The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

A Falcon and some Whiskey

Adam

So. Woke up, cleaned teeth, washed face, dressed and went for breakfast. I hadn’t expected we’d be out of this mess, even before Phoebe told me so. That thought stuck in my head a bit over breakfast. I’d been so wound up with the business about the book I hadn’t really sat down and talked with her about what we were going to do.

I was sure if I could milk her for information on what came up next in the story, I could work out something and use it to get us out of this place. I should see her and apologize. I’d been a bit short with her the day before. She didn’t really deserve that. For all she looked like an eighteen-year-old, she was really just a kid, and I should be trying to behave more like the adult here.

We had just an hour of weapons practice this morning, then on to scrying and invisibility. All of the sessions were shorter than the previous day’s. Feri got some kind of message and rushed off half way through his class. One of the young seniors took over for him. There was gossip over what was going on, but no one could explain it. Jinnie reckoned it must be something important, but couldn’t guess exactly what.

At the midday meal there was more gossip, all vague, something big had happened, some major attack by Maldon, which Malaika had had a part in dealing with. No one had seen Rachel this morning, and there was talk that she and two other seniors, ones I didn’t know, were involved as well.

Max and Jinnie were bombarded with questions, particularly from leaders of the other cohorts. Neither of the two had a clue what was going on. To me, they seemed to be hovering between being a bit miffed about that and chuffed at the fact that at least it was their cohort leader, boss of the most junior cohort there, who was involved when all of these others were in the dark. Then a girl with hair covered in a scarf came into the Hall and dashed over to Jinnie. There was some conversation, which got interrupted by others, but which had exclamations running round the seniors’ group.

Jade slipped out of the crowd nearest to Jinnie and found Miya at our table. “Hey, Shamma says she was just talking with her cousin Rani. He’s a senior in some scrying group Malaika’s in charge of. He says she’s just stopped a pile of attacks by Maldon and sent the Elders to get some crown away from him. The Crown of Felton or something.”

“What? That must be the Crown of Eldon. Sophie told me about it. It’s one of the Crowns of Power Maldon stole when he rebelled and started his empire. It’s massive powerful, but dead evil since he’s had it. Have they got it here?”

“Dunno, Shamma said they were all up in some sort of big conference. Said there’s a crowd of Elders come in from loads of other Gards, and Rani and the others all had to stop and talk with them.”

I tried to be interested in this. Crowns, eh? Rings had been done, I suppose. If nothing else it had the chance of getting us out of this place earlier. It did sound genuinely positive, but it meant very little to me, so it was hard to have much enthusiasm. The rest of the cohort were pleased about things, that was partly because it was our great leader who was doing stuff, and partly because other people were impressed, so they felt they should be too.

Whatever the conference was, it affected the next lesson, which was on mind-riding. He must have stolen this idea from someone else as well, though it had been worked up and fitted in well with the other elements of Mage-craft.

A Japanese girl called Aki, who was gorgeous, filled in for Senior Llewellyn, the Welsh woman everyone had called Megs. She met us in a room fitted out like a pet shop and explained the theory like this.

“You’ve already tried scrying with Senior Armitage, so you have the idea that you can connect to the great web of consciousness and pull ideas from it. What you are going to look at today is really just an extension of that. Your mind can ride on the web by hitch-hiking in an animal mind. You won’t be able to do it with another human – they would know you were there and throw a fit until you left. An animal, on the other hand, will not be able to comprehend what is going on and will accept your commands, well, better to call them suggestions, and let you steer them. Once you have this skill off well, you might be ready to move on to putting your own consciousness out in the form of a familiar.