"Thank you, sir." Kiram bowed again to the older man. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"Yes, it's good that you realize that this does inconvenience us. It is not common to accept a new student directly into the second-year courses, much less accommodate his individual studies." Strangely, Scholar Donamillo's stern expression seemed to soften as he looked over the wooden crates. "I can only hope that you will prove to be the mechanist genius your teachers claim you are."
The label 'genius' brought a second flush to Kiram's cheeks and also a gnawing anxiety to the pit of his stomach. At seventeen, most of his achievements were still built upon his father's innovations. This would be the first time he would have to rise to a challenge alone.
"I will do my utmost to win the Crown Challenge in the academy's name," Kiram assured Scholar Donamillo. The older man offered him a slight smile in return. He reached out and brushed a clump of mud off Kiram's shirt.
"No doubt you will want a bath after your long journey. Scholar Blasio will take you up to your room."
"Yes, sir." Kiram snatched up his coat and his gray trunk and followed Scholar Blasio across the lush, green lawn to the three-story stone building that dominated the grounds.
"This is the dormitory. First-year students are all housed on the first floor of the west wing, in the old armory room." Scholar Blasio pointed to where the west wing jutted out from the main building. The windows were barred. "With everyone in a single room the night wardens can keep them out of trouble more easily."
Kiram was glad that he hadn't been forced to come as a first-year student. He couldn't imagine sleeping while crammed in a single room with a hundred noisy Cadeleonian boys. The smell alone would have driven him mad.
"Second and third years are housed together on the second floor. Those young men who stand to inherit titles, of course, stay on for a fourth year of Lord's Law. They each have private rooms on the third floor."
"What about the watchtowers?" Kiram gazed up at the two jutting towers that rose up from the third floor.
"The west tower is used for storage and the east one is for special cases." Scholar Blasio looked a little uncomfortable. "Let's go in, shall we?"
Inside, the building was dim and cool. Crests of Cadeleonian noble families, all woven in academy blue, decorated the walls. The royal crest of the Sagrada family was inlayed in gold over all the doors. Scholar Blasio led him past a statue of a rearing stallion, through a huge dining hall, and then up a massive staircase.
"Four of the lecture halls are located on the first floor, the rest are in the east wing," Scholar Blasio told Kiram as they walked up the stairs. "The dining hall and common library are directly below us."
"Everything seems so heavy and huge," Kiram commented. "It looks a little like a fortress."
"It used to be one. Three hundred years ago, during the first Sagrada dynasty, this was one of their great strongholds. After the Restoration the reinstated Sagrada king turned the fortress over to one of his favored vassals to train young lords in the arts of war and law. Of course, things have changed since then but we have not forgotten our history. In fact, it's right under our feet." Scholar Blasio paused on the stairs and pointed back down to a radiant, black design that spread across the stones of the floor below them.
"That is exactly the spot where one hundred years ago Calixto Tornesal opened the mouth of the white hell and defeated the Mirogoth invaders."
Kiram studied the fine web of black cracks. He didn't believe in the white hell or any of the other Cadeleonian hells but the sight of the burned, pitted stones still gave him pause. Standing in an ancient fortress, with a scholar relating the story and pointing out its exact site, it seemed almost plausible that a Cadeleonian nobleman had traded his soul for the power to drive back an invading army.
Even so, Kiram couldn't credit it. A soul could not be given up any more than joy or kindness could be bottled and sold at market. Only in death could the soul leave the flesh.
Kiram glanced to Scholar Blasio, searching his face for some sign that he was joking, but his expression was serious.
"Calixto's descendants still hold the pact of the white hell." Scholar Blasio looked meaningfully at Kiram.
Kiram wasn't sure if he should respond with reverence or revulsion. At last he decided to simply be honest. "In Haldiim tradition we don't believe that people are condemned to hells. We believe that in death all creatures pass through a shajdi and then are reborn in a new form."
Seeing Scholar Blasio's furrowed brow, Kiram continued, "Most modern Haldiim, like my family, don't give much credence to the tales of shajdis hidden in sacred forests or the Bahiim who opened them and claimed power over life and death. If shajdi ever did exist, it was in the ancient past, and they have gone now. But really, most of us understand such stories as metaphors for the balance of birth and death."
Only the very religious Bahiim took shajdis as literal gates between life and death, and the last thing Kiram wanted was to be taken for a superstitious ascetic who'd spend hours talking to trees.
"Really?" Scholar Blasio cocked his head slightly. "So, you aren't afraid of the hells?"
"No, as I said, we don't believe in hells. Shajdi make for amusing stories, though."
Scholar Blasio gazed intently at Kiram, studying his face. "So you wouldn't be afraid of a man who had been hell-branded? Who had the gate to a hell burning within him?"
Kiram simply shrugged. "I suppose not."
"It wouldn't worry you at all to, say, sleep in a room with him?" Scholar Blasio sounded almost incredulous.
"So long as he wasn't insane or sick with black pox I wouldn't be afraid to sleep in a room with any man," Kiram replied. It wasn't entirely true-certainly he wouldn't want to sleep in a room with a thief or murder or, honestly, a man who stank terribly.
"Well, that's good to know. Your room is on the third floor, in the east tower." Scholar Blasio continued up the stairs. Kiram followed him in quick strides. "It's away from the other rooms so it will be quiet enough for you to study, and unlike the other rooms, it's very spacious."
Kiram thought he knew where all of this was leading and decided to just get to the point, instead of having Scholar Blasio nervously list the amenities of his living arrangements when he'd already stated the east tower was reserved for special cases.
"You want me to room with one of these hell-branded men? A descendant of the Tornesal line?"
"You don't have much choice," Scholar Blasio admitted at last. "The other upperclassmen have refused to room with a Haldiim. They have no objection to you schooling here, but sleeping in the same room, when their souls are unprotected, is out of the question. However, since Javier's spiritual state is already.compromised, he risks nothing in sharing a room with you."
Kiram wanted to demand what exactly it was that these people imagined he was going to do to them in their sleep but then his thoughts stopped short as he registered the name Javier and remembered the dark, sardonic eyes of the rider.
"Javier? The man with the white stallion?"
"Yes, Javier Tornesal, Duke of Rauma. He will be your upperclassman."
Chapter Two
More than spacious, the room was vast and nearly empty. Two beds stood against opposite walls, one of them little more than a wood frame and mattress while the other seemed well used and only half made. A dresser and writing table stood beside it and several black, leather- bound books lay on the table along with an inkwell and a penknife.
Normally, Kiram would have found some excuse to look through the books. This once he wasn't paying so much attention to them.
Instead he stared at the maze of thin red-brown lines that curved and spiraled across the floor like a gigantic map of the heavens.