The Iron Trial

by Holly Black

  “Is this place on the map?” he asked.

  Aaron squinted. “Yeah. In fact, we’re almost there. Just one room to the south …” He disappeared through a dark archway, then reappeared a moment later, flushed with victory. “Found it!”

  Tamara and Call crowded in after him. For a moment, they were silent. Even after seeing all sorts of spectacular underground rooms, including the Library and the Gallery, Call knew he was seeing something special. From a gap high in one wall, a torrent of water poured out, splashing down into a huge pool that glowed blue, as if lit from the inside. The walls were feathery with bright green lichen, and the contrast of the green and the blue made Call feel as if he were standing inside a huge marble. The air was redolent with the odor of some unfamiliar and tantalizing spice.

  “Huh,” Aaron said after a few minutes. “It is kind of weird that it’s called the Butterfly Pool.”

  Tamara walked up to the edge. “I think that’s because the water is the color of those blue butterflies — what are they called?”

  “Blue monarchs,” Call said. His father had always been a fan of butterflies. He had a whole collection of them, pinned under glass over his desk.

  Tamara put her hand out. The pool shuddered, and a sphere of water rose up from it. Even as it shifted and rippled across the surface, it kept its shape.

  “There,” Tamara said, a little breathlessly.

  “Great,” said Aaron. “How long do you think you can hold it?”

  “I don’t know.” She tossed back a thick dark braid, trying not to let any strain show on her face. “I’ll tell you when my concentration starts to give.”

  Aaron nodded, smoothing the map out against one of the damp walls. “Now we just need to find our way —”

  At that moment, the map in his hands burst into flames.

  Aaron yelled and pulled his fingers away from the blackening pages sparking through the air. The pages fell in a shower of embers and hit the floor. Tamara yelped, losing her focus. The water she’d been suspending splashed down over her uniform and turned into a puddle at their feet.

  The three of them looked at one another, wide-eyed. Call straightened his shoulders. “I guess that’s what Master Rufus meant,” he said. “We’re supposed to follow our lighted stones or marks or whatever in order to get back. That map was only good for the way here.”

  “Should be easy,” Tamara said. “I mean, I only lit one of them, but you guys lit more, right?”

  “I lit one, too,” said Call, looking hopefully in Aaron’s direction. Aaron didn’t look back.

  Tamara frowned. “Ugh, fine. We’ll figure out the way back. You carry the water.”

  With a shrug, Call went over to the lake and concentrated on shaping a ball. Call drew on the air around him to move the water and felt the push-pull of the elements inside him. He wasn’t as good at it as Tamara, but he did okay. His ball dripped only a little as it hovered.

  Aaron frowned and pointed. “We came in there. This way. I think …”

  Tamara followed Aaron, and Call went after her, the ball of water spinning over his head as if he had his own personal storm cloud. The next room was familiar: the underground stream, the colorful mushrooms. Call navigated among them carefully, afraid that at any moment his water ball would fall directly on his head.

  “Look,” Tamara was saying. “There’s lit-up stones over here….”

  “I think those are just bioluminescence,” Aaron said in a worried voice. He tapped at them and then turned back to her with a shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do. We go this way.” She set off with a determined stride. Call followed, left-right-left, through a cavern full of huge stalactites growing in the shapes of leaves, don’t drop the water, around a corner, through a gap between boulders, keep it together, Call. There were sharp rocks all around and Call nearly walked right into a wall because Tamara and Aaron had stopped dead. They were arguing.

  “I told you it was just glowing lichen,” Aaron said, clearly frustrated. They were in a large room with a stone cistern in the center, bubbling gently. “Now we’re lost.”

  “Well, if you’d remembered to light up stones as we went —”

  “I was reading the map,” Aaron said, exasperated. In a way, Call thought, it was kind of nice to know that Aaron could get irritated and unreasonable. Then Aaron and Tamara turned to glare at Call, and Call nearly dropped the spinning globe he’d been balancing. Aaron had to throw out a hand to stabilize the water. It hovered in the air between them, shedding droplets.

  “What?” Call said.

  “Well, do you have any idea where we are?” said Tamara.

  “No,” Call admitted, glancing around at the smooth walls. “But there must be some way to find our way back. Master Rufus wouldn’t just send us down here to get lost and die.”

  “That’s pretty optimistic, coming from you,” said Tamara.

  “Funny.” Call made a face to show her exactly how funny it wasn’t.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Aaron said. “Arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

  “Well, following you is going to get us somewhere,” Call said. “And that somewhere is about as far away as you can get from where we need to be.”

  Aaron shook his head, disappointed. “Why do you have to be such a jerk?” he asked Call.

  “Because you never are,” Call told him staunchly. “I have to be a jerk for both of us.”

  Tamara sighed and then, after a moment, laughed. “Can we admit that we’re all at fault? We all messed up.”

  Aaron looked like he didn’t want to admit it, but finally he nodded. “Yeah, I forgot that we weren’t allowed to use the map on the way back.”

  “Yeah,” said Call. “Me, too. Sorry. Aren’t you good at finding paths, Tamara? What about all that tapping into the metal of the earth stuff?”

  “I can try,” Tamara said, her voice a little hollow. “But that just lets me know which way north is, not how these passageways intersect. But we’ve got to come across something familiar eventually, right?”

  It was scary to think about wandering through the tunnels, to think about the pits of darkness they could fall into, the sucking mud pools and the weird choking steam rising from them. But Call didn’t have a better plan. “Okay,” he said.

  They began to walk.

  This was pretty much exactly what his father had warned him about.

  “You know what I miss from home?” Aaron asked as they went, picking their way past concretions that looked like tattered tapestries. “It’s going to sound super lame, but I miss fast food. Like the greasiest possible burger and a mound of fries. Even the smell of them.”

  “I miss lying out in the backyard in the grass,” Call said. “And video games. I definitely miss video games.”

  “I miss wasting time online,” Tamara said, surprising Call. “Don’t give me that face — I lived in a town just like the kind you guys grew up in.”

  Aaron snorted. “Not like where I grew up.”

  “I mean,” she said, taking over the maintenance of the spinning blue globe of water, “I grew up in a town full of people who weren’t mages. There was a bookshop where the few mages met up or left messages for one another, but other than that, it was normal.”

  “I’m just surprised your parents let you go online,” Call said. It was such a regular, non-fancy way to waste time. When he imagined her outside the Magisterium, having fun, he imagined her riding a polo pony, although he wasn’t exactly sure what that was or how it was different from a regular pony.

  Tamara smiled at him. “Well, they didn’t exactly let me….”

  Call wanted to know more about that, but as he opened his mouth to ask, his breath caught at the sight of the remarkable room that had just appeared in front of him.

  THE CAVERN WAS quite large, the ceiling carved to be vaulted like the ceiling of a cathedral. There were five tall archways, each flanked by marble pillars, each inlaid with a different metal: iron, co
pper, bronze, silver, or gold. The walls were marble, indented with thousands of human handprints, a name carved over each one.

  A bronze statue of a young girl with long, wind-whipped hair was in the center of the room. Her face was upturned. The plaque beneath her read: Verity Torres.

  “What is this place?” Aaron asked.

  “It’s the Hall of Graduates,” said Tamara, whirling around, her expression awed. “When apprentices become journeymen and journeywomen mages, they come here and press their handprints into the stone. Everyone who’s ever graduated from the Magisterium is here.”

  “My mom and dad,” Call said, walking through the room, looking for their names. There was his father’s — Alastair Hunt — high up the wall, too high for Call to reach. His father must have levitated to get his hand there. A smile pulled at the corner of Call’s mouth, as he imagined his father, this very young version of his father, flying just to show he could.

  He was surprised that his mother’s handprint wasn’t next to his father’s, since he assumed they’d been in love even as students — but maybe the handprints didn’t work that way. It took a few minutes more, but finally he found it, over on a far wall — Sarah Novak, pressed into the base of a stalagmite, the name scrawled in a fine point, like it had been done with a weapon. Call crouched down and rested his hand inside the place his mother’s had been. Her hands were shaped like his; his fingers fit neatly inside the phantom ones of a girl long dead. At twelve, his hands were as big as hers had been at seventeen.

  He wanted to feel something, with his hand pressed inside his mother’s, but he wasn’t sure he felt anything at all.

  “Call,” Tamara said. She touched him gently on the shoulder. Call glanced back at his two friends. Both of them had the same concerned looks on their faces. He knew what they were thinking, knew they were feeling sorry for him. He shot to his feet, shaking off Tamara’s hand.

  “I’m fine,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “Look at this.” Aaron was standing in the middle of the room, in front of a large archway made of a shimmering white stone. Carved across the front were the words Prima Materia. Aaron ducked under it, popping out the other side with a curious look. “It’s an archway to nowhere.”

  “Prima materia,” Tamara murmured, and her eyes widened. “It’s the First Gate! At the end of every year at the Magisterium, you go through a gate. It’s for when you’ve learned to control your magic, to use your counterweights properly. After, you get your Copper Year armband.”

  Aaron went pale. “You mean I just went through the gate early? Am I going to be in trouble?”

  Tamara shrugged at him. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem like it’s activated.” They all squinted at it. It stood there, being a stone archway in a dark room. Call had to agree that it didn’t seem exactly operational.

  “Did you see anything like that on the map?” Call asked.

  Aaron shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  “So even though we found a landmark, we’re just as lost as before?” Tamara kicked the wall.

  Something dropped down. A large, lizardy thing with shining eyes and flames all down its back and … eyebrows.

  “Oh, my God,” said Tamara, her eyes rounding into saucers. The ball of water took a dangerous dip toward the floor as Aaron stared, and this time Call had to stabilize it.

  “Call! Always lost, Call. You should stay in your room. It’s warm there,” Warren said.

  Tamara and Aaron turned to Call, shooting him both exclamation points and question marks with their eyes.

  “This is Warren,” Call said. “He’s, uh, this lizard I know.”

  “That’s a fire elemental!” Tamara said. “What are you doing, knowing an elemental?” She stared at Call.

  Call opened his mouth to disavow friendship with Warren — it wasn’t like they were close! But that didn’t seem the best way to persuade Warren to help them — and Call knew that, at this point, they really needed Warren’s help.

  “Didn’t Master Rufus say some of them were into, you know … absorbing?” Aaron’s gaze followed the lizard.

  “Well, he hasn’t absorbed me yet,” Call said. “And he slept in my room. Warren, can you help us? We’re lost. Really lost. We just need you to lead us back.”

  “Shortcuts, slippery paths, Warren knows all the hidden places. What will you trade for the way back?” The lizard scrambled closer to them, spraying gravel from between its toes.

  “What do you want?” Tamara asked, rooting around in her pockets. “I have some gum and a hair tie, but that’s about it.”

  “I have some food,” Aaron offered. “Candy, mostly. From the Gallery.”

  “I’m holding the water,” Call said. “I can’t go through my pockets. But, uh, you can have my shoelaces.”

  “All of it!” said the lizard, head bobbing up and down with excitement. “I will have all of it when we get there and then my Master will be pleased.”

  “What?” Call frowned, not sure he’d heard the elemental quite right.

  “Your Master will be pleased when you are back,” the lizard said. “Master Rufus. Your Master.” Then he ran along the cave wall, fast enough that Call had to breathe hard to keep up and keep the ball of water moving at the same time. A few drops got lost in the rush.

  “Come on,” he said to Tamara and Aaron, his leg aching from the effort.

  With a shrug, Aaron followed.

  “Well, I did promise him my gum,” Tamara said, jogging after them.

  They followed Warren though a sulfur-streaked hall, orange and yellow and weirdly smooth on all sides — Call felt as though they were walking through the throat of some enormous giant. The floor was unpleasantly moist with reddish lichen, thick and spongy. Aaron nearly tripped, and Call’s feet sank into it, sending the ball of water wobbling as he steadied himself. Tamara stabilized it with a flick of her fingers as they passed into a cavern whose walls were covered with crystalline formations that looked like icicles. A huge mass of crystals hung from the center of the ceiling like a chandelier, glowing faintly.

  “This isn’t the way we came,” Aaron complained, but Warren didn’t pause, except to take a bite out of one of the dangling crystals as he went by it. He bypassed all the obvious exits and headed straight for a small dark hole, which turned out to be an almost lightless tunnel. They had to get on their knees and crawl, the globe of water wobbling precariously between them. Sweat was running down Call’s back from the cramped position, his leg was killing him, and he’d begun to worry that Warren was leading them in the totally wrong direction.

  “Warren —” he started.

  He broke off as the passageway suddenly widened out into a vast chamber. He staggered slowly to his feet, his bad leg punishing him for pushing it so hard. Tamara and Aaron followed, looking pale with the effort of both crawling and holding the water steady at the same time.

  Warren scuttled toward an archway leading out. Call followed as fast as his leg would allow.

  He was so distracted by the effort that he didn’t notice when the air became warmer, filling with the smell of something burning. It wasn’t until Aaron exclaimed, “We’re been here before — I recognize the water,” that he looked up and saw that they were back in the room with the smoking orange stream and the huge vines that hung down like tendrils.

  Tamara exhaled with clear relief. “This is great. Now we just —”

  She broke off with a cry as a creature rose out of the smoking stream, making her stumble back and Aaron yell out loud. The ball of water that had hung between them crashed to the floor. The water sizzled as if it had been dumped onto a hot skillet.

  “Yes,” said Warren. “Just like I was bid. He told me to bring you back, and now you are here.”

  “He told you,” Tamara echoed.

  Call stared openmouthed at the huge being rising out of the stream, which had started to boil, huge red and orange bubbles appearing on the surface with the ferocity of lava. The creat
ure was clumped and dark and stony, as if it were made out of shards of jagged rock, but it had a human face, a man’s face, the planes seemingly cut from granite. Its eyes were just holes into darkness.

  “Greetings, Iron Mages,” it said, voice echoing as though the thing spoke from some great distance. “You are far from your Master.”

  The apprentices were speechless. Call could hear Tamara’s breath rasping in the quiet.

  “Have you nothing to say to me?” The creature’s granite mouth moved: It was like watching stone fissure and split apart. “I was once like you, children.”

  Tamara made a horrible sound, half sob and half gasp. “No,” she said. “You can’t be one of us — you can’t still speak. You …”

  “What is it?” Call hissed. “What is it, Tamara?”

  “You’re one of the Devoured,” Tamara said, her voice breaking. “Consumed by an element. Not human anymore….”

  “Fire,” the thing breathed. “I became fire long ago. I gave myself to it, and it to me. It burned away what was human and weak.”

  “You’re immortal,” Aaron said, his eyes looking very big and green in his pale, grimy face.

  “I am so much more than that. I am eternal.” The Devoured leaned close to Aaron, close enough that Aaron’s skin began to flush, the way skin pinkens when someone stands close to a fire.

  “Aaron, don’t!” Tamara said, taking a step forward. “It’s trying to burn you, absorb you. Get away from it!”

  Her face shone in the flickering light, and Call realized there were tears on her cheeks. He thought suddenly of her sister, consumed by elements, doomed.

  “Absorb you?” The Devoured laughed. “Look at you, little flickering sparks, barely grown. Not much life to be squeezed out of you.”

  “You must want something from us,” Call said, hoping the Devoured would swing its attention away from Aaron. “Or you wouldn’t have bothered to show yourself.”

  The thing turned to him. “Master Rufus’s surprise apprentice. Even the rocks have whispered of you. The greatest of the Masters has chosen strangely this year.”