The Book of Terrus: The Wise and Powerful

Chapter 8 - King's Word

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Arzai was no fool; she knew her earliest days as High Obad would not be easy. Traitor or no, Master Tomur's shoes were no small void to fill. She just didn't anticipate difficulties this soon after the fact.

Upon the morning of Arzai's official inauguration as head of Goran's Magicol, Ijireen flatly refused to come out of her room. Bvhoros asked, Davenir pleaded and Arzai threatened, all to no avail. Finally Arzai had all but demanded that the other two Obads find a bloody way to get the girl to the ceremony, come fire or frozen water. Somehow Davenir managed to coax Ijireen out in the end. That did nothing to erase the ferocious scowl carved onto the teenager's face all throughout the inauguration.

Opting to ignore Ijireen's silent tantrum, Arzai instead spoke to Bvhoros on the way back to the Tower of the Elements. Her frustration mounted when the Earth Obad had no answers to her questions, namely what was taking Frandel so long to return. Arzai wanted him back in Amenthere as soon as possible, not because she missed his arrogant strutting, but rather because she would sleep far better once Frandel received and more importantly accepted her ascension to High Obad.

"I know no more than you do, Arz...Master Arzai," Bvhoros said as they climbed the winding steps behind the Ovates. "Frandel was to scout eastern Goran for gifted children, and return within a turn of the moons."

"The moon was dark when he left, and now it waxes thin again. I'm half tempted to send a bird to look for him."

Once Bvhoros might have chuckled at the younger Obad's impatience, or even gently chided her. Now he only kept walking, his hands hidden deep within his wide green sleeves. Arzai wasn't sure if that was out of deference to her new rank, or something else. Forced to swallow her frustrations, Arzai brushed past the others once they reached the tower's rotunda.

Rather than deal with the mood of the Magicol, Arzai instead chose to confront what had once been Master Tomur's study. Set on the top floor of the tower, wooden scaffolds crisscrossed the ceiling and opened out onto the night sky for star-studies. Beneath the observatory, the High Obad's study was a wide space, with domed stone walls almost completely hidden behind hundreds of charts, maps and figures. Smaller tables ringed the room, sporting all manner of elemental exhibits. When she was a girl Arzai used to like trying to sneak in here whenever Mistress Lirien neglected the lock. To a child this room seemed to contain all the mysteries of the world, just waiting to be discovered.

Particularly fascinating were the crouching, hound-like skeletons in one corner, carefully reassembled and held together with wires and pegs. Before seeing those juvenile bones, Arzai had never completely believed in the legends about King Amenthis fighting dragons. As she passed by Arzai gave the tallest skull a gentle little pat, making it bob on its serpentine spine.

"I suppose you're mine now," she said aloud to the dragon skeletons and the study at large. When no one answered, she sighed aloud. "whether you like it or not."

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That had been almost five hours ago. In the time since then, Arzai's respect for Master Tomur had experienced a begrudging renaissance. Traitor though the man may have been, even she couldn't deny his sheer intellect. Spread across the polished black desk in the center of the study were stacks upon stacks of paper delving into not one, not two, but all four of the elemental magics. Amenthis's beard, there was enough theory to deal with just for fire alone, and Arzai had been studying for fifteen years! She had no idea what half the projects assembled on the tables ringing the room were about, much less how to continue or conclude them. A glance at the notes next to each yielded only a collection of shorthand scribbles in Tomur's spidery pen.