Island Shifters: Book 02 - An Oath of the Mage (37 page)

Beck did not know what to say.

“With wisdom comes patience, apprentice. Your training is over when it is over and not a moment before. Come.”

Beck reluctantly followed behind and where he originally thought he was standing in the middle of a flat endless surface of rock, he could now see that they were on the lip of a deep stone valley. Beck looked down from the precipice and below was a city unlike any he had ever seen. The buildings were sleek and angular, with rows and rows of windows, and the roads were covered with a black, unfamiliar substance. Lights on tall poles lit the entire city in a brilliant glow as hundreds of white-robed figures glided from one building to the next.

“The first part of your journey is to learn,” Arias informed him as he started down. “Here you will learn all there is to know of shifting, sorcery, and defense. A Mage must be the master of all.”

Walking behind his guide, Beck had a chance to study the inhabitants of the city. All were men and most of advanced age if the heads of gray were any indication. Wrapped in their cloaks of white, he assumed that they were his instructors. When they saw him approach with Arias, they stopped what they were doing to stare. It was obvious that he was the object of their interest and a general excitement rippled through the air as they pointed and smiled.

“I told you, it has been a while since we have had an apprentice. Be prepared to be inundated. Your training is about to begin.”

True to Arias’ word, the instructors descended on him in an ocean of white and swept him toward one of the strange windowed buildings. He was led to a massive room that seemed even bigger due to the windows that covered the entire western wall. The instructors called it the preparation room, but it looked to Beck like any traditional classroom with student desks, diagramed reference charts, slate and chalk.

As soon as he sat down, the time raced by at a hectic pace as the lessons began by one instructor after another. First was a review of the rudiments of the four metamagics of shifting taught to him at the Parsis Academy, but then the education branched into different forms of shifting that he did not know existed.

There was metalshifting that allowed a shifter to forge raw metal into finished products. Instead of using tools to hammer, bend and cut the material, a metalshifter used his magic to heat and mold the object into the desired shape. It made him wonder if the more renowned metallurgists in Deepstone were actually using metalshifting and unaware that their magic was involved.

Sightshifting was a unique ability that allowed shifters to create lifelike illusions. One instructor created a likeness of Beck that looked incredibly real, even down to the gestures Beck used. When he reached out to touch the illusion, it disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Weathershifting could cause changes in the island’s weather patterns, and feralshifting allowed a summoner to communicate with animals. This, Beck suspected, was the shifting ability of the Elves and must be why Airron could never learn the magic. He was already a bodyshifter, and a shifter could only master one form of shifting, the most dominant ability presenting first.

He learned how airshifting manipulated the currents in the air to move objects, create tunnels of air, and even allowed the practitioner to fly. Kenley would be able to fly! He was not quite sure how he felt about that, but was grateful that he could at least now instruct her on the safe use of her magic.

He was not surprised to learn that there were also more sinister forms of shifting like the spiritshifting of Adrian Ravener, dreamshifting that allowed a shifter to stalk a person’s nightly dreams and torment them while they lay powerless to prevent the intrusion, and soulshifting that provided the ability to steal a person’s very soul.

In this world where Beck now existed and trained relentlessly, he did not eat or sleep nor did he feel the need to. The hours turned into days, and he was only able to mark the passage of time by the stubble growing on his chin.

From shifting, the focus moved on to a vigorous indoctrination in the arts of sorcery. He learned the principles of every spell, curse and incantation known to the Mage. He discovered that it was a hover spell that Adrian Ravener used in the Demon War when he appeared to fly, not a form of airshifting.

He learned the art of healing and how to prepare alchemical potions including the LifeFire Tonic that Avalon Ravener was so desperate to have as it could extend life by hundreds of years.

All that he learned was unlike the education of his youth at the Academy where he remembered only half of what he was taught, if he was lucky. This training by the Mages became entrenched in the very marrow of his bones, and everything he learned, he was told, would be an arsenal easily within reach his entire life.

As his mind and body filled with more knowledge and wisdom, he knew he was becoming something more, and maybe even dared to use the word superior.

When the sorcery education concluded, Arias Sarphia reappeared. It had been days since he had last seen the Mage.

“I was beginning to think I would not see you again,” Beck commented sourly.

“As I told you, I am your guide and will not leave you for the duration of your education.”

“Mage…”

Arias held up a hand. “It is over when it is over, apprentice.” The Elf led him out of the preparation room and back outside toward an enormous circular building. “You must now prove to us that what you have learned can be translated into skill.” Arias held open a large, arched wooden door, and Beck went through cautiously.

It was an arena.

Rows of benches filled with Mage instructors surrounded an open field of bare dirt. More bright lights mounted on poles glared down on the center of the arena.

He followed Arias out to the middle.

“Your final tests in defense will not be easy. Prepare yourself for a fight to the death. You will face many opponents. Do not hesitate, do not feel remorse. Your adversaries most certainly will not.”

“Will I have a weapon to use?”

Arias shook his white head. “You are the weapon.”

He looked around at the seated audience. “Can I die here in this world?”

“Yes.” The Mage paused. “It does not happen often, but it does happen if an apprentice is especially weak. Are you ready?”

Beck nodded, and the Mage turned and walked away, leaving him standing in center of the arena alone. Immediately, a grating sound echoed behind him, and he turned as an iron grate he had not noticed previously lifted open.

Beck narrowed his eyes at the black opening. Who would he fight first? Would it be another Mage?

No.

It was not even a man.

A beast dressed in an armored chest plate and a battle axe in each fist stepped out into the light on two hooves, and the grate clanged shut behind him. The animal resembled a bull with two curved horns, and a blunt snout with wide nostrils through which a gold ring dangled. Tufts of coarse black fur peaked up around its face and a full coat of wooly hair covered its body.

As soon as the bull saw Beck, it strode forward confidently, arms and legs bulging with muscled power as he advanced. Throwing its head back in a challenging roar, the beast hefted one of the axes in its hand and hurled it through the air at Beck. The blade tumbled end over end, unerringly on a path for his head.

Beck instinctively threw out his hand. “
Divergia
.”

The axe swept away out of his path and landed in the dirt. Wanting to end this quickly, Beck started running forward to close with the beast, and the animal picked up its pace in response. The other axe flew from its hand, but Beck easily sent that weapon flying wide as well.

As he ran, Beck methodically sorted through his mental cache for the best way to dispose of his opponent. That was when the bull struck first.

“
Bindeno
,” it bellowed in an almost unintelligible growl.

Beck cursed when he felt his arms and legs snap to his sides and he fell into the dirt, unable to move. It had been a disastrous error to believe his opponent a simple animal when in fact it had the gift of sorcery. It was too late to issue the counterspell, and Beck could only lie there helpless while the bull thundered across the field. Skidding to a stop in front of him, the beast lowered its head and flipped him onto his stomach with one horn. Then, with a violent thrust, the bull speared him through the back and lifted him into the air.

Beck screamed out at the pain. The beast shook its head victoriously and Beck, impaled on the tip of one horn, felt his back break, and his body went completely numb below the waist.

He almost blacked out from the agony, but fought to retain consciousness as his vision began to darken at the edges of his eyes. His arms still pinned to his sides, he found that he could move his hands and stretched them toward the large head beneath him. His fingers were just long enough to grab onto the bony protrusions over the bull’s eyes. The beast must have known what Beck intended, because it let out a desperate howl and tried to shake Beck loose.

It was too late.

“
Morbendi
.”

The bull-like animal fell to the ground dead.

Beck gritted his teeth in misery when he hit the ground alongside the fallen animal. The binding spell now released, he used the strength in his forearms to drag his body off the horn embedded in his back. Panting from the exertion, he pulled himself free with a nauseating sucking sound. None of the instructors in the arena rushed to his aid, and he knew they would not. He was on his own.

Reaching out with his healing sorcery, he probed his back for the injury. Fortunately, the spinal cord was unharmed, but two vertebrae had become dislocated from the stress of the bull’s gouging maneuver. Forcing the pain away, he went to work realigning the vertebrae and knitting together the ligaments and sinew that held the bones in place.

When he was finished, he was soaked in sweat, but the pain was gone.

Beck flinched when he heard the grate open again.

He turned around and sat up.

A tiny, blonde-haired girl in a short tunic walked toward him.

He got to his feet quickly and tested his injury. It felt completely healed.

Beck was unsure what to do. What kind of threat could this little slip of a girl cause to him?

She continued to approach and bounced a ball in the palm of one hand. He waited. If the instructors expected him to simply kill a small girl out of hand, he would have to disappoint them.

By the time Beck realized that the ball in the girl’s hand was actually an orb of fire, she had already launched it at him. He sidestepped out of the way but, just like his earthen missile at Odawa, the ball circled around behind him and struck him in the back. His shirt immediately caught on fire. Instincts led him to fall to the ground and roll instead of using a spell to put out the fire, but it worked equally as well.

The little girl was upon him now and looking down at him with large blue eyes. She smiled innocently, and he hesitated with the spell that was on the tip of his tongue. In that brief pause, the girl’s face transformed into the visage of a demon and she opened her mouth wide in a hideous scream, unleashing a stream of lethal fire blazing out of the opening.

Beck screamed as the fire engulfed his face. Using his legs, he kicked the girl and sent her small body sprawling to the ground.

He cast a spell to put out the fire this time, but his face still felt as if it was on fire as he crawled on hands and knees to the girl. The demon countenance gone, she smiled at him again as she lay on her back and blinked her eyes adoringly.

Beck did not use the killing curse. He wanted the little girl to serve as a reminder to him to never again hesitate in the face of evil. Reaching out, he encircled her tiny neck in his hands and twisted, killing her.

He fell back down on the dirt once again. His face felt like it was sloughing off his skull in shredded, smoldering pieces.

This time when he went to work to heal his injuries, a single tear fell from his eye and rolled down his blackened cheek. He did not cry from the pain or for the death of the girl or in anticipation of the next fight. He cried because the training was taking too long. He cried for a different little girl that he loved desperately, but feared he would never see again.

C
HAPTER
23

An Oath of the Mage