INTERLUDE 8C: THE TEST
“I am the lie that must be voiced again and again. I am the thing whose breath pulls the tides. I am the twisted ankle and the rusty nail. I am Lady Misfortune.”
– from the Wyrdic Creed
“Fifteen gold!” Danaphrim let the glass orb fall from his fingers, clunking back down on the velvet-covered table. “I could get ten of these in Oldtown for that price.”
“Well, that’s why you came to my establishment, is it not?” The shopkeeper smiled, her mouth filled with gloating white teeth. “You clearly want a seeing-ball that works for longer than it takes you to walk out of the store. In this case, my young seer, I can only commend your choice. Did you scan the future before deciding? Our seeing-balls are sourced directly from the Wizard’s Hat, don’t you know.”
I’m not a seer, Danaphrim thought coldly. I’m a mage. I’m a master of magic.
He grumbled a bit, but he ended up paying almost the full asking-price for the seeing-orb. After all, the shopkeeper was at least half-right. He did want one that lasted more than five scryings, and he had briefly entered the trance to ascertain the most trustworthy vendors for his supplies.
It was the test, in three days’ time. He had to be ready, and applicants were obviously going to get ahead of the pack by demonstrating their wherewithal; bringing their own components would just be a part of that.
Danaphrim headed back along the Hill Road to Oldtown, munching on a hot beef sandwich as he went (and tossing the onions to the rats whenever he came across the horrid stringy things in his otherwise quite-perfect snack). When he reached his apartment, the run-down one-room hell-hole he’d been calling home for the past eight years, he kicked his way through the detritus to his night-stand and lit the candles, then emptied the contents of his satchel onto the bed.
The Tears of the Beast: a compound of extracts taken from over a dozen animals, perfectly preserved; the greatest shapechanging philtre money could buy. (Well, Danaphrim’s money at least.) The feathers of a phoenix, ideal for works of pyromancy. The shard of a child-killing sword, essential for the swiftest summoning of a particular demon he had in mind. The bottled last breath of a dying artist, an illusion facilitator like no other.
And, of course, the seeing-orb, for the clearest visions known to mankind… the clearest visions affordable on his budget. The final purchase had almost drained his savings dry, but Danaphrim didn’t care. This was his chance. This was the opportunity he’d been waiting for all his life.
Grandmaster Nelesto was taking on a new apprentice for the spring season, an appointment that might be extended into a permanent position, if the candidate was right. Dan intended on being that candidate.
Imagine. To be the one standing behind him when he gives his lectures. To be the one who helps him with his experiments, handling only the rarest, most fragile spell-components.
To be the one who inherits his secrets, his name and reputation…
Yune willing.
The old gnome had a number of apprentices already, but Dan had little doubt he could rise to the top. So few had received the training he had, exposure to the five mageries. Sure, he’d dropped out of Enchantment in the first term, and the two terms of Druidry he’d followed it up with had been an almost-total waste of time – but he’d completed a whole year of Divination, and the vision he’d had during his finals exams led him into taking the combined Wizardry-Sorcery course for extra credit after hours. Now, five years in the industry later, he still hadn’t moved out of his terrible student accommodation – wages in manufacturing were low, rents in Oldtown were high, and the mage knew it was time to make his mark on Mund, on the world… He needed a career, something he could write home to his uncle about. A job that was a profession… A job that paid enough for him to get a property loan…
While he ate his crude dinner he brushed up on his druidic spells – along with illusions they were his weak-spot, a shortcoming he hoped to offset with the Tears of the Beast – and then settled down with his crystal ball on his bed.
The trance was unclear, as usual. He’d hoped that using the orb as a focus would let him see a more-complete vision but all he perceived were fragments, a general impression of the room, its occupants… Grandmaster Nelesto would’ve scried the test, and his influence would interfere with his would-be apprentices’ attempts to pierce the veil of the future, discover their fates.
He sighed, and let the trance carry him off to sleep, a deep slumber in which his dreams were bright, dreams of spell-components kissed by power, glowing orange in the shadows of the evening sky.
No, not spell-components. Mund. It was Mund that burned. Mund that died to fuel the magic.
When Dan awoke he remembered, but it was too raw for him to dwell upon, too real for him to begin to recall details, connect the dots; and, mercifully, by breakfast the dream had vanished into the mists, going wherever it was dreams went, when they too died.
* * *
The working week and its monotony finally came to a close. After he cast the light-emitting spell, a red one, on the last bauble of the day and put it in the chute down to the boxing department, he pulled on his winter cloak and walked out of the building with his colleagues. Phimos and Deyra both knew of his plans, and when they bade him farewell till Moonday morning, they added a hushed ‘Good luck!’ and ‘You’ve got this, man!’ to their usual partings.
Starday arrived, the afternoon of the test, and it was exactly as his imagination had filled in the details. The hall was located in a well-appointed guild tower on the bank of the Whiteflood, a tall, narrow construction of coloured bands of stone. One of the Grandmaster’s current apprentices showed the candidates up several flights of stairs and into the testing chamber; it was only during the nervous, halting conversation they had while they were waiting that Dan found out the dwarf wasn’t just an assistant.
A dwarf? A dwarf, apprenticed to Nelesto?
Everyone knew that dwarves had the least magical potential of the various races. Considering their rarity, elves and gnomes produced mages and archmages at a staggering rate. While humans possessed little by way of supernatural ability, most magic-users were human simply due to demographics. But dwarves – bearing in mind the amount of them in the city, there were very few working in the magic sector. Thinking back about it, Dan had only met three or four dwarves in all his years working for Eturiel’s Enigmas – while he’d met dozens of elves and gnomes, and hundreds of fellow human mages.
The chap must be serious about pursuing his career, if the Grandmaster accepted him, Dan reminded himself.
He looked around at the other contenders. They were waiting in a room of oak and blue velvet curtains, large enough for them to spread out. As far as he was aware, there was only a single position open, and his dozen-or-so rivals seemed to be aware of that fact too. There was a lot of low muttering, a lot of last-minute spellbook-page flipping, a lot of clinks and rustles from hands frantically digging through bags of reagents.
Except for one applicant – a youngster even by Dan’s standards, the one who’d known that the dwarf was one of the Grandmaster’s apprentices. He was a foreigner with a complexion similar to Danaphrim’s own, hidden behind thick black whiskers and beneath a crooked mage’s hat. His brown leather robe looked more like a coat, and seemed to have known better days; it was strung with belts covered in component-pouches, but the young man seemed quite content with their layout. His hands were folded in his sleeves, and he stood closer to the centre of the room than anyone else, appearing open to conversation, a broad smile on his face.
Why isn’t he nervous? Dan thought; and wondering about that only made him feel more nervous still. There were mages here twice the smiling boy’s age, there were elves and a gods-damned gnome in here – just what was the lad so happy about?
Everyone straightened up when Grandmaster Nelesto entered, floating a few feet off the floor on the winds of wizardry.
The gnome was old. He was beardless, but there was a day’s growth of stubble on his cheeks and neck – he wore what remained of his hair in two spiky tufts behind his ears. His eyebrows were thick and white. His robe was exquisite, gold and grey and flowing, a sunlit forest river.
“Welcome!” His voice was deep for a gnome’s, and didn’t sound particularly welcoming. “I am Aubrel Nelesto, Master of the Sixth Way.” He came to hover with his back to one of the walls, and everyone followed him with their eyes. “You have come seeking tutelage, seeking the chance to garner your own accolades, fate willing.” He held out his little arm and the wrinkly hand extended from the sleeve’s cuff, pointing a tiny old finger at them. “Know this! There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. Even Timesnatcher can’t sit on his backside when he has a vision – he has to act! That’s why we’re here today. Well… why you’re here.”
The Grandmaster turned to the room’s entrance – he’d left the door ajar behind him – and beckoned to someone just out of sight.
It was the apprentices. One by one they filed in, nine of them. Their mage robes were plain but each and every one of them had an air of superiority about them: even the ones with true wisdom in their eyes still wore smug smiles on their lips.
Dan’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t exactly been expecting a written exam – what was I expecting, precisely? – but he’d never imagined the test would be quite so public as this.
They were to perform, not just for the Grandmaster but in front of an audience, an audience made up of the competition, of students more advanced than them?
As the last apprentice entered, the dwarf who’d led them to the room, one of the candidates balked and made a run for it. It was one of the indigenous Mundians, his pale skin turned white with stress and nausea, and he vanished through the doorway, almost bowling both himself and the dwarf over as he went.
The sound of the man’s fleeing feet slapping the stairs slowly faded.
Well… that’s one down, at least, Dan thought grimly. He had control of his stomach, his rebellious late breakfast… for now.
“The accolades begin now!” Nelesto went on, as though nothing had happened. “You see my students. Each of them has invented a greater variety of spells in the last twelve months than the average mage learns in a decade of schooling! We are extremely exclusive. We share our secrets only amongst ourselves.”
Dan looked around at the smug apprentices.
“It’s possible that not one of you produces magic of an acceptable quality,” the gnome continued. “Yet there is only one apprenticeship on offer. I will take only the very best in the city. My current students will help me make my decision, as always.”
Yeah, right, Dan thought sourly. You’ve definitely scried this out. You probably already know who wins.
“Know this also. He or she who proves the greatest, will be accepted by my students as one of their own. You will receive help, guidance, not rejection and rivalries. This is at the heart of what I do here, with the Sixth Way. All artificial barriers to learning are set aside! We have our love of the art itself, and need naught else to sustain us!”
Dan felt the fire of inspiration in his blood, and, for the first time since arriving, raised his chin.
“Good! Now remember your number!” Grandmaster Nelesto pointed to an elf maiden. “One!” A pretty-looking gnome. “Two!” A burly old Westerman…
The confident youngster was seven. Dan was nine.
“We will witness your magic in ascending order. Please, number one, to the front, here my dear. Everyone else, back!”
Dan headed towards the rear of the empty room, trying to stride with the same self-assured expression that the bearded youngster wore on his face. Behind him, he heard the drifting Grandmaster offer a few words of encouragement to the quivering wreck of an elf maiden whose turn was first.
Within a few moments everyone was in place, the apprentices standing at the very back, leaning against the wall. The poor girl – she might’ve been fifty, because she looked like a teenager – was shaking in her boots; she was twisting a coil of her peach-coloured hair in her hands.
“Don’t be alarmed. You are to demonstrate one spell and one spell only. Each of you will have five turns, and should present a spell from a different magery on each demonstration. There are twelve of you, how nice, so we should be here a good while – please, if anyone requires it, there is a bathroom and refreshments just down the corridor. Do ensure you’re present when you are called, however.
“A word to the wise. It would behove you to begin with those schools of magic with which you are least proficient. We won’t necessarily assign any greater weight to the last spell than the first, so don’t fret if your fifth fizzles. But… well, we have noticed that we do tend to remember a grand finale.”
Dan caught the sound of some apprentices murmuring appreciatively behind him.
“Anyway – my dear. That should take some of the pressure off going first. Now, if you’d like to begin your preparations?”
The elf took a deep breath, let go of her coral curls, and got her act together.
Once she started, it was obvious to Dan just how good she was. She was preparing something from the divination school, he was pretty sure. His strongest, her weakest…
How magery was developed in the first place was the quintessential question of all magic research; finding those trails and unlocking new spells, new combinations of phrases, was the true calling of the mage. Sorcery, it was said, was the purest of mageries, due to its primary reliance on the genuine tongues of power: Etheric, Netheric, Infernal. The nature of the encryption which Litenwelt Kordaine and the others had used to formulate the tongue of spell-incantation was the core mystery of the world, in Dan’s eyes. (In the eyes of the most-popular modern theorists in the field, that was.) As he listened to her voice, he could almost hear the Etheric cadence to the elf’s chanting, even though the words would be meaningless in every magical tongue other than Materium’s. Other than the Five’s.
“I-if someone would be so kind as to hide this for me?”
None of the applicants dared move but an apprentice swaggered down from the back, took the proffered piece of chalk from the elf-girl’s hand and headed back.
On the way, Dan noticed as he tossed it to one of his friends, a burly lad who snatched it out of the air, reached into his boot and stowed it away inside his sock.
“Done,” the first apprentice called.
The elf turned back around and finished her spell, tapping her little glass bell with a small hammer; the bell shattered, and a light came into the elf’s eyes.
“I sense…” The maiden flicked her hair back behind her ears and took a few steps closer. “The chalk… It’s in a…” Her nose wrinkled. “A very smelly place…”
Everyone laughed: the candidates giggled somewhat nervously, while the apprentices roared, the burly guy loudest of all.
The elf successfully retrieved the chalk from the toxic sock – the apprentice wouldn’t do it for her, merely holding out his leg with a smirk on his face – and the Grandmaster seemed hardly to notice, nonchalantly congratulating her. Then it was number two’s go.
The turns went by. A gnome woman in a raunchy corset-style robe loosed a mediocre fireball that might’ve ignited its target… if its target was a bundle of exceptionally-dry kindling. An old man failed a shapechange.
Faint traces of a healing spell that would serve to heal a whole scabby knee. The tiny, almost-transparent illusion of a mouse, useful perhaps for toy-making and distracting cats for five minutes. A botched attempt to summon an imp, creating only a red flame that laughed mockingly for ten seconds.
When number seven was called, Dan perked up.
Let’s see what Mr. Confident can manage, he thought.
The youngster drew out a feather and a dried bird’s foot from his pouches, completed a short, squawking incantation and – poof! – he was instantly replaced by a fierce-eyed, brown-feathered hawk.
The Grandmaster clapped, as did some of his apprentices.
“Bravo!” he called. “A complete transformation, in the quickest time I’ve seen since…” The old gnome glanced down at the nine initiates, then frowned. “In a goodly while! I do hope you haven’t peaked early… How long can you hold it, may I ask?”
“Sixteen minutes, or thereabouts.”
The foreign voice emanated quite clearly from the hawk’s beak.
The Grandmaster raised a bushy eyebrow.
“From a single feather and trigger-phrase? No amplifications?”
The hawk nodded.
“If you wouldn’t mind maintaining the spell…?”
“Of course.”
The hawk half-hopped, half-flew back into place.
“Well, well… number eight!”
Dan realised it was almost his turn but he was distracted by the bird nonchalantly sitting there, cosying down in its soft bed of feathery flesh to watch the next contestant cast their spell. He wasted almost his whole preparation time looking at the damn thing. When Nelesto called for number nine his body reacted before his mind, setting his feet into motion in advance of him raising his head. He stared at the floor until he was at the front, then spun around to face them – the sea of expectant expressions – remembering only then why he’d always wanted to work in research, behind the scenes. Why he’d always opted for the modules with minimal practical exams.
Stage-fright gripped him, and the urge to run out the door was equally impossible to fulfil. He was rooted in place – every second that passed it would worsen –
Yune… Yune, please…
Then he remembered how he’d defeated the stage-fright, back in his second year, when he’d had to present a full vision to the class.
He closed his eyes.
“Number nine?” Nelesto asked.
“One moment.” Dan’s voice came out cool and collected now that he could no longer see the eyes on him – and speaking, hearing that smoothness in his own tone – it made it easier still.
He opened his eyes, smiling.
The horse-illusion he’d prepared turned out to be the biggest, most solid-looking anyone had yet demonstrated, and, while it couldn’t move and the Grandmaster didn’t quite clap, Dan could tell that his enchantment met the standard required.
I’ll do better next time, he thought, returning to his place, feeling a line of sweat running down his back under the robe despite the winter day’s chill. I’ll do my best.
He looked down at the annoying hawk, thinking of the fifteen gold he’d spent on his divination orb, of the consolatory looks that Phimos and Deyra would cast him on Moonday morning.
No. It’ll be looks of confusion and awe, directed at each other, when I don’t show up.
His eyes narrowed.
I’ll do my best, and I’ll win.
* * *
He couldn’t stop his hands shaking. He’d just completed his fourth spell, summoning a fifth-rank demon all on his own, one of the powerful kinkalaman, a servant of lamentation from Mekesta’s pits. It had drained him, mentally, seeing that awesome killing-fiend pacing there on its sword-blade appendages, awaiting his command. He’d only succeeded at it once before, but the gamble had paid off; the reagents (including the dreadful sword-shard, of course, but also a slave’s fingers unwillingly taken) were consumed to ash as the circle burst into crimson fire and the deadly shape appeared, a thin silhouette in the flames.
He went for his second bathroom break, and on his way back he ran into the elf-maiden drinking a cup of watered-down white wine at the little refreshment table. She offered him a smile and a nod so he stopped and took a cup for himself, pouring only a half-measure from the jug – he needed his wits about him, and, even watered-down, wine went straight to his head.
“You’re up soon?” he verbally prodded her – number ten had to be done by now. “Last go, eh?”
She sipped her drink and sighed. “I can’t wait. I don’t know why I’m still here – I’m not going to win. Stupid pride won’t let me let it go, I suppose.”
Dan shook his head, admiring her elfin beauty. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all know it’s between the gnome and Mr. Confident. But none of us are going to give up now, are we?” He grinned ruefully. “We should’ve run at the start when we still could…”
She fluttered her peach-flecked eyelashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about… Yeah, the gnome lady right after me, she’s great – Mr. Confident, number seven, right? He’s in the lead, I think. But you – you’re better than the gnome. You’re still in the running.”
He flushed with the praise, coming from her. “I don’t know about that… but I plan on trying.” He cocked his head at her. “How would you fancy commiserating with me afterwards? There’s a nice place on the corner –”
Her eyes widened. “Oh – I’m sorry – I would, but I’m – I’m betrothed…” Before he could recover or apologise or make some stupid excuse she gulped down what remained of her drink and put down her cup. “I’d best get back, before my turn comes around… good luck!”
She strode off, her curtain of sweetly-scented coral hair swishing behind her as she vanished around the corner into the testing hall. The old man, number three, came out and headed past him to the bathroom.
Dan sighed and finished his drink, then had another half-measure before joining her. The elf was just starting, performing the opening gestures to an enchantment. He moved along the wall to the back so as not to distract her, watching as she ran through a complex series of gesticulations.
It was a fine casting – the best illusion they’d seen yet. A hunting dog appeared, and then another, and another, slipping around from behind her, from nowhere, loping around the room, sniffing hands, tongues lolling out… ten, fifteen, twenty of them… they even stank like dogs…
Everyone applauded when she let them fade away, and the elf curtsied before returning to her place.
“Fantastic!” the Grandmaster cried. “And now – number two.”
Hush swiftly fell. Everyone knew number two was a real contender. No one would suggest aloud that Nelesto might be biased – and his existing students would have a hand in the decision – but this particular comely-looking older gnome wearing her voluptuous little robe… Whatever their faults, no one in this room was stupid. The fact she was a virtuoso at the arts of magic would’ve sealed the deal, if not for number seven… and, if the elf-girl was to be believed, number nine, Danaphrim himself.
The gnome bowed deeply, facing Nelesto directly (showing off her flexibility, is she? Dan thought scathingly) then reached for her reagents.
Number two sang her spell, and grew as she did, reaching four feet, five, six – ten, twelve –
Finally, at something like eighteen feet, she stopped swelling up. Her head went almost halfway to the high ceiling.
Everyone clapped again, and she spoke in a thunderous, fearsome voice rather than her own: “I can maintain the transformation for thirty-four minutes!”
Nelesto was laughing as he slapped his old hands together. “Oh, my dear!” he called. “That shan’t be necessary! Please, come down now, before the beams buckle! Not that I make a habit of discussing a lady’s weight.”
The gnome woman received a handshake from him – a warm, two-handed clasp – and Dan chewed on his lower lip in worry.
Three also summoned a kinkalaman, but made at least three errors to Dan’s ear, which delayed him considerably. Four summoned a small lightning-storm. Five changed into a bear, which was awesome, but far less impressive than an eighteen-foot gnome.
Six – curses be upon him – pulled out a divination orb similar to Dan’s only better, the model that cost thirty gold with the built-in magnification array, the trance-aversion safeguards…
When number six finished telling Grandmaster Nelesto what he’d had for breakfast, Dan was feeling sick. He’d planned on finding out just the same piece of information for his own concluding remark.
Still, the clapping was unenthused, the laughter tinny, half-faked. Perhaps Dan had chosen poorly; his idea being stolen might’ve been a blessing in disguise… This way, he had a little while to adjust his plans.
“Number seven?”
All eyes turned to Mr. Confident.
“Well…”
For the first time, he made a comment as he stepped up. For the first time, Mr. Confident seemed ill at ease.
Dan smiled.
Let him feel the pressure, for once.
“Well, I’ve saved my enchantment for last and I don’t quite know why.” Seven buried his hand under his hair and had a good scratch at the back of his neck, looking up at the Grandmaster from his lonely spot at the front. “I suppose I could put something together…”
He sounded – what, drunk? Drugged? Dan had hardly heard him speak, and he hadn’t noticed anything back when they first arrived… Had Mr. Confident been under the influence of something all along – something to enhance his performance, maybe, which was now leaving his system…
He started an enchantment incantation; Dan was no enchantment specialist, but it sounded like number seven had lost a wheel on the last lap. Whatever it was supposed to sound like, he knew it shouldn’t have sounded like this. It was as though a whole bunch of spells had been put in a cauldron and whisked to a fine paste. Mr. Drug-Addled didn’t even seem to know what he was doing with his components – his hand jerked from one pouch to the next in a dance that could’ve been beautiful if only there were some meaning, some purpose behind the motions. He’d barely crushed the sun-seeds before he’d pulled out a dessicated bat-wing, and Dan couldn’t follow what happened to either of them, abandoned in favour of a double-handful of gold powder, left to drift aimlessly on the air as his chant’s cadence changed yet again…
It was almost sad, to see such a strong contender lose it like this.
Almost.
It was a long spell, and Dan caught himself stifling a yawn –
All of a sudden number seven clapped his hands together smartly, stepping back.
“Hope you like it!” he said brightly.
It was the understatement of the millennium.
At first it was just a pair of marble-like trees flanking him, designed more for prettiness than as a simulation of reality. A flock of white birds appeared in the branches and started wheeling about the room.
Then it got started.
The train of hounds appeared, but this time they were chasing a fox – the prey went wheeling around the legs of the audience and the dogs followed, snapping and panting – then, just as they were about to catch it and Dan prepared himself for a grisly change to the illusion, the white birds descended, fighting off the dogs –
The hounds that made it through the cloud of razor-like beaks and shining talons were faced with no ordinary fox. Living swords whirling about its red-brown shoulders, it expanded, shuddering up to gargantuan proportions; the monstrous thing had stopped running, turning to glower at its pursuers –
As Dan watched a black storm gathered above its head, fingers of lightning flickering down about it like a terrible, majestic crown –
But it’s an illusion.
It wasn’t that he’d forgotten it wasn’t real – but the spectacle still managed to elicit feelings in him all the same, his body reacting to the sounds, the smells, the rush of purified air that swept down at his nostrils from the storm-cloud, stirring his hair…
Number seven let the glamour fade.
“Is that okay?” the youngster asked a bit uncertainly, beady eyes gleaming from the shadows beneath the hat. “Will that do?”
“Young man!” Nelesto cried. “To do that… improvised, without rehearsal, or foreknowledge of your competition’s spells –”
“I wouldn’t quite say that.” Number seven gave the room an exaggerated wink. “I’d have to be a fool not to scry ahead, eh?”
Nelesto offered the youngster a blank expression; after a noticeable pause the Grandmaster did manage to produce a faint, slightly-strangled chuckle, but when the old gnome went on to wave at the next contestant it was without the faintest bit of interest.
* * *
When his turn came, Danaphrim threw caution to the winds and drew gasps from his audience by winding back and forcibly smashing his seeing-ball on the floor. Fifteen gold, lying in a hundred jagged pieces of hardened glass – then the ribbon of power it’d contained floated free of the shards, lifting gently up towards the roof, curling pink and blue on the air, a twist of pure time.
As it reached the space in front of his head, Dan completed the incantation and breathed it in.
Please, Yune – if there was ever a time for you to listen to me, this’d be it.
It was a simple spell, very easy to perform – but it had a high skill-ceiling. Mastery was the key here. He still had a chance, this last chance – to be somebody – to become a member of this elite society – to give his life a scrap of meaning.
When granted a dash of time-essence, a small shot of the stuff like his orb had possessed, an amateur might buy themselves thirty seconds of double-speed, or fifteen seconds of quadrupled-speed… or a second rivalling a lesser arch-diviner. With a spell like this, mastery was demonstrated via experience. The adept could spread that condensed thirty seconds, making it forty, fifty, sixty… The expert could spread the second of inestimable speed, making it a second-and-a-half, two seconds…
He would have to use the time wisely.
Dan didn’t think of himself as a seer – he was a mage, a true mage – but he’d always favoured divination. He’d spent more hours catching dandelion-seeds than any of his classmates back at the Maginox – it was a good environment for him to do his sorcery and wizardry homework, practice summoning elements and eldritches, or just sit under a tree reading. He’d existed for so long under the effect of haste-spells that he’d probably lived three solid weeks more than someone born the same day as him.
He hadn’t done it in months, even years, but the situation called for something extreme, and he was here to meet that challenge.
The moment of inhalation was blissful. The energy disappeared inside him, infusing him with its potential. Doubts melted like icicles in sunlight.
It all came back to him, and he blurred towards the apprentices first.
Tying shoelaces together was child’s play – and possibly insulting, depending too much on the apprentices’ collective sense of humour to reliably win him the coveted prize. No. The old tricks would be useless here.
Halfway to the back of the room, he skidded about and made for the exit instead.
Something else. Something better…
When time reasserted its normal flow, and the audience saw him properly for the first time in what to him had felt like two minutes, he was trying to mop his brow with his sleeve without spilling the drinks in his hands.
“Ah – Grandmaster, you still appear to be without a cup. Please do forgive me.” He smiled triumphantly as he saw the old, floating gnome cast about, staring at the drinks in everyone else’s hands. “Here – I wondered if you might want to offer a toast, to such an exciting day of interviews?” He reached Nelesto and passed him one of the cups. “I think it safe to say we’ve all learned something this afternoon, whatever the outcome.”
He’d come a long way from shutting his eyes in fear before the first spell, to directly addressing his prospective new mentor after his last. He’d captured everyone’s attention –
And he’d overstepped. The idea had seemed sound when he ran through the hypotheticals, but he realised now he’d gone too far. No one had hands free to applaud which, after the last round of constant clapping, left a void, an awful silence ringing in his ears. Doubtless, they looked impressed with his magic, but the Grandmaster glanced down sympathetically at number ten –
I make myself seem presumptuous, as if the next contestants don’t even matter, he realised. They don’t, but I look vain, and that’s all that matters.
I should’ve stuck with my plan, and just gone one better with performing the vision…
Nelesto said something conciliatory, and the audience murmured their false praise at his spell; they drank, set down their cups, and number ten stepped up.
To top it all off, the wine didn’t taste half as good as it had when paired with the peachy elf-girl for company.
* * *
The Grandmaster convened the apprentices at the front, and, mercifully, the quiet debate took no more than three minutes. Whatever device Nelesto was using to fly – the effect had lasted far longer now than a spell would permit, surely? – its power was becoming depleted. The gnome genius wobbled a bit on the air as he whipped around –
“Without further ado, we would like to announce that we have come to a consensus. Congratulations… number seven!”
Everyone clapped – the apprentices enthusiastically, the contenders less so.
That’s it. All over. He slapped one hand into the other, slowly, sarcastically. Not like you actually need his tutelage, though, is it? Dan stared at the grin behind the youngster’s beard, the eyes beneath the hat gleaming gloatingly. Planning on taking over? Planning on making a name for yourself, being somebody?
Where’s my name going to be written down for the centuries that come? Tax records, rent agreements, employment documents…
I’m no one.
“Well done, well done indeed! Well, young man, might I ask your name?”
“Ibbalat Uroot, but you can call me Ibb.”
“Ibbalat… of Miserdell?”
Dan’s jaw wasn’t the only one that dropped; an audible clunk rippled around the room.
Number seven just nodded modestly. “I know it’s a bit of a big deal, the whole Ord Ylon business, but I never completed my formal training – my master was killed, you know? – and I’d love to study under you. If that’s still okay?”
Dan had a thousand questions for the dragonslayer. Foremost:
Why are you even here?
“But…” Grandmaster Nelesto seemed at a loss for words. “But… surely you could found your own college? Your charter –”
“I need the credits.” Ibbalat of Miserdell spread his hands apologetically. “There was no other tutor I thought I could really learn from, you know? You’re the best.”
There wasn’t even a trace of fawning in the foreigner’s words – he sounded a hundred percent sincere, like he was just stating a fact.
Nelesto’s aged flesh flushed. “Well, of course, we’d be glad to welcome you into our ranks, young master! You would need to commit to a minimum term of a year if –”
“Two would be my preference,” Ibbalat cut him off. “Supposing we don’t all get Everseer’d before then.”
The moment Nelesto grinned tightly and nodded, the dwarf apprentice took it upon himself to loose a cheer, almost tripping over his beard as he rushed up to the new recruit, grabbing the youngster’s hand and shaking it vigorously.
Then all the apprentices descended on Ibbalat, laughing, congratulating him, already showering him in a dozen different dragon-themed enquiries.
When Danaphrim got outside, night had fallen. The elf-maiden didn’t meet his eyes, striding off towards Hill Road. He was going the same direction, so he had to walk artificially slowly. She went at a fair clip but his accustomed pace was somewhat faster. Fearing the awkwardness of a prolonged overtaking manoeuvre, he decided to hang back, nurse his ego, sort his convoluted thoughts.
Yet even when he reached his flat he couldn’t stop that fateful phrase from replaying itself, occupying centre-stage in the spotlight of his mind. He busied himself with all the chores he’d left aside while preparing for the test, washing pots, sorting his clothes, cleaning…
“Two would be my preference.”
Two.
Two years!
He punched the wall, ignoring the neighbours’ cries of protest, punched it and punched it until he lost a knuckle, until he had to waste five silver of reagents on a healing spell to fix his stupid hand.
Two years. I’d have given him twenty.
It wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever fair. He’d always thought as a child that once he grew up the world would somehow come into focus, its injustices put in perspective, the real lessons brought into relief. But he’d had it all backwards. The older he got the blurrier, the greyer, the clear-cut black-and-white world of a youth became. One injustice revealed ten more, and each of them another ten. And the lessons… The lessons were buried under the same seething swirl of emotions that had always blanketed his mind. He punched the drop out of his wall, broke his own bones on the solid yew-wood planks, because he was still that person. Still that lost kid. Still searching for the lesson, waiting for it to bubble up out of his misery – for everything to make sense.
He introduced a bottle of strong ice-spirit to his lips, and barely set it down till Sunday was dawning and he fell asleep in his chair.
When he woke up Sunday night, feeling like he’d grown eight extra heads each experiencing their own separate hangover, he went to the glassless window, threw open the shutters and stood there with his hands on either side of the frame, letting the cold winter wind cleanse him.
I’m not going, tomorrow. Can’t face Phimos, Deyra. Can’t face the work. The mundane. The monotony. If I keep working there, I’ll die of it. The… the failed potential.
Something else. There’s something else for me.
He looked up into the swift-moving storm-clouds conquering the sky.
Yune had never listened to him. The gods of light up there, beyond the clouds, couldn’t be seen, by day or night. But the darkness was wily; it had slipped around the stars, filling every corner, every cupboard and closet in the world with its malice.
To have my name recorded. To be somebody. I don’t care why. I just want to be remembered. I just want to be important. Ibbalat’s already someone, already important. Why, Yune? Why couldn’t it be me? I put in the practice. I tried my hardest. I took risks. Still, I’m back here, back in this same stinking mess. Illodin, can you hear me? Can you promise me my name will be said in reverence some day? Can you tell me if I’ll be given a line in the Annals of the High Mages?
Can I exist, for real, not as a dream of myself?
There was no answer. There was never any answer.
No.
Mekesta… Mother… You sent your son to me, to do my bidding, your many-bladed son… Aid me now! Help me as I wade in your darkness. Let me see the way through – show me the distant shoreline, the way to leave all this… this misery behind!
The darkness held no special answer either. He stood there awhile longer, basking in the icy breeze, then, when he could finally bear it no longer, he fastened the shutters and cast himself back down on the bed.
He reintroduced the ice-spirit to his lips, and they met back up like old friends. As he drank, clarity came back to the world. Eight extra heads became four, two, one… finally, he was himself again, and it’d only taken him a quarter of the bottle.
Clarity. Focus.
The meaninglessness of his existence – that was the shadow through which he crawled. And there was no escaping it.
Yes, I see it now. Don’t look for a way out of the dark – there isn’t one. Embrace the dark. Embrace the chaos…
Ibbalat’s smug face formed out of the black pit of Dan’s mind, its bushy beard, the ostentatious hat…
Two years…
I know, now. I know, Mother. I know what I have to do.
He looked down at his hand, his recently-healed knuckles. He clenched the fist again, but this time his target wasn’t going to be a pathetic piece of wood.
No. In the end, he’d show the ‘dragonslayer’ who held the real power in Mund. The outland scum needed putting in his place, and Danaphrim would be the one to do it.
By whatever means necessary.
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