A Sorcerer's Tale: Ch. 4
Of Dreams and Horses
He felt the earth cracking.
A great dome of power shifted underneath him as his magical aura started to grow. Staring at his fingers, he watched them begin to emanate a purple light, which spread over the rest of his body. Gravity began to shift. A burning flame roared inside his body, threatening to render his spirit homeless.
Yet all the while, he was filled with joy and exuberance that few people ever achieve in one lifetime. Giggling almost maniacally, he raised his hand into the air and began to form a globe made entirely from his Gift. He screamed a scream filled with terror as well as excitement.
"Power!" he cried. "Absolute power!"
The sphere of magic having reached its maximum volume, he thrust it in front of him towards his enemy. It was a gigantic monster nothing like anything anyone has ever seen, with soulless eyes and a body that does not seem to be entirely solid. It was a bright flaming orange color with gigantic "limbs" and a head covered with eyes. It had no visible mouth. It didn't seem to need one.
As the ball of his Gift hit its target, he heard a pitiful cry from somewhere behind him. He could not distinguish the precise words, but the speaker was in great pain. Thrusting the pleas aside, he concentrated on destroying the creature.
He succeeded. With a burst of light, the monster gave a terrible howl and disappeared. He laughed again, filled with an unnatural childlike delight. The sorrowful cries grew softer and softer until they completely stopped. The smile slid off of his face: he had regained himself long enough to hear the last word.
"Thom..."
Thom of Trebond awoke soundlessly from his dream. The only thing he could do was to tremble in fear.
He left his dormitory with something to think about. One thing he could do that Alanna could not was predict the future. However, he could never do it when he wanted to, and the ability often showed itself in unsettling ways, usually in the form of dreams. In such trances, he was powerless to do anything that might alter the course he was about to take.
And he could only predict things that could not change. Even if he deliberately tried to change his fate, it would end up the same. Once he had predicted that Alanna would fall off a horse. He could see her surroundings in his vision and tried to rush over to help her. He was stopped by his father who wanted Thom to help him with a set of documents he was currently engrossed by. Alanna had fallen off the horse and broke her arm.
"Only the Gods can change the future," Maude had told him after he discovered his latent ability. "And even then, only the Great Gods can make decisions that change the course of the world. Influential people in history are always protected by one of the Gods. The late King was one. Mithros was said to watch over him."
Thom later learned that the Old King was responsible for uniting Tortall and expanding its territory. No wonder Mithros, the God of war and battle, was said to be responsible.
But now Thom was faced by a terrible thing he couldn't control. Someone would lose their life because of arrogance. HIS arrogance.
"The best thing I can do is forget about it," Thom told himself. "If I try to fix it, I'll just make it worse." With that, he nodded to himself and went off to the dining hall to eat breakfast.
Thom was disappointed to learn that day that only one of his classes involved magic. The rest of them involved preparing young ladies for court and instructing young men in manners. Etiquette, dancing, literature, and music were only examples. Thom had to take all of them just as the ladies did. Each of his classes only contained a handful of boys. The rest were fidgety, snobbish girls from noble families whose prime ambitions were to become beautiful, get married to royalty, and produce the next heir to the throne. Most would settle for nobles of high social standings, but a few only dreamed of marrying Prince Jonathan, the present heir to the Tortallan kingdom.
Most of the children were expected to know how to read and write. Thom was actually surprised at how many nobles couldn't. After the priest who taught reading and writing asked him to read a passage from a book, Thom rattled it off expertly, earning many startled and awed looks from his classmates. Thom looked smug until he heard his teacher's reply.
"Well, Master Thom," he began, "Since you seem so ADEPT at the thinking arts, I suppose you wouldn't mind showing off some more. Report on the entire book tomorrow at the beginning of class."
After class ended, Thom was still grumbling about his rotten luck. Just then, a dainty hand tapped his shoulder. Turning around, he came face to face with a group of girls.
Gulping, he tried to get out of speaking to them, but the assumed leader, a dark haired girl with tiny pert lips, spoke up. "We all thought it was WONDERFUL how skilled you are at reading, Thom. Most of our kinsmen aren't even half as knowledgeable."
She continued to gush until the bell for the next class rang. Sighing with relief, Thom excused himself and ran off, leaving the girls in speechless silence.
The next class was music. Thom learned that to be considered a proper noble, even if he wasn't going to go to many social events he had to master at least one instrument, unless he could sing. Having a terrible singing voice, Thom chose the flute since it seemed the lightest to pick up and easiest to use. He instantly regretted his choice however, since the other boys in the class would not stop teasing him about it. He was fairly embarrassed until he found that Marius was in the class and had also chosen his instrument.
"The flute is a fine thing," Marius said, defending his and Thom's honor as men. "Although it may seem quite an effeminate choice, let us not forget that one needs strong lungs to play one properly. All flute players have large, strong chests."
Too confused by this to comment, the boys left them alone after that.
"Was that really true?" Thom asked Marius curiously later. "What you said about the flute players, I mean."
Marius shrugged. "I don't know. It probably is. Most of those guys will have been run out of here by the girls in this place by midwinter so I don't think they should preach about manhood."
Thom grinned, quickly hiding his amusement. He was startled to find a friend in Marius, who was intelligent and had a wicked sense of humor. Thom found himself chuckling whenever Marius made one of his pert jokes, which was very often. He'd never laughed so much in his life.
The day continued on through Mathematics and Etiquette with little mishap. Then came the "physical arts" that the young men and ladies had to learn. Thom could instantly tell that they would not be half as strenuous as what his sister would be practicing during the same hours of the day. However, they proved to be much more humiliating than getting hit and falling down.
Dancing, Thom thought to himself after the class was over. What a stupid idea for a social event. Now he could not escape the girls that insisted on following him everywhere. They were there with him, and he had to dance with most of them. Thom suffered through their painful attempts at flirting as they prattled on about how rich their families were and how many horses they owned. It was enough to make a boy sick.
After about the sixth dance, the teacher called for another switch. Thom groaned. At least if you got stuck with one girl you could get used to it. But these girls were all different and prattled about different things in different voices.
To his surprise, his next dance partner did not greet him gushingly but instead uttered a soft and sensible "hello." Thom stopped looking at his feet and stared directly into the blue eyes of Selene, Marius' sister. She gave him a quick smile, which he grudgingly returned.
"I'm glad I'm dancing with you now," he said after a few moments of silence. "The rest of these girls are crazy."
This comment startled a laugh out of the blonde. "Well, most noble girls are. I just can't understand why they're all glomming onto you of all people."
Thom felt as though he should be insulted by that remark, but declined to say anything. "Well, why aren't you like that? You seem very level headed, not that I know much about things like that," he asked instead. Since Selene is Marius' sister, he reasoned, it might be good to be friendly with her. But that wasn't the only reason he was talking to her, he reflected. There was something about her that reminded him of Alanna.
Selene smiled. "I'm glad you think so," she said. "Truth to tell, I'd rather not be here. This place is far too prissy and polished for my liking. I grew up near the sea," she continued after pausing to let Thom spin her around. "I'm very accustomed to ships."
"Well, why did you come here then?" Thom replied, slightly confused. Now she wasn't sounding like Alanna at all. His sister would have snuck aboard one of the boats as a stowaway instead of come here, just as she had gone to the place.
Shrugging, Selene responded, "I guess I sort of have to. I'm the only girl in my family. The rest of my brothers went off to become knights. Marius is here training for priesthood. I suppose I just felt that running off to become a sailor seemed a bit ungrateful. Because I'm from Port Legann, I'll bring quite a dowry, Scanran or not. Besides," she continued, grinning slightly, "Some cultures say that it's bad luck for a woman to be aboard a ship."
Before Thom could probe further, the dance came to an end and the instructor called for another switch. Selene winked at him and held up a dainty finger to her lips before walking off to her next partner. Thom couldn't help staring at her as she walked away.
Ten minutes later, Thom's class was outside, near a well kept pasture. Thom marveled that grass could grow so deep in the Grimhold Mountains before wondering what they could possibly be doing outside.
He soon found out.
"Horseback riding?" Thom exclaimed as he stared at a great herd of the beasts that were grazing and pawing the ground. His outburst drew giggles from his classmates.
The instructor, a muscular dark-haired woman in riding gear, glared at him. "That's right, young master Thom. Every young court lady needs to learn how to ride."
"But I'm not a lady!" Thom protested, red-faced with exasperation and embarrassment.
"I know that, young sir," the instructor said. "Don't be pert. Sorcerers need to ride too. Can you imagine walking everywhere every time someone needs a service performed? No one has been able to come up with a decent flying spell yet. Too many side effects; people kept turning funny shades of purple. So until that day, you will ride. Understood?" she finished, staring him down.
Thom rolled his eyes a bit. "Yes, Madame Instructor."
He then began to peruse his choice of horses, frowning as he did so. He was never a good rider, and horses never seemed to like him. Perhaps they could sense that he hated their smell, their gruffness, everything about them. He was about to select a strawberry roan that looked calm enough when a voice called behind him,
"Funny, I didn't figure you were such a scaredy-cat, Thom."
Thom whipped his head around and saw Selene standing there, a smile hovering on her face. Glaring at her, he replied, "I just don't like horses, all right?"
Selene laughed. "Yes, I figured as much. But why would you pick that horse? She seems awfully tame."
Thom's eyes narrowed. She was teasing him, he could tell. "What difference does it make?"
Selene shook her head. "Oh, not much, really. But wouldn't you rather ride that one over there?" She was pointing behind him. Thom turned around and stared into the eyes of the largest horse he had ever seen.
Its mane was black, along with the rest of its body, right down to its hooves, which were stamping the ground menacingly. It was at least twice as tall as Thom with mad eyes that flicked around at everything that moved. Thom could have seen the Dark Lord himself riding on it. Peering at the label on its stall, he gulped visibly, despite his best intentions.
"Storm-brewer?" he read off. "Even the name sounds beastly!"
"What are you, scared? You're a boy, aren't you?" Selene said mockingly. "I thought you had more guts than that, Thom."
Thom stiffened. He could tell that Selene was goading him to take that horse. But why? Did she want to see him fail? Or was this really a test of his manhood?
One thing was for sure. Something in her voice made him really want to ride this horse, just to prove her wrong. He resolutely walked inside the stall and put his hand on Storm-brewer's quivering flesh. The horse snorted and stared into Thom's determined purple eyes.
"Well," the instructor said as she came to check his pick. "Changed your tune, haven't you boy?"
Thom chanced a look over at Selene and his eyes widened. She was standing by the roan that he had been about to choose as his own.
Infuriated, Thom turned away. Of course, who else was going to ride a horse called "Storm-brewer"? He made a silent oath that no matter what it took, he would master this beast.
As he got into bed at the end of the day after completing his reports for Literature and Etiquette, he felt as though he should have remembered something extremely important that had happened the night before. For the life of him, however, he couldn't remember what it was.
