Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (46 page)

The big day arrived, and with the good wishes and
back-claps of the five boys and two girls, Lorrimer headed for his
re-examination.

The whole group waited on the lawn, fidgeting,
pacing, making comments that nobody heard. Peashot was the worst affected. He
began throwing stones with uncharacteristically bad aim, then paced, lay down,
paced, climbed and fell from a tree, and finally took himself for a walk. He
was back to check perhaps before Lorrimer had even begun his exams. The rest
tried to make small talk, but it all seemed too small in comparison to the
answer they awaited. It was the longest morning of the year; in Peashot’s
estimation, about two-and-a-half weeks.

Finally Lorrimer emerged, looking haggard. All
eyes fastened on his, all asking the same question. He strode quietly towards
them, put on a shy smile and nodded.

The lawn erupted in whoops and cheers and congratulations.
They all clapped his back, Liru hugged him and Delwyn planted a kiss on his
cheek that produced a dramatic change of colour. The princess, it appeared, was
losing her hold.

The girls arranged a party at Liru’s house. Her wealthy
parents had a mansion large enough to accommodate them all. Another four of her
friends would be there, so there would be dancing partners for all.

“And this time you will dance,” she informed
Peashot. The small boy was so happy over Lorrimer’s success, which he saw as
largely due to his own coaching, that he was prepared to suffer a dance or two.

“As long as I don’t have to dance with someone
taller than me.”

“Well I’m shorter than you, so you can dance with
me.”

Peashot considered this, stood next to her, and had Aedan
measure to confirm the assertion, then nodded his approval.

The party was an explosion of colour and music, and Mardrae
hospitality left them all somewhat overwhelmed. Liru’s father, a dark-skinned
man with strong arms and piercing eyes, spoke to them individually, expressing
his pleasure at being able to host them. He knew the names of everyone who had
been involved in the fight, and before leaving them to their celebrations,
thanked them for defending, among others, his daughter. Even Hadley, though he
remained aloof, seemed impressed by the man.

There was more food than they had ever seen at a
private party – and it was all for them. Using a basic sign language Wildemar
had taught, Peashot tried to convey cryptic instructions to Lorrimer about
stealing some food. He was furious when Liru raised her hands and signed, “Wait
… wait … go!” just as the butler turned his back.

Lorrimer acted like he had never seen a sight as
beautiful as that heavily laden table. Until Delwyn entered the room – tall,
graceful, smiling gently – and then he almost forgot to eat at all.

Peashot found that, with Liru showing him the
steps and matching his stroppiness with steel of her own, dancing was actually
not so bad. Lorrimer had clearly been practising. He was now able to execute a
few of the more complicated moves with a surprising level of control over his
gangly legs. Delwyn was enchanted.

No one felt inclined to sleep when the musicians
left. The whole group took pillows and blankets and went up onto the roof where
they watched stars and told stories and jokes that got progressively thinner.
But the foggier the brains and the worse the jokes, the more the laughter. When
the sun rose, it warmed them enough to nudge the whole party down to the dorms
where they slept until lunch.

It was then that Aedan met Liru’s mother. Even
from across the room, he saw the pain of loss etched into her face. Deep gullies
divided her brows and shadows lurked beneath hollow eyes. It was a slaver
attack, many years ago, in which her eldest daughter had been taken – he had
not forgotten what Liru had told him – but in the mother’s eyes the grief was
still fresh.

“Already I am in your debt, Aedan,” she said, “and
more of you I will not ask. But my Liru has told me that we share wounds from
the slavers, and word of your growing skill, it has reached my ears from many
mouths. I want you to know that if it ever happens that you are able to strike against
the flesh of Lekrau, you will be acting not only for yourself and for Thirna, but
for Mardraél too. You will strike for the thousands who have lost and the
thousands who fear to lose the ones that they love. And though I have no place
to ask it, if you ever find my Yulla for me, you will have the rights of a son
in my house. She was the gentlest of souls. The last thing I heard from them as
they dragged her away, it was that I should not worry for she would be sold to
a respectable brothel.”

Though her eyes had looked drained of every last
tear, they flooded again. She turned and hurried from the room.

Aedan slipped away and climbed the stairs to the
roof where he sat and gazed out over the rooftops and the distant plains,
sombre and still under a deep and endless sky.

“Did she upset you?” It was Hadley.

Peashot and Liru arrived too. They sat down beside
Aedan, looking out over the western grassland to the Pellamine ridge.

“Yes,” said Aedan. “But it was a good reminder.” His
eyes searched the vast space for a while before he continued. “One day I am
going to find Kalry’s grave, and I’ll plant flowers on it – blue rainbells,
those were her favourite. If I can, I’ll find Liru’s sister. And then …” he took
a deep breath, “then I’m going to give Lekrau something to fear.”

“I know you are,” said Peashot. “Just don’t think
you’re going alone.”

Aedan began his second year with a level of determination
none of the masters had seen before. The classes were more difficult, the
material more extensive, and the new languages, Vinthian and Sulese, were
challenging, but he ate through it all like fire in the brushwood.

Several more incursion reports only served to raise
his sense of urgency. The Fenn scouting forays were escalating both in
frequency and size. And to the west, a Lekran raid near Port Breklee had shaken
the locals badly. Over thirty families were taken from an undefended inland
town only weeks after their soldiers had been reassigned to fortify patrols
around Castath.

Aedan was growing convinced that he would be called
to action well before his training was done. As he saw the walls rising up
around the city and listened to the ringing of steel from forges that did not
sleep, he knew that it was no longer a question of if, but when.

Dun introduced them to the heavier weaponry – war
hammers, maces, and flails. As before, he spent a lot of time on footwork and
balance, ensuring that missed swings did not turn the apprentices around and
expose their backs. He spent no less time on breathing, as heavy weapons tended
to result in clamped lungs and rapid exhaustion.

They began to work with siege weapons too –
catapults, ballistae, battering rams and even assault towers – studying the use
as well as the construction and inherent weaknesses of various designs.

While most of the boys thought primarily of the
Fenn, Aedan imagined a Lekran soldier in front of him every time he lifted a
mace, and a Lekran ship whenever he aimed the ballista.

There were many practical exercises now. The boys
regularly accompanied rangers, senior apprentices and marshals on scouting
expeditions. During these they were always heavily armed and took every
precaution, always searching for potential Fenn ambushes and never approaching
from an exposed position.

One group, which included the boys from Malik’s
dorm, became too bold during one of their approaches and paid for it. While
riding up to a thicket from which a finger of smoke rose, the lead ranger
suddenly coughed and died with a shaft quivering his chest. At the same time,
Cayde’s pony staggered and fell, an arrow through its neck. Everyone fled
except one of the marshals who dragged Cayde onto the back of his own horse and
carried him to safety.

They later said that when the pony went down, men
had broken from cover in an obvious attempt to secure a prisoner. The smoke had
not been a mistake betraying the Scouts, but a lure. Cayde, along with many of
the other boys were more than a little shaken by the incident.

Though Aedan never encountered any of the
foreigners, he twice came upon old campsites where Fenn reconnaissance was
suspected, and he once discovered a corpse nearby.

The apprentices were also taken to see investigations
and arrests within and around the city where they could observe the
grey-cloaked marshals exercising some of the skills that had made them legendary.
The real work of the grey marshals – the watching of surrounding nations and
pre-empting of danger – was something the young apprentices would not observe
for many years.

It was during one of the local patrol outings that Aedan
decided to ask a favour.

Over the past weeks, suspicion had been growing to a
horrible certainty. His father’s threat was turning out to be real. Twice he
had caught glimpses of coordinated movement around him. The first time he had
doubled back, sprinted at his supposed follower and dodged past. The second
time he had walked right into the trap. Men rose up from dirty corners ahead,
and flooded in from behind. They almost caught his feet as he scrambled up a
blocky wall and escaped over the roofs. It had been very close.

He was patrolling the same area now with two
marshals when the sensation of being tailed crept up on him. After glancing
behind, he asked the marshals if they would help him. They agreed and took
another route, while Aedan headed on, shadows closing around him.

He appeared at the top of an alleyway a short while
later, bolting like a rabbit, with a pack of half-a-dozen club-wielding men close
behind. The pursuers were gaining on him. He put on a burst of speed, took the
corner, dashed past the two heavily-armed marshals, and turned around to watch
the collision.

The gang might as well have tried to run through
the city gate – closed. With iron-capped quarterstaves, the marshals struck clubs
from numbed hands with beguiling ease. Aedan marvelled. The blows fell with
speed and precision, making short work of the six men who were summarily arrested
and packed away behind bars for a long respite from their labours.

The gang would provide no information, but Aedan
was fairly certain it was his father trying to bring him in. His teeth ground
as he considered what he would have done to the man. If only his legs would not
buckle under him.

While walking back from the prison, a comment Liru
had recently made came to mind. It wasn’t the first time it had returned to
haunt him. She had said that the hate that sometimes looked out of his eyes was
worrying her, that it would not be good for him.

But who was
she
to criticise? Of all people,
she should have been the one to understand. He tried to push her words from his
mind.

In order to improve their communication skills, the boys
dined out four nights a week with families that were native speakers of Orunean,
Fenn, Vinthian and Sulese. There were many such families associated with the
academy. At these dinners, the apprentices spoke only the language of the
hosts, learned their manners, grew familiar with the national foods which they
learned to prepare, and paid attention to the more subtle aspects such as
humour.

Every second class of each subject was now presented
in a foreign language. Environment, Aedan was beginning to understand, was
foundational to their training, and it underpinned a great deal more than
language studies.

They were required not only to learn from but to live
in a wide range of environments.

The first was the wild, where they continued to
develop their survival skills – trapping, fishing, hunting and, when necessary,
scavenging for food. Locusts, slugs, worms, and even certain roots were among
the last choices. They were taught to recognise the rocks like flint and chert,
sharp and hard enough to strike a spark from steel; then Wildemar took away
their steel and taught them to make fire with wood, friction and blisters.

The next environment was a little easier. Each boy
had to study at least two trades, common jobs that would be found in any town
or city, jobs where it would be possible to find employment and slip into the
working ranks of any society. They were allowed to apprentice to farmers,
butchers, masons, blacksmiths, tailors, cobblers and several more.

Aedan chose livestock farm labour and carpentry.
He showed himself a natural hand with the animals, and within weeks, proved
himself the most useless carpenter’s apprentice in all of Castath. Whether it
was a lack of patience or just the wrong kind of head for angles and planes, he
produced consistently un-sellable work. His chairs never balanced until he’d
sawn so much from one leg and then another that the seat was half way to the
ground. His tables were never flat, the wobbly joins never flush. Even Kian,
whose positive enthusiasm knew no clouds, seemed to despair of Aedan’s
prospects. For Aedan, the smells and feel of woodwork were nostalgic, and he
did not regret his choice, though he stood alone in this.

The training environment that followed was
something unexpected. For many, it proved to be the most trying aspect of their
preparation. They were clothed in rags and sent, for three weeks, to work
beside the poorest and lowest – fullers, street cleaners, lime-burners, gong
farmers, and worst of all, the tanners whose days were spent in the heavy fumes
rising from concoctions of urine, dung-water and animal skins that slowly
rotted until the hair could be removed and leather produced. The boys would
then spend their evenings in the worst alleys where their sleeping bays had
been arranged and paid for by the academy – the streets were territorial and
newcomers were not smiled on if they did not show the proper monetary respect
to the alley-lords.

The programme had been running for years and the
boys were expected and tolerated as the outsiders they were. Here they
discovered a world that many of them had happily consigned to ignorance. For
those from wealthy families, the shock was beyond words.

It was not just the matter of hygiene. On the
narrow back roads of the Seeps, the veneer of civil society was missing. The
brutality of selfishness and the rule of might wore no genteel cloak and stood
behind no formal niceties. Here, in full view, was that which was swept under
the carpets of the rich.

Aedan’s worries about his father’s thugs subsided
a little after a few days. Perhaps, he thought, they had lost interest in him.
Still, he found it difficult to sleep and jolted awake at every sound.

Like the rest of the apprentices, he was
distressed by roughness of street ways when there was no “law” or “money”
walking past, but soon he began to notice kindness and generosity too, though
there was little to be generous with. Old men gave their bread to a sick friend;
a woman defended another’s baby from a drunk; children without parents took
care of their siblings, shouldering responsibilities no child should have.

At first, Aedan was not accepted into any of the
surprisingly close-knit spheres. But one evening he gained the friendship of
two old men, Garald and Hayes, when he stood up to a young, truncheon-swinging
thief who wanted their small meal. After a long, hushed discussion the men
called Aedan over to sit with them instead of “retreating so lonesome-like”.

There was no trouble finding a topic of
conversation, for they were deep in the streams of rumour that continued to
flow in from the eastern towns. The ideas on which they wanted Aedan’s opinion
made Rillete’s seem tame. And it was not only talk from the east.

“These be strange times,” Garald said in a raspy
voice, cracked with wear and age. “Since that unnatural storm with its lightning
strike looking like gold and fire pouring into the earth, there’s something
changed here. At nights, sometimes I’m feeling things in the ground under these
old bones. Shakes and shiverings that don’t belong in rock. You mark my words,
boy. There’s something been disturbed under this city. You be sure to tell them
folks back at the ’cademy.”

When the three weeks were up, the ragged apprentices made
their way back to the academy. A few of them were in bad shape. Seeing as the
programme was under Kollis’s supervision, they complained bitterly to him about
the exercise. Kollis let them speak. After several had told their stories, he
explained.

“There are few things that can be properly
understood without experience. If you learned weapons from a book, how useful
do you think you would be?”

There were a few murmured replies – not very
useful.

“Understanding a society means understanding the
whole society, not just the part that dresses well. As marshals, you will need
to understand a city’s structure from one end of the social ladder to the
other. Circumstances on an operation might require you to adapt, to hide for
long times where you had not expected to, or to seek information where you
would rather not.

“But more importantly, the exercise was to move
you to empathy and broaden your understanding of what it is to be human.”

Much as he struggled to accept anything from Kollis,
Aedan had to admit that there was sense here. The experience had not been the
most enjoyable, but it had brought a new depth to what he saw when he looked
out over the city. For the first time, some of the apprentices were beginning
to understand the plight of the lower classes, not as an idea, but as hunger
and thirst.

Peashot remained silent and morose through all of
it. Aedan had once visited him in his alley. The little foxy-eyed boy had
grunted at the attempts to spark conversation and remained facing the wall, hacking
and scratching gravestones into the bricks with his knife. His mood lingered
through the following week when Kollis began a series of classes on religion.

Kollis’s introduction was a relatively cynical
description of the old faith – the belief in the Ancient, the creator who was
said to be before all and above all. He then moved on with far greater
enthusiasm to the rich tapestry of faiths now accessible – Eclonism, Telresh,
Chorism, Shendra, and several more.

Peashot raised his hand and said without emotion
that he thought all religion was stupid and wanted to know how a tapestry of
lies was a good thing.