Pain like needles ran down my arm, radiating out into the muscles and bones, adding to an ache that had been building all morning.

The experience of forcing maja out through my hand was like exhaling until my chest bucked in pain, then continuing to exhale. It was stretching my fingers until my joints popped, and curling my feet until they cramped, and clenching my jaw so hard that my teeth broke, all at once, and somehow worse. Expelling maja felt like choosing to bleed.

My instincts told me that this was self harm. My body told me that I was spending my life. I put all those feelings aside and pushed on regardless. A feeling like sparks danced through my hand as I drew my finger through the air, telling me that something was working, even though the maja that was leaving me was invisible.

My maja only left my core reluctantly, trickling down my arm as a line of dark droplets before pooling at the end of my finger like blood oozing from a paper cut. I felt a slight resistance as I spooled out a spiderweb-thin line of concentrated magic, like my finger was a piece of chalk dragging against a slate board. The thread of maja left behind might have been invisible and intangible, but the real physical feeling of drag convinced me that something was happening.

The maja of my core felt cool to me, like damp ashes in the fireplace of a room where all the shutters were nailed shut. It was calm, peaceful, and relaxing. What I was trying to do with it now went against that feeling. I was throwing open the shutters and letting the breeze in. I was stoking the fire, and trying to catch the smoke.

I drew my hand through the air as the energy congealed at my fingertip, tracing the lines of the Winter Hearth canto in the air as quickly and accurately as I could, the flow of maja creating a slow, sickening tug that stretched from my hand to my heart as it left my body.

With a pained sigh, I drew the last line.

I felt the canto cohere and connect as a buzz of energy in the air. For a moment I could feel the maja circulating through it in an ever-accelerating loop, and then... it fizzled. The energy dispersed like a slap of cold water to the face. The canto faded into nothing, accomplishing nothing.

It was a full day after we’d arrived at the academy. I’d had a day of study in the library and hours of practice during the evening, but I was still failing every canto I tried to cast.

It wasn't my memory that was at fault. I'd been back to the library that morning to check, and I had it perfectly memorized. It had to be my rendition that was flawed.

No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't draw the canto out faithfully enough to get it to snap into the spell. It was maddening. I had the knowledge and the power, but I didn't have the skill. My lack of physical coordination was letting me down. If only I'd played more sports.

Though, having an audience didn't help. Adrian lay on his bed at the opposite side of the cell, watching me without comment.

He’d barely spoken since we’d arrived, just two or three words to tell me his name. Everything I knew about him I’d learned from observation.

He’d refused to wear the clothes they’d given us. He’d put on his gray robe just for long enough to wash the clothes he’d worn on the journey and make it back to the room. Now, his damp shirt and pants were hanging off the room’s desk to dry, while he lay in bed with the coarse blanket pulled up to his stomach.

I’d spotted old scars on his chest and forearms; thin white lines hiding under fair hair that I took to be nicks from a sword. He wasn’t much taller than I was, which was probably a sign that he’d grown up poor, but he’d filled out since then. His fortunes must have been improving, before he got drafted.

When I looked at him I saw a boy who’d won his way free from lowly beginnings through martial skill. He had the sword scars, and the muscle to match. Maybe he’d found a place in a city militia, or won a position as someone’s squire. He might even have been a criminal, a bandit, though from the innocent expression I’d glimpsed on his face when he didn’t know I was looking I doubted it.

He was staring at me now with an unreadable expression. His eyes were like blue stone, and his gaze was as heavy as stone. After a minute I realized he was silently judging me.

“What?” I said to him, letting my hand drop.

I wasn’t expecting a reply. He’d been morosely silent since we arrived. But after a while, he did reply.

“You’re desperate to be one of them,” he said.

He spoke with a Losirisian accent, making him my countryman. He was probably from somewhere in the Central Tablelands. He sounded sad, more than judgmental. I paused before replying. Did I really seem desperate?

“I want to learn magic,” I said. “It’s my only chance at being free one day.”

“Freedom?” he asked dully. “That's your reason for playing their game? Or is that just what you tell yourself?”

“It’s the truth.”

“It sounds like a lie,” he said. “The kind that a good person tells themselves so that they can do something evil.”

“Look, I’m only trying to cast a hearth spell.”

“You’re walking the path they laid out for you,” he countered. “As soon as you decide to follow, you’ll follow them to the end.”

I let go of the mass of maja in my chest, feeling it slump and relax, like a farm horse that’d just been let off the plough.

“Well, what’s your plan?” I asked him. “Starve to death in bed?”

He’d barely left bed since we’d moved into the cell the previous day, and I hadn’t seen him take any of the bread the soldiers had brought us at night or the oat cakes they’d left there this morning. I wasn’t even sure he’d had anything to drink. I felt a flash of concern that he might really have resigned himself to starving to death.

“I plan to keep my soul,” he said, then he lay back on the bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

I watched him for a minute, then got up, grabbed the extra oat cake I’d picked out for myself that morning, and walked over to his bed.

I held the cake out to him.

They were dry, unappetizing things, but I’d had worse. They were solid food.

He ignored the cake, staring up at the ceiling.

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I leaned over and jammed it into his mouth.

He yelped, waving a hand to push me away, but I was already stepping back.

He pulled the oat cake out of his mouth, shooting me a glare, but I noticed that a bite was already missing out of it.

I went back to sit on my bed.

When I called up my maja and began threading it down the length of my arm, it seemed less sluggish than before.

----------------------------------------

Our assignments arrived that afternoon.

I was sitting alone at one of the tables, halfway through a lunch of salt crackers when the messenger stepped into the barracks. His hands gripped the handles of a dark wooden box, and I had no doubt that our assignments were inside.

He was escorted by a pair of soldiers in black and silver felt brigantines. The soldiers carried their swords unsheathed, like they expected us to attack them.

The messenger marched into the room, placed the box on one of the tables, then pulled off the lid to reveal a neat stack of scrolls.

He pulled them out one by one, passing them off to the soldiers who handed them out, seemingly at random.

One of the soldiers approached me, a scroll in one hand, her naked sword in the other.

Her expression was blank. I couldn’t tell if she was going to stab me if I refused to take the scroll, or if the blade was just another level of psychological pressure, but either way it didn’t have any influence on my decision. I knew we’d be getting assignments, and I knew we’d be punished if we failed them. I’d already decided I’d do them.

I took the scroll and put it down on the table in front of me.

When everyone in the common room had been given a scroll, the messenger took the box into the corridor and started handing them out door to door, catching anyone who hadn’t been present in the common room.

I looked down at mine. It was a roll of simple white paper a hand’s width across, bound around a wooden rod by a length of brown twine.

I put down what was left of my cracker and picked it up.

After weeks away from Scribe Bevin’s study, my hand thrilled at the touch of the paper. It was soft, silky, and dry; the feeling of home, of quiet lessons and engaging work. I ran my hand across it before I even touched the string tying it closed.

It felt like linen paper, with a faint raised texture, stone beaten and cold pressed. It would crease well and ink readily, and wouldn't easily tear even when it was wet.

Realizing I was putting it off, I untied the cord and rolled the scroll out flat on the table.

My first assignment was written out across two lines.

At the base of the mountain, north of the road, by a lake in the shape of an amphora, a solitary ginsberry tree grows. Collect from it a pound of green leaves and bring them to Master Korphus in the Academy laboratory.

Below the description was an artful sketch of a broad tree with seeking hand-like roots, and beside that a diagram of a star-shaped leaf.

I reread it a couple of times, looking for a hidden meaning. I found none.

A pound of leaves.

It wasn’t a task that would strain the average Losirisian villager, let alone a sorcerous initiate. It certainly wasn't much of a test of my ability.

Was it a chore then?

I could understand a master who offloaded tedious tasks to their subordinates. They'd call it a test to put down their apprentice’s inevitable complaints.

Despite where I was, and how I was brought here, and exactly who was giving me this assignment, I felt disappointed.

I rolled the scroll back up. I thought I should just get it out of the way as fast as possible.

It was only just past midday, so there were still about seven hours of daylight left, and it wouldn’t take much more than two hours to get down to the base of the mountain.

Around the hall the other students were reading their assignments with varying degrees of relief, confusion, and despair. Every assignment must have been different from the rest. I wondered if they were all as mundane as mine.

I didn’t know what a ginsberry tree was, but if it was by a lake and there was only one, I’d probably be able to pick it out, especially if the picture was accurate.

There was no chance I’d be able to get my hands on a knife to help cut the leaves, but I needed a bag to hold them at the bare minimum.

As I looked around the common room and my eyes fell on the sack full of salt crackers the soldiers had dropped in the corner an hour ago.

So far, none of the other students had recognized the sack they brought food in as something that we might take and use for ourselves. The speech Master Cordaze had given when we arrived could even be construed to mean that I should take it. The first line of her Sovereign’s Path practically told me to, It is not to receive, but to take.

I stood up slowly and began making my way over to the sack.

It still had a small stack of crackers in the bottom. I took them out and put them on a nearby table, then bundled up the sack and pushed it under my tunic. A quick look around told me that nobody had seen me. They were all too caught up with their private thoughts about their assignments.

I headed for the door that led back to my cell.

I tried to catch a glimpse of someone else’s assignment over their shoulder as I left, but they heard me coming and turned around, shooting me a suspicious glare. I considered asking them what they’d been told to do, but given the general mood of the group, I didn’t think that would go anywhere. Maybe I could get Adrian to tell me his.

When I got back to our room, the other boy hadn’t even looked at his scroll. It was still tied shut, sitting on the desk. He didn’t look at me as I came in, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling above his bed. The oat cake I’d left him with was sitting on the floor in the corner, half eaten, as if he’d taken a few more bites then thrown it across the room.

“Aren’t you going to look at your assignment?” I asked.

There was a brief silence, before he said, “Why would I?”

I moved to my bed and sat down. I pulled out the twine I’d taken from my scroll and started tying it around the top corners of the sack to make a loop.

“Cordaze said they’d punish us if we failed two in a row,” I said, speaking while my hands worked.

“As if there’s anything left to punish me with.”

“I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “I wouldn’t want to put my imagination for punishments up against theirs.”

He didn’t reply to that, and I didn’t push it.

I was glad that he was at least talking now. Maybe after a few more days, he’d start to consider his situation and make his survival a priority.

I finished with the sack. Between scribe Bevin’s library and my spinner of a mother, I was as good with ropework as anyone back home, and with a few strategic plaits and knots I’d been able to turn the sack into a makeshift shoulder bag. With a knot in each corner of the sack to provide grip and the twine tied around them in a fisher’s hitch, it would sit on my shoulder without cutting, and the knot would hold strong even with a heavy load.

“Do you mind if I read it?” I asked, looking up from my work.

“I don’t think they’ll give you extra credit for doing two.”

“I just want to know what the other tasks are. Aren’t you interested in mine?”

Adrian’s response was to turn over and put his bare back to me, facing the wall.

I took that as tacit permission, and grabbed his scroll from the desk. It was identical to mine, except for the assignment written inside.

Pray to the goddess Ixilthan and report her response to Master Deisite in the tower’s command center. The following prayer may be used:

‘In the Hollow Depths I call to You, Ixilthan. In the holy light of tallowed foes I witness you, Ixilthan. In the eyeless sight of your keepers, I kneel to you Ixilthan. I care not for the sun. It is you I venerate. Ixilthan. Ixilthan. Ixilthan. Holy, holy, holy, Ixilthan; worthy of worship.’

It was bizarre. Another non-task. But this one couldn’t even be a chore. How would they even know whether Adrian had done it? They couldn’t listen in on someone’s private prayers. And to demand he get a response… Gods responding to mortal prayers was the stuff of fireside stories. At least, it was in Losiris. Maybe we’d just been praying to the wrong gods. Or the right ones.

I carefully rolled Adrian’s scroll back up and re-sealed it with its twine. I cast a glance at him as I put it back on the desk.

“Do you want to know what it says?” I asked.

“It won’t make any difference.”

“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to do it even if you knew what it said,” I told him. If he wasn’t even going to wear the clothes, there’s no way he’d claim to venerate some subterranean god, even as a lie.

I went back to my bed and pulled my makeshift bag over my shoulder, shifting it until it sat securely.

“Look, I’m going down to the foot of the mountain to gather some leaves,” I said. “I should be back by dark. If I’m not…”

Adrian rolled over in bed and shot me a look. “What? I should come and look for you?”

I stalled in my response. Back home I told people where I was going as a matter of habit, because in the village, if you tripped in the woods and sprained your ankle, then they would break out the search parties to find you.

Staring into Adrian’s hard glare, I knew that wouldn’t happen here.

I packed my assignment scroll and my reserve of salt crackers into my new bag and left the room.

I knew the route I’d have to take to make it down the mountain, but my task would force me to leave the academy. I didn’t know how I was going to convince the guards to let me out.