by Layton Green
Inside the first cage was a unicorn.
The beautiful equine watched them pass with sad eyes, unable to stand because the cage was too small, its horn poking out of the top of the cage even while splayed on its haunches.
A two-foot tall imp ran back and forth in the second cage, its tail swishing against the sides. The hag holding the majitsu bent to slice open the door, and the imp shrieked and backed as far away as it could. The hag set the majitsu down, grabbed the imp by its neck, and pulled it out. Zedock’s majitsu cursed and fought, but the hag shoved him inside and shut the door, then re-secured it by producing more gray material from her fingertips.
The majitsu locked gazes with Mala after they stuffed him inside. He was breathing hard, not from exertion but from rage. His eyes slid away, and he cursed again and grasped the bars of the cage.
They passed three more enclosures on each side, all occupied by a creature. Mala saw a nymph, a mermaid with her tail stuck in a dirty basin of water, a golden fox that teleported to the back of the cage when Mala looked at it, and three lizard-like creatures, each with two heads and a blue humpback. As she passed the last one, she heard a voice inside her head that sounded as if both heads were talking at the same time.
You must help us, the voice said. A terrible fate awaits.
Mala didn’t need a voice inside her head to tell her that.
The final two cages, one on either side, were empty. The hags shoved the imp in one and Mala in the other. Mala didn’t bother pleading; she knew no quarter would be given. Instead she processed what she had seen and tried to devise a plan of escape, however unlikely the prospect might be.
But what she really wanted to do was scream.
-17-
Val retraced his steps through Bohemian Isle to find his driver parked alongside the swampy canal, reclining in his seat and smoking his pipe. One of the horses snorted as Val approached.
The driver took out his pipe and cackled. “From the look on yer face, ye got what ye needed. And maybe a bit more.”
Val climbed into the carriage. “Yes I did. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, laddie, my pleasure.” He took the reins. “Where will it be, then?”
Val took a deep breath. As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. “The school for wizards.”
The driver paused with his pipe halfway to his lips. “The Abbey?”
“If that’s the wizardry school, then yes.”
“Laddie, if I may, why on earth would ye want to go there?”
“To sign up.”
The driver slapped his knee, his braying laughter trailing away when Val’s expression didn’t change. “Are ye a wizard?”
“I’m about to find out. How does one apply? Is there some sort of entrance exam?”
The driver stared at Val as if he had just sprouted an extra head. “All I know is hearsay, but they say there’s a testing period at the start of each semester, where hopeful wizards from across the Realm line up to see if they’ve got enough power to join the Abbey. If ye make it in, the new class starts every year on the tenth of January. One week’s time.”
“What does the test entail?”
“A display o’ power, they say.”
“What happens if you fail?”
“Some become majitsu. Some go rogue. And some . . . well, they just fade away, I s’pose.”
Lovely, Val thought. A display of power on demand is exactly what I’m not prepared for.
“They say ye can try again after another year if ye fail,” the driver said, picking up on Val’s tightened jaw.
“No, I can’t.”
There was an uneasy silence, and the driver said, “Laddie, can I ask ye a personal question?”
Val lifted his eyes. “Sure.”
“Are ye . . . a citizen of the Protectorate?”
After a long pause, Val slowly swung his head back and forth.
“Ye can’t attend the Abbey if ye ain’t a citizen, or at least a registered visitor.” The driver’s brow darkened. “And they’ll throw ye in the Fens for tryin.’ ”
“How does one register?”
“Ye take the Oaths and apply.”
Val crossed his arms and reclined into the seat. “Then I suppose our first stop is wherever it is that one takes the Oaths.”
The driver puffed on his pipe, eyed the descending position of the sun as he blew a perfect smoke ring, and spurred the horses.
The driver took Val to a pillared building in the Government District that looked crafted out of black granite. A steady stream of people entered and exited the boxy edifice.
“The Tribunal,” the driver said. “It’ll be a line, but I’ll wait for ye. Listen, laddie . . . my name’s Gustave Mortimer Scurlock. Call me Gus. My wifey, she’s got a cousin who married a lad from the north. Way north, like you. Tiny village name of Talinmar, just outside the Protectorate. Lad’s surname is Kenefick.” Gus put his hands up. “Maybe ye don’t, but if ye be needin’ a name to use for the Oaths . . . if it ever came up . . . we’ll vouch for ye.”
Val flipped a gold piece to the driver. “Thank you, my friend.”
Gus’s eyes widened as he took the coin. He tipped his hat. “Thank ye.”
Val walked through the imposing pillars and into a grand foyer filled with civil servants, uniformed guards, and long lines of people that snaked into adjoining hallways. He found the line marked ‘Registered Visitors,’ and spent the next hour waiting to reach a desk where, under the alias of Val Kenefick, he responded to background questions from a bored official.
After paying a levy of one gold piece and two silver florins, Val received a vellum Certificate of Registered Visitation and was ushered into a long corridor, where he waited in line to take his Oaths. When his name was called, he entered a room with two rows of benches running along the longer walls. Opposite to him, sequestered behind iron bars, was a raised platform supporting five desks arranged in a semicircle.
“Approach the platform, please,” said a white-haired man sitting in a green-backed chair behind the center desk. The other seats were occupied.
Val stepped forward.
“Your certificate?”
He placed the vellum certificate on the desk. The administrator leaned forward to peer at the document.
“Val Kenefick from Talinmar Village, do you understand and agree that by swearing the Oaths of the Protectorate of New Albion and receiving a Certificate of Visitation, you will be bound, on pain of incarceration or expulsion, not only by the laws of this land during your period of visitation, but by the letter, principles, and spirit of these Oaths?”
“I do.”
The judge looked up at him. “Place your hand over your heart.”
Val complied.
“Do you hereby swear that you possess no religious faith or belief, nor do you adhere to or practice any religious creed or doctrine?”
“I swear.”
“Do you hereby swear that should anyone attempt to incite you to worship any god or goddess, or attach yourself to any religious creed or doctrine or body of worshippers, that you will immediately and forthwith report that individual or individuals to the nearest Tribunal?”
“I swear.”
“Do you hereby renounce any allegiance to any gypsy clan, native tribe, or other group that operates under archaic belief systems that are in direct contravention to the laws of this land and the principles of these oaths?
Ah, there’s the kicker for the gypsies, Val thought. “I swear.”
The judge pressed his wooden stamp against Val’s certificate with a thump, and waved him through.
After making arrangements to meet the next morning, Gus dropped Val at a pub named Falrick’s Folly, two blocks down from Salomon’s Crib. Val wasn’t about to step foot in the Minotaur’s Den, the mercenary pub where he and his brothers had once been assaulted.
The next morning, Gus picked him up and drove past the French Quarter to the edge of the Goblin Market. They traveled down Espl
anade alongside a twenty-foot wall, then passed through the tall iron gate marking the border of the Wizard District.
As before, a pair of majitsu guarding the entrance waved Gus past the line of tourists. Val gave the guardhouse a sidelong glance, not wanting to attract the attention of the shaven-headed warrior monks milling about inside. Lithe and intense, dressed in black robes cinched at the waist with silver belts, the majitsu unnerved Val almost as much as the wizards.
Just as it had the first and only time he had visited, the Wizard District made his heart skip a beat. The hundreds of spires piercing the sky like a pageant of tropical minarets. The assortment of domes, obelisks, ziggurats, poly-sided towers and fantastical creations of stone that supported the spires, some the size of a small chateau and some five times that size.
From his last visit, Val knew the Wizard District wasn’t all handsome topiary and otherworldly architecture. Lord Alistair’s compound was a maze of wards and potent magical defenses cleverly disguised within the landscaping, and Val suspected the rest of the compounds followed suit.
The carriage rolled along the tree-lined pathways of mosaic tile separating the compounds. They passed the midnight blue Sanctum, the red-and-gold-marble Hall of Wizards, and then continued to the southeast side of the district, further than Val had ventured before, to a squat manor of pale blue limestone topped by a quartet of spires. Behind the manor, a beguiling collection of buildings lay nestled among serene groves of palms, bougainvillea, banana trees, and live oaks laden with Spanish moss.
“The Abbey,” Gus announced.
People milled about the stone fountain fronting the manor, and a wizard in brown robes flew inside one of the obelisks rising out of the foliage on either side.
What if the wizards guess where I’m really from? Val thought as the carriage slowed to a halt.
What if I fail the test?
What if the test kills me?
Most people, his brothers included, thought Val had nerves of steel. On the contrary, his nerves were just like everyone else’s, jittery and unsure.
It was stubbornness and willpower that carried him through.
“Ye know I’ve got no love for wizards,” Gus said, “but I wish ye the best of luck. If ye get in, at least there’ll be one I trust.”
Val nodded in response, hopped down and took a deep breath, strolled to the ornate bronze door with his head held high, and stepped inside.
The first thing he saw was a grand foyer with walls and flooring of striated blue marble. He assumed the heraldic banners hanging from the ceiling represented the houses of esteemed wizard families.
A line of people waited to be seen by a wizened old man behind a counter at the far end of the room. The line moved quickly, and when Val reached the front, he presented his Certificate of Visitation and was given a wooden marker. The clerk pointed down a wide hallway and told him to have a seat.
As Val approached the waiting salon, a powerfully built older man flew past him with a dejected look on his face.
Val swallowed, watching the wizard wheel around the corner while hovering three feet off the ground. If someone with that much power had failed the test, what hope had he?
The waiting salon was an oval chamber filled with plush furniture. He slid onto a silk-covered divan and avoided contact with the other applicants. He didn’t want to see the confidence in their eyes or the magic alive in their hands.
Instead, he looked within.
Searching for his magic.
Val had accessed it before, and knew he could do so again. Just not at the level he wanted. Unless his or his brothers’ life was in immediate peril, he couldn’t do much more than float a paperweight across the room.
Whatever the coming test entailed, he had a feeling it wouldn’t involve toying with office paraphernalia.
Alexander’s words of advice came floating back to him.
Focusing the will requires extreme concentration, but magic also requires release. The balance between the two is the key, and the hardest lesson to learn.
Focus and release, focus and release, focus and release.
Val had practiced it over and over, triggering that pressure point in the mind which he knew released the magic. It was almost like learning to ride a bike: wobbling back and forth until finding that sweet spot of balance that allowed one to stay upright, then practicing until it became an automatic response.
Except bike riding was simple, and magic was unimaginably complex. Reaching the source of his magic was just the beginning, and he didn’t know how to use or expand his power.
Concentrating until beads of sweat formed on his forehead, he reached inside again and again while waiting to be called, diving in and touching that wellspring of power.
“Val Kenefick, Talinmar Village?”
He looked up at the man with the clipboard who had poked his head into the alcove. Somehow, two hours had passed. One other person remained in the room, and she looked as nervous as Val felt.
He stood. “Ready.”
The clerk collected Val’s marker and led him down the hallway to an open door. He had more butterflies in his stomach than during his first day in court. At the time, his performance before the watching partners had felt like the most important thing in the world. Looking back, it seemed a triviality.
After Val entered, a mahogany door swung shut behind him. To his right sat two men and a raven-haired older woman wearing a crimson robe and a platinum circlet in her hair. One of the men wore a purple robe, the other a robe the color of crushed garlic. All three wizards sported blue and white striped stoles.
Val eyed the strange array of objects on the marble floor in front of the wizards: a gold block the size of a stove; a large clay bowl full of white orbs that resembled ping pong balls; and a tub of molten lava that steamed, hissed, and flamed within a silver container Val assumed was magical.
He kept a blank face, but his stomach roiled at the implications. He had been hoping the test would consist of one of the wizards probing his mind for evidence of innate magical ability.
“Proceed to the testing square and remain inside,” the dark-haired woman said without introduction. She had a hooked nose and a strong, almost masculine, chin. A ruby ring in the shape of a seven-pointed star adorned her right index finger.
Val looked down. A three-foot square of silver tile occupied the space in front of the lava basin. He stepped onto it. No heat emanated from the lava.
The woman said, in a rote voice, “Lift the gold block and hold it at head height.”
Val had been afraid of that. There was no telling how many thousands of pounds that thing weighed.
He breathed through his nose and remembered Alexander’s instructions.
Allow your mind to move inward . . . focus, forget, find, and control.
Release, Alexander had said. Not just focus, but release.
Find the magic and control it.
Focus.
Release.
Balance the two.
Val let his mind go blank, focused and released, merged the two. Again, he thought. Again and again and again.
He found the elusive touchstone of magic inside his head, then put everything he had into moving the block of gold, straining so hard he felt as if he was causing an embolism in his brain.
The block tilted a fraction of an inch, and then settled. Normally Val would have fallen over in stupefied awe at his success, but judging by the glances of amusement exchanged by the three wizards, he knew his effort wasn’t good enough.
Not nearly so.
“When I release the glow orbs,” the woman said, scorn dripping from her voice, “hold as many as you can in the air, then replace them in the box one by one.”
She flicked a finger, and the entire box of white spheres flew into the air above Val’s head, dozens of them, scattering in a wide pattern. They stopped just below the ceiling, hovered for a moment, and then fell.
Even if he had ample time to focus, Val couldn’t ha
ve done what she asked. The orbs plummeted towards the floor, and he only managed to hold two of them aloft. Just before the rest of them hit the floor and shattered, the woman opened her palm and the entire lot floated gently back into the bowl. Val tried to guide the two orbs he had stopped into their container, but he couldn’t manage both at one time. One would drop while he held the other, and he ended up losing control of both.
He choked on his wounded pride as the woman had to replace the final two orbs in the bowl. Val hated to fail at anything, even if it was a test of wizardry of which he had no hope of passing in the first place.
The two men had smirks on their faces. Val wanted to wipe them off.
The woman was unsmiling. “That will be all,” she said coldly. “There is no need for the lava test. Elgan?” she called out. The clerk appeared in the doorway. “Please add this man’s name to the Do Not Return register.”
“Yes, Dean,” the clerk said.
Val stepped forward, to the edge of the silver tile. “Please. Let me try again. I have power but can’t always summon it.”
The woman looked down her hooked nose at him, as if she were a queen and Val were a peasant who had just asked for her hand in marriage. “I think not,” she said.
Desperate for a solution, Val thought fast. The two times he had used magic of any consequence—not counting whatever had happened with Alrick—Val’s or his brothers’ lives had been in danger. He didn’t know if there was a trigger beyond mortal peril, but he knew that if he didn’t try something extreme, his quest was doomed before it began, and he had no hope of finding his brothers.
Attacking the wizards was suicide. They would snuff out his life in a heartbeat. He kept thinking, and a crazy thought popped into his head. The woman’s eyes clouded. One of the men pointed at the door. Val bowed his head and turned as if to leave.
Instead of walking away, he plunged his left hand into the basin of lava.
The pain was like nothing he had ever felt, shutting down his brain, a wind tunnel of fire roaring through his nerve endings. He screamed and stumbled backwards, the flesh of his hand melting like wax on a candle. Somehow through the pain he remembered why he had done it, and he focused his agony and rage on the giant cube of gold.
