by V. St. Clair
“This is silly,” Asher tried again, though both girls were still ignoring him. “Trish has plenty of friends and likes to be prepared for anything in the arenas. Maralynn is very popular and the optimistic sort, who prefers to hope for a reprieve from the Masters…”
“Stop pretending to mediate us,” Tricia snapped at him. “Just go ahead and take her side like you always do.”
Before Asher could respond to this unfair (or was it?) comment, Maralynn said, “Maybe he takes my side because he knows I’m right. You just don’t want to accept that the Masters are capable of being nice to us.”
“The Masters are never nice!” Tricia snapped loudly. “They aren’t our friends, they’re our teachers! Do you think they care if you get your hair wet in a challenge arena before the holidays?!”
“A valid point,” a quiet voice commented from the doorway, and the four of them turned in surprise to see Master Willow standing at the threshold. How they missed his arrival with the bright red Mastery robes he was wearing was beyond Asher.
Tricia clapped her hands over her mouth as though she could reclaim the last thing she said, looking utterly horrified.
Master Willow looked unfazed and added, “We generally aren’t very nice people,” to Maralynn. “As Tricia pointed out, we are being paid a lot of money to prepare you for the challenges of the real world, so our goal is to kill you as often as possible in the arenas until you all toughen up. I wouldn’t count on a reprieve tomorrow if I were you, though Asher is also correct in thinking we would not use the volcano arena again this soon.”
How long has he been standing there?!
Maralynn frowned but didn’t respond, while Tricia continued to look horrified that her mentor had heard her calling the Masters mean.
“I don’t suppose there are going to be dragons involved in tomorrow’s arena?” Asher asked for the fun of it. “Because Michael hates dragons.”
The Master of Wands shrugged and said, “How should I know?”
“Well, you are one of the people who will be choosing a location for us…” Asher pointed out.
“Actually, Sark is selecting the arena for you this time,” Willow explained. “He likes to see you, in particular, fail, and he’s quite upset about your wonderful discovery in the field of Prisms,” he continued without hesitation. “He’ll probably pick one of our worse setups for you, to console himself. Consider yourself warned.”
Asher raised an eyebrow while the others gasped.
“Well, thanks for the heads-up.” He’d always appreciated the Masters’ candor, if nothing else. “Any reason in particular you were lurking outside the common area, watching Trish and Mara fight like cats?”
This earned him a glare from both girls, which he pointedly ignored.
“Actually, yes. I came to inform you, Asher, that the Council of Mages has finished evaluating your research project and is ready to present their findings tomorrow. You’re to report to the Crystal Tower at eleven o’clock in the morning to receive your Medallion of Merit.”
It took almost ten seconds for this information to fully sink in, and then he jumped to his feet and yelled, “Are you serious?! They’re approving it and giving me a medal?!”
When Master Willow nodded, Asher burst into laughter, or maybe he was crying; it was hard to tell. He picked up Maralynn and swung her in a circle in his arms, hugging her despite her yell of surprise. Then he released her and did the same with Tricia, who called him a lunatic as he spun her in circles.
“Congratulations,” Master Willow continued calmly. “You deserve the recognition. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the ceremony.”
And with that he left them alone. Both girls recovered from their dizziness and offered their congratulations as well, looking truly happy for him and temporarily forgetting about their argument with each other.
Asher was so happy he even hugged Michael Warren.
He meant to tell Aleric the good news as soon as he got back to his room, but when he barged in, breathless and exhilarated, it was to find that his roommate was gone.
Oh, right, I’ll bet he’s spending the night in his workshop again.
Asher frowned at the empty space. Come to think of it, his best friend had been spending every moment of his free time locked up in his workroom for weeks, apparently committing himself whole-heartedly to his ambitious research project. He wondered if his own success was spurring Aleric to work longer and longer hours, hoping to catch up with his own groundbreaking discover in Prisms.
Aleric can’t be that jealous of me, he dismissed the thought. Besides, he was already pouring all his focus into it even before I had my big breakthrough. He must just be desperate to impress his father for a change; poor guy.
Privately, Asher thought that was a losing battle, because the curmudgeonly old man would probably never properly acknowledge anything his son did, but he didn’t have the heart to tell his best friend that.
I should go find him and offer to help. It’s not like I’m working on anything else at the moment.
The thought was not a cheerful one. He was still basking in the glory of his first real success, and the last thing he wanted to contemplate right now was diving into another hideously difficult project that he wasn’t at all certain he could make much headway in.
After the hubbub has died down…maybe in a week or two. Then I’ll offer my services to Aleric if he wants them, and maybe we’ll get lucky and knock out another big discovery together.
That was more than fair, given that Aleric had never actually helped him with anything he was working on, despite the offer. Content, Asher finished his homework and went to bed, glancing at his chrono before turning off the mage-lamp and noting with alarm that it was very late out.
Aleric was still gone.
Asher slept so late that he barely had time to get ready for the ceremony at the Crystal Tower, skipping breakfast entirely. He leapt out of bed as though possessed and ran about the room looking for appropriate clothing to wear; it only now occurred to him that he didn’t own anything formal enough for the occasion.
“Aleric!” he woke his friend abruptly, who had returned sometime in the early hours of the morning and was now sleeping on top of the covers, fully clothed.
“Ungh…” Aleric groaned as Asher shook him by the arm. “What do you want? Is the dorm on fire again?”
“No, worse,” Asher insisted. “I need something to wear to the Crystal Tower today and I don’t own anything other than casual clothing!”
Aleric yawned and sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes and blinking his surroundings into focus. He saw the panicked look on Asher’s face and cracked a smile.
“I’d loan you my robes, but since they’re Frost House robes, it would be a huge scandal for you to show up wearing them. Everyone would think I’d been disinherited, or that we’d adopted you at the very least.”
Asher made a face and said, “Oh lord, spare me the shame of being associated with the Frosts,” jokingly. He became serious once more. “And you don’t have any generically nice clothing I can borrow?”
“All of my clothing is generically nice, and personally tailored to fit me, unfortunately for you.” He looked apologetic. “I’m a bit broader than you, so you’d look a little silly in my ill-fitting clothing, or I’d cheerfully lend it to you.”
Asher sighed and mentally reviewed his finances, wondering how much money his father could loan him on the fly.
Not enough.
He exhaled heavily and said, “Oh well, it’s not like it matters what I wear. Surely they know I’m poor.” He was trying to convince himself as much as Aleric. “It’s better to just go as myself anyway; the Masters would laugh themselves stupid if I showed up looking all pretentious.”
His friend gave him a commiserating look, but said, “True enough. At least straighten the creases out of your pants though. No need to go in looking sloppy if you can help it.”
Asher managed to find a clean pair of pants that d
idn’t look like they had been crumpled on the floor for a week and changed into them, standing in front of the mirror and fidgeting with his hair in vain.
“You’re fighting a losing battle there,” Aleric observed smugly, watching him with enjoyment.
“No matter what I do with it, it just curls around my circlet and makes me look like I just got hit by lightning,” Asher vented with a scowl. “I don’t know how you get yours to lie down perfectly for you, other than the fact that you keep it trimmed stupidly short.”
His friend grinned and said, “You would look terrible with my hairstyle. I’ve always thought you needed that mop to cover your lumpy head.”
“I do not have a lumpy head,” Asher retorted, abandoning hope and letting his hair do whatever it wanted. “By the way, are you coming to this ceremony or not?”
Aleric raised his eyebrows in interest and said, “Do you want me to? My parents will certainly be there, as the representatives of our House, but I’m not technically required to be present.”
“It would be nice to have an ally there. You know I tend to let my sarcasm run away with me when I’m feeling out of my element.” Another horrifying thought struck him. “Oh no…I don’t even know where the Crystal Tower is! How am I supposed to get there?!”
Aleric barely stifled a laugh, the first time Asher had heard him laugh in a long time. We need to spend less time cooped up with projects and enjoy life a bit more.
“How can you not know where the Tower is? It’s in Osglen, which I’m sure at least one of the Masters has mentioned in the last six years of your magical education.”
“Oh, that’s settled then. I’ll just pop over to the largest of the Nine Lands and roam around aimlessly until I find it. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes,” he rolled his eyes.
“It is a giant tower made of imbued crystal, in an otherwise flat landscape,” Aleric pointed out. “But I suppose you can’t be late to receive your medal or the Council will take it as a sign of disrespect, so I’ll drag myself along with you.”
His friend mercifully refrained from changing into his own House robes, explaining that since he wasn’t the one being honored they weren’t a strict requirement, though Asher suspected it was mainly to make him feel better about being so underdressed for the event. Whatever the reason, he was grateful, since now Aleric only looked somewhat wealthier than him, as opposed to significantly wealthier than him.
They were out the door a few minutes later, leaving the castle and stepping onto the lawns to get direct sunlight for their translocation.
“I should probably lead this one, since you don’t know where we’re going and you’re so jittery you’d only get us lost if you tried,” Aleric suggested, and Asher nodded tersely, too tense to be humorous.
He touched his friend’s shoulder to avoid being left behind when the translocation took hold, letting Aleric lead them.
With my luck, this will be the day Aleric’s mind is on his research and he accidentally sends us both to a venomous snake-pit instead of to the Crystal Tower.
He blinked to shake the dark thought of having to battle snakes on an empty stomach, and when he opened his eyes, he exhaled in relief. If Aleric had been distracted while casting, it wasn’t evident, because they were standing in front of a building that could only be the Crystal Tower, which until now, Asher had never seen in person.
He relaxed marginally at having made it to the right place—and in good time— though now he had to prepare himself to make contact with every important person he could manage to meet, since this would be his first introduction into high society.
Today could change everything for me. I have to be flawless and charming…
“Come on, you don’t want to be late,” Aleric called back to him, already at the entrance, and Asher startled and hurried to catch up. He tried to take in all the sights as they entered the headquarters of the Council of Mages, but honestly, in the days to come, he couldn’t remember anything about what the inside of the place looked like. He was too overwhelmed with the magnitude of it all, and trying to plan out witty rhetoric to make himself likable and win himself a few new allies.
Aleric led them seamlessly into a large conference room of some sort, the walls of which were lined with rows of benches that considerably limited the actual floor space. Most of the benches were currently filled with mages, some of who Asher knew on sight—several Masters from Mizzenwald amongst them—and some he had never seen before in his life. In the center of the rectangular room a platform had been erected, upon which stood most of the members of the Council of Mages, save a couple who were milling about, talking to the others in the room.
“Where are you going?” Asher asked Aleric in alarm, as his friend was already walking away from him, abandoning him near the doorway. People were turning to get a good look at him, some of them making faces at his casual attire while others simply looked curious.
“To get a seat near the Masters before I get forced to take a chair near any of my political allies…or worse, political enemies.” Aleric grimaced and resumed walking.
Asher, not knowing where to go or what to do, followed him, assuming he could ask the Council member who was standing in front of the bench with Masters Willow, Reede, and Antwar on it.
“Ah, there’s the man of the hour,” Reede greeted him first. “Glad you could make it,” he added with a wry smile, glancing suggestively at his chrono to indicate how close they had cut the time.
“Sorry, no one actually told me where this place was, so I had to get Aleric to agree to bring me,” Asher responded with a touch of his usual personality. “If you really wanted me to be here, I’d imagine one of you could have taken the time to give me directions to the place.”
Master Willow, looking stunned, said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot that you wouldn’t have been here before,” sounding genuinely stricken by the oversight.
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” he forced a smile through his nerves. “I’m here now.” he turned to the Council member who was studying him carefully.
“You’re Asher Masters?” the man asked, a slightly disdainful note to his voice as he took in Asher’s appearance.
“So it would seem. And you are…?”
The man looked shocked that he didn’t already know.
“Calahan Biloxas, future leader of the Council of Mages.”
As far as Asher knew, the Council hadn’t yet finalized their votes on who the new leader would be, so either something changed since he last cared enough to ask Aleric, or else this Calahan was every bit as cocky as Asher himself. His age came of something as a surprise for someone so high-ranking; Calahan couldn’t be more than ten years older than Asher himself.
“Nice to meet you, Cal,” he began, only to be interrupted with, “Calahan,” as the mage corrected his shortening of the name.
“Okay, Calahan,” Asher began again, mentally deciding that this was one of the most pretentious people he’d ever met. “Where am I supposed to go when this thing gets started? Do I just follow you around?”
“Yes, I’ll lead you to the center dais, where the others will be waiting. You and Herewald—the present leader of this Council—will stand in the center, where he will congratulate you and present you with your reward.”
Asher nodded and resumed looking around the room for familiar faces when the others turned back to their previous discussion. There were a few Masters from each of the other Great Nine schools in attendance, visible throughout the room due to their uniquely-colored robes; some he recognized from the Inter-School Championship he’d participated in during his youth.
He was a little surprised that Sark wasn’t there as well, since Aleric told him that the Master of Powders had ambitions to join the Council of Mages, and he would hardly miss a chance to act smarmy and do some politicking when the chance presented itself.
Probably couldn’t stand the thought of watching me get awarded for anything. The two of them had never gotten alon
g, even during Asher’s first year. Aleric had always been the favorite where Sark was concerned. Asher wasn’t at all sorry for the man’s absence from the proceedings; it’s not like he wanted or needed the Master of Powder’s good opinion.
It was only in that moment that he realized something important.
“Hey, where’s my dad?” he asked the group in general, interrupting Master Antwar midsentence with the question. “Surely someone told him about this whole thing…”
“Who is your father?” Calahan asked skeptically, as though he wasn’t convinced that Asher even had one.
“Torin,” he answered immediately, liking the mage less and less. “Torin Masters.”
“Never heard of him,” Calahan looked unimpressed, turning to the others. “Is he relevant?”
“Of course he’s relevant!” Asher blurted out before anyone else could respond. “He’s my father, for crying out loud.”
It was Aleric who said, “He doesn’t mean relevant to you…he’s asking if your father is politically important.” He looked embarrassed on his friend’s behalf as he explained it quietly, though the others could hear him clearly.
“What does it matter if he’s politically important?” Asher turned angrily to Calahan. “He’s my dad; he should be here to bask in my achievement and be glad for the years of work he’s done to help me realize it, whether he’s the High Mayor or just the guy who takes care of familiars at Mizzenwald.”
Calahan sounded condescending when he said, “Asher, we don’t let just anyone be a part of our proceedings. You are here because you have proven your value to the magical community, and after much debate and discussion with those who know you, we believe you are worthy of this elevation into a higher social circle. Your father has done nothing—magically speaking—to merit the same consideration. His presence here is valueless; count yourself lucky that you are able to escape the restraints of your low birth.”