Spells of the Curtain Volume One

  Spells of the Curtain Volume One

  Copyright © 2018-2019 Tim Niederriter

  http://mentalcellarpublications.com

  https://dwellerofthedeep.wordpress.com/

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written consent of the author. Unauthorized duplication in any media is a violation of international copyright laws and will be prosecuted.

  Published by Mental Cellar Publications

  This is a work of fiction People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to actual people, places, and events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  More Series by Tim Niederriter

  This series is for the friends who made it possible. | And also for Zig Zag Claybourne, a fellow author who encouraged me to dust off this tale. | Thank you all.

  

  More Series by Tim Niederriter

  Tenlyres

  The Rain Protocol

  The Pillar Universe

  Temple Theater (Forthcoming, 2019)

  Other Books

  Rem’s Dream

  Find out more at http://mentalcellarpublications.com

  This series is for the friends who made it possible.

  And also for Zig Zag Claybourne, a fellow author who encouraged me to dust off this tale.

  Thank you all.

  Magic flowed through Edmath. His adrenaline pumped from the infusion of raw life force. He loved that feeling. He drew in the rest of the flowing light as quickly as he could. The magic within him gave everything living in the garden a glow to his second sight. Normally Edmath would relish such a feeling, but time was short.

  He had to move this demonstration along because he had staged it for the last moment. His class graduation ceremony drew near indeed. Unfolding his palm upward, Edmath exposed the seed he held there to the students’ eyes.

  A humid breeze blew through the gardens tossing streams of early summer pollen adrift around Edmath and the students that sat on the grass around him. Edmath’s fingers caged the seed to keep it from being blown away. He breathed in as he focused on the brass-reinforced bone striker ring looped on his finger. Striking the invisible curtain of existence in a long motion with his whole arm extended, he slit open a new tear with the ring, allowing magic to flow forth.

  The raw power of life poured from the gash in the material curtain. Rivulets of the magical stream broke off immediately, flowing through shallow currents invisible until marked by its progress. Edmath’s trained Saale eyes picked out every detail of the flow. He drew it in more slowly than that of his first striking from seconds earlier.

  His students watched the magic more intently than Edmath. At the moment he needed to observe them as well as work the spell. His reports on them were already written, but if these students were not trained to see the magic, if they couldn’t follow currents and movements exactly, they would have to be held back.

  Lexine Park’s proctors emphasized practical sight when watching magic. Students trained to notice the important things like the pace and direction of the flow, and leave the rest to the background. The proctors tested the classes frequently to make sure they were prepared to serve the empire in peace and in war. Edmath had endured many of their tests himself over the years. A familiar current carried the main stream of magic directly to him.

  “This spell is based on what I’ve been studying about plant growth.” He made the sign of the root by pressing the tip of his index finger to the middle joint of his thumb. The sign usually involved placing the two digits tip to tip, but not for this spell. One of the fifth year students, a swarthy member of the bear tribe, Gayaneb, narrowed his eyes as the light bloomed brighter.

  Gayaneb’s Saale sight had always been among the keenest in his class. His attention to detail was second to none. No wonder he noticed the small difference in Edmath’s form.

  The technique Edmath used to make the plant’s growth stable was one most of the students likely wouldn’t pick up as quickly as usual because many of them were training to be more active in their magic use. He hoped at least one would go into crafting more permanent life, if only because it was a safer professional path than acting directly on a battlefield.

  Edmath suspended that thought and concentrated back on the spell as he worked it. The mental intricacies of the spell felt familiar, but, as always, they needed careful attending. The hand sign was less than half of a Saale mage’s spell. Most was done in pure thought.

  The seed sprouted in Edmath’s palm. He smiled at the other students as the new plant’s roots wrapped around his fingers and curled down to the back of his hand. Edmath focused back on the seed to guide its growth. He frowned in concentration. Though he kept his other hand locked in the sign of the root, he couldn’t help but smile again. Only a Saale could see what he saw now. Gleaming magic from the tear he had made with his striker just a moment ago continued to flow around him, and pulsed into the growing plant, nourishing it.

  He cleared his throat with a cough as the plant began to sprout branches and small, fresh-smelling green leaves. It became heavy with new growth. The strain on his arm grew with it. Edmath looked out at his class.

  “Remember, my friends, concentration allows you to bend the symbols you make to your design. Remember your signs and symbols. They are important, but not one of them is universal. The real power is in the body-gates we have opened over the course of our training, and in the mind.” Crouching down, Edmath set the still-growing sapling in the shallow hole he’d dug for it earlier. He looked up at the class. “The lesson I mean to teach is simple. Remember the fundamentals. Strike strongly. Sign firmly. Think clearly on your spells, and never take a life.”

  The last instruction could be difficult in the real world, especially given the possibility of war with Roshi. Saales sickened and could even lose their powers if they killed with magic. His eyes moved over the class. Gayaneb nodded.

  Edmath breathed in.

  “Any questions?”

  Gayaneb raised his hand with a smile.

  “Aren’t you going to be late?” He pointed at the garden’s sundial.

  Edmath turned toward it. The hours advanced expeditiously as always. A few other students laughed.

  Edmath grinned.

  “Anything else?”

  “Not a question,” Gayaneb said. “But good luck, Ed.”

  Other students nodded and smiled. An appreciative murmur ran through the class. Edmath straightened the black sash that crossed his chest and marked him as a commoner.

  He did not feel like a commoner today.

  “That’s Saale Donroi, as of today, my friends.”

  Big Gayaneb clapped his hands loudly and bellowed a laugh.

  “Not if the Roshi beat you to the principal center.”

  The other students began to laugh and clap as well. Edmath waved them off and shook his head with a chuckle.

  “If you insist.”

  He glanced in the direction of the Principle Center, still grinning. The future will not wait for me, after all, he thought. And he walked to the edge of the garden where a crawling tree waited, past small birds singing the praise of the fresh summer sun in their own language.

  He did not know anyone else who could converse with those particular birds because there was no tribe for them in the Empire of Zel.

  Edmath stopped at the base of the crawling tree. He reached up and grabbed the bottom branch to climb up.

  He took a breath and let it out, and wondered whether or not the administrators would wait fo
r him if he ran late. Either way, he needed to keep moving. Part of him regretted climbing the extra few rows high to get a view of the campus as the tree carried him toward its center.

  He swung his legs down from the branch he sat upon. The breeze tugged at his tunic as he moved, gentle but loud amid the red and white-petaled flowers and green leaves. He dropped to the next branch a level down from him and continued his descent. Each level of the tree’s branches was exactly four feet down from the last one. The well-tended plant stood seventy feet tall and Edmath usually liked to ride near the top, but today he had not had the time to climb the whole way up.

  The current Saale Emperor, Haddishal Rumenha, had grown the tree, named Orpus Strodusial, outside his window during the years he’d studied at Lexine Park.

  Edmath hoped he had been right to mention the tree in his letter to the emperor, where he had requested consideration for employment.

  The story went that Rumenha was only allowed to keep the crawling tree because it spent the nights hiding in the gardens. That had been almost thirty years ago, almost eight years before Edmath’s birth, and now the unique tree was Edmath’s favorite way to get around the grounds. Peering out through the leaves and the branches, his eyes traced the sloping rooftop of the Principal Center where the ceremony would take place.

  “That’s far enough, my good Orpus.”

  He looked down through the evenly-spaced branches to the ground far below. The translucent, ghosted roots of the tree roiled over and through the dirt leaving no trail. They became insubstantial as they passed through the earth, a product of Rumenha’s ingenuity, and an incredibly complex magical modification. Edmath smiled as the movements of those roots slowed. He dropped down another branch to the lowest level, less than two yards from the base of the tree where the roots issued forth.

  He put a hand on the trunk by the animant symbol carved deep into the tree’s bark long ago. It formed a jagged triangle with a circle at each of its three points. The deceptive simplicity of it made many unsure of Orpus Strodusial’s ability to think when they first met it, but Edmath had been friends with the tree from his first year at Lexine Park. At the time, as a tribeless orphan among royals, he had needed friends who did not ask questions.

  He knew well enough that the Orpus was intelligent, though it could not speak. His research over the last year proved that intelligence decisively. The investment of consciousness came with the same magic that made the roots ghost through the ground.

  As the roots stopped moving, he dropped down to the grass below the tree. His wooden sandals clacked as he walked onto a footpath of white stone.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. Without the school’s grant from his high entrance challenge grade, he might not have been able to afford them. But with the money, he’d not only paid for them but also earned a way onto the short path to the Imperial City of Diar and beyond. Edmath knew he had been lucky, especially after being orphaned before he could remember.

  His adoptive mother had once referred to his luck as his life’s redemption.

  No tribe. No blood family. Few young people did so well in his circumstances, and they had made his social life a challenge for a long time.

  He followed the stone path to the double doors, then opened one of them and slipped inside. The principal center was a huge white stone building, a fortress dedicated to learning. Making his way through the building’s tiled entry halls lined with statues of college princes of the past, from the centuries lost Doblemane Pyul all the way to long-bearded Haddishal Rumenha and proud Amonos Nane.

  Of all the Saales and royals depicted there, all appeared fully human except for Nane, whose stocky form had been sculpted halfway into his coral tosh, showing one arm covered with the wrinkly stony skin of his tribe’s creatures.

  Edmath passed the statues and turned down a staircase at the far end of the entrance hall. At the bottom of the stairs, a long and familiar corridor led to the antechamber containing the seniors of Edmath’s class. Usually, there weren’t so many graduates. Lexine Park had outdone itself in the eyes of the Empire of Zel that year.

  Edmath stepped into the chill air of the many spans long and dimly lit antechamber and looked for his place in the line for commencement along the wall. His place had been determined by his graduation challenge grades but he was fortunate.

  Grades put him exactly where he belonged; just between his friends near the front of the line. Chelka Benisar, the fierce and beautiful squid princess, stood in the lead with a gap and several other individuals between herself and the honorable Whale Prince Brosk Naopaor.

  Over their tunics, the two of them wore regas, the sashes of white that distinguished them as royalty of their tribes. Tribal royalty was far from uncommon in the nation, but both Chelka and Brosk belonged to higher families that ruled regions. Brosk stood well over two yards tall and his broad form dwarfed both Chelka and Edmath. He wore black clothes, eschewing Lexine red in favor of more somber colors except at his collar.

  Chelka had swept her long black hair back from her face so it spilled onto the shoulders of her pale blue tunic. Her long skirt was the same color as her hair except for the red at the hem, both the black and the red a nod to Lexine Park’s school colors. Her bright eyes flicked from Brosk to the door at the end of the hall ahead of the line.

  Edmath approached them. He raised his arm in greeting and grinned as Chelka looked from the door to him.

  “Well, I suppose this is going to be a good day.” He tightened the fastening of his black commoner’s sash, the reverse color from the regas worn by Chelka and Brosk. “Is that not true, Lady Benisar?”

  “Don’t you, of all people, call me that.” Chelka’s lips turned up at the corners and she showed her teeth in not precisely a smile. “I don’t call you Monk Donroi.”

  Her eyes sparkled, looking very large, and then a true smile softened her face. She glowed with a kind of vitality visible even without second sight.

  Her playful rebuke reminded Edmath again how lucky he had been to be raised in that monastery until ten years ago. They had trained him to the basics of magic and attempted to teach him etiquette. The few teachings on manners that had stuck at the time were now largely forgotten, especially when among his friends.

  “You know well, I’m no monk, but they taught me some useful lessons.” Edmath’s grin only broadened as he met her dark and beautiful eyes. “My dear lady.”

  “Not that I don’t respect your timing, Ed.” Brosk turned from the line and folded his massive arms. “But you are truly late this time. Why risk trouble so close to graduation?”

  “The ceremony hasn’t begun yet.” Edmath adjusted his sash with one hand. “Aren’t you worrying a little more than usual, Prince Naopaor?”

  “Don’t start that business again.” Brosk chuckled and pointed down the line. “I brought this up because Zuria wanted to talk to you.”

  Edmath dipped his head to Brosk, and then pushed his glasses up his nose. He bowed his head in an exaggerated motion.

  “That is very serious business indeed, sir. I must go.”

  Brosk shook his head with a smirk of his own.

  “Go find your sister, my friend.”

  Edmath must look like a child next to Brosk. He appreciated the prince’s friendship, especially given Brosk’s reserved nature and high social standing.

  “Of course.”

  “You have a few minutes,” Chelka said, “But get right back here as soon as you can.”

  “Your wish is my command, Chelka.”

  Edmath started down the row of seniors. Most of them were laughing and talking in their own friend groups.

  The six years here training to become Saales had been challenging at times, but Edmath couldn’t have argued that it was not worthwhile. Though many of his fellow students were of royal blood, he lacked any status along with his missing tosh. His parents had given him little, but the monks had managed to tell him his father’s name, Jurgat Donroi.

  The abb
ot had told him his father had died fighting Roshi invaders after the old monk discovered Edmath’s Saale talent. At the monastery, many monks trained as Saales, but few studied as broadly as a student at a college like Lexine Park.

  Edmath’s mind turned from the past to the present as he moved down the line of seniors. The empire’s sphere of humanity may not have recognized Edmath as a royal, but he had made it to this place nonetheless.

  He found Zuria about ten people back from Brosk and Chelka. She smiled when she saw him. Her black hair was bundled into a long braid that coiled over her shoulders like a black sash counter to the white one she wore which marked her as a royal, however minor, of the Serpent Tribe. She had brushed her bangs back from her forehead.

  She looked just like her mother in a lot of ways, the mother who had adopted Edmath. He knew the old priestess would be proud of both of them. They were like a pair of gift oysters, one dark, and the other light. Of all the families in the empire that could have taken Edmath in after the monastery, the Mierzons might have been the most opposite looking, but they were also among the most kind.

  “You wanted to see me, sister? Are you ready to graduate?”

  Zuria nodded, her gaze falling from Edmath’s face. She looked quite pretty there, dressed in the violet and white dress her mother had given her new for the occasion. He knew what she needed to hear.

  “Mother will be proud.”

  She smiled.

  “Thank you, brother. I just got nervous when I didn’t see you earlier.”

  “We’re always even.” Edmath laughed. “After all, my world wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  Raising her head, Zuria smiled. She folded her hands around her rega.

  She told Edmath just a few weeks ago that she couldn’t wait to graduate. Now the fear of moving on seemed to be getting to her. When they had started at the school they had each been the only person the other had known. The two of them had arrived here together and soon they would leave together.