Hunter's Beginning (Veller) Read online

  “Well there was in mine. I don’t know what you saw.”

  “It was a room filled with books and scroll and on the floor there was this… sliver ring.” He said as his voice began to trail off, it was like he was trying to recall a dream.

  “For some reason I remember thinking that If I took the ring, it would help me control my mystic arts… it would make me stronger, I could help so many people and nobody would know, it was… it was just a small ring… nobody would even know if I took it.”

  “Bait.”

  “What?”

  “It was bait.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you want to catch the right vermin, you have to use the right bait.” Kile replied, it did make sense in a strange mystic’s tower sort of way.

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “It was what my father would always say as he set the traps in the barn, if you want to catch the right vermin, you have to use the right bait. Your bait was a ring, a way to… master you mystic arts. Mine was a ruby, it made me think it would solve all my problems, like it would actually have made any difference. I wonder what Alex was tempted with.”

  “Probably elevated shoes.” Daniel laughed. “Well, at least you saw the enchantment for what it was”

  “No, not really, it was more like dumb luck; I came very close to taking the bait.”

  “But you didn’t, you knew it was enchanted.”

  “Well… no, I didn’t know it was enchanted, not until… well… later. How would I have known?”

  “You had no idea?”

  “I just said I didn’t.”

  “You… you really don’t have any mystical influence.” Daniel said with a note of disbelief.

  “Oh, well you finally figured that one out.” Kile replied a bit more sarcastically than she had intended. “I’ve only told you that how many times.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What, that I can’t make illusions or dry out mud or set fires or move objects.”

  “Well… yeah.”

  “I’ll have you know, my mother never did any of those things and she got by alright.”

  “That's not what I meant, it's just that… you can’t be a Hunter without a Hunter’s edge, without some form of the arts. It just doesn’t make any sense… it… it’s just not done. You should have failed out by now.”

  “Well… there’s still time.”

  “Yeah, but… were heading to Azintar.”

  “Well take it up with the driver, not me; I don’t know what’s going on.” Kile replied and she turned to stare out the window. She was finished with the conversation, he could continue if he wanted but he would have to do it without her.

  The Carriage rolled on, late into the evening as Kile and Daniel sat across from one another in silence. Kile stared out the window, watching the world go by one tree at a time. It was not the most scenic of trips, but then she had never been on that many trips to compare it with. The only time she had ever left Riverport was to go to Littenbeck, and now she was heading to Azintar. They were moving west, catching up with the setting sun but not nearly fast enough as the skies began to grow darker. She was moving farther and farther away from home, away from Riverport, and although her thoughts did wander home briefly they did not stay there very long. She kept running over what Daniel had said about the Hunter’s Edge, and the mystic arts. It was the one part of the entry examination that was completely out of her control. It was something you either had, or you didn’t, and she didn’t, and if what Daniel said was true, then all Hunters had a touch of the arts, it was what separated them from the people they helped, from the common mercenary, and it was something they could use to their advantage. It was known as the Hunter’s Edge. Whether it was the ability to set fires with just a brush of a hand, or to heal the wounds of a fallen comrade, it was not something she could bluff. She had seen some of the boys use theirs during the fight with the valrik, the fight that never happened she had to keep reminding herself, but nevertheless the boys who could use their arts… did.

  Daniel had managed to heal the injured, Eric was throwing balls of fire at the enemy, and even Alex was able to confuse a valrik by creating illusions of himself, which Kile had to admit were very convincing. The only thing she was able to do was trip-up a valrik and get herself killed, neither one would win her many points in the evaluation category let alone in an actual battle. So, why was she still here? If the yellow Mystic hadn’t found any magic in her then why did he pass her, why would they waste their time on her? Why would they let her continue with the test when so many had been removed? They should have just failed her and sent her packing, which would have been the best thing to do, at least from her point of view. If she had no way of becoming a Hunter, then they should put her out of her misery and send her home. Of course that wasn’t really putting her out of her misery, it would just be adding to it. Could it be because she was a girl? Would they show favoritism? She could hardly believe that based upon the way the Weapons master looked at her. He didn’t want her there, that was clear for anybody to see, and he wasn’t alone. Maybe it was just out of his hands, which would make her a charity case, and that didn’t make her feel any better. If she wanted to become a Hunter, she would have to understand the Mystic Arts better.

  “Daniel… can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, what do you want to know?” He replied. There wasn’t a note of anger in his voice, of which she was relieved. It was getting dark in the carriage and she couldn’t see his face very well, she couldn’t see if he was smiling or not. She was a little nervous asking him anything. She had been a little curt with him, and then the silent treatment was a bit rude.

  “The mystic arts.” She finally said.

  “Oh, is that all.’ He laughed, “You’re asking the wrong person, I only know what little I know, you would have to ask one of the mystic scholars if you want to know more.”

  “Yeah… I know… But you still know more than I do. I just wanted to know what it was like… you know, to use them, to have them, what does it… feel like?” She asked, trying to make out his reaction in the darkness. There was a moment of silence before he finally answered.

  “It’s kind of hard to explain.” He replied.

  “Okay.” She said as she sat up and faced him, when in doubt, start at the beginning, or something like that. “You told me you knew that the gem, or the ring you saw… was enchanted but you never touched it.”

  “That's right.”

  “How did you know? The only reason I knew the ruby was enchanted was because a poor mouse had gotten too close to it.”

  “What mouse? There were no mice in the testing area.”

  “There was a mouse in mine, but that’s not the point. How did you know that the ring was enchanted?”

  “Oh, well that was the easy part. Things that are magical, or enchanted, they kind of… give off this… energy… that people who are influenced by the sphere of water can detect… it’s kind of like this light that you can’t really see, you just kind of feel it’s there, but you can’t really… feel it either… it kind of…”

  “Hard to explain.” She finished for him. It may have been hard for him to explain, but she did get the general idea. “Do you think animals can see it...this light you’re talking about?”

  “I don’t know, I never really thought about it. I know they can hear things that we can’t and smell things that we can’t… I guess that means they should be able to see things that we can’t.”

  “So, for example, say a dog could see this light, or… even a mouse, would they be drawn to it, or avoid it.”

  “Wow… I’m not sure, I guess if anything I’d say they would avoid it or ignore it, otherwise all these enchanted objects would have animals flocking around them, but I don’t know... you would have to ask…”

  “A mystic scholar.” She finished for him, now where was she supposed to find one of those.

  The rapid
pace of the carriage began to slow and the ride began to even out, enough that Kile could look out the window without the fear of smacking her head on the side of the door. They were just passing through the farmlands now, and even in the dim light she could make out the great seas of golden grain stretched to the horizon, and more men to work them than there were in the entire town of Riverport. Her father had always envied the size of Oric’s farm, but Oric had nothing that even came close to the fields of Azintar. There were a few horse drawn carriages moving past them now, some carrying men, most carrying supplies. They were probably Merchants on a journey to other towns, other places. To Kile it seemed like an odd time to be starting out, but they would know better than she would. A man in green livery rode in the fort carriage and appeared to be as interested in her caravan as she was in his. Could he be a Hunter she wondered, he appeared to be dressed the same way as the men that collected them from the tower. She thought about it for a moment, and decided that he was because she wanted him to be. A Hunter hired by the merchants to protect them from the bandits on the road to… wherever. It was kind of romantic in a way, and she thought, someday that would be her riding at the front of a merchant’s caravan. Would that even be possible?

  They rolled down the road for another twenty minutes and still never left sight of the fields of Azintar. It wasn’t until the carriage pulled off the main road that she got her first look at the famed walled city, although she couldn’t make out much of it in the darkness, but what she could see was beyond anything she could have imagined. Tall stone walls fifty or sixty feet high with men walking along the battlements dressed in the colors of what she figured were those of the city or those of the Lord of the Lunvalt Province. The towers rose even higher with their flags blowing in the wind. It was something out of a story book, the tale her brother used to read to her when she was very young. Stories of brave knights battling dragons and beautiful princesses in need of rescuing, of daring deeds and epic quests. She would lie in bed, listening to tales and put herself in those stories, but she was never the princess in need of rescue, she was always the daring knight that did the rescuing, sometimes battling valrik that bore a strange resemblance to her father. Man did she need help.

  The carriage moved under the shadow of the great wall as it wound down the side roads, passing under a huge set of gates as it moved into the city proper. Guards in armor holding pikes, with bright helmets, marked its passing with little interest. Kile tried to see everything, from where they were going to where they had been, but the darkness was stealing what little there was to see. They rolled around the outer edge of the city until they reached a second gate. These ones were not as grand as the first they had passed through, but they were thrown open upon their arrival and people began to close in around the carriages. Kile managed to see, by the light of the torches, the crest of the Hunter’s guild mounted on one of the great doors

  She had made it. She had finally arrived at the Hunter’s Academy.

  ***~~~***

  8

  The Hunter’s Academy wasn’t exactly what Kile had expected as the carriage rolled into the courtyard, but then she hadn’t really given it much thought, so she wasn’t sure what to expect. It was a large compound, that much was clear, with many smaller buildings around the outer perimeter and looked more like a prison than a school. The first building they passed as they crossed under the gates was a large three story structure that ran along the southern wall. It was lined with small narrow windows that could be closed off with narrow shutters. The roof was a gable with black slate that was newer than the building itself. This was the direction where most of the people came from, as they ran across the compound to see the caravan arrive.

  They were dressed in a series of colors from drab browns to Hunter green, and ranged in age from fourteen to seventeen. Kile didn’t like the idea of being a spectacle, but she knew when she stepped out of the carriage, many, if not all, of those eyes would be directed at her. She would hate to think that they had all come to see the girl that wanted to be a Hunter, and wanted to believe that they were just curious of the new group that had just arrived, but from the less than warm welcome she had received at the entry examination she couldn’t fool herself into thinking that she wouldn’t draw some attention. They never got any closer than the low fence that ran along the roadside which she was grateful for, and the boys piled up on the rails to get a better look. Kile quickly turned her attention to the rest of the compound trying to avoid the inevitable.

  On the west side was an even larger structure built of stone with a grand entrance set up for the front door. This was the main building; the one where visitors were drawn to, where meetings were held, where cadets seldom saw the interior of if they were lucky. A second building, or it could have even been part of the first building depending on how it was viewed, extended along the western wall and ran all the way into the side of the hill. This was where the staff stayed, so it would appear, as the building was lined with rows of doors that led out onto a stone courtyard that had been fenced off. The courtyard emptied out into the main compound which was a large open field divided by fences. The compound continued north, up a hill where Kile could just make out two more buildings in the dim light. The western most building was long and flat, but she didn’t have the slightest idea what that was, the eastern building was easier to identify as a livery stable, mainly because the horses standing outside it, gave it away.

  All the structures appeared to face the center of the compound and the fenced in areas, what theses were used for she couldn’t guess, but she figured she would find out soon enough as a row of torches were being lit, creating a path from where the caravan stopped, all the way to the center of the fields. It was the fence along this path that the spectators gathered to watch the new kids walk.

  “This is where you get off.” The driver said without even turning to look at her.

  Kile didn’t bother to ask him what was going on. She knew he, like most of the people she had met in the last few days, wouldn’t give her a straight answer. It was easier just to go with the flow and figure it out on her own.

  She stepped off the carriage quickly turning away from the boys that had gathered along the path and who were now laughing, pointing and shouting words that were less than encouraging. They hadn’t seen her, or didn’t pick her out from the rest of the boys yet and she followed Daniel to where the group was now being led down the path and into the large fenced in area. It reminded her of the fair that her brother Leon had taken her to when she was ten. The prized bulls would be brought before the spectators to be judged. Unfortunately she was the cow among the bulls as the entire mass of them moved in silent unison. She managed to blend in quite well since the other boys didn’t seem to shy away from her as they had done at the tower, it was probably because they were all a bit overwhelmed by the spectators. She knew that if she could get into the fenced in area and keep her head down, she could avoid detection for now, of course that was a short lived hope.

  “There you are.”

  His voice was like the dropping of a plate in a quiet room, its shatter silenced the crowd and drew everyone’s attention to that one spot and that one person who stood over that plate and would have done anything to just disappear, but the attention wasn’t on Alex for very long, it quickly shifted to Kile.

  She cringed as several of the new boys, and more than a few of the spectators perched on the rail turned her way. The unsettling silence lingered at first as everyone started to crane their necks to get a better look to find out what had drawn everyone else’s attention, but it wasn’t long before the whispering started. From the boys in Hunter green down to the boys in drab brown, the gentle flow of whispers began to get louder, and she didn’t have to hear what was being said, she could guess.

  “You want to keep it down.” Daniel said as he clipped Alex on the back of the head.

  “What?”

  “There’s nothing worse than a hyperactive chipmunk with a
big mouth” Daniel replied as he leaned over and whispered something in Alex’s ear. The small boy looked around the courtyard as if noticing the spectators for the first time. He looked over to Kile as if to say sorry, before he tried to make himself less noticeable.

  Kile figure it was too late to hide and she didn’t want to appear any more different than she already did. She held her head up high and followed the rest of the boys as they passed through the gate and into the largest of the fenced in fields. She watched as two boys in green livery close the gates behind them, they were officially sealed off and surrounded as the spectators began to circle the fenced in area taking seats upon the rails and waited for the show that was about to commence. Kile felt on display and she could now hear what the boys had to say. There were a few comments about how young the new blood looked and how the guild was really scraping the bottom of the barrel, but the ones she heard the loudest were the comments directed at her. It became painfully clear that she was not welcome.

  A hush fell across the sea of spectators as it slowly parted, and a bulky, balding, middle aged man with a large mustache passed through the crowd. He was broad shouldered with thick arms and a bit of a pot belly that was barely concealed behind the finely tailored clothing that he wore. He had a long red cloak that billowed out behind him a bit too dramatically and two rather large black Shinar mastiffs that walked before him. The dogs entered the fenced in area first, each one had to weigh in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds and they both appeared to take quite a bit of enjoyment out of scaring the new recruits. They watched the boys with a look that could easily be read as if to say, you step out of line and your ass is mine.

  They walked slowly to the center of the field, and sat down about three feet apart facing the huddled mass of new blood. The large balding man followed. He moved with a deliberate gate, if not a slight bounce, and stood between the two dogs. Kile had to wonder how long they practiced this little routine as it was done with flawless precision.