The Iron Trial Page 5

  “Let him go, Alastair,” said Master Rufus, his deep voice full of sadness.

  “No,” Call’s father said. “He’s my child. I have rights. I decide his future.”

  “No,” said Master Rufus. “You don’t.”

  Call’s father jerked back, but not fast enough. Call felt arms grabbing at him as two mages wrenched him out of his dad’s grip. His father was shouting and Call was kicking and pulling, but it didn’t make a difference as he was dragged over to where Aaron and Tamara stood. They both looked absolutely horrified. Call flung a sharp elbow out at one of the mages who was holding him. He heard a grunt of pain, and his arm got jerked up behind his back. He winced and wondered what all the parents in the bleachers, here to send their kids to aerodynamics school, were thinking now.

  “Call!” His father was being restrained by two other mages. “Call, don’t listen to anything they say! They don’t know what they’re doing! They don’t know anything about you!” They were dragging Alastair toward the exit. Call couldn’t believe what was happening.

  Suddenly, something glinted in the air. He hadn’t seen his dad’s arm pull free from the mages’ grip, but it must have. A dagger now soared toward him. It flew straight and true, farther than a dagger should be able to go. Call couldn’t take his eyes off it as it whirled at him, blade first.

  He knew he should do something.

  He knew he had to get out of the way.

  But somehow he couldn’t.

  His feet felt rooted to the spot.

  The blade stopped inches from Call, plucked out of the air by Aaron as easily as if he were plucking an apple off the low-hanging branch of a tree.

  Everyone was still for a moment, staring. Call’s father had been pulled through the far doors of the hangar by the mages. He was gone.

  “Here,” said a voice at Call’s elbow. It was Aaron, holding out the dagger. It wasn’t anything Call had ever seen before. It was a glinting silver color, with whorls and scrolls in the metal. The hilt was shaped like a bird with its wings outspread. The word Semiramis was etched along the blade in an ornate script.

  “I guess this is yours, right?” Aaron said.

  “Thanks,” said Call, taking the dagger.

  “That was your father?” Tamara asked under her breath, without turning her face toward him. Her voice was full of cool disapproval.

  Some of the mages were looking over at Call like they thought he was crazy and they could see how he got to be that way. He felt better with the dagger in his hand, even if the only thing he’d ever used a knife for was spreading peanut butter or cutting up steak. “Yeah,” Call told her. “He wants me to be safe.”

  Master Rufus nodded to Master Milagros and she stepped forward.

  “We’re very sorry for that disruption. We appreciate that you all remained in your seats and stayed calm,” she said. “We hope that the ceremony will proceed without any further delays. I will be selecting my apprentices next.”

  The crowd quieted again.

  “I have chosen five,” said Master Milagros. “The first will be Jasper deWinter. Jasper, please come down and stand by me.”

  Jasper rose and walked to his place beside Master Milagros, with a single hateful look in Call’s direction.

  THE SUN WAS beginning to set by the time all the Masters had picked their apprentices. Lots of kids had gone away crying, including, to Call’s satisfaction, Kylie. He would have traded places with her in a second, but since that wasn’t allowed, at least he got to really annoy her by being forced to stay. It was the only perk he could think of, and as the time to leave for the Magisterium drew closer, he was clinging to any comfort.

  Call’s father’s warnings about the Magisterium had always been frustratingly vague. As Call stood there, singed and bloody and soaked with blue ink, his leg hurting more and more, he had nothing to do but go back over those warnings in his mind. The mages don’t care about anyone or anything except advancing their studies. They steal children from their families. They are monsters. They experiment on children. They are the reason your mother is dead.

  Aaron tried to make conversation with Call, but Call didn’t feel like talking. He played with the hilt of the dagger, which he had stuck through his belt, and tried to look frightening. Eventually, Aaron gave up and started to chat with Tamara. She knew a lot about the Magisterium from an older sister who, according to Tamara, was the best at absolutely every single thing at the school. Troublingly, Tamara was vowing to be even better. Aaron seemed happy just to be going to magic school.

  Call wondered if he should warn them. Then he remembered the horrified tone in Tamara’s voice when she’d seen who his father was. Forget it, he thought. They could get eaten by wyverns traveling at twenty miles an hour and bent on revenge for all he cared.

  Finally, the ceremony was over, and everyone was herded out into the parking lot. Parents tearfully hugged and kissed their kids good-bye, loading them down with suitcases and duffel bags and care packages. Call stood around with his hands in his pockets. Not only was his dad not there to say good-bye to him, but Call didn’t have any luggage, either. After a few days with no change of clothes, he was going to smell even worse than he did now.

  Two yellow school buses were waiting, and the mages began to divide the students into groups according to their Masters. Each bus carried several groups. Master Rufus’s apprentices were put with Master Milagros’s, Master Rockmaple’s, and Master Lemuel’s.

  As Call waited, Jasper walked up to him. His bags were as expensive-looking as his clothes, with initials — JDW — monogrammed onto the leather. He had a sneer plastered on his face as he looked at Call.

  “That spot in Master Rufus’s group,” Jasper said. “That was my spot. And you took it.”

  Although it should have made him happy to annoy Jasper, Call was tired of people acting like getting picked by Rufus was some great honor. “Look, I didn’t do anything to make it happen. I didn’t even mean to get picked at all, okay? I don’t want to be here.”

  Jasper was shaking with rage. Up close, Call saw with bemusement that his bag, though fancy, had holes in the leather that had been carefully and repeatedly patched. Jasper’s cuffs were an inch or so too short, too, Call realized, as if his clothes were hand-me-downs, or he’d almost grown out of them. Call bet that even his name was a hand-me-down, to match the monogram.

  Maybe his family used to have money, but it didn’t seem like they had it anymore.

  “You’re a liar,” Jasper said desperately. “You did something. Nobody winds up getting picked by the most prestigious Master at the Magisterium by accident, so you can forget trying to fool me. When we get to school, I’m going to make it my mission to get that spot back. You’re going to be begging to go home.”

  “Wait,” Call said. “If you beg, they let you go home?”

  Jasper stared at Call as if he’d just spouted off a bunch of sentences in Babylonian. “You have no idea how important this is,” he said, gripping the handle of his bag so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “No idea. I can’t even stand to be on the same bus as you.” He spun away from Call, marching toward the other Masters.

  Call had always hated the school bus. He never knew who to sit next to, because he’d never had a friend along the route — or any friend, really. Other kids thought he was weird. Even during the Trial, even among people who wanted to be mages, he seemed to stand out as strange. On this bus, at least, there was enough space that he got a row of seats to himself. The fact that I smell like burning tires probably has something to do with that, he thought. But it was still a relief. All he wanted was to be left alone to think about what had just happened. He wished his dad had gotten him a phone when he’d begged on his last birthday. He just wanted to hear his father’s voice. He just wanted his last memory of his dad not to be of him being dragged away screaming. All he wanted to know was what to do next.

  As they pulled onto the road, Master Rockmaple stood and began talking about the
school, explaining that Iron Year students would be staying through the winter because it wasn’t safe for them to go home partially trained. He also told them how they’d work with their Masters all week, have lectures with other Masters on Fridays, and participate in some kind of big test once every month. Call found it hard to concentrate on the details, especially when Master Rockmaple listed the Five Principles of Magic, which all appeared to have something to do with balance. Or nature. Or something. Call tried to pay attention, but the words seemed to wash away before he could commit them to memory.

  After an hour and a half of driving, the buses pulled into a rest stop, where Call realized that in addition to not having luggage, he also didn’t have any money. He pretended not to be hungry or thirsty while everyone else bought candy bars and chips and soda.

  When they reboarded the bus, Call sat behind Aaron.

  “Do you know where they’re taking us?” Call asked.

  “The Magisterium,” Aaron said, sounding a little worried about Call’s brain. “You know, the school? Where we’re going to be apprentices?”

  “But where is it exactly? Where are the tunnels?” Call asked. “And do you think they lock us in our rooms at night? Are there bars on the windows? Oh, wait, nope — because there aren’t going to be any windows, right?”

  “Uh,” Aaron said, holding out his open bag of cheesy-garlic-bread-flavored Lays. “Chip?”

  Tamara leaned across the aisle. “Are you actually deranged?” she asked, not really like she was insulting him this time, but more like she honestly wanted to discuss it.

  “You do know that when we get there, we’re going to die, right?” Call said, loud enough for the whole bus to hear him.

  That was met with a resounding silence.

  Finally, Celia piped up. “All of us?”

  Some of the other kids snickered.

  “Well, no, not all of us, obviously,” said Call. “But some of us. That’s still bad!”

  Everyone was staring at Call again, except Master Rufus and Master Rockmaple, who were sitting up front and not paying any attention to what the kids were doing in back. Being treated like he was nuts had happened to Call more times that day than it had happened to him in his entire life, and he was getting sick of it. Only Aaron wasn’t looking at Call like he was crazy. Instead, he crunched a chip.

  “So who told you that?” he asked. “About us dying.”

  “My father,” said Call. “He went to the Magisterium, so he knows what it’s like. He says the mages are going to experiment on us.”

  “Was that the guy who was screaming at you at the Trial? Who threw that knife?” asked Aaron.

  “He doesn’t usually act like that,” Call muttered.

  “Well, he obviously went to the Magisterium and he’s still alive,” Tamara pointed out. She’d lowered her voice. “And my sister’s there. And some of our parents went.”

  “Yeah, but my mother is dead,” said Call. “And my father hates everything about the school. He won’t even talk about it. He says my mom died because of it.”

  “What happened to her?” Celia asked. She had a package of root beer gummies open on her lap, and Call was tempted to ask her for one because it reminded him of the sundae he was never going to get and also because she sounded kind, like she was asking him because she wanted him not to worry about the mages, rather than because she thought he was a raving weirdo. “I mean, she had you, so she didn’t die at the Magisterium, right? She must have graduated first.”

  Her question threw Call. He’d lumped it all together and hadn’t thought about the timeline much. There had been a fight somewhere, part of some magic war. His father had been vague about the details. What he’d focused on was how the mages had let it happen.

  When mages go to war, which is often, they don’t care about the people who die because of it.

  “A war,” he said. “There was a war.”

  “Well, that’s not very specific,” said Tamara. “But if it was your mother, it had to be the Third Mage War. The Enemy’s war.”

  “All I know is that they died somewhere in South America.”

  Celia gasped.

  “So she died on the mountain,” Jasper said.

  “The mountain?” asked Drew from the back, sounding nervous. Call remembered him as the one who had been asking about pony school.

  “The Cold Massacre,” said Gwenda. He remembered the way she’d stood up when she’d been chosen, smiling like it was her birthday, her many braids with their beads swinging around her face. “Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you heard of the Enemy, Drew?”

  Drew’s expression froze. “Which enemy?”

  Gwenda sighed with annoyance. “The Enemy of Death. He’s the last of the Makaris and the reason for the Third War.”

  Drew still looked puzzled. Call wasn’t sure he understood what Gwenda had said either. Makaris? Enemy of Death? Tamara looked back and caught sight of their expressions.

  “Most mages can access the four elements,” she explained. “Remember what Master Rockmaple said about us drawing on air, water, earth, and fire to make magic? And all that stuff about chaos magic?”

  Call remembered something from the lecture at the front of the bus, something about chaos and devouring. It had sounded bad then and it wasn’t sounding any better now.

  “They bring something from nothing and that’s why we call them Makaris. Makers. They’re powerful. And dangerous. Like the Enemy.”

  A shiver went down Call’s spine. Magic sounded even creepier than his father had said. “Being the Enemy of Death doesn’t sound that bad,” he said, mostly to be contrary. “It’s not like death is so great. I mean, who would want to be the Friend of Death?”

  “It’s not like that.” Tamara folded her hands in her lap, clearly annoyed. “The Enemy was a great mage — maybe even the best — but he went crazy. He wanted to live forever and make the dead walk again. That’s why they called him the Enemy of Death, because he tried to conquer death. He started pulling chaos into the world, putting the power of the void into animals … and even people. When he put a piece of the void into people, it turned them into mindless monsters.”

  Outside the bus, the sun was gone, with only a smear of red and gold at the very edge of the horizon to remind them how recently it had become night. As the bus trundled along, farther into the dark, Call could pick out more and more stars in the canopy of the sky out the bus window. He could pick out only vague shapes in the woods they passed — it was just leafy darkness and rock as far as Call could see.

  “And that’s probably what he’s still doing,” said Jasper. “Just waiting to break the Treaty.”

  “He wasn’t the only Makari of his generation,” said Tamara, as if telling a story she’d learned by rote or reciting a speech she’d heard many times. “There was another one. She was our champion and her name was Verity Torres. She was only a little older than we are now, but she was very brave and led the battles against the Enemy. We were winning.” Tamara’s eyes shone, talking about Verity. “But then, the Enemy did the most treacherous thing anyone could ever do.” Her voice dropped again so that the Masters up in the front of the bus couldn’t possibly hear. “Everyone knew a big battle was coming. Our side, the good magicians, had hidden their families and children in a remote cave so they couldn’t be used as hostages. The Enemy found out where the cave was and instead of going to the battlefield, he went there to kill them all.”

  “He expected them to die easily,” Celia added, jumping in, her voice soft. She’d obviously heard the story lots of times, too. “It was just kids and old people and a few parents with babies. They tried to hold him off. They killed the Chaos-ridden in the cave, but they weren’t strong enough to destroy the Enemy. In the end, everyone died and he slipped away. It was brutal enough that the Assembly offered the Enemy a truce and he accepted.”

  There was a horrified silence. “None of the good magicians lived?” asked Drew.

  “Everybody liv
es in pony school,” Call muttered. He was suddenly glad that he hadn’t had enough money to buy any food at the rest stop, because he was pretty sure he would have thrown it up now. He knew his mother had died. He even knew she’d died in a battle. But he’d never heard the details before.

  “What?” Tamara turned on him, icy fury on her face. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” Call sat back with his arms crossed. He knew from her expression he’d gone too far.

  “You’re unbelievable. Your mother died during the Cold Massacre, and you joke around about her sacrifice. You act like it was the mages’ fault instead of the Enemy’s.”

  Call looked away, his face hot. He felt ashamed of what he’d said, but he felt angry, too, because he should know about these things, shouldn’t he? His father should have told him. But he hadn’t.

  “If your mother died on the mountain, where were you?” Celia interrupted, clearly trying to make peace. The flower in her hair was still crumpled from her fall at the Trial, and one corner of it was slightly singed.

  “In the hospital,” Call said. “My leg was messed up when I was born and I was having an operation. I guess she should have just stayed in the hospital waiting room, even if the coffee was bad.” It was always like this when he was upset. It was like he couldn’t control the words coming out of his mouth.

  “You are a disgrace,” Tamara spat, no longer the chilly, restrained girl she’d been throughout the Trial. Her eyes danced with anger. “Half the legacy kids at the Magisterium have family who died on the mountain. If you keep talking that way, somebody’s going to drown you in an underground pool and no one will be sorry, including me.”

  “Tamara,” Aaron said. “We’re all in the same apprentice group. Give him a break. His mother died. He’s allowed to feel any way he wants about it.”

  “My great-aunt died there, too,” Celia said. “My parents talk about her all the time, but I never knew her. I’m not mad at you, Call. I just wish it didn’t happen to either of us. To any of them.”

  “Well, I’m mad,” said a guy in the back. Call thought his name might be Rafe. He was tall, with a thicket of curly dark hair, and he wore a T-shirt with a grinning skull on it that glowed a faint green in the dim light.