by S T G Hill
And that hatred burned hot inside of her.
“Uh, Ellie,” Sybil whispered, “Your hands are glowing.”
The power had snuck up on her. It thrummed its way through her veins, invigorating every sinew, every nerve.
It was delicious. She wanted more.
But her hands were glowing. White lightning-forks of energy pulsed just beneath the skin, winding down her wrists and around her knuckles.
She put her hands on the invisible elastic band holding everyone down against the seats. Formerly invisible band. It started to glow at her touch.
Ellie could sense it. Feel it like a smooth, warm bar beneath her palm. One that she could break just by closing her fingers, if she wanted…
“Ellie!” Sybil hissed. She grabbed Ellie by the shoulder and squeezed.
Ellie forced her hands away from Turnbull’s spell. The power within her didn’t like that. It hummed inside of her, like someone had suddenly turned the volume knob all the way to 11.
She calmed down, slowly, while Belt and Caspian walked with slow ease across the stage towards the Primes and Aurelius.
The lines of power beneath her skin turned to threads, then disappeared entirely. Her whole body shook, just a little.
“You okay?” Sybil said.
Belt broke the silence that had fallen over the amphitheater before she could response. He pushed in between Master Shaffir and Arabella, bee lining for Cassiodorian.
“I’ve just heard!” Belt said, his voice carrying cleanly to the highest bench, “You know if there’s anything I can do to help, all you have to do is ask, Aurelius.”
Caspian turned his back on them and surveyed the audience. Ellie turned away, grimacing at the oily feeling of his eyes passing over her.
"We will recover," Aurelius said.
Even from the stands, Aurelius looked shaky on his feet. Belt saw the same thing, because he offered the aged sorcerer his hand to help him keep his balance.
Aurelius waved the hand away, and Ellie's heart swelled. At least the Magister didn't seem to think as highly of Belt as everyone else did.
"Do you think the Magister suspects him?" Sybil whispered.
"Maybe," Ellie said.
Belt would wipe the floor with him, she remembered Thorn saying. But was he right? Just a few hours ago, she’d seen the Magister summon a dragon made of pure magic.
“Perhaps I can deliver some much-needed good spirits, then,” Belt said.
“I see what you intend,” Cassiodorian said, his voice a mere whisper despite the marvellous acoustics.
Belt ignored him and turned to face the crowd. He was an imposing man, and he didn’t appear at all put off by all the attention paid to him by the audience.
If anything, he seemed to drink it in.
“Students of—” he started.
Then the Magister raised one shaky hand into the air and Belt’s mouth moved but no sound came out. When he registered what happened, he turned to face Aurelius and the two of them argued in silence.
Aurelius kept shaking his head, trying to remain calm. Belt grew increasingly agitated, throwing accusing fingers first at the Magister and then at the crowd.
Then Aurelius bowed his head forward and touched his face, his eyes squeezed shut.
He collapsed.
The crowd gasped. Turnbull, also distracted by the scene, let his restraining spell collapse and everyone jumped to their feet as one.
Belt rushed forward and supported the Magister while Arabella and the other two Primes raced in.
The spell, which Ellie thought of as the Cone of Silence, dissolved.
“See that he’s taken care of,” Belt said.
“Did Belt do that to him?” Sybil said.
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past him,” Ellie said. The truth wormed its way through her stomach.
The truth that said that Thorn was probably right about who would win that fight.
Belt turned back to the crowd, “I’ve come with an announcement. In order to bring the school back together after the underhanded attack you suffered last night, I’m invoking my right as prime benefactor of Sourcewell Academy to launch a competition.”
He let the last word hang in the air just long enough for the entire crowd to start murmuring.
“But what is a competition without a prize? The prize is this: the winner will accompany me for an entire month of private tutelage.”
There were several gasps. The murmur turned louder. Ellie’s entire body prickled.
Another rush of energy slammed into her, this one different from the others. She had enough time to scrunch her eyes shut and push the heels of her palms against them, dropping her assignment scroll, before she sat clumsily back down on the bench.
She saw… something. Ancient walls, corridors.
A maze? she thought. That thought came right on the heels of, What is happening?
As quickly as the vision came, it went. As a parting gift, it left behind a splitting headache that pulsed hard right behind her left eye.
“But such a prize requires a fitting competition,” Belt continued, “In three days’ time, six fortunate contestants will attempt the Trial of Minos. And, as part of my commitment to the safety of Sourcewell Academy, I have personally cast a protective spell around the campus. No one can get in or out without my explicit consent.”
Chapter 15
Belt didn’t deign to answer any questions. He opened another breach portal with a wave of his hand and he and Caspian walked through.
The amphitheater remained totally quiet for several moments, then burst into wild activity.
Most of it was people asking each other if they knew what the Trial of Minos even was.
Ellie watched the Primes help keep Magister Cassiodorian on his feet. A gnawing maw of worry chewed ever-larger parts of her stomach.
“I think I’ve read about this somewhere…” Sybil said.
Turnbull, still the closest teacher, started yelling at everyone to keep quiet. It wouldn’t be long before he decided to use magic to make that quiet happen.
“Come on, we have to find Thorn,” Ellie said.
She grabbed Sybil’s wrist and then the two of them pushed their way down to the bottom step, where they slipped around the curved back of the amphitheater.
The noise of all the conversation droned at them, then quieted suddenly when one or more of the teachers decided enough was enough and planted everyone’s butts back on the seats with a spell.
“Close one,” Sybil said.
“Did they take all the people who got hurt last night to the same place?” Ellie asked.
The campus felt abandoned with everyone back behind them. Ellie didn’t think she’d seen it so empty. It was kind of creepy.
“Yeah, Oak Hall,” Sybil added.
Ellie took a left at the next set of paths. Oak Hall was actually the Oak Grove College for Medicinal Magic.
That was quite the mouthful, though, so pretty much everyone abbreviated it to Oak Hall.
Students who showed a high aptitude for medical magic, usually kinesists since that branch of magic lent itself well to healing, went there for specialized training.
That building had been spared the brunt of the attack.
It wasn’t long before the grove of oaks that gave the building its name appeared over the rolling meadows of the campus. The mighty, thick-trunked trees made a natural wall, a sort of forest fortress around the clinic.
“How many people got sent there? I don’t think I heard an exact number,” Ellie said.
“Not sure. Around 50, I think,” Sybil replied.
“So many,” Ellie said.
She hadn’t seen Thorn since the attack. How badly was he hurt? Was he even awake? What had happened to him that he was still there?
Because anything that couldn’t be healed right away had to mean serious injury.
A few weeks after Ellie started classes, she’d been in an introductory channeling seminar and d
uring a demonstration from Master Thatcher, someone broke their arm.
Master Thatcher was a nervous new teacher, having himself been an upperclassman only a year earlier.
He’d been showing the class how precise a magical sorting spell could be by arranging a bunch of heavy old books by the height of the author.
Outside the room, someone’s spell had backfired, making a crack like thunder.
This had spooked Thatcher, and his panic sent the books flying.
A large tome that had to be half as tall as Ellie shot through the air and hit a kid named Remy right on the arm, fracturing it in three places.
The book, the largest by far, had been meant for the last place in line. Big book, short author.
She found it funny how memory could work sometimes.
Remy didn’t scream, she remembered. He just sort of stared at his crooked arm with disbelief.
To his credit, Thatcher cast a quick messaging spell and moments later a red-robed kinesist teacher arrived from Oak Hall.
The whole class stared as this medic wove glowing threads of healing magic into Remy’s arm.
Remy had flinched away, anticipating pain, but after he said it hadn’t hurt at all. It only felt kind of warm. Like someone dunked his arm into a warm bath, he’d said.
It took only a couple minutes for his arm to be all better.
So if they could fix a broken bone so quickly, what had happened to all these people?
Ellie worried about Thorn. And another, more insidious feeling threaded its way into her stomach and around the base of her spine: guilt.
They walked by the ruins of another hall, so badly smashed that it was little more than heaps of shattered brick and broken glass.
There was something else, too: a strange, pulsing feeling to the air. And depending on the angle you looked at the ruins from it reminded Ellie of peering through warped glass.
That had to be the magical fallout Master Shaffir mentioned. That strange aftereffect of powerful magical attacks that lingered and prevented other spells from working well in the area until it cleared.
“I still can’t quite believe Belt arranged the attack,” Sybil said, “Why would he even do that? I mean, he’s supposed to be Sourcewell’s biggest benefactor!”
They reached the grove. A light breeze ruffled the canopy of leaves above them, dappling the grass with sunlight.
Ellie went and leaned against the trunk of the nearest tree.
“It’s all my fault,” Ellie said, “He attacked the school to get at me.”
Sybil frowned, “That can’t be right.”
But Ellie could see the doubt in her friend’s face. The doubt that remembered how Ellie cast that breach portal to get them out of Vine Hall. Because Ellie was supposed to be an ab, and breach portals were powerful magic reserved for the likes of Belt and Cassiodorian who’d spent decades or centuries studying their craft.
“It is, though,” Ellie said. She didn’t want to lie anymore. She’d hinted at things with Sybil already, like telling her the attack was Belt’s fault. But so far she’d steered clear of the truth.
Well, she couldn’t hide it anymore. So she told Sybil everything.
Chapter 16
Sybil grew up in Toronto. Her dad drove buses for the city, and her mom taught second grade.
When she turned 14, she did some magic. Not a big spell, but big enough.
She and her father had been going for some pasta sauce and a bag of penne for supper at the nearby Sobeys, which, Sybil told Ellie, was a Canadian grocery store, and on their way to the door, Sybil noticed the little dog.
It was stuck in a minivan with all the windows up, the sun blasting down heat through the windshield.
She tried all the doors and found them locked. The dog, excited to see someone, kept jumping around and yapping, building up even more heat until it collapsed in a furry pile of exhaustion.
Panicking, Sybil kept shouting for help. But her dad had been talking and walking and hadn’t noticed her lag behind.
Sybil beat her fists against the window and searched for something to break the glass, but never found anything.
Not really certain why, she tried the door handle for the sliding door again.
“Just unlock!” she shouted at it.
And the car unlocked. The lights flicked and the horn chirped just as though the owner had thumbed the unlock button on their key fob.
After a drink of water the little dog turned out fine.
Sybil couldn’t believe what happened, but what came next shocked her even more: her father was a sorcerer. Well, he had the training, at least.
He’d opted for a none-magical life, for the most part. He was most skilled in prognostication, and he’d had an inkling for a few weeks now that Sybil was about to show her own magical talents.
The talent also came in handy as a bus driver, allowing him to avoid the many little fender benders and the like that happened in heavy city traffic.
Not to mention how he could always tell if Sybil had any homework. And it also explained how he’d correctly predicted a couple pop quizzes at school.
When she turned 15, he sent her off to where he learned to control his abilities: Sourcewell Academy.
Ellie knew all this from when the two of them swapped notes on growing up.
Chapter 17
“You know, I think I read about that somewhere…” Sybil said.
“I feel like you’ve read just about everything somewhere,” Ellie replied.
“And this is why I’m passing Master Shaffir’s channeling class and you’re not.”
Ellie leaned back against the trunk of the oak tree, the rough bark biting at her skin even through her shirt.
She’d heard people say things like they felt 100 pounds lighter after getting a secret off their chest, but she never thought it would literally feel that way.
She thought she might actually float away.
“Thanks for telling me,” Sybil said, dropping the subject of their grades when she saw Ellie’s reaction.
“Yeah… hey, don’t tell anyone.”
“Duh,” Sybil replied.
Ellie wanted to press her further on where exactly she might have read something about the Omenborn, but that needed to wait. They needed to find and talk to Thorn.
They went into Oak Hall. Inside the main foyer, Ellie stopped to take it in. It was different from any building on the campus she’d seen so far.
It had a fountain, for one. Right in the middle of the marble floor. A large caduceus statue, two snakes entwined around a staff, rose up from the middle of the fountain.
As she watched, the two snakes turned to regard the girls. Ellie’s skin crawled.
“Everyone must be back at the amphitheater,” Sybil said. Her voice echoed off the domed ceiling of the massive foyer.
“Almost everyone,” Ellie said, nodding towards one hallway.
A harried looking teacher in a red robe hurried down through the foyer, her hair in disarray and her face drawn. She barely spared them a glance.
“Do you remember that locator spell?” Ellie said.
“Sort of, but I haven’t really gotten the hang of it. Can’t you do whatever it is you do?”
Ellie frowned, “No. I think I’m still pretty fried. I don’t exactly have control over it, if it you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh… well, maybe there’s a directory—” Sybil started.
Then one of the snakes spoke. “Whom do you ssseek?”
They both started.
“I didn’t know that any of them could talk!” Sybil said.
“Me neither,” Ellie replied.
Sybil grabbed her wrist and squeezed, but Ellie didn’t look away. The snake regarded her with dead black eyes that didn’t so much reflect light as absorb it.
Living in the city, she never really saw snakes outside of the zoo. And none of the other statues on the campus talked. Some of them just sort of watched you as you walked by.
Once, when she’d dropped a textbook outside her intro to prognostication class, the statue of an old bearded man had picked it up and handed it back to her.
She didn’t have time for this.
“We’re looking for Thorn…” here she glanced at Sybil, “What’s his last name?”
Sybil shrugged.
“There can’t be many Thorns on the campus,” Sybil said, swallowing against the anxious lump in her throat.
“Thorn? Yesss,” the snake said. “He is here. He is awake. He wants to sssee you, Eleonora.” A slender forked tongue flicked out and then back into its maw, tasting the air.
“It knows your name!” Sybil breathed.
“Follow,” the snake said. Then it pointed its stone-scaled snout down the hallway to the left.
As they watched, a dully-glowing beam of light came to life in midair, making a line to show them their way.
“Umm, thanks,” Ellie said.
“You’re welcome,” the snake said. Then it wrapped its snaky body back around the staff and resumed its position staring into its mate’s eyes.
They followed the glowing rope of light down hallways and up two sets of stairs. Their footfalls echoed off the walls, joined occasionally by the sounds of someone in pain.
These twisted in Ellie’s stomach.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Sybil said.
“Really? Because it’s so super easy,” Ellie said, instantly regretting the bite in her voice, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Sybil broke in, “Let me rephrase: you shouldn’t blame yourself. Even if you are this Omenborn thing you didn’t make Belt attack the school. You didn’t make those Errants hurt people. It’s all on him and on them.”
“Thanks,” Ellie said. It did help, but only a little.
Curious, Ellie reached out for the rope of light. Her hand passed clear through it, but she thought she felt a curious, tickling warmth where the light touched her bare skin.
Finally, the rope led them to Oak Hall’s top floor. Immaculately polished floors and warm, deep-stained wood panelling greeted them. Sconces in the walls made room for marble statues.
“It goes into that room there,” Sybil nodded at the rope.
So close to their destination, they rushed the final few steps. Ellie grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open before really thinking about being polite.