Gavon scratched his bristling beard for a prolonged time and stared straight ahead without glancing at her. He was too immersed in his thoughts to take notice of her. Ill at ease, she shifted her weight with a resolute sigh and wondered how long she needed to stay put like this for.

Sirahael left the freezing chamber an eternity ago, saying he had to attend to something important.

The Crown Prince also hinted that Gavon should take her to Mahgrad in his place and show her around. But half an hour or more had passed since then, and the dark-eyed mage had still not spoken a single word to her.

He either pretended she wasn’t there or he was truly blind to her mere existence! The silence itself didn’t bother her, though, since she was lost in thoughts as well, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Now it was clear why Sirahael assumed she would recognise him just by hearing his name and why he was so surprised when she didn’t.

But it was not this insight that was bothering her. What in the world was he doing in Lordôm if he were none other than the Crown Prince of Gartâr?

Surely, it was one thing to see a wizard do the unthinkable and be reckless, but it was quite another to witness the Crown Prince – the future king – barely make it out of the Land of the Beasts!

Who knew what would have happened if he had died that day and someone caught her with his morbidly stiff corpse? Surely, everyone – yes, absolutely every child of the Almighty – would suppose she had assassinated him!

She winced as the dark-eyed wizard advanced to the wooden door as quickly as lightning and as quietly as a mouse, running away like a coward. He had no intention of showing her Mahgrad or breathing the same air as her.

Still, she dashed after him and mustered up the courage to say the words she had been meaning to say ever since Sirahael left.

“I can go to Mahgrad myself if you just show me where it is, sir.”

Gavon came to a complete stop in front of the battered door, sniffing with such annoyance that she knew he didn’t like her approaching or speaking to him. He answered nonetheless and rolled his eyes. He wasn’t just saying them to scare her; that was certain. He meant every single word.

“What makes you think you can enter Mahgrad without me, you dull thing?”

She blinked. “Then, how do I—”

Gavon suddenly bolted out the doorway so unexpectedly that she almost tripped over her own feet and hit the grass headfirst trying to catch up with him. She would’ve smashed her brain out if not for her great and superior sorceress reflexes!

What was it about these wizards, she wondered, and always trying to run away from her? She caught her breath as Gavon finally slowed down despite all odds, then studied her surroundings. It had become night, and shady shadows shrouded everything in utter murk.

A slew of servants appeared in front of them shortly afterwards, greeting the master, who couldn’t keep his hands to himself as he walked past the giggling maidens.

Gavon, however, rather remarkably, she had to confess, tried to restrain himself whenever he peered over his shoulder and locked eyes with her so that he lost his lewd smile and cleared his throat.

Arlena took this opportunity to scan the otherwise sleeping castle, where only the knights on the parapet wall appeared to be awake, save for some servants crossing the bailey for reasons she didn’t know about.

She tried a few times to ask the wizard questions but soon figured he didn’t like it when she talked to him first, so she kept her thoughts to herself until they reached the keep.

That was also when Gavon asked her an unforeseen question himself, one she hadn’t thought of before, and it came right out of the blue.

“Tell me, what’s a keep for, boy?”

He pointed at the towering keep with mesmerised eyes. She followed his gaze and cocked her head. What’s up with him, she thought and shook her head.

“It’s Artam, my lord,” she replied, and she was about to answer his question too when she noticed how he scowled and the dreamy expression on his tanned face faded – especially when she said the last word.

“Lord?” he said. “There’s no lord here, lad, only masters and mages. But a child of the Queen, I dare say, must not know about such things.”

She dropped her eyes; her lips curled down, and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Anyone in her stead would think he enjoyed being called lord since he dressed as lavishly as the members of the aristocracy, but the dark-eyed wizard surprised her with his response.

“Now that you know that, tell me your answer, and,” Gavon looked her in the eyes for the first time with a funny expression on his face as he chafed both arms. “Will you please step on it? It’s bitingly cold!”

Arlena blinked, startled by how quickly the wizard’s hoarse, solemn voice changed pitch.

He was odd, to say the least, standing in front of the keep and rubbing his arms while looking around the bailey – literally hopping in the same spot like a rabbit to get his heart pumping while doing these funny poses at that!

She stifled a peal of escaping laughter and averted her gaze as she struggled to come up with an answer. It was easier said than done to ignore the strange sight of a grown-up making childish noises though.

“The keep is, uhm, the highest point in a castle and—”

“I wouldn’t say it’s always the highest point,” he interjected and then waved at her to continue. “What’re you waiting for? We don’t have all night, do we?”

She paused for a few seconds and avoided lifting her head or locking eyes with the wizard because she was utterly afraid of breaking into frantic laughter if she did.

“Uhm, so it’s not always the highest point, as you just said, sir, but it’s where—”

“You don’t have to repeat that, you nitwit.”

“Of course, sir, I mean mage. So, the keep is… the keep… So, what I mean is that—”

“No, this won’t do,” Gavon exclaimed as he flung the metal door open and tottered in. “I’ll tell you myself when we get down there. Come on, chop-chop, will you?”

The dark-eyed master shut the door as she entered the keep and made sure it stayed locked. With his back against the door, he kept hugging himself and murmuring in a hushed tone about something she couldn’t discern. He looks like a kid caught short, she thought, and now savours each second as if his life depended on it.

With a disapproving look on her face, she sighed and shifted her focus from his weird expressions to the inside of the keep. It was suffocatingly small, she noted, and devoured by shadows, save for a single torch that shone as brightly as it could in the middle.

Strange as it may seem, she didn’t notice the spiralling staircase to her right for a great while, since she needed some time to adjust to the darkness and shift her focus away from the funny-looking mage, who had yet to stop making faces.

The staircase was made of wood, as was everything else in Belzcakir, except for the keep’s metal door, which was likely heavier than the gatehouse door by the look of it. It led upwards and to the top of the keep but also downwards and into the unknown.

Stolen novel; please report.

She realised, a bit late, that the staircase was also adorned with an unending line of torches, casting their flickering light as far as her vision allowed.

Despite being the hideout for wizards, the keep was curiously serene and completely blanketed in darkness. Mahgrad was known for being a place where thousands of aspiring wizards studied sorcery and magic, so how come it was so quiet and eerie?

The torch in the middle flickered about as these thoughts crossed her mind and shimmered violently in place when she came within immediate reach. Gavon, who was trembling from the cold a second ago, yanked her away from the blaze with an alarmed look on his face at the drop of a hat.

Everything happened so quickly that she didn’t even realise he was digging his nails into her shoulder until he finally let go of her. He lost all colour in his hardened face, and his voice was fraught with dread, even though she knew not what had caused it.

“Do you want to put both of us in danger, child!?”

“Danger?” she repeated with a quizzical look.

Gavon gestured to the torch, which was now pointing directly at her. “Spells; there are more spells in this torch than what you’ll ever learn in a lifetime. The second it touches you, the entire guild will know you’re here.”

“But how—what’d you do to stop the spell?”

“I didn’t, “ he replied. “It’s confused, that’s all.”

“Confused?”

Gavon looked her straight in the eyes. “It’s confused because I’m here, because I’m with you. You’d not be spared if you had come here on your own.”

Arlena stared at the raging flames that hissed at her, ready to scorch her until she was no more. She shuddered. Her heart pounded and thumped in her chest as if it wanted to rip out of her. She gulped hard. What now, she thought, what should she do now?

“H- how am I supposed to get past it? If what you’re saying is right, then I—”

“Take it easy, kid. Sirahael told me to accompany you for a reason,” Gavon said. “I’ll teach you a spell, all right, but the spell will only last a few hours at a time, and you’ll have to cast another spell once the first one wears out. Do you understand so far?”

She nodded and shifted her gaze to the torch across the metal door as the mage approached it with wary steps.

“I’ll show you how it works with this one.” He then nodded towards the downwards spiralling staircase. “The other torches, if they react to you, you’ll have to take care of on your own.”

With her heart in her mouth, she observed as the wizard raised his hands and aimed them at the torch, encircling the dancing flames within his palms. It looked easy, but it was harder than the mage made it look.

He cast a glance around them to make sure no one was approaching, then began the spell. Much to her surprise, he directed his words of wisdom at the flames, which differed from how sorcery worked because it depended more on the words used than the will of the caster or the object subjected to the spell.

She recited the spell in her head and watched as the flames brightened and calmed down within mere seconds. The more he raised his voice, she noted, the quicker the flames subsided.

It worked! Gavon let his hands fall to the sides shortly after and proudly adjusted his azure cape as he pompously explained to her the things she had to look out for.

“One spell should suffice as long as the torches don’t move towards you, but that’s not always the case, and you should watch out for the apprentices—”

“Does it matter if I say the spell aloud or in my head, master?”

Gavon shook his head. ”There’s no difference at all. Of course, saying it out loud makes it easier to enchant the torches, but it only differs by a fraction of a second.”

After this brief explanation, they continued down the spiralling staircase for ages on end through the darkness. Most of the torches ceased to respond to her after this one spell, but as they approached the hideout and ventured deeper into the blackness, the spells grew more powerful and resilient.

Inevitably, Gavon’s spell would stop working at some point, and it did just that. They came to a standstill and exchanged gazes. Gavon raised his eyebrows as if to tell her to hurry.

“What you waiting for, lad?”

She pulled a half-hearted smile and said, “What if I mess it all up?”

“You’ve messed things up the very second you got here, son,” Gavon said. “It won’t get much worse than that, so step on it before I regret taking you down here.”

She paused for a moment before mustering up the courage to do as the master said. But as she approached the torch, the flames lurched and tilted towards her without warning. She backed away unwittingly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the dark-eyed mage cross his arms with an annoyed look, and she bit her lips and stepped forward to chant the spell the master taught her. For a moment, she could swear that the spell had lost its power and stopped working.

In a panic, she raised her voice until the spell streamed out of her as smoothly as a placid lake. The torch became still in that instance. A huge smile curled on her lips, and she glanced at the master with sparkling eyes, proud of herself for getting the spell right on her first try.

But the wizard, instead of acknowledging her miraculous feat, lowered his gaze and continued down the staircase, muttering something about them needing to get a move on. She grunted and followed the master with a bitter grin on her lips.

It wasn’t like praising her would hurt him, she reasoned, especially since the enchantment had worked on her first try!

As they continued to descend the spiralling stairs, she finally understood why the keep was so quiet. They were several miles down the keep by then, and only now did she hear a distant chatter come through the serenity.

It was at this very moment that Gavon continued their odd conversation about the keep, which she had already forgotten about, so it took a short while for her to comprehend what he was babbling about out of the blue.

“About the keep,” he said and looked over his shoulder. “It’s the safest place in Belzcakir. That’s all you need to know for now.”

She opened her mouth to inquire further, more curious about this place than ever before, but decided it was better to keep her curiosity to herself.

There was more to this place, this crammed keep, than what the mage let her in on, but she buttoned up and said no more of it. So they continued for a few more minutes without exchanging a single word until they reached the end of their arcane journey at the bottom of the winding staircase.

The faint din grew louder and drowned out their shallow breaths in the dark. The end of the staircase led to yet another narrow space with no doors, windows, or hatches – just boundless darkness and nothing else.

But the subtle chatter pervaded the entire keep, and she knew they were closer to Mahgrad than ever before.

Gavon studied her, which she noticed after a few seconds. He was concerned about something, that was as clear as day, but she couldn’t figure out what it was for the life of her – not until he broke the silence and voiced what bothered him.

He hesitated, she reasoned, he hesitated to show her the secret passage because of her identity. She was his foe. She was the child of the Queen and the nemesis of the Almighty. It was only natural that the dark-eyed wizard didn’t want to trust her or her intentions. So what made him bring her here despite all this?

“Few sorcerers remain since the uprising, where’d you learn to enchant?”

She broke into a cold sweat. “My mum taught me some basic spells, mage. She’s a good woman, and she only taught me what her own father taught her before the… before the persecution.”

She made an effort not to say ‘massacre.’ The thought of what had befallen her race was enough to make her see red. So, she dropped her eyes and avoided his persistent stare, hoping he would take a hint and say no more about the subject at hand.

But the mage pressed on, purposefully or not, to get a reaction out of her – at least, that was how it felt.

“It must’ve been a tough life to lead for your mother and you. It’s no simple thing to conceal the stench. How’d you come down the Céinai mountain without being caught?”

She glimpsed at him for a split second. ”My mum married a guard, sir. Being a widow with an infant still suckling at her breasts, she was doomed to die had she not. Don’t look at me like that; I don’t like being pitied, especially not by people who have led an easy life.”

Gavon was about to protest against her claims but ended up clamming up like a clam. His eyes showed a hint of tenderness. She wiped a tear from her cheek and turned her face away.

She hated this feeling of being vulnerable and pitied by those who had caused her misery. And she hated Gavon for making her shed tears this very second! He acted as if he cared, as if he genuinely understood how miserable she was, but it was only a pretence!

He didn’t know what it felt like to wish she was never born! All of this, everything that had happened to her, was because of the wizards who turned on her forefathers and slaughtered everyone who fought for Jewarta, which was rightfully theirs! She didn’t believe for a second that—Gavon advanced towards her.

Arlena jerked back a little, terrified that he meant to harm her, only to realise that the wizard had moved to the centre of the cramped space, right at her feet, where he crouched and unlocked an invisible hatch.

The hatch was rectangular and lacked handles, and as soon as Gavon used magic to lift it, an enormous chatter filled the silence and caught her off guard. He didn’t chant a spell to unlock the invisible entrance to Mahgrad. He simply put his hand above the hatch and gently raised it in the air as a sharp, amber-coloured light emancipated from his palm like a thousand fireflies trapped under his skin.

It was a surprising mixture of magic and sorcery: the will of the caster merged with the power of the glistening light. This, she thought while gaping wide, must be the reason magic was superior to sorcery. It was enticing, and it was powerful. It was something she had never witnessed before.

Gavon beamed as he saw her awestruck expression, smiling so gently that she understood why the servants, male or female, looked at him with such doe-like eyes. Her heart skipped a beat, and she dropped her eyes only to catch him gesturing for her to look down.

Arlena followed his pearl-black eyes and stared down through the hatch as numerous apprentices, scholars, and masters appeared before her naked eyes, oblivious to her and her master’s presence above them.

She raised her eyes to the wizard, awestruck and gaping wide, as he said the following with a glint in his eyes:

“Welcome to Mahgrad, Artam.”