Free Hunter's Beginning (Veller) by Garry Spoor Page B

over his mouth.
    “A what?” Kile asked staring at Alex, who suddenly looked a lot smaller to her as he cringed under her glare.
    “A Freak is a term that some use to describe unconventional magic.” Daniel laughed.
    “I don’t think I like being referred to as a Freak.”
    “Well, Alex is right about something… he must have seen something if he was testing you for the sphere s of Wood and Metal. There’re not taught at the Mystics’ Tower… well… not anymore.”
    “Why not?” Kile asked.
    “There just weren’t enough practitioners.”
    “What happen to them?” Kile asked, but before Daniel could give an answer, the door in the back of the room opened and Mathew Latherby entered, followed closely by Garret Boraro.
    The other boys quickly took to their seats as Kile took to hers and waited to hear what it was that Master Latherby would tell them next. He stepped upon the platform and looked over the room, stroking his well trimmed beard. He appeared to be counting those that were left, and Kile got the distinct impression that he was disappointed. Maybe not so much disappoint but saddened by how few there were. If what he said was right, that each one was to be individually evaluated after the exams, then those that still remained were not safe. He turned his back to the cadets and whispered something to Garret who nodded in agreement before exiting the room. Kile was sure that as Garret Boraro passed her, he had given her a look that was not very encouraging, although it could have been her imagination.
    “Rooms have been made available for you. Tomorrow you will start the next and final stage of your exam. Good luck.”
     
    They were separated and then lead to their individual rooms in what appeared to be different parts of the tower by mystics dressed all in white who either knew very little about the exams or were strictly forbidden to speak of them. It didn’t bother Kile too much since she wouldn’t have known what to ask if they had bothered to answer her.
    What did bother her was that she didn’t have time to finish her conversation with Daniel about the new spheres of influence, not that it would really matter in the long run. She felt no more of a connection to wood or metal than anything else the yellow mystic had presented her with, but it was nice to know that somebody was willing to tell her something. She felt so foolish. She knew nothing about the mystics or the Hunters. Her only hope was that there were others that knew even less than she did, but, knowing the way her luck was running, they would have been the ones that had already been escorted out of the tower.
    The room was anything but luxurious; in fact it was little more than an empty cell with a single cot shoved against one of the walls. Kile sat down on the edge of the cot and stared into the opposite corner of the room, since there wasn’t anything else to stare at. She was getting rather hungry and didn’t get much to eat except for the Taka fruit, and even that she didn’t get much more than a mouth full out of. Was this another part of the test, to see how the cadets handled starvation? She wouldn’t put it past them. It could pass as a form of survival test. She lay down on the cot and stared up at the ceiling for a change of view, it wasn’t much different from the dark corner of the room.
    She had survived the testing so far. Whether she ultimately passed or not would be entirely up to the panel of judges or whatever they were calling themselves. Erin Silvia would be one of them. Would Erin vote for her because she was the only girl, or would she base her decision on the test scores, however they scored them? Kile was fairly sure that Garret would vote against her in spite of how well or how poorly she did, for some reason the weapon’s master didn’t approve of her being here. He wasn’t alone either, from what she could tell from most of the boys, they weren’t very pleased sharing their testing day with a