The First Life of Tanan (10 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

One morning, eighteen months after Tanan arrived at the monastery, Figis ended their morning meditation by asking Tanan to stay and talk with him.  Tanan sat cross legged across from his teacher.

“Now that you are beginning to cultivate a peaceful mind, we will begin your training in temporal magic.”

“I thought that’s what we had been working on for the last year and a half,” said Tanan.

Figis smiled.  “In a way, we have.  When a farmer wishes to plant a field of wheat, he must first prepare the soil.  He must plow his field to expose the soil.  He must remove the rocks from the soil so that it can be more easily worked.  Only after much hard work does he plant the seed.”

Tanan understood. “Do you think my mind is prepared to learn temporal magic?”

“We shall see.  Today, I want you to experience temporal magic so that you may begin to understand it.”

Figis picked up a small wooden tray filled with sand and placed it on the floor between them.  He took a pinch of sand and began to sprinkle it back onto the tray.  As Tanan watched, the sand began to fall more slowly from Figis’ hand.  And then the sand stopped moving.  Tanan was able to see each grain of sand hanging in the air.  And then the sand began to move again, falling more and more quickly until Figis had sprinkled all of the sand back to the tray.  Tanan was amazed. Figis, enjoying Tanan’s wonder, gave a hearty laugh.

After his first lesson, Tanan learned a great deal about manipulating time.  The first thing was that, much like protective magic, temporal magic had a limited range.  Time could only be manipulated in a relatively small space.  Within the bubble, time could be slowed, stopped or even sped up in relation to the space outside the bubble.  When Tanan asked if time could be reversed, Figis just shrugged and said, “It seems unlikely.”

•        •        •

One of the first things Tanan learned when he began to study protective magic was how to create a bubble around himself that wouldn’t accidentally kill someone.

He also learned protective incantations that gave the body a protective charge.  The incantation that had killed the Constable was one of those spells.  Now that Tanan understood the spell, he learned just how much of a statistical miracle it had been for him to successfully summon it that day in Port Billen.

Healing magic was much easier than temporal or protective magic, and it was the most commonly practiced kind of magic.  In addition to the healing magic he learned from Soama, he also studied his father’s medicinal magic.

By far, the most common kind of magic was environmental manipulation.  Compared with other kinds of magic, it was almost entirely useless.  Most people who possessed abilities in magic could do a little environmental manipulation.  At it’s simplest form, it could be used to slightly warm or cool the body.  The best that most Abbots could hope for was to light a candle or cool a glass of liquid.

There were no Abbots at Jesera who specialized in environmental magic, so Tanan’s only real source of information on the subject was the library, which contained exactly two books on the subject.  One was a basic book of incantations that could be used to test children for the magic abilities.  The other was a book on the theory of offensive magic, which was the fifth branch of magic.  That book talked a great deal about how environmental manipulation might be used offensively.  When Tanan was fifteen, Figis allowed Tanan to discover and study that book.

CHAPTER FORTY

When he was seventeen, Tanan began studying offensive magic in earnest.  He had mastered the fine art of lighting a candle, but had not been able to recreate the kind of effect that had killed the Legionnaire.

There was a large hall in the monastery that was rarely used.  Tanan pushed all the tables and chairs to one end of the hall and started using it to practice his offensive magic.

After many conversations with Figis, he understood that fear and rage had amplified the effect of his magic on both of the occasions when he had killed.  Figis said that strong emotions of any kind could effect magic in unpredictable ways.  Rage, said Figis, was to be avoided in daily life, but especially when performing magic.  That was a large part of the reason Figis spent the first year of Tanan’s training teaching him to meditate.  Tanan now knew that a calm emotional state was optimal for performing magic.

He began to practice, trying to replicate what he had done to the Legionnaire on the Lataki plains.  Instead of a Legionnaire, he was experimenting with a tomato.  He was able to build energy, condense it, and add to it in the same way that he had that morning on the plains.  But after almost a month of practice, he wasn’t able to do much more than make the tomato so hot that it split open.

When he killed that Legionnaire, he’d used so much energy that it knocked him unconscious for a full day.  Even if he could replicate his results from that day, being unconscious for a day wasn’t very practical.

He went to talk to Soama.

“You told me once that a skilled practitioner of the magical arts could pull energy from the sun, water or air.  Can you tell me more about that?”

Soama recommended that Tanan speak with Figis.

“This is an interesting question,” said Figis the next day after morning meditation.  “My mentor, Kelzang, was able to harness the energy from the world around him.  I have never been able to accomplish this, but I will tell you what he told me.”

“To harness the energy from the world around you requires incredible concentration. Kelzang was able to meditate for days at a time, completely separating his consciousness from his physical body.  He told me that once he achieved that separation, he was able to observe the world in its most simple form and draw power from it.”

“Imagine a pebble. Crush the pebble into sand.  Choose one grain of sand and crush it into dust.  Choose one speck of dust and crush it into smaller pieces.  Kelzang told me that eventually the pebble would be broken into pieces so small that they could no longer be broken.  And he said that the smallest particles were moving faster than you can imagine.  He was able to harness the energy in those spinning particles and focus it into his magic.”

Tanan was intrigued.  “How did Kelzang achieve the separation of consciousness from his body?”

Figis smiled broadly.  “That is the question, isn’t it?  I have attempted this many times, but my magic doesn’t require vast amounts of energy, so my interest has never been more than academic.  But it was most useful for Kelzang, who was a Master of healing magic.  Kelzang was more than four hundred years old when I studied with him.  He was able to draw upon the energies around him to maintain his vigor.  He was also able to heal injuries and sickness that other healers could not.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Tanan stopped trying to explode tomatoes and began using his time in the large hall to meditate.  As a student, he had obligations that prevented him from meditating for long stretches of time as Kelzang was said to have done.  He would have to attempt separation of consciousness with the time that he had available.

After a week of fruitless efforts, Tanan realized he would need more time if he were to make progress.  He sat to meditate, and after getting comfortable and relaxed, he formed a temporal bubble around himself, speeding up the passage of time inside the bubble relative to time outside.  It took several weeks of practice, but Tanan was eventually able to maintain the temporal bubble while going into deep meditation.

Each day, he would meditate longer and longer inside his bubble.  To the outside observer it seemed like he was meditating for an hour at a time.  For Tanan, it was several hours.  Eventually, he was meditating for days at a time inside his bubble of accelerated time.

One day, during one of his expanded meditation sessions, Tanan became acutely aware.  He continued to meditate, exploring his state of heightened awareness.  He found that he could look down at himself, sitting on the floor of the large hall.  Tanan realized that he had separated his consciousness from his body and took time to enjoy the sensation.

He always brought a tomato with him, and it was there on the floor in front of his body.  As he focused on it, the tomato seemed to zoom at him.  He moved his focus closer and found himself looking at the inside of the tomato.  He zoomed in farther until he could see all the different kinds of small parts that made up the tomato.  Tanan didn’t understand what he was seeing, he just selected one of the small pieces and focused in until he was looking at the molecules that made them up.  He zoomed in on one of the molecules and found himself looking at particles that were vibrating very fast.

Tanan moved his awareness closer and could feel the immense energy in each of the tiny particles.  Tanan was sure he was looking at what Kelzang had described.

Thinking about the feeling he had when he gathered energy inside his body, Tanan attempted to gather some energy from the atom he was observing.  He pulled his awareness back and gathered energy from an entire group of atoms.  So much energy surged into him that it jolted him back into his body.  His temporal bubble was gone.

Tanan opened his eyes.  He felt as though he had been blind to the energy that moved around him, but now that he was aware of it he could feel it.  It was as obvious to him as sunshine on a summer day.  The energy was surging through him, and he had to force himself to relax.  Now that he was aware of it, he could feel the energy in the air as it moved around his body.  There was energy radiating from the marble floor below him.

He drew a small amount of energy into himself and compressed it to a pinpoint.  This was more energy than he had ever had at his command, and he could feel infinitely more all around him.  He looked down at the tomato and pushed the gathered energy into the center of it, as he had dozens of times before.

The tomato exploded into a fine red mist, and then there was a sound, like a peal of thunder, that was so loud it left Tanan’s ears ringing.

Abbots came running into the room, drawn by the noise, and saw Tanan, sitting cross legged on the floor with a huge smile looking at a blackened place on the marble floor in front of him.

Tanan could feel the energy swirling in the air around him and knew that it was his to command.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

It was six months after Tanan learned to harness energy from around him when Gowrand arrived in Jesera and immediately started complaining about Komisan, King Dannap and all the other things that he found unsatisfactory.  Many of the Abbots at Jesera knew Gowrand and were used to filtering the useful information out of his overly dramatic rants.

Before Gowrand, it had been almost a year since an Abbot had arrived from Komisan.  It sounded like trouble could be brewing on the island.  A meeting was held in the great hall, which still had a scorch mark that Tanan hadn’t been able to scrub out, and it was decided that in the spring, a group would travel to Komisan to investigate.

The Abbots didn’t know Gowrand had inadvertently led a King’s Legionnaire to Jesera who was, at that moment, observing the valley from a rocky outcropping in the mountains.

•        •        •

Calid left Jesera after a week of watching, making a map and taking notes.  He took longer to make the return trip because he was out of food and had to fish and trap rabbits in order to eat.

When he arrived at the Legion outpost, his appearance stirred up confusion.  The commanding officer was relieved to see him, and also ready to court martial him for dereliction of duty.  When Calid managed to make the man listen to his story, the officer stopped screaming at him and started paying attention.  Calid made a full report of what he’d seen and turned over his maps and notes.

The officer wasn’t extremely intelligent, but he knew this information was important.  He appointed an interim commander and then he and Calid left for Panna to deliver the information to King Dannap.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Dannap listened to Legionnaire Calid’s report in silence and then asked a series of questions which Calid did his best to answer.  Dannap sat on his throne and stared at Calid, who stood uncomfortably under the scrutiny of his King.  After two minutes that felt like an eternity, Dannap stood and left the room without a word.

The King went into his private chambers and sat in the large chair beside the fireplace.  A secret Abbot village in the mountains.  The murderer Tanan would certainly be in that village.  Dannap would have his revenge.

The Abbots were not only harboring the fugitive, but had a secret village in Lataki territory.  This was troubling.  It was not simply a single rogue Abbot who’d helped the boy escape, it was much worse.  The Abbots were all over Komisan, and if they were working with the Lataki that meant trouble for Komisan.  They would be dealt with.

Dannap spoke to a guard, who was standing motionless near the door.  “Bring me Brakkas.”  The soldier left without a word.  Moments later, Brakkas, the Legion Commander, who had been waiting in the throne room with Calid, entered the room.

“The Abbots are working with the Lataki,” he said to the Commander.  “Have Pinter brought to me at once, and have your men be ready to start arresting all of the Abbots when I give the order.”

Brakkas nodded and left.  He returned to his offices and immediately sent a squad of four men to bring in Abbot Pinter.

•        •        •

Although there was no official hierarchy in the Brotherhood of Abbots, Pinter had volunteered several years ago to act as spokesman when it came to King Dannap.  Because of this, Dannap thought Pinter was their leader.  And so it was Pinter the Legionnaires wanted when they barged into the Abbey.

The Abbots were perplexed by the aggression of the Legionnaires, but in more than seven hundred years they had never had reason to fear the Legion.  The first Abbot they came to led them through the Abbey in search of Pinter, who was in the kitchen making preparations to cook the evening’s meal.

“You’re under arrest,” one of the Legionnaires said as he roughly took Pinter by the arm.  The Abbots who witnessed this were taken aback.

“For what?” asked Pinter, sure that there had been some sort of misunderstanding.

“Shut up!” said another of the soldiers as he took hold of Pinter’s other arm.  The Legionnaires walked Pinter, who did not resist, out of the kitchen.  There were three Abbots in the kitchen, plus the one who’d escorted in the Legionnaires.  They followed the soldiers to the door of the Abbey and watched the men manhandle Pinter up the street toward the palace.

They immediately rounded up the remaining Abbots and held a meeting.  The situation in Komisan had been deteriorating for some time.  The Abbots had become increasingly marginalized over the past several years and there was a sense of growing hostility toward anyone with the ability to perform magic.  The arrest of Pinter, especially in such a rough manner, was a bad sign.  The Abbots across Komisan would need to be told of this development.

Within a half hour of Pinter’s arrest, dozens of cats were on the move, carrying messages.  The news of Pinter’s arrest would spread to every Abbey on the island within thirty-six hours.