A School for Sorcery (Arucadi Series Book 6)

by E. Rose Sabin

  Before she could use the ability again, she’d have to learn to control it. She only hoped she had frightened Oryon as much as she had scared herself.

  The door opened and Lina came in. Hastily Tria thrust her paper into her desk drawer. She’d done enough experimenting for one evening.

  The hope that Tria had pinned on the Paths to Other Worlds course withered after the class got under way. There were only two other members: Irel and Petra. Disregarding Tria’s special need, Aletheia concentrated her attention on Irel, encouraging the withdrawn, frightened girl to speak, praising her contributions, exploring the questions she timidly raised for discussion. Ordinarily Tria would have approved of this nurturing, but desperate as Irel’s need was, it did not exceed Tria’s. It seemed to Tria that she and Petra might as well not attend, for all the notice Aletheia took of them. Tria began to suspect that the Transdimensional Studies mistress was deliberately ignoring her to avoid involving herself in Tria’s quest.

  Was no one willing to help her? Winter was dragging itself toward spring, yet she became more and more frozen into a snowy waste of hopelessness, isolation, frustration, and defeat. She had no interest in her studies; her grades were mediocre at best. Her former friends avoided her, and even her conferences with Rehanne were becoming less frequent.

  She plodded upstairs after supper. She’d choked down only a bite of leathery meat and a swallow or two of lumpy potatoes. The food had reverted to its former unappetizing appearance, taste, and smell; she could no longer dispel the illusion. She didn’t really try; it wasn’t worth the effort. Rehanne scolded her for not eating. She was becoming too thin, but her personal appearance no longer mattered. She entered her room, dreading another evening of ignoring Lina and pretending to study.

  Lina wasn’t in the room. Good. She settled at her desk, opened her Ethics book, tried to read. The words swam in a meaningless jumble. Her fingers toyed with the crystal. She found herself staring at it instead of at the book. It glittered in the lamplight; fire sparkled in its depths.

  Something was taking form in it. Another message from Wilce? It was no parchment that became visible to her intent gaze but a small silver-clad figure. She recognized the scandalous gown, the voluptuous shape: the Dire Woman who had stolen Wilce.

  Could the thing see her? Leering, the death’s-head beckoned to something behind it, something that crept forward on all fours. It moved clumsily, its hind legs much longer than its forelegs. The Dire Woman rested her hand on the creature’s back. Patches of pale, diseased-looking skin showed through a coat of thin brown fur. It raised its head.

  Tria screamed. The beast wore Wilce’s face.

  The brown eyes held no recognition, only pain. A slovenly growth of whiskers failed to form a beard. The nostrils were pinched as though reacting to a foul odor. The lips parted in a grimace that exposed gnashing teeth. A trickle of saliva moistened the chin.

  “Wilce!” At her agonized cry the creature hung its head. Had he heard? He looked ashamed of his hideous transformation. If he is, he still has human feelings. That means there’s still hope.

  The vision faded. She let the crystal fall back against her breast and sat stunned, uncertain that what she’d seen was real. It could have been a cruel trick of Oryon’s or a product of her own distressed imagination. As she tried to decide, the door flew open and Lina burst into the room.

  “I’ve got it!” she announced. She whirled round to slam the door shut and lock it, then ran to Tria’s side. “I know where Oryon got the summoning spell. Kress finally let it slip. I—What’s wrong?”

  “Never mind.” Tria clutched Lina’s arm. “Tell me.”

  Lina frowned. “I will, but … You look sick. Didn’t eat again, I’ll bet.”

  Tria dismissed Lina’s concern with an impatient wave. “Tell me,” she insisted.

  “He found the spell in a book he borrowed from Master Hawke last term when he took Summoning and Expelling. And Master Hawke is scared to death somebody’ll find out and blame him for everything that happened. Oryon gave it back, but Kress remembers the title. And he described the book—oversized, leather-bound, title imprinted in ornate gold script. It’s called The Perilous Art of Consorting with the Shadow Powers.” Tria rubbed her forehead to drive out the pain needling her head. “How will that help us? We can’t ask Master Hawke for the book. He’d guess why we wanted it, and he’d never let us have it.”

  “Leave that to me,” Lina said with a secretive smile. “I won’t use Rehanne’s spell, I’ll tell you that much. What I want to know is, when I get it, will you dare to use it?”

  Tria hesitated, thought of what she’d seen in the crystal, and was gripped by a cold fury. Why not? Oryon had dared. And all those who should be helping her defeat him had distanced themselves from her. The high moral principles they claimed had not translated into concern for Wilce and Gray. Even Rehanne seemed to have lost her zeal for the quest. Only Lina remained steadfast. And that though Tria had doubted her, questioned her methods, and impugned her motivation.

  “Yes,” Tria said with sudden decisiveness. “I’m with you. Get the book.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE SUMMONING

  Tria refrained from asking Lina about her progress in getting the book. She noted, however, that Lina had become much more animated in Master Hawke’s Symbolism in Magic class, volunteering answers, taking detailed notes, asking probing questions, and often staying after class to discuss a crucial point that the rest of the class had overlooked. Once or twice Tria saw her accompany Master Hawke from the classroom wing across the quadrangle to the entrance of the faculty residence hall.

  Late one evening, Lina walked into their room, announced, “I have it,” and drew from beneath her jacket a large, leather-bound volume.

  The book was over one hundred years old. It was not a replica like the stolen Breyadon. “He loaned you this?” Tria asked, running a cautious finger along the spine.

  “Of course not. He invited me in to use his library. I’d asked him about reference works for a paper I planned to write on how water symbolism is used differently in the rituals of male and female workers of magic. It’s a subject I knew would pique his interest. I told him I’d already reviewed all the material the school library had. His books aren’t arranged in any particular order, so he had to go shelf by shelf looking for what I needed, and I tagged along behind while he did that. When I spotted this book, I waited until he was busy rummaging through stuff on another shelf, snitched this, and hid it under my coat.”

  She made it sound so easy. “He didn’t have it warded or anything?”

  “He probably did. I have a talisman that cancels wards.” She pulled from her pocket a circlet of twisted gold wires into which five different gemstones were set, and tossed it onto the bed.

  Her casual manner irritated Tria. “Why didn’t you tell us you had a thing like that? We could have been using it.”

  Lina picked it up, held it in the palm of her hand, and regarded it with as much embarrassment as Tria had ever seen her show. “I, uh, didn’t have it. I loaned it to Kress a long time ago so he could come up to this floor. That’s how he got into the room the night you and Oryon had your big power duel. I didn’t want to tell you that, especially since I couldn’t get it back. Kress wouldn’t return it. Then a couple of days ago he did.”

  “Kress and Oryon didn’t come upstairs together that night,” Tria recalled, thinking aloud, trying to make sense of this new revelation.

  “Oryon didn’t need it. He had his own … way of overcoming wards.”

  Lina had been about to say something else when she hesitated, Tria was sure of it. What more did she know that she had kept to herself? She glared at her roommate.

  Lina pouted. “I knew if I told you about the talisman, you’d blame me more than you already did for everything that happened. I planned to tell you as soon as I got it back.”

  “And you got it back a couple of days ago.”

  “We didn’t n
eed it for anything right then. You know about it now. Are we going to look at this spell book or aren’t we?”

  Tria regarded the book with distaste. More than ever she regretted having agreed to the summoning. If she wished to be released from her promise, this fresh evidence of Lina’s untrustworthiness provided an excuse. But if she backed out, Lina could justifiably accuse her again of doing nothing to rescue Wilce and Gray. Unsavory though her methods were, Lina had accomplished more than either Tria or Rehanne, and with Wilce’s condition so critical, this was no time to quarrel with an ally. “Let’s see the book,” she said.

  Moving to Tria’s bed, Lina opened the large tome, rested it across both their laps, and together they pored over its soft, clothlike pages. To Tria the paper had the feel of leprous skin; it smelled of dust and pestilence. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. She withdrew her hand and let Lina turn the pages.

  The writing was in the common tongue, but the print was an archaic style and had faded to a dull brown, making it laborious to read. Tria felt defiled by her contact with the book; she wanted to scrub her hands, wash her clothes, and soak in the bath. She forced herself to read the spells and incantations, shuddering as she did so, feeling a revulsion that threatened to bring up the little supper she’d eaten. She was ready to slam the book shut and thrust it away from her, when Lina’s forefinger stabbed the page resting on Tria’s knee.

  “That’s it! We’ll copy this, I’ll return the book in the morning, and Master Hawke will never know.” She lifted the volume, carried it to her desk, and got out pen and paper.

  Relieved of the loathsome weight, Tria wondered whether she had only imagined the air of evil about it. Lina seemed oblivious to it. The catgirl’s confidence made Tria set aside her doubts and resolve to carry out their plan.

  They needed two or three days to gather the materials for the spell. Anxious to get the thing done, Tria complained about the wait, and Lina cheerfully reminded her that the weekend would be a better time than a school night when they needed to be studying. That bit of sarcasm drove Tria from the room.

  Although it made her uncomfortable to talk to Rehanne and conceal the plans for the summoning, Tria sought out her friend. Rehanne needed to know what Tria had seen in her crystal. They met after lunch in Rehanne’s room where they could be alone; Elspeth, Rehanne’s roommate, had kitchen duty. They sat on Rehanne’s bed, and as Tria described her vision, she plucked at a loose thread on the hand-embroidered coverlet.

  Face pale, Rehanne stared at the crystal as though trying to glimpse a vision of her own. “It’s only a piece of jewelry,” she said. “How could it show you something from another plane? It had to have been some trick of Oryon’s.”

  “It could have been,” Tria admitted. “I hope it was. I don’t want to think what I saw was real.”

  She wrapped the loose thread around her little finger. Too late she saw the widening gap in the floral pattern. “I’m sorry,” she said, stripping the thread from her finger and clasping her hands tightly in her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I do think it was real. If it had been a trick, wouldn’t Oryon have shown me Gray as well as Wilce?”

  “Why? He knows you cared about Wilce.”

  “But Gray was a friend. Besides, Oryon knows I’d tell you what I saw, and you care about Gray. I think I saw only Wilce because the crystal was his gift to me and forms a link between us.”

  “Have you tried to find him again in it?”

  “No. I—I haven’t wanted to see him like that.”

  Rehanne frowned. “But you should try. Maybe you could communicate with him. Let him know we’re trying to help.”

  “I can’t report much success,” Tria said bitterly. “But all right, I’ll try.”

  She held the crystal in the palm of her hand and peered into its depths. She tried to forget her surroundings, block out her awareness of Rehanne’s intent gaze, and think only of Wilce, picturing him as she had seen him at the ball, not as he had been in her vision.

  The crystal reddened, became like a drop of blood in her hand. No shapes appeared in that crimson sphere, but a feeling of terror mixed with unbearable grief shook Tria. She dropped the crystal and fell trembling and sobbing into Rehanne’s arms. Rehanne wept, too. When their deep, sudden sorrow ebbed enough to let them draw apart and press handkerchiefs to their ravaged faces, they discovered they had missed their afternoon classes.

  “What did you see?” Rehanne’s voice quavered on the verge of further tears.

  “Nothing,” Tria said, her own voice far from steady. “But I felt—I felt what he must feel. Rehanne, we have to get them free. They can’t wait any longer.”

  Rehanne nodded, and Tria nearly told her what she and Lina planned. But the words stuck in her throat as she thought of what the spell required. She would do it—she had to. But she could not confess it, even to Rehanne.

  Tria’s nervousness increased as the week’s final day of classes wore on. Master San Marté chose that day to direct his lecture to her. She found herself arguing with him, disputing his claim that one could always determine the most ethical response to any situation. “Life is filled with ambiguities,” she insisted, thinking of the unethical spell she had agreed to attempt.

  “A situation seems ambiguous only because we do not perceive it clearly,” he said, teetering on his tiptoes. “Ambiguities are the result of taking a limited view, of failing to see an action in its full context.”

  “A limited view is all a mortal can have,” Tria objected. “Who but the gods know the full context of an action?”

  At which Master San Marté harrumphed, adjusted his toupee, and moved to the next point in his lecture. And when the hour ended and the students filed out, he bestowed on Tria a final cold and hostile stare.

  It was agony to sit through Mistress Dova’s class, see Oryon, and try to conceal her agitation. His face wore its usual smirk. She kept asking herself, Does he know what Lina and I are planning? Does his power let him spy on us and overhear everything we say? If it does, what will he do?

  Jittery and tense, she entered the Paths to Other Worlds class ill-prepared for the day’s lecture and wondering how she would manage to sit still and look attentive for the interminable hour.

  She greeted Aletheia, gave Petra a brief nod, and opened her notebook, though she knew she would take no notes.

  Irel came in and walked toward her seat by the far wall. As she passed Tria, she paused and a spasm contorted her rabbity features. Aletheia greeted the girl, but Irel gave no indication of having heard. Trembling violently, she sank into her seat and put her head on her desk.

  Aletheia hurried to her, rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, and bent to whisper something in her ear. Irel shook her head, shrugged off the sympathetic hand, and jumped up. She ran to Tria and shook a finger in her face. “No, no, no!” she cried in a shrill voice. With a final shrieked “No!” she turned and bolted from the room.

  Aletheia started after her, stopped at the door, and turned her head to call over her shoulder to her two remaining students, “I think it would be best to dismiss class today.” Then she raced after Irel.

  Too stunned to move, Tria stared at the empty doorway until beside her Petra asked, “Do you know what that was all about?”

  Tria looked into Petra’s anxious face. “I … maybe … I’m not sure.”

  Petra continued to hover. Unable to endure the girl’s curiosity and concern, Tria jumped up and, like Irel, dashed from the room.

  Badly shaken, she went upstairs and lay on her bed. Irel must have foreseen the summoning—and its results. And plainly she foresaw a disaster. She might tell Aletheia. Or Headmistress. Tria secretly hoped that she would and that someone would intervene and prevent them from performing the spell.

  She could not force herself to rise from the bed and go to Master Hawke’s class. Lina would wonder where she was. Also, she would face a stiff penalty for missing the class a second time in one week, but grades no lon
ger held any importance for her.

  She resolved to tell Lina about Irel and persuade her that they should abandon the attempted summoning. But Lina came bouncing in flourishing a human skull. “Here it is,” she announced, bubbling with triumph. “The last thing except for the dove. Master Hawke had it in a cabinet in his classroom. He opened the cabinet to get something else, and the skull was sitting on the shelf, grinning at me. After class I waited until everyone else left the room, picked the lock, and—behold! We’re meant to do this, Tria. Look how easily we’ve found all the materials.”

  Tria said nothing.

  Lina had found most of what they needed for the spell, but Tria had to snare the dove. Bundled in her fleece-lined woolen jacket, hands in her pockets, she walked along the road leading away from the school. It was a clear, cold, crisp day. Sunshine glinted off patches of snow scattered over the fields. Green sprigs poked through the barren ground. Tria wished she could keep walking—away from the school, away from the responsibility thrust on her.

  A dove cooed. The familiar, soothing sound froze Tria’s heart. She stopped; her eyes searched the field. A brown head bobbed up and down, finding seeds hidden beneath the snow. Watching it, Tria hoped she was wrong about having this talent. But she had to try.

  She gave an answering coo. Her power stretched forth, touching the dove, calming it, calling it to her. With a musical whir of its wings, it took to the air. Trustingly it landed on her outstretched hand.

  She eased it beneath her jacket and hurried back to the school. She climbed the steps to the second floor, cast a guilt-laden glance at the closed door of Headmistress’s office, and turned to go on to the third floor.

  Veronica stood at the foot of the steps. Holding tightly to the dove through the fabric of her coat, willing it to be silent, Tria nodded a greeting and tried to go around the little maid. Veronica edged over and blocked the way.