Tarn's principal tutors were Select Kwang and Candidate Chiang, Tervola Aspirants destined to join Shinsan's sorcerer-nobility. Both were older than Lo, and powerful wizards. Kwang had but a few years to wait to become full Tervola. His destiny was guaranteed. Chiang's future would remain nebulous till the Tervola granted him Select status.
His chances were excellent. Lord Wu was a powerful patron.
The Tervola of the eastern legions, including Wu, also contributed to Tarn's education. He was the child of their secret ambitions.
Aspirants, usually the sons of Tervola, were selected for their raw grasp of the Power, and advanced by attaining ever more refined control.
Tarn stunned his tutors.
He learned in weeks, intuitively, what most Aspirants needed years to comprehend.
His first few tricks, like conjuring balls of light, amazed Lang and Tran.
"His father is a Prince Thaumaturge," Lo observed, unimpressed.
Time marched. Tarn's magicks ceased being games and tricks. And, despite the swiftness of his progress, his instructors grew impatient, as if racing some dread deadline.
"Of course they want to use you," Tran responded to an unexpectedly naive question. "They've never hidden that. Just don't let them make you a puppet."
"I can't stand up to them." Kwang and Chiang had shown him his limitations.
He could best neither, though his raw talent dwarfed theirs.
"True. And don't forget. Be subtle. Or suffer the fate they plan for your father."
Blood began to tell in a growing need to dominate.
"Lord Wu," Tarn once protested, when the Tervola was his instructor, "can't I go out sometimes? I haven't left the citadel for months."
"Being O Shing is a lonely fate, Lord," Wu replied. He set his locust mask aside, took Tam's hands. "It's for your safety. You'd soon be dead if the agents of the Princes discovered you."
Nevertheless, Tarn remained antsy.
The roots of his malaise lay in his treatment by minorfunctionaries. They granted honors mockingly, treated him as O Shing only when Wu was present. Otherwise, they bullied him as if he were a street orphan. Till Tran cracked a few skulls. The persecutions, then, became more subtle.
When Tam was promoted to Candidate-nominee the bureaucrats tried separating him from his brother and Tran. He threw a fit, set his familiar on his chief tormentor, one Teng, and refused to study.
Wu finally intervened. He permitted Tam to retain his contacts and interviewed everyone who came in daily contact with Tam. Many left with grey faces. Then he summoned Tam.
"I won't interfere again," he said angrily. "You have to learn to deal with the Tengs. They're part of life. Remember: even the Princes Thaumaturge are inundated by Tengs. Only men of his choler, apparently, become civil servants."
There was something about Wu that Tam had, hitherto, seen in no one else. Maturity? Inner peace? Self-confidence? It was all that, and more. He awed Tam as did no other man.
The bitter years began when Tam was fourteen.
Treacheries took wing. Double and triple betrayals. A wizard named Varthlokkur destroyed Tarn's father and uncle, Yo Hsi.
Lo brought the news. "Pack your things," he concluded.
"Why?" Lang demanded.
"The Demon Prince had a daughter. She's seized his Throne. It means civil war."
"I don't understand," said Tam, gathering his few belong-ings.
"You, you, get packing," Lo snapped at Lang and Tran. "The Throne, of all Shinsan, is up for grabs, Lord. Between yourself and Mist. And she's stronger than we are. The western Tervola support her." More softly, "I wouldn't give a glass diamond for our chances."
"She's that terrible?"
"No. She's that beautiful. I saw her once. Men would do anything for her. No woman like her has ever lived. But she's that terrible, too, if you look past her beauty. Lord Wu believes she conspired in the doom of the Princes."
"Why involve me?" Silly. This was the deadline Kwang and Chiang had been racing.
"You're Nu Li Hsi's son. Come on. Hurry. We have to hide you. She knows about you."
It was all too sudden and confusing. Willy-nilly, tossed by thewhims of others, he fled a woman he didn't know.
O Shing was, Wu believed, the strongest Power channel ever born. But he hadn't the will to back it, nor the training to employ it. He had to be kept safe while he grew and learned.
"Oh, lord," Tam sighed. They were three miles from Liaontung. The band included Lo, Chiang, Kwang, and a Tervola named Ko Feng.
A black smoke tower had formed over Liaontung. Lightnings carved its heart. Here, there, hideous faces glared out.
"She's fast," Ko Feng snarled. "Come on! Move it!" He ran. The others kept up effortlessly. Being physically tireless was an axiom in Shinsan. But Tam....
"Damned cripple!" Feng muttered. He caught the boy's arm. Lo took the other.
The black tower howled.
"Lord Wu will show her something," Kwang prophesied.
"Maybe," Feng grumbled. "He was waiting."
Tam found most of the Tervola tolerable. He liked Lord Wu. But sour old Feng he loathed. Feng made no pretense of being servant or friend. He plainly meant to use Tam, and expected Tam to reciprocate. Feng called it an alliance without illusion.
Their flight took them to a monastery in the Shantung. Feng left to rejoin his legion. Elsewhere, the Demon Princess routed the Dragon Prince's adherents.
Her thoughts seldom strayed far from O Shing. She traced him within the month.
Tam sensed the threat first. Pressed, his feeling of the Power had developed swiftly.
"Tran, it's time to leave. I feel it. Tell Lo."
"Where to, Lord?" the centurion asked. He didn't question the decision. One of his darker looks silenced Select Kwang's protest. That made clear whom Wu had put in charge.
O Shing knew little about the nation being claimed in his name.
"Lo, you decide. But quickly. She is coming."
Kwang and Chiang wanted to contact Wu or Feng. "No contact," O Shing insisted. "Nothing thaumaturgic. It might help them locate us."
They didn't argue. Was Wu using this hejira to further his education?
Again they were just miles away when the blow fell. This timeit was mundane, soldiers directed by a Tervola Chiang identified as Lord Chin, a westerner as mighty as Lord Wu.
"Tran," said Tarn, as they watched the soldiers surround the monastery, "take charge. You're the woodsman. Get us out. Everyone, this man is to be obeyed without question."
There were complaints. Tran wasn't even a Citizen.... Lo's baleful eye silenced the protests.
Chin stalked them for six weeks. The party declined to six as the hunters caught a man here, a man there. Chiang went, victim of a brief, foredoomed exchange with Lord Chin. He didn't choose to go. Surprised, in despair, he fought the only way he knew.
His passing allowed the others to escape.
In the end there were Tam, Lang, Tran, Kwang, Lo, and another old veteran from the Seventeenth. They hid in caves in the Upper Mahai. Their stay lasted a year.
Men drifted to the Mahai, to O Shing. The first were regular soldiers from legions torn by the conflicting loyalties of their officers. Later, there were Citizens and peasants, fleeing homes and cities ruined by the Demon Princess's attacks.
Lord Wu, though far from Mist's match in the Power, won a reputation as a devil. Her chief Tervola, Chin, could defeat but never destroy him.
O Shing gave the recruits to Tran to command.
Tran played guerrilla games with them. His tactics were unorthodox and effective. Much enemy blood stained the rocky Mahai.
Tam learned to keep moving, to be where his foes least expected him. He learned to command. He learned to stand by his own judgment and will. He learned to trust his intuitions, Tran's military judgments, and Lang's assessments of character.