L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

Rhiobyn winced. “They don’t do that in training.”

Talanyr lifted his eyebrows. “They do what they think is necessary.”

“As will I, if you don’t get back to copying,” added Thelsyn from the doorway. “You need to finish that report and get on your way, Rahl. You don’t want to keep Taryl waiting.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl dipped his pen in the inkwell. He finished Grawyl’s report, both copies, and hurried off to the weapons-training area.

The door to the chamber was ajar, but when he stepped inside, he discovered that the space was dark, with the windows shuttered and covered in heavy dark cloth. Even the skylight had been blocked with something and shed no light on the training floor. A single tiny candle, surrounded by a frosted and heavily smoked glass mantle and set in the northwest corner of the chamber on the floor, was the sole source of illumination once Taryl shut the doors.

The thin-faced mage-guard held two heavily padded staffs. He extended one to Rahl.

Rahl took it and waited.

“We’re going to spar and keep sparring for as long as necessary. You will not ask any questions, and you will follow directions.”

“Yes, ser.”

Taryl stepped back and took his staff in both hands. Rahl did the same.

In the dim light that was barely brighter than total darkness, at least to Rahl, Taryl’s staff flickered toward Rahl’s left shoulder, and Rahl parried, aware that Taryl was far better than Khaill or any other mage-guard he had faced. He concentrated on following both Taryl’s body and the staff.

Even so, Taryl’s staff immediately swept under Rahl’s guard, and Rahl had to jump backward, his boots skidding on the stone pavement. He barely maintained his balance, and his next block was awkward and required a circling retreat.

Taryl moved forward, seemingly effortlessly, even as his staff cracked Rahl’s wrist. “Concentrate. Do you think that you’ll always be the best?”

Rahl forced his attention back to Taryl, trying to follow and anticipate the mage-guard’s actions in the minimal amount of light afforded by the single shielded candle.

For the next series of passes, although Taryl did most of the attacking, Rahl thought he was holding his own, or as close to it as possible.

“Stop!” Taryl stepped back.

Rahl lowered his staff, warily.

“I’m going to put out the candle. You’re to do the best you can. I’ll tell you when I’m in position, and when to expect the first attack. I would suggest you concentrate on defense.” Taryl turned and walked toward the corner and the lone candle.

Rahl swallowed. He was supposed to defend himself against one of the best he’d ever faced in total darkness-without any real control of the order-senses that had once allowed him to function in darkness?

Taryl bent over the shielded candle.

Then pitch-black darkness surrounded Rahl. He could barely hear Taryl’s footsteps as the mage-guard approached.

“Ready?”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl held his staff in a guard position.

Taryl’s first blow was to the right end of the staff, forcing it almost to the floor.

Although Rahl neither sensed it nor saw it, he pivoted away, not fighting the pressure, but letting it swing him slightly, as he reversed the guard position with the left side of the staff, before stepping back-right into a blow across his left thigh.

He staggered, then hobbled back quickly, trying to keep his staff up and moving, attempting to weave a defense against an attacker he could neither see nor sense.

The padded end of Taryl’s staff slammed into his chest, and, off-balance as he was, Rahl tumbled backward. His buttocks hit the stone floor hard, and he barely managed to hold on to the staff with his right hand.

“Get up,” came Taryl’s voice, calm, almost cold. “In a real fight, if you sat there and pitied yourself, you’d be dead.”

In a real fight, thought Rahl, he wouldn’t be blind and fighting a master mage. He scrambled to his feet and repositioned his staff.

No sooner did he have it up than Taryl’s weapon clipped the back of his right calf.

“You don’t always get to fight just one person,” added Taryl, somewhere to Rahl’s right. “You won’t be able to keep your eyes on everyone.”

Rahl turned…and took a blow to his left shoulder, and then one to his right. He retreated, but the blows kept coming, no matter how hard he tried to anticipate them.

“Stop thinking, and start feeling,” came from Taryl, who followed the words with a slash to the staff itself, striking so hard that Rahl’s fingers were momentarily numbed.

Rahl thrust wildly, and was rewarded with a return jab to his gut, just hard enough to double him up and send arrows of pain through his abdomen and chest.

It wasn’t fair! Rahl struggled erect.

“No…it isn’t fair,” Taryl said out of the darkness, his staff lashing out and thudding into Rahl’s thigh. “Life isn’t fair. We don’t get what we’ve worked hard to develop. Other people cheat and lie and prosper, and we do everything right and honestly and suffer. That’s often the way it is.”

Another staff blow-almost taunting-struck Rahl’s left calf, and he danced leadenly to his right, trying to weave a defense against a mage he could not see.

“Superiors abuse their position and make us suffer.” Taryl’s padded staff thudded into Rahl’s upper left arm. “It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.”

Rahl tried to keep his staff moving, but it was getting heavier and slower. In the darkness, the tears streamed down his face. This wasn’t an exercise. It was sadistic torture.

“It’s not fair when you can beat anyone in the light, and they make you spar in the dark.”

Rahl threw out a parry, catching something. Then he stepped back to the left, only to run into another blow.

“We don’t get to choose the way of the world. We have to deal with it as we find it. So…deal with it. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for things to be perfect.”

Rahl forced himself back into a defensive posture.

“Don’t fight the darkness. Accept it.”

Accept it. That was easy enough for Taryl to say. He had order-senses.

“Listen…if you ever want to be more than a checker or a clerk…listen. Listen to the darkness as well as the light.”

Rahl tried, but, just as soon as he felt something, another blow struck from somewhere, no matter how he tried to defend himself.

“Feel…unless you want to die!” snapped Taryl.

The padded staff jabbed Rahl’s chest.

Rahl backpedaled quickly, taking a deep breath and just trying to get a sense of the room, of the darkness.

There was a blur to his left, and he brought up the staff in a parry, actually avoiding being hit. He stumbled and took another blow, but grasped a brief image of Taryl and dodged the next thrust.

Slowly, Rahl began to sense where Taryl and his staff were, and even more slowly, he began to be able to block and to parry, to sidestep and to avoid some of the sudden attacks.

He still took blows, but they were far fewer, as his order-senses strengthened, and he was able to weaken the impact of many of those that did strike.

Still, his arms ached, and his legs burned. He was sweating heavily, and breathing loudly, and still Taryl pressed him, but…he could sense where the older mage was, and even the staff’s position.

For all that, Taryl kept attacking, and Rahl was forced to defend…and defend.

At some point, he became one with his order-senses-but still Taryl pressed.

Then, abruptly, came the words. “That’s enough.”

Rahl could sense Taryl as the mage-guard moved to the south window and pulled away the black cloth covering and opened the shutters. Then he walked back to Rahl, who was as much leaning on the padded staff as holding it.