Grimm felt considerable satisfaction when Kargan or Crohn congratulated him on a well-delivered “spell", though such plaudits were few and far between.
Grimm's love of books had been dulled by the constant study of runes, and he used the Library less than he had before. He threw himself with wholehearted intensity into physical games with Madar and Argand in the large Scholasticate yard. He missed Erek's rehearsals, which had been tiring at times but always enjoyable. To assuage the loss he felt, he threw himself into his friends’ games with a reckless, almost desperate abandon. Anything had to be better than the endless, dull, stultifying repetition of runes!
* * * *
One day, as Grimm's class was trooping to the Refectory for the mid-morning meal, they heard a strange high-pitched scream from one of the classrooms and ran as one to the source of the noise. Many others were gathered outside the room, with expressions ranging from callous amusement to outright terror.
An incomprehensible babbling came from behind the locked door, and a calm, measured tone that sounded like Urel's. The shrieking had reached such a level of intensity that many of the Students covered their ears. A blazing, blue light flashed around the edges of the door and, with a wet, sodden thump, the walls seemed to bulge outwards for an instant, with blue tendrils flickering from the very interstices of the stone blocks. Then came the sound of a chair being dragged across the floor and a final, decisive thump. Silence once more reigned.
Magemaster Crohn, his hair and robes flying, pushed his way through the throng, bereft of his normal gravity. “What are you boys doing here?” he cried. “To the Refectory with you! At once!"
The Students moved with reluctant, snail-like speed away from the door, as Crohn smashed it down with his staff.
Grimm could see that the classroom now seemed to be covered in red paint, and a single figure hung in the centre of the room, suspended from the ceiling by a cord around his neck. It looked like Erek. Crohn cut the blue-faced figure down and tried to revive him with increasing intensity, but to no avail.
Running from the room, Crohn shrieked at the nearest boy. “You, boy! Fetch Magemaster Fyr, the Healer, immediately! RUN! The rest of you, go to the Refectory and stay there, or in your cells, until you are told otherwise. The afternoon class is cancelled!"
The Students looked uncertain, nervous and confused. With tremendous effort, Crohn regained his composure. “Do I have to tell you twice? Go to the Refectory, right now! There is nothing more to see here."
At that moment, the Scholasticate Healer, Fyr, arrived, out of breath and as dishevelled as Crohn. With a cry of “Oh, no, no, no!” he rushed into the room and leapt to the prostrate body.
Crohn's gaze was icy and commanding, his voice low and dangerous. “Go. Now. This is your last warning."
Something seemed to push the boys away, and they finally fled.
* * * *
Thorn looked harried, and much in need of sleep. Magemaster Crohn retained a respectful silence while the Prelate gathered his thoughts.
Rubbing his brow in a pained manner, Thorn gave a deep sigh. “What went wrong, Crohn?"
The Magemaster picked his words with care. “I knew Garan quite well, Lord Prelate. When Magemaster Urel told me what you had in mind for the boy, I advised caution, and he raised his own doubts about the boy's suitability.
"If I may be frank, Lord Thorn, I feel that putting the Neophyte so heedlessly through such an ordeal was unforgivable! I intend to advise the Presidium of my concerns with regard to his tuition, and I cannot but accept that you had a major role to play in the tragic losses of Neophyte Garan and Senior Magemaster Urel."
Thorn straightened his back and looked the Magemaster straight in the eyes. His brows were lowered in an angry scowl, and his face was flushed.
"Magemaster Crohn, I would wager you have not the least understanding of the demands of Guild politics!” he snapped. “Do you have the slightest comprehension of the responsibilities that I bear? The reputation of our House with High Lodge is paramount, and I deemed it essential that we assay the Neophytes for suitability as Questors. Senior Magemaster Urel told me that, in his earnest opinion, the boy was suitable material, and I advised him to proceed with caution.
"It is now plain that Urel was derelict in his duty, painful as that is to say. I warned him that the boy might be emotionally fragile, but he assured me that he would take care not to push Garan too far.
"It is abundantly clear to me that the Neophyte was pushed too quickly and too hard. A less intense and longer Ordeal might well have saved the situation and we might have been celebrating the creation of a new Adept Questor rather than mourning the sad loss of a Magemaster and a Neophyte."
Crohn harboured grave doubts, but he respected his Prelate too much to call him a liar.
"Lord Prelate, I knew Urel for many years, as did we all.” he said. “He was a kind and reasonable soul, and I cannot believe that the responsibility for this tragedy lies with him alone. Your recent general orders for greater firmness with the training of Students are of a piece with this tragic occurrence."
Seizing on Crohn's words, Thorn saw an opening. It was plain that the Magemaster would not accept the image of Urel as a sadistic slave-driver, and so he tried another tack.
"Ah, Crohn, there is such charity within your soul,” he groaned, slapping a hand over his face as if in sudden, anguished awareness. “I see now that I may have been a trifle ... over-zealous in my eagerness to do my duty to the House and to the Guild. Poor Urel; he was so loyal to the House that he ignored his own feelings and drove himself to fulfil the letter of my instructions with such zeal that his sense of duty blinded him to the possible consequences.
"I have nobody to blame but myself; in my eagerness to serve the Guild, I was guilty of giving imprecise orders, and I was so wrapped up in my own duty that I failed to notice the impending tragedy."
Shaking his shoulders as if suffused with self-accusation and guilt, he risked a peek through the fingers over his eyes and was gratified to see that Crohn was still nodding. It would be all right. Deniability; that was what Thorn needed, and it seemed that he had struck a rich source of it.
"Lord Prelate, I beg forgiveness for suspecting you of any ill intent in this frightful miscalculation,” Crohn said, hanging his head. “Yes, Urel was a good man, but I must admit that I felt, on occasion, that his sense of dedication to the House and the Guild bordered on the fanatical, even above the love he felt for his charges. Please forgive me my odious words."
Thorn disguised a deep sigh of relief as a smothered sob. “Crohn, I mourn the passing of these two fine souls as much as you, and I see that I, too, may have been a little too wedded to my duty.
"I wish you to succeed Urel as Senior Magemaster, Crohn, and I trust you to put me back on the right track whenever you deem it necessary. My first order to you as Principal of the Scholasticate is to ensure that all Magemasters act within the dictates of their good sense and humanity. Perhaps I have been working them too hard."
"Lord Thorn, I will arrange a ceremony for our two lost friends. May I trust that you will be there?"
Thorn nodded, maintaining his pose of deep sorrow. He had to fight to keep a smile from his face; he knew he had succeeded in his pose, and that Crohn would lay the majority of the blame for this debacle on the dead Urel, as he had hoped.
* * * *
Madar and Argand were sitting with Grimm in the charity Students’ area of the Refectory, and the three boys were deep in discussion about the recent tragedy, despite the fact that such chit-chat had been forbidden by Crohn. Since there were no Magemasters present, they felt at liberty to gossip, although they kept their voices low.
"An accident, eh?” Argand said. “Who'd have thought that Erek was a Neophyte Alchemist? I'd have thought he would've been better as an Herbalist or something."
Grimm nodded. “I always thought all those potions and things must be dangerous. Poor old Urel."
"Poor old Erek, too
,” Madar said with feeling. “He hurt so bad at what he did to Urel that he topped himself."
A snort came from another table, and the boys turned to see an older Student of about twelve or thirteen. “I've seen it once before,” he confided, his eyes flicking back and forth as if expecting the presence of a Magemaster. “The whole Refectory was trashed just before you came, same blue light, the lot. Then, old Arrol comes out with that new mage, Dalquist. A right state, they were in."
Grimm was puzzled. “But Dalquist isn't an Alchemist, he's a Questor,” he said, wrinkling his brow in perplexity.
"That's what I say,” the older boy said. “It's all very odd. You stick around here, you hear all sorts of funny things. I'm not even sure old Erek was any kind of Alchemist—I think that's just a story they've cooked up.” He shrugged and turned back to his meal.
With no further information on the incident, the heated discussion petered out. “Oh well, at least old Kargan isn't quite so hard on us these days,” Madar observed with a bright smile.
"That won't last, Madar, you'll see,” was Argand's gloomy response. “They're just toying with us; it's the lull before the storm. This whole thing reeks with suspicion, if you ask me."
"You think everything's suspicious, Argand,” Grimm said. “Remember when Kargan had that fever and stayed in bed, and you told us all he'd been carted off to the mad-house?"
"That was different,” Argand grumbled. “If he wasn't, he should have been!"
The conversation drifted into wild speculations about all aspects of Scholasticate life, but the boys steered clear of the deaths of Erek and Urel.
* * * *
Back in his cell that night, Grimm mused over what little he had seen of the incident. He knew Urel would never have hurt Erek, and nor would Erek have dreamed of raising a hand to Urel. His mind kept going back to the screaming and shouting Erek, and the strange, incomprehensible language that issued from his lips just before the explosion; he could not get the sounds out of his head. When sleep finally found him, his dreams were disturbing.
Chapter 17: Progression
After two years in the Scholasticate, Grimm had proved to be an apt student, quickly mastering the complexities of the seven families of runes, learning how to write, pronounce and inflect them in various circumstances.
Despite his shy nature, he felt his confidence growing stronger by the day. Now, even some of the more snobbish Students treated him with a measure of respect or, at least forbearance.
However, such tolerance was far from universal. On one occasion, the bully, Shumal Tolarin, deliberately tripped him outside the Refectory, sending Grimm sprawling to the floor, winded and with a bloodied nose.
"Ooh, so sorry!” Shumal said with a smirk on his face, as if daring the smaller boy to try something, but Grimm was too busy trying to get his breath back even to speak.
Grimm said nothing about this, even to Madar and Argand. Instead, he bided his time until he came upon Shumal in a dark corridor without his sly acolyte, Ruvin.
While Shumal had his back turned, Grimm leapt on the bully, slammed him into the wall, punched him in the nose and threw him to the floor.
Shumal was larger than Grimm and not the kind of boy to take such an affront lying down. Lurching to his feet, he gave easily as good as he got. By the time they stepped apart, their chests heaving, both boys were marked, Grimm somewhat more so than Shumal.
However, Shumal's splendid silk robes were torn and scuffed, whilst Grimm's rough, patched homespun clothing looked little different after the fight. There was no time for Shumal to change his clothes, and he looked in a sorry state when he entered Crohn's classroom. The Magemaster made a show of ignoring the gloriously-hued bruises and contusions on both boys, but he awarded a severe penance to Shumal for being untidy in class, in direct contravention of rule 2.1. Grimm was not punished.
After this incident, Shumal gave Grimm a wider berth, substituting sullen disdain for overt insults and assaults. Although Grimm had told nobody in the class about the altercation, except for Madar and Argand, the truth was plain for all to see. Many now accorded him a significant measure of respect.
* * * *
More conscientious than some of the other boys in the Lower Scholasticate, the three friends studied often together, aiding each other and each reinforcing the others’ knowledge and confidence. Even the nearly tone-deaf Argand learned to handle rhythmic chants and simple songs, and even Kargan of the over-sensitive ears praised him for this.
As if to compensate for Argand's lack of ear, he proved himself adept at the fluent scribing of even fourth-order runic phrases, seamlessly linking the complicated twists and curlicues of the runes together with flowing strokes of the pen. He was only too happy to aid Grimm, whose penmanship was far from exemplary.
Madar, the most talented and versatile musician of the class by some margin, gained great proficiency in the reading of the aura he had once found so difficult, rivalling even the mastery of his friend, Grimm.
* * * *
Now, Grimm was nine years old, and the boys began to study other arts. Grimm found painting, dancing and woodworking difficult, but he proved more adept at mathematics, languages, history and geography. With some of the Students, Grimm had garnered a reputation as somewhat of a toady, just because of his facility with magical studies. The relative lack of rebukes from the Magemasters had only served to reinforce this image. His new problems now seemed to mollify his accusers.
Now his fallibilities had been revealed, the other boys perhaps began to see him as a mere human like them. Grimm even welcomed the waspish rebukes he received from the acerbic Magemaster Faffel, who taught Grimm's least favourite subject, Courtly Graces.
When the hapless youth was less than perfect in his dancing, as he often was, Faffel would unleash an acid tongue, the back of his hand, or a casually-cast punitive spell. The Magemaster did not have Kargan's scruples over judging the less able, and he allowed the class free reign to laugh and mock whenever Grimm made an awkward move.
"I was not aware that this particular dance was called ‘The Fairy Elephant'!” Faffel spat on one occasion. “Thank you so much for enlightening us all, Afelnor. We are in your debt."
Even the mild-mannered Grimm found himself biting off retorts at times like these. Why couldn't Faffel see that he was trying his best?
The sharp-tongued Magemaster regarded his particular discipline as the most important on the syllabus, as all the other Magemasters seemed to do, but he was more insistent and vitriolic in its defence.
"Afelnor! Yes, you, Afelnor! Attend to me! You may think that being a mage is all about dazzling displays of power, but I would advise you to correct that impression at once! A mage may have the power and skill to shame the most potent practitioners of the art, but it will bring his House little credit if he trips over his feet in the simplest dance, or belches at table, or slouches like a slattern.
"How many times have I told you that ‘power and presence complete the mage'? Again, please; this time with at least a modicum of grace, if you have the slightest concept of the word!"
It was ever a puzzle to Grimm that, despite his exquisite sense of timing and his skill with music, he could not seem to persuade his feet to move in time with the music, earning him many rebukes and punishments from Faffel. He found it impossible to dance with an invisible partner, since Faffel's instruction consisted of diagrams and descriptions of how a dancing partner would move.
Madar, on the other hand, was an excellent dancer, and he underwent the penance of teaching Grimm to dance by acting as a female partner, without the least word of complaint, taking Grimm through all the main dances in the Refectory when meals were finished. At first, Grimm felt deep embarrassment to put on these displays in front of the other boys, but Madar persisted to the amusement of all, and Grimm began to improve, becoming a tolerably competent dancer. At times, he began to earn a little grudging, lukewarm praise from the curmudgeonly Magemaster Faffel.
; Sometimes, this was as fulsome as “I once said that you were not fit to dance in a slum flea-pit. I now see that I was wrong. You are fit to dance in a slum flea-pit!"
The young Student rarely saw the humour in Faffel's barbed jokes, even if most of the other Students seemed to enjoy it.
Grimm's command of Representaional Art, another of Faffel's subjects, was also poor, but Argand was an enthusiastic and accomplished artist, and he gave Grimm enough help to allow him to produce creditable portraits and landscapes by dint of a few simple guidelines. Nonetheless, Grimm always regarded a class in Courtly Graces with trepidation.
* * * *
Every day, the Students were allowed to spend time playing in the large Scholasticate yard. Grimm now tended to shun the more physical games preferred by the more active Madar and Argand, but often other Students, some much older than Grimm's nine years, would run out of ideas for new games. On these occasions, Grimm would be consulted and would evince ideas for new games, providing that he was allowed to choose his role in each.
From time to time, Shumal would attempt to force his way into these games, often for no other reason than to upstage Grimm, but the other boys would shun him, since he always ended up punching, tripping or otherwise causing trouble, for which the blame would be shared by all.
Grimm found himself with a unique, if muted, popularity, although he often felt like a tool, to be used only when the other boys became bored. Nonetheless, he felt that he had a valuable role that was appreciated by the others, and he was always ready to venture an opinion, however it might be taken.
When Grimm was asked by one of the older Students if he would care to join in an end-of-year entertainment for the Scholasticate, he accepted with some glee, on the proviso that he would not be expected to dance. He had not forgotten the debacle of Erek's abortive pageant in his first year, but he put it behind him.
The Chronicles of Grimm Dragonblaster [Book 1: A Mage In The Making] Page 13