Ascension of the Whyte

by Karen Wrighton

inside. 

  “Err... I’m not sure…. what is manna anyway?” he said, a crease between his brows.

  “Manna,” said Irwin “is an incredibly delicious sweet, made from wafer and apis honey. It has a thick honeyed topping, which is usually embossed with the image of a bee.”

  “In that case,” said Ash triumphantly holding up a golden, oval shaped wafer between his fingers. “I guess I was spot on!”

  “Well done Ash.” Irwin congratulated. “As a reward you may share the manna with the rest of your cell.”

  Ash beamed with pride as he passed the jar to the others.  Lee took a biscuit.

  “Well done Ash,” he said, with a sly smile and a lift of an eyebrow, “you evidently have great talent for emptying your mind. It’s no wonder you are such an accomplished Metamorph.”

  “Thanks, Lee,” said Ash “but it’s beginning to worry me, being at the top of my game already. It means that now, the only way is down.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that...,” said Lee

  “Awe thanks,” said Ash.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.” Said Lee, snorting as he gave Ash the briefest and tiniest of smiles, “because you most certainly are not, at the top of your game...”

  By the end of the class, almost all of the new novices could read the apis, with little or no effort or errors. Consequently, they all left the classroom content and eagerly anticipating their next lesson. However Rose, deep in thought, appeared to be somewhat downhearted. She had found the apis message almost impossible to decode, only managing to read her message with an enormous amount of help from Ash.

  “You would think that with the vapours of four great wizards inside of me,” she said. “I should be able to manage to read an apis at least half, as well as everyone else.”

  Privately though, Rose was beginning to worry that she would turn out to be a big disappointment to everyone.  ‘Maybe Lee is right,’ she thought. ‘Everyone’s expecting me to be this great wizard, the saviour of the Afterlands, and yet I can’t even read a supposedly simple apis message. Maybe the prophecy was just guesswork, maybe I am just a mistake, an artefact of the ascension process, a chance error, a blip.’

  Ash, sensing her mood, gave her a friendly nudge with his elbow, “ Hey! None of us is good at everything… except for Lee of course,” he said with a wink, “ but anyway, I don’t think you were brought here to read messages Rose.”

  Upon entering the Cognito classroom, the group of novices were instantly hushed by the imposing, scholarly atmosphere. The vast round room possessed walls so high that the ceiling could not be discerned.  Each wall was lined with beautifully hand carved wooden bookcases, each of them overflowing with books.  Thousands, perhaps millions of books of every colour and size, filled every available space. Most of them were obviously ancient and some of them were ridiculously large.  There did not seem to be one space available to add another.

   Giant ladders hung on circular frames linking walkways at different levels. High above them they could see something moving, leaping quickly between levels.  Rowan and Tamarix pointed up at what appeared to be two small, crooked men in red jackets and pot shaped hats. They seemed to be bounding fearlessly from one ladder and onto another on a lower level, a distance of over fifty feet. The room was dark and imbued with the musty scents of polished oak, old paper, parchment, and candle wax.

  Towards the centre of the room was a circular area of comfortable seating, soft squashy chairs and sofas were placed next to polished wooden side tables supporting dark green oil lamps. This seating area encircled another central area housing a collection of small hand carved wooden lecterns arranged in a circle around a circular plinth that supported a larger and a much more ornate podium. Its upper section had been fashioned into two fyre hawks, the wings of which provided support for the Magister’s books and notes.

  Lady Tesler stood patiently behind the lectern and waited for the novices to take their places. The last of them to do so was Saffron, a young gold who looked around mortified, as she desperately searched for a spare lectern.  Joel, her cell’s Alchemist, called to her, waving and pointing frantically to the relatively small podium next to his own, which was vacant. Lady Tesler smiled sympathetically as Saffron rushed to take her place.

  “Welcome to Cognito young novices.” she said, “I trust that you enjoyed your first morphology class.”

  She looked reassured as the students nodded in accord.

  “That is good. However, it is Cognito that is by far the most important of all the potentia. I suspect that many of you will value the arguably more glamorous aspects of Magica, Alchemy and Morphology over what may appear to be the much drier potens of Cognito. To do this is extremely unwise, because Cognito is the potentia for the acquisition of knowledge and knowledge… is power.”

  Her voice emphasised this last sentence and it held a conviction of belief that was both convincing and beguiling.

  “All of you here” she went on “possess the innate potentia to acquire knowledge through Cognito, to store this knowledge efficiently and to access it when needed. Some of you will be able to do much more than this. Some of you will have minds that are able to synthesise knowledge from all around you and rarely, one or two of you will be able to do all of this at an amazingly rapid rate. These gifted individuals will also be able to retain and access this great wealth of knowledge, indefinitely.”

  Her eyes drifted over the faces of the novices, finally coming to rest on Auriel as she continued.  

  “These very special individuals will be invaluable to their cells because with great knowledge, comes great power. Now, in order to assess each of your current working levels I will need you complete a small test.”

  Subdued groans and sullen expressions followed this revelation, the Muds seeming particularly unimpressed. Lady Tesler flashed them a brief smile of amusement and went on.

  “You should all have in front of you a copy of the book, ‘A Concise History of the Afterlands,’ by the native Ferrum author, Acer P. Green.  Traditionally this is the first book that new novices read after ascension. ‘Concise’ may not be an entirely accurate description. As you can see it is a rather large volume, but most of you should be able to finish it easily by the end of the lesson.”

  Ash raised his eyebrows “yeah” he said, flicking through the book’s vast number of pages with his thumb, “ like that’s going to happen.” 

  “To begin,” said Lady Tesler, “ I would like you to turn over the front cover of the book.”

  She opened her copy and watched as they did likewise.

  “Novices, please do not be too worried about this, acquisition of knowledge by Cognito is a relatively simple matter and for the majority of you it should be as automatic as breathing. Now please watch carefully” She said, demonstrating her actions as she proceeded. “First you must hold the book. It should rest lightly in your ringed right hand. When reading large books such as this, you will need to hold the top left corner in your left hand, like this.”

  She illustrated using her own copy of the book. 

  “When you are ready to use Cognito to assimilate the knowledge from the book, you will need to give the command for the knowledge assimilation spell which is Cognosco. You will need to state this clearly, pronouncing each syllable precisely; Cog-nos-co. This spell, when cast correctly, causes the knowledge contained in the book to flow out from the pages and into your consciousness where it forever will become part of your memory. Do you understand what you need to do?”

  They nodded in accordance.

  “Good,” she said, “then you may begin.”

  The acoustics in the Cognito classroom were as good as those of any auditorium and the sound of the novices giving their commands simultaneously was deafening.  However, as they began to read, the room became hushed. Soon all that could be heard was the industrious sound of hundreds of sheets of paper flicking and rustling as the pages of their books turned independently and the nov
ice’s potens stones pulsated and glowed. A shimmering stream of written words, symbols, numbers and images flowed from the books and dissolved into the eyes of the reading novices like snowflakes falling on water.

  Some of the novices were able only to stimulate the pages to turn relatively slowly, others more quickly, and then there was Auriel. The pages of Auriel’s book turned so rapidly that they blurred before the eyes. A swift, steady stream of information flowed into her consciousness. She finished her first book in minutes, Lady Tesler, noticing immediately, brought her a second, even larger and grander than the first. It was entitled ‘Advanced Cognito - Maximising Memory Storage and Organisation’.  Then, just few minutes later, she returned with five more.

  Rose watched Auriel the other novices, all seemingly engrossed as the pages of their books turned relentlessly and the knowledge held within leapt from the pages and into their consciousness. Faces aglow from the reflection of the shimmering prose, their expressions shifted as they encountered new ideas, learned about their new world and discovered their ancestry. Rose tried to concentrate on her book. She was sure that she was doing it right,  but each page seemed to struggle even to turn and the flow of information leaving it and entering her mind was little more than a trickle. Lady Tesler saw that she was struggling.

  “Lady Rose, are you having trouble