The Sorcery Code (The Sorcery Code #1)(22)
Within an hour, the battle was nearing its morbid conclusion. Staring at the bloody remnants on the field, Augusta knew it was a battle she would never forget.
No, she corrected herself. It was not a battle—it was a slaughter.
Chapter 14: Gala
“This is spectacular,” Gala told Blaise, looking down at the city below. They were sitting on his chaise, a magical object that she found quite impressive. Light blue in color, it reminded Gala of a narrow, elongated sofa—except that it was made of a strange diamond-like material that looked hard, but was actually quite soft and pleasant to the touch. Blaise was navigating it using verbal spells.
Gala especially liked the fact that she could sit so close to Blaise. She enjoyed his nearness; it made her recall the warm sensations she’d experienced when she’d kissed him earlier. Thinking about that kiss, she tore her eyes away from the view below and glanced at Blaise, studying his strong profile.
It bothered her that he doubted her feelings. She obviously lacked real-world experience, but she’d read enough to understand the mechanics of attraction—and what it meant, to feel like that about someone. She was sure that meeting other people wouldn’t make a difference in how she regarded Blaise. This trip to the village would serve multiple purposes, she thought, turning her attention back to the city below. It would let her see the world, and it would also reassure Blaise that she knew her own mind. She didn’t want to seem ignorant or naive to her creator.
“This is the Town Square,” Blaise said, interrupting her musings. He was pointing at a large open area below. “You can see all the merchant stalls surrounding it. And you see that water fountain in the center?”
“Yes,” Gala said, her excitement increasing. She liked learning, and it was great to see these things with her own eyes, rather than through a Life Capture or the pages of a book.
“Everybody who visits Turingrad comes to this fountain to throw a coin in the water,” Blaise said. “Rich or poor, commoner or sorcerer—they all come here to make a wish.”
“Why? Is that a form of sorcery?”
“No.” Blaise chuckled. “Just an old custom. It was in place long before Lenard the Great and the discovery of the Spell Realm. A superstition, if you will.”
“I see,” Gala said, though the concept confused her a little. Why would humans throw their coins into the fountain like that? If the fountain had nothing to do with sorcery, then it obviously couldn’t grant wishes.
“And that’s the Tower of Sorcery over there,” Blaise said, pointing at an imposing structure sitting on top of a large hill. “That’s where the most powerful sorcerers live and work. The Council holds meetings there as well, and the first few floors are occupied by the Academy of Sorcery, a learning institution for the young. The Sorcerer Guard is also stationed there.”
Gala nodded, studying the Tower with curiosity. It was a large, stately castle, made even more impressive by its location on the mountain. Whoever had built it was clearly making a statement. The building practically screamed ‘power.’
Looking at it, Gala realized that something about the mountain bothered her. The shape of it, the steep cliff at one end—it was just too different from the surrounding flat landscape. “Is the mountain real?” she asked Blaise, turning her head to look at him.
“No.” He gave her a smile. “It was built by the first sorcerer families over two hundred years ago. They wanted the Tower to be unassailable, so they did a spell to make the earth rise up, creating this hill. The building itself is fortified with all manner of sorcery as well.”
“Why did they do this? Was it because they were afraid of the common people?”
“Yes,” Blaise said. “And they still are. It’s unfortunate, but the memory of the Sorcery Revolution is still fresh in most people’s minds.”
Gala nodded again, remembering what she’d read in one of Blaise’s books. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the entire fabric of Koldun society had been ripped apart by a bloody revolution. The old nobility had gotten fat and lazy, disconnected from the brewing discontent of their subjects. The king had been among the worst of the offenders, completely oblivious to the changes taking place as a result of the Enlightenment and one man’s discovery of something called the Spell Realm.
Lenard—or Lenard the Great, as he would later become known—had been a brilliant inventor who, among his other achievements, managed to tap into a strange place that had the power to alter reality in a way that was uncannily similar to fairy-tale magic. It wasn’t a fairy tale, of course, and what was known in the modern era as magic was nothing more than complex and still little-understood interactions between the Spell Realm and the Physical Realm. But his discovery changed everything, resulting in the rise of a new elite: the sorcerers.
It started off as harmless little spells—oral incantations in a complex, arcane language that only the brightest, most mathematically inclined individuals could master. Some of the first sorcerers were from the noble class, but many were not. Anyone, regardless of their lineage, could tap into the Spell Realm, and Lenard encouraged everyone to learn mathematics and the language of magic, to understand the laws of nature. He even went so far as to open a school, a place that later became known as the Academy of Sorcery, where many of the subsequent magical and scientific discoveries took place.