A Sorcerer's Rings, page 4
part #4 of Song of Sorcery Series
M innie drilled Ricky while he cleaned the house from top to bottom and while he wasn’t cleaning. She still relentlessly talked to him and had him repeat what she said. Ricky had progressed to synonyms by the time she declared him ready to enter the First Ring.
“Don’t think you are through. You know basics, just basics. When you are free, you can run home for more practice.”
“And more food,” Tobia said. “The worst cooks are in the First Ring.”
“He speaks the truth,” Minnie said. “I don’t know if it’s intentional, but we’ll keep the larder full for you.”
Ricky clutched the portfolio containing the invitation and his identification papers. He looked across the ring field and took a deep breath, then took the first step out the door and walked as calmly as he could down the road and through the portal. He stopped at the portal office and presented his invitation.
“Not here, lad. This is portal three,” the man said. “You can walk on the inside of the ring to portal one. See the portal steward there.” The man leaned over the counter and pointed to the left. “Take this pass.” The steward stamped a yellow card and wrote an elaborate set of initials before handing it to Ricky.
The delay only made Ricky more nervous. His stomach turned with nerves. Fighting Ticco Griama with his wand hadn’t produced the anxiety he now felt. He walked along the garden between the First and Second Rings, laced with paths between the greenery. Ricky passed men and women dressed in gray work clothes trimmed with yellow. That must mean they are part of the First Ring workers, Ricky thought.
He passed the next portal on his right. He saw the number two next inside the First Ring symbol, a yellow ring surrounding four more gray rings with a circle in the center. Ricky picked up his pace along the curving paths and finally stood at portal one. He slipped into the shade of the portal. This one went straight through the rings to the tower, like portal three. He could see the archways of all the other ring buildings.
His gaze moved up over the Ring buildings and then up at the Tower. He didn’t have a desire to become a Tower sorcerer like Kened Gostok. Ricky only wanted to learn. He stood looking at the portal office. He sought out Princess Pira humming the tune that would activate his link with her.
Are you there? Ricky asked.
You have accosted me at a most unfortunate moment. I am where you should never be, she said. However, I am glad you haven’t forgotten me.
I am standing close to the entrance to the First Ring of the Duterian Five Rings of Sorcery. I have learned a bit of Hessilian, even.
Pira spoke a Hessilian poem. I stand beside you and yet you are far away, attainable, yet unattainable. Until you turn your head and grace me with your smile, I stand in darkness, not afraid, but alone.
Those are your feelings? Ricky said.
Of course not, Pira said. It’s a poem, my lord. Meant to evoke an emotion of longing to see one again.
Ricky sensed a pause.
Well…maybe I think that a little bit. Go on, you have my leave to succeed. Had I a token to present you, I’d do so. I wear my little songbird to remind me of your own song of sorcery. I must leave. Goodbye, my lord.
Thank you for the grace of your words, he said.
Ricky felt the link disconnect. He pounded his leg with his fist. Why did she make him say such stupid things! He took a deep breath and plunged into the shadow of the portal. He stood in darkness, not afraid and not alone, he thought with a little smile.
“I’m Hendrico Valian. Here to enter the First Ring,” he said to the portal steward.
“Papers, please,” the man said. Ricky stood while men and women walked in and out of the portal. The officer often looked up to nod to someone he knew or to squint at the writing of a pass shown over Ricky’s shoulder. He stamped a bigger yellow card and gave it to Ricky. “Go through the door opposite. Welcome to the Duterian Sorcery Rings. May your stay be successful,” he said with something less than total enthusiasm.
Ricky wondered how many times the man had said those words. He nodded, but the steward had already ducked into the office. He took a deep breath and entered the First Ring for the first time.
~
“Papers, please,” a woman said, sitting on a high stool behind a counter. She leaned over and looked closer at Ricky. “Aren’t you a little young to enter the First Ring?”
“Would you read my invitation, please?” Ricky said.
She looked down and held the invitation at arm’s length. “A Tower councilor and a Fifth Ring Healer? One would think you are someone exceptional. Well, I’m here to bring you back down to the ground. You start at zero and have to work your way across the rings like everyone else.”
Ricky understood most of what she said. “I don’t expect favors, just an objective evaluation,” Ricky said using words he had memorized just for this confrontation. Minnie had been right about the woman’s speech.
She put some stamps on the papers. “Door on your left.”
Ricky opened the door to a corridor that barely, but noticeably, curved. It reminded Ricky that he actually stood within a sorcerer’s ring. He had finally arrived at the place where he’d be spending the rest of his youth, if Kened Gostok was correct.
He took a few steps and noticed an alcove with windows that looked out to the First Ring garden.
“New or delivery boy?” a man said casually with a hint of sarcasm. He wore a magician’s robe, but Ricky couldn’t see his rank.
“New,” Ricky said.
The man stretched out his hand, taking Ricky’s portfolio. He looked it over. “Gostok warned us that you’d be coming in from the outside.”
“Warned?” Ricky said.
“Be prepared might be a better phrase. You are a prodigy?”
Ricky shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“Parantian, eh? Have you done any performance sorcery? It seems that’s all any Parantian wants to do.”
“I know how to perform, but that’s not what I want to do,” Ricky said.
“What do you want to do?” the man looked down at Ricky’s paperwork, “Hendrico Valian?”
“Learn, so I can find out.”
The sorcerer nodded.
A woman stepped through the door from the lobby. “Master, what are you doing here?” the clerk said.
The man rose after scribbling something on the invitation and turned to help the woman sit. Ricky noticed the rings of a Tower sorcerer.
“I thought I’d meet our new recruit. Valian, I’ll look forward to seeing what you’ve got later today.” The man closed the portfolio sitting on the desk and walked into the adjoining office, closing the door behind him.
“He is?” Ricky asked.
“The Master of the First Ring, young man,” she flipped the portfolio open and read. She let out a little gasp. “He doesn’t generally welcome new sorcerers, but it appears you are special.” The woman pulled a book out of the drawer and made a notation. “You’ll be given a shared room. Do you have living arrangements outside the Ring?”
“I do. I bought a house on the Ring row. Do I still need a room in the Ring?”
She nodded. “You are to stay within the building except for worship day and market day. What portal is your house close to?”
“Portal three.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Did you buy Sorcerer Volavoy’s house? That’s the only Ring Road house I know that’s vacant close to portal three.”
“I did,” Ricky said.
She shook her hand. “It must have been expensive.”
“I share the house with my two assistants,” Ricky said.
The woman opened another book and wrote down a number. “Third floor. Room 3-12. Here is a map of the Ring. You are allowed to walk through the Tower garden when walking to the other side of the First Ring, but you are not allowed inside any other Ring building. Am I understood?”
“That was my impression. My employees are former Ring sorcerers, a First and a Third.”
She made a sound that Ricky couldn’t interpret. “They will help you quite a bit. I imagine they force-fed Hessilian into you?”
Ricky laughed. “They did. I understand most of what you are telling me.”
“Then spend more time with them and tell your evaluators that or you’ll be stuck in a Duterian language class for six months.”
“I will,” Ricky gave the woman a little bow.
She looked up at him and smiled. “At least you come to us with manners. Take this to your evaluation session. It will be held here at three hours after noon.” She made a mark on the map with a pencil. “You will receive further instructions once you have gone through the evaluation. Looking at your endorsers, you shouldn’t have any trouble with that. You may go and find your room.”
Ricky had to ask what endorsers meant. She managed to tell him, so he bowed again.
“Welcome to the Rings,” the woman said in broken Parantian.
The portal three steward looked at Ricky’s instructions. “You made it back. I thought they’d kick out a young boy like you.” The man pointed to a door to the right of him. “Go up to the third floor and find your room.”
Ricky did as he was told. Minnie said the Ring would provide most of what he needed. If he needed more, he could get it at the market or retrieve it from the townhouse. He looked at the room number and walked into the hallway. There were long dormitory rooms on either side of a central corridor.
Ricky would have preferred to overlook the garden, but he ended up looking out and spotting his house on Ring Road. He could fit in nicely here. Room 3-12 was empty, but someone lived on one side.
Ricky sat on the other side, waiting for the clock in the room. He didn’t have anything else to do, so he made his bed from linens stacked in the closet on his side of the room. There wasn’t a fireplace, although that might not be needed between two sorcerers. He stretched out on his newly made bed and fell asleep.
~
“Wake up,” a voice said. “You’re my new roommate?”
Ricky sat up and stared at the clock. He sighed with relief after realizing he had half an hour before he had to be at the portal six entrance. But then he turned his head.
“You’re a woman!”
A blonde woman in her mid-twenties put her hands on her hips and nodded. “I’m pleased you noticed,” she said.
“But you are a woman,” Ricky said.
“You are repeating yourself.”
“I can’t have a female roommate.”
The woman frowned. “Why not? Ring rooms are mixed affairs.”
“I’ve never slept with a woman.”
The woman barked out a harsh laugh. “You certainly aren’t going to start with me. See this curtain?” She pointed to what Ricky thought to be a closet until he noticed a track in the ceiling extending from it to the window. “Don’t worry about privacy. I can’t say anything about snoring, though.” She bent down and looked at Ricky’s face. “Aren’t you a little young for the Rings?”
“Nearly sixteen,” Ricky said. “But I’ve been through a lot.”
“But you haven’t slept with a woman?”
“Well,” Ricky said, “not in the same room. One of my servants is a woman, but she is older than you are.”
“I hope so. Anyone older than me is a blessing,” she said. “My name is Mossa Benkoya.”
“From Gruntal?”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
“My other servant is from Gruntal, and his last name is Dastoya. I thought…”
“You thought right.”
“I have a confession to make.”
“In love with me already? But we’ve just met,” Mossa said.
The woman wasn’t the best-looking female Ricky had ever seen. She looked kind of rough, reminding him of some shantyboat women he could remember. “Not that kind of confession,” Ricky said, hoping he was catching most of the conversation. “I’m new to speaking Hessilian. When I say something wrong, could you correct me, or if I’m looking for a certain word, could you help me out?”
The woman looked a little deflated. “Don’t want to face the Duterian language class?”
Ricky nodded. “That’s right. I don’t want to waste time.”
“Do you think you’ll be getting out of the First anytime soon?”
“I don’t know what soon is, but I want to move through the Rings as fast as I can. I was told it might take five years to reach the tower.”
“Five years, if you’re lucky. I’ve been stuck in the First Ring for more than two years. There are some spells I just can’t get.”
Ricky brightened. “I can help you with spells if you help me with Hessilian.”
Mossa grinned. “It is a deal. Do you know what a deal is?”
Ricky nodded. “I’ve got to get to my evaluation.” He grabbed his portfolio and gave Mossa a bit of a bow and left his room. He patted his cheeks. Ricky was sure they were as red as a strawberry. He shivered at the thought of living in the same room as a woman, although he was glad Mossa didn’t look anything like Loria Mansali, Minnie, or even Princess Pira…that would be awful.
He rushed to portal six and showed the map to the portal steward. In a few minutes, he sat outside a room that had a sign in Hessilian proclaiming to all that the room was for evaluations. Two other men sat next to him. Both looked older than twenty. Ricky was certainly the baby in the First Ring.
A man in sorcerer robes opened the door, escorting a dejected-looking young lady out of the evaluation room. “If your power increases substantially, you can re-apply, but as it stands, I’m sorry,” the man said.
“Next?”
“Hendrico Valian,” the master of the First Ring said from within the room. “I saw your face through a crack in the door, and I’ve been waiting for you to arrive.”
Ricky walked in, but not before bowing to the two men waiting for him.
“They were ahead of me,” Ricky said, entering the room.
“No one is ahead of you in the First Ring, and we are going to see if that is the truth,” the master said. “Lift me up from the ground.”
Ricky intoned the deflection spell and lifted the master two feet off the ground and then let him down.
“I wouldn’t have believed it of a youth,” a woman, one of three other sorcerers in the room, said. “What else can you do?”
“Typical things. I can create a light, a fire, an explosion. I can fly, but that’s a variation of the deflection spell I used to raise up the master,” Ricky said.
“An explosion?” another sorcerer asked.
Ricky picked up a pencil sitting on the table. “Mind if I use this? It saves fingernails.” He sang and extended a tiny thread of fire and then cut off the flow. The resulting explosion sounded like a loud clap.
“That wasn’t an illusion?” the woman asked. “We know you’ve performed.”
Ricky shook his head. “I’d have to demonstrate outside. I have knowledge of destructive spells and illusions, but nothing that is constructive.” He hoped he used the right Hessilian words.
“He’ll still need to go through the First Ring,” the woman said. “He is half-trained.”
“I agree,” the master said. He looked at Ricky. “I don’t think you’ll linger long in the First Ring, but what you will learn within the Rings is a broader knowledge of sorcery. Parantian sorcery is narrowly focused. Duterian sorcery abhors what the Crespi dynasty has done to our Parantian brothers and sisters. Come with me. I’ll get you fitted out. Return to the lady whose place I took this morning early tomorrow for your schedule. I will work it out myself. Come along.”
Ricky had expected something different. He had entertained the notion that he would be transferred to the Third or Fourth Ring after amazing the sorcerers. He was certain he amazed them, but he was still stuck rooming with Mossa Benkoya. He followed the Master across the Rings, around the Tower, and to the twelfth portal. It looked like there were twenty-four in all. Gardens decorated the grounds between the rings, and the garden between the Fifth Ring and the Tower was exquisite.
“It is a nice day, is it not? When the weather worsens, from the late fall to the spring, you have to walk through the Ring to get to the other side. It takes nearly half-an-hour, what took less than ten minutes today,” the master said. He didn’t say much else, but Ricky noticed a high density of Fifth Ring and Tower sorcerers spending time in the central garden.
The master of the First Ring noticed Ricky looking around. “When you reach the Fifth Ring, most of your work will be spent in contemplation and when in the Tower, unless assigned like I am, you will spend most of your days thinking and writing.”
Ricky was happy to notice that the master didn’t use the term ‘if’ but ‘when.’ That made him feel a little reassured, even though he had to ask what contemplation meant in Hessilian.
They ducked into the thirteenth section of the First Ring. Ricky found that the section was essentially a four-story warehouse that served the First Ring.
“I want you to take care of this young man. He has been newly accepted into the First Ring. He will need clothes, robes…” the master waved his hand. “You know what he needs better than I. Be nice to Sorcerer Valian.” He turned to Ricky. “I’ve business in the Tower. You don’t have to return to the sixth portal, but go to your room using the closest route.”
Ricky would do what he thought the master said, and within an hour, he dumped a gunny-sack full of clothes and supplies on his bed. His side had the door, but Ricky found a short side curtain that allowed him full privacy in his smaller portion of the room when he needed it. He didn’t, since he heard Mossa snoring away, taking a nap.
“Mossa?” Ricky said.
He heard some loud snorting, and then she replied. “What?”
“Where do we eat?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
“Not exactly,” Ricky said. “I’m a bit hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I don’t even know where the washroom is.”
Mossa slid the curtain aside as she finished buttoning up her blouse and then donned her robe.
“Get your robe on, boyfriend. The grays are our tickets to eat.”
Ricky complied.
