"Quiet! Despite the unexpected nature of the message"—she paused, still shaken—"the team choosing will continue as planned. You will line up at the many doors around the bowl, it doesn't matter which one, just spread out. When you enter the room, you'll be given a test. Teams will be grouped by their score, but no more than one Hall member in each team. You may begin the challenge whenever you'd like, for as long as you'd like. Come back to this room when you want to work on it more. The doors will be attuned to your Hall pins. Good luck."
Chapter Five
All anyone could talk about was the special prize for the competition while they waited to take their test so they could be sorted into teams.
"What do you think it is?" asked Deshawn.
"I'm not sure I care," said Aurie. "I just want to get a good grade."
"You can't tell me you're not even a little curious," he said.
"It's probably a trinket, or something minor from his personal collection," she said.
"See, I told you, you were curious," he said. "But it's not a single trinket. How would a team of six split it?"
"Fine, it's not a single trinket," she said, glancing at how slow the lines were moving. She wanted to get to the test. She was anxious to start on the project.
Deshawn went all starry-eyed. "Think about what could be in there. I mean, he was the most famous wizard ever. Practically created the modern magical structure with his patronage. The whole upper portion of the Spire is his domain, and nobody's seen it since his death. I'm sure he picked up some legendary artifacts along the way. Maybe those are the prizes."
Aurie thought about the Rod of Dominion. "I doubt he's going to give a dangerous artifact to a bunch of second years."
Pi leaned in. "What if it's a tour of his rooms? You know, Willy Wonka style?"
"I'm more curious about what kind of test we'll be given," said Aurie.
"You'll find out soon enough," said Deshawn. "It's not like you can do anything out here."
Aurie was anxious. She didn't know if it was the strange message from Invictus, learning Zayn was in assassins, or the test itself, but when she spoke, the words came out more harshly than she intended. "The test has to be something we all know how to do. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair to some Halls. So the magic will be simple. Probably requiring knowledge that's readily public, or generally cultural."
After their initial recoiling, understanding passed across their faces. Deshawn whistled in admiration. They hadn't been thinking about it, but Aurie had. She always thought three steps ahead—it was the only way she'd guided herself and Pi through their childhood.
A few minutes later, Pi touched her on the shoulder. She pushed her hair out of her face and didn't speak right away, as if something was weighing on her mind.
"What is it?" prompted Aurie.
"Do you think there are any records of our family anywhere?" she asked.
Aurie frowned. "You should be preparing for the test."
Pi rubbed the back of her neck. "Writing that background for my character made me realize I don't know anything about my history. Dad was an orphan and Mom wouldn't talk about growing up in Tehran."
"Pi, I can't really think about that right now. We should focus on what we're about to do," she said, though the lack of history bothered her as well. She just hated talking about it.
"Do you think anyone's still alive in Tehran?" asked Pi.
"Doubtful," said Aurie, sighing. "I remember overhearing Mom and Dad talking about some news they'd gotten, and her mentioning she was the last of her family."
"I feel so blank," said Pi.
"We'll make our own history," said Aurie, even though she didn't quite believe it herself.
The test door opened, beckoning Aurie. She kissed her sister on the forehead and wished her luck. After a short hallway, she entered a nearly empty room. The only object besides an exit door and a timer on the wall that was currently set at 0:00.00 was a small black cube.
When the door closed behind her, a voice said, "Open the box."
The timer started counting right away. Aurie cracked her knuckles as she approached. She'd been watching how quickly the lines moved to get an idea how fast she had to solve the puzzle. Generally, it took about fifteen to twenty minutes, though a few times she saw the lines move at around five. If she wanted to get a good group, she needed to solve it quickly.
Aurie leaned forward to examine the cube. When her fingertips brushed it, an electric shock bit into them, making her recoil.
Her fingers were numbed. She shook them out and, undeterred, tried again. She was able to pick up the cube without further injury. The numbness wore off as she rotated the object. There was no obvious way to open it, no seams, no latches or handles.
Aurie cast a spell on her eyes that would allow her to see the presence of faez.
As she expected, the cube was magical. She peered at it from up close, looking for clues. Nothing. The timer was at two minutes already.
"Maybe I'm over thinking this," she said, and tried a few spells on the cube. She cast various opening spells, but the cube absorbed them without change.
When the timer passed the three-minute mark, she said, "Open sesame!"
Nothing.
Frustrated from staring at an inanimate object, Aurie spun around so she could think more clearly, only to find a phrase written on the wall. It was visible because of the spell on her eyes.
ON YOUR UNLUCKY DAY DON'T FORGET THE WORDS TO SAY
"Unlucky day?" she asked no one in particular.
The phrase meant that she had to say something to open the box, so she hadn't been far off trying "Open sesame."
Unlucky day? What would an unlucky day mean? Thirteen was the traditional unlucky day. On a Friday?
Aurie spun around, tapping on her lips, until the answer came to her.
"Thirteen. Thirteenth birthday," she said.
The clock was nearly at five minutes. For kids with magical ability, the thirteenth birthday was a special occasion called Triskanatalis. The occasion was similar to the bar mitzvah coming-of-age ceremonies celebrated by Jewish kids. In fact, Jewish kids often combined the two, if they qualified.
The celebration involved a simple ceremony in which the child promised to use their magical abilities for good. A simple spell was cast, though it had no official binding and was only ceremonial. Her mom had taught her the spell the week before her thirteenth birthday. It was one of the last things they'd done together before she died.
Aurie stepped to the cube.
"Mea promissum bonum operibus."
Nothing happened. The timer had passed five minutes. Aurie was sure that was the answer. What had she done wrong?
The spell had been cast after writing her name in a book of spells that was traditionally given on that day. She searched for something to write her signature with, but there was nothing else in the room. So she put her finger to the cube and wrote out her name with the tip like she did with those electronic credit card machines.
"Mea promissum bonum operibus."
The cube opened, revealing a red button. Aurie jammed her hand down to press it. The click from the door opening was deeply satisfying.
She was about to go through the door when she noticed the timer was still going. It was counting past six minutes.
"Close enough," she said, going through the door.
The hallway led to a waiting area with the others who had taken the test. No scoreboards were present to give her an idea where she stood. She found the other Arcanium students who had finished the test and compared notes. So far she'd solved it the fastest of the group.
After about an hour, Pi came out of the room sobbing. Her eyes were puffy and red. Aurie gathered her younger sister in her arms.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I couldn't do the puzzle," she said, breaking away and then punching the wall. "Nothing worked. After an hour, the door opened up. I failed completely. Why am I even here if I can't do a simple puzzle!
"
Aurie squeezed Pi tighter.
"What was that stupid thing, anyway?" asked Pi, once she'd collected herself.
Aurie's breath caught in her throat. Pi didn't know because their parents had died when she was ten and on her thirteenth birthday, they'd been moving to a group home. Aurie had forgotten to wish Pi a happy birthday that day.
She felt like the worst sister in the world, twice over. On the ride, Aurie had been worried about making sure they stayed together. She'd heard too many horror stories about siblings being split up. It wasn't until a week later that she remembered that she'd missed Pi's birthday.
"Forget it," she said.
Pi's face wrinkled in anger. "Tell me. Don't treat me like a kid."
"It was the Triskanatalis spell," said Aurie.
The truth dried up Pi's tears as her jaw pulsed with anger. "I see."
"Don't stress about it. It's just a way to choose teams. The real competition happens after that," said Aurie.
Pi wasn't pleased. "What was your time?"
"Around six minutes," said Aurie, cringing.
"Yeah, doesn't matter says the girl with a top time," said Pi.
"I'll probably get stuck with a bunch of Coterie and Alchemists," said Aurie.
Pi moved away and collected herself in the corner. It'd been a while since she'd seen Pi this broken up. The reminder of her thirteenth birthday was probably about the worst thing, because it brought with it the memory of their mom and dad. They wouldn't have forgotten if they'd been alive, which made Aurie confused if she was supposed to be mad or sad. Eventually she settled on the knowledge that she was always letting her sister down.
The rest of the wait took another hour. When it came time to find out the teams, they were sent through a portal. It would not only group them up, but give them access to their competition room. Each team could come and go as they pleased while solving the puzzle. It was expected to take the whole year. The earliest any team had solved it was by December.
Before they went into the portal, Aurie said to Pi, "Hope you get a good team."
"Doubtful," said Pi as she trudged forward.
After the portal flashed and Pi was whisked away to another location, Aurie took a deep breath. She was nervous about who her teammates would be. She reminded herself that she was likely to be grouped with some of the halls that formed the Cabal, though that didn't mean they were a part of those plots. These were just other students who were in the same position as she was, nervously hoping they could form a good team. She was glad she couldn't be grouped with Violet due to the one Hall restriction. Aurie hoped that she didn't get grouped with any of Violet's friends, the ones from the incident outside of Arcanium, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
Aurie crossed her fingers and stepped through the portal. Her skin tingled as if she'd crossed through an electric field. She blinked and arrived facing the last person she expected to see on the other side.
Chapter Six
Five minutes. That's what she wanted her time to be. Even eight or ten would have been fine. She'd always been good at everything. When she was eight years old she'd broken her arm playing soccer, but finished the game because the score was tied. She'd scored the winning goal.
But her time? It wasn't even a number. DNF. Did not finish.
Pi wanted badly to be on a top team so people wouldn't think she'd gotten into Arcanium because of her sister. Starting over in Arcanium felt too much like the years of moving from school to school, making new friends, knowing she wouldn't keep them for long.
Pi was good at finding friends. She just didn't know how to keep them. They'd never spent enough time in any one place.
Friendships were insubstantial, surface things. She knew their favorite bands, favorite colors, maybe who they had a secret crush on, but nothing else. It was a lot like her family history. She knew her parents' names, facts about their lives and careers, but nothing about their hopes and dreams, the stories that create the fabric of history, of family.
The Triskanatalis ceremony was just another reminder of it. When she was younger, she thought the whole idea was stupid, but Pi remembered her thirteenth birthday, riding next to her sister on the Greyhound bus to Kentucky, waiting for Aurie to remember that it was her birthday. She didn't even really care about the ceremony. They could have joked about it, then Aurie would have taught her the spell. That would have been enough. It wasn't like Pi didn't understand that Aurie was under a lot of pressure being the oldest. She didn't expect anything special, she just wanted to be a part of something greater than herself. And for some reason, that stupid spell was a part of that idea.
Pi was the first one into the team room. Comfy couches formed a semi-circle around a table with a pair of custom laptops. A small kitchen was in the corner. The refrigerator and pantry were stocked with food and drinks. She was opening a Dragon's Blood alchemical booster drink when her first teammate appeared.
The girl had dark skin and thick glasses that made her eyes appear bigger than they were. She was small, mousy, and looked ready to break at the first sign of trouble.
Pi took a deep breath and introduced herself.
"I'm Pi, short for Pythia. Arcanium Hall. I'm excited to meet you," she said with her hand extended.
The girl glanced around the room as if she were in the wrong place, leaving Pi in an awkward position.
Without stepping forward, the girl said in a voice so quiet Pi could barely hear it, "I'm Raziyah Johnson. Stone Singers."
Pi tried to hide her disappointment. The Stone Singers were the civil engineers of the magical world. Very specialized, and good at their jobs, but not useful outside of road and building construction.
Raziyah seemed to sense Pi's discomfort and added, "I'm good at math."
"I'm sure we'll need it," said Pi hopefully.
"Are we the first ones here?" asked Raziyah as she looked around, disappointed.
A pithy response about being good at math and counting to two formed in Pi's head, but she left it unsaid. Being good at making friends meant not making comments like that. Not at first, anyway.
"Whoa, what a head rush," said a familiar voice from the doorway.
Her friend from Freeport Games, Hannah, stood in the doorway. Pi greeted her with a hug. She was simultaneously excited and disappointed. Excited because she knew Hannah, but disappointed because she knew she wasn't a great student. Not in the traditional sense anyway. Pi's expectations for team success started to fade.
"Sweet place we've got here," said Hannah after introductions. "We could totally have our gaming session here."
The fourth and fifth members of their team showed up right after each other. The fourth was Rigel Yamaguchi from the Theater hall and the fifth was Echo, whom she also knew from Freeport Games. She hadn't even realized he was in the Halls, though it explained why Hannah knew him then since they hadn't seen him in Freeport Games before.
Echo took a seat in the corner away from everyone else while Rigel in a Midwestern accent launched into a story about how he met Frank Orpheum, the patron of the Theater hall, in a rare book emporium while on vacation in Rome. The well-known mage had charmed his mother first by getting rid of her smoking habit with a little hypnotism, then by creating an illusionary pangolin that stayed with her the rest of the day.
Raziyah took an interest in Echo as if he were a younger brother. She got him some food and tried to talk to him without much success. He mostly stared at anything but another person. Pi gave Raziyah a shrug. At least she was trying to inspire teamwork, but overall, Pi was not feeling great about their chances. She was the only member of a major hall that taught general magic. The others were specialized practitioners.
"Where's our sixth?" asked Hannah after a few minutes.
"Maybe we don't get one," offered Raziyah. "If there aren't enough to fill out a team of six, the last place team probably gets shorted."
"Nobody solved the puzzle?" asked Rigel.
Raziyah sa
id, "Thirteen was when my parents got divorced."
Hannah shrugged her broad shoulders. "My parents weren't talking to me. They'd sent me to special school to cure me of my queerness. Clearly it didn't take."
"That's terrible," said Rigel as he messed with his hair. It was shaved on one side and long on the other with dark blue accents.
"Don't sweat it. I enchanted phones at the school to change the word straight to gay. The place closed down a few months after I left," said Hannah with a wink. "What about you?"
"That was the year I was back in Nagoya. My parents wanted me to learn traditional Japanese theater. I think they felt guilty about moving to Chicago when I was a baby, but my heart's in the American stage. It was one of those things that just got missed flying back and forth all the time," explained Rigel.
Pi explained why she didn't know about the Triskanatalis spell, and nobody bothered asking Echo. They all just assumed he was too weird to have done normal kid-parent things.
"Hey, the portal's activating," said Hannah.
They all moved towards it, except Echo, who was doing something that looked like counting his fingers over and over.
"I think it's stuck," whispered Raziyah.
"I hope it's not malfunctioning," said Rigel.
Magic wasn't always reliable, but the portals around the school were top notch. Pi hoped their sixth member was someone from a top hall. She'd even take someone from Coterie, just to have a fighting chance.
When the sixth member stepped out of the portal, Pi choked on the name.
"Aurie?"
Her sister stumbled into the room, looking a little bleary-eyed.
Hannah, oblivious to the implications, launched herself forward and threw her arms around Aurie. "Aurie!"
"Wait," said Raziyah, at an almost normal volume, "you're both in Arcanium."
Aurie was confused. "What's going on? I can't be in this group. I solved the puzzle."
"The choosing algorithm must have failed," said Rigel. "Spells are fallible."
"Maybe it was confused because I was in Coterie last year," offered Pi, but she didn't think that was it.
Web of Lies (The Hundred Halls Book 2) Page 5