The Iron Trial

by Holly Black

  “I had another sister,” Tamara said in a whisper.

  “What happened to her?” Aaron asked, his voice hushing to match hers.

  “Worse,” said Tamara. “She became one of those things I was telling you about — a human elemental. There are these great mages who can swim through the earth like they’re fish or make stone daggers shoot out from walls or bring down lightning strikes or make giant whirlpools. She wanted to be one of the great ones, so she pushed her magic until she got taken over by it.”

  Tamara shook her head, and Call wondered what she was seeing as she told them about this. “The worst part is how proud my dad was of her at first, when she was succeeding. He would tell Kimiya and me how we should be more like her. Now he and my mother won’t talk about her at all. They won’t even say her name.”

  “What is her name?” Call asked.

  Tamara looked surprised. “Ravan.”

  Aaron’s hand hovered in the air for a second, like he wanted to pat Tamara on the shoulder but wasn’t sure if he should. “You’re not going to wind up like her,” he said. “You don’t have to worry.”

  She shook her head again. “I told myself that I wouldn’t be like my father or my sister. I told myself I would never take any chances. I wanted to prove I could do everything the right way and not cut a single corner — and I would still be the best. But then I did cut corners — and I taught you how to cut them, too. I didn’t prove anything.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Aaron. “You proved something tonight.”

  Tamara sniffed. “What?”

  “That Jasper looks better with pudding in his hair,” Call suggested.

  Aaron rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I was going to say … although I sure wish I’d seen it.”

  “It was pretty great,” Call said, grinning.

  “Tamara, you proved that you care about your friends. And we care about you. And we’ll make sure you don’t cut any more corners.” He looked over at Call. “Won’t we?”

  “Yeah,” said Call, studying the toe of his boot, not sure he was the best person for this assignment. “And, Tamara …?”

  She scrubbed the corner of her eye with her sleeve. “What?”

  He didn’t look up and he could feel the heat of embarrassment creep up his neck and make his ears pink. “No one’s ever stuck up for me like you guys did tonight.”

  “Did you actually say something nice to us?” Tamara asked him. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Call said. “I might need to lie down.”

  But Call didn’t lie down. He stayed up talking with his friends for a good part of the night.

  BY THE END of the first month, Call didn’t care if he was about to get creamed by the other apprentices in whatever trial they were going to do, so long as it meant no more Room of Sand and Boredom. He sat listlessly in a triangle with Aaron and Tamara, sorting the light and dark and lightish and darkish piles as if they’d been doing it for a million years. Aaron tried to start a conversation, but Tamara and Call were too bored to talk in more than grunts. But sometimes now, they all looked at one another and smiled the secret smiles of actual friendship. Exhausted friendship, but real friendship nonetheless.

  At lunchtime, the wall opened, but for a change, it wasn’t Alex Strike. It was Master Rufus, and he was carrying in one hand what looked like a massive wooden box with a trumpet sticking out of it, and in the other, a bag of something colorful.

  “Continue as you were, children,” he said, setting the box down on a nearby rock.

  Aaron boggled. “What is that?” he whispered to Call.

  “A gramophone,” said Tamara, who was still sorting sand, even as she stared at Rufus. “It plays music, but it works with magic, not electricity.”

  At that moment, music blasted from the trumpet of the gramophone. It was very loud, and not anything Call recognized immediately. It had a thumping, repetitive sound that was incredibly annoying.

  “Isn’t that the Lone Ranger theme song?” Aaron asked.

  “It’s the William Tell Overture,” Master Rufus shouted over the music, capering around the room. “Listen to those horns! Gets your blood pumping! Ready for doing magic!”

  What it did was make it really, really, really hard to think. Call found himself straining to concentrate, which made it a challenge to get a single grain up into the air. Just when he thought he had the sand under control, the music would soar and his focus would scatter.

  He made a noise of frustration and opened his eyes to see Master Rufus opening the bag and pulling out a beet-red worm. Call seriously hoped it was a gummi worm, since Master Rufus started chewing one end of it.

  Call wondered what would happen if instead of trying to move the sand, he concentrated on smashing the gramophone against the cave wall. He looked up and saw Tamara glaring at him.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said, as though reading his mind. She looked flushed, her dark hair sticking to her forehead as she struggled to concentrate on the sand despite the music.

  A bright blue worm hit Call in the side of the head, causing him to spill his airborne sand all over his lap. The worm bounced to the ground and lay there. Okay, it’s definitely a candy worm, Call thought, since it didn’t have any eyes and looked gelatinous.

  On the other hand, that described a lot of things in the Magisterium.

  “I can’t do this,” Aaron panted. He had his hands raised, sand spinning; his face was red with concentration. An orange worm bounced off his shoulder. Rufus had the bag open and was throwing handfuls of worms. “Gah!” Aaron said — the worms didn’t hurt, but they really were startling. There was a green one stuck in Tamara’s hair. She looked near tears.

  The wall opened again. This time it was Alex Strike. He had a bag with him, and an odd, almost malicious grin split his face as he looked from Rufus, still hurling worms, to the apprentices, struggling as hard as they could to concentrate.

  “Come in, Alex!” said Rufus cheerfully. “Leave the sandwiches just over there! Enjoy the music!”

  Call wondered if Alex was remembering his own Iron Year. He hoped Alex wasn’t visiting any of the other apprentice groups, ones that were learning cool things with fire or levitation. If Jasper found out any details of what Call had to do today, he would never stop mocking him.

  It doesn’t matter, Call told himself sternly. Concentrate on the sand.

  Tamara and Aaron were moving grains, rolling them and pulling them through the air. Slower than before, but they were in the zone, working even when they were smacked in the back of the head with a gummi worm. Tamara now had a blue one tangled up in a braid and didn’t even seem to notice.

  Call closed his eyes and focused his mind.

  He felt the damp cold smack of a worm on his cheek, but this time, he didn’t let the sand fall. The music pounded in his ears, but he let all of that slide away. One grain after another at first, and then, as his confidence grew, more and more sand.

  That’ll show Master Rufus, he thought.

  Another hour went by before they took a break to eat their lunch. When they started up again, the mage bombarded them with waltzes. As his apprentices sorted sand, Rufus sat on a boulder and did a crossword. He didn’t seem bothered when they went hours over their time and missed dinner in the Refectory.

  They tramped back to their rooms, tired and dirty, to discover food laid out for them on the table in the common room. Call found that he was in a surprisingly good mood, considering, and Aaron made him and Tamara crack up over dinner with his impression of Master Rufus waltzing with a worm.

  The next morning, Master Rufus showed up at their door just after the alarm, carrying armbands that would distinguish their team during the first test. They all yelled in excitement. Tamara yelled because she was happy, Aaron yelled because he liked it when other people were happy, and Call yelled because he was sure they were going to die.

  “Do you know what kind of test it’s going to be?” Tamara as
ked, eagerly winding the armband around her wrist. “Air, fire, earth, or water? Can you give us a hint? Like just a tiny little itty-bitty —”

  Master Rufus looked sternly at her until she stopped talking. “No apprentices are given advance knowledge of how they are to be tested,” he said. “That would confer an unfair advantage. You must win on your own merits.”

  “Win?” Call said, startled. It hadn’t occurred to him that Master Rufus was expecting them to win the test. Not after a whole month of sand. “We’re not going to win.” He was mostly concerned with whether they would survive.

  “That’s the spirit.” Aaron hid a grin. He was already wearing his armband, just above his elbow. Somehow he managed to make it look cool. Call had tied his around his forearm and was fairly sure it looked like a bandage.

  Master Rufus rolled his eyes. It worried Call that the corners of his mouth twitched up in an involuntary smile, as though he was actually starting to understand Master Rufus’s expressions and responding to them.

  Maybe by the time they were in their Silver Year, Master Rufus would communicate complicated theories of magic by the lifting of a single bushy eyebrow.

  “Come along,” the mage said. With a dramatic swoosh, he spun around and led them out the door and through what Call was starting to think of as the main corridor. Phosphorescent moss flashed and sparkled as they went, down a spiral stair that Call had never seen before, into a cavern.

  At his other school, he’d always wanted to be allowed to play sports. At least here, they were giving him a chance. Now it was his job to keep up.

  The cavern was the size of a stadium, with massive stalactites and stalagmites jutting up and down like teeth. Most of the other Iron Year apprentices were there with their Masters. Jasper was talking to Celia, gesturing wildly at the stalagmites in one corner, which had grown together in a complicated loop shape. Master Milagros hovered slightly above the ground, encouraging one of the kids to hover with her. Everyone was moving with restless energy. Drew looked especially on edge, whispering with Alex. Whatever Alex was saying, Drew didn’t look happy about it.

  Walking farther into the room, Call glanced around, trying to anticipate what might happen. Along one wall was a large cave that appeared to have bars in front of it, like a cage made of calcite. Looking at it, Call worried that the test was going to be even scarier than he’d imagined. He rubbed his leg absently and wondered what his father would say.

  This is the part where you die, probably.

  Or maybe it was an opportunity to show Tamara and Aaron that he was worth sticking up for.

  “Iron Year apprentices!” Master North said as a few more students trickled in after Master Rufus. “I give you your first exercise. You are going to fight elementals.”

  Hushed gasps of dread and excitement spread around the room. Call’s spirits plunged. Were they kidding? None of the apprentices were prepared for that, he was willing to bet. He looked to Aaron and Tamara to see if they disagreed. They had both gone pale. Tamara was gripping her armband.

  Call frantically tried to remember the lecture Master Rockmaple had given them two Fridays back, the one on elementals. Dispersing rogue elementals before they can cause harm is one of the important tasks mages are responsible for, he’d said. If they feel threatened, they can disperse back into their element. It takes them a lot of energy to coalesce again.

  So all they had to do was scare the elementals. Great.

  Master North furrowed his brow, as though he’d just noticed that the students looked concerned. “You’ll do fine,” he assured them.

  This struck Call as unearned optimism. He imagined them all lying dead on the floor while wyverns bent on revenge swooped overhead, with Master Rufus shaking his head and saying, Maybe the apprentices will be better next year.

  “Master Rufus,” Call hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “We can’t do this. We didn’t practice —”

  “You know what you need to know,” said Rufus, cryptically. He turned to Tamara. “What do the elements want?”

  Tamara swallowed. “Fire wants to burn,” she said. “Water wants to flow, air wants to rise, earth wants to bind, chaos wants to devour.”

  Rufus clapped a hand down on her shoulder. “You three think about the Five Principles of Magic and about what I taught you, and you’ll do fine.” With that, he strode away to join the other mages on the far side of the room. They’d shaped the rocks into seats and were lounging there in apparent comfort. Some other mages were coming in behind them. There were a few other older students, too, along with Alex, the cave light glinting off their bracelets. That left the Iron Year apprentices in the middle of the room as the lights dimmed, until they were surrounded by darkness and silence. Slowly, the apprentice groups started to shuffle together into a single large mass, facing the portcullis as it opened up into the unknown.

  For a long moment, Call stared into the dark beyond, until he started to wonder if anything was there. Maybe the test was to see if the apprentices actually believed the mages would do something as ridiculous as letting twelve-year-olds fight wyverns in gladiatorial combat.

  Then he saw shining eyes in the gloom. Great clawed feet crunched through the dirt as three creatures emerged from the cave. They were as tall as two men and stood on their back legs, bodies hunched over, dragging spiked tails behind them. Vast wings beat the air where arms might have been. Wide, toothy mouths snapped at the ceiling.

  All Call’s father’s warnings beat inside his head, making him feel like he couldn’t breathe. He was more scared than he could remember being before. All the monsters of his imagination, every beast that hid in closets or under beds was dwarfed by the nightmares that clawed hungrily toward him.

  Fire wants to burn, Call thought to himself. Water wants to flow. Air wants to rise. Earth wants to bind. Chaos wants to devour. Call wants to live.

  Jasper, apparently possessed of an entirely different feeling about his own survival, broke away from the huddle of the apprentices and, with a great howl, ran directly toward the wyverns. He lifted his hand and thrust it, palm out, toward the monsters.

  A very small ball of fire shot from his fingers, flying past one of the wyvern’s heads.

  The creature roared in fury, and Jasper balked. He thrust out his palm again, but now only smoke rose from it. No fire at all.

  A wyvern stepped toward Jasper, opening its mouth, thick blue fog pouring from its jaws. The fog curled through the air slowly, but not so slowly that Jasper was able to evade it. He rolled to one side, but the fog blew over him, surrounding him. A moment later, he was rising through it, floating up like a soap bubble.

  The other two wyverns sprang into the air.

  “Oh, crap,” said Call. “How are we supposed to fight that?”

  Rage flashed across Aaron’s face. “It’s not fair.”

  Jasper was yelling now, bobbing back and forth on the plumes of wyvern breath. Lazily, the first wyvern batted at him with its tail. Call couldn’t suppress a spark of pity. The other apprentices stood frozen, staring upward.

  Aaron took a deep breath and said, “Here goes nothing.” As Call and the others watched, he dashed forward, throwing himself at the closest wyvern’s tail. He managed to catch it on the down stroke, and the wyvern let out a cry of surprise that sounded like a thunderclap. Aaron clung on grimly as the tail swung around, tossing him up and down as if he were riding a bucking bronco. Jasper, in his bubble, rose up and bobbled around at the ceiling among the stalactites, yelling and kicking out with his legs.

  The wyvern cracked its tail like a whip, and Aaron went flying. Tamara gasped. Rufus flung out a hand, and flecks of ice crystals shot from it, coming together in midair, forming a hand-like shape that caught Aaron inches from the floor and then froze that way.

  Call felt a burst of relief in his chest. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he’d been worried that the Masters wouldn’t lift a hand to help them — that they’d just let them die.

 
Aaron struggled against the fingers, trying to get free. A few of the other Iron Year apprentices moved together in a pack, advancing toward the second wyvern. Gwenda made fire spark between her hands, blue as the flame on the lizards’ backs. The wyvern yawned at them lazily, sending out slow tendrils of breath. One by one, they began to rise through the air, shouting. Celia shot out a blast of ice as she rose. It missed, striking just to the left of the second wyvern’s head, making it roar.

  “Call!” He whirled around at Tamara’s urgent whisper, just in time to see her dive behind a thicket of stalagmites. Call started to move after her, only to stop at the sight of Drew standing frozen, off to the side of the group.

  Call wasn’t the only one who noticed. The third wyvern, eyes narrowed in a predatory yellow glare, curled around to face the frightened apprentice.

  Drew flung both his arms down, palms facing the ground, as he muttered frantically. Then he rose slowly off the ground, lifting himself to the wyvern’s eye level.

  He’s mimicking being hit by the smoke, Call realized. Smart.

  Drew called up a ball of wind into his hand and aimed. The wyvern snorted in surprise, breaking Drew’s concentration and pinwheeling him in the air. Not wasting any time, the wyvern darted its head forward and snapped its beak, catching the very edge of Drew’s trouser leg. The cloth ripped as Drew kicked the air frantically.

  Call rushed forward to help — just as the second wyvern swooped down from the cavern ceiling, straight toward him.

  “Call, run!” Drew yelled. “Go!”

  It was a good suggestion, Call thought, if only he could run. His weak leg twisted as he tried to dart away over the uneven ground, and he stumbled, righting himself quickly, but not quickly enough. The cold black eyes of the wyvern were focused on him, its talons extended as it grew closer and closer. Call broke into a shambling run, his leg aching as he thumped his foot down against the rock. He wasn’t fast enough. Looking over his shoulder, he tripped and went flying, slamming against gravel and sharp stone.

  He rolled over onto his back. The wyvern reared up over him. Some part of Call was telling him that the Masters would step in before anything too serious happened, but a much bigger part of him was howling with fear. The wyvern seemed to take up his whole field of vision, its jaws opening, revealing a scaly maw and sharp teeth….