The Callindra Chronicles Book One - First Quest by Benjamin Fisher-Merritt

down slowly,
as though making sure of her target and tapped the firewood. An
explosion of wind in a perfectly straight line cut a razor sharp
fissure through the center of the meadow, flowers, blades of grass,
stones and anything else that got in its way was sliced neatly into
two pieces. The firewood, however, was still in one piece.
    The string of curses she let loose must have
come from her time in the keep, or else maybe from one of the new
books he’d just brought home. Either way they were colorful enough
to make him raise an eyebrow. Interesting vocabulary for a slip of
a girl; he wondered how old she really was. When he’d asked before
she claimed to be sixteen but if she was over twelve when he pulled
her out of the woods he’d be surprised.
    “ Strange choice for an
apprentice Glarian.” He whirled, Sakar half out of her sheath and
found himself staring up at a massive hammer. “Hand off the hilt or
else I will smash your head like a grape.”
    Glarian followed the hammer down to the hand
that was holding it which was connected to an arm the size of a
modest tree trunk. “Thaeran, they let you out? I thought Lord
Edlras locked you up and threw away the key.”
    “ I have you to thank for
that, The Order sprung me when you started stirring up trouble
again.” The huge man smiled, “They even let me test for Master
again. You’re speaking to Hammermaster Thaeran.”
    “ Congratulations, surely
they didn’t spring you for nothing though?” Thaeran had betrayed a
mission, assassinated a crown prince he was supposed to have been
protecting and been caught red handed.
    “ Of course there’s a catch,
I have to keep an eye on you. My hammer is the only weapon in
existence that you can’t break. We know all about your aversion to
killing, so they figured I was the best bet for keeping you in
line.”
    There was also the fact that Thaeran was an
Earth mage and his powers were physically stronger than any other
member of The Order and that Earth opposed Wind diametrically but
Glarian didn’t mention those.
    “ So what are their terms?”
He asked, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.
    “ You are to stop training
this girl immediately, surrender your Title to the next challenger
and turn yourself in for breaking your oath.” Thaeran said with a
satisfied smile. Glarian had been the leader of the internal
investigation that had revealed his treachery and sent him to
prison for his crimes.
    “ Do you know what will
happen to her if she stops learning?” Glarian asked gliding closer,
“She will destroy herself and likely take anyone or anything that’s
in the area with her. You look at her and see a girl trying to
learn to wield magic, but I see a girl fighting for
survival.”
    Thaeran laughed, “I don’t much care Glarian,
it’s your fault she started learning so her death will be on your
head.” He shifted his grip on the hammer that he still had poised
overhead and in that moment Glarian sprang forward, slamming his
shoulder into the other man’s chest.
    Thaeran stumbled back, but before he could
recover, Glarian had swept Sakar from her sheath and called the
Weave to his aid. The blunted tip of the sword whistled through the
air, first to the four points of the compass and then to tap
Thaeran gently between the eyes. “You will report back that you
believe I am breaking Oath but that you cannot prove it yet. You
will feed them useless scraps of information to string them along
and keep them from sending backup. You will tell me the moment they
send another to replace you. You will not do violence unto myself
or my apprentice.”
    The spell was completed with the fourth
command and Glarian held his blade at the ready, just in case the
big man somehow managed to withstand his magic. Thaeran shook his
head as though trying to clear it, then shouldered his hammer and
trudged off in a seemingly random direction.
    “ If they’d sent someone a
little more adept I would have been on the losing end of