by Joseph Lallo
Without any outward semblance of effort, the sorceress began to reconfigure their surroundings. The walls pushed away and turned from warm, inviting wood to cold stone. The table lengthened, and as it did, new food sprouted up to occupy it. The doorway gaped massively and chains sprang forth to connect to the door, which fell away with an earthshaking crash to bridge a moat that had formed outside. The fire from the hearth shot to the center of the room and scattered, lighting a dozen or so torches dotting the walls, as well as countless candles and a massive chandelier that dropped down from the now-towering ceiling.
In the space of a few moments, she had come to be standing in the great banquet hall of some ancient castle.
"There. I would say that this is a far more fitting venue. Now for the rules of the game. This hourglass will run through after five minutes," she said.
An hourglass appeared, floating above the center of the table.
"After that, it will be turned over, such that it may run back. Now, while the sand is in motion, I will endeavor to capture you, and you will endeavor to escape me. You will be designated a failure if you remain captured long enough for me to mark you down in a red book of failure with this pen," the wizard said.
A case of books materialized behind her. Out from it slid the last in a very long line of red-covered books. The bottom shelf was the only one not fully occupied by the books of failure, as two white books occupied it, and one conspicuous black-covered one.
"Now, if you pass, you will be marked down in the white book. The trial ends when the last grain of sand has returned from whence it came, or when your name has been marked down," she explained. "Have you any questions?"
"How can I expect to resist you? Look how powerful you are. I have only begun my training," she said.
"You have reached a level of mastery in the elemental arts. That is quite enough. As for power? In this place, you are as powerful as I. So long as you know how to cast a spell, you shall do so without effort and without delay. You are being tested only on your knowledge and ingenuity. Now--begin," she said.
"But I--" she began.
Her words were cut off by a bizarre sensation as the room, and all that filled it, seemed to grow to many times its size. A second odd feeling came as she was drawn into the air by some invisible force and dropped down into a red liquid. It stung her eyes, and when she surfaced and looked about, her view of the massive room was wavy and distorted. She had been shrunk and dropped into a wine bottle! The cork worked itself into the opening as Azriel walked the short distance to the pedestal, having already willed the pen into her hand.
Myranda cast her strength into the air around her. Instantly it swirled into action, bursting the cork from the bottle with such force that the bottle tipped. After sloshing violently about, Myranda squeezed from the mouth of the bottle. She had to find somewhere to hide long enough to figure out how to undo the spell. Deacon had yet to teach it.
She ran further among the place settings of the table, crouching behind a folded napkin. Her mind swiftly analyzed her body, quickly happening upon an odd twist of magic that seemed to be wrapped about her. She made ready to levy her own strength against it when a shadow appeared.
Looking to the source, she saw, towering over her, the form of a cat. It was pure black with white flames flickering in its dark eyes. Myranda tried to run, but the cat swatted her painfully to the ground and held her there. In a flash, the cat was turned to stone, pinning her to the ground. Azriel appeared beside the table and headed in the direction of the book again. Myranda finished her work against the shrinking spell, restoring her size quickly enough to hurl the statue away and clear a good portion of the table she was laying on.
"Really, now. Must you make such a mess?" Azriel complained as she turned to watch Myranda sprint out of the banquet hall and down one of the adjoining halls.
Myranda found herself in a long hallway, lined with doors on either side. The doors began to slam, working their way toward her. The girl dove into a doorway containing an ascending staircase before the door could close and climbed it. There was another hall at the top, and she quickly entered the nearest room. It appeared to be a bedroom with a narrow window and posh furnishings. Azriel couldn't have made it out of the dining hall yet. With any luck she still thought that Myranda had been trapped in the first hallway.
"No such luck, I am afraid," came a second voice in her head.
The door slammed shut and locked. Myranda struggled against it, but the heavy wooden door would not budge. It would be a fool's errand to search for a key. Thinking quickly, her mind turned to one of Deacon's spells. Outside of this place, she found the manipulation of the spell to be a clumsy and imprecise procedure, but here things might be different. She cast her mind into the lock, manipulating the individual elements directly. Within a few moments, with a satisfying click, the door popped open.
After a moment of relief, she tried to leave the room. The door was opened barely halfway when it slammed shut again, hurling her backward. Before her eyes the wooden door turned to a heavy iron cell door, and the lock vanished entirely. Soon the door was just a barred portion of wall. It could not be opened. Myranda scrambled out the window onto a thin ledge. The window sealed up behind her, as did each other one along the ledge.
"Well, now. Trapped on the ledge? That is a capture as well," Azriel's voice echoed in her thoughts.
Again Myranda's mind raced. She combed her thoughts for any foreign presence. Finding one, she forced it out. That was how Azriel was reading her thoughts. Now, perhaps, the wizard would not be so certain of her location. With one problem solved, Myranda had to now escape the ledge. The solution was obvious, but unpleasant. Without delay, the girl leapt into the frigid water of the moat below. She resurfaced, gasping for air, only to find Azriel peering off of the drawbridge with a grin.
"I may not be able to detect your mind anymore, but a deaf man could have heard that splash," she said.
In an instant, the water around Myranda began to freeze. She tried to scramble up the edge of the moat, but her foot was locked into the ice. Azriel chuckled lightly to herself as she walked leisurely toward the pedestal to mark down her victory. Myranda listened closely to the footsteps recede. In a flash, enough heat was conjured to free her foot. No sooner had the girl scrambled to freedom than the teacher stopped. Myranda acted fast--before her return.
"You know that I will always know when you are captured and when you are free. There is nothing you can do about that," Azriel informed Myranda.
The girl, now on the drawbridge, tried to rush silently past her. Once the student had made it inside the castle, Azriel willed the individual stones of the floor to rise up as bars to form a cage. Myranda stopped abruptly. Azriel opened her mouth to gloat, but stopped. Poking her hand through the bars to grab the girl, her fingers passed right through.
"An illusion! I didn't expect to see any of those out of you," she said.
The teacher ran outside and forced away any illusions that were not her work. Clinging to the wall were a number of bars of ice, forming a crude ladder leading to one of the first floor windows that had fortunately not been willed away like those of the second floor. Azriel rose into the air and approached the window. It widened to allow her through easily, but Myranda could already be heard hurrying down the hall. Azriel made her way out of the room just in time to see an image of Myranda rush into every open doorway and slam it.
"What fun, a student with creativity," Azriel said.
The powerful wizard touched her fingers to the wall and the stone became as transparent as glass. The effect spread until each and every block that composed the castle could be seen through. One by one, the illusions of Myranda were dispelled, but finishing was not necessary. The change that came over the castle startled the true Myranda, who stumbled backward, knocking over the bookshelf.
When her eyes met Azriel's, and a wicked grin came to her instructor's face, the girl sprang to her feet
and ran toward the hourglass. Only a minute or two had passed, and the rules said that the test would be ended when the last grain returned from whence it had come. If she inverted the glass now, she would need to last only a minute or two more. Azriel was moving quickly toward her, unimpeded by the walls and floor, which separated like curtains at her approach. Just as the teacher's feet came to rest on the floor of the banquet hall once again, Myranda grasped the timepiece. With any luck she would be able to invert it and lock it in ice until the last few grains fell.
Luck, alas, was not with her. When the floating hourglass was tipped to the side, the whole of the castle seemed to lurch in the opposite direction. She lost grip on the glass and slid along the floor, colliding painfully with the wall. Nothing else seemed to be affected by the bizarre shift, which was a mercy, as had the furniture followed her she would have been crushed beneath it.
"Surprisingly, you were not the first to attempt to exploit that little technicality. As a result I have assured that, regardless of which way the hourglass is pointing, the sand continues to fall in the appropriate direction. Just for fun, I have seen to it that you fall in that direction as well, no matter which way I turn it," the devilish instructor said.
As she spoke her last sentence, she turned the hourglass in a random direction, sending Myranda sliding or falling in that direction. She concluded by flipping the hourglass over. Myranda held fast to the table, which she had become pinned against. It was heavy enough to keep her down.
"Well, if that is how you want it," Azriel said. Suddenly the furniture, with the exception of the pedestal, the book atop it, and the hourglass, plummeted upward. In a thunderous crash of splintering wood, the contents of the room collided with the vaulted roof.
Myranda struggled to move, a good portion of debris having landed atop her. Many bones were broken by the crash, but no sooner had she realized this than they were repaired. As she pulled herself from the rubble, Azriel floated "down" to the ceiling and flipped upside down to survey the damage.
"Still able to move about, eh? Very well. We shall have to restrain you," she said.
The sorceress's eyes wandered as she tried to think of something creative to torture her student with. They came to rest on the chandelier, which was hanging "up," unaffected by the shift. She smiled, and the leg-like candle holders twitched to life, scurrying up its chain and across the ceiling like some ornate spider. Everywhere the candle-tipped feet touched took to flame. Myranda freed herself and moved as quickly as she could across the rubble-strewn ceiling, but the animated candelabra moved across debris as though it was born to do it, which of course it had been. The pseudo-creature tore its chain from its mount and threw a loop of it around the hapless girl. In a twinkling she was wrapped tightly in the chain, and the fire was pooling around her.
"Right. I am rather proud of that one." Azriel beamed as she moved to the pedestal and took up the pen.
Myranda used her mind to gather up as much of the fire that surrounded her as she could and focused it around the chandelier spider. The automaton melted immediately, dripping in bright orange blobs to the floor below, but the chain cocooning her remained taut. With the utmost of care to protect herself, as she had the leaves in Solomon's test, she sliced the chains with the fire.
"Your resourcefulness is remarkable. I may have to redefine the word capture," said Azriel.
Approaching the hourglass again, she gave it a twirl. Instantly, Myranda found herself falling, jerked this way and that as "down" perpetually changed. It was disrupting beyond belief. She could barely think. She certainly couldn't move, as each time she approached something that she could grab onto, she fell away from it again. She was trapped in mid-air. Another smile of satisfaction came to her instructor's face and the pen was once again in hand.
Myranda's mind searched for something that might free her. The only thing that seemed to have a chance was levitation. She had never managed it on anything but water before, but Deacon had assured her that the same technique needed to be changed only slightly to levitate anything. Myranda consciously took hold of the mystic energy inside of herself and commanded it to be still. Her uncontrollable flight through the room came to a swift end. A second thought brought the spinning hourglass to a halt, this time properly oriented. As she lowered herself to the ground, Azriel gave a smug smile.
"I must say, you are driving me to new heights of creativity," Azriel said.
Myranda opened her mouth to reply to the compliment, only to be stopped by an odd sinking feeling. She looked down to discover that the floor beneath her had turned to quicksand. She sank swiftly to her waist before she once again put the levitation spell to work. The sand held firm, but slowly she was beginning to pull herself free.
"Sandstone," Azriel said audibly.
Instantly the sand was stone once more, and straining against it felt as though her legs, still encased within, would give far before the stone did. Azriel still had the pen in hand and approached the book to mark the failure. Myranda needed time. She threw up a wall of flame between Azriel and the pedestal. Azriel smirked and undid the spell, barely missing a step. Myranda focused her mind on the tremor spell. A few moments of shaking that threatened to turn her bones to powder shattered the stone of the floor. The pieces of rock fell away, as there was nothingness beneath them, but Myranda levitated herself up.
"Right, that is quite enough levitation for one day," Azriel said.
Myranda dropped, grabbing onto the edge of the hole she'd made. She tried to levitate again, only to find that some spell--an enormously complicated one--was blocking her from doing so. Though she knew that with time she could break the spell, she had more pressing matters at hand.
The girl pulled herself out of the hole in the ground and bolted for the doorway. The chains of the drawbridge pulled taught as she approached, and the stones of the floor began to shoot up in front of her, forming bars as they had for her illusion earlier. She dodged some and cast a quick tremor to shatter others. She was determined to escape this castle. Azriel's spells were becoming more potent by the second, and there was no doubt that she was not far from discovering one that would stall Myranda long enough to mark her failure. She simply had to get as far from the book as possible to maximize the time she had to escape.
The drawbridge was nearly halfway shut by the time she had fought her way to it. As she climbed the steep wooden incline, the surface turned into a checkerboard of fire and ice. Was Azriel trying to catch her or kill her? She swept the fire away with her mind and managed to leap from one piece of charred wood to the other until she pulled herself onto the nearly vertical end of the bridge. With a mighty leap, she came crashing down on the outer bank of the moat. The drawbridge sealed shut and for a moment there was peace. Myranda breathed a sigh of relief, but it was cut short by the creaking of the chains. A moment later they snapped and the drawbridge began to fall open. The terrified girl rolled frantically away, narrowly avoiding being crushed beneath the massive door. So narrow was her escape that, when she tried to move, she found that the hem of her tunic was pinned beneath the bridge.
The shadowy form of Azriel was approaching through the doorway. Myranda pulled desperately at the pinned cloth until it tore free. First, she rekindled the blazes on the bridge. In an instant smoke, fire, and steam concealed the outside world from anyone within. With the modicum of time she'd bought, the girl scanned the horizon. There was a scattering of trees and bushes dotting the open field before her. She conjured a wind to rattle the branches and prayed that her idea would work.
Azriel walked across the flaming walkway utterly unaffected by the flames. She reached the other side of the moat a moment before the tattered wooden door fell into the water. An unseen force made her twitch. Turning to look through the steam rising from the moat, she saw that the first five minutes had elapsed. The hourglass inverted itself, foregoing the gravity reversal that generally would accompany it. Her purpose here was to be tested against as ma
ny situations as possible, not the same one over and over again.
With the approaching deadline renewing her resolve, Azriel turned back to the field. Myranda had been busy. She'd managed to shake free the seeds from the trees and bushes and grow a veritable forest to hide in. It was far too dense to see through, and the girl was still able to thwart her detection spell.
"Clever girl, but there are more ways than one to track prey," Azriel said.
She began to stalk forward, seeming to waft away and back again as a pitch-black wolf with the same flickering white fire in her eyes. The air carried the scent of her target as clear as day. As she followed it, the trees nearest to her withered and died.
Far ahead, Myranda moved--unseen but not unknown--through the thick woods of her own creation. Precious little sun made it through the leaves, a fact that made her feel all the better. As a minute ticked by, then another, the tiniest hint of a feeling of safety came over her. It was a feeling quickly dispelled when she heard the quiet swish of grass beneath feet other than her own. She looked about, trying to spot her hunter, but Azriel made the very sun in the sky sink below the horizon, replacing it with a moon with hardly the strength to allow more than a few rays to peek through the thick canopy. Silently, Myranda managed to climb the nearest tree.
In a lone spot of moonlight, she saw the flicker of a black lupine form, and she realized how she had been found. She conjured a wind from behind her hunter to carry the scent away, but it was too late. The branches of the tree closed in around her like a cage. The moon seemed to brighten, lighting the cleared path leading to the castle.
Something, moving fast, came bursting out of the distant doorway toward them. It was the pedestal, book and pen perched firmly on top. When the pedestal was beside her, Azriel resumed her proper form. She took up the pen. Myranda drew all of the heat she could from the branches. They stiffened, crackling and flaking as the cold rendered them fragile. The desperate girl lashed out against the embrittled wood. The limbs gave way far more suddenly and fully than she had expected. Every last branch and much of the trunk collapsed into large, icy chunks.