Fate’s Pawn

The Eight Schools of the Daishinrin are known to produce the most capable fighters on the face of Arcas. While it would be a mistake to downplay the martial prowess of Arcan Knights and the orcs of the Shattered Sea or the mystical power of the Academy’s Wizards and the gholams in the Jewel of the Sands, none combine spells and hand-to-hand combat quite like the Masters of the Eight Schools. They are, however, an eccentric bunch.

- Traveling Jack’s Guide to the Daishinrin

“You okay?” Roland asked.

Raziel didn’t want to answer the question.

Raziel was completely eclipsed by Roland’s shadow. Roland didn’t just dwarf Raziel. It seemed more likeRoland was a different species. Raziel and Miles had speculated that maybe he had some orc somewhere in his ancestry.

With his thick arms, long legs, and broad chest he was an imposing figure, especially as they prepared to enter a combat event. He had already drawn more than a few covert glances. His rough, blocky features didn’t help either. Roland looked like he could pick up a stone and bite through it like an apple. The other prospective students eyed him with something between awe and terror.

“Yeah,” Raziel answered after a long silence. He was surprised to find that it was mostly true. He did feel more or less okay. Hiro’s advice, poorly delivered as it might have been, was just what he’d needed. He still felt like he’d been thrown out of an airship in mid-flight, but at least now he was falling with a parachute.

“Yeah, I’m good now.”

“Are you really?” Keira said, turning around to give him one of her harsh, measuring looks. Her voice was challenging, her green eyes direct. Raziel welcomed it. Pity, even gentleness, from her would have felt like an insult. With her back ramrod straight, she was about the same size as Raziel, which made her one of the smallest in their quintet but that didn’t make her any less imposing of a person. She’d always been on the thin side but in the past few months her sharp features had taken on something of a razor’s edge.

But Raziel knew what she was really asking. She wanted to know if he was just putting on a brave face so they wouldn’t worry about him. After the way she’d seen him leave the practice area, that wasn’t surprising.

“Yeah. I have a plan,” he said. Her eyes narrowed as she searched his face but she pressed her lips into a line and nodded before turning back around to face forward.

“A plan?” Miles asked from behind Roland. There was a note of desperation in his voice and Raziel remembered that he probably wasn’t the only one who felt like he’d been thrown out of an airship.

Since they’d been standing in line Miles had been almost hiding behind Roland, his eyes fixed on the ground beneath his feet with a constant stream of muttered half-sentences leaving his mouth. Raziel hadn’t expected Miles to care so much about this test. Miles wasn’t normally interested in anything that had to do with combat unless it was in a book. Maybe it was simply that it was a test that made Miles want to pass it.

“I don’t think it would work for you,” Raziel said, apologetic. It didn’t take long for Miles to understand what Raziel meant once he explained what Hiro had told him but that only sent the gangly young man back into his mumbling. Miles was brilliant and, if he could demonstrate that brilliance to the masters, Raziel was certain that they’d accept him as a student. But Miles’ intelligence was a careful, considerate, and exhaustive kind. None of those strengths lent themselves to direct combat.

“That sounds like it could work,” Keira said, nodding as Raziel told them Hiro’s plan. Raziel saw it when the decision came to her. “I’ll challenge Daichi too.”

“What?” Raziel asked, confused. His confusion was followed by a swift pang of fear. Keira was strong. What if she hit Daichi first?

“You don’t need to. They’ll pick you anyway,” Hoeru said, interjecting into the conversation for the first time. Raziel held his breath to avoid sighing in relief. Hoeru had said what he was thinking and drawn Keira’s attention away. She still didn’t know how bad his situation was.

Keira had turned to glare at Hoeru. Hoeru’s lips parted in response, the expression not quite a snarl but certainly not a smile.

The changeling could probably have passed for a human, if not for his teeth. He was lean, moving with a predators grace and his wild silver hair was a strong tip off to his inhumanity but people did change their hair to all sorts of strange colors. The eerie sharpness of his teeth though, that was unmistakably changeling.

“I know,” Keira said. “Which means I don’t have to worry so much about exactly how my test goes. If I fight this Daichi person, one of the masters will still pick me even if I can’t hit him. And that will give Raziel a chance to see how he fights.”

“What if you beat him and I can’t challenge him?” Raziel asked.

“I don’t think that’s how the test will work. I promise I won’t hurt anyone,” she said, smiling with false sweetness.

“It’s a good idea,” Roland said. Raziel was surprised he’d spoken again. It wasn’t uncommon for him to only say a single sentence in a conversation. So it was all the more surprising when he went on. “I’ll challenge him as well.”

Raziel felt like a stone was forming in the pit of his stomach. Roland and Keira were both stronger than him on his best day. What if they did so well that Master Mori rescinded his offer? What if either of them actually did hurt Daichi?

“What do you think Raz?” Hoeru asked though he kept his eyes on Keira. It was all Raziel could do to keep his face straight. He couldn’t tell them not to without explaining why. They were right, it was a good plan.

“Yeah. Challenge him. You’re both going right before me. Just try to leave him in one piece for me,” Raziel said, hoping the joke would cover his nerves.

Hoeru grunted and looked away. The changeling stood out in almost any crowd but these days it was his eyes that were the most unsettling. Once, they’d been dominated by a blue as deep as the sky. There had always been golden flecks in them, like coins at the bottom of a lake. Now that had reversed itself. The exact ratio of gold to blue had never been steady in Hoeru’s eyes, the coins never staying in one place. Now, however, there were only dots of blue left, the rest devoured by eerie gold. Raziel wasn’t sure what that meant. All he knew was that Hoeru barely talked to him anymore.

The changeling hadn’t said anything since he’d joined back up with them when they’d gotten in line. He had simply slouched into the group with a nod. After that, he’d been silent and refused to make eye contact. He stood in line behind Raziel, looking ahead, his hollow eyes as sightless as they’d been since Peritura. Raziel knew something had to be wrong with him but if Hoeru wouldn’t open up about what it was, he couldn’t help him.

The line heading towards the arena flowed into a large vestibule that couldn’t have been created naturally. It was too obviously intended to channel large groups of people into the different areas of the arena. And yet, the texture of the stone had been worked in such a way that it felt as though they were stepping into a natural cave.

Raziel and the others had come through here this morning to sign up for the test and the attendants had looked harried then. Now they were close to outright frantic as they moved to get people checked in and sent to the correct seats.

Most of the attendants were families of elves which wasn’t surprising, but a few humans and orcs were dotted in among them. Most of the people in the audience lines were carrying boxes of finger foods like fried dough. The lines of attendees were split between those taking the test and those coming just to watch and many fathers said good luck to their sons while mothers said the same in a more worried tone. That sent an old, familiar pain through Raziel’s chest but it was one he was used to ignoring.

A single four-armed gholam stood between the two lines taking tickets from people in both lines with a swiftness that approached automation. As Raziel looked around he noticed that the attendants were all wearing the same uniform but the outfit was in markedly different colors.

The attendants all had on loose-fitting pants or shorts as well as a vest with a hood. Some of them had on an undershirt beneath the vest but most only wore the vest. None of them wore shoes of any kind and Raziel wondered how cold their bare feet must be against the stone. Despite their light attire, if any of them felt the chill in the air they didn’t show it, even here in the shade.

The attendants clothes seemed to come in two sets of colors. Some whose vests were dominated by a dark mossy green with dark brown trimming that reminded Raziel of the forests that surrounded Peritura. The other attendants had vests of a deep blood red, edged in black. At first Raziel assumed that the colors must have denoted some sort of rank but they all looked equally pressured by their duties and the only times that Raziel saw any of them giving orders to each other, it was from people wearing the same colors. If anything, being allowed to wear pants seemed to be a mark of station since it was always individuals wearing pants that gave the orders.

Finally, once they’d shown their tickets, they were each given a rolled up mat made of thin reeds and allowed into the arena. Raziel wondered what he was supposed to do with the mat until he exited the cave and the daylight hit him.

Raziel had never seen anything like the arena. The closest thing he could compare it to was an open air theater that had been in Peritura. That had been a popular way for travelers to spend a few hours while they waited for their airships to make ready for the next leg of their journeys. It had seemed huge to Raziel, with seats enough for more than a hundred people.

At a glance, more than a thousand people could have fit comfortably into the arena. It’s had seats in high rows so that no matter where a person sat they would have an uninterrupted view of the stage down below. The seats themselves were just large blocks of flat stone. People spread the mats they’d been given on the thick blocks and lounged. The seating formed a three quarter circle, surrounding the arena at the bottom.

The arena itself was built in a natural bowl of a valley. Just beyond the stage was a crystal blue lake that was filled by a waterfall. The fighting stage at the bottom looked oddly plain to Raziel. It was just a simple raised flat square, made up of smaller square stone tiles. In the large, flat expanse there would be plenty of room to move but nowhere to hide.

At its center stood a single elf. His uniform was neither green, nor red. His vest, undershirt, and pants were white, trimmed with a brilliant blue Raziel associated with particularly colorful birds or butterflies. The elf’s head was shaved so close that only the barest stubble of hair darkened his skin, making his pointed ears seem even more prominent. He was tall and his loose clothing was unable to hide the muscles of his shoulders, chest, and arms, serving only to emphasize them. He had a long face and a set to his jaw that said not only were he and smiling not familiar with one another, they hadn’t been on speaking terms in years.

The elf was statue still, waiting for some signal, probably for all of the prospective students to arrive. So Raziel’s eyes naturally drifted back behind him. There, seated in a raised pavilion that was held up over the lake by sweeping staircases and elegantly carved pillars, were two figures.

One was another elf. The other was a gholam. The elf wore ornate robes, the same bold, blood red trimmed in night black as many of the attendants while the gholam wore the dark forest green and earthy brown. It was hard to make out detail from so far away, so Raziel could not see much of the elf, but the gholam was unmistakable. Everyone on Arcas knew the name Baromah the Willow.

The gholam was huge, filling the large seat, his wooden body shaped like a densely muscled human or maybe an orc. His eye glowed with orange lights that flickered like distant candles and left orange highlights in his tangled briar beard.

There were eight Masters of the Daishinrin schools and ostensibly, they were all equals. But that was only in theory. Everyone knew that Baromah was the leader of the group. Seeing the Gholam with his own eyes was like seeing Aelan the One-Handed King step out of a story book into real life.

“Raz, move,” Hoeru said, touching Raziel on the shoulder and breaking him out of his stupor. The sight of the arena and everything in it had left him standing still while the line behind him clogged. He mumbled an apology and started moving again.

The five of them found their seats without much trouble, though Raziel thought the symbols the elves used to mark numbers all looked the same. They were seated down much closer to the arena than Raziel would have expected, likely so that the applicants could quickly get to the stage when their names were called.

As the seats filled, students quickly ushering the last stragglers into place, the elf at the center of the arena stage finally moved. He raised his head and opened his mouth to speak. Raziel thought that he would have to scream to be heard over the chatter that was filling the arena. But as he spoke Raziel heard his words as clearly as if they were only a few feet apart in a quiet room, only the slightest tingle of magic on the air to give away that this wasn’t just some natural trick of acoustics.

He spoke in elvish first, the measured and precise words seeming somehow right coming from his serious face. After only a few sentences he switched seamlessly to Arcan.

“Greetings. The Eight Grand Masters of the Daishinrin schools extend their thanks to you for traveling so far to seek their tutelage.” The elf’s deep voice carried a sense of refinement, not like someone who was of high birth but rather that his voice was something he had trained as throughly as his body. Raziel could barely hear an accent in his voice, what little traces he had were as closely reigned in as an obedient dog on a leash.

“Please find your seats quickly, we will begin very soon,” the elf continued before switching to the strict, blunt words of dwarven. Not long after he began in elvish again and continued to switch between the three as he went through his message.

“I am Ichiro Sato, head student of the eighth school and I will be facilitating this test. Today, three masters will be here to observe your demonstrations.”

Three? Raziel thought. He caught Miles’ eye, both of them wondering where the third master was. Up in the pavilion the elf master shifted as though he too wondered about the missing master. There was certainly space up there for a third master. Eight chairs were on the pavilion with Baromah and the elf seated in the two chairs at the center. Three more chairs were to the elf’s right and three more were to Baromah’s left. Raziel had assumed that they were the only two masters that were coming.

“You will each face one of the master’s students. You may also challenge a specific student from either Master Mori or Master Baromah’s school if you wish. Defeating a student does not guarantee you a place in a master’s school. Being defeated by a student of the Daishinrin is no dishonor and will not preclude the masters from selecting you. This is about demonstrating your potential. Fight well and show-“

Something drew the Ichiro’s eye and in turn, drew everyone else in the arena’s attention as well. The third master had appeared. He wore the robes of the same white and brilliant blue Ichiro. He carried a container of dumplings or fried dough in one hand and a drink in the other. He had frozen in the sudden silence on the first step up to the pavilion where the other two masters sat. He turned to glance around at the crowd and Raziel got a good look at his face.

Hiro raised his drink to the crowd and to the elf on stage in a quick greeting and continued up the stairs as if he had not brought the entire proceedings to a halt. He moved to the chair beside Baromah without hurrying and, though the other two masters were sitting with their backs rigid and looking positively regal, Hiro threw one leg over the arm of his chair, rested his container of food on his stomach and his drink on the other arm of the chair. While the other two masters looked studiously ahead with their faces carefully blank, Hiro popped a dumpling in his mouth and his face transformed in an expression of satisfied delight.

“Fight well and show us your worth,” the elf on the stage finished at last, his control of his voice slipping to show just the slightest hint of annoyance at his master.