Ruby hated the cold, which was unfortunate because that was just about all they had that far up north. Not a day went by that she didn't curse her rotten fate at being born in the mountains instead of a more tropical location. But then again, they didn't have machines outside of the mountains, and she loved them even more than she hated the cold.
“When are we gonna invent something ta melt all this frosty snow?” she whined through chattering teeth, but she couldn't even hear herself over the growl of the sledge beneath her and there was no other audience. Ruby was no stranger to talking to herself, though usually she was talking to machines, which she held was a different matter entirely from talking to herself.
A few brave strands of her copper hair had escaped the confines of her thick fur hood only to be frozen solid by the icy winds. Even wrapping her bundle of furs as tightly around her as she could her cheeks and nose were left exposed beneath her goggles. Her usually grease-smeared skin had turned bright pink from the winds, with the tip of her long nose dyed a dark red. With that, her bulging black goggles and the furs she looked more like a snow vole than a person, a comparison which she did not find favorable in the least.
Despite the stinging slice of the winds on her exposed skin, Ruby had to stay focused on the sledge beneath her. Machines couldn't run on their own, that would be like a rock rolling itself up a hill. It took a deceptive amount of skill just to make the sledge move, let alone guide it over the uneven tundra and through the ripping curtains of snow.
But Ruby wasn't one to boast about her talent. After all she was still just an apprentice, even if her master was a fog who was too old to see most of her ideas for the genius that they were. Which was why she had the job of trekking out into the wilderness to repair a damaged steam vein while her master sat in front of a fire. She bet at that very moment he was asleep and drooling into his beard.
By herself it would've been impossible to find the steam veins hidden in that monotonous white wasteland, but that was the very reason the machinists that had installed them had placed magnetic waypoints over them and all around the slopes of the mountains. Following her sledge's compass, it only took her ten minutes to reach the fractured portion of the steam vein, which was far too long for her tastes.
The whole in the pipe was small, but lethal nonetheless. Ruby took a second to savor the feel of the warm steam spewing from the breech as it fogged up her goggles. She would have stood there longer, but her fingers and toes were still frozen into blocks of ice so she grabbed her materials and got to work.
Good machinists didn't just work with their hands, but with magic. And while Ruby might have still been just an apprentice, she did have considerable talent. She took a deep breath, gathering energy in her lungs. At the last moment possible the lowered the flap of fur covering the lower part of her face and blew as hard as she could directly into the jet of steam spewing from the breached pipe.
The jet subsided, though only for a short time. That would be enough for her to mend the vein and be on her way home. She reached into the saddlebag of her sledge, fingers clumsy with frost and fur, and pulled out a thick plate of metal. She placed the plate over the breach and with her free hand tugged a mallet free from her belt. Concentrating her magic on the tip of the mallet, she beat the plate with everything she had.
Every time her mallet came down on the two inch thick piece of metal it bent like wet clay with a horrid screech that was lost in the vast emptiness around her. When she was finished a few minutes later, the steam vein was battered and ugly but no longer leaking, and that was what mattered.
“I'm so not made for this,” trying in vain to wipe away the frozen beads of sweat from her forehead as she stashed the mallet back into her belt and hopped back into the seat of her sledge. “Next time one of ‘ese breaks the old man can get up off his frosty bum and fix it hi'self.”
She poured magic into the sledge and the engine roared to life. But that wasn't the only roar she heard. It took her a second to hear the avalanche over the sound of her sledge, and by then she could already see the white wave speeding toward her from the nearest peak. There was no way her sledge could outrun an avalanche, but avalanches were frequent in the mountains of the north and the sledges were designed with that in mind.
Ruby didn't panic as the wall of snow tumbled down the slope. Surviving avalanches was just part of life for her. She worked the controls on her sledge deftly despite her frozen fingers. Just before the avalanche hit her, a metal shield extended up to cover her and six insect-like legs dug deep into the ice. Thick blocks of ice and snow smashed against the metal shield and the sledge rocked back and forth, but it didn't budge as it was buffeted by the avalanche.
When the sound of the avalanche died out, Ruby hit a lever on the control panel in front of her and her sledge dug its way out of the snow. When the metal shield over her head retracted, Ruby looked at the new scenery around her. Everything looked different, but the magnetic waypoints were buried deep enough that they weren't effected by the avalanches. The steam vein she had just repaired had been completely submerged, as had everything else on the side of the mountain. Save for one small metallic glimmer a short distance from her ski.
Her feet sank into the fresh snow almost up to the top of her boots when she hopped out of the sledge and fought her way over to the newly revealed object. Sitting downhill, it could have been a piece that had been knocked off of her sledge. It wasn't. It was a piece of machinery, but like none Ruby had ever seen before.
The thing, whatever it may have been, was just bigger than the palms of her hands, gloves and all. Most of the machine pieces she’d ever seen were made of gears and belts built inside some kind of container, but this piece seemed to be the exact opposite. At its very center was some kind of core, surrounded by golden gears and springs and parts that flowed together so well it was more art than mechanism. Its gears were so sleek and organized that it seemed almost organic, like part of a living creature, broken off and preserved in the ice.
She thought about leaving it behind, even turned her back on it and started back toward her sledge, but for some reason she didn't understand she couldn't leave it sitting there in the snow. So with the mysterious piece of machinery stuffed safely in the pouch of her belt, Ruby headed back to her village.
* * *
Before Trace could even begin worrying about the next day's training he had to first find a place to live. All of the other trainees already had places to stay, whether it was a room at an inn or a private house owned by their families. Just like Simon had said, most of the people who joined the mage-knights came from upper class or noble families. But Trace had already used up most of his traveling funds just getting there, not that he'd had much to start with. At the best he'd only have enough for a night or two at any of the inns in the city.
But even that was better than sleeping on a bench out in the plaza, so Trace found the cheapest inn he could and went there. He waited to get the attention of the woman behind the desk, a girl only a few years older than him with two thick brown braids stuffed over her shoulders and one of the biggest moonstones he'd ever seen hanging from a chain around her neck. He'd only seen one like it before, on the girl who had...
“You,” she accused, pointing at him over the counter. Her enthusiasm was too overwhelming for someone he'd only seen once. “You tried out for the mage-knights. How'd it go? Did you make it?” She hardly paused between sentences even when they were questions, leaving Trace no chance to answer her. He could hardly even nod before she started talking again. “That's great. Congratulations. You know, it's just a rumor floating around the headquarters, but I heard that one of the recruits was class zero. Can you believe it? I've never heard of anything like that, have you? Not only that, but apparently he passed all the trials and got accepted. Isn't that incredible?”
“Actually,” Trace said, scratching the base of his neck as he always did when he was embarrassed, “that was me.”
Her eyes nearly bulged when he said that, blinking like he'd just pointed a light at her face. “You're joking right? You're really class zero? That's so cool. What does it mean, anyway?” Trace shook his head to say he didn't know either, since by then he knew he wouldn't be able to get the words out before she started talking again.
“And now you're a mage-knight... well, trainee I guess. You know I wanted to join the mage-knights, but I couldn't pass the tests so I ended up working for headquarters. That and working here. My family runs this in--That's right.” Trace had never heard anyone cut herself mid-word before, but then again he'd never met anyone who talked quite as much as this girl. “You must be looking for a room. Don't worry, we've got plenty. Our beds might not be as stuffed as the places higher up the hill, but the rest is just as good and the food's even better. You'll be here until training's over, right?”
“I can only afford a few nights,” Trace said, looking down.
“I think we can work something out,” the girl said, leaning over the counter to whisper to him. “To be perfectly honest we're not renting all of our rooms anyway.”
“Is that alright?”
“Of course,” she assured him with a smile. “My parents taught me not to leave someone stranded without a roof to sleep under, so if they've got any problems it's really their fault.” She hurried out from behind the counter, nearly knocking over a stack of books as she did. “My name's Liza, by the way,” she said as she led him past the counter and into the inn. “Your's is...”
“Trace.”
“Trace,” Liza repeated as soon as he said it, “Right. I'll show you to your room.”
“I don't really feel comfortable accepting this kind of charity,” Trace admitted, but Liza was already dragging him down the hall.
“Would you rather stay outside? Maybe stow away in a barn somewhere?” she asked, not bothering to look back at him. “I didn't think so,” she concluded before he had a chance to say anything. “Here you go, you can use this room.”
She opened the door at the end of the hall for him. It was a small room, but big enough for Trace. It hardly had room for the small bed, which was all Trace really needed anyway. It even had a small table in the corner for him to put his bag on. All he had was a couple changes of clothes with him so he didn't need any closets or drawers to keep anything in.
“Well?” Liza asked from behind him. “What do you think?”
“It’s perfect,” Trace answered with a smile which Liza returned.
“Good. You’d best wash up, supper’s in half an hour.”
Trace woke up early the next morning, earlier than anyone else at the inn. He left as quietly as he could and headed out to the fields for his first day of training as a mage-knight. He was feeling pretty good, at least he was until training actually began.
The nickname Zero had stuck from the day before, but only Jaden and Zephyr were comfortable using it in an insulting way. The two of them were easily recognized as the strongest mages out of the new recruits, and each of them apparently had a reason to dislike Trace. To the other recruits, however, he was a mystery. They looked down on him for his inability to use magic, but at the same time he had gotten among the highest combined scores of any of the new recruits so they couldn't dismiss him entirely. But still the only one who seemed to like him was Simon.
There wasn't much time for conversation before Shaw showed up and demanded they run nearly twice what they'd run the day before. No one dared to complain to his face, and once they started running most of them were too winded to grumble anyway.
As soon as they finished their run Shaw gave them a few minutes to stretch and catch their breath before he called them to attention. “This world is more dangerous than any of you can imagine. If you want to survive outside of the safety of this camp, forget everything you've ever been taught about magic. My job is to make sure each and every one of you survives as a mage-knight, and I take it very seriously. Over the next few weeks I will teach you everything you need to know to stay alive. It won't be easy, but you've proven yourselves capable. Continue to show me that you're up to the task, and when your training is finished I'll gladly welcome you into the ranks of the mage-knights.”
He lifted his hand, summoning seven of the ice dummies he'd used in the exam the day before in a line fifty yards from the trainees. “We'll start with the very basics: target practice, and nothing fancy. Start with fireballs and we'll work our way up. Understand?”
“Yes Captain,” said everyone but Trace.
“Then begin.” Without a word to one another all of the trainees but Trace found a target and started launching fireballs at them. Even though the targets were made of ice, the trainees' fire did little more than run down their sides. But everyone there had already seen how sturdy Shaw's ice statues were, so they weren’t surprised.
Trace just watched as everyone else started their training. Shaw had only made seven targets, and everyone knew that meant he wasn't participating in the exercise. But then what was he supposed to do, just sit around and watch? That wasn't what he'd signed up for.
“Trace, come with me,” Shaw called before Trace had a chance to ask what he was supposed to do. “I've got some special training for you.”
* * *
My Beloved,
We've reached the edge of the desert, and it is a more desolate place than ever I imagined it would be. How it could use your touch. The air is so dry and warm the locals say it often catches fire right before your eyes.
I know that this letter will reach you no sooner than my return, but writing it helps me think of you and not of the endless desert ahead. The mining outpost we're looking for is a two days' walk from here. Rand wanted to leave right away, but I remembered what you said about being prepared so we stopped to replenish our supplies before venturing into the desert. I don't know what was important enough to dispatch us all the way out here, but hopefully in a few days we will have it in our possession and I'll be on my way home to you.
Until we meet again,
Katalyn
* * *
“Special training,” Trace muttered to himself, because there was no one else to hear him in the stable aside from a couple of the largest cows he had ever seen. He stabbed his pitchfork into the pile of hay he'd been spreading for the past couple hours. “Is that what he calls this?”
The cow nearest him flicked its tail and bleated indignantly at the injustice of it. At least that was how Trace chose to interpret it, though more likely it was to keep the bugs from biting it. Trace would have said something more, but he'd already said his fill working his way through the stalls of the stable over the course of the morning and instead took out his frustration on the pile of hay.
He'd never minded doing chores, after all that was how he spent most of his time back in Withestrop when he wasn't training, but this was different. He hadn't come this far and trained so hard just to spread hay over the stable floors. That wasn't what he'd worked for. He understood that he couldn't do magic training with the rest of the recruits, but there had to be something else he could be doing aside from farm chores.
But if there was, nobody told him. When Captain Shaw finally came back for him, it was only to give him the equally dull and unimportant job of mending the fences around the stables.
“Why?” Trace asked after Shaw told him what his next assignment was. Normally Trace wouldn't question Shaw, but having spent all day stewing while pitching hay had loosened some of his restraint.
Shaw didn't turn to look at him before replying, “Because they need mending.”
“That's not what I meant.” Even as frustrated as he was, Trace knew he was talking to his superior and kept his tone respectful. “Why am I doing this? If I wanted to do chores I would've stayed in Withestrop.”
“You're not doing chores,” Shaw corrected, tone icy but eyes still facing forward. “You're training your body while doing chores. You can't join the other recruits for magic training, and since you're the first class zero we've seen we're not quite sure how to deal with you. For now put up with this while I come up with a better arrangement.”
While Trace certainly wasn't happy with the arrangement, there was nothing he could do but bear it for the time being. It was good exercise, even if Trace didn't think that was what he needed. Then again, what could they teach him that didn't have to do with magic?
Things didn't get any better for him once he rejoined the rest of the recruits for lunch in the dormitory's mess hall. Trace didn't know if someone had told them or if they just pieced it together from the pieces of hay still caught in his hair, but somehow all of them knew what he'd been doing all day, and Jaden who was always looking for an excuse to take a shot at him couldn't let something like that go.
“I see they found a place where even you can be useful,” he laughed, prompting the other recruits to laugh with him. The boy who had quickly become Jaden's right-hand-man did, but everyone else was more content to ignore Trace altogether than to make fun of him. “I was wondering why they took you on, but it was just to clean up after the horses.”
“I was mending fences,” Trace corrected him in a tone that was nearly a growl, “not cleaning up after anything.”
“Like that makes a difference.” On their way through the door of the mess hall Jaden pushed past Trace and didn't look at him again after that. Trace reached for the sword hanging from his belt but took a deep breath and let his anger pass.
“Don't worry about him,” Simon said, coming up on Trace's other side. “He's just angry you did better on the entrance exam than he did. He's been going back and forth between calling it luck and cheating. He actually suggested that you're using a cursed sword.”
“Maybe I am,” Trace said, looking down at his sword. It was by far the finest sword he'd ever seen, light and strong with a blade that shone like diamond. But all he really knew about it was that the blacksmith who had raised him since his parents died had made it for him. Could he have really made a cursed sword and passed it on to Trace? Trace didn't think so, but he couldn't think of any other way to explain what had happened.
“I mean you know how hard those statues were to break,” he said, “but when I cut through them, it was like they weren't even there. I don't know how else to explain it.”
Despite its name and the fact that the recruits ate after the rest of the headquarters staff the mess hall was almost blindingly clean. The floors, ceilings, tables and arching pillars that ran through the room were all made of white marble while most of the walls were glass. No light fixtures hung from the ceiling, but then none were needed. The food, while not exactly terrible, wasn't anything spectacular. Most meals consisted of a gray, tasteless, texture-less yet supposedly incredibly nutritious substance known only as 'mush,' accompanied by bread or vegetables or on rare occasions dried meats.
Simon smiled at Trace as they sat down at one of the many empty tables with their trays of mush. “I think I do,” he whispered, leaning over the table. “It's just a rumor floating around the headquarters, but some people think you might actually be an anti-mage. That's why you're a class zero, why you can’t use magic.”
Simon said the word 'anti-mage' like it meant something important, something powerful that he didn't want anyone else to hear. Maybe it did for all Trace knew. “A what?”
“An anti-mage,” Simon repeated. “It's not surprising you've never heard of them, considering the last ones died off nearly a century ago. They were like mages, but in reverse.” That only made Trace even more confused. “You know mages cast spells by releasing magic from their bodies and focusing it, right? They emit magic.”
“So does everything that lives,” Trace said, nodding. “Mages just release more than average.”
“Exactly. Only anti-mages don't emit any magic. They absorb it.”
“How does that work?” It didn't make sense, like saying someone could live without breathing.
“No one knows, but we think that magic is necessary for people to live. Most people make more than they need, so they release the rest. But anti-mages don't make any, so they have to absorb it from the air around them. Of course that's only a guess. But because of that ability anti-mages were insanely powerful. They can nullify any spell, no matter how strong, just by touching it. It gave them an impenetrable shield against magic attacks as well as a sword that could pierce any magical defenses.”
Trace had never heard any of this before. It was fascinating, even if he didn't think it had anything to do with him. There was no way he was some kind of all-powerful anti-mage, or an all-powerful anything for that matter. “If they were so strong, how come they all died out?”
“They just stopped being born,” Simon said with a sad shrug. “It's not a bloodline thing. It's almost random.”
Trace picked up a spoonful of mush but didn't eat it. “And you think I'm one of these... anti-mages?”
“It certainly fits. The reason it was so easy to cut through Captain Shaw's statues was because you sucked the magic right out of them. Without magic keeping them frozen and giving them shape, they're nothing more than water. But that might just be wishful thinking on my part. It'd be a great learning opportunity to examine an anti-mage with my own eyes. Just think about the things I could learn.”
By that point Simon was watching Trace with an intensity that made him uncomfortable, like he was a specimen rather than a person. He was about to change the topic when Shaw announced from the doorway that they only had five minutes left for lunch, which the two of them spent eating their mush as fast as they could shovel it into their mouths.
Things hadn't gotten any better for Trace by the end of the first week of training. While he was busy doing things like digging ditches and re-shoeing the horses, the other recruits had graduated from simple fireballs and moved on to more complicated and powerful magic. At least that was what Trace gathered from what they talked about during lunch, the only time he actually spent with them aside from morning runs and stretches.
The only saving grace was that Liza always made sure there was something simmering on the inn's stove for him when he got back after sunset. Most of the time it was some kind of soup or stew together with a thick chunk of bread. Every night it was something different, and each time it was one of the most wonderful things Trace had ever tasted. It almost made his days of menial labor worthwhile to be able to eat something so good at the end of them.
Halfway through the last day of the first week of training, Trace had finally had enough. He waited until Shaw came to assign him a new chore and then confronted him.
“This isn't why I joined the mage-knights,” he said before Shaw could tell him what he would be doing next.
Shaw glanced at him, but only briefly. “Then why did you join?”
“My parents were killed by bandits when I was young,” Trace admitted. “I would've died with them but a mage-knight saved my life.”
“So you want to repay your savior?”
“No. I want to be able to give others the second chance he gave me. I want to be able to help the people who need it most.”
“That's admirable, but completely irrelevant. I've come to test you, not assign you more chores.” He lifted his hand and a wall of solid ice rose from the ground. It was taller than Trace and wider than he could stretch his arms with the thickness to match. It looked completely impenetrable. “Break through it,” Shaw commanded from the far side of the barrier.
“How?” Trace asked. The thing was absolutely massive.
“However you can.”
Trace examined the wall carefully, thinking back to what Simon had said during the first day of training. Was Shaw trying to see if he really was an anti-mage? If he was, all he had to do was touch the wall and it would break. It certainly wouldn't hurt to try.
His breath catching in his throat, he stepped up to the massive wall. Shaw hadn't said anything, but Trace felt like his future with the mage-knights depended on his ability to pass this test. But stalling wouldn't change the end result, so he placed his hand on the wall.
The ice was so cold it nearly burned his hand when he touched it, but that was all that happened. The wall didn't turn into a big puddle of water. It didn't even crack. He tried punching it, but all that did was make his knuckles crack painfully.
“Maybe it is my sword,” Trace said, unsheathing it. He didn't bother to slash at the wall, just touched it with the tip of the blade. Instantly the wall of ice turned into a wall of water, and without anything to hold it up it fell to the ground. The force of it nearly took Trace's feet out from under him, completely soaking the floor of the stable.
Shaw seemed neither surprised nor impressed. He just nodded impassively then bent down to pick up a twig that had washed into his boot. “Try it again,” he said, “but this time use this.” He threw the twig to Trace before creating another wall of ice.
The twig was so thin Trace had to be careful just holding it so he wouldn't snap it. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“The same thing you did with your sword,” Shaw said from the far side of the wall as if it were obvious.
Trace had his doubts, but he did as the captain said. Taking a deep breath, he thrust the twig toward the wall of ice, half-expecting it to snap before it ever even reached the surface.
It didn't. Even when it reached the edge of the wall it didn't so much as bend. It pushed straight through like the ice wasn't even there. An instant later the ice became water and the force of the deluge snapped the twig in two.
Trace stared at what was left of the twig in amazement. “How?”
“It wasn't the twig or the sword that brought down that wall,” Shaw said, boots squelching on the soaked floor as he approached Trace. “It was you.”
“Then how come nothing happened when I touched it with my hand?” Trace asked, still staring at the twig.
“The same reason beginning mages can't just wave their arms and cast fully-formed magic. You need something to focus your abilities. Some mages need chants, you need a sword in your hand.”
“But why?”
“Why is a pointless question,” Shaw said, turning around. “Things are the way they are and knowing the reasons won't change that. Now clean this up,” he added, sweeping a hand over the soaked floor of the stable. “Replace all the hay that's going to rot, and get it done by the end of the day, got it? You've got the day off tomorrow, and after that we start combat training.”
Trace couldn't keep the smile from spreading over his face. “Yes Captain.”
Next Week- Chapter 4: Training