Page 209 of The Shadow Wand

“Where’s Chi Nam?” I ask as Valasca painstakingly draws, wondering if Chi Nam knows about these harsh Amaz ways.

“Strengthening the shield around the Vonor,” Lukas replies.

A tense silence falls as Valasca draws lines of glowing sapphire runes down the sides of both my thighs and arms, her brow knotted in concentration, and I suppress a shiver from the cave’s cool air on my exposed and increasingly lit-up skin.

Seeming finished with the runes on my limbs, Valasca studies them appraisingly, then moves in front of me to draw a series of blue Noi runes all around Sage’s green demon-sensing rune. She then slips behind me to draw another row of runes straight down my spine.

My tangled firelines prickle to life, firing gold, my invisible earth power branching toward her stylus as Valasca continues to draw. My weaker water-and windlines stir under her sorcery, and surprisingly, I’ve the faintest awareness, for the first time ever, of a thread-slim line of light magic tangled with the rest of my lines.

A barely perceptible glowing green line.

Valasca strides back around to my front. “Splay your hands out,” she orders.

I comply, and Valasca proceeds to draw a luminous Noi rune in the center of my palms, just like the ones she and Chi Nam have on theirs.

“Are those weapon-retrieval runes?” I ask.

Valasca nods. “They are. Press their center after deploying your weapon, and the weapon will fly right back into your hand.”

I glance at Lukas, who opens his own palms to display identical glowing blue runes on his hands, his expression still dauntingly severe.

Finally done marking me, Valasca murmurs a runic spell and taps her stylus on the center of my chest.

All the runes pull in under the glamour, no longer visible under my false gray hue.

Valasca hands me the Vu Trin uniform, and I throw on the black fireproof battle tunic and pants. Then I sit down on a rocky outcropping and jerk on socks and my boots and weapons belt, taking out all my residual ire over Valasca’s roughness and Lukas’s emotional distance on my boots as I cinch the laces tight.

Valasca pulls out my newly green Wand from a long sack propped by the cave’s wall and I’m filled with an inexplicable relief as I take it in hand and slide it into the belt sheath, knowing they made a point of bringing it here for me.

Lukas strides forward and begins fastening runic weapons to me along with Valasca, who throws a series of silver Vu Trin star weapons diagonally over my chest while Lukas attaches the sheathed Ash’rion blade to my upper arm. Valasca then secures a cunning sheath around my shoulder that holds three additional blades as Lukas comes down on one knee before me, yanks up my pant leg’s hem, and straps another sheathed knife around my lower leg. Valasca expeditiously does the same on my other side.

I swallow as Lukas checks the fit of the sheath with a look of grim concentration, his hands on me sparking a remembrance of his hands caressing me last night. His sinuous touch down my legs, along my thighs. How he murmured my name over and over. There’s no trace of this ardent affection now, and I feel his emotional withdrawal acutely, even as I struggle to see past my own reflexive emotions and understand.

The knives fastened, they let the hems of my pant legs drop to cover them. Then the two of them rise to their feet, step back, and survey my form.

“I think we’re ready to take her out,” Valasca says to Lukas as if I’m not even there, my wet hair in limp tangles against my face.

Lukas scrutinizes me once more, like I’m a thing. A sword. A weapon to be wielded. He nods and meets Valasca’s gaze. “Let’s see what she can do.”

For the next few weeks, as the portal knits together and charges, Valasca and Lukas work me hard.

Chi Nam is a constant presence in the background, calmly splitting her time between strengthening the Vonor’sshield, charging the portal, and silently overseeing my weapons training. I can sense her guiding hand at work in everything, both Lukas and Valasca often exchanging wordless looks with her that are met with Chi Nam’s quick, almost imperceptible nod.

Each morning, Valasca wakes me with a dousing of icy water, which I now know is a trial that all Amaz soldier apprentices endure to learn to control their response to discomfort. I learned this the second time she threw me in the painfully chilly water, after I cursed her up and down and she snarled out the motives for her actions.

Defiantly rising to her challenge, I soon learn to wake and get myself to the freezing pool just before she and Lukas arrive, confrontationally stripping off my clothes while they stand there, arms crossed. Then I grit my teeth and jump into the freezing cold water before Valasca can push me in.

And every day, before dawn, Valasca enhances the charge in the runes on my body, and I’m outfitted by the two of them with weapons then brought to a makeshift practice area they’ve assembled at the far end of the broad curving ledge outside the Vonor.Lukas and Valasca have thrown up a series of wooden targets marked with concentric circles and shapes of various sizes. Some of the targets are hung from ropes strung on the mesquite tree limbs just past the ledge, these targets teaching me to deal with a moving target.

They instruct me in how to throw stars and blades and spears and how to wield a runic crossbow, zeroing in on blades when it becomes apparent I’m the most comfortable with the weight and feel of these weapons.

They drive me relentlessly, push me to do exercises to strengthen my arms and shoulders and chest, and teach me martial arts sequences to improve my control over my body and my balance. Every muscle in my body aches and burns, but they drive me until pain is cramping through me and I can barely manage another throw, my shoulders screaming with discomfort.

They have me practice in extreme heat. In the dead of the frigid night. And through it all, they purposefully keep me sleep-deprived by waking me with water or harsh taunts or simply grabbing hold of my arms and forcing me to my feet.

When I’m not training with them, I’m with Chi Nam as she drills me in the runic systems, my proficiency in the violin giving me a blessed edge in learning to rapidly slide my fingers over a rune-blade hilt to find the proper runic combinations faster and faster and faster.

I’m so exhausted at night that I fall asleep in Chi Nam’s meditation room the moment my head hits my bedroll, all alone in the space since Lukas now sleeps in another cavern far removed from me.

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