Hunter's Beginning (Veller) (16 page)

“What about the box?” She called out after him.

His head popped through the doorway once more as he slowly surveyed the room again, his eyes going to the cracks in the ceiling. At first it appeared he didn’t know what she was talking about, but he looked at the small ebony box that was still sitting on the table and a slight smile crossed his lips.

“It’s yours… if you want it.” He said with a shrug and he stepped out of the room.

Want it? Why would she want it? That box was nothing but trouble from the moment she picked it up, and besides, it wasn’t very big and wouldn’t be very useful. She grabbed the box and stuffed it into her shirt before following the white mystic out into the hall.

The mystic said nothing as he led her through the dark corridors. She knew if she asked him anything about the exam or her grades he wouldn’t give her a straight answer, if he gave her an answer her at all. She was beginning to understand these
mystics, and she wasn’t sure if she should be worried about that, or annoyed.

The old mystic walked with a slight shuffle, what comes with living in such a damp tower, his white robes dragging behind him
on the floor. With nothing else to look at, Kile couldn’t help but look at those robes and how clean they were. One of the many chores she had back home was washing the bedding each week, and no matter how hard she scrubbed, no matter how many times she washed them, she could never get them as white as the robes this mystic was dragging through the dirty hallways. She had thought about asking him about his laundry, but that was probably done with some strange mystic art, mastered by the sphere of dirty laundry or some such nonsense. She giggled in spite of herself and the old mystic suddenly turned around. Kile jumped back a few feet worried that she may have broken some unwritten law of the tower by showing a bit of mirth, but he said nothing and simply waved his hand toward one of the doors. It opened slowly by itself and she could now hear the talk and laughter of people inside.

“You will wait in here.” The
mystic said.

Kile looked into the room, and was actually happy to see the other cadets. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the noise and company of other people even if they, for the most part, ignored her, of course if they knew what she had done to the testing area that would only confirm their beliefs that she was a jinx. It didn’t really
matter; the noise alone was enough for now, even if it wasn’t directed at her. She turned to ask the mystic how long it would be, but the old man was gone, clean white robes and all.

Kile stepped nervously into the room, the door closing behind her preventing any means of escape. She had expected the noise to stop as soon as her foot touched the floor and every pair of eyes turn toward her, but it appeared that nobody even noticed she was there, and for that she was grateful. She kept to the outer edge of the mob, staying close to the walls, moving around the perimeter of the room, and taking it all in one conversation at a time. It was amazing how much you could learn
simply by listening. For starters, she learned that only one person had finished the test, and that the sudden shaking of the tower which was now believed to have been an earthquake, had startled the mystics and caused a bit of confusion on the streets of Littenbeck. She also learned, more by observation than by listening, that the number of cadets had greatly decreased. There were only a third of them left now, possibly even less since the exam had started. Quite a few must have either dropped out or had been forced out, was she the next to go home, were these the one’s that didn’t quite have what it takes to be Hunters, and they were just waiting to be escorted out of the tower.

The idea didn’t bother her as much as she thought, nor did it comfort her as much as it should. If nothing else, at least she could say she tried, and she had a wonderful story to tell anyone who would listen, even if they wouldn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure she believed half of it herself. Of course there was the
downside of going home, having to marry that little troll of a boy, assuming she could even go home. It was something that lingered in her mind, but now she was away from the farm, she was on her own, who’s to say she couldn’t just keep going, to see what the world had to offer someone like her. Her only regret would be leaving her mother behind without a word, but Kile knew in her heart that she would understand, and as for her father, well, the less said about him the better.

“Kile!”

The fantasy was shattered by the sound of her name as she spun around, looking through the crowd to see who it was. It felt so long since she had heard anyone speak her name, she was beginning to wonder if the tower might have taken that as well. Kile scanned the group of boys, of which none were looking in her direction. She told herself that it was because they believed she was a jinx, otherwise it would be a blow to her ego.

Alex Bartlow pushed his way through the crowd waving frantically. She smiled and carefully waved back, actually it wasn’t so much a wave as it was a slight movement of the hand to say, I see you, I hear you, now shut up.

Not far behind him came the taller form of Daniel, he still appeared to look a little distracted but otherwise in good spirits. She was surprised on how happy she was to see the two of them.

“So, you’re here too?”
Alex said as he got closer catching his breath. “What did you think about that last test?” He asked. “Did you hear, they’re saying that somebody actually made it out?” As always, the boy didn’t wait for any answers, he just continued to ask questions. Kile was sure that he would carry on a conversation with himself quite easily if nobody bothered to stop him.

“Nobody got out” Daniel replie
d, “There was no way out.”

“No, it’s true, I
overheard two of the mystics talking about it when they came and got me, one of them said that somebody managed to get out but made a real mess of the place. They think that was what the commotion was all about.”

“It’s not possible.” Daniel repeated, but he wasn’t all that convincing.

“It isn’t?” Kile heard herself ask before she realized she was even speaking, she would have to more careful of that in the future.

“No, it some mental test, probably designed to see what we would do if we couldn’t complete a mission or something like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, from what I could gather, the last
part of the last test was set up so that you had to fail it, but you had choices on how you failed. You see… you get to this large room with these great big doors, and the closer you get to the doors the more the doors close. It’s impossible to get out of the room. Carter told me he tried to fake his way through, but it didn’t work.”

“How did he do that?” Kile asked
. She wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed that Daniel thought he had to describe the last obstacle to her, as if she wouldn’t have seen it for herself. It was clear that nobody, now not even Daniel, had any hopes for her completing the exam.

“Oh, he used his arts somehow, probably tried to create an illusion of himself as a decoy. He really didn’t explain it, all I know is he said he made a run for it, and the faster he ran the faster the doors closed. If he couldn’t
outrun the doors I doubt if anyone else could.”

“I’ve seen Carter’s illusions,” Alex remarked. “They wouldn’t fool a blind man, let alone a magical door.”

“Couldn’t he just opened the box, take whatever was inside out, and leave the box behind?” Kile asked. That was what she had planned to do if her first idea hadn’t worked as well as it did, of course she didn’t really plan on destroying half the testing area or causing a small earthquake or panicking the citizens of Littenbeck.

“Wouldn’t have worked.”

“How do you know? It might have.”

“Actually.” Daniel grinned sheepishly. “
That's what I tried to do.”

“You did?” Alex responded. “You didn’t tell me that, I didn’t even know you got that far.”

“Well yeah, but it was really thanks to that strange earthquake.”

“What was
inside?” Kile asked. The last thing she wanted to talk about was the so called earthquake that appeared to be the center of attention. Who would have thought that brining down a thirty foot high stone door would have caused so much trouble?

“To tell you the truth… I’m not really sure. I don’t think there was anything inside, not really anyway.”

“Well, what happen?” Alex asked eagerly.

“Well… I opened it, you know, thinking that if I could get the contents to the end of the test it would count as passing, or at least something.” Daniel replied
. Opening the box meant certain failure and it was obvious he was still trying to justify his actions, even to himself. “Well… when I opened it there was this loud bang and a large puff of red smoke that scared the life out of me. When it cleared there was this mystic standing there with his hood up and everything, I couldn’t see his face. He just pointed at me and said. ‘You failed.’ Then the next thing I know I was standing in my room.”

“Wow, maybe I should have opened mine, I wouldn’t have been stuck in that pit for so long.”

“Which pit?”

“Oh, the one with the sloping floor. I even sent an illusion of myself across the floor, but even though my illusions are a lot better
than Carters, they don’t have any real weight to them, so they didn’t set off the trap. I thought it was safe, slid right down into the pit, landed on my ass.” He said to the laughter of the other two. “I sat down there for nearly an hour before a mystic showed up

“What did he say?” Daniel asked trying to keep a straight face.

“I guess he started to say “you failed.” But then everything started shaking and he looked really scared. He zapped us both back to my room, then ran out the door leaving me alone.”

“Well then, time wise you were ahead of me. I only just got to the room when it happened. The floor was just starting to tilt and I was sliding backward trying to grab hold of anything that I could when everything started shaking. I thought it was part of the test at first, but something happened to the floor. It kind of shifted, then the left side dropped and the whole thing just got stuck at this weird angle.”

“Oh come on, why are you always the lucky one?” Alex complained.

“How did you stop from sliding?” Kile asked
. That was a problem she had. If she hadn’t managed to wedge the butter knife in between the stones, she would have ended up where Alex did, in a dark hole on her ass.

“Oh… I harden the mud on the floor so I could climb out.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.” Alex replied.

“Neither did I” Daniel confessed. “It just came to me while I was clinging on to the floor and trying not to slide back any further. During the mystic arts part of the exam the mystic said that I was influenced by water, and that the healing arts are just a part of the water arts. So, I figured that if I could manipulate the water in the mud I could harden it.”

“And it worked?”

“It took a while, and it didn’t harden it all the way, but it was enough that I could climb out, and as I said the floor was at an angle, but it wasn’t all that steep.”

It appeared that everyone was able to use some form of the mystic arts Kile thought, even if it wasn’t to any great degree. Alex could create the illusion of himself, quite convincing one from what she had seen in the combat portion of the exam, and Daniel was able to harden the mud with his skills, she had to use a knife and a fork to climb her way out. It would appear that everyone had an advantage during the test but her. Her only consolation was that if she had caused the earthquake, and she wasn’t admitting that she did, she would have been ahead of Daniel, and she did it without any trickery. Of course, it didn’t mean very much, since she wasn’t sure when Daniel actually started his test, or for that matter, if the tests were the same.

“Well…?”

Kile looked around and then down at Alex. He had clearly been asking her something but she had been lost in her own thoughts.

“I asked how far you got.”

“Me?”

How far did she get. She didn’t dare tell them that she was the one that made it all the way through
, that she was the only one to solve a test that had no solution. It was bad enough that they were calling her a jinx, betting that she wouldn’t succeed. It would definitely make them think twice if she did announce it, but on the same grounds it would just widen the gap between them and her. What would they think of her then?

“Oh come on, it couldn’t be all that bad, did you get at least as far as the tilting room?” Alex asked.

“Uh yeah… yeah the tilting room.”

“Well… what happened?” Alex
pressed.

“Hey Al?” Daniel interrupted. “You said the mystic was just as scared as you were in the pit when everything started shaking.”

“What? Oh… oh, yeah, well, he sure sounded it and he got us out of there pretty quick.”

“That’s a bit odd.” Daniel remarked, seemingly to himself but loud enough for the others to hear.

“Why’s that?” Kile asked, not that she wanted to know anything more about the earthquake, but anything was better than her trying to fabricate a story, she had never been very good at story telling, or lying for that matter.

“I just thought that mystics influenced by the sphere of earth would have known when an earthquake was about to happen, they should have felt it in the stone or something. They would have warned the other mystics.”

“So… what does that mean?” Alex asked.

“It means that what
happened couldn’t have been an earthquake, not if the mystics didn’t know about it before hand.”

“Then what was it?” Alex asked

“How should I know?” Daniel exclaimed, “Do I look like a mystic.”

“Well… yeah,
sometimes you do, especially when you scratch your chin like that.”

Two doors on the far side of the room suddenly opened, and a gust of cold air blew in. It
seemed like ages since Kile had smelled the fresh air, even if it was air that passed over the city first. Two men in full green livery entered, standing on either side of the door. They had tall leather boots, olive green slacks and dark brown leather tunics trimmed in that same olive green. A third man, shorted than the other two but still dressed in the same uniform, stood in the opening.

“If you will follow me.” He said in a sharp clear voice.

It took Kile a moment to realize that these were not mystics. There was no trickery in what they were doing. They were actually walking not floating, they had to open the doors physically with their hands instead of waving at them. These were real people which meant, for better or worse, the mystic tower part of the exam was really over. She followed the boys, keeping to the back of the group as best she could. She watched as they all tried to push through the doors first, everyone wanted out of the tower, and she couldn’t blame them. It was truly one of the most frightening and depressing places she had ever had the misfortune of being confined in, of course it was still the only place she had ever had the misfortune of being confined in.

As she stepped out into the light of day, the sun was already over head, it was just past
noon. She had lost all sense of time inside the tower and she tried to work it out in her head, but it was no use. Master Latherby had told them that the test would take three days. Had it actually been three days? It was hard to tell, but for now all she wanted to do was stand under the warmth of the sun, if just for a moment, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“If you will please find a seat in one of the carriages, we can get rolling.”
The short man in the green livery said, waving to a line of horse drawn carriages bearing the mark of a yellow arrow and a sword crossed on a field of green. Kile was sure she had never seen the mark before, but for some reason it did appear familiar. The test was going on the road she thought as she looked up and down the line of carriages. Most of the boys were scrambling to get into the ones at the front of the line, so she headed toward the one at the end.

The last carriage was smaller
than the others and it wasn’t so much to carry passages as it was to carry supplies since it was burdened with boxes and crates of various sizes.

“Excuse me sir.”
She asked the driver who appeared to be lost in thought. He was a young man, or at least he had youthful features with long blond hair that was tied back, away from an angular face. There was an age about him, one that she had only seen within the mystics, as if he was hiding behind a youthful facade. He looked down at her as if he was surprised that she had even spoken to him.

“Would you mind if I rode in this one?” She asked.

“Supplies.” He said as if the one word explained everything.

“Yeah, I know.” She replied, wanting to tell him that the boxes kind of gave it away, but she thought better of it. “There is more
than enough room for me, I mean, if it’s okay.”

“Okay with me.” He said with a shrug and then turned to stare forward again.

Kile returned the shrug and pulled open the carriage door. The boxes and bags had been loaded off to one side, as if somebody had purposely left the seats vacant, she just hoped she hadn’t taken somebody else’s place.

“Excuse me sir.” She called again, leaning out the window.

The man turned his head slightly not enough to actually look at her, more like his head had just fallen off its pins and hung there for a moment.

“Where are we going?” She asked.

“Azintar.” The man replied and up his head went without another word, as he continued to stare forward.

Not a conversationalist she thought as she settled into her seat, and where was Azintar. She had never even heard of the place so she had no idea how long the trip was going to take, but it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go. Just another part of the exam she figured as she reached into her shirt and pulled out the small ebony box.

She wasn’t sure why she took it, or what she was even planning to do with it. It wasn’t very big, but it was pretty she thought as turned it over in her hands a few times. She had never had anything this nice before as she traced the intricate patterns with her finger, a lot of work had gone into it, it seemed a waste to just leave it behind, and besides, she had earned it. She was the only one to get it out of the testing area, and this proved it.

She held the box at
arm's length and closed her eyes, gripping the lid tightly she slowly opened it. If Daniel was right there should be a loud bang, a puff of red smoke, and a rather confused mystic standing in the carriage with her. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed when nothing happened. Kile opened her eyes slowly and looked into the box. There, at the bottom, wrapped in silver foil was a peppermint imp.

It was a curious thing to find in the bottom of the box and was on a very short list of the last things she would have expected to find. She was sure it was just a coincidence, giving the fact that she loved peppermint imps. The first time she had one was when Erin Silvia found her in the woods back in Riverport after she had gotten lost following her brother. It was the first time she had ever seen a
Hunter. The woman had defied everything Kile was forced to believe, all of the limitations that had been placed upon her because of who she was, what she was, where she came from. Erin had found her when no one else could, built a fire to keep them warm and protected her from the wolves. She had even produced a bag of peppermint imps for them to share. The Hunter was surprised when Kile had told her she had never had sweets before. Candy was a luxury that her father thought was unnecessary and wasteful, so it was something she had never indulged in. When Erin brought her home, she gave Kile the rest of the bag; it was something that Kile never forgot. She had kept the bag hidden, even from her brother, and only ate one when she really needed to, like when she was having a really bad day, unfortunately that was most of the time so the bag didn’t last as long as she would have hoped. She had savored each one and when they were finally gone, she felt as if she had lost something of herself.

“Hey, what are you doing back here?”

Kile dropped the peppermint imp back into the box, closing the lid and slipping it into her shirt. She wasn’t sure why she was hiding the box, the mystic told her she could have it, it just seemed like the right thing to do. She looked out the carriage window, thinking she had done something wrong, or the person whose seat she had taken wanted it back. When she saw Daniel staring up at her she breathed a sigh of relief, and then scolded herself for being so jumpy.

“I figured it was best for everyone. This way they don’t have to fight to see who gets to sit next to me.”
She said with a grin.

“Yeah, right, I can see that happening.” Daniel replied as he glanced down the line of carriages. The larger boys
were already starting to push the smaller ones aside to see who would get the best seats. By Kile’s way of thinking, it was a very un-Hunter like behavior, which only supported her theory that they were among the ones who had failed and were being taken away.