The Unearthing (Book I of the Tebel Chronicles)

Chapter 23

Cyan felt sick with nerves. Tomorrow she started her practical exams, beginning with archery and riding. Although her grades didn't count, only she, Trey, Grand Master Rustley and the I'tes knew that. To make matters worse, Shyla had told her that for the weapon crafts exams, Noring allowed spectators to watch. The swords craft exam was especially popular and so it was set for the whole of the last day of exams. All exams began with the junior students and ended with the most skilled. Despite now having friends who would support her no matter what, Cyan was terrified. Strangely, Greyton had been avoiding her since he got off pool duty. She took it as a piece of good fortune and let him and his bullying slip from her mind – she had bigger things to worry about now.

'It's alright, Cyan,' Kael had said encouragingly when they were all sitting in the common room later in the evening. 'No one expects you to be excellent; you've only just begun training. Airlia is renowned for an excellent academic program, but not for their physical training.'

'But,' she said with gritted teeth, 'everyone knows I'm one of Trey's students, so they'll expect me to be good. I overheard a second year say he was so excited to see all Trey's students fight . . . '

'Yes, that's true. Braeden and Jesse and I are also all Trey's students. But most of the third years training in the swords crafts are not. You'll probably get paired against someone who is in a similar skills range as you. Like you said, Trey wasn't worried.'

Cyan wasn't convinced. But right now she had the archery exam to worry about. She was only able to get the arrow onto the target one out of four times so far – this did not bode well.

'I'm going to bed,' she said finally, realizing her stress was making her friends jumpy. That night, she didn't sleep.

To Cyan's delight, her exams were far less traumatic than she had anticipated. The archery and staff exams were not well attended by spectators and she had done a passable job on both. The horse-riding exam was very well attended, but with Aphrachia under her, Cyan was on fine form and as she finished the tasks set for her, she could hear the applause of the spectators. Even her physicals had been fine, swimming laps under record time. Clearly the extra hours she'd been putting into training had paid off. And even though she could see Rudi was furious, the acclaim of her peers was worth the mood swings she was sure would come her way when the practical exams were over. Over the next few days of exams she realized that while she was far from being a top student, there were in fact many students, third years even, who were worse than she was.

This fact didn't help her anxiety about her upcoming swords exam, however. That Trey was to be one of the judges made her stomach cramp cruelly whenever she thought about it. Being humiliated in front of him would be far worse than in front of Greyton even. By the time the dreaded day arrived, Cyan was so sleep deprived that Shyla had to stop her from pouring juice over her porridge.

'Doesn't matter,' said Cyan dully, mopping up the spilt juice, 'I'm not even hungry.'

'What's the worst that could happen, Cy?' said Kael quietly. 'You may be disarmed quickly. You may even fail. But that's the very worst that could happen. It's happened before – the student lived. It's not life or death here.'

Cyan thought about this. It was true. It would be embarrassing, but not devastatingly so. She didn't have a good enough reputation for it to matter. She smiled tiredly. 'You're right.'

Kael grinned, relieved to see she meant it. He knew she'd had a bad feeling about this particular exam.

Cyan accompanied Kael to see the exam roster for the day. It was here that Cyan realized why Greyton had been leaving her alone. There, in thick, black script, her name was written next to his.