Kin of Kings (The Kin of Kings Book 1) (21 page)

“This isn’t what you want to hear, but if I had the ability to feel anything, I might be suspicious as well.”

“You’re right. That’s not what I want to hear.” She looked away from the horizon to stare straight at him. “You were close with Nick?”

Basen kept watching Lake Kayvol become ever more golden. “About as close as two roommates can be who’d only just met,” he said with considerable embarrassment. “I realize I feel more emotional about his passing than I should.”

“He was your roommate?” she whispered, as if her question was some sort of secret. “It must be difficult to live there now. Will you be moving?”

“I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Has Terren spoken to you about anyone taking Nick’s room? I’m sure it would help you to have company.”

He finally tore his eyes away from the lake so he could judge her expression. As he’d expected, her arched eyebrows matched her tone. She wanted to take Nick’s room.

“You despise your current living arrangements so much that you’d live in a dead man’s room with another man you barely know as your roommate?”

She turned back to the horizon and fell silent. He did as well.

They spoke no words for the better part of an hour, and eventually he forgot the question.

“You know it’s the final day of evaluation week for you mages and warriors,” she said. “The most important day to show your abilities.”

“I know.”

“Then you should really get to the dining hall before breakfast hours are over.”

“I stopped wanting to eat recently. Why aren’t you there?”

“Because I realized I’m happier being hungry than going to the dining hall. I feel like I carry a plague whenever I go there. Everyone hopes I don’t come near them, many leaving the table as soon as I sit.”

They watched the sunrise in silence for another half hour until Annah walked off without warning. He watched her go. When she was halfway to the ramp, she stopped and looked back.

“I would rather live with you…if you’d have me.” Her blue eyes glistened with vulnerability as she awaited his answer.

Sanya seemed to think she and the rest of the Academy would be better off with Annah living with more people to watch her, and clearly Terren agreed by putting her in a house with the students he trusted most. It didn’t seem prudent for Basen to ignore all that.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

It pained him to see sadness break across her face.

*****

Penny frowned at Basen as he came to class late, but it was a sympathetic frown that showed she understood. She seemed to be lecturing about the different uses of bastial energy. Like most other days of evaluation week, she probably would test them after lunch to see how well they retained the information.

It was fortunate that Basen knew bastial energy even better than he knew how to use a sword, for he couldn’t focus on much except the letter from his father he’d picked up at the mail building and read on his way to class. His father had joined the army as an advisor until a more specific role was determined. He would be staying at the castle in Kyrro City and wouldn’t be hungry any longer. It was what his father had wanted since coming to Kyrro, and the good news gave Basen an appetite again. Now he regretted not going to the dining hall for breakfast.

He would visit the castle tomorrow to see his father and Alabell and hopefully gain enough distance from the Academy to find himself again before he returned and learned what group he was in. There was still one day left to prove himself, and he would push himself to try his hardest.

As expected, Penny issued a written test when they returned from lunch. On it were easy questions like, “Why does red represent bastial energy and green represent sartious energy? What was the catalyst to the war? Who is the current king, and how was he appointed?”

Basen supposed the history questions were intended to ensure that the students weren’t fools who knew nothing but how to cast fireballs, for that would reflect poorly on the school. But the final question seemed a little too easy: “What color is bastial energy?”

The first question already confirmed what he thought he knew—it was red. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized there must be some sort of trick to the answer. He tried to think back to his lessons at Tenred’s castle, but he couldn’t recall anything about the color of the energy. It was clear when he gathered it, but then why did red represent it? Perhaps because clear wasn’t easily seen and the energy was hot, so red would make sense? That’s what he answered for the first question, so he hoped it was right.

He didn’t know its true color and hoped Penny hadn’t gone over it while he’d been distracted by his thoughts.

He wrote, “Red.”

When everyone was finished, Penny collected their parchments and quills, then brought their group to the training area adjacent to the classroom. Basen’s eyes were drawn to the wood sticking out of the center training dummy, the ribbon at the apex taunting him. No mage had burned it without destroying the wood. He hadn’t made any attempts and still had no thoughts as to how it could be done.

They gathered around Penny. The young teacher wore a proud smile. “You’ve all done well.” But her smile faded with her next breath. “Keep that in mind during this final test, which tends to make students feel more incompetent than they actually are. For the first-years who don’t know what’s about to happen, let me explain. All of you are about to be given an opportunity to change your final score by showing me how much you’ve improved at what you’re least skilled at. You’ll go one at a time. Does anyone wish to go first?”

No one raised a hand.

“Then I’ll have to choose at random.” Penny glanced at her scroll. “Effie.”

“Pig shit, that was random,” Effie muttered to Basen.

“What was that?”

“I’d be happy to go first, Mage Penny. What would you like me to do?”

“I’d like you to make a sartious wall.”

This confirmed what Basen already had guessed. If her worst skill was casting one of the most difficult spells—one that no other student in their evaluation group could do—then Effie already had proven herself good enough for Group One.

She pressed her lips together and a fine dust of sartious energy swirled around the tip of her wand as she collected it from the air and ground. It darkened as she continued to pull it together, looking like a green snowball. More SE was needed for this one spell than a wand could hold, but she worked quickly to gather it. For all Basen knew, Effie could’ve been using an empty wand all this time. Having sartious pellets didn’t matter much to a mage who’d become strong enough to gather it from the air.

It came together and began to take shape—a green square as thin as paper floating in front of her wand.

“Faster,” Penny said.

Effie’s face tightened, but the speed at which the energy hardened didn’t change. She huffed and eventually made a floating block dense enough so that it no longer was translucent. The square was only a few inches thick and had a diameter the length of her forearm, but it was an impressive sight nonetheless to anyone who knew anything about the difficulty of gathering SE.

“Hold it steady as long as you can.” Penny walked to it and tapped it with her wand. A clink sounded as if it were metal.

Effie’s arm shook. She bit down on her lip. Then she let out her breath, and the floating block of energy crashed onto the sand.

“Good,” Penny said. “Now break it apart.”

Effie waved her wand and the block turned to dust, demonstrating how much easier it was to destroy than create, a sad truth everyone, not just mages, learned at an early age.

“Who would like to go next?”

Basen was too curious about his weakest skill to wait any longer and raised his hand. Whatever it was, he looked forward to the challenge.

“All right, Basen. I want you to meditate.”

Panic seized his heart. “What?”

“Meditate.” She moved closer. “Go ahead.”

“There must be something more difficult you’d have me do,” he tried.

“No, I just want you to meditate.” Many seemed confused as they whispered to each other. Others were audibly annoyed he’d get something so easy.

Shit
.
What did Nick tell me about meditation?

It was like breathing, but with energy. It went into his body and out, but without his mind working to pull it in and push it out.

Penny held her hand on his back. “Begin.”

He mimicked what he figured meditation would feel like to Penny. He pulled in a low amount of bastial energy, trying to draw it into his chest evenly from the air around him. He held it there for a breath, then pushed it out.

He glanced at Penny for a clue as to how he was doing, but she had her eyes closed with her head down. He continued drawing in the energy and pushing it out, though it was like trying to draw perfectly straight lines. There were times when he pulled the energy quicker than he meant, or pushed it out with too much force. He hoped normal meditation was similar.

Penny soon stopped him. “Basen, do you know how to meditate?”

His heart sank. “Not exactly. It’s not something taught to Tenred mages.”

The sounds of surprise from his classmates only worsened his embarrassment. Penny shook her head as she made marks on her scroll.

There goes my chance at Group One.

He moved to the back where he didn’t have to deal with people staring at him. Effie came to join him.

“I can’t believe you’ve kept up with me without being able to meditate.”

“If only that mattered to my overall rating. Which group will they put me in now?”

Effie rubbed her neck underneath her wavy dark hair. “Certainly not Group One, but I don’t know besides that. You’ve done well at everything, but everyone knows how to meditate, so I don’t know how they’ll score that. How did you do on the written test?”

“That depends. What color is bastial energy?”

“What did you write?”

“Red.”

“That’s all you wrote?”

“Yes.”

She giggled and shook her head. “Penny is not going to like that. Didn’t you hear her this morning? She told us that no matter what, don’t write only one sentence for the last question and especially not one word.”

“God’s mercy, I’m going to be put in Group Ten with the mages who can barely cast anything. So what color is bastial energy?”

“It can be red when it’s at its hottest and most concentrated, which is why we use red to represent the color, but no average mage could gather enough bastial energy to see it as red. It’s clear normally, then it becomes white the hotter and more concentrated it gets. Eventually it darkens to red.”

They watched the others as Penny asked everyone to do something different: cast the largest fireball possible, aim from twenty yards away, shoot three fireballs in quick succession, gather bastial energy and hold it steady at a safe distance.

“You haven’t tried to burn the ribbon yet,” Effie said. “How are you planning to do it?”

Basen chuckled bitterly. “Do you mean how am I planning to fail? Like everyone else. With a fireball.”

She pinched his side hard, even twisting his flesh maliciously.

“Ow!” He didn’t mean to be so loud, turning the heads of nearly the entire class. He apologized as his cheeks became hot, then waited for them to turn back around.

“Effie, what in god’s world was that for?”

“Do you want to be in Group Ten?”

He didn’t answer her rhetorical question, eyeing her fingers warily.

“Don’t you want to be in Group One with me?”

“Not if you’re going to pinch me.”

She slapped him, sending his face to the side.

“What the bastial hell, Effie!” he groused, holding a hand to his stinging cheek. “Damn, how many men have you slapped? There was a lot of practice behind that.”

She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Enough with the jokes! Are you ready to be serious?”

“Yes.”

She let go of him. “I just realized you finally used a Kyrro expression: bastial hell. You’re learning to adapt. The next step to being more like the rest of us at the Academy is to take advantage of your talents and think differently. Everyone here uses whatever they can to be noticed by their instructors. Now, I might have an idea for a spell you can use. I know that you’re not as knowledgeable as I am about what spells there are, and you’re not as experienced at casting, and you’re skill with sartious energy is still at a beginner level, and your meditation—”

“God’s mercy, can you get to the but?”

“But! You are absolutely exceptional at what, Basen?”

“Manipulating bastial energy.”

“So what spell can you cast that will destroy the ribbon and not the wood?”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“Because if it works, you don’t want it to be because I told you what to cast. Penny might even have a rule against it, for all I know.”

He supposed that was true.