Free Wartorn: Resurrection by Robert Asprin, Eric Del Carlo Page B

around the corner at that moment, waving one of those paddles they so generously used on students' backsides. Everyone scattered. Raven made straight for her quarters.
    RAVEN LEANED BACK on her stool and rubbed her burning eyes. She had no idea what time it was or how long she had been poring over her studies, and she really didn't care. She was determined not to sleep until she had mastered the lesson they'd spent the day studying.
    Though there was no test scheduled for tomorrow, that was no guarantee that there wouldn't be one. Unannounced tests were the norm, not the exception for magicians in training. What was more, since the tests were often of a practical rather than a theoretical nature, failing one could be injurious, if not actually fatal.
    Rising to her feet, Raven stretched and walked a few steps, all the movement her cramped cubicle would allow. Students' cubicles were designed to be utilitarian, not comfortable. Hers was barely large enough to accommodate a sleeping pallet, her study desk and stool, and a chamber pot.
    There was no mirror. The Academy didn't provide one, and Raven had seen no point in purchasing one for herself. She already knew what she looked like.
    Her mother had named her Raven in hopes that the girl child would grow to match her own grace and beauty. The truth was, her mother had always been very proud of her own good looks. It was her beauty that once caught the eye of a rich and powerful man of the city of Felk and moved him to relocate her from her small village home into his bed as his mistress.
    She had fulfilled that role willingly and with enthusiasm for many years, until she had become pregnant. At that time, her lover "retired" her, but with a stipend that enabled her to return to her old home and set herself up comfortably without having to work.
    As her looks began to fade at last, she had hopes that her daughter would blossom and follow in her footsteps.
    Unfortunately, it was not to be. Raven had been a chubby baby, and rather than melting away when she matured, her baby fat solidified and grew. Despite her mother's admonishments to "stand up straight" and "arch your back, don't sit there like a lump," Raven grew from being a plump, awkward girl to being a plump, awkward young woman with stringy dark hair. She had also never grown beyond a very modest height.
    Friends might have made her situation bearable, but she didn't have any. Her mother always held herself aloof and apart from the other villagers, feeling her years among the rich made her better than the rustic, rural folk she had grown up with.
    The villagers responded to this attitude with undisguised scorn, which their children emulated in their own fashion by taunting, teasing, and socially debasing the young Raven every chance they got.
    Denied any affection by those around her, Raven had retreated into her fantasies. Her mother had insisted that she learn to read, believing it was prerequisite for anyone hoping to someday move among the nobler set, and Raven proved to be an eager student. Quickly mastering the basics, she devoured any text or writing that came her way, and took to writing her own when the limited supply of new material was exhausted.
    Turning a blind eye to her actual surroundings, Raven fashioned a dream world she could retreat to at will, a world built from bits and pieces she had heard or read about, other lands and the Isthmus's various city-states. The nearest city to her little village was Felk, where her mother had once lived with her father. It was an old city, and a large one, and thus fascinating to the lonesome, homely girl.
    There was one fantasy in particular that she cherished and held dear: Someday she would seek out her father, and he would shower on her the affection and approval that her mother never gave her.
    That fantasy had particular allure, because, if her mother were to be believed at all, her father was none other than Lord Matokin himself.
    As early as Raven could