The Test

by Todd Fahnestock

  He paused, assessing.

  Perceiving and dividing one’s Soulblocks was the first and most important lesson he’d learned at the academy. Brom had spent a great deal of time looking at his Soulblocks in the beginning, and then every time he’d used his magic since. Ever before, the storm inside each Soulblock had been a thick charcoal mist, with lightning lancing between. His second Soulblock looked exactly this way.

  But his third and fourth Soulblocks did not. They were filled with swirling red, blue, and white mists, with lightning forking through.

  A chill went up his back. His third and fourth Soulblocks had been altered. But...by whom?

  He looked around his room, at the banner of the Champion’s Academy coat of arms on the far wall. It bore a shield with four colors of the paths of magic and their four icons: a red dragon, a white owl, a blue bear, and a black moth in front of Fendra’s moon. That banner was in every student’s room, a standard decoration unless the student was wealthy enough to replace it with decorations of their own, like the wall hangings in Oriana’s room.

  Brom’s Soulblocks had been invaded and altered by a Motus, an Impetu, and a Mentis.

  He tried to push down his fear, but it was obvious his Quad mates had done something to him, and the fact that he felt foggy, felt like he was forgetting something, strongly suggested he’d been mind-controlled.

  But mind control was a fourth-year spell. Oriana couldn’t have done it. She simply didn’t have the ability...

  ...unless she did. Quad Brilliant had broken boundaries this past year. They were the talk of the school, like no other second-years had ever been. And Brom had performed a fourth year spell, connecting Vale to the Soul of the World. Why couldn’t Oriana...?

  Stop it, he thought firmly. Just because it fits doesn’t mean it’s true.

  He stood up, clenching his teeth against the wave of nausea and the ache of sore muscles.

  The sunlight beckoned to him, and he staggered to the window, thrust open the heavy drapes. He gave a sigh of satisfaction. The morning sun danced across drifts of snow, and it felt amazing, as though the sun alone helped replenish whatever his body had lost. He closed his eyes and basked in it, then blinked and looked down at the snow. Gods, it had piled up, at least a couple of feet over paths that had been shoveled yesterday. Brom remembered the paths cutting through the drifts, but he didn’t remember last night’s storm. Gods, it must have been a blizzard.

  He suddenly realized he couldn’t remember anything of last night after Vale had...after he’d declared his love for her. She’d told him she didn’t believe in love and then she’d slipped out the window. It hadn’t been snowing that hard then. The blizzard must have come after.

  And what had Brom done? Had he simply lain back down and slept? He didn’t remember that, didn’t remember even closing the window.

  That chill of fear returned.

  My mind has been altered, he thought, now certain. Oriana has plucked memories from my mind.

  He walked to his wardrobe and saw one set of clothes on the chair next to the hot chimney that ran through his room. The chimney brought warmth from the fires of the furnace in the catacombs beneath Westfall Dormitory. He touched the tunic, and it was cold and wet all the way through.

  So either he’d jumped into a barrel of water after Vale left, then crawled into bed...or he’d been out in that storm but couldn’t remember a thing about it.

  He needed answers. He pulled his spare tunic and breeches from the wardrobe and grabbed his boots from where they lay next to the chimney. They, too, were wet through and through. He put everything on, shivering at the chill on his feet.

  By the time he left his room, he felt more normal. It was morning. He was going to class and he was ravenous for breakfast. He emerged onto the walkway amidst the twenty or so other second-year students on this level. He saw Royal several doors down, and the big man looked just like Brom felt. Tired. Ill. Brom thought about going to talk to Royal about his strange morning, but one of the foreign colors in Brom’s Soulblock was blue. That meant whatever had happened to Brom, Royal had been a part of it.

  Instead, Brom decided to go straight to breakfast, to pretend it was just like any other morning. He shuffled along with the other students, down the stairwells to the Floating Room where all the meals were served.

  The Floating Room was to the south, and it was a marvel that had long since become commonplace. The long room rotated slowly on a magical axis, and every wall was a floor, with tables, benches, and food. Each floor had its own gravity, and each was a different color: red, blue, white, and black to represent each magical path. A dining Anima could look up and see the tops of all the heads of the students on the path of Impetu, look to the right and see those who followed the path of Mentis, to the left and see those of Motus sitting sideways, devouring their soup. It was expected that Quad mates ate outside their Quad, sitting instead with others of their chosen path.

  When Brom had first entered the Floating Room, he’d been agog at how powerful The Four must be to create a room that not only defied gravity, but slowly turned about. Most new students vomited the first several times they ate in the Floating Room.

  Now it was simply a place to eat, and Brom was lost in other thoughts that were much more troubling. He stood at the edge until his floor rotated around, then he strode into the hall with a dozen other Animas from various years.

  The moment he gathered his food and sat down, he tore into the bread, shoving down mouthful after mouthful, and the morning’s vegetable stew tasted better than anything he’d ever tasted before. Almost immediately, he felt his body strengthening. Vigor returned to his limbs, and his mind began to think more clearly. The feeling of a constricting steel band around his head eased.

  Brom looked at the faces of the students around him, most of them bent on breakfast. A few watched him, but that was nothing new. He, Vale, Oriana, and Royal had become famous lately, not only among their class, but even among the third- and fourth-years. He glanced to the right at the tops of the heads of the Mentis students, the white floor a wall to him, cluttered with tables and students and meals that defied gravity. Could someone over there have used their magic on him?

  He finished two bowls of soup and three small loaves of bread. His belly was fit to burst, and yet he still felt like he could eat more. That was how it felt when a student was soul-sick—like you could never eat enough.

  Once he was finished, he left the Floating Room and went straight to his classes. He tried to focus as the masters and instructors droned on, but his mind wandered, and he kept looking inside himself at those bizarre and suspicious third and fourth Soulblocks.

  Finally, lunch came, and he quickly gorged himself again, feeling stronger, then went to the practice room.

  Oriana was already there, standing by the Invisible Ones, and she watched him as he entered. It looked like she had been about to practice her Mentis abilities, but she paused, then gave him a soft smile.

  He tried to analyze that smile for artifice, but it looked genuine. Was she capable of simply stealing memories from his head and then smiling at him like that?

  The answer was: of course she was. She had been trained from birth to hold her emotions in check. For Oriana, everything was second to her duty, to her purpose of ruling Keltovar after her parents were gone. He had come to think of her as a friend, but...was that naive?

  Royal came in next, looking troubled but also heartier after half a day and two meals. He walked over to the corner of the room that was as far from the Invisible Ones as it was possible to get, and then he seemed to study the wall. Obviously, he wanted to talk to his Quad mates out of earshot of the Invisible Ones. Royal wasn’t a subtle man.

  Suddenly, Royal’s voice was in Brom’s head, and he caught the tail end of what must have been a telepathic conversation with Oriana.

  “...strangest feeling when I woke up.”

  “Brom can hear you now,” Oriana spoke inside Brom’s head.

>   “Then we need to talk,” Royal said.

  Brom moved toward Royal, happy to get away from the silent Invisible Ones. Though the Invisible Ones were instrumental in students increasing their skill, they had always made Brom uneasy. These silent men and women accepted money in return for having someone manipulate their minds, emotions, souls, and bodies. It seemed like a horrible job.

  And, of course, the Invisible Ones made him uneasy in another way, too. They could be spies for the masters, neatly positioned in every practice room in the academy.

  Vale entered the practice room last. Her gaze flicked from the Invisible Ones to her Quad mates and then all about the room, as though she was looking for someone else. Her face had that stony look that Brom had realized, just last night, might be her real face. Last night...when he’d declared his love for her and she’d painfully told him, in no uncertain terms, that she didn’t believe in love.

  That much, at least, he remembered. So why couldn’t he remember...other things?

  “Are we talking in each others’ heads?” Vale asked as Oriana projected her thoughts to Brom and Royal.

  “Good morning, Vale,” Royal said politely.

  “So we’re being sneaky,” she said.

  “I thought suggesting a nice little stroll through six-foot high snow drifts might seem suspicious,” Oriana said.

  “Why would someone be suspicious of us?” Vale asked, and the question fell with the weight of a broadsword.

  “I don’t know,” Oriana said.

  “Ah,” Vale said. “So you just woke up this morning and felt the need for secrecy?” Brom could hear her anger. “Just wanted to give that extra little attention to detail, did you?”

  Oriana’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying somebody’s mucked in my head, Princess, and by Kelto it better not have been you.” She squeezed the hilt of her dagger.

  “It wasn’t,” Oriana said.

  “Easy, Vale,” Royal said, and he reached out a gentle hand toward her. She spun, and this time her dagger came out, pointed at him.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said aloud.

  This was all wrong. Brom suddenly felt like they were right back at their initial meeting in the Collector’s room, reverting to their personalities before their bond.

  “Let’s all calm down,” Brom said. “I have...missing pieces from my memory as well.”

  “I awoke while my second Soulblock was still filling,” Royal said. “Only after lunch did my first finally fill. Obviously, I used them last night. But I don’t recall how.”

  “So you’re missing memories, too.” Vale thought to Royal.

  Royal thought on that, confused. “No, I... No. That’s just it. I’m not. I went to sleep as normal. I woke up as normal, except I was exhausted, and I’d used two of my Soulblocks.”

  “I, too, was missing my first two Soulblocks,” Oriana said. “Like Royal, I don’t know how I spent them. I clearly remember going to bed last night. I remember falling asleep. That is all.” But even as she said it, she got the same thoughtful, confused look on her face as Royal.

  “I lost memories from last night,” Brom said, realizing he had to lie to them, or they’d know that he and Vale had been lovers for weeks now. “I was down by the river, watching the snow fall. I guess I must have come back to my room, but I don’t remember.”

  Vale glared at Oriana. “Did you do this?”

  “Mind control you? Steal your memories?” Oriana’s voice was curt and derisive. “I have never once used my powers on you without your consent.”

  “Because you wouldn’t do that.” Vale sneered.

  “That’s right.”

  “Even if you accidentally found out something you didn’t like? Something you thought we ought to be punished for?”

  “And exactly what should I punish you for?” Oriana asked.

  “Nothing!” Vale’s voice sounded like a shout in their minds. “It’s not your place to punish anyone!”

  Royal looked befuddled. “What do you mean, find out something she didn’t like? Find out what?”

  “Like something private. Like something that’s none of her fucking business!”

  “Vale!” Brom said.

  “I don’t like people messing with my head,” she shouted so loudly in their minds that everyone winced. “Stay out unless I invite you!”

  “I did,” Oriana said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I cannot control what you believe,” Oriana said.

  “That’s exactly what you can control,” Vale replied.

  “If I mind controlled you, I would make you less of a raving lunatic.” Oriana’s indigo eyes flashed angrily.

  Vale lunged at Oriana, but Brom put a hand on Vale’s chest and stepped between them. Her dagger whipped around and stopped an inch from his throat.

  “Stop it!” he said aloud.

  Her snarl pulled back, exposing white teeth.

  “Clearly something happened to us,” he said.

  “Clearly one of us has a guilty conscience,” Oriana said.

  “Fuck you!” Vale said.

  “Hey!” Brom shouted over them both.

  “We should work together to find out what this is, not fight!” he said through the mental link. He put a finger on the tip of Vale’s blade, gently pushed it away. “What if this is an attack from some rival Quad? Or if this is some test by one of the masters? What if we are being assaulted, and whoever it is hopes we’ll blame each other?”

  Vale glared at Oriana for a long moment, then sheathed her dagger and turned away.

  “It can’t be a Quad from our class. Mind control is a fourth-year spell,” Royal said.

  Vale swiveled back, her eyes mean slits. “Oriana knows it,” she said. “I’ve seen the books you’re studying. Strange how I noticed you reading those passages, then suddenly I wake up and I’m missing memories.”

  Oriana looked surprised.

  “Is that true?” Brom asked. “Have you already learned mind control?”

  Oriana hesitated, then nodded. “But I’ve not used it yet, and I would never use it on any of you. I—”

  The double doors opened, and The Collector stepped into the room, shrouded in his black robes. Only his pointed beard and mouth were visible beneath his black cowl. Behind him, spread out in a half-circle, were four others: two males and two females. Each wore the color of their path. Blue, white, red, and black.

  The larger female wore blue. Brom had seen her on Quadron Garden before, had noted her because of her unusual size. She stood over six feet tall, and her blue robe did nothing to hide her bulging muscles.

  The second woman, slightly shorter than Oriana, had her hands tucked into the opposite sleeves of her form-fitting black robes. She was the only one with her cowl all the way down, shadowing her face like The Collector.

  One of the men wore red robes. He leaned slightly forward, fists clenched and eyes brimming with ferocity.

  The other man was thin and stood spear-straight at the back of the group, his fingertips steepled together in front of his face. He wore a Mentis’s white robe with the cowl drawn back, and gave a cool glance to each of Brom’s Quad mates.

  Vale turned her smoldering gaze to the newcomers. “What’s this, then?” she said using Oriana’s mind link.

  “That’s Quad Phoenix,” Brom said.

  “Fourth-years,” Royal said. “I heard they’re expecting to be called for their Test of Separation any day now.”

  The Collector stepped to the left of the door, held his hands up.

  “Quad Brilliant,” he proclaimed. “Your impressive progress draws the gaze of The Four. You have outstripped your second-year classmates. You have outstripped the third-years as well. You should be applauded for your efforts and your talent. The Four have sent me to determine if you are, indeed, ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Royal growled.

  “This is your primer,” The Collector said, waving a han
d at the Quad that had come with him.

  Vale gasped.

  The primer was a challenge leveled at advanced fourth-year Quads, and only those invited to take the Test of Separation. On a few rare occasions, it had been leveled at incredibly talented third years. Brom had never heard of the Test of Separation being given to second-years.

  Success in the primer meant immediate advancement to the Test of Separation.

  Failure meant possible expulsion, injury, or death.

  “We are not fully rested,” Oriana said. “Come again tomorrow, and you shall find us prepared for the challenge,” she commanded in her princess voice.

  The Collector chuckled. “Destiny does not call on you at the moment of your choosing, Princess. I will find you equal to the challenge now, or not at all,” he said.

  “We are second-years!” Brom protested.

  “You are Brilliant,” The Collector said softly. “And everyone knows it. Show me just how brilliant, or prove you are imposters.” He turned to the fourth-year Quad. “Kill them.”

  “What?” Royal roared

  Vale crouched, her dagger back in hand. Oriana took three cool steps to the wall, and her voice filled each of their minds.

  “This is real. We fight,” she said. “We put our bickering aside and we show them what we are.”

  Brom felt like his head had been shaken. His disorientation from believing someone had controlled and altered his mind was suddenly intensified with the news that The Four were sending them to the Test of Separation.

  He should have been happy, should have felt some kind of elation that The Four, the benevolent keepers of the academy, felt that much confidence in Quad Brilliant.

  But his stomach was in knots.

  He felt Royal’s Soulblock open first, and the big man released a floodgate of confidence into Quad Brilliant. All of Brom’s Soulblocks doubled, and he opened his first as well, letting the magic explode into him. He reached into the souls of his opponents, reached out for the Soul of the World all around him. And he laughed aloud.