Blade of Tyshalle

A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers. One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time. One is mortal. They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless. They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers. They each die fighting the blind god. ZERO The only way I can explain why you'll never see me again is to tell you about Hari. This is how I visualize the conversation that ended up pushing me into Hari Michaelson's life. I wasn't thereI don't know the detailsbut the images in my head are vivid as a slap on the mouth; to be a good thaumaturge, your imagination must be powerful and detailedand I'm the best the Conservatory has ever produced. This is how I see it: "It's all here in the telemetry," says Administrator Wilson Chandra, Chairman of the Studio Conservatory. He wipes the sweat from his palms on the hem of his Costanti chlamys and blinks through a stinging cloud of cigar smoke. He licks his lipsthey're thick, and always dryas he looks down at the rows of trainee magicians who meditate with furious concentration below. I'm not in that class, by the way; these are beginners. Chandra goes on: "He's doing very well on the academics, you know, he has a fine grasp of Westerling and is coming along very well in First Continent cultural mores, but as you can see, he can barely maintain alpha, let alone moving to the beta consciousness required for effective spellcasting, and we, we're working only with Distraction Level Two, approximately what he will find in, say, a private room in a metropolitan inn, and under these circumstances I simply don't believe" "Shut up, will you?" says the other man on the techdeck. "Christ, you make me tired." "I, ahm . . ." Administrator Chandra runs a hand through his thinning hair, sweat-slick despite the climate control. "Yes, Businessman." Businessman Marc Vilo, the Patron of the student in question, rolls the thick stinking cigar around his mouth as he stumps forward to get a better view through the glass panel. Businessman Vilo is a short, skinny, bowlegged man with the manners of a dockhand and the jittery energy of a fighting cock. I've seen him in the netfeatures plenty of times; he's an unimpressive figure in his conservative jumpsuit and cloak, until you remember that he'd been born into a Tradesman family; he'd taken over the family business, a three-truck transport firm, and had built it into the Business powerhouse Vilo Intercontinental. Still only in his mid-forties, he had purchased his family's contract from their Business Patron, bought his way into the Business caste, and was now one of the wealthiest menoutside the Leisure Familiesin the Western Hemisphere. Netfeatures call him the Happy Billionaire. This is why Administrator Chandra is here right now; normally the Administrator has much more important duties than entertaining visiting Patrons. But Vilo's protegethe very first he has ever sponsored into the Conservatoryis failing miserably and is about to wash out, and the Administrator wants to soothe the sting, and perhaps retain a certain degree of goodwill, in hopes that Vilo will sponsor further students in the future. This is a business he's running here, after all. Sponsoring an Actor can be extremely lucrative, if the Actor becomes successfuljust ask my father. The Administrator wantStover, Matthew is the author of 'Blade of Tyshalle' with ISBN 9780345421449 and ISBN 0345421442.