Hope (9 page)

She recovered her senses, grabbed the sheath for the sword, and walked over to where the other armed candidates waited before Sir Lanclor could say more. The candidates gave her odd looks and she could tell they thought she was out of her mind or pretending the sword spoke to her to impress someone. Kathryn wished
that were the case. She remembered every detail of the vision. Hal finally selected his sword, also in the last row, and walked toward her.

"What was that all about? Did your sword talk to you or something?" he asked as he attempted to adjust his grip on his weapon without dropping it.

"Did you feel any type of pull from your sword?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

He took the hint. "It didn't call to me or anything, but I felt as though this was the strongest one in the bunch. I don't know why. I just knew I could count on it." He sounded like he would start caressing his sword and reading it poetry.

"Would you two like to be alone?" she asked with one eyebrow raised.

"If everyone could follow me, I’ll show you how to maintain your weapon. Before each session, I’ll thoroughly inspect everyone's gear," Sir Lanclor said as he led them toward the north end of the courtyard.

Weeks later, Kathryn sat alone in her room and finished reading the last of her magic assignment. In the beginning, she feared Jakob had tricked her. Since she didn't believe in the Goddess, she didn't see how asking Her to activate a spell would work. Sighing, she closed the book and traced its indented designs with her forefinger.

"She must really like me." More likely, She liked Jakob and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Kathryn.

While the other candidates struggled to perform their spells, she could perform hers on the first try. That initial week, she read the fire spell in the common room and created a small fire globe in her palm. Awed and with a happy smile, she looked up to see the others staring at her, frowning. She packed up her things and left the common room.

Learning afterwards from Rielle that the other recruits had been trying to perform the fire spell for hours without success, Kathryn could see how they would think she showed off and probably resented her now. The language barrier prevented her from going back down to the common room to explain, afraid she would only offend them somehow. Even Hal seemed annoyed that she could perform a spell on her first try while it took him about twenty tries to get it right, if at all.

Not wanting further to embarrass her fellow candidates in class, she seldom raised her hand to show the Assessor that she had mastered the spell. Assessor Jakara interpreted her lack of participation as ineptitude. Whenever he spoke of other people whom failed the class, he would always look at her with a scowl. She learned to despise that arrogant ass.

Rielle had spelled all of the descriptions to be in English, so Hal and Kathryn could read them without a translator. Last week, Kathryn had decided to read ahead and learn a few more spells. She had ended up reading the entire book and could perform the spells without thinking about it. The book of spells consisted of pages of long alien words that she found somehow familiar, with their pronunciation, a detailed description of what each one did and how to counter or block it. Although she never let it show, she was terrified.

When she would read a spell, she would know how to pronounce it before she looked at the pronunciation guide. Instead of learning the spells, it was like refreshing her memory. She knew Jakob’s memories seeped into her mind, but the creepiness factor still made her feel inadequate. She hadn’t heard from Jakob since his condolences. Cheating never appealed to her and this felt so much like copying someone else’s paper, Kathryn didn’t trust herself.

She learned something else early on when she first attempted her water spell. She looked at the wooden bowl, pictured the spell in her mind, then before she finished uttering the spell, the water had already formed in the bowl. After several experiments, she found she could invoke the spell without speaking the incantation. With that and the Sights, she just didn't know who she was anymore. Even with Jakob’s slow trickle of memories, the flood of change overwhelmed her sense of self.

She jumped as a knock sounded at the door. Opening the door, she found Hal standing on the other side with a desperate look on his face.

"May I come in?"

Nodding, she stepped aside.

"I finally built up the nerve to speak with the other candidates. They were pretty wary at first, but thawed when I started asking them if they could help me with my spells." He looked embarrassed before he continued. "I would have asked you, but I didn't want you to think I was stupid or anything. I'm desperate at this point. I've never had this much trouble in my life learning something."

"Which spell are you having problems with?" she asked.

"Um, all of them," he said with a grin. "The other candidates are in a similar situation. They've learned one or two, but only if one of them gets lucky and teaches the others. After seeing how easily you performed the fire spell, they were embarrassed to approach you. I convinced them that you didn't bite. Could you come to the common room with us and give us a few pointers?"

"I didn't realize you were having so much trouble." She felt guilty feeling self-pity because she
could
perform the magic without a problem. "I'll come down right now." She turned for the door when Hal spoke.

"Won't you need your magic book?" He pointed at her desk.

She realized there was no point in lying. "No, I don't need it."

"What would you like to work on first?" Kathryn glanced around the large table at the group of candidates.

"Well, we’ve finally cast the fire and ice spells, but we can’t seem to master the water spell at all. I think Lesair cast it once, but we can’t seem to cast it a second time." Datera, a tall, lean young man with a friendly face, shook his head.

"Well, try casting the water spell and maybe I can see what you’re doing wrong."

"I’ll try." Datera focused his attention on the small bowl in the center of the table. A hush fell over the table as he stared at the bowl. "
Wak’ethia
!" Perfect pronunciation, but she could tell he was just saying the words and not feeling them. No water appeared in the bowl. The frustration in his eyes was plain, but he took a deep breath and looked to her for guidance.

"You pronounced the spell correctly, but what were you thinking when you cast the spell?"

"What was I thinking? I was thinking about all of the syllables and emphasizing the correct ones, hoping the Goddess would understand what I was asking. About how much of a fool I must seem to not even be able to cast a level 1 spell!" He sighed with resignation. "What else should I be doing if I pronounced the spell correctly?"

"When learning new spells the pronunciation is the key, but you need to use your mind to cast the spell as well." She gathered her thoughts, trying to make everything as simple as possible. "You can’t just think about the word. That’s all it is, a word. You need to think about what the word means. Water. Think about how refreshing it can be on a hot summer day when your mouth is as dry as dust and your throat aches for moisture. You’d do anything for a drink when the heat of the day feels like it will consume you. Now, try casting it again and thinking about the meaning of the word before you utter the incantation."

Datera looked thoughtful as he looked at the bowl for a full minute. "Wak’ethia!" The bowl filled with water as Datera’s eyes lit with the joy of accomplishment. "I can’t believe it was so simple this whole time! Such a basic concept, yet it makes all of the difference in the world. Thank you so much, Lady Kathryn!"

"It was my pleasure. Would everyone else like to try?" Everyone around the table nodded as they worked for hours to achieve a goal they had all been working on for weeks.

Kathryn thought the sheer exhaustion of teaching the others spells for most of the night would help free her from her Sight for at least one night, but she was wrong. The Final Battle Sight hit her as soon as her head touched the pillow. The death and destruction increased in detail, leaving her with a sick feeling in her stomach when she awoke just after midnight the next morning.

Remembering the smell of blood and burning bodies, she threw up into the bucket and knelt upon the floor in front of the tub. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she realized going back to sleep was not an option. She decided to walk down to the library, hoping for some type of escape for her mind. On Earth, she loved to escape from the routine of everyday life with a good book.

She found herself in the section containing old scrolls and tattered books dealing with nothing but incantations and magical theory. Magic most likely triggered all of her Sights, so maybe she could find a way to get rid of them or control them. She glanced at what titles she could read and chose the first volume from a multi-book series entitled
Incantations of Av’lor
. After she removed the book from the shelf, she noticed on the front a piece of paper attached to the cover that read
The Lost Spells: Book 1
.

She brought the book to a well-lit table and opened it. The book, similar to her spell book from class, had beautiful illustrations and notes written in the margins. The first incantation, the Communication spell, seemed simple. It was a spell that mimicked telepathy and allowed someone silently to communicate from one person to another or to large groups. Knights used the spell often during battle to issue commands or to call for reinforcements. The incantation was only four syllables, but she felt as though something wasn’t quite right. The incantation read "
Lak’ath or’vat
." It should read "
Lak’oth ar’vat
" which meant, "mind speak."

Kathryn remembered the library having parchment and a type of pencil to keep notes, so she retrieved some and wrote down the correct spelling of the Communication spell. She made sure to reference the book and wrote a quick summary of the spell description.

Spending a few hours immersed in the Lost Spells book, she found most of the other incantations misspelled and suspected the
author must have been dyslexic. The incantations consisted of high-level offensive spells such as fire and lightning, several physical and elemental shield spells, and a Knowledge spell. The Knowledge spell allowed a person to cast the spell on a book, which passed on the knowledge of its pages to the caster or the caster’s target.

The Knowledge spell came with a warning about using it for books of incantations, as those required extensive study to learn each incantation. However, it recommended the spell for learning languages, although only practice would allow a person to speak them fluently. The temptation of the spell was too great. She found herself sitting in another part of the library with an Av’lorish to English dictionary.

With her left hand touching the side of her head and her right pressed flat upon the book, she cast the Knowledge spell.

"
Lak'oth mem'ina dor'ath
."

Nothing happened. She then remembered her own teachings from last night and tried to imagine what imagery she needed for a knowledge spell. She remembered all of the frustration of not understanding those around her and the humiliation of her ignorance. Knowledge was power, but it was also a lifeboat that kept a person from drowning in the loneliness of ignorance. With that in mind, she cast the Knowledge spell again, hoping for a result.

"Lak'oth mem'ina dor'ath."

Her head dropped to the table as she blacked out.

She woke up a short time later to the dawn light shining through the library window onto her table. Her head ached, but she wasn’t sure if that was from the lack of sleep or the Knowledge spell. Most likely it was from her head hitting the table. She quickly returned the books to the shelves, grabbed her parchment and headed back to her room to get ready for her class.

She didn’t want to leave her papers where anyone might come across them, so decided to store the parchment in a small hollow area underneath a loose stone in the floor she had made last week while experimenting with the teleportation spell. It had only taken her two attempts to move a chunk of the rock floor to the courtyard outside her window. Supposedly, she’d eventually be able to get dressed in her armor in an instant with that spell, but she had a hard time believing it.