Fidēlis/Fealty
Chapter Two
The mages and the templars at the tower keep her in relative seclusion for just over two years. Her days are framed through the morning and evening prayers; through her studies she reads the entire Chant of Light. Certain verses get stuck in her head for days at a time and she practices writing them down. She is under observation here. That's what the sign on her door says, Under Observation. Lona didn't understand, when she'd first arrived, exactly what that had meant, but as time had worn on she figured it out for the most part.
Under Observation meant that she was bad; might do something terrible. No one wants that, do they, Lona? The templars have watched her at every moment. She thinks that they must be strange, shining men indeed to spend so much time on one little girl.
She hasn't felt the sunshine on her face since the day she arrived at the Tower.
Lona sees one mage more than the rest. He's middle-aged and rather boring but he has a commanding presence when he enters her room. He stifles the world around her so that all she can see, and hear, is him. His name is Silas. Enchanter Silas with the boring voice and the magnificent presence. The first thing he teaches her is how to read. The second thing he teaches her is how to control her emotions.
Sometimes the templars talk outside her door. It's always late at night when she should be sleeping. Magic exists to serve man. She can never sleep when she's running verses in her head. When she first arrived the templars talked mostly about tranquility. It was a foreign word to her. She asked Silas what it meant once and he told her not to worry. That being tranquil meant being at peace. She liked the way peace sounded.
My Creator, judge me whole: find me well within Your grace. Lona doesn't understand, exactly, what the words mean. She only knows that they mean something and that she needs to pay attention.
Outside her cell, the men stop talking about tranquility and start talking about training. Silas spends an entire fortnight working with her, teaching her how to control herself. The flames that took her family flicker gently in her palms when they're done.
Silas gives her a week off and announces that the real training will begin soon. She is already eight, half way to being nine.
Silas brings her to see the shining man that is in charge, so she's told. The man's name is Greagoir, Knight-Commander Greagoir who controls the shining men and will be watching over her for the rest of her life. There is another mage in the room that Lona has met several times before: First Enchanter Irving. She's never seen him look so worried, however. He almost brims with concern. For her, it seems.
When Greagoir speaks his words have no softness to them as he details the things that are expected of Lona now.
She is to obey her teachers.
She is to obey the templars.
She is to never kill anyone ever again.
The Knight-Commander holds her arm steady and draws a blade across the skin there. She tries to squirm away but he holds tighter. Her blood is collected. The First Enchanter heals the cut with a wave of his hand and leads her down; down into the main halls of the tower.
There is a world in this tower that she has been previously ignorant of. Children her age run screaming through the halls only to be reprimanded. Older kids, showing the first signs of adulthood, gather in quiet corners. Some whisper. Some . . . are doing something completely different with their mouths and these too draw the wrath of Irving. She doesn't understand their actions.
She doesn't understand much of anything besides the feeling of everything being just too much. Too much movement and too much noise. She has never been around this many people in her life.
The First Enchanter leads her to a long room, curved with the tower, and full of beds. Beds on top of other beds, even. Each double bed has a trunk at each end of it. A handful of children, both boys and girls and all taller than she, gather at the far end, around a second door that leads back to another room. Irving pushes her towards the group and Lona can't move for fear of the others. "Please." She has said very little in her tenure here. This one word, a small plea, falls on deaf ears. Irving moves her onward.
"Where is Enchanter Mirna?" The children have not noticed their presence before but they do now. They scatter, revealing a woman mage sitting on the floor. A chill runs down Lona's spine when she sees that this woman's hands are also bound with the magical cloth that she was brought here with. She does not know the word for the fabric, but it takes away. The cloth leaves her small power unable to function.
It appears the same is true for the older mages too.
Irving leaves her side to assist the woman on the ground. She soon as she is free the woman casts a spell that halts the children who have captured her in their paths. The woman, Lona supposes her name is probably Mirna, stands slowly and smiles warmly at her. As though she has not been held hostage by the cadre of children in the room.
"You must be Solona. My name is Enchanter Mirna." The woman kneels down in front of Lona and brings them eye to eye. Her gaze is warm and it's been a long time since Lona has had someone look at her this way. Something tugs at the back of her mind, a memory, of a flowing skirt and flames. Mirna grabs her hand and pulls Lona back to the present. "Welcome to the Apprentice Quarters. You're officially on your way to becoming a real mage now."