Rahl swallowed before answering. “Much better. Khaill seems pleased, and I don’t get many bruises anymore. I still sweat a lot. He makes you work hard.”
Rhiobyn and Talanyr exchanged glances. Finally, Talanyr spoke. “If you’re really good with weapons, you might get assigned to a city patrol station.”
“From here?”
“It does happen, more than you think,” Rhiobyn said. “That’s for clerks and junior mage-guards. Most of the seniors will stay here.”
“Is that because…?” Rahl decided not to say more.
“It depends,” replied Talanyr. “Some of the mage-guards actually want to stay here. Dymat likes his duties here. So does Dymetrost. Others prefer it to Highpoint or coastal duty in the north.”
“If you could choose,” asked Rahl, “where would you like to be stationed?”
“Someplace smaller near Atla. Really, I’d like Rymtukbo, but that’s too close to Jabuti, and you never get stationed near your hometown. It’s too hard to be fair if you know people. Sometimes, they’ll move a mage-guard who’s gotten too friendly, too. They do it more than once, and he’s likely to end up here.”
Rahl could see why the Triad would follow that policy, but was it necessary for all mage-guards?
He stifled a yawn and then took another mouthful of dinner. It had been a long and tiring day.
LXXIX
On fourday and fiveday, Rahl spent most of his time back in the copying room, because, whenever he was gone, the reports tended to pile up. At the end of each day, Taryl sent him off to spar with whoever was working out in the weapons exercise room, but more often than not, he ended up against Khaill or Taryl himself.
Right after midday on sixday, Taryl entered the copying room, carrying his satchel. “Finish up whatever reports you’re working on and meet me in the training chamber.”
“Yes, ser.”
Taryl nodded and was gone.
“When he does that, I get worried,” offered Talanyr from the other end of the table.
“You two have it easy,” suggested Rhiobyn. “They don’t throw chaos-bolts at you.”
“Not yet,” Talanyr replied, “but wait until an ordermage drops a shield around you, and you can’t draw chaos from anywhere, and then he starts in on you with a staff or a truncheon reinforced with order.”
Rhiobyn winced. “They don’t do that in training.”
Talanyr lifted his eyebrows. “They do what they think is necessary.”
“As will I, if you don’t get back to copying,” added Thelsyn from the doorway. “You need to finish that report and get on your way, Rahl. You don’t want to keep Taryl waiting.”
“Yes, ser.” Rahl dipped his pen in the inkwell. He finished Grawyl’s report, both copies, and hurried off to the weapons-training area.
The door to the chamber was ajar, but when he stepped inside, he discovered that the space was dark, with the windows shuttered and covered in heavy dark cloth. Even the skylight had been blocked with something and shed no light on the training floor. A single tiny candle, surrounded by a frosted and heavily smoked glass mantle and set in the northwest corner of the chamber on the floor, was the sole source of illumination once Taryl shut the doors.
The thin-faced mage-guard held two heavily padded staffs. He extended one to Rahl.
Rahl took it and waited.
“We’re going to spar and keep sparring for as long as necessary. You will not ask any questions, and you will follow directions.”
“Yes, ser.”
Taryl stepped back and took his staff in both hands. Rahl did the same.
In the dim light that was barely brighter than total darkness, at least to Rahl, Taryl’s staff flickered toward Rahl’s left shoulder, and Rahl parried, aware that Taryl was far better than Khaill or any other mage-guard he had faced. He concentrated on following both Taryl’s body and the staff.
Even so, Taryl’s staff immediately swept under Rahl’s guard, and Rahl had to jump backward, his boots skidding on the stone pavement. He barely maintained his balance, and his next block was awkward and required a circling retreat.
Taryl moved forward, seemingly effortlessly, even as his staff cracked Rahl’s wrist. “Concentrate. Do you think that you’ll always be the best?”
Rahl forced his attention back to Taryl, trying to follow and anticipate the mage-guard’s actions in the minimal amount of light afforded by the single shielded candle.
For the next series of passes, although Taryl did most of the attacking, Rahl thought he was holding his own, or as close to it as possible.
“Stop!” Taryl stepped back.
Rahl lowered his staff, warily.
“I’m going to put out the candle. You’re to do the best you can. I’ll tell you when I’m in position, and when to expect the first attack. I would suggest you concentrate on defense.” Taryl turned and walked toward the corner and the lone candle.
Rahl swallowed. He was supposed to defend himself against one of the best he’d ever faced in total darkness-without any real control of the order-senses that had once allowed him to function in darkness?
Taryl bent over the shielded candle.
Then pitch-black darkness surrounded Rahl. He could barely hear Taryl’s footsteps as the mage-guard approached.
“Ready?”
“Yes, ser.” Rahl held his staff in a guard position.
Taryl’s first blow was to the right end of the staff, forcing it almost to the floor.
Although Rahl neither sensed it nor saw it, he pivoted away, not fighting the pressure, but letting it swing him slightly, as he reversed the guard position with the left side of the staff, before stepping back-right into a blow across his left thigh.
He staggered, then hobbled back quickly, trying to keep his staff up and moving, attempting to weave a defense against an attacker he could neither see nor sense.
The padded end of Taryl’s staff slammed into his chest, and, off-balance as he was, Rahl tumbled backward. His buttocks hit the stone floor hard, and he barely managed to hold on to the staff with his right hand.
“Get up,” came Taryl’s voice, calm, almost cold. “In a real fight, if you sat there and pitied yourself, you’d be dead.”
In a real fight, thought Rahl, he wouldn’t be blind and fighting a master mage. He scrambled to his feet and repositioned his staff.
No sooner did he have it up than Taryl’s weapon clipped the back of his right calf.
“You don’t always get to fight just one person,” added Taryl, somewhere to Rahl’s right. “You won’t be able to keep your eyes on everyone.”
Rahl turned…and took a blow to his left shoulder, and then one to his right. He retreated, but the blows kept coming, no matter how hard he tried to anticipate them.
“Stop thinking, and start feeling,” came from Taryl, who followed the words with a slash to the staff itself, striking so hard that Rahl’s fingers were momentarily numbed.
Rahl thrust wildly, and was rewarded with a return jab to his gut, just hard enough to double him up and send arrows of pain through his abdomen and chest.
It wasn’t fair! Rahl struggled erect.
“No…it isn’t fair,” Taryl said out of the darkness, his staff lashing out and thudding into Rahl’s thigh. “Life isn’t fair. We don’t get what we’ve worked hard to develop. Other people cheat and lie and prosper, and we do everything right and honestly and suffer. That’s often the way it is.”
Another staff blow-almost taunting-struck Rahl’s left calf, and he danced leadenly to his right, trying to weave a defense against a mage he could not see.
“Superiors abuse their position and make us suffer.” Taryl’s padded staff thudded into Rahl’s upper left arm. “It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.”
Rahl tried to keep his staff moving, but it was getting heavier and slower. In the darkness, the tears streamed down his face. This wasn’t an exercise. It was sadistic torture.
“It’s not fair when you can beat anyone in the light, and they make you spar in the dark.”
Rahl threw out a parry, catching something. Then he stepped back to the left, only to run into another blow.