Kitabı oku: «Tempests and Slaughter»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Map

Chapter 1: August 30–September 1, 435

Chapter 2: September 2–October 14, 435

Chapter 3: October 14–16, 435

Chapter 4: October 16, 435–March 436

Chapter 5: June 1–4, 436

Chapter 6: June 5, 436–March 18, 437

Chapter 7: May 23–August 24, 437

Chapter 8: August 25–28, 437

Chapter 9: August 31–December 2, 437

Chapter 10: December 3–31, 437

Chapter 11: January 1–9, 438

Chapter 12: February–March 438

Chapter 13: March 438

Chapter 14: April 438

Chapter 15: April–May 15, 438

Chapter 16: June–September 2, 438

Chapter 17: September 15–30, 438

Chapter 18: September 30–October, 438

Chapter 19: October 438–June 439

Chapter 20: Summer Term 439

Chapter 21: Summer Term 439

Chapter 22

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Also by Tamora Pierce

About the Publisher

Map

THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF CARTHAK
The School for Mages

The Lower Academy for Youthful Mages

SCHEDULE OF STUDY, AUTUMN TERM, 435 H.E.

Student: Arram Draper

Learning Level: 10

Breakfast – Third Morning Bell

Morning Classes

History of the Carthaki Empire

Essentials of Water Magic, beginning studies

Language: Old Thak

Lunch – Noon Bell

Afternoon Classes

Mathematics

Essential Earth Magic: Seed and Harvest (First Half Autumn Term); Stone and Earth (Spring)

Reading and Writing

The Tools of Magic: Bowls, Mortar and Pestle, Salt, Water, Vials

Supper – Seventh Afternoon Bell

Extra Study at Need

CHAPTER 1
August 30–September 1, 435
THE IMPERIAL COLISEUM, THAK CITY, THE CARTHAKI EMPIRE

Arram Draper hung on the rail of the great arena, hoisting himself until his belly was bent over the polished stone. It was the only way he could get between the two bulky men who blocked his view. He knew it was risky, but he couldn’t waste his first chance to see the gladiators when they marched into the huge stadium. His father and grandfather were back at their seats, arguing about new business ventures. They weren’t paying attention, waving him off when he asked to visit the privies and never realizing he’d squirmed his way down to the rail instead.

Apart from them, he was alone. There were no friends from school for company. They all said he was too young. He was eleven – well, ten, in truth, but he told them he was eleven. Even that didn’t earn him friends among his older schoolfellows. Still, he wasn’t a baby! If he didn’t see the games with his family today, he might never get the chance, and he’d learned only last night he might not see Papa again for two years, even three. Carthak was a costly voyage for Yusaf Draper, and his new venture would take him away for a long time. But in the morning, Arram would be able to tell the older students that he had watched the games right from the arena wall!

Already he’d heard the trumpets and drums announcing the arrival of the emperor and his heirs. He couldn’t see their faces, but surely all the sparkling gold, silver, and gems meant the wearers were part of the imperial family. He could see the Grand Crier, who stood on a platform halfway between him and the royals. More important, he could plainly hear the man’s booming voice as he announced the emperor’s many titles and those of his heirs.

‘Lookit!’ The bruiser on Arram’s left bumped him as he pointed north, to the emperor’s dais. Arram wobbled and might have pitched headfirst onto the sands twenty feet below if the man on his other side hadn’t caught him by the belt and hauled him inside the rail. Without appearing to notice Arram’s near fall, the man on the left went on to say, ‘There’s the widow, and her son! She never comes to games!’

‘Who’s the widow?’ Arram asked. ‘Who’s the son?’

The big men grinned at each other over his head. ‘For all you’re a brown boy, you don’t know your imperials,’ said the one who had bumped him. ‘The widow is Princess Mahira, that was married to Prince Apodan.’

‘He was killed fightin’ rebels two year back,’ the other man said. ‘An’ the boy is Prince Ozorne.’

Now Arram remembered. Ozorne was a year or two ahead of him in the Lower Academy.

From the podium, the crier bellowed that the emperor would bless the games. Everyone thundered to their feet and then hushed. His voice amplified, most likely by a mage, the emperor prayed to the gods for an excellent round of games. When he finished, everyone sat.

For a very long moment the arena was still. Then the boy felt a slow, regular thudding rise through the stone and up his legs. His body shuddered against the railing. Nearby, in the wall that took up a third of the southern end of the arena, huge barred gates swung inward.

Here came drummers and trumpeters, clad only in gold-trimmed scarlet loincloths. Their oiled bodies gleamed as brightly as the polished metal of their instruments. The brawny men represented every race of the empire in the colours of their skin and hair and the tattoos on their faces and bodies. One thing they had in common: iron slave rings around their throats.

Arram rubbed his own throat uneasily. His original home, Tyra, was not a slave country. Three years in Carthak had not made him comfortable with the practice, not when there were no slaves at his school. He saw them only when he was outside, and the sight of them made him edgy.

The leader of the musicians raised his staff. The trumpeters let loose a blare that made Arram jump, almost tipping him over the rail. The men caught him again.

‘You’re best off at your seat,’ the friendly one advised. ‘Ain’t your mamma callin’ yeh?’

‘I’m eleven,’ Arram lied. ‘I don’t need a mother – I’m a student at the School for Mages!’

The men’s laughter was drowned out by a thunder of drumrolls. Arram gave the sands what he called his special, magical squint. Now he saw waves of spells all over the arena floor. They sent ripples through the air, carrying the arena’s noise even to the people in the seats high above.

‘Why do they allow spells on the arena sand?’ he shouted at the friendlier of the two men. As far as he knew, magic was forbidden here. Perhaps they allowed only their own magic, just as they allowed the emperor’s magic.

‘What spells?’ the man bellowed. He reached over Arram’s head and tapped his friend as the musicians marched past. ‘The lad thinks there’s magic on the sands!’

The other roughneck looked down his flattened nose at Arram. A couple of scars on his face told the boy he may have come by that nose in fighting. ‘What’re you, upstart?’ he growled. ‘Some kind of mage?’

‘Of course I am!’ Arram retorted. ‘Didn’t you hear me say I’m in the School for Mages?’

‘He’s simple,’ the friendlier man said. ‘Leave ’im be. Who’re you bettin’ on?’

The other man seized Arram by the collar and lifted him into the air. ‘If you’re a mage, spell me, then,’ he growled. ‘Turn me into somethin’, before I break yer skinny neck for botherin’ us.’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Arram cried. His mind, as always, had fixed on the question of magic. ‘Only a great mage can turn a person into something else! Even—’

His foe choked off Arram’s next comment – that he might never be a great mage – by turning his fist to cut off the boy’s voice entirely. ‘Stupid, am I?’ he shouted, his eyes bulging. ‘You moneyed little piece of tripe—’

Arram might have corrected him concerning the state of his purse, but he couldn’t breathe and had finally remembered a teacher’s advice: ‘You don’t make friends when you tell someone you think he is stupid.’ He was seeing light bursts against a darkening world. He called up the first bit of magic he’d ever created, after a walk on a silk carpet brought flame to his fingers. He drew that magic from the sands and seized the fist on his collar.

The tough yelped and released Arram instantly. ‘You! What did you do to me?’

Arram couldn’t answer. He hit the rail and went over backwards, arms flailing.

He was trying to think of lifesaving magic when a pair of strong, dark brown arms caught him just before he struck the ground. He looked into a man’s face: eyes so brown they seemed black in the bright sun, a flattened nose, a grinning mouth, and holes in both earlobes. His head was shaved.

‘You don’t want to join us, lad, trust me, you don’t,’ he told Arram, already walking back against the line of marching gladiators. The ones closest to them were laughing and slapping or punching the big man on the shoulder. Like him, they wore leather armour. Like him, they were oiled all over. Some were missing ears or eyes. These were the beginners, the midlevel fighters, and the old-timers, not the heroes of the arena. Some didn’t look at Arram; they were murmuring to themselves or fondling tiny god-images that hung on cords around their necks.

‘Hurry, boy,’ an older gladiator muttered to Arram’s rescuer. ‘Guards comin’.’

‘You don’t want the guards catching you,’ the big man explained to Arram as he quickened his pace. ‘They’ll whip you before they cut you loose. Is your family here?’

‘Sitting in the copper section,’ Arram said miserably. He had no idea how he’d get back to Papa and Grandda.

‘Don’t fuss,’ the big man told him. ‘We’ll fix it.’

Arram smelled something odd, like a barnyard thick with hay and dung. The ground under his rescuer shook. The boy looked up and cringed. Massive grey shapes approached, swaying as the sands thundered beneath their broad, flat feet. They waved huge, snake-like trunks painted in brightly coloured stripes, circles, and dots.

He had never been so close to an elephant! One halted in front of them as the others followed the parade of gladiators. As the gladiator lowered Arram to the ground, the gigantic creature knelt before them.

This elephant was decorated all over in red and bronze designs, even down to its toenails. It eyed Arram with one tiny eye and then the other before it stuck out its immense trunk and snuffled the boy. Despite his lingering fear, Arram grinned – the trunk’s light touch on his face and neck tickled. Carefully he reached out and stroked it.

‘This is Ua,’ the big man told Arram. ‘Her name means “flower”.’ He pointed to the rider, seated behind the creature’s large, knobbed head. ‘My friend’s name is—’ The name he pronounced sounded to Arram like ‘Kipaeyoh.’ ‘It means “butterfly” in Old Thak. Kipepeo,’ he called up to the armoured woman, ‘this lad must return to the bleachers – Where?’ He looked at Arram, who pointed. By now his father and grandfather had shoved up to the rail, next to the kinder burly man. The one who had dumped Arram over the wall was nowhere to be seen.

‘He must be placed there,’ the big man told Kipepeo. ‘Can you do it? Quickly?’

‘For you, Musenda, my love, anything,’ the woman called. She blew the man a kiss, then sounded a series of whistles.

‘Ua will get us all out of trouble,’ the man called Musenda told Arram. ‘No yelping. Ua’s as gentle as a kitten. For now.’ The elephant twined her trunk around the boy’s waist and lifted him. Arram yelped as his feet left the ground.

‘Thank you – I think!’ Arram called as Musenda trotted off to his place in line. The passing gladiators and elephant riders waved to Arram as they spread out in their ranks. Arram realized they were blocking the imperial soldiers who were trying to catch him. He clapped his hands over his face.

‘Don’t panic,’ Ua’s rider ordered. ‘She won’t let you come to harm.’

Arram lowered his hands and realized the elephant was too short to reach the top of the wall. ‘Her trunk isn’t long enough!’ he cried.

Kipepeo laughed. Tapping the great animal with a long rod, she guided Ua to the wall just beneath Arram’s relatives. Frightened and excited at the same time, the boy grabbed some of the coarse hairs on Ua’s crown for balance, trying not to yank them. Then he prayed to the Graveyard Hag, Carthak’s patron goddess and, he hoped, someone who might look after elephants and boys.

Kipepeo gave three sharp whistles.

Slowly, groaning in elephant, Ua straightened and stood on her back feet. Arram gasped as she lifted him high with her trunk. Now he was within easy reach of his father and grandfather. He raised his hands. They bent down, gripped him, and hauled him up and over the arena’s rail.

On solid stone once more, Arram turned and shouted, ‘Thank you, Ua! Thank you, Kipepeo!’

His two adults scolded him loud and long as they dragged him up the steps to the copper seating, but they also bought him a lemon ice and grilled lamb on skewers once they got the tale of his short adventure out of him. They even helped him to stand on the seat between them as the lengthy line of warriors, animals, and chariots finished their parade around the arena.

The gladiators bowed to the emperor, thrust out their fists, and shouted, ‘Glory to the emperor! Glory to the empire!’ The moment they finished, the elephants reared on their hind legs and trumpeted, the sound blasting against the arena walls. The crowd cheered, Arram and his family cheering with them.

Now the parade returned to the gate at the rear of the coliseum, with the exception of two groups of fighters.

‘It’s a scrimmage,’ Yusaf explained.

‘It’s a fight between lesser fighters, like a small war,’ Metan added. He was Arram’s grandfather, owner of their cloth-selling business. ‘The ones that need more experience. One team wears green armbands, and the other wears orange.’

‘Have you a favourite?’ Yusaf bellowed. The noise of the crowd was rising as people bet on Greens or Oranges.

Arram shook his head shyly. This fight was taking place right in front of the emperor’s part of the stands: he could not see much detail.

‘Here,’ Yusaf said, pressing a spyglass into Arram’s hand. ‘You ought to have a really close look at your first fight!’

Arram smiled at his father and raised the glass to his eye. Yusaf showed him how to twist the parts until he could see the emperor as if he stood only a foot or two away. Arram gasped at the flash of jewels on the great man’s robes, then swung the spyglass until he found the teams of fighters. Musenda was not among these gladiators.

A slave struck the great gong at the foot of the imperial dais, and the opposing forces charged with a roar of fury. They smashed one another without mercy, kicking and tripping when they were too close to swing their weapons. Arram stared, gape-mouthed. This was nothing like the self-defence lessons taught in the Lower Academy! One fighter, a tall, glossy-skinned black woman, was glorious, her spear darting at her enemies like lightning as she held off two attackers at once.

The crowd gasped. A gladiator wearing a green armband sprawled in the sands. A long cut stretched from the downed man’s left eyebrow across his nose; it bled freely. A pair of slaves raced forward to drag the fallen man from the arena as his opponent turned to fight someone else. The crowd booed their disapproval.

‘Why are they angry?’ Arram shouted in his father’s ear.

‘They prefer more serious injuries,’ Yusaf replied.

‘But he couldn’t see!’ Arram protested. ‘How can he fight if he can’t—’

Metan patted his arm, a signal for him to be quiet. Arram sighed. He was glad the slaves had taken the man away.

He looked for the woman and saw her knock a man down. She was raising her spear for a killing stab when one of his comrades swung at her, knocking her weapon from her grip. She lunged forward and grabbed his spear.

Suddenly a fellow Green stumbled into her, shoving her forward. Down onto her knees she went, clinging to her opponent’s weapon. The crowd was on its feet, screaming.

The female gladiator still gripped the spear, but one of the two men fighting her had cut her deeply from her ribs to her hip bones. She knelt in the sand, fumbling with crimson-black ropes that spilled over her loincloth. Arram opened his mouth and swiftly clapped his hands over it: the gladiator was clutching her intestines. He shoved the spyglass into his grandfather’s hold and forced his way through the crowd, praying that he would make it to the privies.

He didn’t. Arram threw up in the tunnel, in the gutter off to the side. Even when he was being sick, he wondered if the trench was there to carry away vomit or water from the winter storms. He was able to save the rest of his stomach’s contents for the privy. The immense stone room with its long line of stalls was empty, for which he was deeply grateful. He spewed everything in his belly. Finally he was able to rinse his face at one of the privy’s fountains. Weak and disgusted with himself, he staggered outside to rest on a convenient bench. His father found him there.

‘I thought you would like the games,’ Yusaf said, beckoning to a water seller. He purchased two bamboo cups full and handed one to Arram. The boy drank slowly; his stomach heaved a little, then settled. ‘Haven’t you gone with your school friends?’ His father sat next to him.

Arram shook his head. ‘I don’t have any friends,’ he admitted softly. Would his father be ashamed of him? Quickly, he added, ‘Well, I have some to talk to, but they’re two or three years older than me. And my old friends say I’m too good for them now that I’m two terms ahead. But everyone talks about the games. I was sure I’d like them.’ He hung his head. ‘You should go back. I’m ruining this for you and Grandda.’

Yusaf rubbed his shoulder. ‘Don’t be foolish. We see you once a year, if we’re lucky. It will be even longer if I get this new contract. Today we would far rather spend time with you. Wait here, and I’ll get him.’

Arram sat in the shade and gazed at the buzzards overhead. He had spotted a golden hawk when he heard his grandfather’s voice.

Metan purchased his own throwaway cup of water and came over to stand next to the bench. Arram put the spyglass in his lap and stared nervously at the old man. Metan’s bite was worse than his bark, but even his bark drew blood sometimes.

Finally the old man said, ‘What will you do when you must learn healing? Didn’t you say you’ll be cutting entire bodies open?’

Arram gulped. ‘Maybe I’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘They have us doing worms and fishes now. It’ll be years before I must work on big animals, or people. If I even get to do people. I’ll be taught to make medicines first – herbalists are well paid, too,’ he pointed out. He didn’t tell them of the time he had been told to add a herb to repel snakes to a teacher’s potion and, thinking of something else, had brought the man a herb that would attract poisonous spiders instead.

Yusaf nudged him. ‘Arram!’

The boy twitched. ‘Oh – I’m sorry, Father, Grandfather. I was thinking.’

‘You are always thinking, youngster,’ Metan said. ‘Come – let’s rent one of these carts. If your belly’s up to it, we’ll take an early supper in Thak City.’ He walked towards the lines of carts for rent, calling back to Arram, ‘You can tell me what you mean to study this year.’ He chuckled. ‘I daresay I will like that as much as you enjoyed the games.’

Two days later Arram stood at one of the many docks in Thak’s Gate, watching his father and grandfather board the small shipping vessel that would take them across the Inland Sea to Tyra. He barely remembered the place: Carthak was his home now. He never said so, of course. His family would be hurt. But the truth was, they hardly seemed like family. The things they liked to talk or write to him about held little interest: shipping, cloth, cloth markets. The only thing about their way of life that fascinated Arram was the magic that could be worked with weaving and thread. His family scorned it – there was no status in such spells. Thread magic was the work of hedgewitches and goodywives, not worth their attention. If Arram became a mage, then all the money they’d put into his education would be worth something, but only in terms of battle or healing magic. Those would bring the family status and fortune.

Arram sighed. They loved him. He knew that, from the gifts they sent – sweets, warm blankets and coats, coin for shoes – and their letters. He loved them, for their kindness, their letters, and their visits. But he didn’t understand them, or they him. The games were just the most recent example.

He saw them waving and waved back. The ship was easing from the dock as sailors rushed up the masts and about the deck. A crowd gathered around Arram, waving and shouting to those who were sailing away.

Someone shoved him. Arram scowled at her, but she didn’t even look down. He was insignificant. His temper roiled inside him. He was always too small, too young, always being put aside. His mood was strange today, prickly and restless. He was itchy inside his skin.

‘Safe journey!’ people shouted, and ‘Swift journey!’

The thought sprouted up like it had been waiting. There was a way he could do something significant. They wouldn’t know it, but he would. It wasn’t much, but he’d feel better for it. He looked hurriedly at the inside of the hem of his tunic, searching for a loose thread. Only a couple of months ago, he had begun reading about weather magic. He had memorized a few spells from it to try when he had some time alone, out in the fields beyond the university, but surely this spell was safe enough. It was for hedgewitches, after all, a blessing for ships and voyages. It was a small thing.

He found a loose thread and tugged it free. It was red, even better! Red was for luck, hope, and strength. Holding it down in front of his belly so the people around him wouldn’t see, he wove the two scarlet ends of the thread in and out of one another, murmuring the words of the old spell. His fingers and the back of his neck were tingling. Small breezes played with his heavy black curls. Sweat trickled down his temples as he finished with the traditional blessing for his relatives and the ship. The breeze tugged at the thread. The nervous energy that had plagued his insides all morning surged and tore the thread from his fingers. He could swear it was strange, strong power from inside him that did it, and not the gusting air. Whichever it was, his spell-thread yanked from his fingers to fly high over the harbour.

Right in front of everyone, the vessel that bore Arram’s father and grandfather leaped into the air like an exuberant zebra, dropped lightly into the water, and zipped between the two lighthouses that guarded the opening to the Inland Sea.

For a moment there was only the slap of waves on the pilings. Then, nearby, someone who sounded very official yelled, ‘Who cast that spell? I want him caught and held for breaking harbour law! Find him right now!’

Correctly guessing that no one would be looking for a ten-year-old boy, or even an eleven-year-old one, Arram squirmed his way out of the crowd. Once clear, Arram trotted to the spot where a cart regularly waited to take passengers along the eastern side of the city wall, paid his fare, and took a seat. He had a great deal to think about.

CHAPTER 2
September 2–October 14, 435

The day after Arram waved goodbye to his father and grandfather, the autumn term classes began. At first everything was exciting. Arram sometimes complained about the amount of work that he faced, but the truth was that he learned quickly and well. Now he dug into the new classes with enthusiasm. Soon enough, however, he discovered that the intense work of the previous two terms, and the sessions with tutors to help him catch up and keep up as he moved ahead, was over. He was moving at the same pace as his fellow mage students, with empty hours to fill. His new fellows were at least two or three years older than he was; it was beneath their dignity to spend their spare time with a younger boy. Worse, he was getting curious about what lay ahead, until his curiosity overcame him. He began to turn over new and different magic in his head. And since he hadn’t had any fresh surges of oddness, he began to relax.

One place where he could not relax was Master Girisunika’s Essentials of Water Magic class.

Master Girisunika, who frequently stressed that she would teach Lower Academy classes until there was an opening in the Upper Academy, did not care if her students were bored. She spent the month of September making them recite what they knew of water and its magical properties as they learned it from the text. Next she taught them to stop water in midair as they poured it from a pitcher into a dish. Next they caused water to form small waves in a dish, then made it swirl widdershins in it. Now, in the second week of October, they were to use the latest spell they had memorized to draw water up from the centre of the dish, then let it fall and rise like a fountain.

On that hot day, Arram was bored. He had taken his turn at the table in front of the class. There he was the first to be successful in raising a five-inch-tall spout of water from the broad, shallow dish. He also raised scowls from his older classmates. Carefully ignoring them, he lowered the spout into the remaining water. Master Girisunika nodded, marked her slate, and beckoned to the next student without so much as a word of congratulations.

Arram watched the others work the same spell, except that it wasn’t the same. So far they had all made mistakes or failed completely. Finally he gazed at a nearby window. Its sturdy wooden shutters were closed, the spells on it shimmering in his gaze. They were there to keep any accidental magics from escaping the room. Still, Arram didn’t need to see outside to let his imagination go free.

He wished he’d had more time to fiddle with this spell. It wasn’t hard, no matter how much his classmates struggled with it. They only had to lift out a touch of their magical Gifts, a fingertip’s worth, set it on the water’s centre, then lift it up. Imagining it, his eyes half closed, Arram saw how he could raise the water into the air, higher even than Girisunika had done. With three finger-touches, he could create a pretty three-armed fountain. He had an image in his head of a dish ringed by spouts of water when Girisunika tapped his shoulder with her long pointer.

‘Do we bore you’ – she consulted her list of students – ‘Arram Draper? I know that you did the problem already, but it is possible to learn from others.’

Arram stared up at her, begging her silently to leave him alone. He was getting that panicky knot in his throat. He had tried not to get her attention this term. She didn’t know his unhappy way of getting into trouble, particularly when he was rattled.

‘Answer me, boy.’

Mithros help him, he had forgotten her question in his distress. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I was told you need special handling, but I had no idea it meant you were deficient in mind,’ she snapped. ‘Who helped you to do this spell before? Speak up!’

‘N-nobody, Master. Lady. Instructor,’ he stammered.

None of the titles he’d tried made her happy. ‘I am a master,’ she snapped. ‘Not a master of water, but sufficiently educated in it to teach this class.’

They were surrounded by giggles now. Master Girisunika jerked from side to side, trying to spot the offenders, but the students wouldn’t let her catch them. They’d had plenty of practice since Arram entered their lives.

Thwarted, she turned back to him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, and tapped the worktable with her pointer. ‘Do it again.’ As the students murmured, Girisunika swung around to glare at them. ‘If you helped him before, you will not help him now,’ she told them. Once Arram stood behind the table, she took a place at his shoulder. ‘All of you, hands on desks. Should anyone move a finger, they will get punishment work for the rest of the term.’

He was as nervous as he’d ever been in a class, but he had to defend himself. ‘No one aided me.’

She slapped his head with her palm. ‘I did not ask for a debate, boy. I gave you an order. Now do the spell.’

He raised his hands. They shook. ‘I can’t concentrate,’ he said hopelessly.

‘A mage in the field must concentrate at all times,’ she snapped. ‘Report to me after your other lessons for three weeks. Do the spell!’

The giggles that filled the air stopped when she glared at his classmates.

With her attention locked on the others, Arram closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and held it. Sometimes that helped. His magical Gift boiled in his chest, like the River Zekoi in flood season. He called the sparkling black magical fire up and let some of it stream through one shaking finger. Over the wide dish on the table, he wrote the spell-signs, using his power for ink.

It worked just as it did the first time. A vine of liquid rose into the air. This time he let it stretch as high as the master’s nose instead of the five inches she had required. His fellow students hissed; they always did when he succeeded where they failed.

Arram glared at the water as it dropped into the bowl. It wasn’t fair. Just because they couldn’t work a bit of magic, they expected him to drag his feet.

He faced the master. ‘I did it all alone,’ he insisted. ‘I could do more.’

She folded her arms over her chest, looking as if she’d gulped sour milk. ‘Oh, truly? What more could you do, pray?’

He turned back to the dish. Placing drops of his Gift on his forefingers, he touched each to a different spot on his slender column of water. It split. Now three ropes of water flowed up and over, then back into the dish, like his favourite garden fountain. Feeling bolder, he turned his hand and called the spouts. They went two feet higher. At that height, the water splashed onto the dish, the table, Arram, Girisunika, and the students in the first two rows.

‘Too messy,’ he said, frowning in concentration. All of his focus and power were locked on his creation. It was a bad habit of his, paying attention only to his spell.

Carefully he reached into the dish and spun the water sunwise once. It twirled, winding the three spouts like thread on a spindle until they shaped a twist in the centre. The twist became a miniature cyclone, swaying to and fro.

Arram frowned. There wasn’t enough water for people to see the glass-like swirls in his miniature cyclone. The bowl was nearly dry. He sent his Gift into the jar by the table, only to find less than a palmful of water inside.

He yanked it up and threw it into the bowl. Some of the students in the front began to snicker. Girisunika took a deep breath and announced with heavy meaning, ‘If you are finished, Draper …’

He was not finished. He could make it even more interesting. He scowled at the bowl and the cyclone, clenching his unsteady hand. Strength ran through him, coming from the floor – no, from beneath the floor. It soared up through his Gift almost as it had at the harbour six weeks ago. The feel of it was different, heavier.

It lanced through his hand and into the thin water cyclone. Without warning, the liquid shot into the air and sprayed throughout the room. Arram yelped and his fellow students howled as everyone was drenched.

‘Calm yourselves!’ Girisunika shouted. Raising a hand that shone with orange-red fire, she drew the water away from the students and back to the front of the room. It climbed until it formed a foot-deep pool-like block that enclosed Arram, the master, and the worktable. On the table, in the dish and above it, water continued to spout.

‘Draper,’ the master said, ‘where is the water coming from?’

Arram glanced at her face. She was sweating. ‘Where?’ he asked blankly.

‘Yes, dolt,’ she snapped. ‘Where did you get the water? There is far more here than before. Stop it at once!’

He had no more idea of the water’s source than he did of the wind that thrust his relatives’ ship out of the harbour. He scratched his head. He’d used no water signs other than those he’d placed at the spell’s start. The strength of it must have come from that strange shove of power that had gripped him.

His imagination built a picture of his cyclone’s thin tail passing through the dish, the table, and down through the marble floor. He bent and squinted at the table. The deepening pond of water had sprouted a rope of itself. Somehow it passed through the wood to feed his creation above.

Arram ducked underwater to find the source. A moment later a rough hand grabbed his collar and dragged him into the air. He struggled and spat. One of the bigger students had a strong grip on him.

‘What are you doing?’ Master Girisunika roared. ‘Do you want to drown? No one else can undo your mess!’ She motioned for his captor to release Arram. The youth obeyed.

‘Draper, what have you created?’ she demanded.

Arram held his head in his hands, but it was useless. Another surge ran through him, through his Gift. He lost control.

The spout exploded against the ceiling. The entire workroom was waist-high in water. The students were pounding on the doors. As was the rule when magic was being worked in class, the doors were closed and sealed to prevent outsiders from entering and causing just the kind of mess they presently had.

‘Undo this gods-cursed spell, boy!’ Girisunika yelled.

Arram shook from top to toe. They would send him home; he would never learn proper magic. Worse, they would lock him in one of those special cells the other boys talked about once the candles were doused. The cells where no one could use their Gift. He would be cut off forever from the thing he loved most, all because this instructor wouldn’t leave him alone!

One of the doors slammed open, knocking aside the students standing there. Water flooded into the hall. An elderly black woman and a snowy-haired white man, both in the red robes of master mages, stepped into the classroom once the depth was down to ankle level.

Flood or no, the drenched students knew that everyone was supposed to keep their heads and follow the rules in any emergency. They hurried to stand beside their desks as required when masters entered the room. They did not know the old woman, but Arram recognized the man. He was Cosmas Sunyat, head of the School for Mages.

Master Cosmas made glowing signs with his hands; the old woman made different ones with hers. Slowly every trace of water, even of dampness, vanished. The dish where Arram’s troubles had begun was empty even of a drop. It fell to the worktable with a clatter.

Arram picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Despite the bother, he was sad that his spell was gone. The surge of excitement had faded, too, leaving him no idea of how to call it back.

Girisunika was furious. ‘Who helped him?’ she demanded, glaring at Arram’s classmates. She was so angry she ignored the newly arrived masters. ‘He’s a child – he couldn’t do it himself! Which of you vile parasites connived at this?’

Master Cosmas thumped his ebony walking stick on the floor. ‘Master Girisunika, control yourself!’ he commanded. He surveyed the room. ‘Youngsters, report to Hulak in the kitchen gardens. Let us see if you remember the difference between coriander and weeds.’ As Arram’s fellows gathered their things and filed out of the classroom, Master Cosmas added, ‘Girisunika, Arram Draper, come with us.’

Masters Cosmas and Girisunika drew ahead as they walked through the marble halls. Arram, who had been raised to be polite, kept pace with the slower old woman. They had not gone far before she asked, ‘Did you have help from the others?’

Arram looked at her. ‘No, Master,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t have done it anyway. They aren’t very good.’

The woman snorted. ‘They are perfectly suited to those studies for their age, young man – as you should be. I am Master Sebo Orimiri. Who are you?’

Arram bowed as he’d been taught. ‘I’m Arram Draper.’

‘So you are the Draper lad. That explains a great deal.’ She walked on, making him trot to catch up.

‘It explains something?’ It was accepted in the Lower Academy that nothing explained the strange events that happened around Arram. ‘Whatever it explains, I probably didn’t do it on purpose,’ the boy added.

‘Tell me, what is your favourite place in the university?’

Arram looked at the master, sensing a trap but unable to figure out what manner of danger it could possibly hold. In the end he decided honesty would probably get him in the least amount of trouble. ‘The river. Or – or the gardens. But usually the library, Master Sebo.’

‘Only the Lower Academy library?’ She glanced at him and smiled. ‘The truth, lad. I’ll know if you lie.’

Something about her convinced him that she meant what she said. ‘No, Master. The mages’ library for the Upper Academy.’

‘Indeed!’ He seemed to have surprised her. ‘Not the Upper Academy? Aren’t the mages’ books too difficult?’

‘Most of them,’ he admitted. ‘Usually I read encyclopedias and books like that. They aren’t too hard, and I can look up the parts I don’t understand.’

‘I see. And how do you get past the librarians?’

‘There is this one book … The spells make me seem like part of the background.’ Arram smiled.

‘But surely, when you move, they notice.’

‘There was a note that you shouldn’t move when people look at you,’ Arram said.

‘Very practical. And this spell is useful, I take it? Not just for reading?’ Master Sebo asked drily.

He liked the look in her old, watery eyes very much. ‘I’m tired of doing the same things over and over,’ he explained. ‘With the not-seeing spell I can watch the masters and seniors experiment after the library is …’ He realized that he watched them when he was supposed to be in bed, after the masters and seniors had locked the doors. He sighed and dug his hands into his breeches pockets. Now he was truly in deep muck.

‘Don’t the masters inspect the library to ensure they have no witnesses?’ If Master Sebo was angry, her voice did not give it away. ‘I would like to think they are properly cautious.’

‘The, um, the spell I used works on masters as well as seniors,’ Arram mumbled.

Sebo halted, forcing Arram to do the same. ‘Where did you get it?’

Arram looked at her crinkled face. Could he get in any more trouble? ‘I found a little book on the upper level, mashed between … Bladwyn’s Book. It’s called Bladwyn’s Book. It has all kinds of spells for fighting and concealment. I learned that spell from it. Most of the rest only made my head hurt.’

‘I should think so,’ the old woman replied. ‘Bladwyn was a black robe mage who lived in the early three hundreds.’ She tugged on one of the ropes of beads that hung around her neck. ‘You were trying to work a black robe’s spells, Arram Draper. And here you are, alive and in trouble. How old are you?’

His breath hitched in his throat, but he managed to say, ‘Eleven, Master.’

‘Liar,’ she told him cheerfully. She didn’t seem to take offence.

The four of them entered the receiving room to the headmaster’s offices. The youth who sat reading there put aside his book and jumped to his feet. Cosmas beckoned to him and murmured instructions in his ear. The young man nodded and trotted out of the chamber. Cosmas ushered Master Girisunika and Master Sebo through the door to the inner office. Then the older man looked at Arram.

‘Remain here until you are summoned, young Arram,’ he said. ‘I suggest you work on a ten-page essay for me. It will be upon the virtues of maintaining one’s concentration, no matter what distractions may present themselves. In a while we shall summon you, understand?’

Arram understood. He understood that he was about to be very bored. He bowed to the head of the School for Mages. ‘Yes, Master Cosmas.’

‘Very good.’ The older man walked into his office and closed the door.

Arram hated boredom. That was the source of many of his problems. Bored, he might tinker with the spells he was taught – just tinker, not actually cast the whole thing! Then came visits to the healer, unhappy interviews with instructors, and labour or essays after that.

The head of the academy had told him to think about an essay on concentration, he reminded himself. But how could a fellow concentrate when he was so easily bored? Boredom had set his grandmother to teaching him to read when he was three. The first teacher for his Gift had come soon after, when he accidentally burned a month’s supply of firewood. He was six when his teachers gathered to tell his parents that the best – the only – place for him was the Imperial University of Carthak. No one in Tyra could teach a child whose Gift was so strong so young.

Yusaf hadn’t wanted to send him away, but Mother, Metan, and Grandmother had overruled him. Farm children apprenticed in the weaving houses at Arram’s age, they said. Embroiderers began their apprenticeships even younger. Besides, did Yusaf want to wait until Arram’s Gift burned the house down?

With soot on his hands from fighting Arram’s most recent workroom fire, Yusaf agreed. He brought Arram to Carthak himself and sat through his son’s entrance examinations. Arram was the youngest student by far. He performed a number of written and spoken tests, then demonstrated the magic he had been taught. When he and Yusaf returned in the morning, a master was there to admit Arram to the Lower Academy. Arram had cheered, and hugged his father, and danced around the room. He had thought he would never be bored again.

Now he had truly made a mess of things. Surely Master Girisunika worked out that Arram’s magic had somehow fetched water through the earth, and the tiles themselves, and the table, and the dish, without leaving a mark. He wondered if that had ever happened to Master Bladwyn, back in the old days. If it had, it wasn’t in the little book. Bladwyn never made mistakes.

While he’d been thinking these gloomy thoughts, his instructors and other masters he did not know passed through the waiting room. They entered Master Cosmas’s inner office, all demanding to know why they had been summoned. Arram put his face in his hands and wished he were on that ship with his father, bound for some far place beyond Carthak and Tyra.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, listening to muffled voices and wishing more than anything he could eavesdrop, when the most beautiful girl he had ever seen walked into the room. She wore her bright golden hair in a long braid down her back. When she smiled at him, her blue eyes shone like gems. Her light blue gown was in the Northern style – coming from a family that dealt in cloth, Arram still looked at what people wore. And her smile was very, very sweet.

‘Hello, there!’ she said, her voice as sweet as her smile. ‘Is Master Cosmas in?’

Reminded of his fate, Arram fell back into the glooms. He nodded. ‘But he’s having a meeting with other masters.’

The beautiful girl sighed. ‘Well, I’ll just have to wait. The master cook told me to hand this directly to Master Cosmas.’ She raised the small package she held, then flopped into the chair next to Arram, her legs splayed before her. ‘Cook believes that every message she sends is of utmost importance. Cook is very serious.’ She pulled an overly serious face, startling a laugh out of Arram. ‘I’m Varice Kingsford. What dreadful crime did you commit?’

‘I’m Arram Draper.’ He smiled despite his gloom. ‘I lost control of my Gift.’

To his surprise, she laughed. ‘I’m sorry, you look so glum, like they’re going to take you out and shoot you at dawn. With poisoned arrows, no less. Everyone loses control around here. That’s why all the workrooms are magicked to the rafters! That’s why we’re in the Lower Academy!’

‘You lose control?’ He couldn’t believe it.

‘Two months ago I knotted everyone’s hair in the room, including the master’s. They had to get three other masters in to figure out what I’d done,’ she confided. ‘I was just trying to make a net to catch stray magics, but …’

‘It went awry,’ Arram said. He was all too familiar with that problem.

‘They expect our Gifts to tangle early on,’ Varice told him. ‘How will we learn to manage them if they don’t?’ She looked him over. ‘Oh, come on. You look like you murdered someone. What happened?’

It took a little more encouragement and teasing from her, but soon he was telling the story of his morning. Instead of shocking her with his tale of runaway fountains, he saw her collapse into giggles. ‘Oh, I wish I could have seen it!’ she cried.

Then and there Arram promised himself that he would marry her one day.

The door opened and Master Cosmas looked out. ‘Ah, Varice, I thought I heard your laughter. Another package from Master Cook?’

The girl sprang to her feet and bowed like a proper student, then presented Master Cosmas with the parcel. ‘I was not permitted to return unless I had given it into your hands, Headmaster,’ she said with a smile.

Cosmas chuckled. ‘Thank you, my dear. You had best go before she thinks it went astray.’

She gave him a pretty curtsy and looked at Arram. ‘I’ll see you soon, Arram Draper!’ Then she trotted off, her skirts flying out behind her.

Arram hung his head. Not if they send me home, he thought, glum again.

Cosmas put his arm around Arram’s shoulders. ‘It’s not so bad as all that, my boy. Trust me.’ They stood aside as the instructors and a couple of the masters left the office. This time they looked at Arram. One or two of the instructors smiled, though not Master Girisunika. She frowned and hustled away, clearly unhappy.

Cosmas frowned. ‘Where are those runners of mine?’

As if they’d been summoned, a boy and a girl in Upper Academy robes came trotting into the room from outside. ‘It’s taken care of, Master,’ the boy said, puffing.

‘They’re bringing the books, Master Cosmas,’ the girl announced.

‘Very good, both of you,’ Master Cosmas said, beaming at them. ‘Now, would you run down to the kitchens and ask them to send up lunch for, oh, ten masters and one very hungry boy? We shall dine here. No, Lyssy, not in my office,’ he said. The girl had gone white. ‘In my dining room.’

She hesitated. ‘I should clear away the books and papers in there.’

Master Cosmas nodded. ‘Very good. Nangla, if you will go to the kitchens? Tell them I will need lunch to be served at the hour past noon.’ He smiled at Arram. ‘That should give us sufficient time to have a good talk.’

The boy left; Master Cosmas led Arram into his personal dining room, where Lyssy had already gone to work. Arram looked around as Lyssy removed piles of books from the long table. There were a number of different chairs: the room was built for large gatherings. Now only seven places were filled, one by Master Sebo. Master Cosmas pointed Arram to the place next to her, then took a big cushioned chair across from them. He did not introduce the other masters seated there, but left it to them to introduce themselves. Yadeen, Chioké, Lindhall – even Arram lost track of them after a short time, because each mage had plenty of questions to throw at him in addition to a name.

Arram thought he had been tested when he first came to the university, but it was nothing compared to what these eight masters subjected him to over the next three hours. They threw questions at his head like his fellows threw balls at him during play hours. Many of them covered material he had studied in the past three years, but others did not. There was plenty he had never encountered, even in his secret explorations. They knew about those, somehow – had Sebo told them? They wanted the tiniest of details about what he had studied – magical and ordinary – at home, and even about things that weren’t studies at all. They asked if he had tried drawing on his own, or building things, or handling animals. They asked if he sang, danced, or did gymnastics.

And then, with Sebo’s eye on him, Arram finally confessed to reading what he could of Bladwyn’s Book.

‘Bladwyn’s Book?’ That was the master who frightened him the most, a tall, muscular black man whose heavy lower lids made his dark eyes seem huge. He leaned forward, scowling. Like the other masters, he wore a scarlet outer robe. Under it he wore a simple white cotton shirt and breeches, and plain leather sandals. If he did well as a mage, his clothes didn’t show it, though Arram had been at the university long enough to learn that the best mages weren’t always finely dressed. ‘Bladwyn’s Book?’ the big man repeated when Arram didn’t reply immediately. ‘You were actually able to work spells from it?’

‘One spell,’ Arram admitted. ‘A hiding spell.’

The big mage flipped a large hand at him. ‘Show.’

Arram looked at the floor. ‘Do I have to?’ he asked Master Cosmas.

‘If you please,’ the head of the school replied. ‘Then we’ll feed you, I promise.’

Arram sighed. In truth, he didn’t see how doing it would get him into any worse trouble. He drew in his breath and let it out, then shaped the signs in his head. It wasn’t the kind of spell that could be worked with smelly oils or signs written on the floor, not if a fellow wanted to go unnoticed, anyway.

At first nothing happened. He was too nervous. Had he used everything up with the water spells? He glanced at Cosmas, who nodded at him in a comforting way.

He drew in a breath, bringing his Gift up from his belly, and released the air. He imagined himself drawing the signs on a great chalkboard inside his head. His hand quivered, or his imagination did. When he looked down, half of him was invisible, and half of him was not.

‘Relax, lad,’ Master Sebo told him. ‘That’s good enough for now. Release it.’

Arram looked at her. ‘I can do it right,’ he protested. ‘I work it all the time.’

‘We know you can,’ she said, glaring at the big mage in the chair across from them. ‘And if Master Yadeen weren’t so busy glaring at you, I imagine you would have done it properly.’

‘I wasn’t glaring,’ retorted the big man. ‘My face is always like this!’

Arram saw what Yadeen meant. He had the kind of eyes that looked as if they were set in an intimidating stare. ‘It’s just hard to concentrate,’ the boy explained. ‘Not because of Master Yadeen, though. I’m tired from the mess I made in class.’ A couple of them smiled at that.

‘By his account, he doesn’t use the spells we teach the older students,’ said a very beautiful master with glossy black hair and big brown eyes. She had introduced herself as Dagani. Arram was fascinated to see that she wore brown paint around her eyelids and crimson paint on her mouth. If he hadn’t met Varice, he would have thought this woman, in a stomach-baring gold silk top and skirt under her robe, was the most beautiful female he had ever seen. The woman continued, ‘Indeed, I have seen no masters use such a spell.’

Chioké sniffed. ‘The structure is archaic.’

This time Yadeen did scowl. ‘What is archaic is new to those who have never seen it, Chioké. Most defences against such spells would not be able to counter it.’

Master Cosmas stood and rubbed his hands together. ‘I think it’s time we had lunch. Arram, you may drop the spell and join us.’ He opened the door. Kitchen servants trooped in with all manner of plates and pitchers, setting everything that was needed on a long side table.

Watching the adults, Arram saw he was to take an empty plate and choose whatever appealed to him, then carry it to the main table.

Sebo and the beautiful mage, Dagani, added their own selections to Arram’s plate. He also found himself sitting between the two women at the table. They made certain he ate the greens and the fish they had given him, as well as hummus dip with bread. During the meal, Dagani got him to talk about his family and his normal day. She and Sebo exchanged looks when he admitted that mostly he read or walked in the gardens by himself.

He finally got the courage to ask, ‘What is this about? Will I be dismissed?’

‘Cosmas!’ Dagani called, rapping her spoon on her plate. ‘My dear sir! This poor lad thinks you mean to send him away!’

Arram sank into his chair.

Dagani tugged on his arm. ‘Up,’ she ordered, smiling. ‘You look like a turtle.’

‘Young man, I am sorry,’ Cosmas said when Arram stuck his head over the table. ‘I thought you knew what we were about. I will not send you home – that’s the last place a lad of your talents should be. When you came to us, your Gift was sufficient for the basics, but – for the most part – dormant. Sleeping. Now, however, your body has begun to change. With it, your Gift will unfold. You should have been reexamined before, frankly. We questioned you so thoroughly to see where to place you next.’

Arram groaned. They were going to shift him again? ‘Sir, that’s the third time in three terms!’

‘Speak to the master with respect,’ Chioké told him severely.

‘Don’t be hard on the boy,’ Dagani chided, her eyes flashing. ‘He has not been taught to expect the extraordinary, as has Ozorne. He doesn’t understand.’ She turned to Arram. ‘Did they tell you, when they moved you ahead these last two terms, that no two young mages grow at the same rate? Just as no two young bodies grow at the same rate—’