As for a Tournament of Casters, yes, once it did exist, and during the years that it did, legends were made of some of its champions. The Guild of Then created the tournament as a challenge and celebration of full magic, and every year casters from all over the world would gather together and battle one another to test their skills.
The first tournament took place nearly two thousand years ago, halfway across the world in the now-flooded Kan Desert of Barra. Some years saw the entry of less than honorable casters—every kid in school learned about Etana the Cruel—but whoever the champion and wherever the chosen location, the theme of showcasing full magic remained the same.
Just as Embry said, the Tournament of Casters hasn’t taken place for a long time. After full magic was banned, the age of leftover magic took over and anything to do with full magic came to an end. And there’s a very good reason for that. Fifty casters casting magic against one another over the course of a single tournament would shatter the earth into about a million pieces.
I watch Embry with narrowed eyes, not sure what to think at all. I’d thought him powerful, but I might have just mistaken it for madness.
He waits for the crowd to quiet. He hasn’t smiled despite the applause. The directness in his gaze nearly convinces me he’s sane.
“The rules of the tournament are still simple. Survive, and you move on to the next round. Don’t get knocked out, and you move on. Don’t request a bow-out, and you move on.
“And though full magic has changed so the tournament can’t run as it once did, we’ve made it as close as possible. We’ll be casting full magic—a diversion spell—around the fighting rings so no Scouts will be able to find us. The Guild’s magic will help contain your magic to within the ring—damage to the earth will be minimized. Our magic will also strengthen your bodies as you fight, so pain and injury will be slowed.
“There will be a fight every night, for a total of four, including the championship. The last caster standing will be crowned champion, the winner of two hundred thousand marks, and eligible for membership in the Guild of Now. To become a modern great.”
Now Embry does smile, and it turns him from powerful to charming, from frightening to merely intimidating. The change is disarming for how sincere it seems. I almost wonder if I’m wrong about him being dangerous.
I look for Kylin to see her reaction, but I can’t see her. I do catch sight of Finch, and the raw hunger on his face is startling, almost hard to look at.
So now I know what he’s fighting for anyway—not just for two hundred thousand marks but to also become a member of the Guild of Now. To become a modern great.
“Of course, while every member must be a champion, not every champion will become a member,” Embry continues. “We use the tournament to help us determine who might be a fit for the Guild—who will be great, as it were. It’s not just about how much magic you can draw, but how you control it, how you use it, how you don’t use it. New membership is determined by a majority vote, and because we maintain a strict seven-member standing, only when a current member chooses to leave is a new one considered and put to the vote.
“It doesn’t need to be said, but as Speaker of the Guild, I will say it anyway: Outside of fights, the tournament doesn’t exist. If you decide to reveal us, you will experience the full magic of seven very powerful casters turned against you. And I can guarantee it will not be a particularly pleasurable experience.”
I very nearly glance around, wondering where the rest of the Guild is. If Embry is just one of its seven members, shouldn’t there be six more of him around, all of them casting all their magic to keep the tournament running?
But then I realize how they are here, even if I can’t see them. The Guild is the tournament itself, its own nebulous cloud of the very magic that has put it together. The Guild is in the floating light bulbs, in every single ring starter, in the air, maybe even as parts of Embry himself. They are everywhere here. To be a fighter in the tournament is for the Guild to always be close.
I shuffle a bit on my feet, not sure if I’m more creeped out or impressed.
Now Embry’s smile does disappear, and his teal eyes go back to reminding me of his power. What is he when he’s not a member of a secret and powerful guild of casters? A lawyer? A con man? A gangster like Saint Willow?
“The original Kan Desert is long gone now, flooded over,” he says. “But as the original greats once brought their tournament there, then so will we.”
The world changes and I’m standing in sand.
The floor of the food court is now an endless stretch of dunes, of swirls of dusty clay. The ceiling’s turned into a sky of blue that no longer happens over Lotusland. There’s already grit in my mouth, coating my teeth. The air is dry and hot.
The Kan Desert.
It hasn’t existed for over a thousand years.
I bend down and touch the sand, letting it run over my fingers and get stuck beneath my nails. It covers my sneakers, the trickle of it brown and dusty through the laces. A sudden thirst prickles my tongue, and I’m parched, desperate for water. My throat hurts for real.
Embry’s power is a palpable thing—I felt it myself. But each of the seven members of the Guild of Now must be just as powerful, their full magic working together to convince not just one mind of a lie but hundreds of minds, all at once. How else to explain full magic that doesn’t hurt its creators? Magic held together with a level of control that doesn’t split the earth but turns it into its toy?
If my own full magic is a red fire, then that of this tournament is like all fires put together. It is magic of another time. When we didn’t have to pretend.
I stand up on trembling legs and peer out at the cheering crowd. A chill passes through me despite the desert heat. Reality wavers, and I know I’m slipping—who am I? A caster pretending to be someone else, sneaking around the back alleys of this city to keep surviving? Or a caster who really believes she can become a new great, about to measure her magic against that of others?
The food court tables and chairs are gone, the outer ring of them now upswept piles of sand. Spectators sit on their tops the same way crows perch on power lines. They’re shouting down at us from above, cheering and calling out our names. I don’t have to see their eyes to know they want to see full magic. To see us fight with it. It’s in the air like an electric charge, a storm about to break. What had been anticipation in the food court has become a thirst out here in the desert.
I suddenly feel very small within the vastness of the Guild’s magic, inside this tournament that is beyond a contest. In reality, this building should be hanging in tatters. This ancient part of earth should never again exist before anyone’s eyes.
But I rub sand from my fingers.
Rudy, you should be the one seeing this. I’m sorry to have taken it away.
“The tournament’s full magic is a closed system,” Embry says. “Only the Guild’s key starters will give you access to the fighting locations. Only our ring starters—red for blood, white for bone, gold for skin, silver for breath—and the elements taken directly from within the fighting rings will work as starters. As the world once was, you can cast full magic here and not die, just as the world won’t die.”
Embry turns and heads out toward the crowd. Desert kicks up at his feet.
Five seconds later he stops and looks back, like he’s forgotten to say something. Everyone goes quiet, waiting.
“The opening round will be a ten-minute free-for-all—whoever remains standing at its end will move on to the next round.” He squints teal eyes against the bright sun as he moves away. “Those ten minutes start now. Good luck.”
In the blazing hot desert, time freezes. Fighters around me go absolutely still. I don’t even breathe because I forget how to.
Just … fight?
Just … start?
It’s the caster whose ring name is Aimee who wakes up first.
She bends down and scrapes sand into her palm. She turns to the
fighter next to her—his cheek is emblazoned with his ring name of Morton—and casts, her finger a blur.
An eight-pointed star and a bone spell. Full magic.
Morton lifts off upward and back. Like his entire rib cage is taking off and dragging him along. Three long airborne seconds later and fifteen feet away he lands with a dull thud. Sand flies up in a cloud around him. His groan of pain comes through it.
We all stare at Aimee. She stares back, just as shocked. She drags her hand to her nose.
There’s a single long smear of blood on her finger. No more comes.
No one speaks as we all wait for a sound, a sign. What part of the landscape is going to crack?
But the desert remains unchanged.
Then someone shouts, another fighter casts, and Aimee doubles over as though she’s been kicked. Two seconds later everything is chaos as fighters turn on one another. Through all the frenzy, I’m vaguely aware of searching for Finch. To keep track of his bright blond hair and unfeeling eyes and the danger he is as the reigning champion. For a second, Navy and his perfectly fitted shirt appear in my mind, and I think of how he’s somewhere up in the sand, watching.
Whoever Finch is to you, you’d understand why I’m going to have to try beating him, right?
The chaos deepens. Casters are yelling, falling, throwing magic at one another to prove their own is the best. Someone is pinned to the ground by some spell I can’t see, and he slams his hand down on the ground three times.
“Bow out!” his lips bellow. “Bow out!” A second later he turns into a statue, a marble form still lying on the ground.
No, something else has turned him into a statue, I realize. He’s been turned by the Guild of Now that is all around us in its nowhere-yet-everywhere form, watching for fighters who are eliminated and putting them on hold until the end of the match.
I can’t seem to move. Everything around me unfolds, and it’s like I’m watching a movie. This isn’t happening right here, it only appears to be.
Sort these, Aza. Rudy in my head, saying what he always said to me when he set me to work in his apothecary. Think of a good system. First things first, then work outward from there.
I drop to a crouch, mind whirring as I peer low across the sand. The same way I peered low in a washroom stall to see rose-gold sneakers, to hear another competitor’s secret to survival.
Maybe I’ll just cast a shield spell so I don’t die, and wait everyone else out.
Shield spell.
Because first things first.
I dig at the ring starters in my pants pocket. My fingers are clumsy, already sweating, and I swear out loud. I’m still glad I kept the starters out of my starter bag, but I’m not so sure about being able to get to them fast while they’re in my pocket.
And I swear out loud once more for Embry and his Guild of Now—if anything from a fighting ring can be used as a starter, why build a ring that is nothing but an endless field of sand?
Finally I’m able to yank my hand free.
In my palm, flashes of white and silver.
I stuff the white coin back into my pocket.
How many points to cast a shield spell and keep it going? Too many, and it’ll weaken any other spells I cast; too few, and someone else’s magic will break through.
Everything’s a jumble, so I let caution win. I draw a seven-pointed star, drop the silver coin into my palm, and puff a breath onto it. I imagine an impenetrable layer of red fire wrapping itself around my body, as cool and safe as flowers, jasmine and wisteria.
The air around me bends, goes wavy, like a just-invisible cocoon—an invisible suit of armor. The bodies of other casters blur the way hot pavement blurs. I’m standing on sand that appears half-liquid. The sound of the desert goes muffled and gauzy.
I let the spent silver starter slip from my hand and brace myself for the pain of casting to smash into my bones. Only when the wave of it comes, goes, and then doesn’t come back, do I remember: Casting here won’t hurt as badly.
But then a different pain comes. A dozen punches all coming at once.
I let out a strangled half scream.
The image of red fire slips away as I slam forward onto my stomach. Pain drives down on my arms and legs and back, and my mouth kisses the desert.
Shock reverberates as I struggle to turn my head, spitting out sand and trying to absorb the truth:
I’m going to have to get way better at holding on to a shield spell.
The desert around me is a swelling tide of noise, cheers and applause and heckling from the crowd, fighters yelling and screaming.
I move my eyes and there’s a guy two feet away—thin, pale, watching me. His cheek says his ring name is Teller. His hand is still in a fist, clutching the starter for the spell he just cast on me.
I don’t have to see the starter to know that it’s a gold coin. Good for a skin spell, an impact one on my muscles to break my concentration so I’d drop my protection spell.
Teller grimaces as his hand lifts to his temple.
Headache.
The price he has to pay for having cast that nine-point spell.
The invisible hammers of my own pain start to pull back, and my thoughts rush together as I slowly lurch off the ground. My fingers grapple at sand.
Casting nine points would normally take me half a day to sleep off. I’m guessing it’d be about the same for Teller. These are the most general rules of full magic, of the spells we cast and how much they cost.
But not here. And not for this headache, which will only be a glimmer, the pain of it just as brief.
Before I can waste time deciding how long I actually have, I pick up the sand I’ve scrabbled together with my fingers. Different skin spells I can choose to cast flash across my brain.
I can make his muscles go numb or knot them up. I can turn his headache blinding.
Or I can simply cast to kill. Only here in this fighting ring, with its made-up rules that don’t punish me for knowing full magic, is this chance possible. And I want to win this tournament, don’t I? What do I care about being dishonorable and not getting voted into the Guild, when all I want is the two hundred thousand marks? How would honor help me figure out things about Rudy and Shire and payback?
Can you ever be sure you’re using magic and it’s not using you?
My father’s words as we sat at the table in the teahouse earlier tonight, the kindest ones he knows for telling me he doesn’t trust me.
I cast before Teller has recovered, while still a bit breathless, with sweat dripping down my face.
A palmful of sand, and he’s clutching at his eyes. A thin shard of agony ripples down my spine.
Another palmful, and the desert around Teller rises in a cloud. It circles his head, a mass of swirling sand.
I dig out a second silver ring starter from my pocket. I cast, and my shield spell comes back. I draw six points this time, paint up cool red fire and rhododendrons and chrysanthemums in my mind.
I stagger, unsteady; blood drips from my nose, once, twice, three times. The desert pales, turns gray, before righting itself.
The sound of the crowd changes, a surge of cheers and applause the way an incoming tide surges. I wipe my face and turn to see what’s happening. Bright blond hair glints beneath the sun, the wave of a blue-striped ribbon. It’s Finch, being impressive. I catch a glimpse of his face, and it’s back to the way it was before he gave away his longing for the Guild, stony and unreadable. He cuts his way through fighters, and I look elsewhere around the desert.
Casters have fallen.
There are thirty of us left, maybe thirty-five. Eliminated fighters are sprawled all over, marble statues tipped on their sides. Spilled blood lies in dark, coppery swaths across the sand. The air smells of fire and smoke as earth is drained more of its magic, a well visited by too many buckets. I taste salt and metal on my lips.
It’s too easy to imagine this fake world being on fire for real. A single fighter here could do it with on
e spell, if the Guild’s magic wasn’t so protective. No wonder the earth took back our magic when we couldn’t learn limits. It must have been able to see itself being set on fire, too.
Teller’s tripped out of that swirl of sand I cast around him and is stumbling in my direction.
My hand’s still in my pocket as he goes flying through the air.
The fighter who cast the punch on him is a woman with the ring name of Nola. She’s in sand up to her ankles, having snuck up on him while he was still coiled up and more than half-blind.
He crashes to the ground.
Nola pushes up her glasses with a light brown finger, draws another star on her palm, and begins to cast. She casts over and over again, her hands a blur as she draws, blows on her palm, repeats. Each punch of air pushes Teller deeper into the desert, until he’s nearly entirely buried.
Finally she stops. She’s gone ashen beneath her complexion, breathing hard. She leans over and retches.
Teller doesn’t move at all. Knockout.
A second later, he is a marble statue, held in the invisible arms of the Guild until it’s over.
I jerk a starter out of my pocket. It’s red, good for a blood spell. I’m about to cast on Nola when another fighter finds me first.
I know this because I can’t breathe.
A ringing sound fills my ears and time shrinks. My eye sockets start to burn. It could be a skin spell on my lungs so they don’t work, on the part of my brain that tells those lungs how to work, manipulation of my air itself with a breath spell, but what does it matter when I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe—
It’s Kylin.
Her eyes stay locked on my face as I strangle. They shimmer like they’re damp, like she’s sorry. Gray fog swims across mine, turning the desert into stormy sea. My heart is bursting.
You know my secret, her gaze says. She swipes at her eyes. I have to do this.
And because I still can’t breathe, I picture the blood spell I know will save me. I picture my hand on a spigot, turning it to full blast, and cast.
Kylin begins to bleed—from her mouth, nose, eyes, ears. Breath whooshes back into my lungs, and I’m gasping, coughing, crying as the pain pounds at me like a dozen fists.
Caster Page 9