L glyph [https://i.imgur.com/2vwU4yB.png]

The Arcanum was quiet, grey and still in the morning light. Deserted, one might think. In an hour, boys would rush through the gates and fill the Campus with their noise and bustle, but for now, Lorie was alone.

She stood outside the Library. Above the closed doors a carved depiction of Sophia, Light of Divine Knowledge, gazed sternly into infinity. Inside lay every book ever written on the arcane arts, and one of them, surely, must explain what she could do. Her ability wasn’t likely to be unique — in hundreds of years of arcane study and practice, someone must have done something similar, and someone must have written about it. All she had to do was find the right book.

Lorie tugged on the wrought iron handle. The door opened smoothly and she stepped inside.

A huge cavern of a room stretched before her, silent and gloomy. Ranks of shelving stood like soldiers, divided by shadowed alleys. Nothing moved but dust motes drifting in the air.

Lorie crept forward. She had never seen so many books, nor imagined so many might exist in the world. There must be hundreds — thousands — an excessive superfluity of the written word. What in the Light could people have found so much to write about? Surely they would have run out of things to say before filling half these pages.

Not knowing where to start, she wandered into the shelves at random. The smell of leather and old paper engulfed her. She pulled a book from the shelf and opened it to the title page: On Ye Practyce of Alchemy said the spidery letters. Dust tickled her nose. She returned it to the shelf.

With so many books, they must be organised somehow, or no one would ever find anything. But how? Alphabetically? By subject matter?

She walked further along the shelves. Some of the books had titles on their spines in gilt lettering: The Language of Angels; Glyphs of the Heretic Maxim; On the Evocation of Elemental—

‘Hey. You, girl — what are you doing in here?’

She started. A black-robed scriver glared at her. He was a young man, with a pale bony face and darting eyes.

‘I—I’m a student,’ she said. ‘I just wanted—’

He frowned. ‘You’re a girl.’

‘Yes, I—’

‘Get out,’ he snapped. ‘You aren’t allowed in here. These books are very valuable. Out.’

She scurried away, past The Creation of Homunculi and Exorcism of Demons. When she reached the end of the aisle, she glanced back. The scriver had turned and was walking away.

From the sea of worn brown leather bindings, a book title leaped out at her: Summoning of Elemental Powers. She grabbed it. Clutching her prize to her pounding heart, she ran out of the Library, into the Campus.

It was still quiet. There was no one to see her, no one to accuse her of being a thief. Not that she was a thief — she had only borrowed the book. She had every intention of returning it. First, though, she had to find somewhere to read where she wouldn’t be disturbed.

With the book tucked under her arm, she padded across the Campus to the Gymnasium and slipped into one of the small classrooms used only by the senior students. Dark green floor-length curtains framed large windows overlooking the little garden. Four chairs surrounded a round table, and an easel blackboard stood in the corner.

She sat down and flipped open the book.

A few minutes reading were enough to convince her she’d chosen the wrong book. It seemed to be a mix of historical anecdotes and speculation, nothing practical.

From the scattered remains left behind, we may assume the people known as the Forerunners had developed the arcane arts to a high degree. All glyphs known to the modern practitioner were discovered — or rediscovered — from investigations of Forerunner artefacts.

According to certain legends, the Forerunners practiced the evocation of demonic and angelic Powers, and finally constructed their own Powers to more aptly serve their needs. The greatest of these Powers was named the Demogorgon. One story blames the Demogorgon for the disaster known as the Cataclysm, which created the Circle Sea and destroyed the Forerunner civilisation, though whether this has any factual foundation is highly doubtful.

Which was interesting, but had no bearing on her problem. This book — or any other plucked randomly from the Library — wouldn’t help. She closed the book and set it aside.

If the answer wasn’t to be found in a book, what then?

She could summon a salamander her own way, which felt natural and easy. The method taught by the Arcanum felt unnatural and wrong. Perhaps for her, it was wrong. But the new glyphs she was learning did seem useful — if only she could combine them with her natural ability.

Why not try? No harm in that. Just try and see what happens.

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Try what though? Summoning a salamander was too easy. Something fire-based, but small… She remembered, once in Sark on Sammael’s-day eve, there had been a display of Alchemist’s Candles in the square. The flickering showers of coloured sparks had lit up the dark so prettily.

Her mind leaped to the glyphs to use: flame, summoning, control… but what if she added more glyphs? If she added aleph, could she make the salamander adopt an animal form?

Why not try?

She settled back and closed her eyes. Breathing easily, she focused on her chosen glyphs. The symbols burned in her mind.

That’s it. Good.

Come. I’m ready.

Warmth filled her, and a giddy sense of joy. The salamander’s awareness tickled the edge of her mind. It was playful and curious — nothing to fear. She just had to show it what she wanted, then let it go.

It’s so easy.

A drowsy comfortable contentment held her in place, as one feels sometimes on waking from a good sleep. She opened her eyes and smiled.

The salamander had taken the form of a kitten, a cute, fluffy little fire kitten with long sparking whiskers and eyes like hot embers. It sat in a nest of flames.

It was sitting on the book.

‘No!’ She snatched up the burning book and batted out the flames with her hands.

The leather binding was scorched, the pages charred. She threw it on the table and looked round for the fire-kitten.

It was half way up the curtains. Flames licked at the edge of the material. Even as she watched in horror, the kitten scrambled higher and the dark green fabric smouldered behind it.

Lorie pounced and grabbed it. ‘Ow, ow, ow,’ she hissed — it was like a holding a hot ember from a fire, but she couldn’t let go. It was her summoning, her fault. She squeezed tight until the fire-kitten popped out of existence.

The curtains were still burning. In desperation, she ripped down the material and stamped on it until the fire was out.

She sagged back into the chair, staring at the ruined book. Her hands were red and stinging with small burns. The curtains were ruined. But the book… books were expensive. A scriver would have worked for months to create this copy. It might be the only one in the world, for all she knew.

This was awful. She had stolen a book, and then to compound her crime, she’d destroyed it. If the Masters knew what she’d done, they’d certainly throw her out of the Arcanum. They hadn’t wanted her here in the first place. They’d be only to glad to eject her. Maybe they’d punish her too.

Tears pricked her eyes. She felt sick and cold. From outside came the distant murmur of many voices and running feet. School was starting, and if she didn’t show up, people would wonder where she was.

Quick. No one will know it was you.

Impulse drove her to her feet. She ran out of the door and down the corridor, straight into a tall boy coming the other way.

She backed away, blinking back tears. ‘Sorry. I’m so sorry.’

It was Phin, she realised. He smiled. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit—’

‘I’m fine. Just late for class. Sorry.’ She brushed past him and strode away.

Dread pursued her. Phin had seen her, he’d seen she was upset. If he found out about the burnt book and the burnt curtains, what would he think? He’d know it was her, he must. What would he do? Would he tell the Masters? He was a friend, sort of, but she couldn’t ask him to cover up something as bad as this. He wouldn’t, anyway… would he?

Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Simon was warm, very warm, and horizontal. A constant dull grinding roar surrounded him, accompanied by tooth-rattling vibration. The air smelled flatulent and stale.

Oh. He was in the snowcrawler. And unless this was one of Sammael’s lesser-known hells, he was alive. That was unexpected.

‘So you’re awake.’

He opened his eyes to see Riga staring at him from the bunk opposite. Rage flooded him. If he’d had the strength, he would have launched himself at her throat. Instead, his body jerked spasmodically, and he said: ‘You tried to kill me!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said.

Jonas appeared. ‘What’s going on? Simon, calm down.’

‘Calm down?’ Simon glared at him. ‘That bitch tried to murder me. She threw me down the shaft.’

‘He’s confused,’ Riga said. ‘I told you what happened. I went back to help him and he was gone. He must have fallen.’

‘Riga,’ Jonas said. ‘Give us a minute, will you?’

She shrugged and made her way forward.

Jonas sat on her bunk. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Beaten and burnt. Like a half-cooked steak.’ Simon subsided. He didn’t have enough energy to remain angry. ‘What happened?’

‘I got to the lift cage first, then Riga arrived, and I realised you weren’t with us. She said she’d gone back for you but you’d disappeared. She wanted me to signal Vikki. I wanted to wait for you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. I got the signal ready, anyhow, and then I heard yelling. I look down, you’re hanging from the chain screaming about the explosive. Well, I thought, damn, that’s going to kill us all, but I assumed you knew that as well as I did. So I aimed a fire-bolt straight down.’

‘You survived though.’

‘Oh, yeah. Shaken, but the cage protected us from the worst of it. Then would you believe it, I look out, and you’re still hanging there like the world’s ugliest rotisserie. So I got Riga to help drag you in, and then hey-ho, we’re off for the surface. You’ve been out of it since then.’

‘How long?’

‘Two days.’ Jonas fished under the bunk and pulled something out to show him: a scrap of black leather, and two twisted, blackened bits of what had once been intricately jointed steel.

Simon looked at his hands, the left red and blistered, the right with its ugly stumps. The loss of the steel fingers hurt more than the burns. ‘No sign of stone-wyrms?’

‘No, praise the Light. We got out pretty quick though. I didn’t fancy hanging round.’

‘Jonas.’ Simon turned onto his side. His chest and back ached dully. ‘I saw someone, in the mine. One of the miners. He controlled the wyrms.’

Cal had stood at the bottom of the shaft, glowing with phosphorescent light… Simon shuddered. He didn’t want to believe what he’d seen, yet it made sense. The destruction of Sark, the deaths, were horrid — but it was a human sort of horridness, a human cruelty.

Only how could Cal, of all people, have wielded such Power? He wasn’t an Adept. Perhaps he could read, barely, and he might have seen the tomb inscription…

Simon swallowed. It wasn’t impossible: if the glyph sequence was designed to do so, it could work on any reader, over time — rewriting his mind until capable of summoning the Power.

Of course, someone like Cal would be quite, quite mad by that stage.

‘The explosion must have killed him,’ Simon said. If not, he doubted they would have survived to escape.

‘Lucky, if you’re right.’

‘Sark wasn’t lucky. That tomb inscription turned an unremarkable young miner into a walking catastrophe. And that’s what Holomy recorded in his book. That’s what we’re taking back to Athanor. Can you imagine what this might do in the wrong hands?’

Jonas looked grave. ‘I don’t know what to make of all this. Thankfully, we have a few days travel left. Rest and get your strength back. Time enough to figure this out later.’