by Awert, Wolf
Small beads of energy streamed from the Oa’s fingers like pearls on a string. They were small fireballs, their red glow containing a golden shimmer. With a grand motion the White Mage created a blue shield that eliminated the little red pearls.
Tiriwi changed the position of her fingers a little and the pearls began to stream out in all directions. It looked very pretty, but quite untidy. Some fell to the ground, others flew up into the sky. The mage sent out large, flat disks of Water through the room, catching and enveloping most of the pearls. One came close to him, and he extinguished it with his foot; another, he crushed between two fingers. Several of them had reached his head, swarming around him like so many bees, then landing on his shoulders, their flames going out.
The White Mage laughed, as did some of the onlookers. But the laughers were outnumbered, for not everyone enjoyed the show. Irritated mutterings could be heard from the archmages’ followers. “The Oa is ridiculing her examiner. It’s all just a game for her.”
In Ringwall, magic was life. Magic was sacred, a means to an end. Magic was a tool and a weapon, it was part of all arcanists. Magic was so much, but what it most certainly was not, was a game.
The second volunteer was a young mage from the school of Water. He pushed his way past his colleagues and stepped towards the middle of the Hall. His dark blue robe stood out against the warm brown of Kleiborn and Tiriwi’s silvery-gray. He glanced toward the Grand Mage of Earth, snapped “Ready?” and sent a dazzling Metal bolt at Tiriwi. It seemed a little excessive for the rules of a first-year trial, but was not banned. Tiriwi caught it in an elegant movement and made a colorful light beam between her hands. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she breathed.
The mage’s lips thinned in annoyance. He had failed to surprise the girl and now called: “If nobody objects, I will take the third task as well.”
Kleiborn nodded. “It is irregular, but no rules state that an examiner can only partake in one task.” He repeated the third task again. “In the third task, the student is required to undo a poison, a disfigurement of their body, a disease or, theoretically, a curse.”
The young man stretched imperiously, stared around the hall and grasped into the air with an impressive gesture. Nobody could see what he had caught. He balled his fists, redirected them in front of his face, stared at the unmoved Oa, opened his hands and blew whatever it was at her.
Tiriwi stood her ground. She seemed to be seeing through the Water mage, focused on something far beyond him. Bemused, the mage tried again, this time with considerably less pomp. Still, the cast showed no effect.
“I think he’s trying to poison her, and failing at it,” Nill whispered into Brolok’s ear.
“How come?”
“I don’t know,” Nill said. “But if a poisoning is nothing but a confusion of elemental magics in one’s body, then I suppose you can prevent it if you’re prepared. Instead of healing herself, she’s just blocking any attempt at poisoning her.”
The young mage was becoming angrier by the second. He took position, his legs apart, his arms crossed in front of his chest. He put all his weight onto the balls of his feet and bounced up and down a few times, all the while staring deep into the Oa’s eyes.
Tiriwi’s expression was confused. Her lips let slip a tiny “oh.” Nill saw her face becoming slightly red, seemingly rising from her neck. Tiriwi’s gaze sunk to the ground. She looked ashamed.
The mage smiled a self-satisfied smile.
But when Tiriwi raised her eyes again, her brows were pulled together in the frown she always wore when she disagreed with something. Nill and Brolok knew that look well enough and wondered what they were about to witness. They, and their teachers, had seen that the Oa, despite her apparent meekness, could be very forceful when defending her position. Tiriwi seemed not only not meek, but rather exceptionally angry. She was no longer avoiding her examiner’s gaze, but returning it with an unexpected hardness and determination.
The young man was still smiling, but his confidence seemed to wither. His smile vanished. It was now his face that turned red, and the veins near his temples pulsated menacingly.
“Has she passed the test?” Kleiborn asked.
The young mage said nothing, so Tiriwi answered quietly: “I think so.” And then, a little louder, “Shall I explain what happened?”
“That won’t be necessary, you’ve passed,” the Water mage coughed. He turned about abruptly and walked with wooden steps and a stony face back to his seat. Nill could not see it from where he stood, but Empyrade seemed highly amused.
Kleiborn waited for a moment to see if anyone was going to object. When nobody did, Tiriwi went back to Nill and Brolok without getting a mentor or patron for her further education.
Brolok did astonishingly well. He attacked with a glowing ball of Metal and suffocated a fireball with an Earthen shield. Nill had no idea where he got the strength to control these elements, especially in the hall, but Brolok was certainly good with Earth magic. All sorts of mages taught healing magic, and Brolok chose an unknown one from the rows in the back. This one did not bother with poisons or illness. He simply sliced open Brolok’s face in a terrible cross pattern.
Brolok did not so much as wince. Even as the blood ran down his neck and down his collar, he showed no emotion. He pressed the edges of the wounds together, like Tiriwi had shown him, and said aloud: “That’ll heal over time.”
He stayed there with closed eyes for another moment, then took his hands off his face. Everyone could see that the bleeding had stopped and the wound had sealed.
Tiriwi was disgusted. “He’ll have those scars for the rest of his life. He’s marked forever.”
The examiner turned to Kleiborn and nodded. “Passed, although he’s a fighter, not a sorcerer.” Then he looked at Brolok for a long moment and said: “Come here, lad.”
Brolok approached his examiner with supreme indifference in his expression. He held his hands in front of Brolok’s face, and the wounds re-opened. A small spurt of blood shot out of the corner of his mouth. But then the cuts began to seal themselves from within, until all trace of them had vanished. Tiriwi was relieved.
“I will assume patronage of this one,” the White Mage said.
Nill was, as he had predicted, the final student. As he took his place, muttering swept the hall again. Although he did not realize it, Nill was well on his way to becoming famous in Ringwall. Rumors abounded about his inability to control magic, his failure at finding the magical patterns outside of Ringwall and his irreverence of higher-ranked students. Many had come to witness him being put in his place. But without knowing, he had won friends. Empyrade did not conceal her interest in the three students from the caves. Today also marked the first time the master archivist had visited the Hall of Ceremony for a trial, although nobody knew what he thought.
Nill was small, tough and slight, and took up minimal room in the hall. His aura twitched and flickered, changing color constantly. This irregularity betrayed his racing heart, although on the surface he looked calm and collected. He looked thin and fragile. A lost Nothing among the mighty.
“Now then, Nill. Who have you chosen to be your first examiner?” Kleiborn’s voice was soothing.
Time to see whether my plan is sheer madness or plain brilliance. Nill gulped, his throat painfully dry, and bowed deeply before the judge before moving. The muttering in the hall stopped instantly, the silence was electrified with tension. “What is the boy doing?” some of the keepers of tradition wondered. Nill went to the mages, came almost improperly close to the archmages and stopped in front of Bar Helis, the Archmage of Metal.
Nill gave another deep bow and asked, his voice shaking slightly: “Would you honor me by examining me in this task?”
The only thing that stopped the cascade of commotion and careless words from breaking out was the respect everyone present had for the Magon and his archmages. Some audible exhalations, a few sighs were to be heard, nothing else. The hall was silent. Not the
silence after a long, eventful day; rather the silence before an earthquake, as nature collected all its strength before unleashing the disaster. And if it had been the silence of a day, then that of a solar eclipse, when friend and foe, human and beast crawl below until life returns.
The Archmage of Metal took long, magically-charged steps to the middle of the Hall. He held a black staff in his right hand, which was covered in carved runes invisible to all but himself. Nill had to hurry after him to reach his spot in time. He bowed again before his examiner, then before Kleiborn and then before the convened mages. All eyes were upon him, everyone awaited his attack. Nill’s mouth formed unheard words and the black robe of the Archmage began to flutter, although not a wind was in the Hall.
“Air heavy, robe light. Air heavy, robe light.”
The Archmage looked down and saw the hem of his robes fluttering a few inches from the ground. Nill took this moment of carelessness to throw nuts, fruit and thorns at his examiner. A few scattered laughs told him how insane the attack was. Attacking an Archmage was already madness, but using Wood magic against Bar Helis was the pinnacle of madness, for Metal was the natural enemy of Wood.
Nill had left his position and was running all around the room, describing a circle around the Archmage and staying in constant motion as plant parts continued to fly around.
The Archmage allowed Nill’s magic to approach him closely, then shattered everything around him with a magical cloud of Metal. The nuts were crushed, the fruit burst, the thorns disintegrated, the branches and leaves lost all form. Slowly a circle of sweet-smelling plant matter came to rest around the Archmage, made of sticky juice, oil and light water.
Nill had reached his original position again and was concentrating on the mage’s robe again, making it flutter. As the Archmage smoothed the creases in it, Nill cast an Earth wave at him, causing the stone slabs on the floor to burst. The Archmage was surprised and blocked the attack with a hasty movement, causing him to lose his balance. He gripped his staff for support, but at that moment Nill sent a bolt of lightning toward the staff, which shook heavily. This was not due to the strength of the attack, but rather because it was absorbing the element greedily. The Archmage had managed to stay upright, but slipped in the oily matter surrounding him, his foot sliding away. Bar Helis gave a roar of cold fury, banishing the plant matter. His free arm jabbed forwards, the air seemed to flicker in a blue light, and a wild spark hit Nill squarely in the chest. He stopped moving, his heart stopped beating, space and time lost their meaning for a moment.
Nill could see and hear, feel and taste, but he could not move a muscle. Everything in his body ground to a halt, air was growing sparse. His heartbeat slowed. His aura shrank.
The judge gave a signal that the task was complete, and asked the Archmage to lift the spell he had cast.
With a snap of his fingers, Nill fell into a heap. Like old clothes someone had thrown out, he lay on the floor, motionless.
The Archmage returned to his seat, his steps calm, but his expression icy. Not even Kleiborn dared ask for the result of the fight.
Brolok whispered to Tiriwi: “What a battle! I never would have expected that from the little blighter. But now he’s got an Archmage for an enemy. Prince Sergor-Don and all the other students seem not to have been enough for him. He had to go and make an Archmage look foolish before the whole house.”
Tiriwi’s eyes showed only a fraction of her worry. This time Nill had messed up, and the implications could be deadly.
Nill had managed to rise by now, standing on his spot in a somewhat crooked manner. The cramp had not yet left his body entirely, and he gingerly held his right side.
Kleiborn looked around the room laboriously to give Nill a few more moments to regain his strength before asking him whether he was ready for the second task.
Nill nodded weakly. He looked to the mages again, pressing his lips together. As his gaze wandered along the first row, he set off. The silence this time was not as complete as the first one had been, for the mages were already wagering on how disrespectful the next choice would be. Nobody in the hall still thought that Nill would stop at anything. How far was he willing to go?
Nill passed the Magon, passed Keij-Joss and Mah Bu. He stopped before the last Archmage at the end of the row. Ambrosimas sat there. The Word. The Archmage of Thought.
“Would you grant me the honor of being my second examiner?”
Nill’s bow this time was less deep than the first, as his side was still numb, although it had just began to tingle.
Brolok and Tiriwi could see how some of the mages were shaking their heads. How was Ambrosimas to test Nill? The magic of Thought was not taught in Ringwall; its study was a matter of private instruction from mage to mage. Did Nill really expect the Word to fight with Fire or Water?
To everyone’s surprise, Ambrosimas smiled, hoisted his considerable weight out of his chair and moved with astonishing speed to his position. There he stood, thinking, for a long time. Kleiborn would have asked any other mage not to take too much of the attending audience’s time, but nobody dared tell an Archmage what to do. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Ambrosimas appeared to reach his decision. He stood upright, his body tense, and made a wide gesture.
Nill felt a slight vibration in the soles of his feet that became gradually stronger, until his entire body was shaking.
It was a deep Earth spell, something very difficult to use effectively in Ringwall. The battlefield was more suited to this kind of magic. This was also why nobody except Brolok had used Earth magic so far; Nill had cast a wave against Bar Helis, but it had remained very close to the surface, despite breaking open the floor. But Nill liked the Earth, and Brolok had shown him something of the strange beauty the element possessed.
He carefully answered with a plant spell. Strong roots shot up around his feet, weaving together to make a dense net. The floor still shook, but the roots annulled most of the earthquake’s effect on Nill. His teeth stopped chattering.
Ambrosimas began to sing in a deep, full, pleasant voice. The melody was simple, consisting of a few well-chosen phrases that kept repeating, set against a steady rhythm. Nill knew that rhythm. It was the same Tiriwi had played on her drum when they had met. At the very least, it was similar. Nill searched for the attack hidden in the music; the attack was his to defend himself against, according to the task. But there was none. There was nothing. This was the opposite of war, of fighting and dueling. Nill began to wonder what he was even doing here. Fighting duels seemed like such nonsense when there were much nicer things in life, like music. Well, if there’s no attack, there’s no need for defense, he thought. His thoughts began to wander. He found himself humming along to the melody, until something disturbed him, plucking at his mind. He understood not a word of the song, but he suddenly had the feeling that it was mentioning him. He felt an urgent desire to sit down and do nothing but watch the flowers and the butterflies. He knew that odd plucking sensation in his mind as well; had it been Dakh-Ozz-Han or his ill-mannered raven? Someone wanted something out of him, and he did not really want to give it. He heard a quiet, girlish voice say in his head: “Don’t fall asleep.” Nill twitched, and his old stubbornness came back to him. He saw now the silliness of watching flowers and butterflies in a stone hall. He had been half defeated without having done anything at all! It had taken far too long to recognize the attack for what it was. But it was not yet too late.
Nill did not know any magical language, and he could not sing any magical songs. What he did know was the voice of the animals, the sounds of nature. Was that not a magic of sorts? Nill decided to find out. He began with a hissing noise, something he had learned from snakes. He amplified the sound until it became a sharp whistle, so piercing that many of those present had to cover their ears, and the Word stopped singing. Dissonance against harmony. Instead Ambrosimas answered with a soft whooshing sound that began to pulsate, hitting Nill like shock waves.
“What is stro
nger?” he had once asked the elders in his village. “The young khanwolf or a fully-grown borck?” “The mountain Roc, my boy. The mountain Roc.” What an answer that was. The Roc was the largest bird of prey in all of Pentamuria. It always appeared when two fighters battled, and would chase away the winner and feed off the loser. The Roc was the bringer; it took the flesh and handed over the soul. Sometimes it was impatient and attacked the weaker target before the battle was over. But now Nill understood what the Roc meant. He screeched the Roc’s cry that could paralyze any prey, and the shock waves settled. The Word whimpered like a frightened mouse and Nill charged towards him, ready to finish his magical attack with a physical one. His exact plan remained a secret to everyone but himself, however, because at the moment he reached his opponent he found himself embraced by him. Ambrosimas hugged Nill tightly and planted a loud smacking kiss on his forehead. “Not all quiet voices are weak, little one,” he whispered in Nill’s ear. Nill awoke from his battle-trance and looked up, confused. Ambrosimas said out loud: “That was no magic you did. It was a game of tones. Leave that for when you’re actually ready for it.”
He turned around and said into the room: “I will be the boy’s patron.”
The Hall seemed suddenly breathless. In the entire history of Ringwall, no Archmage had ever assumed patronage. After a few moments of hesitation, the Magon spoke. “Is it not a little early for such an offer, Brother Ambrosimas? The trial has not yet been passed.”
Ambrosimas was calm. “Mine has. And that is good enough for me.”
After the second task Nill felt more confident again. He turned back towards the archmages without waiting for Kleiborn to ask. The surprise from earlier had been replaced by curiosity; who would have to test him next? Three different examiners, the first two had been archmages. The third had to be one too. Many of those gathered in the Hall would have been unsurprised if Nill had challenged the Magon himself, for the boy had either no respect at all or he was simply an idiot. But Nill passed the Magon, to the disappointment of some and the relief of many. Instead he looked up at the Archmage of the Other World. He did not even have to speak. Mah Bu had already risen from his chair and quickly took his place at the center of the Hall.