The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

Use of Weapons 1

Day Fourteen

That was interesting.

Phoebe

The next day was a bit hen. For a start, the place was littered with couples. I talked to Lewis and Lucas at breakfast about what had gone on the night before.

“They were all getting off with each other!”

“All of them!”

“Except us!”

They hadn’t much more to add, so I left them to get on with their breakfast. Jinnie told me the same. Marcin wasn’t around, so she’d been by herself, but she’d noticed she was one of the few. It didn’t make any sense, but what did?

Jock came up to talk after breakfast. He was in a good mood, but was being very secretive about something. He asked me if I could come out to the practice area around lunch time. If I could bring Brendan, he said, that would be great.

Adam

I enjoyed a nice lie in the next morning. No one woke me until late, judging by the height of the sun. I felt better and got dressed. Udaam came in just as I was about to leave.

“You’re looking better,” he said, “How do you feel?”

I assured him I was ok and he asked me if I was up for something around lunch-time. Plans had progressed faster than expected and we were ready for a trial. He said the Duerg apprentices would all be busy with things for the morning, so I could rest up. They’d find me and tell me when to come. Then he left and I went for breakfast and to mooch around ‘till I was called.

Rebecca

It was only by chance we spotted them. I was scrying and caught a feeling of Vere and movement. We sent familiars to look and caught them taking a break. The group was huge, I’d never even heard of so many Vere together before. Something was off about them, though. They were Vere, but most of them didn’t look very good at it. There were too many of them for us to risk trying anything. We sent a familiar on to warn East Gard and then started getting ready to go back ourselves.

We all still wanted to be in the action, but we also wanted to get back, see friends, relax a bit and (let’s be honest here) swagger a bit, so we weren’t too sad our tour was over. There’d be others to brief, and we thought we’d got things to teach them that we’d never been taught.

There were also things we wanted to pass on that might not have been communicated by the familiars we’d been sending back. Stuff about the level of training and just general smarts that Maldon’s rogues had. More about the fact that the Pheres and Sileni were getting fed up and prepared to start dropping out of Maldon’s army, not so much the facts of it - more just how it had felt to talk with them. We reckoned someone should be trying to talk with them properly. Maybe they’d come over to our side. There was a lot of stuff the familiars might just not have got over.

Kayley

I was an educational psychologist. I remembered that now. I loved the Brendan Earle books, though there was a darkness in the last few that had worried me. Cameron was a clever writer, though and the part of Kayley was one that I loved and identified with from the beginning. She was the only adult that was sexy. When the auditions were announced I wrote my application that same day. I can’t imagine my mum was pleased at the idea of me taking the part of a Jamaican, though; we’re Trinnies and proud of it.

I don’t think I ever thought it through to where I was now. I wasn’t particularly worried by the fact that I couldn’t sort out which parts of me were Jessica the psychologist and which parts were Kayley the Mage. We’re all much more complicated and faceted than we realise anyway. Agonising over how you got to be the way you are is pointless, you need to understand it and deal with it.