The Book of Deacon (51 page)

Myranda thought she'd had enough to think
about before--trying to identify when to attack, when to defend,
and whether a counter was possible was like playing a game of chess
in a heartbeat. The position of limbs, the distribution of weight,
the speed, direction, and location of the weapon . . . she could
take an hour to consider each one and still be wrong.

All too soon, the demonstration was over and
the sparring began. She quickly found that during an attack or
while defending, things were clear. The tenseness came in the
moments when she and Lain were between attacks, quietly measuring
each other, deciding what would happen next.

Finally, it happened. Myranda had leaned in
for a downward strike. Her arms were raised, leaving her abdomen
undefended. Lain struck with what looked to be one of his slower
attacks. It most certainly did not feel like one. Myranda cried
out, dropped her weapon, and doubled over. In an instant Myn was
between them, desperate to stop them from fighting. The pain shot
through her. It was a moment before she could regain the wind that
had been knocked out of her.

"That was a kill," he said, as though his
point had not been made clear enough.

She managed to recover after a minute or two
and tried to continue, but Myn would have none of it.

"That is all for today. I imagine that Myn
will be cutting our next few sessions short. But if she can get
used to your attacks connecting, she can get used to mine," he
said.

"Don't be so sure. My attacks were not as
cruel as yours," she said.

"Oh, no? You were swinging with all of your
might. You came near to breaking a rib once," he said.

"Impossible. You didn't make a sound," she
said.

"In my line of work, it is wise to keep
silent," he said.

"I don't care how disciplined you are, you
would have doubled over, too, if I'd hit you as you did me," she
said.

Lain dropped his weapon to the ground and
grasped his right little finger with his left hand. With a sharp
twist and a horrid snap, he wrenched the digit out of place. The
merest flutter of his eyes was the only indication he'd felt
anything. He took his hand away. Myranda cringed and turned away.
When she heard a second snap, she knew that the finger would at
least be where it had started.

"Why didn't you tell me? I wouldn't have
struck so hard," she said.

"You will never learn to fight properly if
you are pulling your attacks. I want you to fight as you had
before, or I will never answer another question," he said.

A terrible guilt filled Myranda.

"Let me see your hand," she said.

"No need," he said.

"Just let me see. It is swelling already,"
she said.

A whisper of a thought was enough to heal the
minor damage he'd done. While she was at it, she healed the blow
she had taken.

"Unlike you, I can't stand idle while someone
suffers," she said.

"Sometimes standing idle is the best course
of action," he said before retiring to his hut.

Myranda gritted her teeth in anger as she
walked away. Myn canted sideways behind her, trying her best to
keep an eye on both of them. Past sundown, it would seem that the
throng of admirers had better things to do, as she was not
assaulted by them as she headed back to Deacon's hut. Myn barged in
as before, and rushed over to him to start sniffing at his tunic's
pocket.

"Stop. I said one per day. You've had yours,"
he said, protecting his pocket from her search long enough for her
to give up and retreat to Myranda for a scratch on the head.

Deacon could see that something was on
Myranda's mind.

"I suppose that things didn't go well today,"
he said.

Myranda fumed for a moment before she could
answer.

"Deacon. Lain . . . he could have done
something about the massacre," she said.

"What massacre? Ah! The one you told me
about, at Kenvard. He could have prevented it? How?" he asked.

"He found the person who leaked the
information! He knew it was going to happen!" she said.

"What did he do with the information?" he
asked.

"Nothing!" she said.

"Well, that was decent of him," Deacon
said.

"Decent of him!? I cannot think of something
worse he could have done!" she cried.

"He could have sold it to a higher bidder, or
delivered it himself to receive the payment intended for the man he
killed," Deacon said.

Myranda paused for a moment. Each was
admittedly far worse than doing nothing at all.

"But still--he could have warned them!" she
said.

"Well, I suppose you are right," he agreed.
Almost immediately, a confused look struck his face as a thought
came to mind. The same thought struck Myranda as well.

"Why would he need to?" she realized. "If the
intelligence never got delivered, the Tressons couldn't have known
about the weakness . . ."

"Indeed. One wonders how the massacre could
have happened at all. That is, if Lain's word can be trusted,"
Deacon said.

"I don't think Lain cares enough about what I
think to lie to me anymore. And after how I have acted, I don't
blame him," Myranda said.

After having a late meal, Myranda
retired.

#

The days to follow began a new routine for
her. She awoke, had breakfast, and played with Myn for an hour or
so. The little dragon was now quite the flier. Once airborne, she
could stay aloft seemingly indefinitely, and before long, she was
able to take off from the ground rather than a rooftop. Once the
flight was over, either through the fatigue or choice of Myn,
Myranda would stop by Deacon's to look for any tips before
venturing to Cresh's hut.

Once there, she would learn the next step in
a long string of earth magics. Despite the language barrier, Cresh
was a very good teacher, managing to coach her through refining the
size and direction of her tremors, identifying the qualities unique
to each type of earth, and even coaxing plants to grow faster,
larger, and stronger. This last topic was the most difficult, and
required nearly three weeks to complete. In this time, Myranda
found that she had come to understand his odd language well enough
to not rely so heavily on the gestures.

Her time with Lain was the most trying. Over
a week of battle was needed to finally convince Myn that Lain and
Myranda were not fighting out of anger again. This, however, was
not completely true. Myranda's apology for her behavior prompted no
response at all from Lain. He fought in almost complete silence
each day. She managed a pair of well-placed counter attacks,
several days apart, but they differed from her other achievements.
She stumbled upon them less in a moment of epiphany, and more
through some new instinct that she was developing. They were almost
mechanical in nature. Lain's only words on the topic were to remark
that such was as it should be.

Further trying was the fact that, with each
passing day, sparing with Lain was becoming more difficult. A bit
more speed and a bit more accuracy found their way into his
maneuvers every time they fought. He was keeping his skill level
just beyond hers. Before long, the clear openings for her to attack
vanished, and the split-second openings for counterattack were
shaved thinner and thinner.

Five weeks after starting her work with
Cresh, the dwarf indicated that it would be a fine time to offer
her the final test. There had been no warning that the end was near
until now. At least, none that she'd managed to understand. He
produced an apple from his pocket, proclaiming it to be,
apparently, the last fresh one to be had in the village. Myranda
wondered where the others had gone, and how many there had been,
considering in all of her time in Entwell she'd seen neither an
apple nor an apple tree. The latter fact, it would appear, would
soon be remedied.

Cresh took a bite of the fruit, dug his
fingers into its core, and retrieved a seed. The dwarf launched
into a speech that was apparently very amusing, as he punctuated it
with stifled laughter. A quick tremor churned up the earth beside
his hut enough to yield to the seed when he dropped it. After
pushing it into the soil, he requested that Myranda replace the
lost apple, as well as supply the pantries of the whole village.
Her success would hinge upon how the apples tasted. He expected to
be sinking his teeth into one by sundown.

"Sundown!?" she objected, hoping that perhaps
she had misunderstood him.

The dwarf replied with the beginnings of yet
another long-winded exposition on one subject or another, but the
vigorous nodding that preceded it was all the answer she needed.
Had Myranda known that the test would be on this day, she would
have arrived earlier. The sun was only a few hours from the
horizon. She set to work immediately. The method was one she had
practiced time and time again. She would mingle her energies with
those of the seed, coaxing it to sprout. Once the growth had begun,
she would provide for its every need from her own strength. Until
now, she had only done so with weeds, and in some occasions,
flowers. The tree required far more nurturing than any of the
previous plants.

Halfway through the first hour, the sapling
of the tree had emerged from the ground, and leaves were beginning
to form. This test was unlike the others. Whereas the fire and wind
were enormously taxing to keep fed for the appropriate amount of
time, they required only one type of energy. The tree's needs were
many and varied, requiring her to call upon nearly all of what she
knew of earth magic to meet them. The elements in the soil had to
be drawn into the still-growing roots at many hundreds of times the
speed that nature would have allowed. Similarly, Myranda's spirit
took the place of the sun as the source of energy for the leaves to
feed on. Only water was provided by Cresh, as water was not the
point of this test.

Another half-hour saw a tree as tall as
she.

The task of growing the tree, while growing
in intensity, decreased in complexity as the end grew near. Though
dizzied by the energy she'd spent, Myranda was able to push enough
of the spell to the back of her mind to be able to appreciate the
completion of her handiwork. It was a sight to behold as new cracks
in the bark appeared. The leaves shriveled and dropped away onto a
growing mound beneath the tree. Almost immediately, the greenish
brown leaf-buds reappeared, followed in turn by the brilliant white
apple blossoms. A breath of wind that she conjured pollinated the
flowers and the resultant fruits plumped before her eyes. She cut
off the flow of energy just as the last of them reddened.

Through the virtue of her magic, she had
brought this tree through two dozen seasons in the space of an
afternoon.

The sun had, by rights, set a few minutes
prior, but as the sky was till rosy with its light, Cresh decided
that the time requirement had been met. He reached for an apple,
but found the lowest of them just be out of reach. He raised the
crystal-tipped root he used as a staff. The tree lowered its branch
as though it had a mind of its own, and shook an apple free into
his hand. The dwarf sniffed the fruit thoughtfully before taking a
bite, considering the flavor as a connoisseur might sample a fine
wine. Finally, he declared the endurance test to be complete.

Myranda heaved a sigh of relief, as she had
far more strength and clarity left now than she had entering into
any of the other tests of dexterity.

Myranda was led inside of his hut, and the
door was shut behind her. A table was in the middle of the room,
and a chair had been grown before it. Atop it was set a bowl filled
with gray sand. A pair of empty bowls was set beside it. Cresh
spread a pinch of the sand on the palm of his hand to reveal that
there were actually fine grains of black and white mixed thoroughly
enough for the bowl's contents to seem uniformly gray. He then
produced a blindfold, which he secured over her eyes. She was to
separate the black and white into the separate bowls without the
use of the eyes or her hands. With that, Cresh retired to another
room.

She reached out with her weakened mind. The
differences in the energies of different types of earth were
difficult to detect in the clearest of mind. Despite her many
impairments, the black grains were soon clearly unique enough in
her mind's eye to separate. The spell to manipulate earth was one
she had learned well, but with so much of her concentration devoted
to keeping the two types distinct, when the time came to move them,
they seemed as heavy as lead weights. Moving them more than a few
at a time seemed impossible, but she pressed on. By the time the
last white grain found its way to its own bowl, she felt as though
she'd moved a mountain.

Cresh pulled the blindfold from the weary
girl's head and patted her on the back, chuckling. She opened her
eyes to the light of a torch and smiled weakly at the reason for
his laughter. While she had succeeded in separating the sand, she
had been less precise where the sand landed. Rather than in the
respective bowls, she had managed to scatter the sand anywhere but.
The only clear spot was the bowl that the sand had formerly
occupied. Fortunately Cresh was satisfied. He handed her an apple
and helped her to her feet and out the door.

The hour was late. None of the admirers and
well-wishers were awake--save Deacon, who had remained despite
being required to wait outside of the hut. He helped her to her hut
and set her on her bed.

"Well, this is a refreshing change. You
finished a test and did not need to be carried home," he said.

"A personal best," she said, lying down. Myn
hopped atop her immediately.

"Sleep well. When you recover, you shall
begin work on the final elemental magic," he said.