by Clark Bolton
“Time to see the girls,” Bose announced with a grin as they came to their assembly area.
More and more they talked about girls, as did all the other boys in the form. Ich-Mek had noticed it in himself as well, and thinking about it now suddenly brought back the memories of Yi-La’s legs. As he began nudging boys into their proper positions, he found himself hoping they were as pleasant to look at as before.
“Double your distance!” Ich-Mek called out loudly after a nod from Master Fla. He then quickly moved to stand on the left side of the last row of Sixes. This put him in front of the first row of Tens, and so now he had only to wait for Yi-La. As before, the girls came marching in silently, their robes a shade of red brighter than his own.
Being odd-boy, he felt an even greater pressure not to glance at her, or acknowledge her presence in any way. This worked at first, but then when she yelled out the command to re-color robes, he was truly startled by it. He had been sure it would come from Master Fla, barring that then from Yi-La’s master.
This meant only one thing: she was the odd-girl for her form. The thought had never occurred to him before. And as he pulled his robes over his head he wondered if this fact was true for other forms. It made sense, he told himself as he began to recite the arcane-script that would turn his robes silver. Keeping odd-students paired like this made ceremonies like this run smoother, he was sure.
His thoughts had distracted him from his main goal of the day, but as soon as the white of her shift caught the corner of his eye, he focused back on the plan. He couldn’t be caught looking at her – that would be unforgiveable, not to mention painfully consequential. But there was coming a moment when his head would be hidden from all.
His robes were silver now, and he could just see a glint of silver from where he knew her robes must lie. Reaching down he pulled his robes over his head with a practiced motion, and paused just long enough to look down the arm-hole of his robes at the girl beside him.
It was Yi-La for sure, though she looked different now since last he had seen her, which was more than a year ago. And her legs were even more appealing, he concluded as he let his eyes close for an instant to cherish the moment. What’s more, she had breasts now, and her shift did a poor job of hiding them.
__________________________
“I’m not on the prime path anymore,” Bose had declared suddenly.
Ich-Mek couldn’t bring himself to confirm this openly, though he was sure of the truth of it. All three of them were in different forms now. What was more, they were in faraway dormitories as well. He hadn’t yet mentioned that he had his own cell now. It was in a hall of sixty-seven individual cells, and his was special. He was the odd-boy again.
“Do you still have Master Fla?” Ich-Mek asked Bose softly to try and get his friend to think about something else.
“No,” Bose replied emotionlessly. “Master Pel…and some odd-boy I think you don’t know.”
“I have Master Juel now…but you’ll do fine…you know that.”
Bose shook his head. “I wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t told me.”
Ich-Mek felt blood rising to his face as he worried about what Bose was going to say next. “I didn’t say anything about master Pel, did I?”
“No,” Bose scoffed. “The path…I can’t stop thinking about the path.”
“I could be wrong,” Ich-Mek suggested, which was echoed by a nod from Rish.
“It’s just another path, right?” Rish suggested. “Mine’s not so bad. Got to study more Imin…but…”
“It’s not the dragon path,” Bose said sadly before starting to sob. “My family will be so unhappy.”
“No!” Rish insisted. “I’m not on that path, and I’ve heard Imin is an opportune place for a mage. There are ports there, and orchards, and a celebration lasting a whole moon comes every other year! You’ll likely end up in an even better place.”
It was a lot to think about, Ich-Mek decided as he laid his hand gently on Bose’s shoulder, alongside Rish’s. Was he on the dragon path, he asked himself. He still hadn’t found the second peg-board he had promised his friends he would. On it would be the answers, he was sure. Other than Regent Ober-Toss’s office, he could think of nowhere else to look.
“I’ll find the peg-board,” Ich-Mek promised again.
“Doesn’t matter!” Bose replied angrily as he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “It will just show a peg dropping off into the abyss.”
“Maybe,” Ich-Mek replied softly, “maybe not. Could show you’re going to be a rich mage. Living in the palace, even.”
Bose smiled through his tears. “My family would like that,” he admitted.
“I wouldn’t,” Rish interjected. “People lose their heads there, I’ve heard.” He moved his finger across his throat as he said it. “…Or worse, meet the dragon.”
Ich-Mek smiled sickly at his friend as he considered that possibility. “I think maybe a mage would survive that,” he suggested.
Both his friends looked at him with open mouths. “Did someone teach you how, Mek?” Bose asked with a serious look on his face.
Ich-Mek tried to laugh off the question. “No…I…I just thought maybe a dragon-mage would know how.”
“Maybe you’re not on the dragon path,” Rish suggested with a worried look.
Ich-Mek shrugged guiltily before swallowing and saying, “I have my own cell now.”
The following night a knock came on Ich-Mek’s window. He had only one window, and it was high up on the wall, just above the built-in shelf that served as his desk. Another built-in shelf served as a bed, which was the first time he had ever slept above the floor.
Daring to climb up on his desk, he then brought his nose to the window to see who or what had made the noise. Three smiling faces were staring up at him. Two he recognized as his friends, but the third boy he didn’t think he knew. With some difficulty he got the window to open enough to talk to them.
“It’s late!” he hissed down at them.
“Come on!” they urged him in a whisper.
“Where?” he asked several times, but the three refused to answer.
Finally, in frustration, he climbed down and then carefully drew aside the curtain that covered the doorway to his cell. Peeking down the long hall, he saw no one, and so quickly exited the dormitory. In the back alley the three boys waited.
“This is Um-Jek,” Bose said in a whisper as he motioned to the other boy before carefully peering around a corner. “He is going to take us to the cave!”
Ich-Mek stood silently in the dark alley, feeling very much certain this was a bad idea. “We shouldn’t go,” he argued. “What if we get expelled?”
“They won’t expel you,” Bose replied. “Tell him, Um-Jek.”
The boy bowed in response. “You’re in Master Juel’s dormitory, he never expels anyone. And they won’t, not from here.”
“How do you know?” Ich-Mek asked doubtfully.
“Just come on, Mek!” Bose hissed. “You want to get caught?”
Rish then pulled him close. “You’re on the prime path…I’ve heard this is expected.”
All three of the boys then nodded at him in agreement. “Maybe, but how about you, Rish? You keep telling me they’re going to make you leave!”
Rish shrugged, and the other two boys just kept taking steps down the alley and signaling for him to follow. Finally, Ich-Mek relented and started after them. He figured that as an odd-boy he could at least wander around after dark a little, and be able to talk his way out of any situation that arose.
“Down there?” Bose asked as the four of them squatted at the border hedge, which was composed of thorny rosebushes.
A vague path could be seen that required one to crawl on hands and knees through the brush. It led down steeply, looking to Ich-Mek like it might lead perilously close to the cliff that protected that side of the school.
“Yeah!” said Um-Jek, who began slowly crawling down the path. “Just don’t tear your
robes…that’s how most boys get caught.”
“What happens if you tear your robes?” Rish asked as he started after the boy.
“Your master might see it!” Um-Jek hissed back.
Bose didn’t hesitate to start following Rish, and so Ich-Mek felt compelled to follow as well. They still weren’t beyond the school grounds yet, he assured himself, which meant he could still beg for forgiveness if need be.
There was a narrow border of bushy foliage between the rosebushes and the cliff proper. Much of it looked to have been trampled down by previous visitors. It provided a place to stand, and to peer down over the cliff. Um-Jek did this only briefly before sitting down and beginning to collect the many vines running under him into a kind of rope.
“This is the best spot,” Um-Jek assured them as he slowly rolled over on his belly and began to inch back toward the cliff. “Some of those are good too,” he told them as he pointed further down the edge of the cliff, “but don’t use this one until I’m all the way down!”
The other three boys were speechless as Um-Jek slowly disappeared from sight. There was just enough light left to see his silver robes for a moment, then it was someone else’s turn to go down.
“How far?” Rish hissed over the cliff, but got no answer.
“What if we can’t climb back up?” Ich-Mek asked in a panic.
This was becoming more and more of a bad idea, he decided. Bose had paused now for a while, as if rethinking things as well. But when Rish began gathering up vines, Bose started to do the same. With a shake of his head, Ich-Mek began searching around on the ground for his own.
By the time he started over the edge, his two friends were well ahead of him. Almost blind, he found he had to search for footholds with his feet, and then slide down a little, then repeat the process. He could hear his friends talking to each other as they descended, but still had no idea how far down he was expected to go.
He nearly continued past the narrow ledge the other boys were standing on, which he came to realize later might have been the end of him. Following the dark shape of Um-Jek again, they soon came to a wider ledge and then to some caves. These were shallow, and Um-Jek insisted they led nowhere.
“This is it here,” Um-Jek assured them as he plunged down a steep slope of loose shale.
Sliding and stumbling, the three other boys followed him diagonally across the wide deposit until they came to a path leading back up. Here the shale was replaced by more solid rocks, acting as good footholds and handholds. Several minutes of difficult climbing brought them to the wide mouth of a low cave.
“Don’t stand in the way here,” Um-Jek warned. “They’ll throw rocks at you.”
“Who?” Ich-Mek asked with concern.
So far they hadn’t seen any other boys, nor even heard any. This changed when they ducked into the cave. It took a moment for them to realize that there was some light in there, and that the noises they heard were from many different sources.
Another deposit of shale formed an enormous pile just inside the cave, and they were forced to take one of two ways around it. Looking up in the glowing atmosphere of the cave, they could see that the deposit had been formed from a monumental collapse. Um-Jek chose to go left, so the rest of the party dutifully followed him. Moments later there were greeted by boisterous calls.
“Are they yelling at us?” Rish asked when they came to a halt.
Um-Jek just smiled in response and then began picking his way over loose boulders and around puddles of water. As they followed, they could smell smoke and see sizable shadows playing across the walls. Such was the terrain in the cave that it was difficult to tell where things originated.
The floor of the cave undulated wildly, with hills arising in some areas and gullies in others. At places the ceiling was high overhead, and in others the hills reached up to touch it. Much of the cave was littered with broken slate, and the outer edge nearest them had a kind of ledge running along it. It was here that boys were joking loudly, and sometimes yelling at others.
When they came upon five or six boys hunkered down against a steep slope, they stopped to see what they were doing. Suddenly a piece of slate the size of a dinner plate came sailing out from above them and smashed into pieces only a short distance away. The boys smiled and laughed in amusement as they dared to stand again.
It was clear to Ich-Mek now that this was much like a snowball fight, but with much more deadly projectiles. When a large glowing slate came sailing out from the ledge above, they caught site of its owner, who turned out to be just another boy in silver robes.
“They’re doing magic!” Bose exclaimed as they watched the glowing slate shatter into a hundred fragments. “How can they do that?”
“No rules here,” Um-Jek replied breathlessly as he dared to approach, and finally join in with, the other boys.
Ich-Mek’s heart raced as he watched the boys throw rocks up over the hill onto the ledge above. Moments later, more rocks came sailing back, and again some of them glowed. Bose dared to run out and snatch a piece of glowing rock, then sped back to display his trophy to Ich-Mek.
“Can you do this?” Bose asked with excitement. “I’ll bet it would really scare them!”
Ich-Mek shook his head at the idea of doing magic for just pleasure. Although he thought that perhaps he could recall a glow cantrip, he felt it unwise to demonstrate that he could. Instructors forbid the memorization of spells unless in special circumstances, and this was certainly not one of them.
Um-Jek eventually came running back to them, exclaiming, “They are not supposed to use fire.”
One of the boys in front of them had a small pot filled with flames, and was using it to light his way as he advanced up the slope. Moments later he became the target of vicious rock-throwing, eventually dropping the pot as he rolled back down the slope.
“Tang doesn’t like it,” Um-Jek explained. “Too much smoke.”
Again, Tang’s name had come up, making Ich-Mek very much want to see this person. He still wasn’t sure if Tang was a student or an instructor. Looking around the seemingly endless cave, he tried to pinpoint some logical location for this Tang to be in.
“Is he here somewhere?” Ich-Mek asked excitedly as he watched other displays of magic.
“You have to go around the other way!” Um-Jek called out loudly as he began throwing rocks himself. “Around the mountain!”
They assumed he meant the initial pile of slate that they had been forced to skirt. Tugging on Bose’s robes, Ich-Mek suggested they should maybe go back that way.
“You have to pay him something, or he won’t talk to you,” Um-Jek warned when he saw them preparing to leave.
They looked at each other in doubt, for none of them had brought any silver, and in fact none of them owned any. “We don’t have any coins,” Ich-Mek then admitted.
“Ahhhh!” Um-Jek grunted as he launched a small piece of slate high up toward the boys above them. It fell far short of the target, but did draw the enemies’ attention. “He doesn’t want coins,” Um-Jek continued in reply while ducking down with them to avoid a hail of rocks. “He likes rice-paper…and ink…stuff like that.”
“Why?” Ich-Mek asked as he kept a wary eye out for rocks.
Um-Jek turned to smile widely at him. “He likes written cantrips most of all.”
Chapter 4
The three friends sat outside Rish’s dormitory in the evening, eating a supply of cakes that Ich-Mek had brought with him. Since the Pus-Don delivered directly to his cell, Ich-Mek had found himself with more food than he could sometimes eat. Furthermore, he had discovered the things in his cell stayed in his cell: no longer did the Pus-Don remove items that wouldn’t fit in his keep-chest.
His friends didn’t live under the same conditions as he, and so were thankful when he offered to bring things for them to snack on.
“You go back to the cave yet?” Ich-Mek asked his friends.
“Ten or twelve times now,” Bose admitted as he
crunched noisily on a rice-cake.
“You’re going to get hit by a rock, you know?”
Rish lifted up the sleeve of his robes. “I already have.”
He seemed proud of the small bruise, Ich-Mek concluded as he shook his head in astonishment. Too busy even to think much about the cave, he had come to tell his friends of the bizarre courses he now had. The strangest was the course where he and one other boy were the only students. The other boy was an odd-boy on top of that, which, of course, meant he was from a different form.
He had been subjected to other strange teachings as well. Courses used to be an entire year in length, which had always been the case when they wore the green and the red. But now masters began to come and go almost weekly, and there was often more than one master at a time.
“I’ve been studying scroll-making,” Ich-Mek announced hesitantly.
“No! You mean…spell-scrolls?” Bose asked in confusion.
“Spell-scrolls,” Ich-Mek admitted proudly.
It was one of the most jealously guarded secrets they were aware of. Never was it discussed openly how or who performed this task, other than to imply that it wouldn’t be taught to them at Key-Tar-Om. Some courses had piles of scrolls that were used to teach young students cantrips such as the re-coloring-spell. These were not intended to be used in casting, but rather for memorization.
“Remember when that boy cast the re-color spell off the scroll?” Ich-Mek reminded them. “It turned to ashes right at the instructor’s feet.”
They all laughed at the early childhood memory. The instructor had been so furious that for the whole rest of the lesson he’d made the boy stand on a chair while he lamented about the cost and the irreplaceability of the scroll.
“Who was that?” Rish asked after he finished laughing.
“Was it you?” Bose joked.