CHAPTER TEN
Stones, Bones, and Sulfur
Mira needed another day to look through the Judge book from Jans's classroom, so I focused on catching up on what I'd missed in the three days of classes I'd been asleep. I reported to the courtyard the next night for my next training session with Galen, making sure to dress in an ugly orange shirt and worn breeches so I wouldn't ruin any clothes I liked.
Before I reached the courtyard, though, I encountered my mother in the hall. Her icy eyes stopped me in my tracks, and I stood there, at a soldier's attention, waiting for her to speak. "Good afternoon, Kaybree," she said.
"Good afternoon, Mother." I tried to meet her eyes, but found myself looking away each time, like a magnet bouncing away from another magnet. "I'm on my way to meet Lord Valkegaard."
"He says your training is progressing," she said. She pursed her lips. "Albeit slowly. Will you be ready for the next one?" She meant the next Angel, but couldn't say that with sages and students passing around us.
"Of course," I said. Sure, I'll be fine. If it waits another fifteen years to show up. "Lord Valkegaard is a most dedicated instructor."
"That he is," she said, stalking around me with that discriminating frown she often wore. "Very well. I will check on your progress again next week."
I let out a slow sigh as she left. I wonder if she knows I have my father's journal. She hadn't mentioned it, so I put those fears aside. With the training session with Galen, I had plenty to worry about.
He was already there when I arrived, going through his forms with a wooden sword. Instead of the vest and collared shirt, he wore his Vormund surcoat and training breeches. The trees dripped raindrops into the marshy, muddy ground. The air smelled of moist dirt and sharp, fresh rainwater. "Right on time," he said, tossing me a wooden sword. "Go through some warm ups and we'll begin." As before, his manner was crisp and direct. No small talk, no "how was your day" or anything else. Just "let's begin." Perhaps my mother was rubbing off on him.
He came over, holding an item behind his back. "I thought we'd try something a little different to start off." He held out a white glove. "Now, don't touch it yet. This is a relic that we call a Weapon. No one is quite sure where they come from, but they're the remnants of items forged in the Age of Visions. This one doesn't shoot sparks, so you should be fine. Just put it on and focus on emptying your mind."
I slipped the glove on, holding my breath and waiting for it to explode. It didn't. In fact, as I stood there, breathing steadily and staring at it, nothing happened at all. "What do I do now?"
Galen took a step back and pointed to a large rock. "I want you to push the rock. Just lightly. Concentrate on moving the rock an inch back."
I focused on the rock, feeling a tingling sensation in the glove. Move. I gave the rock a mental shove, but it did not budge. I pushed again; still nothing. Galen watched me expectantly. I tried a third time, throwing my will at the rock in a fierce wave of motion. Bolts of lightning shot out from the ground around me, sizzling blue wisps that curled the blades of grass and scarred the tree trunks. Mud water bubbled and sparked. I stepped out of the marshy water, hoping to stop the lightning, but it only intensified. A bolt of energy blasted through a tree to my right, charring bark and knocking a large limb to the ground.
Galen cried out in pain. White energy sizzled around him, shooting toward his boots. In desperation, I pried the glove off of my hand and threw it to the ground. Like a candle flame extinguished by a gust of icy wind from an open window, the lightning disappeared. I ran over to Galen, who had fallen to the ground. "Galen! Are you all right?" I knelt beside him, cursing my inability to control the relics. How long would I be a menace to everyone around me?
He coughed and stood, brushing wet grass from his clothes. "Good thing I wore these boots," he said, gesturing at the smoke rising from them. "I thought something like this might happen."
"I'm so sorry," I said. "I just—it was out of control!"
"That's why we're doing this," he said, holding up a hand. "The very beginning is crucial to learning control over your abilities. Until further notice, we're going to escalate the training to a daily affair. Meet me here every night from now on."
"Every night?" I thought about the bards' show tomorrow night. It was the first chance I'd ever had to leave the sagekeep with my friends. And the first time I'd ever had a friend to go with. "But you know I have classes, right?"
"Classes?" he said, coughing. He stood and brushed twigs from his coat. "This is the fate of the human race. Your training comes first. If the sages have a problem with that, they can take it up with me."
My heart sank. So much for my plans. "Okay. What now?"
He shook his head. "We'll come back to Weapons training another time. It looks like you still need some time to adjust." He grabbed the glove from off the ground. "Go ahead and practice your sword strokes. Let's see what you remember from last time."
As catastrophic as relic practice nearly became, it could not rival the humiliation of sword training. This time, Galen wielded a six-foot oaken staff against my clumsy sword strokes, and I found myself face down in the mud more times than I could remember. Running and dodging on hard ground posed no problem, but in the icy slush of earth sodden with rain and snow, my feet couldn't hold traction. By the time the sun had set, a chill wind sapped the warmth in my joints, and I felt as if I moved through jelly. My only consolation, I thought while shivering and clutching the wooden sword hilt in frost-numbed hands, was that I had successfully chosen an outfit worth ruining.
After I pulled myself back up from tripping on a tree root, Galen set down his staff and said, "That's enough for now. I don't want to push you too hard."
I gasped for breath, leaning against a tree for support. I wiped my face with a sleeve, replacing mud with more mud, which now dripped from my cheek. Thoughts of impressing Galen had flown far away during the training. I had the impression, though, that girls who powdered their faces didn't impress him as much as those who fought the Angels. In that case, the mud and sweat would have given me an advantage.
Galen waved me over to a rock where he'd set his bag. "Come here, have a seat. We still have some time left before dark, and I wanted to show you something."
I plopped myself down next to the rock, resting my numbed legs and not caring about the water seeping into the old pair of breeches. "What is it?" A thought occurred to me, and I perked up. "A relic?"
"Something like that," he said. He drew a black gemstone from his coat pocket. It emitted a slight screeching sound, like someone dragging their nails across a chalkboard, but when he pulled it away, the sound stopped. "You see, Kaybree, when the sages talk about relics, they mean the 'holy' objects given to us by the Angels. They were meant to protect us from the creatures of the forest." He held up the black stone and put a blood red one next to it. "But there are also other kinds of relics. Objects that work against the Angels' power, should you come in contact with them."
"Relics against the Angels?" I asked. "How could the Almighty's creations hurt one of his messengers?"
He set down the stones and drew a small pouch out of the bag. "The Angels are more complicated than that." He scooped up a bit of moist earth. "For example, we know the Angels are tied to the forest. They're creatures of life and the natural world, so objects of decay and stone can hurt them." He picked up the black stone. "Gemstones from the darkest recesses of the earth have been discovered by our workers in the colonial mines. Their presence can sometimes weaken an Angel's power." He opened the pouch and held it out to me. "Smell this."
I made a face. "Smell it?"
"Go ahead."
I sniffed the inside of the pouch. The smell nearly overpowered me, burning through my nose and making my eyes water. I coughed and turned away from the stench, but it lingered, like a burning rotten egg. I waited for my sinuses to clear before I tried to speak. "What was that?"
"It's called sulfur. It might smell bad to us, but to the Angels, it's toxic. We're
still trying to figure out why, but until then, at least it works." I coughed again, wiping moisture from my eyes. It "worked" on humans as well, it seemed.
Galen took a slender white object from the bag, handling it with both hands, like a woman cradling her baby. "We also have relics of our own. Remnants of those whom the Angels cursed." He held it out for me to see. "Behold, the finger bone of Elrich Ardawk the Heretic."
I stared at the bleached white bone. I knew that people sometimes kept heirlooms from their ancestors, but bones were supposed to be buried underground—especially the bones of heretics. Ardawk had accused the sages of being worse than highway robbers: at least robbers admitted that thuggery was wrong, but the sages pretended it was a holy calling. Ardawk hadn't been known for his subtlety. "Where did you get that?"
"It's been passed down for generations," he said, sheltering the bone under his hands from the rain. "Legend has it that Ardawk's finger was cut off by a Knight of Valir shortly before he was burned to death for heresy. His followers saved the bone, and some say it's been imbued with his spirit." He cleared his throat and glanced around, as if nervous. "Listen, Kaybree, it's dangerous out there alone. Once the Angels know who you are, they'll come after you. But your powers are still wild and volatile. Until you learn to control them, you don't stand a chance. And I may be able to protect you from politicians, but not Angels."
He took a cord and wove it through a hole in the bone, and handed it to me. His eyes sparkled with sincerity. "That's why I want you to have this. It will protect you from the Angels, at least a little. Only an Angel will know what it is, so nobody will accuse you of heresy just for having it." He put the necklace on me, and I pushed my damp hair out of the way for him. "I want you to be safe. That's why I insist on an intense training program. That's why I won't accept anything but your best effort."
I smiled back at him as the relic sat against my chest beside the serpent-head key. "Thanks, Galen," I said, heat rising in my cheeks at his words. "That's really sweet of you."
"Keep the relic close to your heart," he said. "Let it remind you that I'm always near. We're in this together, Kaybree. We're here to defend humanity."
"Of course." I glanced down at the relic again. "I just have to forget that it's really some dead guy's finger."
Galen burst into an embarrassed smile. "Yeah, that might be best."
I smiled back. It might have been the finger bone of a heretic, but it was a gift from Galen and my defense against the Angels. I ran my hand down the grooves of the heretical relic, touched that Galen cared, but aware of the relic's true purpose. Stones, bones, and sulfur—as well as two days of training—were all that stood between me and humanity's worst enemies.