25th Orovost, 998 NE
‘In relation to the Third Law of Harmonic Ideals, explain an approach one might use in order to avoid annihilating oneself when in danger of tapping surplus energy into one’s construct.’
Principle of Effi-cacious Drawing, he thought, and scribbled his answer on the page. See, I still need you, Fin.
He glanced up from his desk. Ithilya was there at the front of the chamber, scrawling something in chalk on the blackboard, and the white radiance of the globes illuminated everything in the blue-walled, tile-floored classroom. Every scratch of the students’ ensorcelled pens, every scrape of the arch-wizard’s chalk was rendered in perfect clarity. Yet he heard nothing, saw nothing.
For five seconds he stared into space – stared at Fin’s face – imagined her death for the thousandth time…
Why won’t my power come?
Then he loosed the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding and returned his eyes to the question sheet.
When the two hours were over, Ithilya rang the small bell that sat upon her desk. Yawns rippled across the room – it was nine o’ clock, and most of them had been hard at work revising around their chores all day.
“Very good, class. You will leave your answers here,” she indicated the corner of her table. “Success will be rewarded with greater challenges. Failure will be tolerated – only to a point. I shall see each of you with your results.” And then she said the words that were their dismissal: “Praise be to Locus.”
“Praise be to Locus,” they echoed, gathering their things and getting to their feet.
It didn’t take her two hours to arrive at Aramas’s room.
“You have both passed, almost with distinction,” she said after Cull opened the door for her and invited her in. “I am impressed, I must admit. I had thought you might be amongst those I… would need to tolerate.” The older woman offered a rare smile, the lines around her mouth crinkling. “In my discipline, there are only two more stages before you might begin journeyman preparation.”
“Thanks, Ithilya,” Cull said, smiling.
Aramas just nodded his gratitude, doing his best to match his friend’s expression, but his eyes were on the floor at the archmage’s feet.
“You have taken in Fintwyna’s pet,” Ithilya observed, glancing at Wendy beside Aramas’s cot. “None of the other druids wished to mind her?”
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‘Mind’ her… Like Fin’s ever coming back…
“She… she doesn’t move much,” Aramas offered by way of explanation.
“She’s just delightful,” Cull grated out.
Ithilya merely shrugged. “I have heard from Vardae.”
“From… Vardae?” Cull asked heavily.
Clearly the memory of the arch-diviner pointing at him and saying ‘Kill that one’ was sticking with him.
“With regard to the druid’s defeat.”
Aramas looked up at last.
“What – what happened?” He heard the iciness, the demand in his own tone and couldn’t hold it back. “And who was it? Who killed her?”
“It was indiscernible; there was divination interference, somehow, although no recognised diviners of note were on the scene. Winterprince was there of course, and a number of magisters, when it ended. For the most part, however, it was surely the defeater of the Cannibal Six, the new champion Feychilde, with whom Fintwyna contended. About that there can be no disagreement, no variation in the scrying.”
Feychilde.
More than the mystery of this place, more than the fear of the constant danger in here or the vigilant champions out there, Fintwyna was what made him want to stay.
Now she was gone, and this was where he had met her. Before, there might’ve been a chance he’d have left – if she’d gone, he might’ve followed her. But now there was nowhere else to see her, no place for her ghost but the rooms in which he already spent his days.
He would come into his inheritance. He would see her, speak with her again, one way or another.
“She will be avenged upon Feychilde’s corpse,” he choked, shuddering.
“Who is Feychilde?” Cull said, looking from Ithilya to Aramas.
Aramas just shrugged. He didn’t care; it wasn’t like it mattered. This Feychilde would kill him, or he would kill Feychilde. Either way, the survivor wouldn’t have long to live before the days of doom were upon them.
“An arch-sorcerer, of Sticktown –“
Aramas started to laugh. “An arch-sorcerer! This just keeps gettin’ better.”
Cull raised his eyebrows. “You can’t fight an arch-sorcerer –“
“Not yet, he cannot,” Ithilya cut in. “And still, I would have him ready for the moment the weight of his fate comes upon him.” She surveyed the both of them, hands on her hips. “You each show the promise of accomplishment in days to come. I shall have Liebor and Ibaran come instruct you, Aramas; and you, Cullimo, may listen and glean much you would not otherwise – your rota permitting.”
Ithilya left them, but before she closed the door Aramas caught the sound of her murmuring, “Goodnight, Wendy,” and he found himself smiling as he slipped into sleep a few minutes later.
He fell straight-away into a deep dream, and for once there were no dragons the size of city-blocks; just the spiders and their reborn mistress, and Ithilya, his new mother. The three of them were together, alone in a black forest under darkness.
No, not quite alone – he laid the body of his enemy on the ground, a black-robed, black-masked champion, ready to be interred in the dirt.
Fin clung to him and he to her – she praised him, thanked him, and whispered that he had not finished.
The earth hungered yet he denied the earth its hunger, and raised his fingers, making the champion’s lifeless flesh dance – then Cull was there, and Cull was laughing, pointing at the corpse and laughing.
When the two adepts arrived the following afternoon to offer him instruction in the finer points of sorcery, they took one look at Aramas’s face before turning to each other and nodding in approval.
* * *