Chapter 2
As Karenna got out of the wagon in the main Academe courtyard, she could not help but marvel at the institution’s size. The buildings looked like massive blocks of terra-cotta colored stone, and for the most part that’s what they were. The courtyard was bare of either grass or trees, but a squat, ungraceful fountain gurgled in the center. Through the main bulk of the buildings Karenna could see the dark, leafy green of the Gypsie’s Forest. She shivered. No one was certain why the rulers of Dirantyr had decided to build the Academe so close to Gypsie territory, but the woods looked harmless enough.
Tannar, clambering out of the wagon behind her, was not very impressed. He stared around the courtyard in a “this is it?” kind of way. There were students everywhere, and more streaming in through the big double doors into the open-aired courtyard all the time. Karenna did not like crowds. Pack too many people together and one of them was bound to notice your eyes. But these children represented nearly every sixteen-year old boy and girl in the kingdom of Dirantyr. There were farmers’ sons, whore’s daughters, the offspring of shopkeepers and nobles and merchants and bakers. And here they would be taught side by side, very nearly as equals.
Karenna sighed. Of course, the class distinctions would shine out, even through the uniforms they would be given. But as the enormous courtyard began to grow ever more crowded, she felt, just for a moment, the exhilarating sense of being a part of something larger than herself.
Someone tripped and fell on her. Karenna caught him, helped steady him. He looked at her with big, mournful gray eyes. “Tank ou,” he snuffled, and wiped his nose. Both it and the skin around his eyes were red and it was hard to tell if he had a cold or homesickness. “Sorry for fa-a-a,” and then he sneezed. He sniffed and wiped his nose again, then extended his clean hand towards her. “I’m Menee Vocilia,” he said, his diction slightly better. “Have you seen my brother?”
Just then a boy, identical to Menee, stumbled into the little group. “Oh, there you are,” he said breathlessly to Menee. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Karenna looked from one of them to the other. She had never seen twins before, and now realized that she had never quite believed they existed. Both the boys had long blonde hair and slightly sunburned faces. Both of them, while short, seemed to have extremely long legs that they were constantly tripping over. And both of them had those wide, unusual gray eyes.
“I’m Karenna Morn,” she said, deciding there was not much else to do. “And this,” she gestured at where Tannar stood, watching the scene with vague disgust, “is Tannar.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” said the second twin, pumping her hand vigorously. “I’m Laroo Vocilia, and you’ve already met Menee.”
A trumpet blast called all attention to the far end of the courtyard, where two trumpeters stood flanking a man in flowing black robes. “Headmaster Tavrinal will now address the students,” announced one of the trumpeters. The robed man stepped forward, gazing over the crowd. Karenna had heard of Ashter Tavrinal, but she had expected an older man with long gray hair and a waist-length beard. One always did when meeting a wizard. Tavrinal couldn’t be much older than thirty-five, and his dark, shoulder-length brown hair showed only a hint of gray.
“Welcome to the Dirantyr Training Academe,” he said. He did not shout. He did not need to. His piercing eyes seemed to find every single student, slipping past their defenses and finding all the dirty little things they had hidden away. Karenna could have sworn he held her gaze a heartbeat longer than any of the others.
* * *
Tannar watched Headmaster Tavrinal address the students, talking about patriotism, honor, and the unique opportunities these students would experience here. Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded like propaganda. Coming from him it sounded like truth. Of course, Tannar knew that the Academe was more than just a machine for finding soldiers or mages. Literally hundreds of craftsmen, merchants, and shop owners watched promising students and offered them positions after graduation. Expensive as it was, it could not be denied that the Academe gave its students more options in life than they would have found at home.
Tannar glanced over at Karenna, who caught his gaze and cocked an eyebrow. He shrugged. Tavrinal’s voice continued to wash over them, instilling a quiet stillness rarely seen in adolescents. The twins, Laroo and Menee, listened with rapt faces. They looked too young to be sixteen. Far too young.
Tannar leaned over and whispered to the nearest one, “So, what’s your story?”
The twin looked at him, horrified. “We can’t talk during the Speech.”
Tannar heard the capital letter. “How old are you, kid?”
“Sixteen.”
Liar. “How old are you?” he said again.
The twin caught his gaze. Tannar cheated—he focused his dark stare on the boy and let his eyes flash blue for an instant. Laroo lost all resolve. He swallowed. “I’m fourteen,” he whispered. “So’s Laroo.”
“Yeah, I figured that part. What are you doing here two years early?”
Menee glanced fearfully at the talking headmaster and then around at the crowd. No one was noticing them. “Have you ever heard the name Vocilia before?”
Tannar shook his head.
“Laroo and I are the youngest of five boys. All our brothers and our dad are famous battle mages.” He sniffled, then sneezed again. “Laroo and I are just Possible Healers Class 1!” He said the words like a curse. Students who had mage potential were classified as Class 1, 2, or 3, Class 3 having the greatest probability of becoming powerful in their field of magic.
Tannar regarded Menee. If he was a Possible Healer of any class, he wasn’t doing his powers much justice. Not with a cold.
“So, what, your father sent you here early?” he asked.
The twin nodded, the picture of dejection. “He thinks that getting a jump on the Academe might…well, help somehow. Menee and I aren’t sure why but we’re not going to argue, naturally.”
“Naturally.” Tannar glanced towards Tavrinal, who was still speaking with the even, unhurried calm of one who knew how to keep a courtyard full of nervous youths still for minutes on end. “What happens if you get caught?”
Laroo didn’t answer for several seconds, and it took Tannar a moment to realize he was waiting for a sneeze to finish. The achoo came as expected, and the twin wiped his nose before answering. “Most of our teachers already know, the Headmaster probably does, too. They just sort of pretend they don’t. Father pulled strings to get us in early, and he’s the sort of man with a lot of strings to pull.”
“Ah,” said Tannar.
* * *
As the speech wound down, Karenna could hear the spell of the headmaster’s voice loosing its power. The students began to talk quietly amongst themselves and shift uncomfortably in the crowded conditions. Karenna glanced back at the gate they had come through. It was closed; they were all here.
A small, balding man stepped forward and called over the heads of the crowd. “Attention, everyone, attention please!” Hardly anyone heeded him but he went on. “If you will all please listen to me a moment, I will be dividing you into your units now.” The students began to take an interest. He cleared his throat and began to read from a scroll. “If the following students would please step over here:” he rambled off a list of names and ten students gathered at one corner of the courtyard. Presently an older student, doubtless one of the second-years, came and led them away to the dormitories.
The process was repeated several times until the ranks in the courtyard began to thin. The balding man coughed and peered over the scroll at the diminishing crowd, a sign they had learned meant he was beginning a new unit. “Ahem, Karenna Morn.” Karenna stepped over to where he indicated, looking around nervously. “Shanna Liam.” She watched as the blonde-haired girl came up next to her. The smile was still fixed firmly in place, as if it had been sewn onto her lower face. Karenna returned it, showing perhaps more of her teeth than was really genuine. “Charn Kadaz. Larch Ferris. Seema Loan.” A fat, red-faced boy; a sly-looking boy; and a thin, nervous girl joined them. “Laroo and Menee Vocilia.” Karenna smiled rather more warmly as the twins came and clustered around her like kittens around a mother cat. “Phara Batte.” A young woman, almost as tall as Karenna, approached the group warily, looking at each of them as if they had value only as target practice. “Obern Nouth.” A well-built young man with a handsome face and broad shoulders approached them. He gave Karenna a dazzling smile and her heart thumped. She looked around at her unit. There were only nine. The man cleared his throat again, peered at the paper, and said, “Tannar.”
Karenna saw him swagger towards the groups, her emotions wavering between irritation and relief. Irritation won out. She glowered at him. He smiled. The older student, a young man with a hint of a beard, came and led them away from the uninviting stone courtyard.
* * *
Their dormitory consisted of the two rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys, each furnished with three sets of bunk-beds. These were joined to the other three dormitories in the building, and all four connected to a large communal privy. Surprisingly enough, it was not too foul-smelling.
The walls were stone, the floor was stone, even the ceiling was stone. Karenna had to fight back a mounting claustrophobia. It wasn’t right, being surrounded by all this heavy, oppressive stone; it wasn’t natural. Her breath came in short gasps and she felt as if her lungs were on fire from want of air. Shudders wracked her body as she tried to breath, she was trapped.
“Are you all right?” A gentle voice near her head broke her out of her terror. She looked at the handsome boy, Obern. His hand was resting gently on her arm, his face full of concern.
Instinctively, she lowered her eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Karenna blushed crimson. “Yes, I’m all right.”
He released her. She looked self-consciously around her. They stood in the hallway just outside the girl's room; boys weren't allowed in. Shanna had already claimed the highest bunk of the one near the door. The two others, Seema and Phara, had taken bottom bunks, leaving one pair of bunk-beds, the one wedged in a corner, unoccupied. Tannar was standing in the doorway to the boys’ room, his arms crossed, glaring at Karenna and Obern.
“I’d better be going,” said Obern. “See you tomorrow, then?”
“Yes,” said Karenna vaguely, “tomorrow.” There were windows in the room, of a sort—only slits set high in the thick stone walls, no more than a couple inches wide and glass-less. The main light in the room came from the gas lamps that burned on each wall, and now the sun was setting and the room grew ever darker and gloomier. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her pointedly that she had not eaten since a breakfast of stale bread and cheese in the wagon that morning, after the nightmarish Werewolf attack. There was nothing she could do about it now, though, the kitchens wouldn’t be open until next morning.
Squashing another surge of claustrophobia, she slipped out of her worn cotton dress into the nightclothes laid out for her. Tomorrow she would put on one of the two dark green uniforms that, along with a pair of sturdy sandals for warm weather, boots for cold, and leather leggings, were provided to each student upon arrival. Even though the spring night was a mild one and the thick stone retained the heat of the sun, she wrapped herself in Tannar’s cloak and slipped onto the top bunk of the unused set, clutching her bag in both hands. She fell asleep with her head resting on the shape of the oblong box within.
To quote something a friend wrote to me once:
). Great catches, both of you, and thanks muchmuch. *gives cake* The next couple of days are going to be crazy with working on a speech I have due Friday, but after that disagreeable task is out of the way, Gypsie Eyes and the editing thereof is priority 1! (behind, you know, eating, sleeping, ect.)