The Sage's Consort (The Scholars of Elandria Book 1) Read online

  The Sage’s Consort

  Krystal N. Craiker

  Copyright © 2017 Krystal N. Craiker

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1542511879

  ISBN-13: 978-1542511872

  To Michael

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book could never have happened without the support of my favorite writer’s group, especially Gina Horkey and Lucia Silva.

  My beta readers, Lorraine Hall, Elizabeth Kaupisch, and Pinar Tarhan, were honest, timely, and encouraging. Thank you.

  My mother, Kathy Craiker, is always my number one fan and believes in me. I appreciated her constant texts as she got to new parts of the book.

  And finally, my rock, my support, the love of my life, thank you Michael Dunn. Thank you for supporting me through this endeavor, emotionally and financially. Thanks for fetching me caffeine and reassuring me when I cried. Thank you for loving me even though I spend roughly 75% of my time in my made-up worlds. I love you.

  PRologue

  A crisp breeze blew across the autumn night, and with it a nefarious darkness crept into the otherwise peaceful country. Throughout Elandria, most of the population slept serenely, unaware of the evil that had taken root. Even the King snored in content, as he did most nights. Ruling Elandria was an easy job; no major conflicts had occurred in hundreds of years, and the King left most of the legislating to his parliament.

  But this night, Scholars across the land tossed and turned in their beds. Some slept plagued by random nightmares they would not remember. Others woke after midnight and never fell back to sleep. Still others never slept; their most powerful sleeping draughts could not combat this night’s insomnia. Upon waking, they would find that every Scholar they knew slept restlessly the night before. They would find no reason and would write it off as simply a shift in the climate.

  ***

  A young student dreamed in his dormitory at the Academy for Scholars in the capital city of Teleah. A crushing black force approached him. At first, he stood trying to examine the encroaching nothingness, his Scholar’s curiosity present even in his unconscious state. But it swept toward him, faster, and he felt a fear he had never known before. He ran. The darkness followed. He ran faster. The darkness quickened. He ran until he could not breathe and his side ached from the strain. No longer able to resist, he closed his eyes as the darkness enveloped him. As the evil swallowed him whole, he felt a pain in his heart, as if it were ripped from his chest. He cried out, and then, there was nothing.

  Quinn bolted upright in his bed, sweat dripping from his brow. His heart pounded like a thousand off-beat drums in his chest. He clawed at his heart and forced himself to calm as his eyes adjusted to the dark room. He studied his dormitory, trying to find his way back to reality. A glint of moonlight shone through the window. His bedclothes were tangled and soaked through with his sweat. His books were stacked neatly on his desk where he had left them. You’re in your dorm, he told himself. It was only a dream.

  But it felt like so much more than a dream. It felt more like a warning or perhaps a prophecy, a message. There’s no such thing, he reasoned with his racing mind. It was a nightmare and nothing more. Quinn untangled himself from his sheets and placed his feet on the cold stone floor. He glanced at Rafe, his roommate. Rafe had somehow turned himself upside down in his sleep; his feet rested on his pillow and his head hung off the end of the bed. He grunted and twitched. It was odd, Quinn noticed, because normally Rafe slept like the dead.

  Quinn crossed the dark room to the washbasin. He splashed cold water on his face, trying to shake off the last of his dream state. He had class early in the morning and knew he should try to get some more sleep. He squinted at the clock on his nightstand: just after two o’clock in the morning. He sighed. He felt an irrational anxiety at falling back to sleep; the nightmare threatened to follow him. He resigned himself to insomnia and picked up the Sage’s latest publication on the holiday rituals of the Deyoni people. He read in his bed until the black night became a pale grey, finally falling asleep for the last hour or two before dawn.

  ***

  Just outside Teleah, halfway up a sloping green mountain, the Sage of Elandria stood on her balcony, searching the night for something, anything. She strained her eyes and chewed her lip, looking for an approaching dark nothingness. She had woken from something more than a dream, something intangible that filled her with fear and despair. In her sleep, something evil had swallowed her, making her cry out in pain. She had awoken, breathless and shaking, shortly after two o’clock in the morning.

  Her head ached with a knowledge that something was deeply wrong in Elandria. Most Scholars put little stock in dreams, but she knew that this was more. For the last three hundred years, Elandria had flourished in peace, but she knew in her heart something had changed.

  After an hour, she convinced herself to return inside to her warm bed. Even if a mysterious darkness was approaching, standing on her balcony would do no good. She wondered if she should send word to the Academy and to the King. She decided to wait. She may wield the strongest earth magic in the land, but she doubted if anyone cared about her nightmares.

  As she drifted back to sleep, she remembered the strangest part of her dream. She had called out to someone as she crumbled under the force of the darkness, but in her conscious state, she could not recall the name. It rested at the back of her thoughts, just out of reach.

  ***

  Miles away, something evil encroached on a small fishing village on the Great Silver Lake. Nothing eventful ever happened here. The people went about their lives, selling their fish to the cities and towns nearby. Strangers were welcomed openly, including the two Scholars visiting to identify the Gift of the Earth in the local children.

  The back door of the local inn blew open in the autumn wind. A stranger, known to no one in town, had entered quietly after the last of the patrons retired for the night. He did not latch the door behind him. He climbed the stairs, careful not to make a noise, and picked the lock to the second room on the right.

  The two Scholars lay in their single beds in restless slumber. The stranger drew his knife and quickly slit their throats. He lingered a moment, watching the blood pool around them, drenching their Scholar’s pendants in red. Pleased with himself, he murmured a quiet word of thanks into the night and crept quietly back down the stairs and into the darkness.

  Chapter One

  A sharp pain in his side jolted Quinn awake. Rafe had elbowed him in the ribcage. Quinn blinked, trying to regain his senses. He sat in Professor Quickhorn’s lecture hall, an ancient stone chamber lit only by lanterns, which made staying awake even more difficult today. He had never fallen asleep in class before.

  To his left, Rafe seemed to be trying too hard to pay attention. Quinn noticed his roommate had failed to lace his shirt this morning and his long, dark locks were uncombed. On Rafe’s other side, Sarah stared off into the distance, twirling her golden hair with a glazed look in her eyes. To Quinn’s right, Jack had fallen asleep with his head on the desk, mouth slightly open, a trail of saliva leaking onto the wooden surface.

  Every student Scholar appeared dazed and tired. Jack was not the only person asleep. Quinn would have assumed the end of the school year and the approaching exams were causing everyone a new level of exhaustion. But both Rafe and Jack had mentioned how restless their nights had been, although they remembered no nightmares like Quinn. Even Quickthorn seemed tired. The elderly Scholar could barely complete a sentence without yawning; Quinn could see dark bags under her eyes even from several rows back, and loose strands of grey fell out of her normally t
ight hair bun. The slight woman leaned against the oak podium as if to support herself.

  “Oh, forget it,” Quickthorn said. “The last hundred years of history are boring anyway. Finish reading the chapter before the next class. It will appear on your exams. Class dismissed.” She yawned again. Across the stone chamber, awake students nudged their sleeping friends. Quinn elbowed Jack as hard as he could. Jack grunted in surprise.

  “You’re disgusting, Jack.” Quinn pointed at the puddle of drool his friend had left on the desk. Rafe snickered. “Clean that up. Quickthorn let us out early.” The young men gathered their books. Quinn had a full hour before his next class. He wondered if he could get a quick nap in before. Then he remembered his dream from the night before and shuddered. Perhaps he would find some strong coffee instead.

  “Mr. Atwell,” Quickthorn said. Quinn looked up at his professor. “Would you escort me to my office? I’d like to talk to you.” Or maybe the coffee would have to wait. He nodded. Rafe gave him an inquiring look; Quinn just shrugged.

  He followed the elderly Scholar out of the lecture hall and down the stone steps into the courtyard. He blinked; the sun seemed abnormally bright today. Normally the old stone walls echoed with chatter and laughing of student Scholars. Today it seemed unusually quiet. He saw multiple students asleep on benches or under the shade of the red and yellow-leaved trees; indeed, of the few people in the courtyard, most were in varying states of sleep. Quinn wondered if he had been the only one to have that dream last night. People don’t have the same dreams, he told himself. Even Scholars.

  Quickthorn walked fast for someone her age. She was small and the most wrinkled woman he had ever seen. Her features were sharp, but her manners were soft. She was Quinn’s favorite professor and his academic mentor. Her history and culture classes had always been his favorite, and Professor Quickthorn had so many stories and experiences that he found her courses captivating.

  Across the courtyard, Quinn followed his professor through the large wooden doors that led to a corridor of offices. She opened her office door and gestured at Quinn to take a seat. He was no stranger to this room; as her mentee, he met with her several times a year to discuss his academics and his progress. He sat in the overstuffed blue chair that had to be twice his age. The room smelled of musty paper, and dust could be seen floating in the sunlight that gleamed through the large window. It was winter, and the office was drafty. Quinn shivered. The professor’s fireplace had only a few glowing embers and no flame.

  Quickthorn took a seat behind her desk. She waved a hand in front of the fireplace, and the embers grew into warm, glowing fire, warming the office quickly. Quinn sighed. Growing flames from embers was basic magic, and he could usually just get a spark. Although he had the Gift of the Earth, he had never progressed past the basics. He worked twice as hard in his other classes to make up for his lack of magical skill.

  “Much better,” the old woman said. She yawned again. “I’m sorry. I feel as if I did not sleep at all. It seems to be a trend today.” Quinn nodded in agreement, wondering if she, too, had dreamed of the enveloping darkness. “Now, Mr. Atwell, your fourth year will be over in three weeks. I’ve noticed you have not registered an apprenticeship with me.”

  Quinn shifted in the armchair. At the Academy for Scholars, the students spend four years studying history, medicine, politics, and earth magic. In the fifth year, most accepted an apprenticeship in their desired fields, although some preferred to stay and conduct research or prepare for a career in teaching. “I thought I would stay and do research.”

  “I see. And what were you hoping to research?” Her eyes studied him, calling his bluff. She knew just as well as he did that he had not yet decided what to do.

  He looked down at his lap and straightened the wrinkle in his brown linen pants. “History?” It was a question, not an answer.

  “All of it?”

  “Um.” He searched his sleepy brain for a better answer. Last night’s book popped into his mind, and he thought that would suffice for now. “The Deyoni. The history of the Deyoni.” He met his professor’s eyes, seeking her approval. Instead she simply arched a brow. He looked down again, ashamed. It was not for lack of trying that Quinn had no plan for his fifth year and beyond. In recent months, all he thought about was where his future lay. Medicine never intrigued him enough to pursue a career as a Healer or Apothecary. His earth magic could never be controlled, so he could not very well travel to help farmers and fishers reap great bounty. He enjoyed studying people and politics, so diplomacy intrigued him. But he lacked confidence in all new situations and failed at initiating conversations. He did not want to return to a small, backward village to teach, but he saw no other option.

  After several moments of awkward silence, his professor spoke. “The other professors and I are worried. Your marks place you at the top of all the academic classes in your cohort. We haven’t taught a student as bright as you in years. Additionally, you have the strongest Gift of any of the current students. Yet for some reason, you just can’t control it. You’re powerful, but your magic is wild. Your intuition is strong, stronger than mine. In fact, your Gift of the Earth is nearly as strong as the Sage’s, I truly believe. To find you have no real plan with all your strengths is concerning.”

  Strongest Gift of any of the students. Quinn had to stifle a dry laugh. He had heard this before but never believed it. The Gift of the Earth is the power of Scholars. A small portion of the population was born with increased intelligence, an exceptional intuition, and most importantly, a connection to the natural world that allowed them to manipulate the elements to perform earth magic. Scholars educated at the Academy held immense power in Elandria’s society. Many jobs, such as healing and diplomacy, were limited to Scholars. Quinn had always been different as a child; he could never relate to his peers, and he found his village’s customs and beliefs narrow-minded by the time he reached age six. Strange things happened when he was upset: the ground would tremble or gusts of wind would knock over things. In the village, most thought he was possessed by a demon. He never believed demons existed. He learned early to stifle his emotions to avoid the uncontrollable phenomena that led the villagers of Corthy to look down on him and his family with disdain and fear.

  When a Scholar came to identify children with the Gift, Quinn was the only child in Corthy to have it. He was nine years old and the first in his village with the Gift in decades. The Scholar, a gentle man with brown skin and the whitest teeth young Quinn had ever seen, told him his Gift was immensely powerful. Quinn finally had an explanation for all his peculiarity. But he was still alone. When he got to the Academy over ten years later, he was two years older than most of his classmates. He felt strange, his conservative, rural upbringing setting him apart from his peers. He had good friends, but he had always felt a bit like an outsider in the grand city of Teleah.

  He excelled in his classes, that much was true. And he did have an uncanny knack for reading people and situations. But despite all the training, his earth magic remained mostly wild. While most of his peers could wave their hand over a small plot of land and grow multiple plants, he still had to hold an individual seedling just to get it to sprout. Then in bursts of his frustration, he would make a tree several feet behind him grow six inches or flood the small creek that ran through the Academy’s gardens. A block, magic Professor Viridion had called it on multiple occasions. Quinn had some sort of mental block that kept him from harnessing his power.

  “I don’t know what career to pursue besides teaching in the rural towns.” As the most educated class in Elandria, many Scholars chose to teach in small villages on the outskirts of the country. It was a noble calling, for some, but Quinn loathed the customs and ridiculous religious traditions of the outlying settlements. “I decided I should spend some more time researching before finding a teaching post after commencement.”

  “But is that what you want to do, Quinn?” Quickthorn asked, a motherly tone to her voice this time. S
he rarely called any student by their first name. Quinn felt a rush of emotion but suppressed it. He simply stared at her, unable to answer. He did not want to teach. He did not want to return to an isolated village with out-of-date customs. He certainly did not want to return home. “If you were offered the right apprenticeship, would you accept?”

  “There are only three weeks until the end of the term. I don’t think I’ll find an apprenticeship in that time.”

  She smiled. “That’s not what I asked. Would you accept the right apprenticeship?” Quinn nodded. It was a moot point; his peers had accepted their apprenticeships weeks ago. There was no time to apply. “Very well. I will check in with you soon.” Quinn stood and turned to leave the dusty office. He turned back. He had an urge to ask his mentor something off-topic and more personal than he ever discussed.

  “Professor?” She glanced at him. “I was wondering if—well, I had this strange dream last night. Except, it felt like more than a dream.” She gestured at him to continue, so he sat back down in the blue chair. He described the nightmare in detail; her face was unreadable. Quickthorn took note of the slight shake in his voice as he relived the dream out loud. Quinn was normally so rational and, well, emotionless.

  Finally, she spoke. “Interesting. A Scholar should always trust his intuition, and if it felt significant, then I suppose it’s possible. But I am sure it was just the change in seasons that kept all of us from getting a good night’s sleep.” Quinn nodded, only somewhat reassured. He thanked her and left her office.

  After he left, Professor Quickthorn pulled a piece of parchment from her desk drawer. She had a letter to write, an important request to make. She scribbled her message quickly. Then she paused. Quinn’s power was no doubt extraordinary. She decided to include his dream, as well. It disturbed her to see this rational young man so distraught by a nightmare. She would try everything in her power to get Quinn an apprenticeship he deserved.