Chapter One: New Girl in the Palace

The truth of all of these stories seemed to evaporate little by little with each telling, with each embellishment and disagreement, however as years passed no one seemed to care enough to tell it, or argue about or spend any time at all thinking about it. Until that is, one not so quiet day that was the first day that all of the noble’s children would once again attend the classes the palace offered, etiquette and dance and sewing for the girls, and fierce battle training that might one day offer knighthood to the boys, more esoteric trainings were also offered but the general interest was so dim that most ignored these other subjects or simply forgot that they existed.

Boys of all ages and sizes lined up against the fenced practice courts, waiting to be sorted by knight masters into training classes, a few girls showed up as well, standing slumped at the corner of the fences, chattering madly. Many of the lesser nobility had their daughters train a year or two in the use of a sword and bow and riding, just in case they should need to protect themselves should their family’s fief be attacked. There were an increasingly small number of girls who would continue their training to completion and fewer still that would stand in the ranks of knighthood, yet these lady knights were treated with as much respect by any noble as any other knight of the realm. This latest group seemed nervously determined, those who had been there in years past seemed a bit more familiar and yet nervous with anticipation all the same. Except that was, for the new girl. No one knew exactly who she was, or what she was doing there, but she stood off by herself silent and still, not a single line of worry crossed her face or a dot of redness in her cheeks as the other girls began to whisper about her.

After the groups were quickly separated by age and experience (the new girl being sorted into a group of boys ten boys aged nine to fifteen with no formal training) and dismissed for their lunch hour, rumors of her spread quickly, until every other youth staying in the training wing of the palace had heard of her. After a short while the old story of the little girl who opened the palace gates was being whispered as well, and everyone was set to wondering whether this girl who seemingly disappeared after the palace gates closed behind her had just reappeared in their midst, after all, they seemed to conclude, how many strange young desert girls with bobbles in their hair could one castle (albeit a large one) hold?

After lunch was what the bookish teachers called ‘practical learning’ they themselves being disillusioned to the grandeur of court and knighthood and general waste of time that most of their students spend knocking each other about half killing themselves. Those children who could not read or write or do sums were sent to language and math classes, those who wished to learn to sew and keep a home found their bustling rooms with ease, those who waited for lectures on chivalry sat in well polished seats packed into a large room until there was hardly enough room to seat themselves, but what of this strange girl? She felt eyes upon her as she walked down the hallways passed the brightly lit rooms and chattering youths, she seemed to disappear and float down a flight of stone stairs that led to other less attended classes, and down to the end of that all even, were no more children sat in the halls awaiting their friends to join them. Finally she turned into a half dark classroom, disappearing from their sight.

The knight master jumped visibly when the girl opened the door to admit herself, startled out of the beginning of his lecture, visibly reddened from embarrassment as he pointed to a seat in the back where she sat down without casting a noteworthy glance among her peers.

“Well, another newcomer, eh? Wonderful, I should imagine, yes indeed. Well, now that I truly expect no more interruptions I shall begin again.” This teachers face was kindly, his eyes were overlarge and bright, and the white sleeves of his tunic were splattered with ink and powders. He seemed to be in his late twenties, with a thin but powerful frame and dark hair that was shaggy and slightly un-kept.

“Welcome all of you to sorcery. This class is for the few of you who realize your Touch and wish to train it. Most of you I know from past years but you will note we’ve two newcomers this year so we’ll squeeze out a round of introductions before we begin the practical stuff. Right to it then, my name is Alex, Sir Alexander Drake if you count my years waving sticks at bandits and the like but titles are no concern here, next!” He pointed to a boy in the front row, tall, older, probably seventeen or eighteen and scars left on his cheeks and forearms showed that he was in training to become a knight. He smiled in a relaxed and casual kind of way, and smiling crookedly he introduced himself as John. Others gave more full descriptions, giving full titles and the fiefs or townships to which they belonged. The introductions curled around the room that held only eight people until it came to the last row.

“Ah,” Sir Alex said his large eyes opening wider in curiosity “our newcomers. Please, introduce yourselves.” The boy sitting to the right of our strange girl (one she vaguely recognized as being a part of her training group) smiled largely and brightly said that his name was Tom. He left it at that, his eyes over bright and sparkling in anticipation and inhibition. Now all eyes fell on the strange girl, who remained as calm and composed, her face set in its expressionless gaze, the one that would seem blank if her dark eyes did not brim over with intelligence.

“Mae.”

It took the teacher a full minute to realize that the class had gone silent, caught up staring at her, himself included. He sat up, going red again and cleared his throat his students now attentive to him again.

“Right then, well as we all should know, Touch is a hard thing to measure, as is a students aptitude in wielding it. Magic that comes from your Touch manifests itself in images that others can see, mirages, fakes, duplicates, convincing as all get-go but mostly all are just pretend. We should also know that we cannot manipulate things with the Touch that we ourselves do not have full knowledge of. One cannot conjure a spider if one has no idea what a spider looks like, just as one can’t display a flying bird if you have no concept of how real birds keep themselves aloft or hold their wings. Once real mastery is gained in your illusions, you may even be able to wield a power that can create itself within our reality, not just a trick as most magic is, but real in the truest sense of the word. If you will?” He then raised his hands and a flower appeared on his desk, a white daisy, flawless. Next he pulled a seed from his pocket and concentrated on it, far to quickly it grew into a mature daisy, nearly mirroring the fake one next to it. “You see, the illusion is simpler but…” He reached out to touch the daisy but his hand closed on thin air. “You see, while this other one, though harder to create…” He picked up the daisy and handed it to one of the elder girls sitting in the front, who picked it up and smelled it, smiling shyly. This stunt was greeted with earnest applause, save from Mae still sitting stone faced in the back of the room.

“Now, since this is the first day I must see how your Touch manifests itself, and what control you have over it. I will do this with as simple a test as I can manage keeping it true to the nature of the test itself.” He flicked open a cabinet drawer behind him and pulled out nine candles. He tossed on to everyone in the room who set it on their desk awaiting further directions. He then lit his own candle and split the flame and sent it to the rest, a common household trick that servants with the Touch learned to use quickly as it saved a great deal of time from pulling down chandlers and lighting hundreds of candles with flint and steel. “Alright, here is your task, create a rainstorm, a small one mind, as convincing as you can above your candle, focus on what candles do when rain is falling, keep your mind focused as I circle the room. There you are, now off you go.”

Most of the students created a fairly realistic storm; John sent lightning down to an illusion farmyard complete with miniature horses and cows, while the young Tom could hardly manage clouds that were not transparent. No ones candle even flickered in the unnatural storms. Mae sat still, her hands still folded on her lap. After watching each student and giving small amounts of praise and lots of helpful hints and pats on the shoulder, Alex finally stood in front of Mae’s desk.

“What’s the matter child, are you afraid?” His voice was kind and quiet; he was trying to embarrass her by getting the other students attention. None the less John’s farmyard disappeared and his eyes locked on to the conversation at the back of the classroom.

“No.” She replied, her eyes getting slightly wider and looking slightly bemused.

“Why is there no rainstorm here then?” He asked, clearly thinking she was trying to salvage a wounded pride.

“Fine.” She stated, shaking her head only slightly. “A rainstorm.”

She picked her hand out of her lap and pointed to the ceiling circling slowly. Slowly, too, white clouds began to gather, and turn darker and darker until a light mist began to envelope the classroom. She then pointed her finger to the floor. For a moment, nothing happened, and then drops began to fall. Students cringed as cold drops began to hit their heads. The rain came down harder and harder until it was a torrent of falling water, a true downpour. All of the candles went out, water collected in pools on the floor, drenching the bottoms of the other students clothing. They gathered their feet up in their chairs and held books above their heads, sitting in utter confusion. That is, most of them. The boy named John sat still at his desk, his eyes concentrated above him in a water tight shield that kept him dry, Alex too had the same type of shield that water slid off from, though he only held one hand in the air to create and maintain it. Tom stood by his desk and laughed merrily at the rainfall, enjoying this mid-class downpour. The rain refused to drop on Mae, it scattered around her, though she concentrated no shield, in fact she looked on with the same stony faced intelligence as she had before.

“I do believe that’s enough Mae.” Alex told her, kindness omnipresent in his voice.

Mae nodded and the rain ceased, the clouds disappeared and the puddles on the floor shrank into nothingness. Everyone else remained damp and irritated as they inspected the damage. Seeing that she had caused some sort of disturbance to her classmates Mae flicked a finger quickly and all the candles re-lit at once, but a quick scan of the faces on her class mates let her know that her damage was no where near repaired.

“That was… most interesting Mae… most interesting, yes indeed.” Alex told her with a smile that didn’t match the puzzlement in his eyes.

The bell tolled out from the clock tower signaling the next lesion to begin. Five soggy students groaned and picked up their books and filled out of the classroom sending shooting glares to Mae. John smirked at her a moment, then disappeared into the corridor while Tom walked out with her saying quite plainly, with an irrepressible smile;

“I don’t know why their all so befuddled, that was a great bit of fun, really, and what did they expect from a rainstorm after all?”

Mae stood from her desk and began to walk towards the door, rather slowly, waiting for the hallways to clear of most of their occupants, and was halfway there before Alex called her back. With a look of innocent confusion she sat at the desk in front of him, graceful as if she took more pains from keeping her body on the ground than off of it.

“I assume that you are not signing up for a second hour of classes?” He asked plainly. “Please forgive me if I’m wrong on that point.” Mae shook her head lightly so that the bobbles danced and jingled, catching the light from the candles lit around the room. “Then perhaps you would agree to spend a second hour here, since your skills are not entirely suited to our humble class?” His tone was firm, commanding even, but his eyes spoke the private jest.

“I would like that, Sir.” She bowed her head a fraction in recognition, though not the proper amount when addressing an elder, let alone a teacher. He smiled and nodded back.

“Well then, perhaps now you will let me know just what you did to conjure that little storm. Describe the magic to me, please.”

“Your magic comes from a well within you, you refill it from the earth but that takes time, and it takes even longer to make the pool big enough to do real magic. I have no pool of magic, I pull it from the earth without letting it drip in, I strain the raw element and put it to use right away, its not that much different, just quicker.” Sir Alex kept his face plain as he listened, however he could not help a little surprise in the simple manor of her speech. When she gave short answers and held her composure so solidly it seemed like talking to any scholar, just sifted through the mouth of a thirteen year old girl, however speaking for even so short a time her stony countenance broke down a layer, and it became plain that whatever her demeanor, she was just a child.

“Indeed my dear, this method is not so strange to me, there are very few mages who prefer this method, in fact I’ve written several papers on the subject that not everyone believes. Most mages who prefer this method are consistently in need of such a great amount of power, and do concede that on small workings they use their Touch because when you call raw power there is supposed to be a great deal of pain that comes along with it, and they will concede even further to say that there is nearly no control, so delicate procedures cannot be undertaken. The mages of this method are seemingly exclusively war mages in fact, and they use the raw power because they don’t need control, and are trained to be able to withstand the pain.

“They also agree on one other point, and that is that they would never have discovered that they could bypass the normal limited power of the Touch had they not at some point been in dire need to use so much power at once. Almost all of them were faced with death and found this as a last ditch effort.” His voice remained calm and scholarly, but the smallest of intonations lead her to his real question. He wanted to know what had happened, he wanted to know why she could use her magic the way she did, but she dropped her eyes in the silence that lingered after his unspoken question, unwilling to explain.

“While we’re on the subject,” He continued, though clearly (his voice now full of his normal chipper) the subject had changed a great deal. “your control is truly exemplary, that much is very clear to me. Which brings me to my next quarry, why, under stars and lighting, did you pretend that a smaller, private shower, was out of your grand capabilities?” His eyes jested again, but her own eyes never left the cold stone floor.

“I don’t like people much. They all thought I was stupid, a beginner, someone they didn’t have to pay attention to. They won’t be so quick to judge me next time.”

“Quite right, it is true that they wont, but I think once is enough to learn that lesson, don’t you?” Mae’s eyes rose from the floor, clearly expecting more of a rebuke, but nodded clearly in recognition of the new rule between them. “Right then, I suppose we should actually begin with what you want to study, what fields interest you?” Mae shook her head.

“I don’t know… I guess I’ve never thought about it.”

“Well, do you want to be a war mage, a healer, a spy, a potion master? These kinds of broad subjects allow us to pick what practices will aid us in our given fields, after all it wouldn’t do to decide to become a spy for the kingdom and not be able to create a simple invisibility spell, or to decide to become a healer and not know what bones are connected to what.” Mae’s eyes brightened a little.

“I already know a little spy magic!” Her voiced was a forced calm, although her excitement showed through. Alex grinned widely at this.

“Very well Mae my dear, by all means show me what you are capable of.” Mae dropped her eyes again, to keep the excitement from showing through them.

“All right, but you have to turn around first.” Alex stood and turned to face the front of his classroom. “Okay I’m ready.” She called after half a minute of silence. Alex turned around. “Can you find me?” She asked. Alex’s face dropped a little, but he tired his best to not let her see the slip, but he had to admit to himself that he was a little disappointed, for Mae still plainly sat in her seat the same s before.

“Yes dear, I believe that I can still see you here.” He said it as kindly as he could, but to his surprise true laughter burst out from the back of the classroom. He looked up quickly, Mae stood in the back with her hands clasped tightly over her mouth, her eyes streaming from the withheld laughter. He looked back to her seat and saw her there as well. Then he smiled and reached out and touched the Mae that sat so still in her seat. Though a solid form, it stood far too solid; each hair was held in place like a ribbon of steel, totally immovable.

“Very good…” He whispered, staring that the fake with his incredible scholarly interest. Then he looked up at the real Mae, still standing at the back of the classroom, under control of her emotions now but a smile still whispered on her lips. Then speaking more audibly he added “Very good indeed, I’m quite impressed. How did you learn to do this?” Mae’s smile broadened and the fake disappeared.

“It was hard at first, because I didn’t know how it was supposed to be done, but then when I really had to use it, when I…” Her voice trailed off into silence, her eyes dropped and with it her smile, shattering completely, as if it had never before graced her countenance.

“Mae, are you alright?” Alex asked, his now full of concern. Mae nodded vigorously, but refused to take her eyes off the floor or say a word. She shook visibly though, and soon heard Alex approach, his pace rather quick. Alex stood in front of her, but she refused to raise her head, her shaking increased. He put one hand gently on her arm and the other he brought up to her chin and raised it. As soon as their eyes met she jerked out of his grip and ran from the room, tears running unchecked down her face, washing away every line that has told that she had ever had the capability of a smile.