Masters of the Veil (16 page)

“How’s it going?”

“Very good, Master Rona.”

“Oh, really?” Rona looked suspicious. “How long were you able to keep the image?”

Sam sighed. “Honestly? Not very long.”

“I appreciate the honesty. Stand up straight.”

Sam got out of the stance and shook out his legs. They were getting a little tired.

Rona rotated his neck. “There is a reason I am teaching you this, Sam. This is the first step in the best way to use the Veil. Not the only way, but the best way. This way will leave you free of restrictions. Think of you and Her as a team, and the clearer you are in what you need, the better things will work. If things in your mind are muddled, then your grips will be muddled. Communication is key. Understand?”

Sam shrugged. “Sure.”

“You can even think of it like your football. The best way to work with your team is to be precise with your directions, no?”

Sam stretched out his lower back. “Right.”

“Think clearly, and try not to get frustrated. It only makes things harder.” Rona turned to walk away. “Try again.”

Sam tried again, doing only slightly better the second time.

After what felt like an eternity, Rona returned. Sam dripped sweat, and his leg muscles quivered.

“Take a seat.” Rona pulled out a gold chalice and handed it to Sam as they settled on the ground.

Sam looked in—empty.

“Take note.” Rona did a slight grip and waited. In a moment, a globule of water rushed though the air and landed in the chalice. “From the river.”

Sam raised his brows and looked into the chalice. “It’s clean?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks.” Sam finished the water in one gulp.

“More?”

Sam shook his head.

“So,” Rona took the chalice back, “any better this time?”

“A little.”

“How about a small task, then? Or would you like to practice honing your mind some—”

“A task is good,” Sam interrupted.

“Very well. I have just the thing.” He pulled out two more chalices. They were both gold, like the first, but the three ranged in size from the small chalice Sam had drunk from to one that was almost the size of a pitcher.

How the heck did they fit inside Rona’s robe?

“Your task will be to fill these chalices with water from the river. However, you may touch neither the water nor the chalices once I have set them down. Start with the smallest and work your way up. Any questions?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think that’s a little much for my first day?”

“Not at all. Water is the easiest element to manipulate. Sometimes it travels as ice, sometimes water, sometimes a cloud. It is used to being all places.”

“But what if I break my second-skin?” Sam looked at a belt of stars across his thumb’s knuckle. “I don’t think the snake would give me any more.”

“Assuming you could even find it again. No, I think it is best if you grow a practice plant.”

“But how?”

“I know you can feel Her; I saw it with the ice sculpture. She is there. You just have to connect. Think about Her, feel the energy, and concentrate.”

Rona placed the chalices a few feet away and sat down on a flat rock to meditate. When Sam approached to ask him a few more questions, a force halted him, like he’d walked into a padded wall. Rona, with his eyes still closed, shook his head.

Instead of getting frustrated, Sam laughed. If Rona didn’t want to help him, then he obviously thought Sam didn’t need help. It was a compliment. Pride welled up inside of him.

He picked a spot. “Okay, here we go.”

Sam waved his second-skin over the ground. He concentrated on trying to feel the Veil. After minutes of mind-throbbing deliberation, he still felt nothing. He tried hard to focus only on the Veil, but his mind had its own agenda.

He got into the stance Rona had showed him and thrust his palm out. His knees were squared off into perfect right angles, and his back was like a steel beam. It was exactly the way Rona had showed him.

Even so, he felt nothing.

Deciding to change his strategy, he resolved to think about the plant instead of the Veil. He closed his eyes and pictured a small sprout. In his mind’s eye, he watched the tiny plant spring from the ground. Miraculously, he felt the rush of energy under his fingers.

I got it!

So as not to let it get away, he imagined the plant getting larger. In his head, it got taller and broader and sprouted dozens of leaves. The rush of energy grew, and he gripped Her tighter so She wouldn’t slip away. She pulsed through his fingers like a freight train. At last, Sam saw the practice plant fully grown in his mind. It had ten evenly spaced leaves on each branch and was shoulder height. He felt the last of the energy pass through his fingers, and with a sigh of relief, he opened his eyes.

There, beneath him, was indeed a plant, but it was only large enough to shelter a few ants—baby ants.

Sam looked down at his pitiful creation. The sprout poked just far enough out of the green soil to mock him.

Sam was about to stomp on it, when he heard Rona next to him.

“It is a fine start.” Rona’s words seemed genuine, which only made Sam feel worse.

Sam snorted. “It’s a fine failure.”

“Failure is only permanent if you let it stick around.”

Sam groaned and rolled his eyes.

Rona chuckled. “May told me you’d like that one.”

Sam didn’t think it was funny. “Well, did she also tell you that I couldn’t even do the simplest of grips?”

Rona nodded, his smile growing frustratingly big.

Sam gave Rona an irritated stare. “So, can you teach me something that I can do?”

“No.”

Sam threw his hands in the air. “Does that logic make any sense to you?”

“Pushing yourself
to
your limits defines who you are. Pushing yourself
past
your limits defines who you can be.”

Sam sighed and rubbed out a kink in his thigh. “Did May tell you to tell me that, too?”

“No, that one was mine. She doesn’t hold the monopoly on good sayings, you know.” Rona gave him a calming pat on the shoulder. “I’ve also spoken to Bariv.”

“So?”

“So, I trust that he knows best, especially if you are meant for the same path of power magics. For now, why don’t you use one of Daphne’s leaves for a practice skin? I think you might do better with the river than you think.”

“Okay. But how should I even start?”

“Let me ask you this. What do you think the Veil is?”

“I—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Rona shook his head so fast his crown almost fell off. “You are my apprentice, yes, but
She
is where you find answers. Use Her.”

“I’ll try.” He paused and looked up at Rona’s smiling face. “So, water into the chalices, huh?”

“Just follow your submarine of thought.”

“
Train
of thought,” Sam corrected.

“But Sam,” Rona said with a sly smile, “trains can’t go underwater.”

Sam grinned and made a mental note never to correct Rona.

Rona went back to his rock, and Sam wandered over to Daphne’s plant. Reluctantly, he pulled off his own second-skin. Sam felt sort of nauseous after he tucked it away into the pocket of his robe. Without the twinkling black skin, his hand looked like it belonged to someone else.

He plucked one of the larger leaves from Daphne’s plant and let it wrap itself around him. After it formed a second-skin, Sam felt like he’d dipped his hand in green paint.

I like my own second-skin better.

The other students were busy with their tasks. He saw the girls holding hands and traversing the valley together in a ring, stopping at certain points. She was too far off to be sure, but Sam thought he saw some sort of bird on Daphne’s shoulder.

He joined Glissandro at the riverbank.

“Hey, Gliss.”

Glissandro smiled.

Sam wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. “How’d you do so far?”

Glissandro pinched his lips together and held up a finger.

“Well, at least you accomplished something. Did you see my practice plant?”

Glissandro grinned and nodded.

“Yeah, I know.” Sam swirled his hands in the air. “Now watch, as I mysteriously make water jump from the river.” He laughed and looked over at Glissandro. Instead of his new friend joining in, Glissandro looked like he’d just heard a terrible secret.

Sam looked from side to side, but saw nothing unusual. “What is it?”

Glissandro shook his head and went back to playing his horn.

Sam spent the rest of the morning standing next to the river, trying his best to make anything at all happen. Both his lips and the chalices remained dry. Every once in a while, when he needed a break, he looked over at the other apprentices to see how they were doing.

Petir kept stomping the ground in frustration and throwing clumps of green dirt at the practice plants.

Note to self: remind Petir of this failure in later arguments.

The girls had dug and refilled at least a hundred holes in the valley over the past few hours. Daphne really had gotten her hands on a bird, which looked tropical, and the group followed the bird around, magically digging in the spots where it pecked the ground.

After Glissandro had succeeded a second time, he sat next to the flowing water and carved symbols into the shell with his marked pebble.

Sam plopped down next to him and extended his legs, letting the current run over his feet. “What’s that for?”

After a few more short scrapes, Glissandro gave a satisfied nod and blew a long, beautiful note through the shell. With the modifications, it no longer sounded like a tortured pig, but more like a French horn.

Sam gave a sigh of relief. “Nice.”

It had been hours since he’d felt even the slightest trace of the Veil. The others, including Rona, carried on without bothering to check on him. Sam understood; he didn’t expect he’d accomplish anything, either. Peeling off the green skin and fitting it on his other hand didn’t attract the Veil any better.

At this rate, I’ll never get home.

Giving up for the time being, Sam sighed and flopped down on his back. After a few minutes of staring at the sky, he rolled over into a push-up, losing himself in the familiar rhythm of exercise. At least pushups were something he could do very well. It was on rep thirty that he glanced over and started laughing so hard he crumpled to the ground, knocking the wind from him. Next to him, Glissandro had joined in on the pushups, only

he had both arms behind his back and was doing armless pushups. Every time he went down, he blew a small toot on the snail horn in his mouth, which pushed him back upwards.

A louder note sent him flying to his feet. Sam was still laughing when he stood up beside him, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I need to learn how to do that. My friend Doug would think it was a riot.”

Glissandro waved to an invisible crowd and took a bow.

At the mention of Doug, Sam flashed back to the football field—the field where he could be again, if only he could focus.

No—thinking like that wasn’t getting him anywhere. He forced himself back to where he was, and he blurted out the first thing that crossed his mind. “Why does Rona wear that crown? Is he the king or something?”

“He
was
a king,” Glissandro played.

Sam’s brows shot up. “Really?”

“A tribal king in Africa.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. A long time ago.” Glissandro played a series of long, low notes. “He and his people lived in a territory where the tribal groups were always in battle. They were trained for constant combat.”

“That explains his physique. He could probably put up well over three hundred.”

Glissandro frowned. “Three hundred what?”

“Never mind.” Sam inched forward, sinking most of his calves underwater. “Go on.”

Glissandro played a trill. The note stopped, but the words kept showing up in Sam’s head. “He was originally the shaman for the tribe. He was able to heal all their injuries, even the serious ones. He used a special staff for healing—a staff made from a small tree that had come from the Veil. This meant that Rona’s tribe lost fewer soldiers in battle, which in turn meant that they had more men to fight in future encounters. All agreed that it was best if they made Rona king. Rona made an excellent leader; however, he refused to take the life of another man. This eventually led to his downfall.

“Even though he refused to kill, he went into battle every single time, healing his fallen warriors right on the field with his staff. He was petrified of dying—not because he was afraid, but because he didn’t want to leave his young daughter alone—but still he went. His tribe won each fight and soon all surrounding tribes feared Rona’s. They grew larger and became extremely powerful.”

Another trill, this time higher. “There was a man in his tribe who saw Rona’s mercy as weakness. This was a greedy man, a bad man. Now that the tribe was so powerful, the bad man wanted control. He came up with a plan. He snuck into the territory of a rival tribe, where he was captured and taken to the tribe’s leader. In exchange for his life, the man gave up the secret to Rona’s magic powers—his staff. The man was set free and he snuck back into his territory.

“The next night, the rival tribe declared war against Rona’s. As always, Rona went into battle, but the bad man hid in the woods. The rival tribe had a plan. Instead of attacking the warriors, they all attacked Rona. Rona tried to fight them off, but there were just too many. They broke his staff and beat Rona nearly to death. They would have killed him, but Rona’s warriors were able to save him—just barely—and win the battle, defeating the rival tribe. Rona’s tribe lost an extraordinary number of warriors. Since there was no one to nurse Rona back to health, he went into shock and fever all through the night. Miraculously, he survived, but remained unconscious.

“The bad man was able to take power and became the new king, since Rona remained in a coma for some time, powerless. Now that word had gotten out that Rona had lost his magic, the other tribes attacked. Rona’s tribe began to dwindle in number. They got desperate and began looking for someone to blame. Not wanting to have the tribe’s wrath focused on him, the bad man suggested they sacrifice Rona’s daughter to the gods in the hopes that they restore Rona to health and power. The members of the tribe were losing family—which meant they were losing their sanity. In the end, they decided that the bad man’s plan was the best course of action. In the middle of the night, they snuck into Rona’s dwelling and stole his daughter. All she could do was scream.