The Adventures of Benjamin Skyhammer Read Free Page A

been given something with one hand while the other takes something else away. I was born with the Retrograph ability but not magic powers. I fell in love with Spark and she left me. I was accepted to the Relic Hunting Academy, did the training, then got chosen as Keeper. Expected to squander my life as a figurehead guardian of a Relic, with no idea of how it works." His bitterness threatened to overwhelm him.
    She began to nod.
    "Now you say there's an opportunity for me to get magic powers at this ceremony when I've just learned from a reliable source that the mesh glove Relic is accessible." He sighed. "Can you see why I would be excited about the ceremony but still want to attempt to get the glove?"
    "It's dangerous out there." Higgins massaged her eyes with her fingers. "What do you want to do?"
    "If we leave now, we can be back here in 40 days." He couldn't go without her. No one else would hunt with him and he needed a second person to get across that ravine.
    She sighed. "Fine."
    Skyhammer hugged her.
    "Get off me, you great lout." She pushed him away, smiling. "You said 40 days and I'm holding you to that."
    "Of course, Jacqueline." He'd known her for six years and still had never managed to guess her first name. At the Academy, it had started as a way for her to tease him. All this time later, and he was beginning to think she actually didn't want him to know it. That made him all the more curious of course. He hauled open the door to the street. "Let's get back to the ship and get that glove."
    "You guessed Jacqueline last year," she chided him. "You need to start writing them down. This is why we have Retrographs. Human memory is very unreliable." Higgins followed him out into the streets of the Four Hills business district called Market Hill.
    It was mid-day and dark. Across the street, a floating lamp illuminated the bald head of man clad in tight red leather closing his Retrograph Whorl, then stepping onto a thick dark blue carpet suspended a few inches off the dirt road. He kneeled, looked up, and the carpet shot straight into air.
    The pinch of envy was hardly noticeable anymore. Instead Skyhammer glared at Floatilla, the floating city above them that occupied the Royal Circle of magic. The bald man's carpet soon joined the flow of travellers going between the human capital of Four Hills and the floating city.
    Floatilla was bound to Four Hills or, more accurately, to the King. The King was the physical center of the Royal Circle and the source of human magic. To perform magic spells, humans had to be within ten horizontal miles of the King. Long ago, humans had discovered that the Circle extended hundreds of miles into the air above the King and had built a floating city so more people could live in the Royal Circle and move with the King if he had to go anywhere. He rarely left the Palace, however. It was a lot of work to coordinate the movement of Floatilla and make sure that no one was left behind or hurt.
    The floating city almost filled the column that was the extension of the King's Circle into the sky above. A half-mile gap remained around the outside for safety. A column in the middle allowed for transportation of goods and people. Layers of cities, each built on a thin disc of wood, housed powerful magicians closest to the outer edge and less powerful ones in the central slums. The outer walls of each layer were made of glass, the wooden frames faded by sun, wind and rain to a pallid gray.
    Skyhammer tilted his head back, always impressed despite himself by the sheer scale of Floatilla, and the organization and amount of magic power it took to keep so many humans and buildings and everything else in the air. He wondered if any of the King's Mages who managed Floatilla ever used up their daily quota of magic power and let something, or someone, drop. Eight or so miles away, sunlight illuminated mountains to the north-west and the ocean to the south-east. He opened his Retrograph Whorl and took a