The Test

by Todd Fahnestock

  “Why?” Vale asked.

  “Because this is Brom,” Oriana said. “And his inciting moment will have been spurred by some great emotion. While I remove the memory, I’ll need you to remove the passion surrounding it. If the emotion is still there it would act like a...” She paused, searching for the right words. “...like a tremor beneath the pile of rocks. If the emotion remained, Brom would know that he wanted desperately to do something, but he won’t be able to remember what it is.”

  Vale nodded. “I see.”

  Brom’s heart began to race. The idea that Oriana would be plucking out pieces of him was terrifying. He swallowed it down.

  “I don’t like it,” he said reluctantly. “But I trust you.”

  “Then we are decided,” Oriana said, as though they were simply agreeing on what to have for dinner. She looked at each of them expectantly.

  “Yes,” Brom said. Vale nodded, and Royal said, “I’m in.”

  A shiver ran through Brom, and a ring of golden light rippled out from the four of them. It hit the walls, and the room seemed to expand, then shuddered back to its normal size.

  Then the golden light vanished.

  They all looked around, eyes wide. Brom tensed, pushing up on his hands as if he expected The Four to crash through the wall. But nothing happened.

  “What was that?” Vale whispered, tense and breathless. She crouched like she was ready to spring for the window.

  “I don’t know,” Oriana said. Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she flicked a quick gaze all about the room.

  “Was it some kind of spell?” Royal asked. “Was it The Four?”

  Oriana hesitated, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t know.” She looked ill, which is how she always looked when she didn’t know something.

  They stood there, tense, waiting for an attack. When it didn’t come, they waited some more. Eventually, Oriana cleared her throat.

  “Let’s finish this quickly,” she said. “We will start with Brom. Then Vale, then Royal. Then myself.” She knelt at the head of the bed. “Vale, if you would move closer.” She knelt next to Brom, just to Oriana’s right. “I will guide you, and I’ll let you know when to help. Please don’t do anything more than what I ask.”

  “Just don’t make us all forget that we like each other, okay?” Vale joked. “That was a lot of work the first time around.”

  “Is that possible?” Royal asked, concerned. “Could we forget our bond?”

  “I was joking,” Vale said.

  Oriana didn’t answer the question, which made Brom even more nervous.

  “Lie down, Brom,” she said. He hesitated, and she said softly, “It will be all right. Trust me.”

  Brom lay down, his chest heavy. The bed seemed to sway. His body reminded him that he’d been an inch from death minutes ago, and he wanted to vomit again. Instead, he put his head between her hands and waited.

  Royal came closer, looming over the three of them.

  Vale stroked Brom’s hair, and it calmed him. He wanted to tell her that he loved her. Even more than that, he wanted her to smile and tell him that she loved him too. Instead, she winked. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered.

  “After we get our second-year writs of passage, we’ll talk about next steps,” Oriana said. “Until then, we are just students again. We’re just Quad Brilliant.”

  She gently pressed two fingers to each of Brom’s temples and closed her eyes.

  “Be right, Oriana,” Brom whispered. “Gods, please be right about this.”

  She took a deep breath and gave no indication that she had heard him.

  White light flared, and the room faded away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Olivaard

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The sound of a human head smacking into wood filled the study. Olivaard listened to the satisfying rhythm of it, and it calmed his nerves. The thumping seemed louder than it actually was due to the sullen silence in the room.

  Wulfric sat on the couch before the fire, one foot resting on the chest of one of the dismembered gate guards. The corpse’s pieces were strewn beneath him, some wedged between the couch and the low table. Wulfric cleaned his dripping blade with a piece of the guard’s own tunic, using long, deliberate strokes as he watched the crimson stain spread into the blue and white insignia. Wulfric had been so infuriated after losing the Sacinto in the blizzard that he’d almost lopped off Arsinoe’s head when the Motus had made a poorly-timed joke.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Linza stood perfectly still by the window, much where she had been when the Sacinto spy had burst from concealment and thrown itself out the window at the end of the bar. The only way to know she was upset was by the dimness of the room. Twelve lanterns burned brightly in the parlor, but it was as dark as if those torches were guttering candles. When Linza was upset, she sucked all available light toward herself.

  Olivaard contemplated the covered window through which the brazen spy had escaped.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The curtains over the villain’s escape had been turned to stone, perfectly covering the broken window and keeping the slowly-dying blizzard outside. The four of them had done that in a fit of pique when they’d returned. In addition, they had put violent spells at every window and door in this room. Even a servant within the tower would die a horrible death if they dared disturb The Four tonight.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “Where is Arsinoe?” Olivaard asked, peeved.

  “Venting his frustrations, like you,” Linza creaked in her ancient voice.

  Olivaard glanced over at the second gate guard, who gripped the edges of the bloody wooden pillar by the door and slammed his forehead against it. Initially, the thumps had been good, solid sounds, and the guard had screamed in horror at each vigorous blow. Olivaard had made him cease his caterwauling, though. Now the thumps were distinctly wet, and he thought he’d heard a cracking noise on the last one. It wouldn’t be long.

  “On whom?” Olivaard asked.

  “He mentioned something about the new baker,” Linza said. “Cute was his exact word.”

  Olivaard sighed. The new baker was talented at his craft. Arsinoe could at least have had the courtesy to choose someone incompetent. But then, courtesy was not Arsinoe’s style unless courtesy could provide him with something he wanted.

  Using his powerful mind, Olivaard pushed out a message to Arsinoe.

  “Get in here now. Playtime is over.”

  Arsinoe gave a mental grunt, but Olivaard cut the connection before he could hear anything else. The pleasures of the flesh repulsed him, and he had no desire, even accidentally, to overhear any of Arsinoe’s current thoughts.

  Thump. Thump. Crack. Thump... The guard’s skull caved in, and his body twitched. He head butted the column one last feeble time, then he slid to the ground and didn’t move again.

  “Now what?” Wulfric growled, as though he had been waiting until the guard was dead to ask his question. He gave one last swipe to his now-clean blade and sheathed it. He tossed the rag on top of the corpse pieces below him.

  “Those requiring punishment have been punished,” Olivaard said. “Except the Sacinto.”

  “I could not see them,” Linza said, referring to the Sacintos as they referred to themselves—in the plural. Each individual Sacinto was both male and female. “Even searching for their soul, I could not find them.”

  “I did,” Olivaard said, “but it was sheer luck. And I could not grab hold of its mind.” Olivaard, on other hand, thought of the damned Sacintos as animals, not people. “Somehow, it wrenched its mind away from me, and when I looked again, it was gone.”

  “This Sacinto is deep in the Soul of the World,” Linza said.

  “Obviously.”

  “Explanation?”

  “A guess only,” Olivaard said. “They are closer to nature. They are part tree, after all.”

  Arsinoe appeared in the doorway. His face looked as though someone had
hacked off his jaw, leaving only a gaping hole below his nose. It made his neck look grotesquely long. He held his jaw in his hand. There was no blood, of course. It wasn’t the first time Arsinoe had removed one of his body parts to....do what he did.

  Breathing hard through the hole in his face, Arsinoe leaned casually against the doorjamb and put his jaw back into place. The flesh melted together like candle wax, and then he moved his jaw around in a neat circle.

  “What,” Olivaard asked impatiently, “are you doing?”

  “Something new,” Arsinoe said, catching his breath as though he’d run from the top of the tower. “Novelty stirs the blood. You ought to try it. ”

  Olivaard checked the urge to mind-stab the man. Really. Working with Arsinoe was like working with one of the sweaty students that crawled all over the academy. Rutting little rats.

  “May I presume there will be no more pastries in the tower?” Olivaard asked.

  “I was angry.” Arsinoe shrugged. “Obviously I wasn’t the only one.” He regarded the blood-splattered pillar.

  “Tonight, we are failures,” Olivaard said. “How long has it been since we could say that?”

  Wulfric growled.

  “The spell at the wall was untouched,” Linza said. “Somehow they moved past it.”

  Olivaard shook his head. “Undoing a spell of that magnitude requires more than a rapport with the Soul of the World. Perhaps they are using a magic we have not yet encountered.”

  Arsinoe scoffed. “What are the odds of that?”

  “The Sacinto are a mystery,” Olivaard said icily, hating his own words. “Apparently.”

  Arsinoe suddenly pursed his lips and brought his hand up to his newly-intact jaw. For a moment, Olivaard thought he might remove it again. Instead, he just stroked his chin.

  “Has anyone considered that it might be a student?” Arsinoe asked.

  Olivaard glared at Arsinoe and frowned. The man simply could not take anything seriously. He sometimes wished Arsinoe would shut his mouth and save the rest of them from his idiocy.

  Wulfric spat into the blood at his feet. “The Quadrons who graduate from the academy cannot escape our notice by using the Soul of the World. How could a student do it?”

  “What about Quad Brilliant?” Arsinoe replied.

  “Fuck Quad Brilliant!” Wulfric boomed. “They’re students! They’re dogs who’ve been taught to walk on their hind legs. They’re nothing! We have run to fat, fearing inconsequential students while Sacintos scuttle about our tower like roaches. Our focus should be on finding these Sacintos, destroying them, and getting back to our real task: the One Beneath. We’ve spent altogether too much time talking about the gods-be-damned students in Quad Brilliant. Squash them and be done with it!”

  “And destroy the reputation of the school,” Arsinoe said. “Brilliant.” He chuckled at his own pedestrian wit.

  “The school serves our needs. Not the other way around.” Wulfric stood up, growling.

  “Wulfric has a point,” Olivaard said. “A student could not accomplish this thing, and we have spent far too much time talking about it.”

  “Graduate them now,” Linza said suddenly, and the rest of them fell silent. “Be done with it now.”

  “What?” Olivaard asked, incredulous.

  “Use their prowess against them,” Linza creaked. “Use the Test to put them in their place. Shower them with accolades and say they are prodigies. Trumpet it from the walls of the academy that Quad Brilliant has learned so much so fast that they have leapt over two grades. Then put them through the Test of Separation. The Quad will be broken, and those who remain will have our hooks in them. Collar them and fling them into the two kingdoms. Then we can think on them no more.”

  “We have never graduated second-years before,” Olivaard said thoughtfully, pulling on one of his dangling earlobes.

  “Fine,” Wulfric said. “Send a primer tomorrow. That’s as far as they’ll get. Send the best of the fourth-years. Let Quad Phoenix beat them into meat. Perhaps then you’ll all see them as the children they are, and I can stop hearing about Quad Brilliant.”

  “I like this plan.” Arsinoe clapped his hands together delightedly. “Let Quad Phoenix kill Quad Brilliant. All save the Motus. I’d still like to play with her after.”

  Olivaard rolled his eyes.

  Wulfric sighed, clearly exasperated. “Now can we stop talking about gods-be-damned students and get back to the real problem?”

  “Very well,” Olivaard said. “The primer will be Quad Phoenix.”

  “Excellent idea. That way we won’t even need to send Brilliant to the Test,” Linza said, satisfied.

  “Wait,” Arsinoe said. “What of the princess? After your passionate defense of her usefulness, we’ll kill her, too?”

  “A point,” Olivaard said. “Yes, the princess lives. We send her back to her father, saying we stepped in and broke the rules to protect her because of his importance to us.”

  “Such a diplomat,” Linza said.

  “Can we get back to the Sacintos now?” Wulfric demanded.

  “Thank you for being so patient,” Arsinoe said with dripping sarcasm. “May I pose a question?”

  Wulfric growled.

  “If this Sacinto so easily avoided our spell at the wall because they never touched it, shouldn’t we continue to consider that they might somehow be hidden inside the school, even if it’s not a student?”

  Wulfric seethed and Olivaard marshaled his inner strength not to lash out at Arsinoe.

  “They would have had to bury themselves in the dirt to avoid detection. Who wouldn’t notice a Sacinto walking around the campus?” Olivaard asked.

  Arsinoe shrugged. “I’m simply saying it may be possible. Doesn’t it seem more plausible that the Sacinto is somehow hiding inside the academy than that they are so powerful they can break through our defensive spell without harm and without seeming to touch it?”

  “No,” Wulfric growled.

  “Then maybe it is one of the masters,” Arsinoe said. “Or, I maintain it could potentially be—”

  “If you say it is one of the students, I’m going to chop your head off,” Wulfric warned.

  “I think Arsinoe has a point,” Linza said.

  All gazes swiveled toward her.

  “Knowing we are the most powerful Quadrons in the two kingdoms might have made us overconfident. It is the very definition of arrogance to assume we are right without knowing for certain.”

  “What do you propose?” Olivaard said, surprised that Linza was defending Arsinoe.

  “Read them,” she said.

  “Two hundred and forty students?” Wulfric asked incredulously. “Ridiculous!”

  “That would take days,” Olivaard said.

  “This is exactly the kind of distraction that is hindering us,” Wulfric said.

  “It is the only way to be certain,” Linza creaked. “And I think it is worth being certain.”

  “I agree.” Arsinoe nodded emphatically.

  Wulfric drew his sword and pointed it at Arsinoe. “You put this in her head,” he growled.

  Arsinoe put his hands up helplessly.

  “He put nothing into my head, Wulfric,” Linza said. “You talk about our laziness, and yet you don’t wish to spend the time we would need to be sure that Arsinoe is wrong.”

  With a howl of rage, Wulfric turned and chopped his bench in half. Splintered chunks of wood flew in every direction.

  Olivaard thought about it a moment. There was absolutely no way a student could have evaded them, but he liked the cleanliness of Linza’s idea, as tedious as it would be.

  “I agree with Linza,” Olivaard said. “We will start a mind probe first thing tomorrow. We will call it a mandatory Mentis exercise for all students, to determine their readiness.”

  Wulfric’s enraged breaths whooshed inside his square helmet. “Do what you fucking want. I’m going to look for that gods-be-damned Sacinto.” He stormed out of the room, his hooves thoom
ing loudly.

  “I’ll inform Quad Phoenix,” Arsinoe said gaily.

  “Gods no,” Olivaard said, shaking his head. “You inform The Collector. He will orchestrate the primer. Tell him Quad Phoenix is to be ruthless, sparing only the princess.”

  “Olivaard, please...” Arsinoe said reprovingly.

  Olivaard sighed, then said, “Fine. The Motus girl as well. Make sure The Collector knows this is Phoenix’s primer too. Tell them only one of the two Quads will advance to the Test of Separation. The other will be expelled. If they still live.”

  “I want to watch.” Arsinoe pouted. “To make sure my prize is only sufficiently injured, not gutted.”

  Olivaard ignored Arsinoe and turned to Linza. “Make the preparations for the mind probes.”

  She nodded her head and left the room as silent as a breeze.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Brom

  Brom woke up, and he felt like he’d forgotten something. Morning light trickled into his dorm room through the split in the heavy black drapes. He sat up and gasped at the pain, then lay back down. Gods, it felt like he’d rolled down a hill and hit every rock along the way. His entire body was tender. His head felt like it had a metal band bound around it, squeezing. His stomach roiled, and his arms and legs were feeble.

  What happened to me?

  Had he spent his third Soulblock again? It was like that time by the river with Vale. That time that she and he...

  ...had run by the river. He remembered the rush of the water, the smell of wet earth, Fendra in the sky, blazing silver blue. He remembered connecting to the Soul of the World, bringing Vale along with him. And he and Vale had run next to each other until they...

  Until they what? He couldn’t remember. Had they just run along the river?

  Clenching his teeth, he pushed himself to a sitting position. Gods, he hurt...

  He focused, then reached inside himself, gingerly checking his Soulblocks. A filling Soulblock always felt like a glass box with mist slowly thickening inside until it became like a lightning storm, crackling within. Brom’s second Soulblock was in that process, actually on the verge of being full. So he’d used his first and second. Then why did he feel so awful? His third Soulblock was full. He should just feel tired.