The Phoenix Ring (The Thunderheart Chronicles Book 1) (4 page)

              "You idiot, it isn't just a necklace! What kind of sorcerer are you?"

              By now the rest of the mages had stopped what they were doing and were forming a circle around the two.  Aidan began to feel the anger bubble over inside him.

              "Really, all I know is that you dropped the necklace, and where I come from if someone drops something then you pick it up and-"

              He was stopped short as he had to dodge her fist.  She didn't look so pretty when she was trying to murder him.

              Next she tried to hit him with a surprise uppercut, but he caught her fist. Years of brawling at the orphanage with boys older than himself had shown made Aidan a far better fighter than any of the mages in the room.

              He threw her arm away and the rest of her followed.  She jumped back to her feet, this time with a scepter in hand, when Aidan felt someone pulling him away.  At the same time, another girl was pulling his opponent out of the impromptu fighting ring.

              "I had that covered, you know," Aidan said to Timothy.

              "Yeah, you did great beating up one of the weakest mages here.  Oh, and she's a girl.  Now shut up and follow me."

              Aidan had a tart reply planned, but he closed his mouth and fumed silently.  His mother would have given him a thorough lashing if she knew he had ever touched a girl, let alone gotten into a fight with one.

              Everyone was staring at Aidan as Timothy pushed him out the door.  They kept walking at a furious pace until they got into the boys' quarters, where Timothy opened the door to number thirty-seven and shoved Aidan inside.

              "Stay here.  Don't touch anything!"

              He slammed the door, and Aidan was left alone.

             
Great,
he thought,
two hours and I already managed to break every rule in this stupid place.

              He sat down on the bed he had woken on, and stared at the fire again, which was still blazing. 

             
What am I doing here?  I'm a farm bratt, maybe a Ranger, not a wizard!  Where did I even get my magic from?

              But he knew where he got his magic from.  Not his mother, that was for sure.  That left his father. 

             
My father…

              He had left a bag of fifty silver coins in the room where he had spent one night with Aidan's mother.  She had used it to buy the farm where up to twenty boys could stay at once. 

              Aidan wondered what she was doing now.  She probably thought her son had been accepted into the Ranger’s corps, and was learning to fight trolls in the Nefarious Lands.  She would be so disappointed when he went back to the orphanage with the sign of a criminal burned onto his hand.

              Aidan stared at the table that Malachi had created.  It was made of fairly flimsy wood, and was highly flammable.  Aidan still remembered the word that had made the fireplace light so quickly.

             
Why not, I'm already in as much trouble as I'm going to get in.
He thought.

              "
Ingo
!" he said.

              Nothing.

              Aidan stared at the table.

              "
Ingo!  Ingo!"
  he yelled, getting more and more angry.

              "By the dragon's breath,
ingo
!"  he finally screamed, and jumped back as flames engulfed the table and chairs in a roaring inferno.

              "Whoa, mate, what part of don’t touch anything do you not get?" Timothy was standing in the door with a leather bag slung over his shoulder. 

              "Ok, I never touched it, it just kind of…"

              "Uh, yeah.  Take this."  Timothy said, handing him the leather bag.

              The younger boy pulled a wand out of his belt and pointed it at the flame. 

             
"Eslang!"
he said, and the fire went out, leaving the room hot and smoky and the chair in ashes.

              "Just for future reference, that means
Be not
. Incredibly useful spell.  Now, I have some stuff that I should have explained to you before taking you to the mage training area.  You'll have to sit down on the floor since
someone
had to burn the chair." 

              Aidan sat down on the stone floor, feeling more than a little stupid. 

              "My master believes in learning on the job, but that obviously is not going to work very well with you.  He told you the story "How Magic Came To Sortiledge", which I personally think is a bunch of… well, let's just say I don't think it's true." 

              "Uh, your master," Aidan said "Is he, I don’t know…"

              "Insane?"  Timothy finished, looking up from the bag.  "Yes, probably.  Ok, so I have here a few objects that you are going to look at, if you can promise not to set anything on fire."

              Aidan bit back another reply and nodded his head.

              Timothy reached his hand into the bag and pulled out a large, strange silver ring.  In the front of the ring, where a jewel would normally be held in place, was a type of glass bubble with a strange symbol on the front.  Inside the bubble was a crystal, not unlike the one that the young girl had dropped. 

              "Go ahead, you can put it on, it won't kill you." Timothy said, looking at his fingernails.

              Aidan slipped the ring on.  There was a hole in the back, it was placed so that the crystal inside was always touching the wearer's skin.

              "What is this?" Aidan asked.

              "It's what we generally call a Soulrock.  Well, that’s what the crystal's called.  Do you remember, when you tried to use magic, how you had to get really emotional before it would work?" 

              Aidan nodded his head.

              "Magic is like a living thing, you have to connect with it and make it understand you before you can use it.  A Soulrock is a type of crystal that was grown in a special cave north of the Nefarious Lands.  Through a Soulrock, magic can understand you."

              "Why wouldn’t that girl let me touch hers?"  Aidan asked.

              "A Soulrock bonds with a person." Timothy answered “It becomes one with their
Arror
, an Elven word that roughly means 'life force.'  If you take a Soulrock that is bonded to another person, then there will be a test of wills.  If the owner of the crystal is stronger, then the intruder will die.  If the intruder is stronger, then the owner and the crystal will become his slave.  That crystal you are holding is dead, which is why you aren’t."

              Aidan looked at his fingers and saw that they were shaking.

             
Funny how now is the time my body picks to get scared.

              "But how did I do magic the first time, with a wand?" Aidan asked. 

              "Ah, now we get to the fun part." Timothy said, pulling a piece of wood out of the bag.  "This is rowan wood, which also has a connection to magic, the forest out there has plenty of rowan trees.  Unfortunately, rowan magic is uncontrollable and, as you found, very flammable.

              "For some reason, you have a special connection to the magic.  Whenever you get angry, it seems to respond to you, but only in the same way as rowan, the magic is uncut and completely unsuitable for casting complicated spells.  You should bond really well to a Soulrock, you're more powerful than any other two mages combined.”

              “Why haven’t I ever had this happen before?” Aidan asked.  “I just set a chair on fire, but I’ve been angry plenty of times and never done anything like that.”

              “Your Magic had to be activated.” Timothy said. “Amilech was probably the first magic you had ever encountered.  Good luck trying to turn it off now.”

              "How do I get a Soulrock, do I have to pay for it? ‘Cus I'm pretty much broke."  Aidan said, beginning to wish more and more for the farm where he had grown up.

              "There is a special ceremony where you get to "call" a Soulrock, which will take place in a vault specially designed for them.  If the Soulrock is weaker than your will, you will become its master.  If not, then the mage…"

              "What," said Aidan, "does the mage die?"

              Timothy closed his eyes.

              "But what if I don't want to go through that, what if I just want to go home?" Aidan asked, feeling some more of the anger build inside him.

              "Mate, I wish you could," Timothy said, "I think all of us have wanted that at some point or another.  But even if they make this place out to be a camp, or a nice little barracks, it's really a prison.  And some of us are gonna die."

3

             
The rest of the day
went by quickly for Aidan.  Timothy tried to tell Aidan as much as he could about life at Fort Phoenix, which seemed to be all right except for the whole "Some of us are gonna die." thing.  For the first month after arriving young mages could roam freely throughout the camp to get used to the way it was run.  After that, there would be an evaluation with a rowan staff that would help the older wizards gauge how powerful the new arrivals were. 

              Timothy was the only other "First Month" in the camp, he had arrived two weeks before Aidan.  Malachi managed to pull some strings so that he and Aidan could do their evaluation on the same day.

              The night that Aidan arrived the two boys sat alone in the mess hall.  It was a huge structure with more than thirty large tables that were sectioned off based on age and ability.  Aidan had a good view of the adult tables from where they sat, and Timothy pointed out the warlocks to Aidan.

              "That one at the head of the table," Timothy said, pointing to a very fat man that was starting to lose his fhair, "That is Master Edwin, he is the camp councilor, you know about the council right?  The people that rule the entire known world, yeah, he's one of them." 

              Malachi was sitting on his left. 

              "So tell me," Aidan said, "How did you get a warlock as your master so quickly?"

              "My father is a wealthy merchant," Timothy answered, "And my mother was a powerful sorcerer.  She was friends with Malachi when they were young, and she taught me everything I know about magic.  Malachi took me on as a tribute to her.  Oh, that warlock with the dragon on his forehead sitting on Master Edwin's right is Bartemus.  He's never taken an apprentice, most people think he lost his mind when Marcus Thunderheart died in the Great Wars."

              Aidan stared blankly at his friend.

              "You don't know who Marcus Thunderheart is?  What did they teach you in that village?"

              "Mainly how to survive when your life is not handed to you with a wand," Aidan said testily.

              "Good point.  I assume you know what the Great Wars were, right?" 

              "Of course I do," Aidan answered.  Everyone knew what they were. The Great Wars had been a series of battles that took place fifty-nine years ago.  Beyond that, Aidan did not know much, anyone who asked about them in his village would get cuffed around the ears.

              "Come with me after dinner, I'll ask Malachi for a history book that you can read."

              Later that night Timothy handed Aidan a large, leather bound volume, candles, and a small ring made of rowan wood.

              "Try not to set that on fire, I made it myself," Timothy said. 

              Aidan slipped the ring on and stood the candle up on the floor.

             
"Ingo,"
he said.

              The whole candle disappeared in a blast of heat.

              "Whoa, mate, careful there.   Try and think of just a spark on the tip of the wick.  I've never heard of an untrained mage having so much power." Timothy said.

              Aidan put the second candle on the floor and tried to think of a small spark.

              This time only half the candle was incinerated, and the other half was beautifully lit.

              Aidan put the candle beside the history book and opened the dusty volume. 

              The book had countless chapters, the first one called
How Magic Came to Sortiledge.
  The last chapter was a section titled
The Great Wars
that encompassed nearly half the book.  Aidan flipped to that section, wondering how Timothy had expected him to learn that much.  He began to read: