David Weber - Hell's Gate

"Magic," he'd said in that almost childlike way of his, filled with wonder at the unending delights the universes?all of them?had to offer. "Magic gathers in places like these." He'd waved a dark-skinned, elegant hand at the roaring cataract below their feet. "Or, rather, magic bursts free at such places. There are other locations where the forces we call 'magic' well up in great concentrations: all great waterfalls, certain mountains, some deep caverns, places where lines of force cross. But this place, where the Mythal River plunges into this great chasm, where the entire continent is slowly pulling apart along the Rift?this is the most potent place in all Arcana."

Gadrial had stared at the tall, lean, imposing man she was actually going to be permitted to study with, if only she could overcome her own awe of him, and blinked.

"Mythal is pulling apart?" she'd asked. She'd felt incredibly stupid the instant the words were out of her mouth, but he'd only chuckled gently.

"Oh, yes. That's not common knowledge, mind you. Most people would be terrified to learn that the ground under their feet is actually moving. It's incredibly slow, of course?something on the order of a fraction of an inch a year. But it's definitely moving. Have you never wondered why the great continents, particularly Mythal and Hilmar, look like pieces in a child's puzzle? Pieces which obviously ought to fit together?"

"Yes, sir." She'd nodded. "I had noticed it."

"Of course you had. You're bright, not just Gifted, or you wouldn't be here." He'd waved at the ancient stone buildings. "But it never occurred to you that those continents might look like that because they'd once been one solid piece of land?"

This time she'd simply shaken her head, and he'd smiled.

"Well, that's hardly surprising, either. Generally speaking, logic doesn't suggest that the ground under you is actually moving across the face of the planet, does it? But it is. We've confirmed it here." He'd cleared his throat. "Ahem. That is to say, my research unit confirmed it."

Gadrial had found herself grinning at his tone and his expression. Then she'd clamped both hands over her mouth, horrified at her slip in manners, but he'd just chuckled.

"Before your course of study is complete," he'd promised, "I'll teach you to sense it yourself."

And he had. He'd opened up her world to such wonders that she'd felt giddy most of the time, hungry in her very soul for new knowledge, new understanding of the world around her and the forces that only she and others with Gifts could sense and touch and use to accomplish the things that made Arcana's civilization possible.

Over the next three years, he'd given her the wondrous gift of teaching her how to really use her Gift. And then he'd stood like a fortress at her side when the other magisters?aided and abetted by her fellow students?had torn that precious gift of education from her shocked hands. Had expelled her on grounds so flimsy a sharp glance would have torn them to shreds. On the day when she'd stood wounded and broken, like a child whose entire universe had just been willfully, cruelly shattered.

On the day when Halathyn vos Dulainah had laid into his most senior, most renowned colleagues with barracks-room language in a white-hot furnace of fury which had shocked them as deeply as it had shocked her.

"?and shove your precious godsdamned, all-holy Academy?and your fucking, jewel-encrusted pedigrees?up your sanctimonious, lying, racist, hemorrhoid-ridden asses sideways!" he'd finished his savage tirade at length, and his personal shields had crackled and hissed about him like thinly-leashed lightning. Sparks had quite literally danced above his head, and the Academy's chancellor and senior department heads?indeed, the entire Faculty Senate?had sat in stunned disbelief, staring at him in shock.

"We're leaving, Journeywoman Kelbryan," he'd said to her then, turning to face her squarely in the ringing, crackling silence singing tautly in his incandescent attack's wake.

"We?" she'd asked dully, her throat clogged with unshed tears. "I don't understand, Magister."

For just an instant, he'd glared at her, as if furious with her for her incomprehension. But then the anger seething in his brown eyes had gentled, and he'd taken both her hands in his.

"My dear child," he'd said, ignoring the Academy's still stupefied leadership, "the day this Academy expels the most brilliant theoretical magic adept it has ever been my privilege to train for 'insufficient academic progress' and 'attempts to violate the honor code by cheating' is the last day I will ever teach here."

Someone else had made a sound, then. The beginning of protest, she'd thought, but Magister Halathyn had simply turned his head. The fury in his eyes had roared up afresh, and the Chancellor had shrunk back in his chair, silent before its heat.

"I resign from his faculty?immediately," he'd said.

"But you can't!" she'd cried, aghast. "You can't throw away your career over me! I'm just one more journeywoman, Magister, and you're … you're?"

He'd laid a gentle fingertip across her lips, ignoring the men and women who had been his colleagues and peers for so many years.

"You are anything but 'just one more journeywoman,'" he'd told her, "and this . . . this farce is only the final straw. I should have done this years ago, for many reasons. You're not to blame, except in as much as what these sanctimonious, closed-minded, willfully ignorant, arrogant, bigoted, power-worshiping, stupid prigs have just done to you has finally gotten me to do what I ought to have done so long ago. If they choose to wallow in the muck of their precious supposed shakira superiority to all around them, then so be it. I have better things to do than squat here clutching handfuls of my own shit and calling it diamonds! Besides," his sudden, delighted grin had shocked her speechless, "I've been offered a new position."

One of the other department heads had straightened in his chair at that, leaning forward with an expression of mingled suspicion, chagrin, shock, and anger. Magister Halathyn had caught the movement from the corner of his eye, and he'd turned to face the other man and his grin's delight had acquired a scalpel's edge.

"As a matter of fact, my dear," he'd continued, speaking to her but watching the other magisters' faces like a duelist administering the coup de grace, "I've been offered the chance of a lifetime. I'm going to set up a new academy of theoretical magic on New Arcana, under the auspices of the military high command. And you, Journeywoman Kelbryan, have just become its first student."

The protest had begun then. The shouts of outrage, the curses?the threats. But Magister Halathyn had ignored them all, and so had Gadrial, as she'd stared up into his eyes. Eyes so kind and so alive to the wonders of life, so passionate to see justice done. She'd met those eyes and burst into fresh tears, but not of despair. Not this time. Not ever again.

Until now, almost twenty years and God along knew how many universes away from that moment.

Halathyn was gone forever. Stupidly. Cruelly. For nothing. A reckless, crazy shot by a dragon gunner too blinded by fear and the need to hurt the other side to notice that the greatest magister Arcana had ever produced was in his line of fire. Or?even worse, and just as likely?by a gunner who hadn't cared as long as his weapon's blast took down one of the men killing his company, as well.

Gadrial Kelbryan turned her face into Sir Jasak Olderhan's pillow and cried like a lost child.

They left the fort at dawn.

Shaylar knew something terrible had happened, but no one would tell them what. No one even tried. Jasak had escorted her and Jathmar from Gadrial's quarters to their own the afternoon before, but he'd barely spoken, and Shaylar hadn't been able to touch him, so she had no idea what had happened. Whatever it had been, it had obviously been bad, because they'd spent the night locked in their quarters, with one armed guard at the door, another at the window, and for all they could tell, another on the roof.