by Layton Green
The horses trotted down Magazine Street, sharing the road with a bustle of pedestrians and smaller carriages. Val was pensive on the way to the Wizard District. At his request, in a last-ditch attempt to seek information, Gus had asked around about their old traveling companions. The carriage driver had heard of Mala and was impressed Val knew her, but no one in the city had seen her for months. Allira was also a ghost, and Gus relayed a rumor in the Thieves Guild about a woman fitting Marguerite’s description who, after treatment by a cuerpomancer, had traveled west seeking adventure.
So Val was left with the Abbey. He had no idea what he was getting into, and worry for his brothers consumed him. He had spent most of the last week pacing Salomon’s Crib, avoiding the danger of the streets and wishing school would start so he could concentrate all of his energies on reaching the Pool of Souls.
Despite himself, he was curious. It was magic school. Unlike Will, Val had never been interested in fantasy or the supernatural, but if wizardry was his birthright, then he wanted to know what it was all about. And there was, in fact, one thing about magic that interested Val very much.
Because Val was interested in power.
The streets of New Victoria passed by in a blur, and before he knew it, Gus was reining in the horses by the front entrance of the Abbey. Val was glad to see some of the other students—those who didn’t fly in—arriving in carriages as well.
“How do the wizards afford these towers?” Val asked as he stepped off the carriage.
“Inheritance, I s’pose,” Gus said. “And they oversee the taxes, reserving a nice bit for themselves.”
“Taxes for what?”
“Defense of the Realm, public works, I dunno, just bein’ wizards. How do rulers always get paid?”
“About like that,” Val murmured.
When he entered the marble foyer of the Abbey, the faces of the budding wizards reminded Val of his former law school classmates, skittish with nervous energy yet at the same time imbued with a sense of destiny at the promise of their bright futures.
Nearly one hundred students filled the foyer. The genders appeared equally represented, and he was glad to see a range of ages. At thirty-three, he seemed to be in the older third of incoming students, though not by much.
He joined the line behind the sign marked ‘Registration.’ After reaching the booth, he presented a silver medallion he had been given in the infirmary. The medallion was engraved with his name and status: ‘Val Kenefick—Acolyte.’
The aging counter clerk eyed the medallion, sifted through a box at his feet, and handed Val a vellum scroll. “Down the hallway to your left to select your first-year discipline,” the man intoned. “The Lyceum for electives.”
Val murmured his thanks, then retreated to a corner to open the scroll. It read like a typical class schedule.
Val Kenefick
10:00 Daily Basics of Wizardry I
14:00 Daily History and Governance
16:00 Daily Discipline I
09:00 Sat Elective
Val closed the scroll and followed the other students down a long hallway lit by mauve glow orbs. A series of closed doorways lined the corridor on both sides, and above each door hung a sign designating the core disciplines: Pyromancy, Aquamancy, Sylvomancy, Geomancy, Aeromancy, Cuerpomancy, Alchemancy, and at the very end of the hall, Spiritmancy.
A line of students snaked beside all of the doors except for cuerpomancy and spiritmancy. Did one need special permission to apply to be a spirit mage? Was his quest for the Planewalk doomed before it could start? He had no idea, but he followed the philosophy that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
He felt eyes on his back as he strode the length of the hall. When he reached the spiritmancy door, he gave it a solid rap, frazzled with nerves but not about to show weakness in front of the other students.
The door opened of its own accord, and Val stepped inside a marble-walled room, empty except for two leather armchairs facing each other in the center. A fiftyish man with burnt orange eyes and a fluffy red beard reclined in one of the armchairs. Lying next to him was a staff similar to Val’s, except the azantite tip was a milky orb instead of a half-moon.
The varieties of human eye color on Urfe continued to amaze Val. He assumed that, like species of tropical birds, the spectrum of hues resulted from the presence of different evolutionary pigments within the iris.
The man smiled at Val, his eyes warm like the glow of a hearth. He had an avuncular face, broad and familiar, the kind of face you felt you knew as soon as you saw it. Val wondered if he was looking at his first spirit mage.
Besides his own father, that was.
“Come in, please, come in,” the man said, in a rich brogue. “I was starting to wonder if Damon was our only incoming student.” The man put a hand out and said, “If I could just ensure all is in order . . . .”
Val got the hint and presented his medallion. When the man touched it, the marker glowed with a pale blue light and a symbol appeared under Val’s name, an eight-pointed ruby-red star enclosing the initials DVS.
“Ah, bonnie lad, there’s Dean Varen’s approval. You must have impressed her.” He returned Val’s marker and indicated with an upturned palm for him to sit. Val complied, feeling light with relief.
“I’m Professor Groft, Dean of spiritmancy. I like to extend a personal welcome to all of our Acolytes.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Sir,” Val said.
The professor clasped his hands in the folds of his brown cassock. “I always ask three questions of each new student. After you give your answers—rest assured this is a wholly subjective test—I will stamp your Acolyte token and you may proceed to the elective room. All I ask is that you tell the truth to the best of your knowledge.”
Val waited for the first question while Professor Groft crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap, eyes twinkling as if he and Val were sharing a private joke. “Who are you?”
Val stilled, wondering if the spirit mage somehow knew his true identity. Val didn’t want to tip his hand, but he also sensed Professor Groft would know if he was lying.
He opted for semantics. “I’m not sure I understand the question. Who is anyone? I am who I am.”
The professor’s eyes never blinked. Val tensed, expecting to be asked to explain further, but Groft said, “Do you fancy yourself a man of evil or good intentions?”
What kind of a question was that?
Professor Groft’s odd inquiries caught Val off guard. Nor did he believe for a second the test was wholly subjective, or that Groft did not have an agenda of some sort. Everyone had an agenda.
“Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish person?” Val replied, honestly. “I believe the polar extremes of good and evil are too simple to describe a human being.”
The professor gave a slow nod, his expression unchanged. “Final question. Why do you want to be a spirit mage?”
Again Val hesitated. Was he passing or failing? He couldn’t tell the real truth, of course—that he wanted to sneak into the Pool of Souls and find his brothers—so he told a pair of lesser truths. Maybe they would add up to a whole.
“Because spiritmancy is the most demanding discipline,” Val said, “and I like to be challenged. It would be an honor and a privilege to be accepted.”
“Good, good,” the professor said, though Val didn’t get the sense that he was passing judgment. “Your registration scroll, please.”
Val unfurled his scroll. Professor Groft leaned over and touched the face of his ring against the vellum, leaving a glowing, blue-white imprimatur of a dragon eating its own tail, in the shape of a figure eight.
The same emblem used by the Myrddinus.
Val concealed his shock. Had the original Myrddin been a spirit mage?
The professor slapped his palms on his knees. “Well, then.”
Val took his cue, rising and thanking him for his time, unnerved by the odd exchange. He felt uncomfortable when he couldn�
��t read other people’s motives, and he had no idea what Groft’s game was.
“Good luck,” the professor said gravely, just before Val turned to leave.
Surprised by the change in tone, Val risked a glance back and noticed the professor’s eyes had turned sad and distant, as if the mysteries of the universe swirled within.
Val wasn’t sure where to find the Lyceum, but he saw a number of students proceeding through a doorway at the end of the hallway. He followed suit and found himself in the rear of a modest size auditorium. Colorful booths separated by marble pillars lined the perimeter. Students milled about in small groups in the center or waited in line at the booths.
A room full of budding wizards. Val got a shiver at the thought.
And then remembered he was one of them.
Next to him was a booth marked Potions. A smiling older woman in a thin white robe stood behind a counter filled with inch-high liquid stoppers. Val read some of the labels: Wizard Skin, Vigor, Owlbear Sight, Astral Aura, Dragon’s Tongue. On the left side of the counter, an unfurled registration scroll displayed a list of names and corresponding disciplines.
“Would you care for a sample?” she asked.
“No thank you,” Val murmured, wary of imbibing something he wasn’t ready for.
He backed away and squeezed through the auditorium, eying some of the names above the other booths. Relics. Zoomancy and History of Menagerical Specimens. Combat Wizardry. Pedagogy. Basics of Oriental Magic. Shamanism. Applied Electromancy. Cyanomancy.
In a corner of the room was a booth lined with black velvet and filled with a variety of animal skulls, jars of desiccated specimens, and vials of liquid that smelled like formaldehyde. Val turned away with a shudder when the stern-faced necromancer behind the stall leveled his gaze at him.
Val had to pick something. He decided on Relics. It had a number of people waiting in line behind a booth displaying unusual items in glass cases, and he preferred a larger class in which he could hide. It also sounded like one of the electives least likely to subject him to embarrassment. Maybe he would even learn something about Will’s sword.
As he waited in line, he caught a glimpse of the two items on display—a unicorn’s horn from the Withering Forest and something called the Girdle of Girardius.
When he reached the front, a wizard in gold robes with bushy white eyebrows stamped Relics on Val’s registration scroll. With a nod, he left the Abbey and returned to his waiting carriage. Classes started the following morning.
On the ride home, reliving the events of the day in his mind as the horses trotted past the Goblin Market, Val felt as if he had truly, deeply, and utterly fallen down the rabbit hole.
And wondered if he would ever climb out.
-21-
The mushroom cavern exploded into action. Darrowgars swarmed inside from all four entrances, springing onto mushrooms, climbing the walls, scuttling across the ceiling.
Instead of panicking, the delvers gathered into formation in the middle of the cavern, responding to Farzal’s roared commands. Shields and pickaxes and hammers came up, clashing with the darrowgars as they rushed across the floor and dropped down from above.
Caleb and Dalen jumped to their feet beside Will, joining the line of prisoners backed against the river. Yasmina pressed against Caleb’s back, her hands on his waist, forehead slick with fever.
The darrowgars were quick as striking snakes, snapping with elongated jaws while their rubbery bodies contorted at impossible angles. Will watched as one of the creatures sprang to the side to avoid a blow, then bent its body in half as it reached back to snatch a delver’s legs in its jaws. The warrior’s screams echoed through the cavern.
But the sturdy delvers had experience and discipline on their side. They kept their formation, interlocking shields and impaling the darrowgars as they leapt down from the ceiling and sprang sideways off of mushrooms. Farzal was a particularly fierce warrior, fighting with a war hammer and a double-sided battle-axe, twirling his two weapons as fast as the darrowgars could strike.
Will watched the battle in morbid fascination, having to root for their captors since the darrowgars would surely eat the prisoners if they won. He thought the mushrooms would be an advantage, but whenever one of the delvers backed against a giant fungi, a darrowgar would bend its body around the thick trunks, or spring atop and attack from above.
Dalen shouted for help. Will whipped to his right and saw a darrowgar that must have leapt over the delvers. The creature was rushing towards the line of prisoners, and Dalen stood right in its path. The young illusionist formed three balls of green light and thrust them at the darrowgar’s face, one after the other, but it didn’t seem to notice. Frantic, Dalen waved his hands in the air, and then there were three of him: he had somehow created two replicas of himself, illusory doppelgangers who moved exactly as he moved.
The casting was imperfect, and Will could tell that two of the doppelgangers were more insubstantial than the real Dalen, but the spell confused the darrowgar. It changed direction and sprang at Will instead, lunging for his legs before twisting its torso at the last second for a throat strike. Will stumbled backwards, just managing to slip his hands around the creature’s slimy throat.
The darrowgar pressed forward, its slender neck much stronger than Will had expected. It pushed Will onto his back and put two sticky salamander feet on his chest, thrusting its elongated jaws forward. Will’s wrists and forearms were his greatest assets, naturally thick as well as strengthened by years of working as a contractor, but he could only slow the darrowgar down. The jaws inched closer and closer to his face.
Will tried to buck the thing off, and Caleb and Dalen beat on it with their fists. Still it pressed forward, until Will was staring at two jagged rows of teeth and inhaling the fetid odor of its breath.
The darrowgar’s front feet slipped forward, and the brunt of its weight landed on Will’s chest. He yelled and tried to thrust it off him, wondering why it hadn’t bitten him, then saw a battle axe sticking out of the creature’s back and realized it wasn’t moving.
Farzal reached down and jerked his weapon out. “I don’t appreciate darrowgar eating me prisoners,” he said, giving Will a wink and a wicked smile before helping him to his feet. His grip felt like a steel clamp.
The delver leader walked off, leaving Will shaking from the near-death experience. Dalen was huddled off to the side, hoping none of the delvers had seen his magic display. Caleb stepped out from behind a mushroom with Yasmina, who was pale with fever.
The battle was finished. Three dead delvers—and the severed torso of another—had been laid out in a line near the center of the cavern. Two more moaned on the ground, blood pouring from the stumps of severed limbs and soaking into the topsoil. A delver in a green tunic attended to the injured, pouring a tawny liquid onto the wounds.
The rest of the delvers had whipped into a flurry of action, which made Will think there might be more darrowgars on the way. Some of the delvers broke down camp, while others dragged the bodies of the slain next to the river, leaving them heaped on the bank. Another delver poured a few drops from a stoppered bottle onto his fallen comrades, and their tunics burst into flame.
Farzal strode to the nearest cavern wall and stuck his ear against the stone. After a few moments, his head jerked up. “Move!” he roared.
One of the delvers stuck his hands in the river and came out holding a heavy chain. Another joined him, and they tugged the chain out of the water as fast as they could, until a long wooden skiff drifted into view.
As they pulled the skiff to shore, Farzal crowded everyone on board. The prow of the boat dipped almost to the water. Delvers picked up the six oars lying on board, pushed off the bank, and started rowing in time to Farzal’s command. The boat flew across the water.
Halfway across the river, just as the opposite shore emerged from the darkness, the water near the bank they had just fled erupted, spraying so high it soaked the boat.
An
enormous creature with grub-white skin burst out of the water. It had the head and forelimbs of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the body of a great white shark. Three suckered appendages extended from either side of its torso, twenty feet long and grasping in all directions.
It used its tiny forelimbs to drag its body onto shore, and Will watched in horror as each of the suckered appendages grabbed a darrowgar corpse and shoved them, one by one, into its gaping maw. The crunch of giant teeth tearing into darrowgar flesh reached all the way across the river.
The monster finished its meal and slipped back into the water. The delvers rowed harder than ever, and when the boat reached the opposite bank, they tied it down and rushed ashore. Held until last, Will and the rest of the prisoners scampered along behind them, tripping over their neighbor to not be the last in line.
After the fight with the darrowgars, Farzal marched the party an hour past the underground river, until they reached another cavern with multiple exit tunnels. Yasmina collapsed when they stopped for the night, curled on her side with her hair spread in a halo, an angel slumped on the cold cavern floor.
Caleb had to shake her awake the next morning. As soon as she stumbled to her feet, the dry heaves began, lasting throughout the day’s march. Will and Caleb pled for help. Their captors finally allowed her a few drops of a healing potion, which stopped the vomiting but didn’t improve her pallor.
The next morning, Yasmina was awake before Will. When Caleb stirred, she leaned over him and smiled, her hair brushing his face.
“Good morning,” she said. Her voice was spritely, and it chilled Will to his core.
Caleb put a hand to her forehead. “God, Yaz, you’re burning up.”
“Am I?” she said, in a puzzled voice. “It’s such a nice day today.”