The Iron Trial Read online

  “Go ahead,” said Master Rufus. “Get in.”

  Aaron scrambled into the first of the boats, reaching out his hand to help Call inside. Resentfully, Call took it. Tamara got in behind them, looking a little nervous herself. As soon as she was settled, Master Rufus stepped into the boat.

  “This is the most common way we get around the Magisterium, using the underground rivers. Until you can navigate, I will take you through the caves. Eventually, each of you will learn the paths and how to coax the water to take you where you want to go.”

  Master Rufus leaned over the side of the boat and whispered to the water. There was a soft ripple across the surface, as if the wind had stirred it, even though there was no wind underground.

  Aaron leaned forward to ask another question, but all at once, the boat began to move and he fell back into his seat.

  Once, when Call had been a lot younger, his father had taken him to a big park with rides that started like this. He’d cried through all of them, totally terrified, despite the cheerful music and the animated dancing puppets. And those had been rides. This was real. Call kept thinking about bats and sharp rocks and how, sometimes, in caves, there were cliffs and holes that dropped down like a million feet below sea level. How were they going to be able to avoid stuff like that? How were they going to know if they were going the right way in the dark?

  The boat cut through the water, into darkness. It was the darkest darkness Call had ever experienced. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. His stomach lurched.

  Tamara made a tiny sound. Call was glad it wasn’t just him who was freaked out.

  Then, all around them, the cave came to glowing life. They passed into a room where the walls shimmered with pale, bioluminescent green moss. The water itself turned to light where the prow of the boat touched it; when Aaron dragged his hand through the river, it lit around his fingers, too. He flicked water into the air and it transformed into a cascade of sparks. “Cool,” Aaron breathed.

  It was kind of cool. Call started to relax as the boat slipped silently through the glowing water. They passed walls of rock striped in dozens of colors, and rooms where long pale vines hung from the ceiling, trailing tendrils in the river. Then they would slide again into a dark tunnel and emerge into a new stone chamber where quartz stalactites sparkled like knife blades, or where the stone seemed to grow naturally into the shapes of curved benches, even tables — they passed two silent Masters in one chamber, playing checkers with pieces that flew through the air. “Got you!” said one of them, and the wooden discs started to rearrange themselves, resetting the board to the beginning.

  As though it were being steered by some invisible hand, the boat docked itself near a small platform with stone steps, rocking gently in place.

  Aaron was out of the boat first, followed by Tamara, and then Call. Aaron reached out a hand to help him, but Call deliberately ignored it. He used his arms to flip himself over the side of the boat, landing awkwardly. For a moment, he thought he was going to fall backward into the river, making a huge bioluminescent splash. A large hand clamped down on his shoulder, steadying him. He looked up in surprise to see Master Rufus watching him with a strange expression.

  “I don’t need your help,” Call said, startled.

  Rufus said nothing. Call couldn’t read his expression at all. He took his hand off Call’s shoulder.

  “Come,” he said, and stalked up a smooth path that cut through the pebbly shore. The apprentices scrambled to follow.

  The path led up to a blank granite wall. When Rufus put his hand to the stone, it turned transparent. Call wasn’t even surprised. He’d come to expect weirdness. Rufus walked through the wall as if it were made of air. Tamara ducked after him. Call looked at Aaron, who shrugged. Taking a deep breath, Call followed.

  He emerged into a chamber whose walls were bare rock. The floor was completely smooth stone. In the center of the room was a pile of sand.

  “First, I wish to go over the Five Principles of Magic. You may remember some of these from your first lecture on the bus, but I don’t expect any of you — even you, Tamara, no matter how many times your parents have drilled you — to truly comprehend them until you have learned many more things. You may write these down, however, and I do expect you to think on them.”

  Call scrambled with his pack and tugged out what appeared to be a hand-stitched notebook and one of those annoying pens from the Trial. He shook it lightly, hoping it wasn’t going to explode this time.

  Master Rufus began to speak and Call scrambled to transcribe fast enough. He wrote:

  1. Power comes from imbalance; control comes from balance.

  2. All elements act according to their nature: Fire wants to burn, water wants to flow, air wants to rise, earth wants to bind, chaos wants to devour.

  3. In all magic, there is an exchange of power.

  4. You can change a thing’s shape, but not its essential nature.

  5. All elements have a counterweight. Fire is the counterweight of water. Air is the counterweight of earth. The counterweight of chaos is the soul.

  “During the tests,” said Master Rufus, “all of you displayed power. But without focus, power is nothing. Fire can either burn down your house or warm it; the difference is in your ability to control the fire. Without focus, working with the elements is very dangerous. I don’t need to tell some of you just how dangerous.”

  Call looked up, expecting to be the one who Master Rufus was staring at, since Master Rufus seemed to always be looking at Call when he said something ominous. This time, however, he was looking at Tamara. Her cheeks flushed and her chin went up defiantly.

  “Four days a week, you three will train with me. On the fifth day, there will be a lecture by one of the other mages, and then, once a month, there will be an exercise in which you will put what you have learned to use. On that day, you may find yourselves either competing against or working with other apprentice groups. Weekends and nights are yours for practice and further study. There is the Library as well as practice rooms, and the Gallery, where you can waste time. Do you have any questions for me before we begin your first lesson?”

  No one spoke. Call wanted to say something about how he’d love some directions to that Gallery place, but he held himself back. He remembered telling his father back at the hangar that he was going to get himself thrown out of the Magisterium, but he’d woken up that morning with the sinking feeling that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Trying to flunk the tests in front of Rufus hadn’t worked, after all, so acting out might not either. Master Rufus clearly wasn’t going to let him communicate with Alastair until Call settled in as an apprentice. As much as it galled him to do it, he probably had to be on his best behavior until Rufus relaxed and let him contact his father. Then, when he could finally talk to Alastair, they’d plan his escape.

  He just wished he felt a little more enthusiastic about running away.

  “Very well. Can you guess why I’ve set up the room this way, then?”

  “I’m guessing you need help fortifying your sand castle?” muttered Call under his breath. Even his best behavior apparently wasn’t all that good. Aaron, standing beside him, stifled a laugh.

  Master Rufus raised a single brow but didn’t otherwise acknowledge what Call had said. “I want you three to sit in a circle around the sand. You can sit any way that you’re the most comfortable. Once you’re ready, you must concentrate on moving the sand with your mind. Feel the power in the air around you. Feel the power in the earth. Feel it rise up through the soles of your feet and in the breaths you take. Now focus it. Grain by grain, you are going to separate the sand into two piles — one dark and one light. You may begin!”

  He said it like they were in a race and he’d given them the green light, but Call, Tamara, and Aaron just stared at him in horror. Tamara was the first to find her voice.

  “Separate out the sand?” she said. “But shouldn’t we be learning something more useful? Like
fighting rogue elementals or piloting the boat or —”

  “Two piles,” said Rufus. “One light, one dark. Start now.”

  He turned around and walked away. The wall became transparent again as he approached it, then turned back to stone as he passed through.

  “Don’t we even get a tool kit?” Tamara called sadly after him.

  The three of them were alone in a room with no windows and no doors. Call was glad he didn’t have claustrophobia or he’d be chewing off his own arm.

  “Well,” said Aaron, “I guess we should start.”

  Even he didn’t manage to say it with any enthusiasm.

  The floor was cold when Call sat and he wondered how long it would be before the dampness made his leg ache. He tried to ignore this thought as Tamara and Aaron sat down, making a triangle around the sand pile. They all stared at it. Finally, Tamara stuck out her hand, and some sand rose into the air. “Light,” she said, sending a grain spinning toward the floor. “Dark.” She sent that one on the floor, too, a little distance away. “Light. Dark. Dark. Light.”

  “I can’t believe I was worried magic school was going to be dangerous,” Call said, squinting at the sand pile.

  “You could die of boredom,” said Aaron. Call snickered.

  Tamara looked up at them miserably. “The thought of that is the only thing that’s going to keep me going.”

  As difficult as Call had imagined it to be to move tiny grains of sand with his mind, it was even harder than that. He remembered the times he’d moved things before, how he’d accidentally broken the bowl during his exam with Master Rufus and how it had felt like a buzzing in his mind. He concentrated on that buzzing while he stared at the sand, and it started to move. It felt a little like he was operating a device with a remote control — it wasn’t his fingers picking up the sand, but he was still making it happen. His hands felt clammy and his neck strained — making a single grain hover in the air for long enough to see whether it was light or dark was tricky. Even worse was setting it down without messing up the pile already there. More than once, his concentration slipped and he dropped a grain into the wrong pile. Then he had to find it and pull it back out, which took time and even more concentration.

  There were no clocks in the sand room, and neither Call nor Aaron nor Tamara were wearing watches, so Call had no idea how much time was passing. Finally, another student showed up — he was tall and lanky, dressed in blue, with a bronze wristband that indicated he’d been at the Magisterium three years. Call thought he might have been sitting with Tamara’s sister and Master Rockmaple in the Refectory that morning.

  Call squinted at him to see if he looked particularly sinister, but he just grinned from under a tangle of messy brown hair and dropped a burlap bag of lichen and cheese sandwiches, along with an earthenware pitcher of water, at their feet. “Eat up, kids,” he said, and headed out the way he’d come.

  Call realized he was starving. He’d been concentrating for hours and his brain felt fuzzy. He was exhausted, much too tired to make conversation as he ate. Worse, as he studied the remaining sand, they’d made it only a small part of the way through the pile. The heap that remained seemed enormous.

  This was not flying. This wasn’t what he’d pictured when he’d imagined doing magic. This stank.

  “Come on,” Aaron said. “Or we’re going to have to eat dinner down here.”

  Call tried to concentrate, focusing his attention on a single grain, but then his mind slipped sideways into anger. The sand exploded, all the piles flying sideways, grains splashing the walls and settling into a giant, unsorted mess. All of their hard work was undone.

  Tamara sucked in her breath in horror. “What — what did you do?”

  Even Aaron looked at Call like he was going to strangle him. It was the first time Call had ever seen Aaron look angry.

  “I — I —” Call wanted to say he was sorry, but he bit down on the words. He knew they wouldn’t matter. “It just happened.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Tamara said very calmly. “I am going to sort your guts into piles.”

  “Uh,” said Call. He kind of believed her.

  “Okay,” Aaron said, taking big calming breaths, hands in his hair, like he was trying to press all that rage back into his skull. “Okay, we’re just going to have to do it all over again.”

  Tamara kicked the sand, then crouched down and began the tedious work of moving single grains with her mind. She didn’t even look in Call’s direction.

  Call tried to concentrate again, eyes burning. By the time Master Rufus came and told them they were free to go to dinner and then back to their rooms, Call’s head was pounding and he’d decided he never wanted to go to the beach ever again. Aaron and Tamara wouldn’t look at him as they made their way through the corridors.

  The Refectory was full of kids chatting away amicably, a lot of them giggling and laughing. Call, Tamara, and Aaron stood in the doorway behind Master Rufus and stared blearily ahead of them. All of them had sand in their hair and dirt streaks on their faces. “I will be eating with the other Masters,” Master Rufus said. “Do as you like with the rest of your evening.”

  Moving like robots, Call and the others gathered up food — mushroom soup, more piles of different-colored lichen, and an odd opalescent pudding for dessert — and went over to sit at a table with another clump of Iron Year students. Call recognized a few of them, like Drew, Jasper, and Celia. He sat down across from Celia, and she didn’t immediately dump her soup on his head — a thing that had actually happened at his last school — so that seemed like a good sign.

  The Masters sat together at a round table across the room, probably brainstorming new tortures for the students. Call was sure he could see several of them smiling in a sinister way. While he was watching, three people in olive green uniforms — two women and a man — came through the doorway. They bowed shallowly to the table of Masters.

  “They’re Assembly members,” Celia informed Call. “It’s our governing body, set up after the Second Mage War. They’re hoping one of the older kids turns out to be a chaos mage.”

  “Like that Enemy of Death guy?” Call asked. “What happens if they find chaos mages? Do they kill them, or what?”

  Celia lowered her voice. “No, of course not! They want to find a chaos mage. They say it takes a Makar to stop a Makar. As long as the Enemy is the only one of the Makaris alive, he has the advantage over us.”

  “If they even think someone here has that power, they’ll check it out,” said Jasper, moving down so he was closer to the discussion. “They’re desperate.”

  “No one believes that the Treaty will last,” said Gwenda. “And if the war starts up again …”

  “Well, what makes them think anyone here could be what they’re looking for?” Call asked.

  “Like I said,” Jasper told him, “they’re desperate. But don’t worry — your scores are way too lousy. Chaos mages have to actually be good at magic.”

  For a minute, Jasper had acted like a normal human being, but apparently that minute was over. Celia glared at him.

  Everyone launched into a discussion of their first lessons. Drew told them that Master Lemuel had been really tough during their lessons, and he wanted to know if everyone else’s Masters were like that. Everyone started talking at once, with a bunch of others describing lessons that sounded a lot less frustrating and more fun than Call’s had been.

  “Master Milagros let us pilot the boats,” Jasper gloated. “There were little waterfalls. It was like white-water rafting. Awesome.”

  “Great,” Tamara said, without enthusiasm.

  “Jasper got us all lost,” Celia said, serenely munching a piece of lichen, and Jasper’s eyes flashed with annoyance.

  “Only for a minute,” Jasper said. “It was fine.”

  “Master Tanaka showed us how to make fireballs,” said a boy named Peter, and Call remembered that Tanaka was the name of the Master who had chosen after Milagros. “We held
the fire and we didn’t even get burned.” His eyes sparkled.

  “Master Lemuel threw rocks at us,” said Drew.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “What?” said Aaron.

  “Drew,” hissed Laurel, another of Master Lemuel’s apprentices. “He did not. He was showing us how you can move rocks with your mind. Drew got in the way of a rock.”

  That explains the big bruise on Drew’s collarbone, Call thought, feeling a little sick. He remembered his father’s warnings about how the Masters didn’t care about hurting students.

  “Tomorrow it’s going to be metal,” said Drew. “I bet he throws knives at us.”

  “I’d rather have knives thrown at me than spend all day in a pile of sand,” said Tamara, unsympathetic. “At least you can dodge knives.”

  “Looks like Drew can’t,” said Jasper with a smirk. For once, he was picking on someone who wasn’t Call, but Call didn’t get any pleasure from it.

  “It can’t be all lessons around here,” said Aaron, an edge to his usually peaceful voice. “Right? There’s got to be something fun. What was that place Master Rufus told us about?”

  “We could go to the Gallery after dinner?” Celia said, speaking directly to Call. “There’s games.”

  Jasper looked annoyed. Call knew he should go with Celia to the Gallery, whatever that was. Anything that made Jasper mad was worth doing, and besides, he needed to learn to navigate the Magisterium, make a map like you did in video games.

  He needed an escape route.

  Call shook his head and forked up a mouthful of lichen. It tasted like steak. He glanced down the table at Aaron, who looked weary, too. Call’s body felt leaden. He just wanted to go to sleep. He’d start looking for a way out of the Magisterium tomorrow.