The Mages of Royas Bay (Mages of Wrystan 1)

Chapter 15: Magic Lessons, Part 2

"AND SO THE nation of Wrystan was reformed, seven years after it was first united." As always Mistress Garen's lesson finished just as the bell rang. She'd been doing this a long time and was good at making every breath of her teaching count. "By our next lesson I want each of you to write three pages about the Wolves of Evran – either King Aric I or Duke Wulfric – and how they spent the seven years of the Usurper's rule. Three pages, everyone."

While the grumbling first- and second-years gathered their things and headed for the door, Arien was just waking up from his impromptu nap.

"Here, Azarien, you may find this of some use." Mistress Garen was a strict teacher, but she had a hidden kindness too. When Arien took the small book copied from the original histories written by Lord Blake, the first March of Gunnis Ridge, she even winked. "Try not to stay up so late tonight, hmm?"

Feeling his ears turning red, Arien tucked the book into his bag, muttered something apologetically grateful, and hurried out of the door. He didn't normally find his history classes hard to stay awake for. In fact it was one of his favourite lessons.

The history of Wrystan fascinated him. It was all kings, knights, lords, war and politics, both brutal and polite. And it spanned centuries. So different from his life in the sands, where history and lords lasted as long as it took for the winds to change, and blood had stained the whole desert red.

Although he knew there was an Emperor of Neystan in some distant city, complete with a court and nobles, Arien's home had been on the outskirts of the Empire, where warlords ruled and each compound was a self-contained world of its own. A hard world. His knowledge of Neystani history had been limited to what his mother had taught him, and she had never wanted to know, nor pass on, anything of her conqueror's land.

It surprised Arien how much he liked history. Perhaps it was because it hinted at a state of permanence, something which he'd never had. He liked the idea that some families had stayed in one place for hundreds of years, even peacefully in some cases.

Which was why he was so annoyed with himself for falling asleep. He'd lasted through cookery first thing, but started to lose his focus during mathematics. By the time he reached history he simply could not keep his eyes open anymore. He was so tired.

It was all Mara's fault. She made making glow globes sound easy. Even as she'd talked him through the procedure he'd had no doubts he would soon be holding a handful of his own glowing magic. Instead he'd held nothing. The magic had slipped through his fingers like water, if he could even get his hands into the flow in the first place.

Not that Mara had let him admit defeat. They'd stayed out in the rainy summerhouse all afternoon and well into the evening. They'd both been cold, wet, hungry and dispirited by the time they returned to the school, with not a drop of magic having sparked outside Arien.

There might be a river of it running through him, but what use was that when he couldn't touch or use any of it? He almost wished he had the Hunger back. At least he knew what to do with that.

When he'd tried to shut off his magic in a sulk, Nia had jumped onto his shoulder and twisted his ear in her beak. Then Mara had given him a stern lecture about his responsibilities not just to himself and Rowan, but to all the magic users in the school and the city. It went on so long and raked over so much past guilt that by the time they'd discovered dinner had long been finished, Arien had completely lost his appetite.

Disgusted with him, Mara had sent him to bed, promising to find him when he stopped feeling sorry for himself. Then she'd grumbled something about dining with royalty and had left him to stew overnight. Tired though he'd been he hadn't slept more than a few winks before the morning bell summoned him to yet another round of lessons. If this was life at the mage school, Arien wasn't sure he wanted it.