The Enclave - Chapter Two

Prologue

Chapter One

To Tiera’s mild surprise and extreme relief, the rest of the journey to their new home for the foreseeable future passed without incident.

Getting into the Enclave required a letter of introduction and the lowering of several wards. Tiera suppressed a shiver as they passed through, the magic ghosting over her skin like a cold mist.

The guards, eager to be away, supervised a gaggle of servants in unloading Tiera and Mikhail’s belongings. The servants were small, barely even Mikhail’s height, and he was not a tall child. The servant’s features seemed human, but... exaggerated, was the best word Tiera could come up with. She put that puzzle aside for later, as a woman in a green robe that matched her eyes and contrasted nicely with her grey-streaked black hair, beckoned for the two children to follow her.

They walked in silence to a set of high doors, and the woman looked about to actually explain what was going on when the sound of a gong resonated through the Enclave. Instead, the woman sighed in clear exasperation. “Please join the others inside. Someone will be along shortly.”

The doors led into a large hall, with what seemed to be different displays and activities set up, and a group of other children around their age. Exchanging awkward glances, Tiera and Mikhail joined the cluster, Tiera glancing shyly at a boy with bronze skin, black hair, and a haughty attitude. “Do you know what we’re supposed to be doing?”

She tried not to bristle at the look he gave her, feeling like she was being analysed and judged. Finally, he shrugged, “No one told us anything, either.”

A dark-haired girl poked her head out from near the middle of the crowd, catching their eyes. “There can’t be any harm in looking, at least. Just standing here is boring.”

From the way several other children groaned or flinched - whether at the idea of doing something or because of the person who suggested it was unclear - there had the potential to be plenty of harm involved. Another girl, blonde and thin, rolled her eyes. “Well, less harm than dealing with you feeling bored, anyway.”

Tiera giggled, holding out a hand to the dark-haired one. “I am Tiera, from Destrier Seat and the Carrick Clan, through my father.”

The girl accepted the hand, tugging her toward a table filled with musical instruments. “Desdemona, of the Moon clan. Where do you want to start; this table looks interesting.”

Tiera was one of the unfortunate people for whom no amount of tutoring could teach them to carry a tune in a bucket. The most that five successive teachers had managed was a reasonable singing voice, so long as she had someone to follow in terms of rhythm and pitch. All of them had given up instruments as a lost cause.

Still, some of the carvings on the instruments caught her eye, so she nodded agreement. Desdemona tuned a small harp, tilting her head as though she were hearing each note on a deeper level than human ears could provide. Well, watching the other girl was fascinating, even if Tiera followed none of it.

Tiera picked up a lute, instead, examining the decoration closely. A blonde boy with pointed features came up beside her, “What is so fascinating?”

Tiera ignored the boy’s bad manners of not introducing himself or asking her name, even as she envisioned her mother’s reaction to such rudeness. It was an amusing thought. She tilted the body of the lute toward him, showing off the carvings. “I would love to meet whoever made this. See how they’ve incorporated the runes into the designs?”

The boy looked closer. “Interesting. Which ones catch your attention?”

Briefly, Tiera wondered if it was genuine interest, or an attempt to cover up his own lack of knowledge, and decided that it didn’t matter. It was rare that she had an audience whose eyes didn’t glaze over when she started warming to the subject. “See the wings here? That’s a rune for enhancement, aligned with one for sound. That means that this was probably made for concerts or a travelling minstral who needs to be heard over the noise of a tavern or marketplace."

A girl with tan skin and wild brown hair joined them, examining the lute herself. “The flowers have preservation runes on the petals, against ones for water and fire.”

The haughty boy from earlier approached, some of his attitude mellowing. “That sounds about standard. I’m Vayle, by the way, and this is Damien.”

He indicated the blond boy, who nodded a greeting, and went back to examining the lute. Perhaps he was just socially inept in general. Tiera returned the nod, adding a shallow curtsey, just deep enough to show respect, while acknowledging them as equals. “Nice to meet you, I’m Tiera.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mikhail wander over to a table filled with weapons, and two girls - one blonde and fair, another dark - examining a variety of textiles, talking excitedly. A few of the others gravitated toward a table piled high with books, and more clustered around a table of plants. Several were gathered around a pen of animals, speaking in low voices.

All of them started guiltily at the sound of a door opening, jumping away from whatever they were doing.

A tall boy, probably a few years older than Tiera, with ash-blond hair, grey eyes and a friendly smile, gestured for them to relax. Someone out of Tiera’s range of vision sighed wistfully. The boy either didn’t notice, or pretended not to. “Your instructors sent me to tell you that they’ve been delayed. You can look and touch, but be careful not to break anything. It helps them determine what you’re best suited for. Something like that, anyway.”

This one seemed very easy to like, at least. He chose a seat at the back of the hall, keeping an absent eye on them without interferring. Tiera browsed around the other tables, trying to find something that called to her. The complicated chart listing the properties of the plants and their uses interested her, but not the plants themselves. She stopped again at a tabe with a thick book of runes, and a variety of materials - leather, wood and stone - and carving tools.

Tiera identified moonstone and quartz, both good for passive magics, and supposedly delivering their best results in the hands of female Magicians. It would be interesting to test that. There was powdered charcoal, for clensing, to be mixed with various other substances and used to fill in the carved rune.

Well, perhaps this was to be her gift. She had studied runes before, Runes being one of the brances of magic where anyone could learn the theory, if not the practice of Runecrafting, and her tutor had commented on how quickly she had picked up what limited knowledge he could teach her.

Perhaps the Enclave would not be so bad, after all.

By the next week, Tiera regretted her optimism.

In fact, she regretted every life choice, her own and everyone else’s, that had brought her to this point.

After briefly meeting the Instructors who would be teaching them, the children had been told that they would have a week to get used to their new home before lessons started. The Instructors had been right that it took some getting used to, especially for the higher-born ones.

The newest students had been settled in rooms of four, something of a shock for a girl who had been accustomed to a certain degree of privacy until now. Desdemona was one of her new room-mates, along with another noble daughter, Dahelia, and a girl of Merchent stock, Mellie. On top of that, they had all been issued several sets of plain clothing, something about all students of magic being equal.

Tiera didn’t miss spending an hour getting dressed every day, as tended to be the case at home, but she couldn't help pointing out that different upbringings and experiences made for different people. The Destriers might have tended more toward pragmatism than many of their rank did, but Tiera was willing to bet rather a lot that several of the higher-born students were already writing home to complain. For others, this clothing might be the finest thing they had worn in their lives, and that was it's own kind of discomfort. Sadly, Dahelia was the only one to openly agree with her.

Dahelia was blonde and slender, though her features did not quite fit her face, and already knew Desdemona, having been the one to comment on the dangers of boredom. Mellie was a big girl, with strong arms and mouse-brown hair, but quiet and withdrawn. For all of their different backgrounds, Tiera could easily see them becoming close friends.

The fourth of their number was Desdemona, who was friendly, of an excitable nature, and the main reason that Tiera currently wanted to go home.

Trying to slow her still-racing heartbeat, Tiera walked into the Great Hall and sat down near Mikhail, currently alone as he waited for his own friends and room-mates to arrive. He looked up from his porridge, eyes widening in surprise. “What happened to you?"

His shock was understandable; of the three children raised by Lord and Lady Destrier, Tiera was usually the one who could be counted on to actually follow her mother’s rather strident instructions about keeping up appearances and remaining tidy at all times. Usually, Tiera was good at doing so (and at attempting to make sure that Mikhail and Cirne did the same).

Right now, her clothing was rumpled, her hair frizzy and eyes wild, and she looked and felt ready to fall asleep at the breakfast table.

None of it was Mikhail’s fault, but Tiera scowled at him anyway. “My room-mate, Desdemona, is a Songweaver.”

From her cousin’s confused frown, he wasn’t following, “And?”

His lack of comprehension only made her more annoyed, and Tiera's scowl deepened. "And she hums in her sleep! Every morning we get woken up at the crack of dawn by something exploding! This morning it was my hairbrush, and I didn’t bring a spare!"

Finally understanding her upset, Mikhail winced in sympathy. The... erratic nature of a songweaver's power, coupled with the complete lack of focus or truly bizzare hyperfocus conveyed by a dream-state made for... interesting results. "Have you tried gagging her?"

Mellie and Dahelia joined them, looking as exhausted as Tiera did, and sat down beside Tiera. Mellie ignored the food entirely, resting her head on her folded arms. "Believe me, I'm giving it serious consideration."

The big girl’s breathing was already evening out into the slow, measured pace of sleep. Tiera and Dahelia exchanged looks over her head. Tiera raised an eyebrow. “Wait until she’s asleep, then do it?”

Dahelia considered the notion for all of two seconds before nodding firmly. “I’ll hold her down. I have a spare brush you can borrow until the next market-day, too."

Tiera didn’t get the chance to thank her beyond a grateful smile, because Mellie bolted upright when someone pushed their chair back too quickly, scraping loudly against the stone floor. Starting around wildly for a moment, she rubbed her hands over her face. “I’ll help. We can blame it on impaired judgement due to inadequate sleep.”

From the look on his face, Mikhail wasn’t quite so assured on whether or not that would work as a defence, but if gagging a friend meant the ability to get more than a few hours of sleep, Tiera would take it.

Gagging Desdemona, as it turned out, only resulted in the entire Enclave sharing their misery. Two hours before dawn, everyone woke up to an explosion that turned the framework of a shed, thankfully uninhabited and away from anything important, into so many splinters. Tiera staggered outside with the others to view the carnage, Desdemona at her side.

Belatedly noticing that she was wearing a gag in the first place, Desdemona pulled off the silk kerchief and tucked it away in a pocket. “This is getting out of hand. I really hope that the Instructors can come up with something to help.”

Dahelia was falling asleep against Mellie’s broad shoulder, but forced one eye open. “Did you have the same thing happen back home?”

Desdemona nodded. “Yes, but not as severe. Back home it was just a loud bang, and my parents solved the problem by moving me nearer the servants quarters, since they had to be up with the dawn anyway.”

Tiera’s opinion of her friend’s parents diminished somewhat, but she merely shrugged. “Maybe it’s the excess amount of latent magic concentrated in the Enclave, as opposed to where you live?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Tiera spotted Kerdos, grabbing a pair of twins about his age, who were attempting to make their way to gather some of the larger splinters, identical expressions of curious glee on their faces. Handing them off to an Elder, the woman who had shown Tiera into the Great Hall when she arrived, he made hs was over. The two girls who had been facsinated by the textiles that first day, who had since been introduced as Inara and Heather and who seemed like no more than fashion-obsessed gossips at first, followed in his wake. “Well, that was a new way to wake up this morning. Usually it takes at least a month before someone gains the confidence to try an experiment that backfires quite so badly.”

The cluster of girls all stared at him, until Desdemona broke the silence. “You mean I’m not the only one who accidentally blows things up?”

Unfortunately, an Elder was close enough to overhear. He was tall, dark, and highly intimidating, introduced to the students as Elder Severe. Tiera wondered if that was his real name, or a nickname based on his personality. She wasn’t brave enough to ask.

Elder Severe was also in charge of the students in Tiera’s wing of the Enclave, another baffling decision that Tiera was unwilling to openly question. Fixing the three not under his care - Kerdos, Heather and Inara - with a flat stare until they inclined their heads and quickly left, he turned to his charges. “To my eternal regret, young Miss Moon, you are not the first, nor will you be the last. I must say that we rarely see this level of unintentional destruction, however.”

Desdemona winced, and Elder Severe softened his foreboding stance, just a little. “I can see that teaching you control will be a high priority. I expect you will pick it up quickly.”

Damien, Vale and the third boy that shared their room, Thero, waited until Elder Severe had left before they joined the girls. “Don’t worry; Severe is strict, but he’s ultimately on our side.”

Tiera would wait and see before she made any solid decisions on that - in her experience Elders often said one thing and meant another - but everyone else took Damien’s word for it, so she let the matter rest.

Whatever else life at the Enclave might be, it wasn't boring.

If you enjoyed this story, leave a heart, a tip or a comment, and check out my other works, either published at the link above, here on Vocal, or on Medium.