Ember (19 page)

After a few seconds like this I couldn't help
but let my eyes wander to the path below.

When are Ikovos and Jaden going to be back?
They promised they’d be home yesterday. Should I tell Cornelius the
direction they went in? Will they be in danger if I don’t? Were
they hurt? Or worse, dead?

A chirp came below me. The large glossy eyes
were staring into mine.

“I know, I'm worrying too much, right?”

He chirped again and I had to blink back my
surprise.

“You're not a normal animal, are you?”

He began cleaning his face with his
hands.

“That's okay,” I said, “neither am I.” I
sighed and sunk down further. “I'm not usually this irrational
though.”

He kept cleaning.

“But, honestly, how can you blame me? They're
practically the only people I know here.”

He stopped his washing and looked out at the
trees. It would be dark soon. After all my training I should
probably attempt to get some sleep.

Before me and my new friend went back inside,
I decided to give him a name. After a few tries he seemed satisfied
with Tanis Ven, a name I had read in a story a while back.

Once we were both lying down, Tanis on the
pillow beside me, I fell asleep almost instantly.

*

The next morning I found myself racing down
the hall for breakfast. Last night I'd had the same dream as the
day before. I woke up around two with a heavy pulse from a
nightmare that was bad enough to keep me up for the next few hours.
Eventually I got back to sleep. By the time I woke again it was
almost time for me to meet Holdan for breakfast. So I changed as
quickly as possible and headed out.

I was definitely attracting more attention
with the running thing, but I got to the cafeteria quickly enough,
and was pleased to see Holdan waving me over.

At least, somewhat pleased.

He was sitting at a table with at least five
other boys that were, now,
also
looking at me. I waved as
casually as possible then pointed over to the coffee counter.
Holdan nodded his acknowledgment then turned back to the other
boys.

I headed for the coffee as promised, trying
to figure a way out of eating at a table full of people. I couldn't
think of any good ideas, so I took a deep breath, put on my best
fake smile, and walked over to sit beside Holdan. It wasn't, after
all, the first time in my life that I'd had to feign social
aptitude.

“Hi!” said Holdan brightly beside me. He was
dressed the same today, olive-green shirt, leather pants, no
jacket.

“Hello.” I responded, smiling back.

“How was your night?” he asked.

I thought better than to mention the
nightmare. “Great . . .” there was a slight pause, “and you?”

He nodded as he turned back to his food.
“Good, good.”

I looked across the table uncomfortably.

“Oh!” said Holdan. “I should introduce you
all.” As I tried to keep the breathing thing going, Holdan motioned
to the boy on his left. “This is Nathan, Nate for short.”

A very young, auburn-haired, boy poked his
head out and grinned at me.

Holdan continued. “Derrith.” I looked to the
next boy who was
much
older and got a slight nod. Holdan's
hand moved across the table. “Then we have Jacob, Trevor, and
Vince.”

“Vincent,” corrected the last boy.

The three across must have been close in age,
eleven or twelve maybe?

“And this, everyone else,” they all looked at
me, “is Evelyn.”

I smiled.

“Well, we
know
that, Holdan,” said the
auburn-haired boy. A couple of the others laughed.

Derrith, the older one, wrapped his arms
around Nathan, covering his mouth. “Why don't you put a sock in it,
little man.”

Blushing slightly, I started to grab some
food.

Holdan turned to me. “So, nice weather we're
having, huh?”

I swallowed my bite then looked at him
excitedly. “You like the rain?”

He threw out his hands. “Of course, rain is
the best.” He popped a grape into his mouth. “You?”

I smiled. “Oh, I love it.” He looked
pleased.

The table was silent for a moment as we all
ate.

“So, Evelyn,” started one of the boys across
the table, his eyes were wide. “I heard you came here with Ikovos
and Jaden . . . What was that like?”

The two boys on either side of him and the
younger one leaned in and looked at me eagerly.

“It was okay,” I said, trying not to reveal
my real, emotionally unfounded, answer on the subject. They all
seemed rather dissatisfied with the response.

“Just okay?” asked the middle boy again.

“Nothing exciting?” complained Nate.

I couldn't figure out what they were getting
at.

The older boy, Derrith, waved them down and
looked at me. “You'll have to forgive these guys. They don't see a
lot of Ikovos, or Jaden, so they're always imagining they lead
these ridiculously adventurous lives.” He finished with a half
smile.

I responded immediately. “Why aren't they
around a lot?” I directed the question to Derrith, but Nathan
answered.

“Because they're the best, of course.” A
piece of muffin flew into his face. It came from one of the boys
across the table, Jacob.

“Not better than the masters, you idiot.”

Nathan countered back, wide-eyed. “
So.
I heard that Jaden took on
five
Meoden all by himself.”

Trevor spoke up, directing his claim towards
me. “I heard that one time, they got captured and tortured for
days.” All the boys turned to him as he spoke, his voice lowering
to an accentuated gasp. “It's true. Twenty, no,
thirty
Meoden jumped them while they were sleeping and took them away to a
dungeon.”

I leaned in as his voice got quieter.

“Then, the Meoden held them there and tried
to draw information out of them for three whole days . . . that's
why Jaden has that scar on his neck.” The younger boys and I all
nodded in realization. Trevor continued his story. “People say they
had to fight their way out against dozens of Meoden. And once they
were free, they swore never to speak of it again.”

I heard Holdan scoff next to me and for the
first time noticed that he and Derrith did not seem as engrossed in
the story.

“If they swore never to speak of it,” started
Holdan, “then how did you hear the story?” While he grinned,
apparently happy for disproving the story, Derrith looked at
me.

“Part of what they're saying is true. Jaden
and Ikovos are the most powerful artisans here.” It was all I could
do to keep my eyes from widening at the words. He continued. “To
answer your question from before, they're not here often because
they do a lot of errands for Master Thoran and Master Cornelius . .
. Nothing too exciting though.” He eyed the younger boys teasingly
as he said the last part.

Holdan looked back to me. “So you probably
had a really boring trip, right?”

I cocked my head, the conversation was moving
much too fast for me to keep up with.

“The trip here, with Jaden and Ikovos,” he
clarified.

“Oh,” I exclaimed, then cleared my throat.
“It was ah . . . yeah, it was pretty boring—” I scratched the back
of my head. “You know, walking and . . . well, pretty much just
walking.”

The young boys sighed disappointedly, but
Holdan seemed satisfied. I noticed Derrith had a single eyebrow
raised at me. I tried to ignore it. He couldn’t be
that
perceptive.

I went back to eating and, after a little
small talk, Holdan informed me that we should get to training.

As we walked through the busy halls, I
couldn't keep my mind off of what I'd heard at breakfast. Not the
stories the boys had told. Not Holdan's all-too-unsubtle opinions.
What Derrith had said. What seemed to all of them to be casual
fact.

Jaden and Ikovos. They weren't just two of
the regular guys around here, they were special . . . special out
of a bunch of other incredibly important people. That made them
like . . . really, really important. I didn't think of them like
that before. I mean, I thought they were important, but . . . well,
I just thought there were
more of
them.

I rolled my eyes dismissively, but the
anxiety was building.

I can't believe I spent the night with
them . . . people that important. In fact, I can't even believe I
hung out with them . . . or even talked to them for that
matter.
My heart started racing as the memories of a certain
situation poured back.
Oh my god, I yelled at him . . . and I
cuffed him! The second most powerful, fire-controlling,
magic-using, offense artisan . . . person, and I cuffed
him!!!

Feeling very light-headed all of a sudden, I
grabbed onto the fence post beside me.

“Are you okay?” asked Holdan, resting a hand
on my shoulder.

His casual touch brought me quickly back to
the present. I straightened up immediately and saw that we were
already in the training ring.

“I'm fine,” I said after the black spots had
cleared. Then, in a move to discourage his handling, reached down
to grab a sword.

After a second he did the same. “All right
then, let's get to it.” I stepped back a few feet as he opened his
arms, flipping the hilt around playfully. “Feel like sparring
yet?”

My eyes widened, but I quickly covered it
with a pleading smile. “Do we have to?” It came out more like:
please don't make me.

He grinned back mischievously. “No, but only
if you promise to do it tomorrow,” he said and quickly added,
“
without
complaining.”

I eyed him skeptically. I hardly thought I'd
been complaining. “It's a
probable
deal.”

He held his coy smile. “Assuming that's the
best deal I'm gonna get, I guess I'll agree.”

I smiled happily. I would be killing myself
tomorrow, but for now I was free of both sparring and nagging.

*

We spent the next few hours practicing on the
dummy. Every once in a while last night's dream would pop into my
head, but for the most part Holdan kept me distracted. He was a
very talkative person.

When a few glints of sunlight started to show
through the clouds neither of us was very pleased. We decided to
take a lunch break, with Holdan promising a shadowed spot. We ended
up at one of the tables beneath a nearby tree.

“So where did you live before here?” asked
Holdan as he took his last bite of food. I wasn't even half-way
through mine.

“Tiver,” I said. After I did I wondered if I
should have shared the information. . . .
Then again, what else
would I have said?

He nodded. “Oh, okay, I've been there
once.”

I cocked my head. “Really? Then maybe we've
met each other before.”

He crossed his arms in front of him on the
table, relaxing a bit. “Well, that depends. How old are you? . . .
if you don't mind me asking.”

“Ah, seventeen. You?”

“Twenty-three,” he replied, holding his gaze
on me. “I went there about five years ago, so I guess you would
have been pretty young.”

I nodded, then started picking at my food
absently. “So . . . yesterday you said you could use magic,
right?”

“Yes.” I could hear the smile in his
voice.

“Then, are you a defense artisan or an
offense artisan?” I looked up.

“Offense.” He grinned wider. “You seem to
know a lot about this for being here so short a time.”

This confused me at first. Until this moment
I hadn't considered that, other than the few people I had met,
probably no one else knew of my first visit or even how I came to
be here. As my mind tried to wrap itself around the thought, I
realized that Holdan was still looking at me waiting for an
explanation. I grabbed for the first thing that came to mind.

“Well, I've been around Jaden a lot so . . .
yeah.” As soon as the words passed my mouth I looked down and
widened my eyes.
Where did that come from? Why in the world did
I just say that? It doesn't even make sense.

I was a bit surprised when I heard Holdan
laughing and had to look up.

“I guess that would do it,” he said,
chuckling. “He brags about his ‘
amazing skills’
enough for
anyone to become an instant expert on the subject.”

As he started to laugh again my eyes
narrowed.

He never bragged about it. I could barely
even get him to talk about it, let alone brag!

I shook out my head, checking myself at the
instant reaction.

Evelyn, jeez, what's your problem? It's not
that big a deal.

By the time Holdan was finished I held a
regular smile, though I couldn't help quickly changing the
subject.

“I think I'm all done.” I said, pushing away
my plate.

He smiled, obviously completely unaware of my
minor implosion. “Okay, then. Ready to start up again?”

I slipped quickly off the bench. “Yep.”

*

For the rest of training I had to concentrate
on keeping my mind off of, breakfast, lunch, and, more
specifically, why I kept bringing up a really,
really,
stupid subject.

At one point, in an attempt to distract
myself, I asked Holdan to show me some magic. He promised to do so
only after I kept my deal to spar with him. All around he was a
pretty good teacher. In fact, I got so engrossed in the lessons
that I lost track of time. Before I knew it we were practicing in
barely-visible darkness.

“Now,
this
,” said Holdan, stopping
suddenly amidst a lunge, “is when magic really comes in handy.”

I waited for an explanation. Both of us were
breathing heavily, releasing visible puffs of white into the
air.

“It's a lot easier to fight in the dark when
you're holding a flaming sword,” he finished.

I laughed slightly, nodding my agreement.
“That does make sense.”