Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists) Read Online Free

faint light began to drift away. Worried he was boring the sint, Bayan hummed a quick melody, one he had used to entertain Imee in Pangusay a lifetime ago. The light returned.
    “Please, is it possible to … to learn Savantism? To force an emotion to bond with one’s magic?”
    An illusory leather cord appeared in th e air before Bayan. A small, gleaming black cube of stone coalesced next, threading itself onto the cord. The makeshift necklace curled as if hanging around the neck of an invisible person, and a humanoid shape formed of light and air coalesced within it. The transparent figure performed all the magical spells that Bayan had ever learned, faster than was humanly possible. Faint echoes of the spells’ effects burst all around Bayan: earthquakes in the ground, firebursts in the air, windstorms amongst the trees. With each combination of the six sacred motions—arc, wedge, cross, circle, line, and wave—the body of the anonymous duelist became colored by the hue of the stone. It switched to Avatar spells, darkening with each casting. In mere minutes, it finished the last spell and stood between Bayan and the sint’s light. The shape was pitch black.
    Bayan clenched his jaw, trying not to recoil from the menacing figure. Looking at the sint’s projection was like looking at his own soul, black and raging. Before he could gather his wits and say anything, both the sint and the black duelist image faded into nothingness.
    Bayan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was biting back. His whole body shook with tension. As with the last time he’d begged aid from a sint, the experience had been unforgettable—and incomprehensible. He shook loose his tension and brushed off some clinging pine needles. I hope I don’t have to wait too long to figure out what this means.
    Bayan hadn’t taken more than ten steps on the path from the steep stone stairs to Sint Koos’s cliff-top forest when a deep voice called his name. He recognized it as Cormaac’s. The older student was in a hex that had begun its training a semester earlier than Bayan’s, but while the members of Bayan’s hex were still noticeably improving in their training, Cormaac’s hex had begun to reach the upper limits of their ability, and rumors were spreading that they were going to start topping out and getting parceled out to duel dens across the empire for permanent assignment.
    “You missed supper, Bayan. Headmaster Langlaren made an announcement that one member from each hex is supposed to be meeting now at the Great Hall. He read your name off; you’d better get over there.”
    “Why? What’s going on?”
    “ I don’t know. I’m not there. And good luck getting a straight answer out of Taban if you wait too long and miss it all.”
    As the taller student turned and walked away, Bayan headed for the Hall of Seals at what was commonly considered the “front” of the campus, where the road descended to the valley and the rest of the empire. It was nice, he thought, that so many of the students on campus treated him as one of their own. He wished he could believe it was because they genuinely liked him, but more likely than not it was just because they knew, as did the whole empire, that Bayan had led his hex on an overnight rescue mission last spring and personally saved the emperor’s life and the lives of his family. No one would dare be rude to an Elemental Duelist who could give that explanation for sporting a rarely seen battle pennant atop his dueling sigil flag.
    Through two tunnels and across three tiny, isolated valleys, Bayan finally passed a large eucalyptus tree whose leaves were turning golden and entered the Academy’s main meeting room. With only one member from each hex present amid the usual ranks of teachers, the six sections of benches around the central dais were sparsely populated, and he could easily make out the identities of the two people standing atop the dais. One was Headmaster Langlaren, the tall,