by Lisa Daniels
Artiz gently guided her along until she finally arrived at the main office, where Master Graff sat, currently flicking through a huge stack of papers.
Master Graff, the head of the school... and a drake. Gray-eyed, wearing a dragon pendant, and sporting long, white hair flowing past his waist, he appeared utterly bizarre to Seon. He resembled some kind of living clay person, a mockery of what humanity looked like, and maybe clutched a few too many years under his belt.
The fact that Graff was a drake meant that this school likely contained a mix of both humans and drakes. Originally she just thought that Artiz was some helpful collector who picked humans up from across the world. But where would Artiz have learned to perfect his ability? At a place like this. The elderly drake tapped his fingers against the papers.
“Your name, child?”
It took Seon a second to realize the sound that slipped from his mouth was addressing her. “Seon. Seon Graves.”
“Call me Graff.” He extended a veiny hand towards her, expecting her to shake it. After a short pause, she did, but not without a furtive glance at Artiz. The blond-haired drake smiled, displaying white, sharp teeth.
Something was odd here. Seon knew enough about magic to understand humans had supposedly lost it a long time ago. The wyrms persecuted humans for daring to use it, loathed them for it. The second they suspected anyone of knowing magic, that person would be dead.
Even though she came to the conclusion that both drakes and humans were taught in this school anyway, she wanted to hear it from Graff's lips. “It surprises me to have a drake head of a magic school.” She kept her tone as respectful as possible.
“Does it? We teach both drakes and humans in this place,” Graff replied. “There are less drakes, though. Human magic is more potent in nature. Artiz himself trained here.” Graff nodded at him. “His ability to detect magic is wonderfully honed. An untrained Sniffer often doesn't know where a source of magic is coming from. Just that there's magic in the area.”
Seon stared, nibbling at her bottom lip. Unsure what to make of this whole situation, or why she’d allowed herself to be dragged off in the first place. Trading a life of serving drinks, scrubbing floors and quiet nights with her friends, Harriet, Anya, even that drake, Kalgrin, for what? And what about the shadows she saw in that town? The ones brushing the edges of her vision? Ones she wasn't sure if she conjured herself, or simply observed them when others didn't.
Unbidden, that irritating folk tune started playing through her head again.
“Is it good magic potential this child has?” Graff fixed his attention onto Artiz.
“She smells strong.” Artiz didn’t add to the subject, and Graff smiled querulously.
“Good. Well, I must get back to this. Send her to Zannis.” He then started scribbling in his papers again, ignoring them.
They quietly left. “What was the point of introducing him to me?” Seon asked.
“Procedure.” He swept along the corridor, making Seon struggle to keep up with him. Thousands of thoughts whirled in Seon’s head. She’d barely come to terms with the fact she had something beyond other humans. Something she couldn’t share the knowledge of, and had to live a life of relative secrecy about. Except when people spotted the shadows she found, when they didn't flee from her scrutiny, but instead became bolder, brighter.
Now to learn of drakes wielding magic? Of a temple in the mountains, existing whilst snowstorms howled around them? A place where wyrms couldn’t penetrate, and people collected magic? Taking out those who would be condemned in the world and training them.
For what purpose? She hardly believed any magic users would happily stay in such a school for the rest of their lives. No, they must be trained for a purpose. Hopefully one Seon identified with. A question sprang to her mouth.
“Who is Zannis?”
Artiz didn’t reply for a moment, too busy staying ahead of Seon with his irritatingly long legs. Seon focused on his broad back, the sound of their boots softly impacting the stone floor, and the swish of their heavy fur robes.
“She’ll determine what branch of magic you are. Most newcomers don’t understand themselves, so she goes into their heads and finds it for them.”
“She what?” Seon gaped, her eyes wide.
“Goes into your head.”
“You mean, like mind-reading?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Artiz gave her a thin smile. “She did it to me when I first came here. That woman’s likely been in this school forever. She looks even older than Graff.”
Seon tried to picture this, failed, then said, “And she mind-reads everyone who comes here?”
“Yes.”
Seon began to sweat. The thought of having her mind stripped bare, of some old crone prising away at her secrets, at the conflicts of her mother, of the cruel things Seon had sometimes done... her sweat began to ice on her back.
“It's best not to worry too much about it. Zannis isn't that judgmental. You can bet she's seen things you can only dream of. Now, look here.”
One room in the third storey of the school had five pupils hunched at their desks, scratching something down on their papers. Each pupil wore gray robes, the obvious color theme of the place – and a teacher glared at them with her arms folded, her flat face stern. Glasses balanced upon the tip of her nose.
“These are water elementalists,” Artiz whispered, pointing at the blue sashes adorning the pupils’ sleeves. “Useful to have around. They help provide fresh water and purify diseases out of it. Strong ones can even cause tidal waves, but we’ve not had any like that yet. Still, any magic is better than no magic.”
Unimpressed because she couldn’t see any magic usage, Seon nodded and followed Artiz to another room two corners away. She kept examining his broad back along the way, and the way his blond hair stuck out. She wondered if it’d be curly if it was long. If it bothered to stay down if someone ran a comb through it.
The halls here had a way of pressing into you – and there were long stretches where no gas lamps existed, leaving the walkways shrouded in darkness. It sent chills down Seon’s spine, even though she knew the fear mostly came from the lack of light. The absence of light was the perfect kind of place for her shadows to stir, to whisper from the grave and scratch at the edges of her vision. Funny, because you only saw a shadow because of light in the first place. She tried listening to the personality of the stones, like she did for her table back home, but got nothing but the sense of an icy blizzard in her mind. No personality filled up the silence of these halls. Did that mean her magic didn't work? Or that the school lacked a soul?
Maybe she just needed more time to figure it out instead of struggling to keep up with Artiz.
Now she considered her drake companion. What kind of person was he? Not a cruel person, she decided. He genuinely seemed to want to help her. She liked that about him. Even if she didn't appreciate the manner in which he did it, by essentially threatening her on the spot. Not such a bad-looking guy, either. He did have that rugged slant to his face, like he shouldn't be attractive, yet somehow he was.
What exactly did he do here? Teach? Train? Guard? Drakes might be notoriously more lenient on humans, but they still believed themselves as superior. It was the difference between a cruel and a kind master. Though their attitudes differed, they still both owned you at the end of the day. Obviously if Seon had no other choice, she'd choose the drake to dominate. She preferred the idea of dragons simply not existing at all.
The next room showed two pupils standing and facing one another, spitting fireballs from their hands. Seon instantly pressed her face against the viewing window, eyes wide as flames shimmered over the stones. Another pupil acted as referee. Seven in total lay scattered about the desks and chairs, with a scrawny, bone-thin man examining the action through rheumy eyes. He appeared as if he’d never eaten food in his life. It pained Seon to even look at him.
She started to wonder if magic did things to people. Made them
thin, old, fragile and irascible. The firelight seared a path into Seon’s soul – along with a slice of fear.
What amazing magic. She couldn’t do anything like this. What if she never could? The fire elementalists were magnificent. She wanted to watch for longer. She didn't want to go to Zannis, who might dissect the thoughts in her brain with her weird superpowers. Maybe she could ask Artiz to let her see all the magic that existed, and delay meeting Zannis? A little bit of a cowardly option, but her stomach churned in unease.
“Here,” Artiz said, standing in front of a metal door.
Oh. Seon took deep, calming breaths. Even the door itself had a kind of foreboding texture about it. He pushed it open, and the hinges squeaked. A warm blast of air hit them, and they walked into a tiny office with a roaring hearth, logs crackling and bearing the weight of the flames.
Zannis lifted her head from the paper she studied to stare at them. She swayed from side to side, her tiny body like a twig – Seon imagined stepping on the old woman would break every bone in her body. Brown eyes, bright and alert, peered out of the wrinkled folds of her skin. A human, then, not a drake. Although a large portion of her had too many lines to count, her eyes retained a strange youthfulness.
“Ah!” The woman squinted at Seon. “You’re a new one. I shall look forward to figuring out the magic that lies within.”
“As do I,” Artiz replied, trying to contain his mirth at Seon’s mounting alarm. Zannis half stretched her fingers out to Seon in a grabbing gesture.
Maybe I should ask to go back to the inn...
“Well, better get on with it, then. No need to tell me what you think you can do, girl. All you first-timers get it wrong anyway. Over here. Sit down. Yes, good. Now lean forward. We’re to touch heads. I’m to look into your mind.”
Seon's cheeks blushed when she thought about the men she’d had sex with, not all of them satisfying or glorious. She didn't want Zannis finding out about any of them. It wasn't a part of her life she wanted to recall. She didn't want Artiz to see, either. People didn't look kindly on those who had been with other men. Seon didn't know why. No one cared if men did the same with women. In fact, it was expected of them.
Artiz stretched himself, sitting upon the counter of Zannis’ desk and checking the documents scattered over it. Zannis herself brushed thin, wispy white hair from her dark eyes, and brought her chair over to stand opposite Seon.
She reached out her old, prune-wrinkled hands, and clutched either side of Seon’s head. Seon kept down her impulse to flinch away from those veiny hands, and began threading her fingers into knots.
At first, nothing happened. Seon expected to feel some kind of push upon her mind, and worried that Zannis could just rip through her thoughts without any awareness from Seon's end.
“Close your eyes, girl. Relax.”
Seon huffed, her heart beating erratically, but did as she was bid. Zannis rested her forehead against Seon. The woman’s soft breath brushed between Seon’s eyebrows.
The world around Seon shifted.
She appeared in a white field, barefoot, her toes sinking into the strange substance there. She saw Artiz there as well, blond, gray-eyed – and naked.
Okay, then. Well, not fully naked. The sculpture of him here didn’t have nipples or a groin. It was all smooth. Close enough to touch, she did so, hand printed upon Artiz’s chest.
His eyes fixed upon hers. “Can you hear me?”
Those words. I've heard them before. From that dream I had. With the singing shadow.
All of a sudden, more forms appeared. A naked Anya. Kalgrin. Her mother. The men Seon had seen. People she recognized well or only vaguely. All of them with their flesh on display, but missing the sexual parts. Observing them invoked no sexual desire. Just mild curiosity. All of them were shadows of her past and present.
“Can you hear me?” Anya whispered when Seon placed her palm against Anya’s head. Seon wasn't sure of the tone Anya adopted. Pleading? A warning? Hard to tell when Anya's eyes were glassy, her lips unsmiling and cold.
“I hear you,” Seon said.
Anya shuddered. She pushed herself into Seon’s touch, and then peeled apart. Skin. Flesh. Bone. It all crumbled like clay, until all that was left was a shining, silvery substance.
Can you hear me?
Dust from Anya's body covered the ground. The vapor still hung in the air. “I hear you,” Seon repeated. Touching the substance was like touching silk. It rippled and danced around her fingers.
Now the voices started increasing in volume and frequency. Always the same words. Can you hear me?
Now she saw shadows at the edges of her vision. Shadows that disappeared when she turned to look. One by one, the people she recognized dissolved into the same silvery clouds.
A black tendril crept across the white field, with spindly fingers, grasping hands.
Can you feel me? A hand touched her ankle, sending a wave of cold lancing through her leg, her stomach, her heart. Can you feel me?
“Y-yes,” Seon stammered, heart twitching in fright. She didn’t know why this thing scared her. Maybe that touch would sap all the life from her as well, making her as cold as it. Maybe if she wasn't careful enough, her soul would extinguish and her body crumble into dust.
I’m lonely, it said. Lonely and sad and cold.
The fear tangled with sorrow. No. The shadow’s sorrow. The thing’s loneliness. She detected the personality behind it, like inanimate objects before, except this thing felt stronger than a table. Not quite as strong as a living being.
What awful loneliness. It bit and scratched at her insides, slowly poisoning her own thoughts.
“Why are you sad?”
The shadow crept up her body. Reaching for her heart. Because no one can show me the way home. No one shows me the light.
Now Seon frowned. Ahead of her was a glimmering white door.
Maybe it's that? She noticed that the shadow seemed to completely ignore the giant, gleaming door behind it. Actually, had that door been there before? “There's a light over there. Can't you see it?”
No, the shadow said. No, I can’t see.
Carrying it with her, it clung to her body, slowly freezing her insides. Seon led it to the door. It trembled like a frightened and abused animal. She stuck her hand through the light. “See? It’s here.”
The shadow shrank back from the light. Then, tentatively, it slithered along Seon’s arm and felt along the rays.
Home?
“Home,” Seon repeated, though she wasn’t really sure what home exactly was.
She did, however, feel the shadow leave her soul. It disappeared into the light, gurgling with unrelenting joy.
Home. Home. Home!
Along with that triumphant, keening cry, more shadows began to swarm, clamoring, screaming for her to show them the way home. Skies, these things were starving, grabbing at her as if to tear her flesh apart, and find the key to home inside her body.
Seon blinked and found herself in the office again, the lingering pain of the shadows’ fingers still upon her skin. That wasn't real. Was it? Zannis had released her grip from Seon, and gaped at her with a dumbfounded expression. If this ancient woman gaped at her, what did that mean? Had those shadows cursed Seon? Artiz folded his arms, one eyebrow raised, eyes flicking between them.
“Oh, dear child,” she said. The older woman crouched before her, as if kneeling. “Oh, dear, beautiful child. We’ve been waiting for someone like you.”
Artiz raised an eyebrow. “Is my discovery turning out to have fangs?”
Seon noticed the way he claimed her, making her accomplishment his own. It irritated her. You just happened to smell my magic. Nothing more.
Zannis stroked the wisps of her white hair. “Child. What do you know of magic? Do you understand why it disappeared so long ago?”
“I know nothing, really,” Seon said, thoroughly embarrassed to see this ancient magician staring up at her with reverence. What exactly did the woman see i
n her vision? Did she not find it terrifying to see those shadows swarming, reaching out hands like beggars in the slums? Furthermore, surely the repeated phrase, show me the way home, didn't make sense. The shadows practically lamented the words, and Seon just spotted that door and opened it like it was no big deal. Why didn't they do the same?
“Not many do,” Zannis confirmed with a nod. “We have… books. A lot of information recorded, so not all of it got burnt by the wyrms during their takeover. We know a disease or affliction struck all magic users in the world at some point. The disease crippled the magic. Very few escaped it.”
“I don't understand,” Seon said. “How can magic just... vanish like that? Like, surely, if people became corrupted or whatever, wouldn't you just get more magic users being born in the end?”
Zannis puckered her lips together, forming dozens of deep, trench-like wrinkles over her face. “Good question. However, magic is limited. The maximum number of magic users in the world never exceeded a million. It's referred to as the ‘million souls.’ And if one of these ‘million souls’ is corrupted, then it can’t return and infuse a new host. So the best way I can describe what happened is that magic is like a bag of marbles.”
Seon blinked. She'd just about been following the concept of the million souls. The idea that only one million living people could ever wield magic at any one time, as strange a concept as that was. But marbles? “What do you mean?”
“Let’s say there are fifty marbles in the bag. If someone has a marble, it lets them wield magic.” Zannis’ voice swayed like her body, as if frail and about to give out at any moment. She finally bent herself back into the chair, folding her hands in her lap. “When you die, the marble is placed back in the bag and then given to someone else. That’s how magic works. It’s recycled. Only a limited number of people can wield magic at once. We don’t know why. It’s just how it used to be. And we think it's a million, but it could be more, could be less.”