The Wizard Test

by Bell, Hilari

  His hands were dyed with blood, but the joint beneath them was whole. Vadeen would wake, and find that the life he had chosen still lay before him. That was worth the price, wasn’t it? Dayven lifted his head.

  They were all staring at him, the surgeons, the wounded, the wizard. Lore Master Senna simply nodded, as if something he’d known all along had finally been confirmed. It was in Soren’s horrified gaze that Dayven read the irrevocability of what he had done. The chain of destiny seized him, stifling, inescapable.

  Dayven sprang to his feet and ran.

  The sun was rising when Reddick found him, sitting on the edge of a meadow far from the battlefield, staring at his cupped hands.

  The wizard carried a gray robe, folded neatly over one arm — the symbol of a test that Dayven had passed. A test he hadn’t even been aware of.

  Reddick sat beside Dayven and let the silence grow until, when he spoke, his voice did not interrupt the peace around them. Odd that someone so boisterous possessed so much peace.

  “They sent Vadeen back to the Cenzar camp. He wanted to send you a message, but they wouldn’t let him talk to me. And Soren wouldn’t speak to him.”

  “I’ve lost Soren.” A butterfly crawled out of Dayven’s cupped hands and on to the base of his thumb, flexing new wings in the sunlight. He let fall the scraps of the sundered cocoon. He’d lost Soren, and his honor, and his home. But what had he found?

  “Maybe,” said Reddick. “People surprise you sometimes. Of course, sometimes they don’t. You saved Vadeen. Do you care more for Soren than for him?”

  Dayven’s eyes were on the butterfly.

  “I loved… I love both of them.” Yes, that was what he’d found. And life, and magic — his true path.

  The butterfly lifted and darted away in the golden light.

  “It really isn’t simple, is it Dayven?”

  “No,” said Dayven. “But it’s the way it should be.”

  The End

  Abo

  ut the Author

  Hilari Bell writes SF and fantasy for kids and teens. She’s an ex-librarian, a job she took to feed her life-long addiction to books, and she lives in Denver with a family that changes shape periodically — currently it’s her mother and her adult niece. Her hobbies are board games and camping — particularly camping, because that’s the only time she can get in enough reading. Though when it comes to reading, she says, there’s no such thing as “enough.”

  To learn more about author Hilari Bell, visit her website at hilaribell.com.

  An Ex

  cerpt from Songs of Power

  by Hilari Bell

  Chapter 1

  There were only three of them when the council of makers first met. A perfect circle of seven would have been better. A powered circle, twenty-one, better still.

  “I had hoped for more,” the Eldest admitted. “But a quorum is sufficient to make the decision. How say ye, peace or war?”

  “War.”

  “War.”

  The Young-one hesitated, but agreed. “War.”

  “War,” the Eldest finished. “Thus it is decided. Let us raise our voices in the spell-of-binding-intent.”

  Imina stared at the blank computer screen in front of her. Today was the deadline to come up with a science project, and she didn’t have any idea what she wanted to do. In fact, she didn’t want to do a science project at all. She glanced at the wide window — a stingray rippled past.

  The windows were one of the few things she liked about the habitat. She never tired of the sea, even when nothing moved through the water. In the two months she’d been here, she’d become accustomed to the round, gray glass walls. At first she’d felt as though she were living in half a pearl.

  “Taking the pressure down another two marks,” Lisette told her computer. “That’s five hundred feet, right?”

  Imina’s wandering gaze caught the grimace that crossed Ivan’s face as he bent over his own screen, and she deduced that it wasn’t five hundred feet. She grinned. At least she wasn’t the only one Lisette was distracting. Lisette’s terminal was on straight record mode, so it wouldn’t correct her. It also logged every word of the stream of gossip she aimed at Reba. “…I’d heard Dr. Pennyfeather was bent, but nobody told me he was that weird! When I showed him my splinter, he reached into the open access, picked up a sea urchin and put it on my hand, and it started to suck!”

  Lisette pushed a button, and a buzzer sounded. Her long sleeves drifted over the controls. Her long fair hair drifted everywhere, a sharp contrast to Reba’s short red-brown curls. Imina liked the loose coveralls that were fashionable now; they had lots of pockets. But everything Lisette wore was exaggerated in some way. She should have looked ridiculous in those trailing sleeves, but she didn’t. Lisette looked good in anything.

  Imina sighed and looked around the half-sphere of the classroom. The younger kids on the other side had only terminals built into their small mobile desks. The older kids had their own computer stations attached to the curving wall, which left the center of their half of the room open for the teacher, or for holo-images. Dr. Sandoval’s dark head was bent over Daud’s station. They sounded like they’d be busy for a while, so Imina spun away from the accusing blankness of her screen to watch the mouse in the pressure tank open his cage door.

  Imina liked the mice. Teaching them to open the door when the buzzer sounded had been Lisette’s last science project. Now she was “discovering” whether changes in atmospheric pressure would affect their reflexes or intelligence. It wouldn’t, of course. Everyone in the habitat was proof of that, since they lived at the same pressure as the ocean around them. If it didn’t affect the scientists, it wouldn’t affect the mice. On the other hand, Lisette had her science project working, and Imina didn’t even have an idea.

  The mouse pulled the ring and scampered through the open door to snatch up his treat. When the door sprang shut, another treat dropped into the cage where the previous treat had been.

  “Five point three four seconds,” Lisette read the display to the computer. “And when I said I didn’t want creatures sucking on me, he said he’d be honored to suck it out himself, but he had more germs!”

  Reba laughed obediently, and Lisette turned the dial two more marks. “Six hundred feet,” she said, pressing the buzzer. “He was a little slower than last time. Maybe it is affecting him.”

  Ivan turned from the complex lines and squiggles that covered his computer’s screen, a serious expression on the long, thin face that went with his long, thin body. Everything about Ivan was serious, from his straight, plain brown hair to the soles of his plain brown shoes. He was using both the keyboard and a stylus, instead of voice-activated mode, Imina noticed. Show-off.

  “Have you instructed the unit to alter the mixture of breathing gases to compensate for the pressure?” he asked Lisette.

  “Uh, I assumed it did that automatically,” Lisette told him. “What does it matter?”

  “It matters,” said Ivan, “because if you don’t have enough helium in the breathing gas, nitrogen will gradually accumulate in the mouse’s body, causing disorientation and—”

  “He is acting sort of funny, Lisette,” said Reba, gazing into the tank. “Maybe you’d better…”

  Lisette’s cheeks flushed with anger. “All right, then.” She spun the dial to zero.

  For a moment Imina saw everything in slow motion — each click of the dial under Lisette’s hand, the way Reba’s eyes widened. Then Ivan leaped forward, knocked Lisette’s hand away, and returned the pressure to where it had been.

  “You twit,” Imina snapped. “You almost killed him!”

  “I did not! What do you mean?”

  “What’s going on here?” Dr. Sandoval hurried to the pressure tank, a harassed expression on his handsome face. At least, Lisette said he was handsome. Imina wasn’t so sure. He was a small, neat man, but his features were almost too even. Bland. He didn’t look bland now; he looked like an angry teacher. “Ca
n’t I leave you kids for five minutes without someone starting a fight?”

  The little kids on the other side of the room were staring. Mrs. M’Barra, the humanities teacher, called their attention back to her. Their “revised one-room classroom” could be pretty distracting. On the other hand, it enabled two teachers to switch back and forth with ease, educating all of the small handful of kids who lived in the habitat.

  “It was them.” Lisette’s eyes filled with abused tears. “I was doing my experiment, and he hit my hand, and she started insulting me, and…”

  “Hush.” Dr. Sandoval turned to Reba. “What happened?”

  “Lisette turned the pressure down to zero,” Reba told him. Her voice was solemn, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Ivan knocked her hand away, and Annis called her a stupid twit, and then—”

  “Thank you. I see.” Dr. Sandoval sighed. “Lisette, you know you can’t go from high pressure to lower pressure immediately. That’s why, when you dive out of the habitat, you wear a wrist gauge that warns you if you rise too high.”

  “But that’s outside. I thought that in the tank…”

  Dr. Sandoval shook his head.

  Imina snickered.

  Lisette flushed. “Well, anyway, she had no right to yell at me like a savage.”

  Imina’s fists clenched. “Which takes more intelligence?” she demanded. “To survive in a brutal environment with only the tools you can devise out of a handful of bone, stone, and hide, or to just exist in a … a cocoon of technology? Your people couldn’t survive in the Arctic till the twentieth century. Mine had—”

  “Annis, that’s enough,” Dr. Sandoval interrupted.

  Imina grimaced. She hated being called Annis.

  “We all know how proud you are of your heritage, but science class isn’t the place to express it. Get back to work, all of you.”

  Ivan had already returned to his station. Imina went back to hers and gazed at the blank screen as Dr. Sandoval explained depressurization sickness to Lisette. Why did the silly twit think you had to spend three days in the depressure rooms before you could return to the surface? For fun? A person that stupid shouldn’t be allowed to care for an animal. In fact… A slow grin spread over Imina’s face. Dr. Sandoval had set the pressure tank to decompress the mouse at a safe rate. He hadn’t been at high pressure long, so it would be only a few hours till he was ready to return to the cage on the counter where his five companions played.

  That cage had the same kind of release mechanism as the trick cage, with an extra latch to keep it closed when the mice played with it.

  Imina got up and strolled casually down the arc of the long lab bench that spanned a quarter of the wall. She often watched the mice run in the spinning wheel of their exerciser. She glanced around — no one was watching. The flick of a single finger freed the latch. She wandered back to her computer and turned it slightly, so that her back was to the class when she faced it.

  Now for the fun part.

  Imina took a deep breath and let it out slowly. All the surface worries, the nagging thoughts, the distractions, went out with that breath. Another breath. Another. She listened for her pulse, and soon she could hear it. She focused on the steady throb until the outside world vanished, and she was at home in the darkness of her own mind. A light trance only, but good enough.

  Come, little brothers, she called the mice. White fur, small paws, quiver whiskers. I know you. White fur, small paws, quiver whiskers. I know your spirits. I call to your spirits. I sing to your spirits. Listen to me.

  The rhythmic squeak of the exerciser stopped. They were listening. Good.

  You hear the buzzer, little brothers. The door can open. You hear the buzzer. Open the door. Treats outside, little brothers. Open the door. Freedom outside. Open—

  She grinned when she heard the tiny snap as the door sprang back. But now what? Imina opened her eyes. She could see the bench clearly, but it was distant, like looking through the wrong end of binoculars. The first mouse climbed out and dropped to the counter. Imina looked for escape routes. A plant at the end of the counter grew happily under an ultraviolet light, its leaves trailing almost to the floor. And on the floor was a vent where Imina had often smelled food cooking. It must lead directly to the cafeteria. Perfect.

  Escape, little brothers. Run for the plant. Hide in the leaves like the wild ones do. Escape, little brothers. Follow the food smells. Find the food. You are hungry, little brothers. Find the food. Meshed in her suggestion, the mice raced for the floor vent as if they were starving.

  As the last one dropped through, Imina allowed the world to come back into focus around her. She was smiling. It was the first spell she had worked, except to practice, since she had come to the habitat, and it had worked perfectly. Grandma Ata would have been proud of her. Who needed a science project, anyway?

  The lesson had switched to literature. They were starting English now. Last month had been German, next would be French. This week it was Imina’s turn to help Mrs. M’Barra with the little kids, while the older students started reading Hamlet.

  “You can pick any poem in English,” Mrs. M’Barra told her, “as long as it has enough verses for each of the kids to memorize one. Do you have any favorite poems, Annis?”

  “Not in English,” said Imina.

  Mrs. M’Barra sighed and then smiled, producing dimples in her plump cheeks. Her curly, shoulder-length hair was paler than Lisette’s. “When we do Amerinds, we’ll concentrate on the Inuit, just for you. But English now, all right? How long do you need to choose a poem?” She gestured at the rack of book cartridges and the few old paper books that held poetry in English.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Imina grabbed one of the old books and let it fall open. The poem that started on the left-hand page had about the right number of verses. “I’ll do this one,” she said. “‘Casabianca.’”

  Mrs. M’Barra blinked. “Are you sure you don’t want to think about that?”

  Imina shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “All white man’s poetry looks alike to you?” Mrs. M’Barra grinned.

  Imina smiled back in spite of herself. “Yes.”

  “On your head be it.” Mrs. M’Barra waved a hand at the little ones. “Read it to them.”

  “‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’” Imina read in a bored voice. “‘Whence all but him had fled; / The flame that lit the battle’s wreck / Shone round him o’er the dead.’”

  The children’s eyes widened. The old-fashioned language made Marinka and Luke giggle. Mrs. M’Barra’s lips twitched. A soft chime sounded from the pressure tank on the other side of the room, and Imina’s heart began to pound.

  Lisette started to rise, but Dr. Sandoval waved her back to her terminal and went to get the cage himself.

  “Annis,” Mrs. M’Barra prompted. “You’re sure you want that one?”

  “Ah, sure.” Imina went on reading, trying to watch Dr. Sandoval at the same time. “‘Yet beautiful and bright he stood, / As born to rule the storm; / A creature of heroic blood, / A proud though childlike form.’”

  The ship burned to pieces and blew up under the wretched boy while Dr. Sandoval pulled the cage from the pressure tank and set it on the counter. Then Reba called him over to answer a question. He said he’d try, though he didn’t know much about Hamlet.

  “‘But the noblest thing that perished there / Was that young and faithful heart,’” Imina finished desperately.

  All the kids were giggling now, and Mrs. M’Barra gave up the struggle and laughed aloud. “What do you say, kids? Shall we have Annis pick another poem?”

  “No!” came the unanimous chorus.

  “I want to do the fire verse.”

  “No, I want that one.”

  “I want the one where he calls his father.”

  “There’s three of those, you twit.”

  “I want the first one.”

  “I want the last one.”

  “No, I want the last fa
ther verse.”

  “Annis?” Mrs. M’Barra was still laughing.

  “Let me think about it.”

  Imina gazed at the mouse Lisette had been working with, in his cage on the counter. He should be with his friends. There was no time for subtlety, but he’d just been playing with the door. She closed her eyes and willed the raucous blare of the buzzer into his mind. He twitched a little and tried the door. A few seconds later he was out.

  She tried to send him down the counter as she had the others, but she hadn’t established any real contact with him, and he wandered aimlessly over to his old cage. Mei-lin tugged at her sleeve. “Can I have the first father verse?”

  Imina sorted out verses among the children. The mouse was following his friends’ scent. Luke was shouting louder than the others, so Imina gave him the verse where the boy got blown to bits. The mouse had almost reached the vent.

  “My mice!” Lisette’s shriek split the air.

  “Run, little brother,” Imina shouted. She threw the poetry book at the plant.

  The startled mouse leaped for the vent and vanished.

  “She did it!” Lisette shrieked, pointing at Imina. “She stole my mice!”

  They had sent the children to play in the small, seldom-used gym. Dr. Sandoval and the older kids gathered around the vent. “No doubt about it,” he sighed, straightening up. “Those mice are in the cafeteria by now. We’ll have to trap them.”

  He glared at Imina, who promptly resolved to put the evil eye on all the traps so they wouldn’t catch anything.

  “Did you do it?” he asked.

  Imina considered denying it and decided not to.

  “I thought I’d start a suboceanic ecosystem,” she told him. “The cafeteria should be able to support life. It’s my science project.”