by Andrew Rowe
I’d looked into those, too, but I didn’t have enough context to know what I’d actually need to buy. Mana crystals came in dozens of elemental varieties and several different sizes.
I checked the magic book for replies several times, but the Voice never wrote anything further. I concluded that either it was too busy or that it could only communicate through the book while it was in the tower. I planned to continue checking periodically anyway. It wouldn’t hurt.
I bought some basic food, easy to store food for my room as well. It’d be important if I needed to skip going to the dining hall for any reason. I kept to the cheap stuff, wanting to save as much money as possible.
With all those basic preparations in place, I spent most of my time reading my introductory books. Most of the students seemed to want to use their last days of freedom to socialize, but I was more interested in getting as much of an advantage as possible.
My final errand was one the most interesting, and one I’d been simultaneously excited and terrified about. It was time to visit Professor Orden and talk about what I’d seen in the tests.
I found a long line of students in front of me when I reached her office.
Of course there’s a line. She’s the supervisor for one of the classes. I’m sure a lot of the students are meeting with their supervisors for advice or any way to get an early edge.
I was, of course, the only Enchanter in line for the class that was meant for Diviners and Shadows.
Jin was at the front of the line. He saw me, quirked an eyebrow, and disappeared into the professor’s room.
As the students in line conversed with each other, I considered Jin. His black shirt had a high collar, and he wore gloves on both hands — an irregularity that was most likely designed to conceal his attunement.
He was in the Phoenix Division dorms, which implied that he was an Enchanter or a Mender. Of course, it was also possible he had a foreign attunement that was similar to ours.
Either way, he probably wouldn’t be getting training from Professor Orden. She was in charge of Diviners and Shadows, which had little similarity to the attunements used by the Phoenix Division.
If he was a Spider with a Diviner or a Shadow Attunement, though, he’d have a great reason to visit her for training or advice.
Asking people if they were members of House Spider was a great way to imply he was trying to find them, and thus not a member of House Spider himself. But it was such an obvious tactic for a Spider to use that many would suspect him of being one, just for doing it.
Which implied that he was either legitimately trying to gather information or deliberately trying to get people to question if he was a Spider or not.
Goddess, I wished I had thought to do it first. It sounded terribly entertaining.
Maybe I could still get in on the idea later.
He exited the room a few minutes later, nodding to me with a smirk as he passed by. I continued to wait as patiently as I could as other students took their turns, my mind traversing several threads as I waited.
It was at least an hour before I finally made it inside the door.
Professor Orden sat behind a long wooden desk, hands folded neatly in front of her, staring directly at me as I entered. Her crisp black suit and neutral expression were a stark contrast to the piles of everything imaginable that occupied nearly every usable space in the room.
I couldn’t see how she’d made it behind the desk without climbing over it. There were file cabinets blocking the paths on both sides of the desk, and the walls were lined with bookshelves. While there were some books, the shelves primarily seemed to carry miscellaneous trinkets. Bits of metal, tiny crystals, a crystalline feather, and what looked like a blackened human skull were sprawled haphazardly across them. A collection of masks occupied the little empty space on the back wall.
“Close the door behind you.” She gestured with one hand, and I complied. When I looked back, she’d returned to her neutral position, hands folded in front of her. “You’re not in my class. What brings you here, Cadence?”
I frowned. I knew her position connected her to a class of people that gathered information, but I hadn’t expected her to know me.
It took me another moment to realize that she didn’t need to. I was wearing my house’s symbol on my glove, like I always did, and I had an attunement glowing on my forehead that put me in a different class. She was probably just being observant and deliberately trying to disarm me.
I could appreciate that sort of thing, but I wasn’t in the mood for theatrics. I was nervous enough already.
“I have a message for you, but my understanding is that it’s something that shouldn’t be overheard. Is this a good place and time, or...?”
She waved a hand and stood up with deliberate effort. “Just wait for a moment.”
Professor Orden traced a pattern on the wall behind her with a single finger, leaving a gleaming trail where her finger made contact.
She’s drawing runes. I didn’t recognize the specific shapes, but she drew several of them.
She turned around, folding her arms. “This had better be worth my effort.”
“It’s secure now?”
She nodded in confirmation. “I took the basic precautions. Out with it.”
I glanced at the runes, then back to her. “The Voice of the Tower would like to speak to you.”
She let out a string of creative expletives, the kind and variety that you’re definitely not supposed to say in front of children.
“I’m pretty sure that’s anatomically impossible,” I replied.
“Quiet. I need to think.” She shut her eyes, folding her arms again.
Is this really that big of a problem? I haven’t even told her the details yet.
It was several moments before Professor Orden reopened her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I spoke too soon. This office is secure, but not secure enough for this conversation. I will contact you again at a later time. If you have not already been informed, you are most likely in significant danger. Take precautions. Do not speak to anyone else of this.”
I held up my hands in a warding gesture. “Significant danger? Can you, uh, elaborate about that please?”
Orden tightened her lips. “Just the fact that you know about the existence of the Voice means you probably attracted the attention of one or more of the visages. The kind of attention that usually results in people disappearing. So, as I said, take precautions.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Precautions? Against a visage?”
“Goddess above, boy, were you never briefed on this? Never mind. A visage isn’t going to be dropping out of the sky to annihilate you directly. Their agents are the ones you need to worry about. I can’t give you details here. Wherever you’re sleeping, ward it. Be thorough. Set up means for contacting help rapidly. Keep a weapon near you at all times. If you’re attacked directly, retreat to a populated area and make as much noise as possible.”
“By ward it, you mean—”
The professor held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t tell anyone about the details of your precautions, including me.” Her lips pursed, and she turned to the book case on her right, retrieving a key from the clutter. She tapped three times on a drawer in her desk, whispered something, and then turned the key in the lock. Once the drawer was open, she whispered again and reached inside.
There was an intricately carved chest inside the drawer, as well as a small pouch. The box immediately caught my eye. The runes on it resembled the ones on the entrance doors to the Serpent Spire, but I’d never seen similar styles on human-made equipment.
She removed the pouch and closed the drawer. “You’d better have good enough information to make this worth my trouble, Cadence.”
I lifted the bag. It didn’t have much heft to it, but there were at least a few coins inside. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by leaving quickly, pretending this conversation never happened, and not dying until we have an opportunity to
discuss things further.”
Goddess, what did I get myself into? “What if someone asks why I was here?”
“You had a message to deliver from my sister, Caela. It was a physical letter. You didn’t read it. I thanked you, paid you a courier fee, and sent you on your way.”
“Where would I have met this sister?”
“No one is going to ask you that.” She sighed. “But you’re right to ask. Say she was at the school’s recruitment tent outside the tower. No one will think to check. Now go.”
Her tone didn’t brook any argument. She sat back down, moving to her default position, waiting for the next student. I left the room, walking hurriedly back to my dorm.
***
The first thing I did when I got back to my room was try to write down the runes that I’d seen on the box in her drawer. I’d only had a few moments to look at them, but I thought I had a pretty good recollection of what some of them looked like.
My basic rune book was no help, but Advanced Artifice had some clues.
The central rune was something called a “containment” rune, and it was used for storing things inside a container that were larger than the container itself. I’d heard of things like that before — bags that were used to store large numbers of items, for example. There were diagrams for the runes for making exactly that type of bag, but while the central rune matched that design, nothing else did.
I came close to identifying one of the other runes, the one just to the left of center. It looked similar to a rune designed for governing range for teleportation spells, but the bottom section was drawn differently.
The one on the far right? I was pretty sure I’d either remembered it wrong or it was just a bunch of squiggles someone had made while they were bored.
I still didn’t know enough to understand what the whole thing was supposed to do, but I could tell this kind of thing was powerful. The kinds of runes I saw in the introductory runes book had “mana values” in the single digits. The most similar teleportation range rune I could find was classified at Citrine-level and required air mana and transference mana in the hundreds.
There were a number of other runes on the box that I couldn’t remember as well, and ones I couldn’t make out at all from my angle.
I really wanted one. Maybe I could convince her to let me take a look at it in more detail later?
I also wanted to know why she’d whispered before opening the drawer. Was she unlocking the drawer, or maybe disabling a trap?
I sighed. It didn’t matter. The box, as interesting as it was, wasn’t what I had to work with.
She’d told me to take precautions, so that was the next thing on my agenda. What could I do with the resources I had on hand? I had my handful of crystals, a few silver sigils and some bronze ones, and whatever she’d put in that pouch.
I checked the bag, fully expecting it to contain more wealth than I’d seen in my entire life. It didn’t. Just a half dozen extra silver sigils... and, more interestingly, a single finger-sized transparent crystal.
I’d have to figure out how to identify crystals at a glance at some point.
In the meantime, I packed the crystal away with my others and flipped open the basic runes book. I managed to locate a couple of the runes I’d seen the professor drawing on the wall, and I wondered how she’d been doing it without crystals in hand. Was she powering the runes herself? If so, how many attunements did she have?
The one on the left was “silence”, a simple rune for blocking noise. The other one was “blindness”, which blocked vision. Drawing them on walls wouldn’t do anything on its own, though.
Some of her runes must have been to tie the runes to the wall as an area of effect, then to focus them outward, preventing people outside from seeing or hearing what was within. Predictably, I couldn’t find those runes in the basic book, even though they were the most important.
And I still didn’t have the materials to power any of those runes, even if I knew them.
Maybe I was thinking too much in terms of runes. I still hadn’t even tried to make one yet, so it was probably a little too soon to be formulating my defense plan around them. There were simpler ways to protect myself, at least until I’d taken a few days of classes and made some test runes.
It didn’t take me long to purchase a few mundane supplies at a nearby store. I also checked the school rules for modifying the interior of the room — I could make some basic alterations as long as I fixed them before I left.
Good.
Nailing my door shut at night wasn’t exactly elegant, but it was a pretty effective deterrent. Much more than a simple lock, which undoubtedly any number of spells — or even mundane tricks — could remove. It would be pretty tough to dislodge a board nailed to the wall without anyone noticing.
Eventually, I’d get a silence rune so that people didn’t hear me nailing a board over my door every night.
I considered setting traps, but in a small enclosed space I doubted I’d be able to make them any more of a threat to an intruder than they were to me.
My room only had one entrance, the door. That was fortunate. I didn’t know how I’d handle anything as vulnerable as a window.
I also bought chalk. I’d place a small chip in the hinge of the door when I was about to leave. If I came back and found it crushed, it would imply that someone had been in my room while I’d been gone.
With some effort, I switched around the configuration of my room, putting my bed on the opposite side. If someone was going to blast straight in from the doorway, I’d be out of their line of attack.
My preparations felt woefully insufficient to handle any real threat, but most of the other options I considered were either too expensive (lining the walls with anti-magic materials), logistically infeasible (sleep somewhere other than my dorm room), or outside of my current capabilities (warding the walls).
I didn’t sleep much that night, but I felt some comfort from the sword cradled in my arms and the aura of frost seeping through the scabbard and provided a reassuring chill.
***
Tashday, the first day of classes.
I hadn’t been murdered in the middle of the night. Success!
I didn’t feel that successful, though. I felt exhausted, cranky, and a little bit numb. As it turns out, sleeping with a frost-enchanted sword in your arms has some disadvantages.
For the future, I’d remember to sleep with my dueling cane nearby instead of my sword.
I could already hear the sounds of the parade students heading their way toward the mess hall, trying to get in a meal before classes started. As much as it dismayed me to come into the presence of people again, my stomach was feeling neglected, so I decided to join them.
I winced at the damage to the wood as I unhooked my board from the doorway. There was no doubting that the board would be an effective delay, but it was going to do an unsustainable amount of damage if I had to keep it up for long. I’d have to look into getting a chain to replace it eventually. Possibly several chains. Ideally enchanted ones.
With that done, I realized I still wasn’t in my school uniform, and I’d been told it was mandatory for classes. Like all of the school uniforms, mine was primarily white, but it was accented with copper buttons and crimson epaulets to signify that I was a part of Phoenix Division. Red wasn’t really my color, but the uniform fit me better than I’d expected, and I had to admit that the floor-length overcoat was pretty nice.
I pinned on the shield sigil, and I immediately felt more like I was really attuned. I had a magical shield. I wondered how much it had to cost to provide every student with one of these. Did all our actual soldiers get them, too?
Putting the pin on also made me feel a good deal safer. I had no illusions that it would help me if Katashi came for me directly, but a protective barrier could help if someone else tried to get rid of me.
I resolved to wear the pin at all times. Even when I was sleeping. Especially when I was sleeping.
I belted on my sword — which I really needed to name at some point, all the best magic swords had names — and headed to the mess hall.
The scents hit me almost as soon as the building was in sight. I’d expected the dining hall food to be bland and uninspired, but the smell that filled the air were thick sauces and heavy spices. Some kind of curry, maybe? I loved curry, but I hadn’t had it since a family vacation to Dalenos in my youth. It wasn’t common in traditional Valian cuisine.
The line was less inspiring than the smell. It took me at least half an hour of waiting in the throng of students to get inside the door. I’d say it added to the anticipation, but I still would have preferred instant gratification.
I spotted a couple familiar faces amongst the students in the line. Patrick Wayland, Lisa Stone, and a few others that I’d gone to school with as a child. No doubt there were many others among my former classmates in the line who were too different in appearance for me to recognize. My three years of “private tutoring” had scraped my relationships down to the bone.
I didn’t resent my father for pulling me out of school. I understood his reasoning, his lack of trust for the system that had failed to adequately train my brother for his contest against the games of the goddess. I did resent his adamant refusal to allow me to visit with my friends. Letters helped for a time, but within a year, most of my friendships had atrophied from disuse.
When I neared the front of the line, I saw a list of meal options. I could pick from curried chicken, salmon, and some kind of unfamiliar pastry called a “cinnagar cake”. I picked the chicken and sides of seasoned potato slices and a mixture of vegetables.
It was a disconcertingly good meal. I grew suspicious. Were we being lulled into thinking we’d get excellent food so that it could be taken away at a later time?
Or maybe it was just the fact that this school was attended by those who had been wealthy enough to take an attunement test, and thus they had high standards. I wasn’t sure.
For the moment, at least, I wasn’t going to complain.