The Builder tya-1

  The Builder

  ( The young ancients - 1 )

  P. S. Power

  P. S. Power

  The Builder

  Chapter one

  The bell rang again, either the third or fourth of the day, a deep chime from the main tower. Torrence thought that was the case at least as he ran from the isolation chamber towards the empty commons. Maybe the fifth or sixth if he'd gotten lost in the working trance again. What was he saying? Of course he'd gotten lost. It was just what happened when you drove yourself like he was.

  He'd done it though. Finished his first novel build. He'd made real magic.

  Well, he'd done that before of course, making copies for class, but this time the magic was all his. It made a difference. A lot of people could make copies, only a few did new pieces. The difference between a copier and a full builder was huge. Most people didn't even attempt it.

  Now if it just worked he'd be able to justify having missed classes to get it done. If it didn't work…

  Well, it had better work. That was all. Otherwise he'd have to resign from school in shame, or at least pout and moan about it for a while. It would work. He could feel it. That or he was really hungry. It was hard to tell at the moment, the deep working trance could mess up basic perceptions for a while after you were done sometimes. He grinned and kept moving as quickly as his stiff legs could manage, so not very, all things considered. It was what stopped him from doing a little happy dance. That and the fact he simply had no talent for it. It was tempting to try anyway.

  The sigil piece in his hand, a circle ringed with letters and symbols on a square of unfinished wood, all basically nonsense to anyone except him, had been drawn in black paint, the thick and cheap kind from the student store that took a while to dry. Most of the time at least. This time it had turned solid before he'd even finished the complex field structure, a very good sign considering the nature of the field he'd tried to create.

  He hoped it was anyway. It was just possible he was imagining it, because the whole thing was such a big deal. To Tor. No one else would probably care at all. That was fine though. It hadn't been done for them. Really the idea was to prove he could build to get away from endless copy work. That wasn't hard, but it lacked… spark.

  The build was fairly simple, if anything that got things to happen without physical effort could be called that. Most wouldn't think so probably. The field on the piece of wood in his hand simply told water to leave cloth, and other fibrous materials, within a certain area in space. It should, if the field was strong enough, mean that after washing clothes a person could have dry things ready to wear within moments, instead of waiting for hours, or even longer on rainy or moist days. It was a labor and time saving device.

  The wood the focusing design had been painted on would dry out too, being fibrous material itself, just like cloth, but that shouldn't hurt anything really, as long as it didn't just turn to dust. That shouldn't happen, if Tor had gotten the whole thing right. Most people didn't on their first go, or so he'd been told in class, even professional builders sometimes had to try something dozens of times to get new things right, but he had high hopes.

  Not to mention slight desperation. Now that everything occurred to him properly at least.

  The school probably wouldn't kick him out for just missing a day's worth of classes for something like this, which was school related, but he'd need to show that he hadn't just been off in town playing the whole time, and then slapped some paint on wood as an excuse. Tor wouldn't ever do that of course, he liked school, and learning, too much to try and fake his way through. But did the instructors really know that? If he could think of it as a potential excuse, they probably would too. They'd been at all this a lot longer than he had after all. Age and wisdom were to be respected for a reason.

  Tor kept running, passing other students as he went. Excitement fairly boiled from him, making him smile the whole time, a rare thing for him. A few waved, mostly boys of course, kids from his classes. Oddly enough, one who called to him was a tall, good looking girl with dusky skin and a brilliant white smile. He recognized her as one of the combat giants that regularly beat him in class, so he half waved back as he moved. No one tried to stop and talk to him of course.

  They wouldn't.

  His reputation as a very serious student stopped that from happening, especially if he looked like he was in a hurry or distracted. Or thinking. No one wanted to hear him go on for hours about his latest project, whatever that happened to be. While it fascinated him, the interplay of fields of information that could be made to reorder the fabric of the world, to most people it was just meaningless babble. Tor might as well sit around spouting complete nonsense at them. Actually, he knew that for a fact, because he'd done it a few times just to see what would happen. The responses were identical.

  Almost no one could be bothered to really listen.

  Rolph, the boy that he'd roomed with for the last two years never seemed to mind paying attention to what Tor said and he really tried to pay attention. But other than him and a few instructors, people just tried to leave their conversations at hello and see you later. That worked well enough for Tor, to tell the truth. Most people, other students especially, were a little boring, only caring about the latest song craze, or what clothing to wear on break. As if a student's brown trousers and tunic weren't good enough? What, were they the Prince and Princesses of the realm that they needed to do more than study for their futures? Rolph didn't do that at least. Not too much. For which Tor was eternally grateful. He didn't know what he'd do if his roomie had been one of that type. Go crazy probably and shove pencils in his ears to try and get away from the useless yammering.

  Tor kept to a good jog, which would have made the weapons master, Kolb, happy. The older man seemed convinced that anyone that couldn't run the length of the kingdom and back inside a month was incurably lazy. That no one had ever managed such a feat didn't stop the man from hinting it was the highest sign of worth for a non-combat oriented student like Tor Baker. Too little to fight properly most of the time, short and slender, the head instructor liked to pick on him a little. Running beat having the military students beat the snot out of him daily so Tor did it without complaint.

  True, most of them didn't really try to hurt him on purpose when he was forced, again by Kolb, to take them on in practice, but they somehow always managed it anyway. Generally because most of them were freakishly large. Like the tall girl he'd just passed, what was her name… Petra? She always managed to hand him a piece of his backside when they worked together, which was more than a little humiliating. Worse, Tor kind of suspected that the girl went out of her way to be gentle with him compared to the others, pulling her punches and sword blows. He'd seen her easily drive men over seven feet tall and three hundred pounds to their knees more than once. That Tor was still alive probably meant that she was coddling him like a baby. He decided not to worry about it and grinned instead.

  He was a builder, not a warrior. Maybe a real one now. Unless the build didn't work. Then he was just screwed.

  Keeping his pace steady he made his way up the three flights of gray stone steps to the outside walkway that led to his room. It was decent sized, the room, nearly as big as the bedroom he'd shared with his four brothers before he left home. Had it really only been two and a half, nearly three, years? Rolph complained about the tiny space occasionally, but then his family was rich, some kind of merchant empire thing that involved a lot of famous and wealthy people. At least from what little his roomie had hinted at when he got tired, or had grabbed a little extra wine with dinner.

  The door had a real metal handle, a nice brass lever, and while it didn't have an “official” lock, Tor had made one that recognized him and Ro
lph when a hand was put on the design near the door. It also recognized anyone that belonged to the school, which was probably why they hadn't forced him to take it down yet. All it did was keep people that weren't supposed to be there out.

  Not that he had anything anyone would want to steal, but Rolph did. Fine silk clothes, and books that Tor envied more than a little, as well as more gold than he'd had ever seen in one place before. To his surprise Rolph offered to let him read the books whenever he had spare time, not even worried that he might damage them or leave them smudged. It was nice to just kick back and peruse a history text every now and again, instead of spending all his time working on meditation or field work for building devices. Of course now that he could do his own fields instead of just copying other people's, building was looking to be even more interesting. A lot more actually. The simple fields they'd let him copy so far had been bland to work on.

  Slapping the lock design, a simple hand print in worn paint, got the door to open easily, sliding open as if held in place by some unseen force. It looked pretty magical, but it was really just a clever swivel lock, a wooden privacy bar about the size of his forearm. It was counterbalanced so that the amount of energy it took to swing it in and out of place was virtually nil. The small effort of touching the plate did it, passed the energy of intent along to bump the bar in and out of the way. It was magic strictly speaking, but only the tiniest amount. He'd borrowed the field design from the lock on a chest that Rolph owned, a clever contraption that probably cost half of what Tor's entire family made in a year.

  Rolph stood and just played with the door lock every now and then, sighing and asking him how it worked. Tor had to smile when that happened, since, as an accounting student, Rolph lacked a lot of the needed background to understand what he said. The guy tried to keep up and was bright enough, so Tor kept explaining. That willingness to try was one of the reasons he got along so well with the giant redhead. Even if his family was rich.

  As it stood Tor kind of thought that the other boy was less baffled by the device itself, since he already owned basically the same thing on the chest, than just amazed that someone like him, only a third year student after all, could manage something that interesting. It made Tor happy to hear, and a bit proud, since he'd actually done it the year before. In second year.

  Once in the room he looked around for the wash basket, the large wicker one that Rolph let him share, and picked it up without really looking inside. It felt heavy, but then both he and Rolph had gotten the weapons studies chief instructor for two years straight for some reason. None of the other accounting or field students had Kolb, or even any of the man's first tier trainers. Most of them didn't even have weapons or fighting classes at all. A few that were nobles did, sons and daughters of Counts and Barons that might have to fight to protect themselves someday, even if they were better at math or history.

  Almost no one went into building, it was considered the hardest course of study a person could take at Lairdgren school, so those students normally didn't have more than some light exercise classes, dance or stretching normally. How they'd both “lucked” into the extra combat courses he didn't know. Rolph just shrugged it off the one time Tor had mentioned it, and suggested that maybe their parents had something to do with it.

  Maybe his roommate's parents did, being wealthy people that could pull strings and get special privileges for their child. Tor's parents were wonderful people, hardworking and industrious in all things, including having children, but wealthy and influential they were not. Maybe it had been a paperwork error? That made a lot more sense really. Of course, when he'd mentioned that to Kolb the giant man had just laughed at him and patted him on the back, then told him that if it was, it didn't matter now, since too much time had been spent on him to give up over something as trivial as mis-signed documents.

  Tor had pointed out more than once to Rolph that without the King's scholarship he'd be busily learning to be a baker in his parents' shop like his older brother, or possibly sneaking off to the docks to look for work as a fisherman's apprentice, not learning to build high powered spells and fighting from some of the best teachers in the land. While he could do without the bruises from training like a warrior, he didn't complain about it to anyone but his friend.

  After all, he already knew how to bake well enough to open his own shop, he'd grown up doing it. That taught him enough about work to doubt that learning to fight was really any harder than, say, fishing on the ocean. Both fighters and fishermen had that hard look about them that spoke of something in particular.

  Hard physical labor.

  If he had to pick one to do, he'd take the one that also let him learn magic too. If he had to take beatings to be allowed to learn that, he'd do it with a smile, any day of the week. Well, not really with a smile, more like a lot of wincing and trying not to rub the sore spots, but he'd still do it, which had to count for something.

  Building spells took work too, obviously, or everyone would be doing it, but it didn't do much for the body. At least this way he wasn't turning fat, or into a no muscle stick man like some of the other students had in the last years. That he'd paid for it in sweat and more than a little blood was inconsequential. At least Kolb always said so just before he assigned him some nearly impossible task. Generally things that hurt.

  A lot.

  There was only one other student, a first year by the looks of the boy, about as tall as Tor already and heavier set with muscle, doing his laundry at the outdoor washtubs when he got there. The poor kid didn't seem to be having an easy time of it, apparently not having any wash powder with him. Instead he tried to make do with elbow grease, scrubbing hard at the student browns in his hands. Having had to do that a few times himself in the past, Tor could sympathize. Setting up his own basket next to one of the wooden wash barrels he grabbed a corrugated metal board that didn't seem too dirty, glad that there weren't a lot of people out today. Some of the boards had rust on them, which didn't hurt the brown clothes too much, but could ruin the nice silks and velvets that some of the rich kids had.

  The washing, something that he'd been tasked with since childhood, went quickly with only two people's clothes to get clean. At home it had always been an all-day project, one that he'd done at least once a week. They all took turns at it, since his parents were fanatical about them always wearing clean clothing. Fanatical for Two Bends. Here, he found, that level of cleanliness was actually normal. At least it didn't take him unaware like some of the other scholarship kids. The idea of only wearing clothing for one day at a time had been the regular thing for him and he hadn't had to bear ridicule for weeks before he'd figured it out.

  He worked with a will, wanting to get to the drying as soon as possible, that was the point after all. The water made suds and nearly boiled as he worked the brown canvas on the board, excitement making the task more interesting, if only a tiny bit. The water was cold, of course, but the weather was warm enough so that his hands didn't freeze. It was early in the spring half, only a week into the new term, which meant first the nice, and then the way too hot, weather would be on them in the months to come.

  Perfect baking weather. Or at least it would be in a week or so. Right now was just a bit too cool for dough to rise quickly without heating the room it was in or using a proofing box. Tor got a laugh from the fact that his mind had turned to baking of all things. He didn't hate the family business, actually he kind of enjoyed baking truth be told, but the shop really didn't need five or six bakers. Not in Two Bends, which only had about three hundred people.

  Just as he finished he noticed that the younger boy, who stood a ways off, looked to be nearly in tears for some reason. His browns, the ones the kid held, looked new, and still had that stiff quality about them that normally didn't fade for the first year or so, the heavy material not softening until the fiftieth washing or thereabouts. Tor didn't really want to waste time talking, but knew it wouldn't do to leave the boy in tears either. If it was his kid br
other having trouble he'd want someone to help him out, wouldn't he?

  “Alright there?” He asked, half hoping that the boy would just say yes, so that he could get back to his real work and test the new field build sitting next to him. He smiled, trying to be kind about it though.

  He could spare a few minutes he reminded himself. He'd been the new kid once too and no one had been overly helpful back then at all. It had made everything so much harder. Change had to start with you, or it usually didn't happen. His mother said that all the time. It sounded pretty close to right, at least in a situation like this.

  The boy shook his head, letting it drop, his limp brown hair falling into the blue eyes below, round cheeks looking flushed and embarrassed.

  “I…”

  The kid started as Tor waited patiently, then just didn't speak for nearly half a minute. All that meditation, he realized, had been good for something other than field building after all. He could wait without difficulty now. Great. Well, one thing he could be certain of, life would make him wait for things. It was a handy skill to have, if a little boring.

  “I've never washed my own clothes before… At home we have servants that do it. I never even gave it a second thought, I mean, you put clothes in water and rubbed them on a board, how hard could it be? But no matter how hard I rub, I can't get the clothes clean and…” Pointing as if blaming the water or the tub he grimaced. “I can't make it frothy! What am I doing wrong?”

  The words were so plaintive that Tor had to fight back a smile. It wouldn't do to make the kid feel bad, especially if his family had been the kind that could afford servants. Magical creatures those, that he hadn't even believed really existed until he'd come to school here. The closest thing Tor's family had to servants had been… him and his older sister Terlee. So instead of mocking the poor kid, he decided to actually take a few seconds to be helpful.