5 Training

There are many traits that trace the pattern of one’s life. Traits we are born with, traits that fill in the subtle gaps of what we would want to be and what we become. Then there are those traits we learn and develop over time. The Magi scrutinize closely those minute signs that gift a person with character and self. Those traits that argue mettle and worthiness they nurture and harvest. Those traits that argue dissent and discord they reduce and isolate like a weed laid on bedrock to dry and shrivel in the noonday sun. By tempering behavior and molding character, they channel latent skills and talents into disciplines that strengthen and reinforce beneficial qualities that develop right character. The Order charged with tempering the young, and molding the developing powers of the apprentice Mage, were the Guide. Few were deemed worthy of such a responsibility and even fewer chosen to serve. The Magister was Malcolm’s Guide, and today they sparred using slim steel and deft footwork.

Malcolm needed order, discipline, the rigid path that brooked no wavering, no swerving from the need to wring order and meaning from chaos. He needed challenges placed before him to toughen the mettle of his heart and place in abeyance the weeping sore of loss never healed, only scarred over and which the Magister feared may never fully heal.

Malcolm accepted those blunt assessments. It was the Magister’s duty to weigh and measure, to prod and challenge. If Malcolm could not make peace with his loss, could not reconcile and accept the pain, such a wound could hinder his development and make him insufficient for the Test. But memory was not easily ruled, his family not easily forgotten, and then there were the rumors, the whispers, portents spread by intriguers and gossips of strange manifestations of power occurring near his village. Manifestations that had drawn Poe, the Magister’s previous subditus. Manifestations, some whispered, that cursed the place.  Those whispers could not help but draw Malcolm into a swirl of patterns and desires potentially injurious to his journey toward mastery.

There were also the Magister to consider. Malcolm fully realized the responsibility and the gift of trust to be accepted under the auspices of such fine and exacting expectation. (Something he wished his father could have seen. He would have been proud.) He was expected to succeed, expected to pass the Test, expected to far outstrip most because of who his Guide was. But sometimes, even for all the training and guidance, years of delving character and pluming the depths of being, there were those who come to violate the Codex. It could be using power for selfish personal ends, for private gain, or for political ends; whoever violated the Codex was stripped of their powers, their name stricken from the ranks. Their failure tarnished not only the Mage, but the Magus of the Order of Guides who couched for their charge with the warrant and surety of their own honor. That Magus was stricken from the Order and never given the opportunity to guide the development of another Adept. It was a just accord and had served well for many generations.

            The Magister disengaged, stepping away and slashing his blade through the air to mark his frustration. “You could be great if your mind did not drift so.”

“You tell, so I must believe. But I do not understand the need to be great with the blade. I will never have to see to its use. I could never match a Master such as you. And I will apprentice as a Healer.”

Stilling his blade, the Magister brought it up to salute his opponent. Reflected in the cold steel was the light from the lamps and Malcolm’s blurred form.

“There is more blade in you than you suspect. That is why you could be great.”

“To teach gentry and merchant sons. To yolk myself to—”

“It is an honorable trade,” the Magister said cutting him off. He let the blade tip fall, edge toward Malcolm.

“That is truth, but more honor in the hands of a soldier than to teach youth to duel for ‘honors’ sake.’”

“There is the Praetorian Guard.”

“To track and police my own. . . . That is no course I would choose.”

“Someone must, and it requires our best and surest if we are to honor what we believe.”

“Then let that duty fall to someone else.”

“It is still a thing to consider.” The blade tip rose as the Magister edged forward. “Again!”

ClinkClank. Malcolm, parried, riposted, disengaged, circled away from Master Giles’ longer arms. They were well past the need for blunt tip or dull edge. Clank! Clank! He turned away both slashes. Clink! Master Giles had taught him how in the sound of two blades probing and sliding across the other could presage an opponent’s true attack. Clink! He parried. There were also other tells. It was in the shift of weight and stance. Clank! The stiffening of wrist.

 Flashing tip and razor edge slashed through the air. Steel rang in the open hollow. Malcolm parried a swipe, turned a slash all the while backing up. Focused, straining, footwork dancing, they moved across the gymnasium floor.

“Youth is excess! Youth is distraction! Youth is no excuse!” The Magister punctuated each statement with a furious whirl of blade Malcolm barley parried or sidestepped.

Could he even remember the pangs of youth? Malcolm doubted it. The Magister believed overwrought hormones were partly to blame for Malcolm’s distraction, a malady for all those passing beyond adolescence into adulthood. There was truth to his words. Malcolm could feel the subtle shifts he was undergoing, the fluid change coursing through his body shaping bone and lung, blood and manhood, heightening emotion and thoughts of Kim.

The blade’s tip slid across his forearm drawing a well of blood. The sting brought his concentration into dire relief, just as Giles had intended. The Magister stepped back, lowering the blood-tipped point.

            “What tasks you so?” the Magister asked. He wiped off the blood with a towel from the bench.

            “Failing you, failing the Testing, old scars and women,” Malcolm responded. He sheathed his own blade, staunched the flow of blood and knitted flesh together with ki.

            “What know you of women,” the Magister said wryly, disdainfully, sheathing his blade.

            “Not much, Master,” Malcolm took the Magister’s and his blade to the racks along the wall.

            “That is an informed understanding.”

            “I would like to say I understand subditus, but it has been . . . long since emotion fractured thought.”

            “Because you do not remember or that you do not wish to speak of it. None of the Magi ever speak of their families, or their youth,” Malcolm said picking up a towel to wipe the sheen of perspiration from his brow and neck.

            “Many have lived to see their families and those they love pass to dust,” the Magister said quietly, carefully. “It is a heavy burden.” A burden you have to bear at too young an age the Magister thought silently. “And many do not wish to recall that memory, that loss, by speaking of it.”

            Malcolm knew the Magister would speak no more on the subject as he slipped his arms through the brown sleeves of robes embroidered in rose and laurel with threads of coral and jade. Malcolm quickly threw on his robs not wanting to be subject to the rebuke of the Magister’s impatient regard as he waited. There were other lessons that must be attended to.