Assault in the Wizard Degree, page 15
“In other words,” Rikka put in, “it’s supposed to be cursed. Nothing but ill comes from that land. Even on the rare occasion that rain touches those haunted hills, nothing blossoms from the dust.”
“That would tally with what one of my samples showed,” I reasoned. “The one which found no organic materials in the soil.”
“But our people do venture into the very edge of the Hinter Lands,” Galen noted. “They are rich in gemstones and minerals. Iron and wolfram are what our smiths utilize in their craft. That is why Rikka and I ventured into those hills, even at our young age.”
“There are legends of ghost-haunted towns and sunfire opals the size of your head,” Rikka said. “But we found nothing, and got lost in the bargain. Our father led a search party and found us two days later, just as we were starting to get desperate for water.”
Galen still looked a little shamefaced as he added, “He rehydrated us, of course. And then when we got home, he took a switch to our backsides.”
“I can still feel the sting!” Rikka added, wincing. “My hindquarters turned three different stripes of red!”
After our discussion, Rikka left to rejoin Sir Jorvath to help corral the stonemasons needed to start covering up the ruined charcoal kiln. Galen went to handle his remaining urgent business, while messengers were sent galloping to both Byredunn and Braceward Holt with news of the morning’s events.
And, bless him, Galen even sent one of his limited supply of couriers to bring the news to King Fitzwilliam – along with the announcement of my chosen Champion.
I cleaned up the reagent dishes using the newly refilled washbasin. When I was done, I made sure to leave a note for the attendants on how to safely dispose of the chemically-fouled contents. That was when I heard the slow-motion stampede sound of centaur hooves in the outside hallway.
Curious, I followed the crowd to the throne room. I listened as Galen presided over the announcement to the centaurs of Bloodwine Holt regarding the actions of the morning. He spoke at length about Sir Caltrop’s perfidy, the murder of Sir Yaegar and Sir Halvar, and King Angbor’s (hopefully) temporary absence from the throne.
Sir Jorvath joined me just as Galen finished and the assembled centaurs began to disperse. I told him about the soil tests, which seemed to impress him as much as the displays of magic from earlier in the day. In fact, I spent a fair amount of time answering his questions about forensics. But I couldn’t quite shake him from thinking about it as simply a different form of sorcery.
Dinnertime had crept up on me by then. I ate my way through another haunch of under-spiced mutton and washed it down with a cup of a thick, yogurt-like drink called kyumis. After consuming so much grease-rich meat, I felt like I needed to walk my dinner off. I ended up feeling almost exactly like a pedestrian in most of Los Angeles – acutely aware that the infrastructure hadn’t been built with me in mind.
I had to keep to the far right of any of the pathways, particularly the ones marked with right-of-ways for centaurs travelling at speed. I got plenty of pleasant-but-curious nods and a couple friendly waves as centaurs passed me. On top of that, the walking distance between places was so darned long. I found myself tempted to flag down one of the passing warriors like a hitchhiker to see if I could get a ride.
Just before I decided to turn back, I came across a section of the Holt’s inner courtyard that had been marked off with lengths of rope and stacked sheaves of straw. To my surprise, that’s where I spotted Galen’s younger sister. She was hard at work galloping through a centaur’s version of an obstacle course.
Stacked sheaves had been placed out as barriers to jump, while two others held up a horizontal bar she had to go down to her knees to get under. Rikka bounded over the first type of obstacle with ease. The second must have skinned or burned her knees a bit, but she gritted her way through the low passages and leapt into the final section.
This last part looked more than a bit like a slalom course. Man-high wooden targets had been propped up on either side of the winding pathway. Some type of melon had been affixed on a peg to the top. Rikka charged in, drawing her twin swords with a joyous battle whoop.
Her weapons were a blur as they slashed through each fruit in a splash of red rind and gray seeds. It was amazing to watch her slaughter her targets, but the results gave me an uneasy feeling. The vegetable gore reminded me of when the Noctua had slashed their way through the old Parliament and many of Fitzwilliam’s royal guardsmen.
I put that out of mind with some effort. If anything, it was hard not to admire the fluid grace of Rikka’s swordsmanship. I found myself clapping as she finished her run and turned to trot over to the adjoining section of the course.
She smiled and waved for me to join her. I slipped under the boundary rope and met her as she stopped at a line drawn in the dirt. Huge stacks of hay were set up forty or fifty yards downrange. Woven straw mats had been draped over the stacks, and each mat had been painted with a classic bulls-eye target pattern.
Rikka sheathed her swords and reached around a nearby sheaf to retrieve her archery equipment. She gave me a curious look as she began slipping her gear on. “I didn’t expect to see you out here, Dayna.”
“Same here,” I said. “I figured that you’d still be over at the charcoal kiln, directing things.”
She snorted. “My brother may have lived for too long amongst humans. He forgets how capable we are. When the stonemasons arrived, they quickly figured out what needed to be done. I selected a forecentaur to supervise the covering of the kiln with as much stone rubble as they could get their hooves on.”
“Then you came back here for some practice. You made good use of the day.”
“Glad you approach.” She bit her tongue, and then said, “That is, ‘approve’. I suppose the morning mead is still affecting me.”
I looked around to make doubly sure we were all alone. I was about to get into some sensitive territory, and company wouldn’t help. I had a hunch about Rikka, and I wanted to get to the bottom of her ‘problem’ once and for all.
I coughed into my hand. “Actually, that’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I misspeak. Only once in a while,” she said, as she finished adjusting the straps that held her quiver of arrows to her back. “That shouldn’t bother you.”
“It’s not really about that. Your ‘misspeaks’ are a symptom of something else. It concerned me enough that I wanted to talk to you about it in private.”
“I won’t embarrass you in front of your human friends,” Rikka said sharply. She turned away from me, hiding her face. “I know that I come across as…less than intelligent at times.”
“You’re not less–”
“I am, and I know it!” she flared, though she still faced resolutely away. “I’ve been told so enough times by everyone. It’s why I’m just a well-trained tool for others to use. It’s why my father sacrificed my reputation to keep the throne secure. It’s why you’re trying to be kind to me. Just so I’ll fight for you.”
I felt my face flush again. “Dammit, that’s not true! I didn’t ask for your help as…well, some kind of charity case!”
“Then speak to me honestly, or do not talk at all!” she demanded, in a voice that was a mixture of curiosity and hurt. “Tell me why! Why are you going out of your way to befriend me?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rikka continued, her voice harsh with long-buried hurt.
“You have my skills at your call now, thanks to my father’s oath,” she declared. “You have my brother’s heart already, without currying favor from his disgraced little sister. I don’t know what else you want!”
She finally turned to face me. She hadn’t shed a tear, but her eyes glistened. The sight pierced my heart. Galen’s sister reminded me of Hollyhock in so many ways. But at this very moment, she made me think of Perrin.
She may have been a fierce warrior, but in a sense, she was an innocent. Unlike Holly, she wore her heart on her sleeve. Her expressions of emotion were unforced and genuine. My next few words would count a great deal to her.
“Rikka,” I said, “there’s a barrier I need to smash. It’s the one that’s been built over the years in your mind that separates you from other centaurs. That separates you from me, and even from your brother.”
She stared at me for a moment as if I’d suddenly sprouted wings.
“The wall…is that what you call my problem?” she asked. “I don’t know why you call it that. Nothing was built. It just…is.”
“That’s right.”
“Just because you say–” Rikka stopped in mid-objection. “Wait. I’m right?”
“Yes. Your problem just ‘is’. What I’m saying is, I don’t think anyone’s correctly identified what ‘it’ is.”
Her brow furrowed. That was a good thing. She wasn’t just dismissing me out of hand anymore. Or hoof, for that matter.
“So you think it’s like what we found out about Sir Caltrop,” she ventured, hesitantly. “We thought he was a centaur with magic. But he’s actually something else entirely, in disguise.”
“That’s a fair enough analogy.” I looked around and grabbed an especially long, firm piece of straw from a nearby sheaf. “Okay, real quick: what’s twelve times twelve?”
She thought for a second. “One hundred…and forty and four.”
I handed her the straw. “Show me. Write it out.”
Rikka leaned forward in a half-crouch so that the straw could touch the dirt by the firing line. Her breathing picked up as her forehead furrowed even more deeply. The process was painfully slow, but she wrote out a pair of twelves in the dirt and added an equal sign. She paused, and I counted silently to twenty before she managed to scrawl out the 1-4-4 at the end of the equation.
She exhaled in a rush, as if she’d come up from deep water. “There. I did it.”
“Good. Let me have the straw for a moment.”
She gave it back as I wiped the dirt smooth with my boot. Then I wrote a quartet of words out on the ground. When I looked back to Rikka, her face was a study in ‘unease’. She knew what was coming next.
“Rikka,” I said, “please read each of these words for me.”
“S…straw. M-m. Mean? Ahh…something.” Beads of sweat sprang into existence above her well-defined eyebrows. “With. With-in? I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m just not bright enough to make it out.”
“Let’s try it a different way,” I said, as I took a step in front of Rikka, blocking her view of the words. “What material do you use to make your targets?”
“Straw,” she said, without hesitation.
“What did everyone drink last night?
“Mead.”
“What do you shoot with your bow?”
“Arrows.”
“What is your brother’s true calling?”
“He’s a wizard.”
I stepped back so that Rikka could see the words scratched in the dirt. “Do you really expect me to believe that you’re not bright…when you correctly identified each word I wrote?”
She blinked. Rikka looked to the words, then back at me.
“I did, when you asked me to think about them, didn’t I?” she breathed. “But I can’t…it’s like pushing through a stone wall when I try to…”
“One more test,” I said, as I smoothed the dirt over and gave the straw back to her. “What’s the name of this place, and what can you tell me about it?”
“This is Bloodwine Holt. It was built at the very start of my father’s reign, to serve as a rallying point in the war against King Benedict of Andeluvia.”
“Very good. You obviously know this place well. Now, write the name of the place out.”
The same mask of fear, and overwhelming concentration in the face of it, reappeared. Rikka managed to scrawl out a backwards ‘B’ just as the straw snapped under the force of her trembling hand. She looked up, as if afraid that she’d disappointed me.
“There’s nothing wrong with your intellect,” I said, making sure that I had her rapt attention. “You only have a learning disorder. One of my uncles, and one of my nephews has the exact same thing. In my world, it’s called dyslexia.”
“Dis-lex…tell me more about this, please! How did you know?”
“I learned about it from those two relatives of mine,” I explained. “They struggled a lot in life until they were diagnosed. The tip-off was your occasional misspeaks, when you replace the correct word with a similar-sounding one. My uncle did that all the time. We used to play along and use whatever term he came up with, like ‘I beg your parsnips’ instead of ‘I beg your pardon’.”
She cracked a halfway-hopeful smile. “So, no one thought too poorly of him?”
I shook my head. “Most people know about dyslexia nowadays, so it’s less likely that anyone will grow up thinking…well, not understanding what the problem is.”
“But what is it, Dayna? Am I…cursed in some way?”
“Dyslexia isn’t a curse. It’s not even considered a ‘defect’. As far as anyone knows, it’s just a way that a person’s brain processes symbols and patterns. So it affects how you read or write. Or even how well you can read maps. And since we often visualize what we’re trying to say, it can lead to vocal slip-ups from time to time.”
“If there is no defect, does that mean there is no cure, no fix to this?”
“There is nothing to fix. People who have dyslexia manage it, often choosing to excel in other areas.”
Rikka focused on the distant straw target. Quickly, she grabbed her bow, and in a smooth motion she reached for her quiver, nocked an arrow, and let it fly. With a tiny thock, it hit and stuck in the second ring out from the bulls-eye.
Galen’s sister bit her lip, but it wasn’t out of embarrassment this time. I could practically hear the gears turning in her mind. “So…I’m not dumb, then?”
I shook my head firmly.
“But…” she whispered. “I am what everyone has said in the past, from my foaling onwards. I can’t be anything else.”
I reached out to her, resting my hand on her arm the way I often did to reassure her brother. Suddenly, King Fitzwilliam’s words came back to me. They seemed perfectly appropriate right now.
“A wise person once said that your past is not what defines you,” I said. “It simply prepares you for who you shall become.”
“And what am I to become?”
“I’d say what you become is totally up to you.” I thought about that for a moment before adding, “So long as you become my Champion for Andeluvia’s Spring Tournament.”
She took my hand from her arm and squeezed it in hers for a moment. Then she let go and gave me a big smile. “I am bound by oath already, Dayna. But now? I would be proud to be your Champion.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I woke next morning to an urgent hoof-knock at the door to my room.
“Coming! Just a minute!” I said irritably, as I shrugged my way out of the sleeping bag.
My room was comfortable overall, but centaurs didn’t believe in central heating. So, I’d taken to sleeping in a long-sleeved nightshirt and matching pajama bottoms. The set had been advertised as ‘bargain-priced camping sleepwear’ at my local sporting goods store, and they’d been on sale for a reason. Specifically, they were a cross-hatched jumble of red, white, black, and green.
I suppose those colors might have looked good on a hunter’s girlfriend. As far as I was concerned, the damned things made me look like I was wearing a body-length Scottish kilt. But at least I felt clothed enough to peek out the door.
“Yes?” I asked. The same centauress servant who’d brought my bags to the room last evening stood in the hallway. She made a slight bow before answering.
“You are to come to the infirmary,” she said primly. “I am to escort you there if you don’t know the way.”
“Actually, I do know the way. So thanks, but I can find my way there on my own.” The servant bowed again and turned to leave, just as I asked, “Wait, who is asking for me? Is something wrong?”
She smiled. “The request comes from King Angbor himself. Since he has made it through the night, things are more right than wrong on this day.”
I relaxed and felt the sudden tension drain from my body. “Thank goodness. Have you seen him? Is he well?”
“I am no healer, but he is well enough to take an audience. A griffin arrived at dawn from the Kingdom of Andeluvia, and they are still talking.”
That sent a bolt of happiness down my spine, energizing me as much as a shot of espresso. I thanked her again, closed the door, and immediately began getting dressed. Since the only griffin detailed to courier duty from Andeluvia right now was Grimshaw, he’d have the latest news from Fitzwilliam’s court. And the Reykajar Aerie.
On top of that, it would be good to see another familiar face.
Once I’d washed up and dressed, I made my way down the echoing hallways to the infirmary. The long, narrow room bustled with centaurs coming and going on errands. I had to weave my way among the forest of tall equine legs before I could get close to Angbor.
The centaur King stood next to his healing platform, looking tired but reasonably hale and hearty. Galen and Rikka stayed off to one side, listening in as their father rattled off a series of orders to the assembled centaurs. Shaw reclined on the next healing platform over, patiently preening one of his great white wings.
“Dayna!” Shaw exclaimed, ruffling his feathers as he spotted me. “‘Tis good to see you after thine absence from court.”
“That goes double for me, big guy,” I said, as I reached up and skritched him on the side of his proud eagle head, just the way he liked it. “Any news from the aerie?”
“Aye, mostly bad. Belladonna shall not send more aid to Andeluvia. Methinks she is like to a nervous cat, ready to jump between two threats.”
“Two threats? What do you mean?”
The griffin shrugged expressively. “On the one set of talons, she counts the Creatures of the Dark as a foe. On the other set…I believe she fears the new aerie, which hath been founded by the Valkir Pride.”
