Chapter 111. Training Day Turned Into Something Else the Moment the Veil Bell Rang

Chapter 111: 111. Training Day Turned Into Something Else the Moment the Veil Bell Rang

I screamed.

I’m not proud of it. It was an extremely undignified sound, a kind of wild, ecstatic shriek, and I punched the air and danced a little jig in the sand, and a dozen Nightclaw riders on the wall applauded politely.

Velora looked at the sky with an expression of deep, long-suffering patience, and I saw, very briefly, a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth.

...

Elsbeth had prepared a ring of ice.

It was in the north garden, a wide courtyard enclosed by white colonnades, where she had frozen the paving stones into a gleaming, glassy lake the size of a tavern floor.

The air above it was cold and bright, and each breath came out as a puff of fog. She stood in the middle with her arms folded, bundled in a thick gray coat, and watched me skid toward her across the surface on my backside.

"You are late," she said.

"I fell."

"I observed." She raised an eyebrow. "On the way here you fell six times."

"The road is slippery."

"There is no road... This is the garden."

"It’s still slippery."

She shook her head. It was a tiny movement, and it carried an entire encyclopedia of disappointment.

But her eyes were warm, and I noticed, when I scrambled to my feet, that she had put a pile of folded blankets at the edge of the ice for me to land on.

She’d done it quietly, without comment, and I felt a small, ridiculous glow of pride that I was the sort of person who inspired it.

"Today," Elsbeth said, "you will learn to wear ice."

"Wear it?"

"It is a form of reinforcement... A thin layer of crystal drawn over the skin, which will absorb and turn aside force."

"My people use it to harden our bodies before battle... It is not the same as a shield."

"It is closer to a second skin." She held out her bare hand, and a thin, delicate film of frost spread across her palm, glittering like sugar. "You will push your mana into your arm, and think of a surface that will not break."

"That’s it?"

"That is the beginning."

I felt like I’d heard that before.

I pushed. I thought of an unbreakable surface.

I thought of a wall, and then a rock, and then, for no good reason, a loaf of French bread. A faint, wobbly sheen of frost crept along my forearm and promptly shattered.

"Poor," Elsbeth said.

"I’m trying."

"Your posture is that of a sack of grain that has lost its confidence."

"Thank you."

"It was not a compliment."

"I know."

"Again."

She was not a gentle teacher. She never had been.

She corrected my stance with the flat of her hand, rapped my elbow when it drifted, and delivered a running commentary that was dry as a desert and every bit as merciless.

"You are clenching... Do not clench."

"You are holding your breath like a drowning man."

"It is ice, Leon, not a punishment."

But there was a patience in it that I hadn’t known she had, a steady, grave attention, and she never raised her voice.

I fell. I picked myself up.

And then I fell again.

On my twelfth try, I lost my footing completely, windmilled both arms, and went down flat on my back with a thud that knocked all the air out of my chest.

The sky spun overhead. I lay there, wheezing.

Elsbeth walked over and stood above me, looking down. Her shadow fell across my face.

I waited for the order to get up.

It didn’t come.

"You may rest," she said, after a moment, "for thirty seconds."

I blinked at her.

She looked away, at the horizon. Her voice dropped, and when she spoke again, it was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear it.

"I have not been sleeping either."

I didn’t say anything. I raised my right hand and held it out to her, with the palm turned up and the fingers open.

Elsbeth looked at it. Her face didn’t change.

But something in the set of her shoulders eased, and she stooped and took my hand in hers and pulled me upright in a single smooth motion, as if I weighed nothing.

We stood there for a moment, very close, with our fingers still laced. A faint, small, private smile, hardly more than a flicker, crossed her face.

I returned it.

"Again," she said.

By the end of the afternoon, I could hold a thin crust of ice along my left forearm for ten full seconds.

I counted. Then it cracked, with a sound like a dropped plate, and Elsbeth, who had been timing me with a pocket watch, nodded once.

"Acceptable," she said.

From Elsbeth Evershade, it was practically a medal.

Meanwhile... Magnara taught me the axe.

She did it in the yard, where I’d watched her break a post, at about the time that the sun was beginning to slope toward the west.

It was warmer then, and the light was golden, and the whole place smelled of sawdust and sweat.

She’d picked a hand axe from the rack, a plain, solid tool with a short haft, and thrown it to me without a word.

I’d like to say I caught it elegantly. But... I didn’t.

It hit me in the stomach.

"You will learn the Redhorn stance," she said, ignoring my wheeze. "It is how my people take a blow."

"You lower your weight... You tuck the elbow... You let the force run into the ground, and not into the bone." She set her feet wide, bent her knees, and tucked her arms in against her ribs.

She suddenly looked like a rooted boulder. "Come at me."

I came at her.

It was like running into a cliff. I swung the axe with everything I had, and she took it on the haft of her own weapon without even shifting, and the shock jarred through my arms to my teeth.

She shoved. I flew backward and landed on my butt.

"Again."

"Okay."

"Lower."

"I’m as low as I can..."

"Lower."

I got lower. I tucked my elbows and bent my knees and felt my thighs begin to burn.

She hit me again, harder, and I skidded across the dust.

When I got up. She hit me again.

It went on like that for a long time.

I won’t pretend it was fun. She hit me so hard, so many times, that by the end I’d lost count of the bruises.

But I kept learning. Every time I fell, I understood a little more about where I’d gone wrong.

And somewhere in the middle of it, I noticed something that made my stomach go cold.

Her hands were shaking.

It was subtle. If I hadn’t spent half the night counting her swings, I might not have caught it.

But every time she lowered her axe, a tremor ran through her wrists, a fine, rapid tremble that she covered by gripping the haft tighter. Her horns had begun to hum, a faint, vibrating buzz at the edge of hearing.

And her strikes had lost their rhythm. She wasn’t teaching me anymore.

She was hitting me, and I could feel the anger in every blow, bright and brittle and ready to crack.

In my belt pouch, the Veil Bell gave a soft, steady chime.

I took a hit on the shoulder and went down. But I managed to get up.

Only for her to hit me again.

Something in my head said, quite clearly, ’This isn’t a lesson.’

"Again," Magnara said.

She swung. It was a big, brutal, looping blow, aimed at my ribs, with the whole weight of her body behind it.

I stepped.

I didn’t plan it. It was an instinct.

The world went silver, and I flickered sideways, and the axe passed through the place where I’d been.

I came out of the step directly in front of her, inside her guard, with my hands closing around both of her wrists.

I caught them.

Her axe stopped, a hand’s breadth from my side.

We stood there.

I could feel her pulse hammering against my palms, fast and thin and ragged. Her breath came hard.

Her face was inches from mine, tight and pale, and her amber eyes were glittering with something that looked a lot like tears.

She turned her head away.

"Again," she said, in a rough, cracked voice.

"No."

"Leon."

"You’re not training," I said. "Looks to me that you’re running!"

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Somewhere over the wall, a bird began to sing.

"Magnara..." I said, very gently. "Put it down."

She stood there with her jaw working. Then, slowly, almost with disbelief, she let her arms go slack.

The axe slid out of her fingers and thudded into the dirt. I loosened my grip, but I didn’t let go.

"If I am turned," she said.

It was so quiet that I had to lean in.

"If it happens... If the gold gets into me, the way it got into the others..."

"Who will stop me?"

I looked at her. A huge, scarred woman, the Gate-Breaker of the Red Gate, who’d held back a monster’s claw with her bare arms.

She was staring at the ground, and her whole body was shaking.

"Not who," I said. "But more like a how."

"And I’ll figure it out."

She lifted her head.

"I’m going to figure it out," I said. "I don’t know how yet... But I promise you, I’m not going to let anyone make you do something you wouldn’t choose!"

"Not anyone... Not him... and not even you."

I let go of one wrist. I took her hand, the left one, and turned it over so that the palm was up.

Then I laid mine in it, flat, and curled her fingers over, gently, and held on for a moment.

She stared down at our hands. She didn’t say anything.

When I let go, she kept looking at her palm, as if she’d forgotten what it was for.