Chapter 9
LYRA
The training grounds of the Arcane Sanctum were already awake by the time Vareena and I reached them the next morning.
I heard them before I saw them. Metal striking metal somewhere ahead.
A shout followed by a burst of laughter.
A heavy impact cracked against stone. Then another sound rolled through the corridor, deep enough that I felt it through the soles of my boots, and I stopped beneath the archway.
Vareena glanced back. “You’re going to do that a lot today, aren’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Stop every time someone uses magic.”
“I do not.” She looked at me. I sighed. “I mean can you blame me?”
The corner of her mouth lifted, but she didn’t make anything more of it.
I was beginning to appreciate that about her.
She noticed things without immediately reaching inside me and trying to pull them apart.
She had noticed when I woke before dawn and lay staring at the ceiling.
She had noticed when I couldn’t eat more than half the bread she’d brought back from breakfast. She had definitely noticed when I spent several minutes staring at the clothing the Sanctum had provided me as though it had personally offended me.
Dark trousers. Boots. A fitted training tunic with pale stitching around the cuffs and collar.
Nothing like the dresses and skirts I had worn most of my life.
Nothing that smelled like Edenlo. I had put Maia’s cloak over all of it anyway.
We passed beneath the archway and onto a narrow stone bridge, and the grounds opened below us. I stopped again.
Vareena didn’t say anything this time.
The Sanctum had been too large to understand when I arrived.
I had seen towers and bridges and courtyards stacked against the mountains, but I hadn’t understood how any of it connected.
From here, I could. At least part of it.
The training grounds occupied an enormous section of the lower Sanctum, divided around the circular structure I recognized immediately from the map Vareena had shown me last night.
The Crucible sat at the center, its ancient stone floor ringed by ascending tiers and carved with so many runes they blurred together from this distance.
Four training divisions spread around it, each different enough that there was no mistaking where one ended and another began.
The Aurora Circle caught the morning first. Pale stone and silver-white pillars enclosed several open courts where Light candidates were already training.
Flashes of gold and white moved between them, some no larger than sparks, others bright enough to make me squint.
Across from it, the Pyra Enclave looked as though someone had built a training ground inside the remains of a burned city.
Black stone. Iron. Fire burning from trenches cut directly into the ground.
Heat distorted the air above it even from where I stood.
The Verdant Hallows spread along the opposite side in terraces of stone, grass, old trees, and pools of water fed by channels running down from the mountain.
Earth candidates moved through exercises there, some working stone while others manipulated roots and soil.
I watched one man lift water from a shallow pool and send it winding around his forearms before returning it.
I frowned. “That still bothers me.”
Vareena followed my gaze. “What does?”
“Coren said that was Earth.”
“It is.”
“It’s water.”
“Yes.”
I looked at her. “Those two answers don’t belong together.”
She laughed softly. “You really weren’t taught any of this.”
“No. We were busy learning useful things. Like how not to freeze to death.”
“That does sound useful.” She rested her forearms against the bridge railing.
“Water used to be taught separately. A very long time ago. Nytheris still has true Water wielders, but they’re different from Earth wielders who can manipulate water.
Earth affinity can extend into things belonging to the land—plants, minerals, sometimes water.
Depends on the wielder. True Water wielders don’t have Earth affinity at all. ”
“And they’re stronger with it.”
“Much.”
I looked back toward the pools. “Then why combine them?”
“History. Politics. People deciding classifications were easier than admitting the old ones were disappearing.” She shrugged. “You’ll get a better explanation in Theory.”
I stared at her. “Was that the short explanation?”
“That was me being kind.”
Gods.
My gaze traveled farther, toward the western grounds, and whatever I had been about to say disappeared.
The Umbra Rings were darker than everything surrounding them.
Not because they had been built without sunlight.
Morning spilled over the walls and across the black stone like it did everywhere else.
The darkness came from the people inside.
Shadows crawled over the training floor in shapes that had nothing to do with the bodies casting them.
Some gathered around ankles. Others climbed arms or spread across stone before snapping backward at a command I couldn’t hear.
A woman vanished into one patch of darkness and stepped from another several yards away. My stomach turned.
Everything I had ever been told about Shadow came back at once.
Stories whispered beside winter fires. Children warned not to wander too far after sunset because Shadow wielders could slip through darkness and steal them from their beds.
Tales of the western kingdom and the things living there, usually told by people who had never crossed the Veil and couldn’t have pointed to Umbrael on a map.
I knew that now.
Knowing didn’t stop my skin from prickling.
Then I saw him.
He stood near the far edge of the Umbra Rings with a blade in one hand and another man opposite him.
No robes. No ceremonial clothing. Black training leathers fitted close across his body, sleeves pushed above his forearms. The other man attacked.
He moved once. I almost missed it. One moment the blade was coming toward his throat, and the next he had caught the man’s wrist, turned beneath his arm, and put him on his back hard enough that I heard the impact from the bridge.
He didn’t offer him a hand. The man got up on his own. “Who is that?”
Vareena went quiet beside me.
I glanced at her. “What?”
“You don’t know?”
“Would I be asking?”
Her eyes moved back toward him. “Kieran Nyxara.” The name meant nothing to me. Apparently my face made that obvious.
“Shadow instructor,” she added. “Mostly advanced candidates.”
I looked back at him. He had already resumed whatever he was doing, speaking to the man he had just thrown onto the ground. I couldn’t hear the words. I didn’t need to. The other candidate’s face told me enough.
“He seems pleasant.”
“No one has ever accused him of that.”
A flicker of movement drew my eyes to Kieran’s feet. Shadow slid across the black stone and curled around his boot before disappearing again. My rune warmed beneath my ribs.
I went still. Not now. I pressed my arm against my side.
Kieran’s head turned. There were too many people between us for him to have heard anything. Too much distance for him to have noticed me move. Still, his gaze crossed the grounds and landed directly on me.
My breath caught.
He stared at me. Not at my face. At the place beneath my ribs where my rune had begun to heat. I pulled Maia’s cloak tighter. His gaze lifted slowly to mine. It made anger rise before fear could get there.
“What?” I muttered.
Vareena looked at me. “What?”
“Not you.”
When I looked back, Kieran had already turned away. I hated him immediately.
We continued down the bridge.
By the time we reached the Aurora Circle, my nerves had settled somewhere between nausea and the desire to turn around.
Light candidates filled the nearest training court.
Most looked around my age, though a few were older.
The advanced candidates were easy to distinguish even before Vareena pointed them out.
Their uniforms bore additional markings at the shoulder and collar, and they moved with the infuriating confidence of people whose magic had stopped surprising them years ago.
I became aware of how tightly I was gripping Maia’s cloak.
Vareena touched my elbow. “You’re fine.”
“I’m considering throwing myself off the bridge.”
“That would make orientation awkward.”
“I think we passed awkward yesterday.”
“That’s fair.”
Mistress Calis stood at the center of the court.
I recognized her immediately, though she looked different here than she had yesterday.
Her pale formal robes were gone, replaced by fitted cream training clothes beneath a long sleeveless coat.
Her hair remained twisted tightly away from her face.
Several instructors stood near her, and a group of candidates waited in loose lines before them.
Calis saw us approaching. More accurately, she saw me. “Alerain.”
Every nearby conversation seemed to lower at once. Wonderful.
Vareena gave me a small look that might have been encouragement before moving toward the other candidates.
I approached Calis alone.
“You’re late.”
I looked toward the enormous clock set into the tower beyond her. “The bell hasn’t rung.”
Her gaze dropped over my clothing and stopped at Maia’s cloak. “Remove it.”
My fingers tightened around the fabric. “Why?”
“Because you’re training, not traveling.”
“I can train in it.”
“You cannot.”
I wanted to argue. The answer rose automatically, sharp and ready, but then I looked around and realized everyone else had removed coats, cloaks, anything loose enough to catch during movement. Calis wasn’t asking me to surrender it. She was telling me not to get strangled by it.
That didn’t make me like her. I unclasped the cloak and folded it over my arm.
“There.” Calis pointed toward a stone bench.
I set it down carefully.
When I returned, she was watching me. “You will begin with assessment.”
“I thought yesterday was assessment.”