The Phoenix Ring (The Thunderheart Chronicles Book 1) (3 page)

              The third tribe was cunning and greedy.  Nothing would satisfy them except to rule over the other tribes. 

              “We wish that you would give us the same power you have, to make the ground tremble and the waves rise, to bring fire to life with our fingers and destroy those who hate us.”  The Ancients, for the first time, were afraid.

              “Are you sure this is the power that you wish for?  It will come with a curse, and there are many other things you could ask for, such as wisdom.  Nobody has ever asked for wisdom.

              But the third race remained resolute in their request.  The Ancients finally and very hesitantly gave them what they asked for.  “You will receive your gift, but you will be cursed as much as the elves.  You will not pass until long after the demise of the other races, but you will always wage war amongst yourselves, until every last one of you has died at the hands of another.  Yet some of you will never gain the power, they will be stronger than you in every other way and will never be under your control.”

              The third tribe was left on the middle continent, Gurvinite.  They were called human, their power was called magic, and the ones left without were called
amogh
.”

             
This man is mad,
Aidan thought. 
And he could kill me with his little finger.  I want a knife. 

              The wizard was currently enjoying watching a line of fire ants (that had not been there before) run over his hand. 

              Aidan cleared his throat, at which the wizard looked up and the fire ants disappeared. They did not pop into nonexistence or even fade out.  One moment they were there and the next they simply were not.

              "Where am I, sir?"  He asked in a small voice. 

              The odd man laughed.  "Why in Fort Phoenix, where else?"  he said.

              Aidan cringed.  Fort Phoenix was where the king's wizards and mages were sent to train.  All Aidan knew about it was that it was high in the mountains far to the north of Gurvinite, and that the elders of the village spoke of it as a brutal prison where magic would be extracted from ordinary folk, leaving them lifeless.

              The wizard abruptly stood.  "Come, let me show you around your new home, here, can you read and write?" 

              Rose had forced all the boys going through the orphanage to read and write, and Aidan was no different.  "Yes sir."  He said. 

              "Well then you can take this," he said, handing Aidan a leather-bound notebook from somewhere within the folds of his robes, along with a quill. "And don't worry about ink, that quill will never run dry."

              The warlock opened the door, where a boy about Aidan's age was standing.  He had blonde hair and blue eyes, and was a few inches shorter than Aidan. 

              "Timothy, I want you to take Aidan out and show him around, try to tell him as much as you can." 

              Timothy nodded his head eagerly as the warlock shuffled past, leaving the two boys alone. 

              Aidan stuck out his hand, and Timothy shook it with some vigor. 

              "It is so good to meet you, Aidan," he said.

              "Er, it's good to meet you too," Aidan said, more than a little taken aback.

              "How did you know my name?"

              The boy went red.  "The crack under the door is a little big, and I was standing outside, so I couldn’t help but hear a little…"

              Aidan laughed, he liked this energetic boy.

              "So where do you want to go?"  The smaller boy asked, changing the subject quickly.

              "Uh, you lead," said Aidan. 
Maybe there will be a chance for me to run while he isn’t looking.

              Timothy promptly turned around and began to walk quickly down the hall.  It was a vast structure, with many identical doors like the one Aidan had just used.  Each door had a number on it, the one Aidan had just exited was number thirty-seven.

              Another thing Aidan's mother had taught the boys was simple math, all out of a book given to her by a charitable noble.

              "These are the boys' quarters," Timothy said.  "The girls' quarters are on the other side of the camp, to keep them separated from the boys during later hours."

              Aidan was shocked.  His idea of a wizard was similar to Amilech or Malachi, odd, and with a long white beard.  Timothy did not really strike Aidan as a powerful sorcerer, but a
girl
wizard had never even crossed Aidan's mind.

              They crossed his mind now, and he wondered if they were as pretty as other girls.  No girls lived in his village, but he had met a few his age as they had passed through.  He had never had time for romance.  His focus had always been on joining the Ranger’s corps, and he remembered with a pang that his dream had been forever snatched from him.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t interested in courting an attractive young woman.

              They exited the hall and came out into the open mountain air, which was refreshingly cool.  Aidan saw that there were several odd shaped buildings scattered across a field that seemed almost too perfect.  No building was the same, and many should not have been able to physically stand.  There was a henhouse that seemed to be made of better quality wood than most mansions, with perfect white hens milling around outside guarded by a perfectly golden rooster.  There was a cube shaped building suspended in the air by only one thin leg, with smoke pouring out of it.  However, the most amazing thing was that the entire place seemed to be encased in a huge, blue tinged, transparent soap bubble.

              Aidan realized that his jaw was hanging open, and Timothy laughed.  "Do you want to go see the safety sphere?"  he asked.

              Aidan could only nod.

              Timothy started jogging towards the edge of the field, where the bubble started.  It was fairly easy to see through, and there appeared to be a forest on the other side. 

              "Go ahead, you can touch it," Timothy said. 

              Aidan gently reached out and stroked the bubble, half expecting it to pop. That would be two camps destroyed in twenty-four hours.  To his surprise, it was as hard as steel.

              He pushed a little harder, and finally gave it a good punch.  And then the wall punched him back.

              It wasn't really a punch, but a force slammed into Aidan that knocked him down.  He hit the ground with the wind knocked out of him, Timothy doubled over laughing.

              "Sorry mate," he said between gasps "I should have told you that the safety sphere fights back.  It hits you with twice the force that you hit it, but I guess you know that now."

              Aidan glared at him until the laughing subsided.  
So much for escaping
, he thought.

              "Are you done now?" he asked the young sorcerer.

              "Just about," Timothy answered. "I think next we can take you to the mage training area.  How much do you know about the levels of sorcery?"

              Aidan stared at him blankly.

              "Ugh, this might take a while," Timothy said.  "We can talk while we walk.  A sorcerer is what we call anyone who can practice magic.  A mage is the first level of sorcery, a mage can do magic with a staff, which is made of some material with runes inscribed on it, and it has a gem on one end.  For a mage, magic is directed out of the staff.

              "The next level is a wizard.  Wizards can do magic with a wand, which is a small staff without a gem.  The magic is normally directed out of the tip of a wand, and most sorcerers never make it past the wizard level. 

              "The last level is a warlock.  Warlocks can direct magic with nothing but their hands.  When a wizard becomes a warlock, he has a magic symbol engraved on his head.  There are only three warlocks in the entire camp, and my master is one of them.  Do you need some help?"

              Aidan was furiously scribbling in his notebook, and had nearly tripped over a stone.

             
I do not belong here anymore than I belong in a palace
he thought.

              Aidan and Timothy passed the boys’ quarters.  Aidan realized that it was the most normal building in the entire camp, shaped something like a chapel, while many of the other buildings should not have even been able to stand.  One building on the other side of the camp was fat and round and held off the ground by two thin legs.  And it was the
color of roses
.

              "Oh, those are the girls’ quarter's" Timothy said dubiously.  "Don't ask about the color.  Alright, so this is the mage training building."

              The structure that the boys were standing in front of was about twice as tall as Aidan, and was, unlike some of the others, attached firmly to the ground. It was roughly a circle, and there did not appear to be a roof.  As soon as Aidan registered this, a fireball soared out of the top of building and continued to fly upwards until it hit the safety sphere and exploded.

              Timothy opened the door and Aidan hesitantly stepped in.   The inside of the building was huge, it could easily span half of the village where Aidan lived.  And everywhere there were mages.  All of them had a staff, and most were doing magic of some kind or another.  One boy was flying atop his scepter, a girl was shooting fireball after fireball at a metal shield, and there even appeared to be a group of kids standing around a pool of burning water. 

              Aidan realized his mouth was hanging open, he had barely even noticed that Timothy was still speaking.

              "That boy over there is named Eric, he is so close to becoming a wizard, and that over there is the target area, and- oh, hi George!"  George was a huge boy, at least four inches taller than Aidan.  He had the beginning of a beard, and muscles bulged under his robes.  However, when he spoke it was a surprisingly high voice that emanated from his throat.

              "Hey, Tim, who is this, a newbie?" 

              "Yeah," the smaller boy replied, it was odd that Timothy's voice was deeper.  "His name is Aidan.  He just got here today and Malachi wanted me to show him around.”

              George glanced at Aidan's notebook.  "You still writing everything down?  Here, I can help with that."

              So saying, the boy raised his staff, which was made of stone with a small red ruby encased on top, at Aidan and mumbled some words.  Aidan was half expecting to get blasted off the face of the earth, but he was not expecting the itching that came into his ears.

              Aidan slapped at the side of his head, and then the feeling was gone.

              "There," George said, "That will make it so that anything you hear and want recorded will be written in your notebook."

              "Th-Thanks,"  Aidan stammered.

              "It's no problem.  Come on Tim, I want to show you something I found over here."

              "K, I'll be right back Aidan, try to introduce yourself to some people.  That girl over there might be the worst mage in the world, but she's sweet, and the masters aren’t against relationships.  Her name is Angela.  Good luck."  he said, and then followed George to somewhere else in the room, where he was hidden from sight by a group of mages that were frantically trying to extinguish a flaming staff. 

              Aidan, for lack of a better thing to do, began to walk toward the girl named Angela, who had somehow managed to make a lily grow on top of her head.  She
was
pretty.  And then the lily exploded, and her hair was on fire, and Aidan realized that now was probably not a good time to try flirting.  Instead he looked around at the building.

              He had heard of great arenas in the dwarven kingdoms, where warriors would fight jotuns, or ice giants, for fame and glory.  Its size alone made it far more impressive than any building Aidan had been in.  Also, the walls appeared to be impervious to anything.  Even when a rock that could have come from a catapult slammed against it, it showed no sign of stress.

              Suddenly, Aidan felt a breeze above his head, and looked up in time to see another, prettier girl flying haphazardly astride a staff.  As Aidan watched, something fell from her neck and she fell to the ground.

              Aidan looked at his feet and saw the thing that she had dropped.  It was a crystal of some sort, sky blue and attached to a cheaply made necklace.  It was a beautiful thing, almost as nice as its owner, and Aidan slowly reached down to pick it up. 

              Right before his finger touched it, something collided with his face.

              He was thrown onto his back and looked up to see the girl that had dropped the necklace.

              "Are you mad!?" she yelled

              Aidan leapt up to his feet, nose dripping blood.

              "Listen, I'm sorry, I didn’t know that you were so protective over your stupid-"