A stones throw, p.15
A Stone's Throw, page 15
part #2 of The Petralist Series
“You wouldn’t dare.” Her arms tightened further, triggering a fresh wave of agony. He couldn’t breathe, could barely think from the pain.
With all his strength, he heaved the blade of the knife against her hair, severing the chunk as it scraped against her stone-hardened scalp.
She shrieked and threw him high into the air. He gasped for breath, then groaned as the movement of his lungs triggered yet another wave of pain. He twisted to land on his good side, barely able to breathe, wishing he could just black out. Although he tried, Princess Catriona’s incessant shrieking made it impossible to focus. Couldn’t she just hit him with a rock and end the torture? That would feel better.
When no one hit him, he managed to open his eyes and, with another groan, sit up. His body felt like one huge bruise, and every breath triggered fresh waves of pain from his cracked rib that left him light-headed. He settled for short, shallow breaths that barely kept him from feeling on the verge of suffocating.
All of the students had gathered around while he fought with Catriona, making a circle to watch the drama. Professor Todhar stood near Connor, facing the raging princess, whose face was dripping with tears. In one hand she held the clump of hair Connor had cut off, and with the other, she patted the bald spot on the side of her head.
Connor hadn’t realized he’d grabbed so much. The loss of her hair made the previously unremarkable princess very notable. No one would overlook her for a long time. It suited her personality perfectly.
He imagined how hard the other nobles and courtiers would have to work to not laugh in her face.
“I have the right to kill that filthy creature,” she ranted. “Upon my honor, I must.”
Professor Todhar looked unimpressed. “Your dishonor is of your own making, Princess. You disobeyed my instructions.”
“He cut my hair!” she shrieked.
“I warned you,” Connor managed to pant between labored breaths.
“You dare address me again?” She surged forward, fingers curled into claws to rip his head off, but Professor Todhar intercepted her.
“Calm down, Princess. Don’t force me to restrain you.”
Connor hadn’t believed she could look more offended, but somehow she managed it. Standing to her full, unimpressive height, she lifted her chin and said coldly, “You will hear from my father, Professor.”
“Know this,” he said, visibly irritated for the first time. “I will no longer put up with your spoiled tantrums. You are dismissed from this class and officially on probation.”
“No!” She gasped, echoed by several other students
He continued relentlessly. “Return here tomorrow prepared to obey my commands, or leave the school. While a student at the Carraig, you are under my authority. Those are your choices, Princess.”
He finished in a cold voice, “Choose wisely. I won’t give you another chance.”
Then he turned his back on her and announced loudly, “Class dismissed. We meet at the Rhidorroch tomorrow for first time trials.”
That set the students muttering excitedly to each other as they broke up. A handful of girls clustered around the weeping princess, who slowly left the field and headed toward one of the palaces outside the central castle.
Connor staggered to his feet where he stood for a moment until the world stopped tilting crazily. When his vision cleared, he found the professor regarding him with crossed arms.
“Thank you, Professor,” Connor managed to say.
“I saw her trying to kill you,” Professor Todhar said. “I could have stopped her, but I chose not to.”
“Why?” Instead of anger, he felt only a deep weariness at how different everyone acted from what he considered normal and right.
Maybe he should have learned not to challenge his betters, but he was in so much pain he couldn’t help it. If the professor chose to kill him, there was nothing he could do about it. Then again, if he wanted him dead, why prevent Catriona from finishing him off?
“In moments of great danger, in moments of great passion, are we tested.” He handed Connor his satchel. “She failed. Now sheath that steel before anyone else notices, then see to some healing. You have rounds to attend.”
Connor hadn’t even realized he still held the knife. He sheathed it, managed to drape the satchel over one shoulder on his second try, then shuffled off toward the castle. While exploring earlier, he’d noticed the Healer’s palace, a palatial building with graceful arcs and wide, stone stairs. He moved in that direction.
He was tempted to draw from the healing power of the sandstone rocks so tantalizingly close in his satchel, but he wasn’t sure if the Healers would be able to tell they’d been used, nor did he know how much power the non-affinity-sculpted stones possessed. If he wasn’t relatively close to the healing wing, he’d have done it anyway, but decided to let the Healers do their work.
By the time Connor entered the long healing room with its tall windows and white-sheeted beds spaced evenly down both sides, he was definitely ready for a place to lie down and pass out for a while. All of the beds lay empty, and the ten Healers in their long, tan jackets looked a little bored as they studied thick books.
The professor, a warm-faced, plump woman with a ready smile took one look at Connor leaning against the doorway and clapped her hands together sharply. At the report, the Healers launched themselves out of their seats and rushed over to him. For a second Connor considered fleeing the horde of eager Healers, but he’d never outrun them. At least one of the students ran fast enough they must have a primary affinity with basalt.
As the students began poking and prying at him, the professor approached. “What happened to you, young man?”
“I heard you were looking for new patients for your students to practice on, so I volunteer.”
“How, by jumping off the wall?” Asked one of the students, a freckled girl with an open, friendly face. She touched his side and he cringed, biting back a grunt of pain.
“No, miss. I ran into a very enthusiastic Boulder girl. She’s a hugger.”
She grimaced. “You can’t be serious?”
He shrugged, then winced. “Who am I to deny a lady?”
“Someone who wants to live,” she said.
“Just ignore most of what I say today. I think my brains leaked into my boots.” He glanced back the way he came. “Watch your step.”
She giggled and placed cool hands on either side of his face.
“Hey, it’s my turn,” another girl protested.
“Hush. I’m pulling rank.” The freckled girl closed her eyes and concentrated.
A tiny trickle of healing warmth radiated out from her hands and filtered down through his body. He wondered at that. She was pressing both hands to his face, so where was she holding her sandstone? He had learned from old Marcus, the Healer in Rory’s company, to hold his sandstone pendant in one hand and heal with the other. The sculpted pendant had provided such a flood of healing power it had done most of the work, but perhaps there were other ways to trigger the stone’s power?
After a moment, she hissed in a sharp breath and opened her eyes. For the first time he noticed hers were dark brown, almost black.
“Let him lie down,” she urged the other students. “He’s beat up inside pretty badly.”
As Connor gratefully settled into a soft hospital bed, the professor asked the girl, “What did you see, Aifric?”
“Some abrasions, extensive bruising, and three cracked ribs. Some internal damage.”
Three ribs cracked? Catriona had squeezed him to the brink of jelly.
“Hugging Boulders, eh?” the professor asked, her tone skeptical.
“Something like that,” he replied.
“Well, we’ll help you feel better,” Aifric promised. “Although I recommend you stick to shaking hands in the future.”
“Geall on,” he whispered.
As several students lay hands on his torso and began exploring his injuries and discussing the best treatment plans with the professor, Connor let his eyes drift closed to enjoy the growing feeling of warm comfort the healing power poured into him. Within minutes, the sharp pain from his battered ribs began to ease and he drew in his first pain-free breath in an hour.
He couldn’t relax, though. He’d only made things worse with Catriona, and Jok possessed the pendant. He needed to find Jean, figure out a way to protect her from Jok, get the pendant back, and figure out who had arranged to bring him to the Carraig. Leaving with Ilse would suffice to escape Catriona, although he wished he’d found a way to convince her she had better things to do than murder him.
He hated leaving Ailsa, wished his time at the Carraig had gone better, and longed to spend more time catching up with Jean.
All of his worries and fears faded under a growing thrill, however. He’d dare Ilse’s offer and go to Verena. If she really did care for him, fleeing to Granadure would become the start of the new life he’d long dreamed of.
Even if the promise of her love turned out to be false, at least he’d be far from Shona and the Carraig.
Chapter 23
The healing took a full half hour, during which time Connor mulled over how best to plan the rest of his day. The hours until he met with Ilse seemed far too few to accomplish everything.
When he could stand without pain, he delivered the weekly round of sandstone to the Healers. None of them noticed him palm one of their nearly-spent pieces as they eagerly received their new supply. It might hold only a fraction of the healing power of his pendant, but that could still prove the difference between living and dying, and he needed every advantage.
Aifric, whose energetic enthusiasm seemed infectious, took Connor’s hand before he could escape the long room. “Take care of yourself, Connor. I don’t want my work wasted.”
“Thank you for healing me,” Connor said. Her name and her accent suggested she came from the area around Raineach. He doubted he’d get a chance to ask her about it, but maintained the ruse. “I suspect you haven’t seen the last of me.”
“Try to be safe,” she urged.
She seemed genuinely kind, a trait he was realizing was found in short supply at the Carraig.
With his worries chasing him down the halls, he exited the hospital building and headed deeper into the warren of streets of the Carraig, hunting for the classes of the students with tertiary affinities to metamorphic stones, and keeping an eye out for Jean and Shona along the way.
The gentle breeze caressed the tall spires, drawing from the musical sculptures a soft chorus that left Connor feeling a bit melancholy. The Carraig seemed to mimic his emotion, and he marched along, feeling even more justified in wishing to escape the castle as soon as possible.
Eventually he reached the immense central keep. It rose many stories, sheathed in shining basalt, with four huge wings wrapping it like the petals of a giant, stone flower. Eighteen towers of varying diameters rose above the steeply-sloped roof of the main hall, some wider than most palaces, while others were slender turrets that seemed far too fragile to stand so tall.
He found the Pathfinder class atop a squat, flat-topped tower on the northeast wing, ringed with a stone parapet. They heard him coming long before he arrived, and a couple of students commented on his partially healed bruises as they practiced with their enhanced senses. He was surprised to find six students in the class. Only a small percentage of Petralists or Guardians ever developed affinities with tertiary stones. There were roughly one hundred and sixty Boulders, and just over a hundred Strider students at the school. He hadn’t tracked down the Blades yet, but doubted there would be near as many.
In all of Carbrey’s army, Connor had only seen two Pathfinders, so he felt a little awed to stand among so many. Four of them were girls, and their glowing, crystal-like eyes made them all look exotic. Their elongated ears that they waggled to pinpoint distant sounds sort of ruined the effect, though.
The professor, a middle-aged woman whose huge, hazel eyes glowed even though she didn’t appear to be tapping her powers, had a rich voice that Connor could have listened to for hours. She was explaining the finer points of blocking out unwanted sounds when enhancing hearing, and Connor lingered a few extra minutes to listen in. He had gained some basic mastery over quartzite, but welcomed any suggestions to better withstand the torrent of sounds that assaulted his ears when he first applied quartzite power to them.
“Remember, don’t try to understand it all,” the professor said to a young girl who looked too young to have already developed a tertiary affinity. She barely looked twelve years old, and the little quartzite stone wedged into the side of her mouth made a comic bulge in her cheek. The girl’s elongated ears were waggling back and forth, and her eyes were wide, a look of near panic on her face. “The sounds are like a river you can only sip from. You cannot drink it all.”
“But what if I miss something?” the girl asked.
“Filtering what’s important comes with practice,” the professor explained. “For today’s lesson, we’re listening for the footsteps of Striders out on the plain. Focus on that directive, and let your subconscious draw your attention to the sounds you need.”
Connor barely kept from gaping. He’d thought he understood the marvels of quartzite, but the teacher was talking about filtering out the din of the Carraig while standing at its heart and isolating the sounds of Striders running more than a mile away. He didn’t think he could have done it. By the expressions on the other students’ faces, they hadn’t managed it yet either.
He dared to linger another minute as the professor guided the young student in techniques for regulating breathing to calm her mind, then in bringing to mind memories of Striders to help focus her thoughts.
“The state of your mind is the most important factor in finding success as a Pathfinder,” the professor said. “You must develop the discipline to focus on your intent, despite the distractions, but at the same time keep your concentration loose so as to cast a wider net across the fast-flowing torrent of sound. With practice, you’ll learn to pluck the sound you want from the background noise.”
The professor noticed him lingering and frowned in his direction. He headed for the stairs and whispered, “I love the music from up here.”
Even if she wasn’t tapping quartzite, her students would have overheard. He was glad he’d risked lingering, and filed the advice away. He hoped Ailsa would gift him a full board of stones for his journey. He planned to practice with quartzite and the other tertiary stones during the long trip. He’d travel with Ilse, but that didn’t mean he’d trust her without taking precautions.
The Sentries met in a courtyard of bare ground within the curve of the southern arm of the central keep. All of the students were boys, and most of them looked older than Connor. They were practicing raising towers of earth when he arrived. Two of them appeared comfortable with the process, clearly experienced with their tertiary gift. Two struggled a bit, and the final Sentry, a chubby young man, and the youngest of the group, looked terrified.
That boy lost control just as Connor arrived. Earth exploded upward and tossed him almost thirty feet into the air, shouting and uselessly flapping his arms like he hoped to learn to fly.
He didn’t figure it out. The professor must have taken pity on him because when he hit the ground face-first, the earth softened and, instead of breaking bones upon impact, he sank three feet into the loose earth. The ground rippled and spat him back out where he lay gasping.
The professor, an average-sized man who still radiated the solid strength of one who walks with the earth, began lecturing the boy on the dangers of trying to force earth to do his bidding. “Declan, the bucket does not command the river to flow. It is filled only when placed in the waters.”
Connor nearly laughed at the bewildered look on Declan’s face. Gregor had used the same obscure reference when first teaching Connor. He had explained that with elemental powers, one did not try to bend those forces to their will as they did with igneous stones. Metamorphic stones acted as a gateway to the elemental powers, which had to be entreated more than commanded. It was a tricky process, but once mastered, made available vast abilities to the Petralists. Gregor had lived over eighty years and still looked to be in his prime. The professor looked young, but that only limited his age to probably less than a century. Declan looked more like fourteen.
Connor wondered if the professor knew Gregor and he nearly asked about it, but hesitated when he couldn’t think of a good way to explain how he knew the Sentry. Besides, the professor would doubtless give him a confusing answer. Gregor’s roundabout conversations had left him dizzy sometimes.
“I can do it,” Declan promised, his expression earnest. “Can I still join the perimeter security round?”
Connor hadn’t realized the perimeter security was so extensive beyond the gate where they’d passed through the outer wall. He wondered what they were worried about. The Carraig was situated in the center of Obrion, nestled within the southern flanks of the Tairseach Mountains. Donleavy, the capital, was on the northern boundaries of the same range.
Then again, Ilse had already penetrated that perimeter. Had they somehow suspected her coming? Did they have plans to attempt preventing her escape?
“Can the blind lead those who cannot see, or the maimed guard against dangers unknown to them?” the teacher asked. One of the older students snickered, then looked ashamed that he hadn’t managed to make it sound confusing or thought-provoking.
“I’ll make it work,” Declan declared, not even trying to sound reflective. He placed one hand on the hard ground and concentrated so hard, it looked like he was trying to pull his forehead in through his eyeballs. The ground under his hand bubbled, then cracked.
“Entreaty more than insistence gains entry to the locked estate,” the professor said, looking like he was really trying to help. He probably didn’t understand how infuriating those kinds of comments could be when someone was concentrating.
Connor took a couple of steps back, just in case. If Declan lost control again while trying so hard, the earth might throw him over the roof and send along the rest of them for good measure.
