The seven thunders, p.4
The Seven Thunders, page 4
Horace beamed with pride through his bewilderment. “Wow . . . two letters, I feel I should be playing the lottery,” he said, scrubbing his eyebrow. “Hermium’s a special boy. Any Thunder would be lucky to have him.”
“Excuse me.” The determined, gray-uniformed soldier forced his way through. “Mr. and Mrs. Goodspeed, I’m Boniface Cletes, I represent the Department of Letters and Acceptances. The Selectery wishes to inform you that your son, Goodspeed, Hermium H, as verified in your presence on this day, the thirtieth of Iy, has been . . .” Boniface took a breath. “Ahem, forthwith realigned. He will not be attending the First Thunder Hammerfeld,” he said with a nervous twinge. “Here is his red letter.”
Kehlia let out a muted wail that sounded like the word red and fainted into Horace’s arms.
The foghorns blew again, this time longer and much louder.
“This is ridiculous,” protested Senator Wuvain. “The Selectery has never altered a placement decision in their one-thousand-year history!”
“Hate to interrupt,” said Ravius, “But the children have to board, now!”
“Right!” acknowledged Cletes. “I have a few forms the Selectery needs signed, Mr. Goodspeed.”
Horace nodded and took the papers from Cletes as the children moved toward their ships. “Hermium, take care of your mother,” he said as his woozy wife gripped their son’s shoulder. Tayori followed behind Hermium with his parents.
Hermium held onto his mother, hearing Hargus in his head telling him he could still choose not to go. Big brothers were such pricks sometimes. There was no choosing after the postman had delivered the black letter, now, with a red letter too . . . Destiny had doubled down. There was no turning back. The reality of it hit Hermium; it was like he was wearing irons.
“Someone tell those bloody ships to mute their horns!” vented Senator Wuvain. “Wuvi, stop glaring; it’s not necessary to envy these people. You’ve not heard the last of me, Mr. Cletes! I plan on launching a full senatorial investigation into this t-two-letter debacle the moment I get back to Sovereign City! You and the Selectery are not above the queen’s law; someone will answer for this!”
Boniface ignored the senator’s threats. “Consent form, Mr. Goodspeed,” he shouted, “I need you to initial there that you understand the change. This is his Liability and Insurance form. Yes, sign there and there! Imaginent Stream Authorization form just in case he gets accepted! Print and sign at the bottom. Just two more,” Boniface assured. “Here, Return of Property form if he drops out. And here’s your Glimmeroc Parent Handbook and contact list. That’s it! Everything else has been taken care of.”
“What about his wielder and the other things on his list?” shouted Horace.
“Also taken care of! They’ll issue him what he needs when he’s processed at Glimmeroc. Which reminds me—sign this reimbursement form for his Woe Hammer. The Selectery will dispatch someone to collect it from him at the Fourth sometime in the next few weeks after he’s settled in, so you get your ingots back. He’d better board!”
Hermium boarded the ship and watched from the rail as his father celebrated and his mother flogged him. “Airjock! Woohoo, yeah! Our son’s a flyer, wife!” raved Horace. “Whose son has two letters? Ours does! Gooo Red!”
“But I hate red,” said Kehlia, hitting him repeatedly with her sun hat.
“Make ready to raise anchor!” yelled the galleon captain.
Hargus separated from the crowd still wearing his dirty Drunk Monk apron and stood beside the gray-uniformed soldier and waved.
“He came,” said Hermium. “I knew you couldn’t stay away!”
“Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner,” hollered Cletes. “You’re in good hands! They know you’re coming!”
After two long days of nursing a puke bucket between his legs aboard the Mer Witch, Hermium Goodspeed approached Glimmeroc’s perimeter wrought-iron gates in a scarlet carriage being pulled by four large horses. He stockpiled words for Hargus about his useless licorice sticks for seasickness for the next time he saw him.
The carriage wheels clopped over the bumpy road up the mountainside since leaving the wharf. The red roofs of the Village of Vent poked through the dry brush, and the craggy finger of the Third Prong stretched towards the Musewind Sea. The ascent steepened and Hermium clutched the dark quilted-leather cushion beneath his legs seeing the sheer drop to rocks and cliffside pines through the window to his right, while Tayori and Wuvi, seated opposite him on their own quilted-leather cushioned bench, handled the increased pitch of the cabin casually. Tayori eating a glazie he’d been saving, and Wuvi slept with his head tilted back.
The carriage slowed and jarred to a stop, its springs and metal undercarriage squealing and squeaking as the cabin leveled to a few degrees off center. Hermium swallowed his nerves as Tayori smiled at him. Wuvi blinked his eyes open and shot Hermium a dismissive glance. A footman dressed in red settled to the ground just outside their door, his golden wings stirring up the stony road, clinking pebbles against the carriage door’s glass windows. He retracted his wings and, somehow, they hid behind his uniform.
“Did you see his wings? They’re enormous,” marveled Tayori. The footman opened the door. Hermium followed Tayori and Wuvi out, using the cabin frame for support as he managed the carriage’s two metal steps. He sighed as his feet crunched on the ground. The wind was warm, and it smelled like rain. Similar scarlet carriages were parked ahead of them, their passengers huddled and waiting with their bags for whatever was next. More streamed in behind them, curving into the distance like a long red snake. The horses snorted and neighed, standing tall in their harnesses as the red-uniformed coachman held on to the reins from his perch. Hermium loved horses and waited behind Tayori as a second footman unloaded Wuvi’s bags. The footman handed Hermium his duffel and made an unpleasant face as he attempted to lower his wielder case, and an even sterner one when Hermium had to assist him, but it was the only way it would come down.
“There must be over two hundred kids here,” speculated Tayori.
“Three hundred and twenty,” corrected a man dressed in reds, who approached them from behind, looking at the other carriages and assessing the situation.
“But aren’t there six hundred forty in a class?” inquired Tayori.
“That’s right,” the man replied with a cocked brow. “First wave arrived yesterday,” he said, readying himself to issue instructions. “Inductees,” he barked, “I will be your escort to the keep. I need you single file, and please do not straggle because we are on a very tight schedule. Open the gates!” he ordered. The man strode past stoic guards wearing red capes fastened to one shoulder, the other flapping gently with the wind. Their faces were completely emotionless beneath their open-faced helmets as two hundred or more children took their stab at making them smile. Somewhere in the middle of the long line was Hermium. He wondered if they also had wings they hid behind their uniforms, but the thought fled as he banged his knee with his wielder case and then switched it to his right hand, huffing. Everyone else carried sleek and slim Aeriatis cases; his Woe Hammer’s was bulky and hit his thigh when his arm swung.
“That’s the Bridge of Winds,” said Tayori, pointing at the massive structure just up ahead. “See that statue? It’s a tribute to Zephyrus Galerius, master of the Westwind. There are two more across the bridge, one for Notus Chinook, master of the Southwind, and Eurus Sirocco, master of the Easterlies. Boreas Bellows anchors the other side; she’s queen of the Northwind,” he said as a matter of fact.
They approached the mouth of the bridge where more guards stood at attention at the base of the first statue. Hermium stared at it wide-eyed as he passed. Chiseled out of stone in the fashion of a man with his noble face turned westward, his muscular arms extended towards the heavens holding a basin of burning flame as if in offering.
A quarter of the way in stood yet another statue. “Notus,” said Tayori, gesturing to the stone man fiercely staring at the southern horizon as he too held forth a basin of burning flame. They were now crossing over a deep ravine. Distracted by the mighty Lillirun river rushing below, Hermium hurried to catch up as the escort picked up the pace, the children strung behind him following like goslings. Gray clouds blocked the sun entirely and the air thickened with moisture. They approached the third statue. “Eurus,” mouthed Tayori. The male wind gazed easterly with his fiery tribute licking the air wildly. The way forward beyond him was clouded by mist from the splattering of a raging waterfall that pounded the lower rocks of the adjacent cliffside so hard it covered that end of the bridge in a billow of drizzle, wetting all who walked by.
Hermium was soon greeted by a strong wind near the bridge’s end, oddly chilly considering the summer mugginess, and it blew him and the others dry. The strange wind beat against his wielder case, making it so much harder to carry and keep his balance. “Look Herm, it’s Boreas,” said Tayori with his teeth chattering as he leaned into the wind. The statue towered into the sky disregarding his struggle. A beautiful woman, chiseled with long tresses that were made to look windblown, holding basin and fire, stood like a guardian to the winding road ahead. Her eyes were fixed northward towards the distant peaks of the Corona Back mountains, which were hundreds of leagues away.
Hermium began the circuitous climb upward. Boulders turned to mountainous rock, to a peak and then a bluff, from which rose mammoth foundation stones. Glimmeroc loomed before them.
“Clear the way!” yelled a guard from the tower of the inner gatehouse. The vertical gate was raised; hundreds streamed into the beauty of the courtyard and the great lawn. A lake poked between trees in the distance. The time-conscious escort took the center walkway, pebbled and canopied by a long line of old oaks. Glimmeroc hid between the branches. Hermium dreaded the reveal as he walked into the open, feeling the glare of its windows as if he were a trespasser. Glimmeroc stood tall and wide. The great keep of the Fourth Thunder sprawled for acres. Many buildings had high walls and parapets and spiky towers of alabaster stone. Atop its spires flew red flags, forked at the ends. Red banners hung from its front battlements and bared its sigil of four lines for four winds. Soldiers hovered at their posts with their wings flapping, swords at their sides, watching through arrow slits with serious faces. Others flew in and out of high, nested openings on the face of the keep. Like eagles, they took to the sky circling, as if looking for vermin.
“Airjocks,” said Tayori, his jaw open. Hermium felt both wonder and queasiness as two soldiers locked in combat zoomed by him, feet above his head almost parallel to the ground, grappling with their arms and legs for position, their wings beating the air. They spiraled towards the keep with such speed that it appeared they would kill themselves crashing into its walls, but then peeled away, arcing in separate directions, their wings magnificent and fully extended as they turned about. They hung there for seconds. All the inductees watched though the escort did not slow. The soldiers pulled out their blades, gleaming despite the overcast skies. “To swords!” they yelled to each other, and then they attacked, matching skill against skill, the sound of their steel clinking loudly across the great lawn.
The unfazed escort led them left of the keep’s main doors, black and wooden and big enough for giants, and from there passed a sign pointing to Alumni Hall. The adjoining edifice had all the appointments of a domed cathedral with severe rooflines and skinny, pointy spires. The mouth-spouts were made to resemble winged soldiers squeezing storm clouds with their arms. And at its doors a woman and a man in red uniform stood like sentries. Hermium went up the steps slowly as the escort ushered everyone inside. The sentries appeared to guard not just the doors, but the words written above them.
To wear the Red, you must become the Red.
Hermium had little time to contemplate its meaning, however, as he and Tayori were quickly directed to the last pew, shocked to see how many others were already there. There was an immediate buzz of subdued chatter as the two of them walked across the room. Hermium placed his duffel at his feet and scooched in beside Tayori at the end of the row. Everyone had their wielder case stowed in a special slot. He lowered his and tried to squeeze it in. Unsuccessful, he picked it back up and tried a different angle, making a racket.
“Hey, watch it with that thing,” snapped the boy in the row in front of him, as he rubbed the back of his head.
“Sorry,” winced Hermium. “Stupid case,” he grumbled, giving up and ultimately shoving it with his feet outside his pew.
“Those are some organ pipes,” nudged Tayori. An impressive silvery organ scaled and dominated the far wall of the stage, and above its longest stems a stained-glass window, where hues of red danced and the white fragments which formed the swooshes of the Fourth Thunder sigil glowed brightly.
“I bet it’s him,” said a boy four rows away.
“News travels fast,” said Tayori, noting all the faces that were chittering and looking back their way.
Hermium grabbed the pamphlet in front of him to get his mind on something else and kept his head down, half-heartedly reading its inner cover on Glimmeroc: A Citadel History and getting no further than its declaration that the foundation was set a thousand years ago during the Inceptivus Age. Suddenly, from passageways in the high spaces of the vaulted ceiling flew in a team of uniformed boys, corkscrewing, diving, and then banking sharply. They flew into the rows and snatched kids from off their pews by the hair and forced them to their feet.
“Detailers,” said Tayori. The doors to Alumni Hall clamored shut.
“Detailers! Assemble the companies!” Like a wolf pack, the older boys landed with force on the floor stones, their boots kicking up dust, and pounced on the fresh crop of first-years with all the thrill of bringing down their morning meal. “You heard the Cadet Captain, step to the line!”
Hermium scrambled out of his pew and tripped over his wielder case, cursing at it beneath his breath. Tayori helped him up and Wuvi and others followed after them. Line upon line, sixteen lines in all; together they stood in formation behind the last set of pews, where the older boys could corral them like lambs. Their obnoxious shouts came from all directions. “Not behind your line! On your line!” yelled the detailer in charge of Hermium’s line, wanting attention to detail, blaring into each kid’s face as he worked it, his wings gone, somehow tucked inside his fatigue uniform.
“What’s your name, boy?!”
The detailer’s beady brown eye’s bore into Tayori. He looked fit enough to be a Heptad skaabash blindside flanker. With a square jaw, crew-cut dark hair, symmetrical face, and a slanted scar through his left eyebrow, he was the perfect combination of tall, dark, and hard as nails.
“Sir, Tayori Keelaroo, sir,” said Tayori, standing stiff as a board. “Ready to do my best for the Fourth, sir!”
“That’s cadet sergeant to you, Keelaroo!” yelled the older boy as he looked Tayori in the eye. “How big are you, Keelaroo?”
“Don’t know, cadet sergeant!” responded Tayori, keeping his eyes straight as best he could as the detailer came within an inch of his nose.
“You glaring at me, Keelaroo? You think because you’re big you can look Cadet Sergeant Neffery Iggsworth in the eye and it not have consequence? I’ll whittle you down so fast it’ll make that big head of yours spin. You cornfed, Keelaroo?”
“Parents run a moonmelon farm, cadet sergeant,” said Tayori.
“This nose is never wrong, Keelaroo. You remember that,” touted the detailer. “And what are you staring at, carrothead? They lettin’ in shrimps now?”
Hermium shot up straight. “Nothing, sir,” he said wanting to hit himself. “I mean, nothing, cadet sergeant.”
The cadet sergeant’s face curled with a devious half-cocked smile. “Better pull your wallets out, boys,” he yelled to his fellow detailers. “I’m putting my ingots on this milkbreath. Are you blind or stupid, carrothead, which is it?” he said bearing into Hermium, watching him squirm.
“Uh, uh . . .” stammered Hermium.
“Uh, uh,” mocked the detailer. “Do these stripes say sir?”
“No, cadet sergeant!”
“What’s your name, carrothead?”
“Goodspeed, cadet sergeant, Hermium Goodspeed.”
“You’re the kid with two letters,” said the detailer incredulously. “You’re a blinkin’ pipsqueak. Don’t think for one second that . . . that kid with two letters business gives you one ounce of privilege around here. You’re pond scum just like all the other plebes. Look at you. Woe Hammer case,” he said sneering. “You don’t even have the right equipment. What’s that say about you, Goodspeed? You don’t belong here. Put that stupid wielder box down!” Hermium dropped his Woe Hammer box right on the detailer’s right boot. “Son of thunder!” cursed the detailer. “You just made mule, boy. I’m making it my personal mission to see you’re run out of this Thunder before the end of Plebe Summer. And nobody, and I mean nobody, escapes Cadet Sergeant Neffery Iggsworth. Do you understand me, plebe?”
“Yes, cadet sergeant!” assured Hermium, roiling inside that he was already on Iggsworth’s blacklist.
“Theta Company, I am Cadet Sergeant Iggsworth and your detailer for the next twelve weeks. You’ll be organized into two platoons. You will obey what I say. You have four rotations today before you are inducted. They are medical, IQA, provisioning, and the barbers. This will be done in an orderly fashion, and it will be done quietly. Orderly and quietly!” Iggsworth reiterated. “I will not have this keep dishonored. When you have all been processed, we will regroup here for final assembly on the quad, where you’ll be sworn in and your measly lives will be ours. Is that understood?”
“Yes, cadet sergeant!”
“Okay, two platoons,” said Iggsworth. “Count them off. Goodspeed, one,” he directed, “Bartimus, two. Keelaroo, one. Pree, two. Wuvain, one. Petalborn, two . . .” until each inductee got assigned all the way down his line. “Ones, you’re Halfwit Hawks—you can thank Goodspeed for that name. Twos, Squall Crows. Pla-toons,” Iggsworth said stressing the “pla.” “Form your lines! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Goodspeed to the front; I want you in arm’s reach. Who are you, Ones?!” hollered Iggsworth.
