightened. Before he could answer, his gaze shifted past Elaryn and landed on Teren. He looked at Teren's guards.

"What's he doing here?" Both guards immediately straightened. The older of the two bowed his head.

"Master Edras finished his lesson, milord. We're escorting him back to the guest wing." Cassian looked at Teren with a frown, probably expecting a bow.

"Edras is teaching you himself?" Teren saw no reason to bow to the young master. Duke Ordaan himself had told him that a Corvadryn did not need to bow to him, and Teren certainly did not feel any greater obligation toward his son. He did not particularly like Cassian's attitude either. He shrugged.

"When he has the time." Cassian gave a quiet sound that might have been annoyance, then looked back toward Elaryn, seemingly to continue his conversation. But she had already turned toward Teren.

"There you are! I wanted to speak with you about something." Teren blinked. She did? The look she gave him made it clear enough that this was not the time to confirm it.

"Fine by me. I'm free now anyway." Cassian glanced between them. For a moment, Teren thought he might simply order him to leave. Then Cassian's expression hardened. Apparently, he had no intention of discussing his marriage prospects in front of a former slave he barely considered worth acknowledging. He gave Elaryn a long look before stepping away.

"This matter isn't finished." Elaryn met his stare without answering, then deliberately turned her attention back to Teren. Cassian turned and walked away along the colonnade with his own guards. Teren waited until the young master had passed the next set of pillars before looking at Elaryn.

"You wanted to talk to me?" Elaryn watched Cassian disappear around the corner, then let out a quiet sigh as some of the tension left her shoulders. She turned back to Teren.

"I don't actually have anything urgent to say," she admitted.

"I just needed an excuse to end that conversation with him." Teren glanced toward the corner where Cassian had walked away.

"I guessed as much."

"Thanks for going along with it."

"No problem." She tilted her head.

"You aren't going to ask about it? He shrugged.

"It isn't really my place to say anything." Elaryn looked at him for a moment without answering. She seemed much friendlier with him now than when they had first met. Maybe the sharp tongue was mostly reserved for strangers and people who annoyed her. With Mariel, and now with Teren, she was actually pretty easy to get along with. Elaryn let the subject of Cassian drop.

"Have you thought about joining the Academy?"

"Edras brought it up too. He says I should go." Teren hesitated.

"I'm still thinking about it, but I'll have to decide soon." Elaryn smiled.

"Then perhaps we'll be traveling to Othmir together." Teren had to admit that having the pretty redhead along would probably make the long journey a lot more pleasant. Only then did he notice Duke Ordaan's eight-year-old daughter, Mariel, nearby with her attendant. The girl's sleeves and the front of her dress were wet, seemingly from playing around a shallow stone basin in the garden, and the older woman was trying to dry her with a towel.

Mariel squirmed away from the towel with a complaint and ran back toward Elaryn the moment her attendant loosened her hold."' Ryn! Make the water fox again!" Elaryn looked pointedly at the little girl's dress.

"You're still soaked from the last one."

"That wasn't my fault!"

"You poked it with your wand while I was holding it in the air above you. Of course the water splashed all over you." Mariel glared at the elf.

"It wouldn't have fallen apart if you could make it properly!" Elaryn stared at her for a second.

"You know what, if my water foxes are that bad, perhaps I shouldn't make another one." Mariel immediately tossed aside the little wooden stick she had been pretending was a magic wand and grabbed Elaryn's sleeve.

"No! I won't poke this one. Promise!" Teren smiled slightly. As much as he would have liked to talk more with Elaryn, it seemed like she was going to be occupied for a while.

"I'll leave you to it." Elaryn gave him a small smile.

"I'll see you later, Teren." Teren raised a hand in farewell. He was tempted to stay and watch her make an actual fox out of water, but she had only recently stopped treating him like an irritating stranger. Better not to overstay and give her a reason to change her mind. As he followed his guards toward the guest wing, he thought again about what Edras had told him.

The mage already believed the Academy was his best option, and knowing other students from Karthane would also be making the journey with him made the idea a little easier to accept. He decided had spent long enough thinking about it. It was time to get out of this palace and start learning magic for real.

"Can I speak with one of the palace clerks when we get back?" Teren asked. One of the guards glanced at him.

"Of course. We'll have someone sent to your room after we get you there safely."

"Thank you." He would have the clerk pass his answer to Edras tonight, so the mage could begin making whatever preparations were necessary.