by ML Spencer
Sergan sat in the shadows for a moment, hair in disarray, contemplating Aram with a thoughtful expression. Quietly, he muttered, “I suppose Markus’s skin will remain intact for another day.” He rose from his chair, patting Aram on the head as he moved toward the door.
“Tonight, I want you to hit the books. And keep tying those knots.”
Aram frowned, staring at him in incomprehension. “What good is hitting books? Can’t I just study the diagrams?”
Sergan’s lips parted, and he stared sideways at Aram with a funny look on his face. He started to leave but halted, turning back. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very, very peculiar boy?”
Aram breathed a heavy sigh. Even coming from Sergan, the words hurt.
“Yes, Lord Parsigal. Everyone.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sergan sat across the desk from the empty chair that belonged to his immediate superior, Lord Exilar Tobias Ganith. He had been waiting alone in the Lord Exilar’s office for almost an hour. At first, when the wait seemed longer than it should, he had grown irritated. But as the minutes compounded, Sergan was starting to sweat. Something was wrong. The Lord Exilar wouldn’t keep him waiting this long unless he were trying to make a statement.
Minutes later, the office door finally opened, and Lord Ganith made his appearance, hanging his mantle on a peg on the wall before situating himself behind his desk. Folding his hands on the desk’s surface, he regarded Sergan without expression. Sergan settled back in his seat, folding his hands in a facsimile of his superior.
“The Revered Master desires an update on your charge,” Ganith informed him.
Sergan brought a hand up and fidgeted with his collar, which suddenly seemed entirely too tight. “We’ve made some progress,” he reported. “I have Aram working on knots from Daymar Torian’s notes. So far, he’s managed to blow out a few candles and extinguish the fire in the hearth. I’d say he’s doing well.”
Lord Ganith’s expression did not change. “Let me be frank,” he stated blandly. “The Revered Master allowed you to take Aramon Raythe into your tutelage with the understanding that his abilities would be exceptional. If all he can do is extinguish a few candles, then he is worth far more to us as a source of essence.”
Sergan thought the man was being premature in his judgement, but he knew better than to contradict him. The problem was, if Aram couldn’t find a way to summon magic at will, then it wouldn’t matter how exceptional he was. “Then I’ll push him harder. He has the ability, but there’s a block in his way.”
“What kind of block?”
Reluctantly, Sergan explained, “He claims he needs a catalyst, but I don’t believe it. The boy’s a Savant, after all. I have a feeling it’s just a crutch, so we’re going to be working on getting past it.”
“And what is the boy’s catalyst?”
“Aram needs to feel that someone other than himself is in danger. Only then does the aether become tangible to him.”
A troubled frown etched itself deeply into the Lord Exilar’s face. “Then perhaps you are wrong. Perhaps he is not a True Savant.”
Sergan’s mind scrambled for recourses. He couldn’t let Aram be taken away; the boy was too important to his plans. He had to find some way to stall them.
“Give me a week,” he said. “I’m certain I can get him past his block. I just need to find the right motivation to get him over the hump.”
The Lord Exilar’s lips compressed into a fine line. “A week is too long. I will inform the Revered Master that I have allowed you a period of three days to prove to the Synod that Aramon Raythe is worth his weight in essence. However, if he has made no progress after three days, I will recommend that he be remanded to the cellars.”
Sergan grimaced in disappointment, for he had no idea if he could deliver on his part of the bargain. Three days was not a lot of time. He would have to be much harder on the boy. Much harder.
He rose to leave with a mutter of thanks, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Their second day at the College went better than the first. Aram awoke before dawn and followed the other students out to the practice yard, where he performed the small but excruciating exercises prescribed by Sword Brother Davir. When he was done, he watched the others practicing footwork in the pre-dawn darkness. It was Day Three of the training cycle, the day of rest, which the students spent performing light exercise and honing skills.
After morning combat training was breakfast, which consisted of dried figs, bread, and cheese. Aram sat beside Markus on a long bench and took his time about arranging his food on his plate, as he did every meal, since he hated anything that was disorderly. There were two figs, which was good, for he liked symmetry. But that left just the small slice of bread and the smaller wedge of cheese, and he couldn’t find a good way to arrange them. With a sigh of disappointment, he broke them into smaller pieces and dispersed them in an alternating pattern around his plate.
Satisfied, he picked up a fig and started chewing, only to find Markus staring at him. And not just Markus. Most of the students at the table were staring at him, too, with perplexed expressions on their faces. Aram stopped chewing, a terrible feeling of anxiety creeping over him, for he didn’t know what he’d done to make them all look. Did he have something in his teeth? Something on his face? Ashamed, he lowered his gaze to his plate, hiding his panic as best he could, while Markus glared everyone back into minding their own business.
After breakfast, Aram attended Grammar class with Professor Callain. By the end of the class, he was able to write his own name with quill and ink. Callain had him practice writing small letters over and over, scribing them across a strip of discolored parchment. It turned out that scribing was more difficult than it looked. Because of the angle the nib was cut, the quill could only make downward strokes, so each letter couldn’t be made all at once and had to be broken up into a series of multiple strokes. It took him many trials before he finally produced a rendering of his name that Callain deemed acceptable.
Markus didn’t fare as well. His attention kept drifting from his work. His gaze wandered the room, studying the other students who were his new peers. His quill would go still in his hand, making a widening stain in the parchment.
“Initiate Galliar!”
“Yes?” Markus exclaimed, his back snapping straight.
“I asked, name the first four letters of the Abadian alphabet.”
Every face in the classroom was pinned on him.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Callain awarded him a frown of disapproval. “Not a good start, Galliar. Not a good start.”
One of the students in the front of the class giggled, though Aram couldn’t tell which one. Markus focused harder after that, and by the end of class, could scribe every consonant in the Abadian alphabet.
When the hour was up, Professor Callain bid them good day and left the room, to be replaced by Professor Greeling, an exhausted-looking man with sagging eyelids that never seemed to blink. Professor Greeling taught Arithmetic. It turned out that Professor Greeling wasn’t well-respected by his students, and there were a lot of gestures and eye-rolling whenever he turned his back.
Aram decided he liked Arithmetic better than Grammar, for he discovered that he had a knack for it. With little instruction, he was multiplying and dividing numbers in his head, though he found he had an easier time of it with his eyes closed. Unfortunately, Professor Greeling must have seen him with his eyes shut and thought he’d caught him sleeping, for he came up and rapped his knuckles on Aram’s desk.
“What are you doing, Initiate Raythe? Unless you can tell us the quotient of,” he glanced at the problem on the slate board in the front of the room, “ten thousand four hundred fifty-two multiplied by forty-two thousand five hundred twenty-one off the top of your head, I suggest you pay attention to the process.” With that, he turned and strolled back toward the front of the classroom,
hands clasped behind his back.
Aram frowned down at his desk for a moment with his eyes scrunched, at last saying, “Four hundred forty-four million four hundred twenty-nine thousand four hundred ninety-two.”
The professor stopped midstride and turned slowly toward him. So did the rest of the class.
“What was that you said?”
Realizing that every gaze in the room was pegged on him, Aram froze rigid in his seat, petrified he’d gotten the quotient wrong. Swallowing heavily, he repeated the number in a trembling voice, “Four hundred forty-four million four hundred twenty-nine thousand four hundred ninety-two. Sir.”
Professor Greeling’s eyebrows shot up, and he strode to the podium with more animation than Aram thought him capable of. There, the old man picked up a piece of chalk and started scribbling rapidly across a slate board on his podium while the class looked back and forth between Greeling and Aram, wide-eyed. With a final, adamant jerk of his chalk, the professor took a step back, gazing down at the slate, his face going slack.
“Class dismissed,” he muttered.
Despite his crutch, Aram was the first out the door. Markus came bolting after him, catching his arm and pulling him to the side of the hallway.
“How did you do that?”
Aram shrugged. “Arithmetic is easy.”
Markus shook his head vigorously. “No. Arithmetic is not that easy. At least, not for the rest of us.”
“I’m sorry,” Aram whispered.
The other students leaving the classroom streamed past them, Obriem muttering “freak” as he walked by. Aram closed his eyes and turned away, making his way toward the entrance to the building. He hobbled on his crutch to the courtyard, where he found a bench and sat upon it, dropping the crutch, and leaned forward with his head in his hands. He sat there for a while feeling miserable, hating everything and everyone at the College. His fellow students were mean, the training wicked, his quarters filled with the overwhelming reek of the waste pail that they were only allowed to empty once a day. He even hated his clothes. His trousers were too tight and the roughspun shirt was itchy on his skin. He found himself scratching at the fabric a lot, hoping his fingernails would soften the fibers a bit over time.
“Hey.”
Aram looked up to find Peshka hovering over him, but since she had been one of the people staring at him in the classroom, he looked away. She sat next to him, leaning forward and staring into his face until he burned with embarrassment and squeezed his eyes closed.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Aram nodded. He sat with his arms wrapped around himself, rocking slightly. She was looking at him so intensely that he wanted to squirm right out of his skin and escape.
“Professor Sabrien sent me,” she said gently. “She wants to know why you’re missing class.”
Aram shook his head. He didn’t want to go to another class.
“You’ve got to come,” Peshka insisted. “You’ll get in trouble.”
Trouble. He couldn’t afford to get in trouble because Markus would take the beating. He started trembling because walking back into the classroom would be the most embarrassing thing he could think of doing. Everyone would stare at him in ridicule again and mouth insulting words in his direction. At least back in his village, when people treated him like that, he could escape to his cave, which always made him feel better. But there was no escape at the College—his tormentors went everywhere he went.
“You can sit by me,” Peshka said, laying a hand on his back. “Come on.”
Drawing in a deep, deep breath, Aram bit his lip and grabbed his crutch, standing to follow her.
Aram suffered through Professor Sabrien’s class as best he could, trying hard to ignore the other students. Peshka sat next to him, as she promised. Markus was already there, seated next to a beautiful Odessian girl with the softest skin Aram had ever seen. But her colors were so chaotic that her aura seemed almost damaged—just like most of the other colors in the room. Out of the entire bunch, Aram decided that only Peshka and Poda could be trusted to be kind. Their auras were green and clear and put Aram at ease. The others, though… Of course, considering the students were all in training to be Exilari, it made sense that they’d be chaotic.
Their instructor, Professor Sabrien, was a striking woman with long, black hair and green eyes that sliced through nonsense and distraction. While Professor Sabrien stood in command of the class, every student sat with their backs rigid in their seats, hands folded on the desks in front of them. No one coughed or fidgeted, and there was certainly none of the disrespect that had gone on the previous hour.
After class was supposed to be lunch, but as they walked toward the dining room, they were intercepted by Sergan. The sorcerer came striding from around a corner with an intense frown on his face, halting in front of them and physically blocking their path. Aram looked at Markus, who glanced back at him.
“I’m going to need Aram for the rest of the day,” the sorcerer snapped, sounding even more terse than he did normally.
Aram’s stomach rumbled its disappointment. And even though he was eager to work on more knots, the look on Sergan’s face made him fearful.
“Let’s go,” the sorcerer said, already striding away.
With a sigh, Aram hobbled after him. Instead of leading him back to the study room where they’d met the previous day, Sergan made for the stairs, mounting the mahogany steps. Aram halted at the base of the wide staircase, gazing upward at the many flights of stairs, feeling daunted. Gripping the handrail and his crutch at the same time, he followed his mentor up the stairs, taking one step carefully at a time, his bad leg jabbing pain into him every time he accidentally put weight on it. It took him many minutes and a lot of pain, but at last, he arrived at the fourth floor. There, he found the hallway empty, and he had no idea behind which door his mentor had disappeared through. He wandered down the hallway until he found a half-open door. There, he paused and knocked on the frame, staring past the door at the opulent quarters within.
“Come in,” Sergan commanded.
There was a strain in his voice that hadn’t been there the previous day. Aram felt the tension palpably, and he wondered why it was there. Something had changed. Changed for the worse.
Sergan motioned him toward a chair then sat across from him. Aram sank nervously into his seat, leaning his crutch up against the armrest. His gaze wandered the room, lingering on a large, walnut bureau with many tiny drawers. He wondered if Sergan kept his socks in those drawers. They didn’t look big enough to store much else. All around the room glowed an assortment of tapers. They were everywhere, at least a dozen, perched on every surface in the room.
Leaning forward and clasping his hands over his knees, Sergan said ominously, “Today, we’ll be getting through your block. I’ve been informed that we’re running out of time. If I don’t get you practicing magic without a catalyst in three days, they’ll take you away from me, and I can’t be having that.”
“Who would be my mentor?” Aram asked.
“I’d rather not say. Just be assured they won’t be as nice as me. Now. We have to get you using magic without having to threaten someone else. So, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to threaten you instead. That would be progress, at least.”
Aram shook his head roughly. “It doesn’t work that way. I’ve been in danger before, and it didn’t work for me.”
“What was the most dangerous situation you’ve ever been in?” Sergan asked.
It didn’t take Aram long to think about it. “When I was eight years old, I fell into a well. I had to tread water for an hour before anyone heard me yelling for help. I was sure I was going to drown, but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t use magic to help myself, even when I thought I was going to die.”
Sergan sat back, knuckling his chin. “That was four years ago. Maybe things have changed.”
The sorcerer’s eyes drifted to the fire crackling in the hearth. He
sat staring at the flames for a while, his eyes thoughtful and distant. At length, he let out a grunt and rose from his seat and walked across the room to a window set into the rear wall, hidden by wood shutters. He paused in front of the window and glanced back at Aram. Then he opened the shutters.
The window that was revealed didn’t look down upon a street or the courtyard behind the building. Instead, it stared out at another dark wall only an arm’s length away. In the space between walls hung two thick, plain-laid ropes made of course fibers.
Aram rose from his chair, a cold feeling of dread crawling through his insides. He didn’t like the look of that little space between walls. He had no idea what Sergan Parsigal had in mind, but whatever it was, he was already frightened.
“What’s down there?” he asked.
“A well,” the sorcerer responded, staring down the shaft. “Five stories down. The water’s very cold, and the well is very deep. It leads to an aquifer beneath the College.”
Sergan motioned toward the shaft. “Blow out a candle, or that’s where you’re going.”
Aram’s breath stopped, and he froze rigid. The hour he had spent in the well had been the most terrifying in his life. Ever since then, he’d had a bad fear of wells. And Sergan’s well wasn’t just deep. It was five stories down.
“I can’t…” he gasped, taking a step back, his stomach heavy with ice. “Lord Parsigal, please don’t make me do that. Don’t make me go in the well.”
“Then blow out the candles,” the sorcerer said calmly, gesturing around the room. “Just like you did yesterday.”
Aram’s breath came fast, panicky, his pulse racing. His impulse was to turn and flee, to pick up his crutch and hobble out the door. He shook his head, his desperate hands fiddling with the thin lace he’d taken from his boot.
