Balancer (Advent Mage Cycle) (38 page)

So he wasn’t going to stick at trifles, eh? Then again, the man had so many projects and problems going on, he was probably eager to have one less thing to worry about. Regardless, I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Well. Looked like I’d be building an academy tomorrow.

~*~

I spent the rest of that evening tracking people down and notifying them that we had work to do the next day. My building party was to assemble early the next morning. I had asked only the people I felt were necessary to build the academy with. There was Cora, for the gardens and her expertise on the stables and meurittas’ housing. I had only a vague idea of what to do in those areas – her job was to stand at my elbow and direct me.

I’d snitched Jenna from her internship to deal with all of the metalwork. I wasn’t sure if she was excited or terrified by this sudden switch. When I was talking to her by mirror, I’d suggested cheerfully to think of it as “a class project.” If I had been within reach, I was positive that she would have hit me for that suggestion.

For the main structures, I didn’t think I needed any more help than that. I almost left the building party at those members but some instinct had me calling up Raile instead of going to bed.

“
Garth!”
he greeted in genuine pleasure. “
How are things going over there?”

“Very well, I think.” I sank further into my comfy chair, settling in. Raile would no doubt be asking a lot of questions, so I was undoubtedly going to be here a while. I filled him in on the status of my wedding, the overall plans people were making to move soon to the academy, and the general situation. “Raile, the reason I’m calling you is because I had this notion you might want to help me build the Chahiran academy.”

There was a long silence. When Raile did speak, his voice sounded a bit hoarse. “
Vonlorisen…he approved your plans?”

“This morning, actually.” I frowned slightly, trying to figure out what emotion was making his voice so rough.

“
Garth. I never thought I’d live to see this day.”
There was a choking quality to his words that spoke of unshed tears.
“I would be very glad to help you. What time should I be there?”

Infinitely glad now that I had called him, I couldn’t help but grin. “Well, we’re leaving here fairly early. I think we’ll be at the Isle about mid-morning.”

“
I’ll be there. I’ll bring some help, too. We need to do some proper burials before we break ground.”

“Yes,” I agreed quietly. “We do at that. See you tomorrow, Raile.”

Chapter
Twenty-Six: Academy

The next morning, I went to the academy to pick up Jenna and Cora. Neither of them were students any longer, of course, as both of them were done with school. This assignment would be Jenna’s last before she was officially done with her internship. But the academy was a central location for the three of us, as we lived in different parts of the city, and it seemed the best meeting place.

They were waiting by the central fountain in the main courtyard, and were so wrapped up in their conversation that for several minutes they’d didn’t realize that I’d arrived. Cora was in the official work robes of a Life Mage, and the deep red color looked good on her. She had her fair hair in a braid wrapping around her head, as she usually did when working on a project. On one shoulder she had a large bag filled to bulging. Since Mages never really needed any tools to work with, I had to wonder what was in there.

Most of my attention was drawn to Jenna. This was the first time I’d seen the robes for an Elemental Mage, and I had to admit, they weren’t quite what I was expecting. Most Mage robes were solid in color: brown for Earth, blue for Water, white for Air, etcetera. But an Elemental Mage could use all of the elements, so I had no idea what color they would choose for the robes.

Actually, they didn’t make a choice at all.

The main body of the robe was blue, the sleeves were white, there were panels of burnished gold and brown down the front and the whole robe was edged in red. It should have looked chaotic but somehow didn’t.

Jenna spotted me first and looked up with an excited smile. She bounced up from the fountain’s edge, her bobbed hair flying about as she moved. “Garth! You’re late, what happened?”

“Kartal caught me,” I answered dryly. For a girl who was nervous about this assignment only a few days ago, she was displaying some pretty amazing enthusiasm now. “Are we ready to go?”

Jenna hefted her bag a bit higher onto her shoulder. “We certainly are.”

“Good.” I took them down onto the earth path and for once, I didn’t go at breakneck speed. This morning, I just wasn’t in the mood to break any personal speed records.

“Can I see the finalized plans?” Jenna asked, looking pointedly at the rolled up blueprints in my hand.

I gave them to her, watching as she unrolled them and then tilted them so that Cora could look on as well. Both girls studied the design in silence for several minutes. “This is what Chahiran academies used to look like?” Cora finally asked.

“Well, mostly. I admit I stole a few ideas from Coven Ordan. What do you think?”

“I’m not getting a good sense of scale,” Jenna admitted while frowning at the paper in her hands. “Just how big is this thing?”

I went over the plans with them, letting them draw in a few revisions as we travelled up to the Isle. I had to focus more once we reached the Hahn Gulf, as I had to cross under the water at that point. Still, we reached the very eastern tip of the Isle in short order and I brought us up on the shoreline.

Raile I expected to see, but not Aral. Both men had clearly been waiting for at least a few minutes for our arrival and they turned to us with a smile of welcome on their faces. “Are we late?” I asked, crossing to them.

“No,” Aral responded with a pointed look at Raile, “we’re early.”

With a snort, Raile ignored the statement. “Garth, let me see those plans of yours before we get started.”

“Jenna has them,” I said with a nod of the head in the right direction. “Have you met either Cora or Jenna?”

“No, don’t believe I have.”

“Ah. In that case…” I introduced everyone all around. I’d mentioned Raile often enough to both girls that they recognized him instantly. He seemed pleased, as all men did, to have a chance to work with pretty women.

I made an earth table so that we could spread the plans out and let everyone have a chance to take a good look at them. Cora made some adjustments to the stables, gardens, and meuritta’s houses. Raile had several suggestions on improving the overall glamour that I wanted put on the Isle, as well as a few ways to make the campus more Chahiran in feel. I didn’t worry too much about the changes they were making. I was fairly positive that Vonlorisen didn’t really care what the campus looked like, as long as it was functional.

When the blueprints had been hashed out to Raile’s content, he turned away with a sigh. “We actually came early for a reason. Garth, no one has ever come back to the Isle to properly bury the dead. We have a lot of fallen ancestors here.”

A point that I had considered many times while drawing out these plans. “I know. I want the Academy to the far east of the Isle. The west will have a graveyard and memorial. Before we start building, we need to put the past properly to rest.”

Raile met my eyes for a long moment and then dredged up a sad smile. “Let’s get started.”

~*~

It took us most of the morning, even with all of our considerable power, to carefully excavate the fallen magicians and give them proper burials. It was hot, grim, depressing work and no one said a word during most of it. When we were finally done, I escaped to the shoreline and took a moment to just let the sea breeze wash over me. Here, the past seemed more distant and acceptable. Hopefully I wouldn’t have nightmares about this tonight.

I don’t know how long I sat there before Raile came to join me. He didn’t sit on the sand, as I did, but cast his levitation spell so that he could rest on thin air. For several moments we just looked out over the ocean, not speaking.

No part of me wanted to talk about the grim task I’d just completed, so I brought up something else I wanted to know instead. “Raile, Shad told me something interesting. He said that there used to be another class of Mage—a Weather Mage.”

“He’s right,” Raile answered with a long sigh. “Chahir…it doesn’t look right anymore. It’s changed a great deal. If the Weather Mages had survived the war, I’m sure that things would be very different now.”

“What happened to them, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Raile admitted heavily. “No one does. When the order was passed down for all the magicians to leave Chahir for the Isle of Strae, they weren’t able to leave it as a well-organized voluntary evacuation. It was total chaos.
Everyone
with magic was forced to evacuate immediately, at sword point if necessary. There was little time to even attempt to gather most of their belongings. Even the children were force marched to the Isle. It wasn’t until we were all assembled on the Isle, and they started doing a headcount, that we realized we were a few magicians short. One Earth Mage was missing—I figured he used the earth path to leave on his own, but that’s just a guess—and both Weather Mages. We only had two at the time; an older man that was semi-retired, and his young grandson, who wasn’t old enough yet to be trained. We never heard what happened to them.”

“They weren’t part of the battle on the Isle?” The very thought made me a little queasy. That battle was a pointless massacre, in my opinion, and to risk two irreplaceable Mages in that unholy conflagration….I let the thought stop right there.

Raile shook his head immediately, silencing my fears for the moment. “No, impossible. All of the children were taken to Coven Ordan. If they made it to Strae, the older Weather Mage might have chosen to go join the battle, but his grandson, because of his age would have been taken straight there.”

So it was safe to assume that they had never made it to the Isle. If they’d been caught or killed, someone would have heard about it. If no one had… “Maybe they went into hiding; two people might be able to disappear in all of that confusion.”

“If they had, we’d have surely seen another Weather Mage appear in Chahir by now,” Raile reasoned. “We’ve had at least two of every other class of Mage emerge.”

“But by contrast, there’s never been as many Weather Mages as any of the other classes,” I pointed out. “There’s still hope that one will appear, that blood line had to be very narrow.”

“That’s if they escaped, and survived the purging, or if the grandson married and passed along his genes.” Raile’s voice fell to a low, troubled whisper. “I don’t think they did, Garth. I think we’ve lost that class of Mage entirely.”

I was very afraid he was right, but clung onto my shred of hope in spite of reason. Even obscure side branches of families were capable of producing Mages. I was proof of that. Besides, I would rather go on looking for a Weather Mage that may not even exist, instead of abandoning all hope. I was a great proponent of hope. After all, look at the long odds I myself had faced to complete my destiny as an Earth Mage.

“Well.” Raile slapped both hands against his knees. “Shall we get to work?”

Blowing out a breath, I stood and brushed sand from the back of my pants. “Might as well. Where did my blueprints get off to?”

“I believe Cora had them last,” Raile suggested.

According to my magical sense, Cora was on the far east side of the Isle. Well, at least she was in the right spot to start building.

The Isle of Strae was a very narrow spit of land roughly two miles long, but it was by no means flat. The south-west end had the largest section of level land, but from there it gradually went up so that the far eastern section was elevated a good hundred feet above sea level. I’d debated where to put the academy several times, but I instinctively felt that the east side would better suit my purposes. No matter what warfare you wage, it’s easier to defend a place if you have the high ground. I didn’t want any more battles on this land, but I was not naïve enough to think that just because we’d sent the Star Order into shambles, we were completely out of danger.

There being no paths, I scrambled around rocky ledges and stunted trees to get to the build site. Roads. We were
definitely
going to have to build roads. This was ridiculous.

“Garth, where are you?” Aral called from somewhere up ahead.

“Coming!” I climbed up the last slope, boots sliding a bit on the loose soil.

Aral, Jenna and Cora all stood looking expectantly at me. “How much are we doing today?” Aral inquired.

“Basic structure,” I responded. “We’ll do the decorating, furnishing, and finishing touches later. Aral, your earth sense is strong enough to help me level this area, right?”

“It certainly is.”

“Excellent. Let’s get the foundation down first. Jenna, I need lots of metal rods about the length of my arm to strengthen the foundation.”

She nodded understanding and started working on the nearest earth at hand, changing its properties into metal.

Aral and I tackled the upper courtyards first, as well as the compound that would be behind the school that would hold all of the teachers’ homes. Then we did the main level. Whatever excess stone we moved, I set aside for later use. When Jenna started handing me her metal rods, I put them into the foundation at even intervals.

“What does that do?” Raile asked me, sitting on his air chair again.

“Strengthens the foundation,” I answered almost absently, my eyes never wavering from what I was doing. “I learned from an early age that the strongest things we have are never made from purely one element. Jenna, I need about twenty more rods.”

When the rods were in place, Aral and I took the stone we set aside and covered the entire area with flagstones that fit snugly against each other. As this took precision on our parts, it took longer than doing a simple foundation did and a good hour slipped past before we were done.