by C. A. McHugh
Her eyes widened, and her brows rose in surprise. “Then why ask me to meet you here tonight?”
“Because I need to master this spell, and you’re the only one who’s both mastered it and offered to help.”
“What about Nyssa?”
Her question reminded him of how much his friend’s dismissal had really stung. “She’s busy.”
“A true friend is never too busy.” She offered the words like an extension to her own friendship and somehow managed to rebuke him at the same time for being so suspicious of her. “You don’t trust me, yet you ask me to meet with you in private where I could potentially harm you without any witnesses. Why?”
Besides the fact he didn’t want anyone to know he was having trouble with this spell? “Master Binnius trusts you, and the information you gave us last night about the hykona leaves saved a man’s life, so maybe I trust you more than I think I do.”
His explanation seemed to satisfy her, judging by the contentment on her face. “Then let’s move forward.”
But the moment she cast her next spell, he questioned why he’d agreed to come to her for help.
His arms started to glow, and an odd sense of laxity flowed through them. He looked down and bit back a scream. What were once firm, solid, and easily controlled limbs were now two gelatinous, wriggling wormlike extensions that faintly resembled arms and hands. “What did you do?”
“I made your limbs a bit more difficult for you to control.” She sat down on a bench to watch him.
“Turn them back!”
“No. I think your fear of losing control is holding you back, and this might help you overcome it.” She played with the emerald pendant around her neck and watched him with the same inquisitive manner with which Nyssa regarded most books. “The idea is for you to become comfortable enough to maneuver your hands and arms when they are not solid. If you can accomplish this, then perhaps you will gain the confidence you need to maneuver your whole body when you are in gaseous form.”
“But they seem to have a will of their own!” he protested as his arms flopped aimlessly around.
“If you concentrate, you can control them. Remember, when you are in a mist form, the least little breeze can blow you off course and make moving around a room much more difficult. But if you focus on your body, you can stay in control.”
She had a point. He liked being in control, and now that she’d taken some of it away from him, the familiar tightness in his chest had returned. But he refused to panic. He’d prove to her he could overcome this. His face burned with exertion, and perspiration dribbled down his neck, but finally he was able to achieve some control over his upper extremities.
And just as he was about to tell Seroney that he could do it, she cast a second spell.
His arms tingled and began to melt like wax from a burning candle. “That’s not fair!”
“Who said life was fair?” She twirled her hair absently as she watched with what appeared to be some sort of sadistic glee. “You’ve shown me you can concentrate and gain control over your body when the composition has been altered. I just upped the difficulty level. Continue what you were doing, and you’ll be fine.”
Terror ripped through him as a bit of his flesh came dangerously close to dripping off his body onto the floor. His heart pounded, and throat tightened. But he wouldn’t back down. He wouldn’t panic.
If he couldn’t handle this, what chance would he have against the Raven Bringer?
He poured every ounce of his will into that huge globule, and after a few seconds, it halted and merged back into his arm. He grinned and glanced up at Seroney.
Her smile mirrored his, and she gave him a congratulatory nod. With a wave of her hand, the spell ended, and his arms were solid once again. “Very good. Now, if you channel that kind of concentration into the mist form spell, you should have no problem completing it.”
Aerrin rubbed his hands together, enjoying the feeling of solid flesh and bone. For the first time, he actually believed he could complete the spell.
He murmured the incantation and focused on staying in control. Yes, he could see through his hands, but he could control them. Yes, his feet could no longer feel the ground, but he was in control of where he was. And finally, he could no longer feel gravity tugging at the gaseous form his body had become, but he also knew that he could maintain the shape of his body and keep it whole. He’d become a misty fog that vaguely resembled him, and excitement raced through his mind. He’d done it.
Seroney moved in front of him, her voice low and warning as she said, “Stay in control, Aerrin, You’ve come this far. Don’t panic. Just try and focus on moving your body through space to an object.”
He spied a door nearby and turned toward it. His body moved like clouds of an approaching storm as they rolled across the horizon. What once were his feet, were now extensions of the misty fog his body had become, slowly stretching and undulating as he surged forward. Within a few seconds, he was at the door.
“Good job.” Seroney pointed to the next obstacle. “Now try and see if you can squeeze through the keyhole.”
He closed his eyes and imagined his body becoming small and narrow enough to wedge through the large keyhole. His body shifted. Pressure surrounded him on all sides, causing every inch of him to throb to the beat of his heart, yet he kept his mind focused on the task at hand. His confidence grew, and the pressure eased.
When he opened his eyes, he was on the other side of the door, and Seroney was applauding. He’d make it through that keyhole. He sighed and willed the spell to end. His body became solid once more.
Seroney rushed up to him to throw her arms around him. “I knew you could do it,” she murmured in a way that made him feel ten feet tall.
The unease he’d carried around her vanished in that moment. There was the certain joy of accomplishment after overcoming something extremely challenging. He had not felt this way in years. But then, not many spells had given him this much trouble.
And he owed it all to her.
He studied her as though he was seeing her in a different light. Maybe he still wasn’t quite sure if he could completely trust her, but he knew he would’ve never mastered this spell if it had not been for her help. “Thank you, Seroney.”
“You’re welcome.” She blinked several times before giving him a hesitant smile that seemed to contradict the cool calm she’d exuded this morning in front of her entourage of admirers. Once again, he felt like he was getting a glimpse at the real Seroney, and he rather liked knowing she wasn’t as confident as she appeared to be.
But as soon as he caught that rare insight, the strict and unconventional teacher returned. “Remember to always stay focused,” she advised with a stern nod, “and you’ll have no trouble with the spell. And if you find you can’t perform this spell, there are alternatives.”
Aerrin’s curiosity got the better of him. “What do you mean by alternatives?”
She held up her hand and counted off each spell on her fingers. “If you’re required to pass through a wall, there’s a spell for that. If you have to go over something tall, try air-walking. And if you need get to past something big and nasty, there’s always blinking and ghost-walking.”
Aerrin froze. The first two spells, he’d learned the year before. The latter two, however, sounded like shadow magic. “Blinking and ghost walking?” he asked warily.
“Yes, blinking and ghost-walking. Observe.” Seroney murmured a few words, and a flash of blue magic passed over her. Her body flickered like a flame, moving easily across the room and darting through solid obstacles in her way. When she resumed her normal form, she explained, “That’s blinking. Not the best spell, but it can come in handy from time to time.”
Partial relief flowed through his tense muscles. Thankfully, she hadn’t done what he’d been worried about. “We call that spell shimmering. Blinking refers to how demons move around from place to place.”
Her cheeks flooded with color, and she s
tumbled over her words. “Oh, I didn’t know that. Thanks for informing me of that difference. I would have gone on calling shimmering ‘blinking’ and had people thinking I was a demon or something like that.” She ended with a nervous laugh and avoided his gaze.
Doubt crept into the edges of his consciousness and further ate away at the joy he’d known moments before. “And ghost-walking?”
Seroney cast another spell and became completely transparent like a ghost. Unlike the gaseous form spell, she seemed much more contained. He could even read her expression as she floated around the room and again passed through objects without difficulty. She descended to the ground and ended the spell. “That was ghost-walking. It’s a much easier spell to learn than the mist form spell, not to mention much more useful. I wonder why they don’t teach it to you here.”
“Because the caster could be easily mistaken for an undead. It’s too close to shadow magic.” Aerrin narrowed his eyes. “Where did you learn that spell, anyway? I’m not sure it’s quite legal.”
She backed away, clearly shaken by his accusation. “My mother. She’s notorious for digging up forgotten spells and trying them out.”
He didn’t believe her explanation—at least, not completely. But then, she had been privately tutored at home… or so she’d told others. Plus, he wasn’t absolutely certain the spell was illegal. He would have to ask Master Binnius about that.
After the challenges, though. One obstacle at a time.
As he returned to his room, he replayed the evening to make sense of it all. She’d helped him, so he should be grateful to her. But once again, she’d let something slip that left him wondering what else she was hiding. And if she had knowledge of shadow magic, would that make her more an enemy than a friend?
A wisp of icy dread snaked down his spine as he remembered what Raimel had revealed. The Raven Bringer had apprentices, and one of them was a woman. Could Seroney’s assistance tonight have ulterior motives? And if so, who’s side was she on?
Chapter 11
Aerrin awoke the morning of the challenges exhausted but ready to tackle whatever the masters threw at him. He joined his classmates on the top floor of the Academy’s west wing, where a line of closed doors concealed the five obstacles each student would have to overcome to pass. The rooms on the other side had been magically manipulated for each challenge so that even though the student never actually left the Academy, he or she was transported to another reality. The dangers felt real, and students sometimes got hurt in the process, but a master mage would always intervene if things got truly dangerous.
Of course, once they did, the student failed. Not what he wanted.
Aerrin picked a door and lined up in front of it. When he stepped inside, it was plain, empty room with gray stone walls. But as soon as the door shut, everything blurred as though he were being teleported.
When his surroundings cleared, he was presented with the first challenge—obtaining an object enclosed inside a large crystal. A relatively simple shattering spell released it, and the next challenge appeared a moment later.
He found himself in a tiny enclosed room without a door. Aerrin was tempted to use the pass-wall spell Seroney had suggested but remembered at the last minute a spell to detect secret doors and another spell to knock them open. Once he cast it, he passed through the doorway to the next challenge.
This one involved his ability to control the elements of wind and fire to protect a magic scroll from being consumed in the flames. He breezed through it and obtained the scroll. The second his fingers wrapped around it, the world spun around in circles.
When it stopped, he found himself staring up at a hill giant in the middle of a field. Giants were rarely seen in the kingdom, most of them preferring to hide in the Craigars, the mountains in the remote northern reaches of Highmounte. When they did appear farther south, they caused all kinds of chaos until they were subdued and returned to their homes.
Aerrin dodged the massive foot that threatened to squash him and cast a few stun spells. The giant’s thick skin made them as useless as air, and he wracked his brain for an alternative while staying out of the giant’s grasp. After several minutes, his breath was coming in sharp bursts, and the near misses were getting ever closer. Then he spotted a cord of rope coiled nearby. He cast a spell to animate the rope and wrapped it around the giant’s ankles. The ground shook as the giant tripped, tumbling to the ground, and the world faded into the last challenge.
He was trapped within the cave of a sleeping green dragon, another creature rarely seen in the kingdom since their homelands lay on the other side of the Great Divide. But the wall of mountains didn’t prevent a dragon from appearing in the skies of Elgeus every few years.
After a moment, he recognized the type of dragon he faced—a Verdous Ferro, capable of both flame and acid attacks. Not something he wanted to cross, especially after dealing with that giant.
The only way out of the cave had been blocked by an avalanche of stones, but he knew that’s where the challenge lay. As Aerrin crept towards the exit, he was so busy trying to figure out the best spell to help him escape that he accidentally kicked a loose stone. It clattered across the cave, and the resonant snoring that had lulled him into a false sense of security suddenly ceased. The hair on the back of his neck rose as he turned around and stared into a pair of bright golden eyes.
The dragon raised its head and puffed out its chest, signaling the impending attack.
Terror quickened his heart, and he frantically cast the first spell that came to mind.
The mist form spell he’d worked so hard to master.
A stream of acid whizzed by him, but it did nothing more than push him forward. He was already in gaseous form and slithering through the cracks in the rocks to his freedom. Once he got to the other side, he found himself staring at the same plain gray stone walls he’d faced before the challenges started.
Relief flood his veins as he staggered toward the door. He’d passed.
Aerrin returned to the common room and waited for the rest of his class to trickle in after they completed their challenges. A few minutes later, Nyssa triumphantly pranced in with a smug expression that said, I showed them. He didn’t need to ask how her challenges went, but he did anyway.
“Oh, it was a joke,” she replied with a laugh and flippant wave of her hand. “You would think they would give fifth years something a bit more difficult to help us prepare for our trials, but I guess we’ll just have to wait until the next challenge for that. Perhaps I should suggest adding another round to the challenges or something else to make them more exciting.”
He shook his head, worried at what she might suggest. “Nyssa, the challenges were difficult enough. Remember, not everyone in our class is as talented as you. Leandros wants to pass, too.”
As if on cue, Leandros leaned against the door frame and made a point of showing them that he was still trying to catch his breath. “If they get any harder than that,” he said between pants, “I’m out.”
Aerrin did a quick survey of his friend. Scorch marks covered his clothes, and soot streaked his face, but thankfully, he didn’t seem injured.
Nyssa didn’t appear to share Aerrin’s concern. “If you spent more time reading and practicing your spells instead of playing around with that little sword of yours and flirting with anything in a skirt, it wouldn’t have been so difficult for you.”
Leandros stood up straighter and mirrored her disgusted expression as he closed the space between them. “It’s called a foil. And I did study for these challenges. And now that I passed them, I’d like to forget them and enjoy the rest of the holiday.”
“You’d be better off packing,” a voice sneered from behind him. A small, pale boy with dark hair and a continually sour expression pushed Leandros out of the way and entered the common room as though he owned it. “From what I hear, you won’t pass the next set of challenges, and it’ll be out the door for you.”
Leandros’s face grew red
with barely contained rage. “Why don’t you just crawl back under the rock you came out from, Naisibus?”
Naisibus snickered. “Spoken like a true Vergail. All words, but nothing to back them up. Seems you’ve inherited your father’s folly.” He continued to laugh as he walked away while both Nyssa and Aerrin had to hold Leandros back and keep him from punching their classmate.
Then the tiniest ray of violet magic struck Naisibus, and the laughter changed into the braying of a donkey. He halted, his eyes growing wide. He whirled around to face Leandros, poised to cast a spell on him, but whenever he opened his mouth, no words came out. He covered his mouth and dashed out of the common room, his braying echoing down the hallway.
Leandros doubled over with laughter, and Aerrin released him, scanning the room for a clue as to who had cast the spell. He traced the magic back to a chair facing the fireplace and was surprised to discover Seroney sitting in it, flipping through a book.
“He was getting on my nerves,” she explained before he could say anything, never looking up from her book. “Besides, I thought it was fitting, seeing as he as such an ass to begin with.” Then she fixed those large, steady green eyes on him. “You won’t tell any of the masters, will you?”
Nyssa and Leandros joined him, the latter still occasionally snorting with amusement. As king, he had an obligation to uphold the rules. “Well, technically, you did use magic to harm another student.”
“Oh, it will wear off in an hour, and you know it, Aerrin,” Nyssa interjected, much to his surprise. If anyone was a stickler for the rules, it was her.
“Yeah, it’s not like she cast something permanent that would have to be removed later on,” Leandros added. “Besides, I’ll take the blame if any of the masters ask about it. Seeing the look on Naisibus’s face when he started braying is well worth the punishment.” He leaned over and flashed Seroney a dazzling grin. “Of course, that means you’re going to have to teach me that spell.”
Two against one. He’d been outvoted. Not that he minded conceding in this instance. “Very well. Consider this a royal pardon, Seroney.”
