Birthright-The Technomage Archive (2 page)

And no matter how far-fetched it all sounded, Ceril absorbed every word of it. Gramps knew what he was talking about when it came to history.

Eventually, the morning came for Ceril to head back to Ennd’s Academy. Ceril was rushing around the cottage, frantic to make sure that he was not forgetting anything important that he needed to bring with him. He stacked the last of his bags by the door and turned toward his grandfather.

“
Can I bring the sword with me?” he asked. “I want to show Swarley!”

“
No. And it would probably be better if you didn’t tell Swarley or anyone else about it, either.”

“
Why not?” Ceril asked.

“
It’s complicated, Ceril. Just remember that not everyone understands the Charon legends like I do. Not everyone has the same stories about them. That mythology class should have taught you that.”

“
What does that matter?”

“
It just does,” Gramps said. “Just don’t tell people about finding the sword. Please.”

“
Not even Swarley?”

“
Not even Swarley.”

“
Okay, if you say so.” Ceril agreed. He didn’t like it. He told Swarley everything. But if Gramps said he shouldn’t brag about finding a Charon’s Flameblade in the garden, then he wouldn’t. Probably.

The shuttle descended from the Skylane just then, as if to punctuate Gramps’ request. Ceril grabbed his bags and handed them to the shuttle’s pilot, who put them in the luggage compartment.

“
Is that all?” the tall, skinny man asked him.

“
I think so,” Ceril said. “Let me go back in and check one last time.”

“
Make it quick,” the pilot said.

Ceril nodded and ran back into the cottage. He found Gramps in his bedroom. His back was to the door, but he looked like he was holding the sword, the Flameblade. The light in the room looked funny. “What’s that?” Ceril asked.

Gramps whipped around, but he wasn’t holding anything after all. The light in the room was normal now. Ceril blinked. Maybe he had imagined it.

“
What’s what?” said Gramps.

“
I thought I saw the sword. The room looked funny.”

“
Afraid not,” Gramps said. “I packed it away last night after you went to bed. May contact one of the museums about it; see if I can donate it.”

“
Really?” Ceril asked.

“
Just a thought. Anyway, are you ready now? All loaded up?”

Ceril nodded. “I think that’s everything. Unless I can take the sword and show Swarley.”

“
Not a chance,” Gramps said with a smile. “You be good, okay? Write me when you can, and have a good year. This is going to be Phase II for you, right?”

Ceril nodded again. “I’m nervous about it.”

“
No need to be. It’s still the same school. Just a different part of the same old thing you’ve been doing.”

“
I guess,” Ceril said. He let his grandfather lead him through the house and out to the waiting shuttle. Neither of them was fond of long farewells. They both knew how the other felt. And they both knew that while they would miss each other, they would have another summer together soon enough.

Gramps leaned down and hugged Ceril tightly, gave him a firm handshake, and whispered some sage-like, grandfatherly advice in his ear. Ceril then stepped onto the shuttle that would zip him back to Ennd's Academy, away from the only place in the world where he honestly felt happy.

Chapter One

“
You are not ready.”

That was it. “You are not ready,” then silence. Ceril Bain looked around at the other returning students milling about quietly. They were all apparently still listening to the subsonic speakers in the lobby, which meant none of their welcome messages were so short. So why was his? And what wasn’t he ready for?

Ceril had never met Ennd’s Academy’s new headmaster, so how could he say that Ceril wasn’t ready? And more than that, Ceril wondered just what it was that he wasn’t ready for.

Maybe he would find out soon. Probably tomorrow at Presentation.

Ceril figured there wasn’t much use just sticking around the lobby, so he weaved through the crowd of still-listening students toward his new Phase II dormitory.

The P.A. system disturbed him, anyway. Ennd’s faculty had never actually explained how the announcements worked, and that bothered him. The faculty tended to skirt around conversations about the technomages or their artifacts. If he weren’t a historian’s grandson, he might not have even heard of Vennar.

Well, maybe it wasn’t that extreme. Everyone knew about Vennar. He was
Vennar
. Who
didn’t
know about him?

Ceril stepped into the elevator at the end of the curved hallway.

“
Hello, student. Welcome back to Ennd’s Academy. Where are you traveling today?” The automated attendant’s voice was soft and chipper. Ceril liked talking to the elevators. It made him feel like one of the technomages.

“
Phase II, please.”

After a moment’s pause, the elevator said, “Of course, student.” Ceril hadn’t even realized they had been traveling when the doors reopened onto a different view than Ceril had expected. He stepped out of the elevator, ignoring whatever it was that the automated attendant was saying.

For the past five years, Ceril had grown used to Ennd’s Academy. He had learned the hallways and the decor, and he liked to think he knew his way around pretty well. But as he stepped into the new Phase II area, he felt like a tourist.

Which, Ceril supposed, he kind of was.

He was standing in the middle of the hall when a hand touched his shoulder. He whirled around to see Swarley Dann’s smiling face. Ceril returned the smile, and the two boys embraced.

Swarley had grown over the summer—enough so that Ceril couldn’t call him his “little buddy” anymore. Swarley now stood a good head taller than Ceril, and he had bulked up quite a bit. He looked more like a man than he had before, which made Ceril feel like a child in comparison. He kept his embarrassment to himself and asked, “So you're lost too, huh?”

“
Not lost,” Swarley said, smiling, “just a little misguided. I saw you just standing here, staring at the Library. I thought it was the least I could do to say hello. So
hello
. And since we're going to the same place…” His eyes glinted mischievously.

“
You're lost, too, huh?” Ceril repeated.

“
As a crow in a fishbowl.”

***

“
This place looks so funny, Swarley,” Ceril said. The boys had been wandering around the halls for what had to be hours, looking for their dormitory. “I’m not even sure if we’re in the same school anymore.”

Swarley said, “I know, right? I don’t like it. It’s just so…I dunno what. I mean, Phase I felt so cozy. I felt safe there, you know?” He slapped the sandstone wall and slid his hand across the border that divided it from the brushed-steel paneling beneath it. “But this? It’s just so cold.”

“
It’s sterile,” Ceril said, hoping he had used the word correctly.

Swarley nodded. “Yeah, that’s it exactly. Like a—like a hospital.”

“
Weirdest hospital I’ve ever been in,” Ceril muttered.

The boys walked a little further down the hall, and Swarley pointed into an alcove. Every hall in Phase II seemed to be decorated the same way: statues in alcoves. The statues in this one stood twice the size of Swarley. “Who are these guys?”

“
You don’t know?” Ceril asked.

“
And like you do?” Swarley replied.

“
Well, no. How could I?” Ceril stood beside Swarley and stared into the alcove.

“
Whatever,” Swarley said, “but I bet they’re old.”

“
You think? I bet they’re technomage artifacts.”

“
That do what? They’re statues of people with animal heads cut out of big pieces of rock, Ceril.”

“
They
could
be artifacts.”

“
And you
might
be the prettiest person in the hall right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“
I’m just saying,” Ceril said. “They might be. We don’t know.”

“
No, we don’t,” Swarley said. “Come on, let’s go. I want eventually to find out where we live. My feet are starting to hurt.”

“
Yeah, and I think we go left up here when the hall ends. There should be an elevator to the dormitory level.”

“
How do you know that?” Swarley said. “You’ve been as lost as I am.”

“
We’ve passed the sign for it a couple of times already. You’ve been walking us in circles.”

“
I have done no such thing.”

Ceril just nodded and started walking toward where he thought the elevator was.

“
It all looks the same to me,” Swarley said. “Lead on, man.” He followed Ceril down the hall and toward their dormitory.

***

Ceril opened the door to the room he and Swarley had been assigned. The first thing he noticed was the gigantic, curved window that filled an entire wall from floor to ceiling. They were being housed in one of the higher towers on campus, which gave them a pretty spectacular—and unobstructed—view of the night sky. The moon shone brightly into the room and cast a surreal light across the unfamiliar space.

“
We must have been wandering around for quite a while,” Ceril said, peeking out the window.

“
Must’ve been,” Swarley agreed. He fell backwards on the nearest bed and sighed. “This’ll do. I think I can handle this.”

Ceril did likewise and found that the bed was much softer than the one he had slept on for five years of Phase I. “Yeah, I like it, too.” He rolled over and something jabbed into his side. In the moonlight, he could just make out the corner of the suitcase that was jabbing into him. “Lights,” he said and rubbed his ribs. “I think this is yours.”

He tossed the suitcase onto Swarley’s side of the room, and his friend responded with an “oof” and a “thanks for that” before throwing Ceril’s bag over to him. Until this year, Ennd’s staff had transferred students’ luggage to their rooms and unpacked it. This time, however, they were not unpacked, which meant the boys could finally choose which bed was theirs. It was a small luxury, but until that very moment, the boys had never been given a choice about anything regarding their time at Ennd’s Academy—no say regarding class schedule, roommate, or even when they wanted to bathe. Their two hours of daily recreation were even determined by the staff.

Phase II was supposed to be different, and so far it was. Not only did they get to choose who they lived with, they got to choose their own beds, and at Presentation tomorrow morning, they would choose their primary area of study.

Now that the lights were on, Ceril could see that the room was sparsely furnished with maroon linens on both beds. The beds sat on opposite sides of the room, and there was a large, two-sided desk dividing the room in half. The walls, floor, and ceiling shared the motif of the rest of the Phase II campus: tan stone and brushed-steel.

“
I’m not sure I like this room,” Swarley said. “It still feels just as sterile in here as it did out there.”

“
Get used to it,” Ceril said. “This is home for four more years. At least. Maybe longer, depending on your Rites.”

After a few minutes of lying still, Ceril couldn’t take it anymore. He popped upright and braced himself against the mattress. “Oh, Swarley!” he almost shouted. “I forgot to tell you what I found last week!”

“
A sense of humor? A lick of common sense? What? I’m dyin here, Ceril.”

“
A Charon’s sword.”

“
Shut up.”

“
No, really. I did. I found a technomage sword in the garden—”

“
Shut up,” Swarley repeated.

“
No!” Ceril said excitedly. He stood up and leaned against the desk so he could see Swarley better. “After that, Gramps spent the rest of the week telling me about Vennar and the other Charons. That’s what they called themselves.
Charons
. Cool, huh?”

“
Not even a little,” Swarley said, sitting up and frowning.

“
What’s the matter with you?” Ceril asked. “I thought you’d be excited for me. I mean, I found a Flameblade! An artifact!”

“
Are you an idiot, Ceril?”

“
I think we both know the answer to that,” Ceril said, trying to joke around with his friend. Swarley wasn’t having any of it. What was his deal?

“
My gods, Ceril, you should know better than to just blurt something out like that right now.”

“
I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about, Swarley.”

Swarley sighed. “What happened, Ceril?”

“
I was working in the garden when I hit something hard in the dirt. I thought it was a rock, you know, so I reached in to dig around it so I could pull it out of the ground, and I cut myself.” Ceril’s voice was getting higher and higher as he spoke faster and faster. “Gramps came over, and he saw that it wasn’t a rock. He told me it was a Flameblade. After that, he told me a lot about the Charons.”

“
You mean to tell me that you found a Flameblade in Ternia? In your garden?”

“
Uh-huh!” Ceril nodded vigorously. “Gramps said a technomage could make it catch on fire, but that the fire wouldn’t burn anyone the technomage didn’t want it to. And that the color of the fire—”

Swarley interrupted him again. “Did it ever catch on fire with you?”

“
No,” Ceril said. “But I’m not a technomage.”

“
What about Gramps?”

“
He’s not either, Swarley.”