Free The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy by Chris Bunch Page B

wryly, still seemed to think their happiest days had been spent there.
    Then the time came due and I rode off on the mare I’d chosen, Lucan. She wasn’t my favorite, but was quite young, just five, and I hoped to be able to keep her for a great part of my career. I took another mare, Rabbit, named for her over-long ears and thankfully not her behavior when I was astride, and two mules with my gear.
    I rode to the curve in the road, and turned to wave my farewell and take one last look at my home. It was hot, but the blur in my eyes was not from the sun. My father … mother … sisters … all the family’s servants, and my friends from the village, all were there. I fixed them in my memory, as if I were an artist taking a final look at his models before he hurries to his easel, as if I’d never see any of them again.
    And in truth, that is almost how it has been.
    I have only returned to Cimabue twice, for the funeral rites for my parents. Sometimes I was half a continent away, other times impossibly busy, and later it became unwise to do so for my sisters’ safety. That is not the complete truth — there were more than enough long leaves when I could have gone home instead of elsewhere.
    But I did not and do not know why.
    Perhaps it would be like returning to a dream only to see what a threadbare fancy it actually was.

FIVE
    T HE L YCEE OF THE H ORSE S OLDIER
    My two years at the lycee began in a roar, as hardened ex-cavalrymen, all former lance majors, troop guides, or regimental guides, chosen for iron bowels and lungs and eyes that could see a speck of dust on a uniform or a dot of manure on a horse’s hoof from across a parade ground chorused loudly, obscenely, and thoroughly about my shortcomings.
    Eventually we were shattered enough to be given grudging acceptance, and the army began to rebuild us in the desired image.
    I worked hard in the classroom, but never ranked higher than the middle of my class. Some of the required courses made my eyes cross, such as Military Etiquette and Parade Ceremonials. These would be crucial to a successful career dancing attendance as an aide to a general, but that was hardly how I wished to spend my life. I did acceptably well at mathematics, as long as the instructor could show me its use in the field. I can still figure, within an inch, the height of a mountaintop I must assault given its distance and the angle to the top, but as for reveling in the joys of pure numbers that supposedly express our relationship with the universe, well, I think that’s no better than what the priests prattle, and I leave such importances for temples.
    One course I remember well now was Battlefield Sorcery. It was taught not by a magician, which I found odd, but by a staff officer, which suggested we should not nap through his lecturing, nor harass him with uncomfortable questions unless we wished our first posting to be the Isle of the Forgotten, which all knew to be somewhere between Lost and Nowhere. He explained on the first day that he had a touch of the Talent, and had been selected for that reason. He further explained that the army deemed it important that a “realist” teach the course, rather than some fuzzy-brained scholar who’d fill us up with useless theory and pointless wand-waving.
    In his lectures, we learned the army’s concept of thau-maturgy’s place. It was important, but hardly vital
as long as it is present on both sides
, the officer, a captain of the Upper Half, explained. An army would march into battle, and the sorcerers accompanying it would cast spells of confusion and fear, attempt to influence the weather, cause landslides, make rivers rise or ebb depending on the needs of the commander. But since the enemy would be making their own magic, it would be almost certain the enchantments would cancel each other out. Of course, if one side fought “naked,” that is, without magic, it would be quickly destroyed.
    One of the more scholarly of my fellows wondered