Samuel Lore

‘THE FIRST MISTAKE’

Remarkable, Lyra thought, how quickly the settlers had mixed Gythian with the rough syllables of the Grangor tongue to create the language of Trostanian. Lyra never deigned to speak it, but understanding Trostanian was essential in the multicultural port town, no matter what garish throaty things it did to the lyrical Gythian syllables. Only five years ago, her barriers had melted the Halcyon glacier and already the settlement had become a growing, respectable town. Dockside inns filled to bursting with taxpaying travelers seeking their crystal fortune, adding their native nomenclature to the evolving language. On the docks, sailors called to one another in fluent Trostanian as they passed crates down the ramps from the ships’ tenders to the docks.

Lyra, escorted by her Grangor guide, disciplined her expression into sobriety, but her eyes shone as they darted around the dock. Golden-cloaked Gythian soldiers emerged from a tender hefting ornate chests and crates. With an impatient but formal gesture of greeting she approached the most decorated of the soldiers, a silver-templed man holding the hand of a small boy. “I was told my replacement would be of the mages, but I suppose Trostan can be held well enough by the army now that it’s operative,” she said. “You and your son are welcome here.”

“You’re mistaken, Lady Lyra. Your replacement is of the mages.” The soldier guided the boy forward by his shoulders. “Archmage Lora bade me deliver him to you and memorize her message.”

Lyra’s heart sank along with her eyes as she gazed down at the boy, resplendent in a night-black fur cloak far too large for him, his terrified dark eyes widened with hope. “Deliver the message, sir.”

“‘Greetings, Battlemage Lyra,” snapped the soldier. “‘The Mage Guild of Gythia is pleased to present Samuel the Mageborn, son of Archmage Lora the Mageborn and Scholar Titus the Mageborn, to be fostered and educated under your wise tutelage until such time as he comes of age and can take your place in the governorship of Trostan.’”

“What’s this?” asked the Grangor.

“Politics,” said Lyra through a wound-tight jaw. “Or a cruel joke.”

The Grangor hunched down. “Welcome, Sam. How old are you?”

The boy held up four fingers.

“Four winters old! Such a handsome big boy you are.” The Grangor mussed the child’s hair.

“Lora has banished me to Trostan for fourteen more years.” Lyra coughed out a laugh. “She still fears me.”

“We’ll make you up a room in the mage tower, Sam,” said the Grangor. Without ceremony he swung the boy up onto his shoulders and the soldiers followed them into town, leaving Lyra to stare off into the warm sea of her memories.

In Gythia, the onshore cold from Bladed Bay breezed the curtains in Lyra’s mage tower apartment. Back then, Trostan was a stratagem, a hope for Gythia’s post-war recovery effort. Before she experienced the ice storms of Trostan, Lyra thought this breeze unbearable; she rolled over in bed, smooshing her face into Titus’ chest to escape it. “Hold me,” she mumbled into his skin. “I’m cold.” He slung one leg over her waist, making her giggle. “Useless, you are. Now I’m overheated just on this spot. Get off me and I’ll make tea.”

He held her down, sliding a steel letter opener through the wax seal of a scroll. “If you wanted to escape, you’d turn me into a toad or something, Miss Battlemage.”

“No need,” she said, arching up for a sour morning kiss. “I trust you.”

“That is your first mistake. Ooh,” he said, drawing the sharp point of the letter opener down her side, “It’s from the Archmage. You are important now.”

“Your envy is unattractive.” Lyra shivered and smiled, inhaling the sweat and sandalwood scent of him. “What is that?”

“A letter came for you with breakfast.”

“If it is for me, don’t you think I should open it?”

He held the scroll out of her reach. “Battlemage Lyra of the Mage Guild, blah blah … immediate deployment to the Kall Peaks to establish the colony of Trostan …”

“They’re sending us to the Kalls?” Lyra reached for the scroll, but Titus held fast to it, his brows knitted.

“Your petition of marriage to Scholar Titus the Mageborn is heretofore denied due to the arrangement of marriage to …”

Lyra rolled over him and snatched the letter from his hands; wax bits scattered onto the bed. “.. to Lora the Mageborn,” she mumbled. “There’s been some administrative error. Someone mistook my name for Lora’s. This has happened before.”

“You are not Mageborn.” Titus drew her close. “You knew they might choose to arrange my marriage. The Guild wants …”

“… Mageborn children,” she said. “But I went through all the proper channels. I filled out the forms. I thought ….” She held his ears in her hands, pressed her forehead to his. “We do not have to obey. We can be farmers in the provinces. We can disappear in Taizen Gate.”

“You have worked since childhood to rise in the guild’s ranks. I will not allow you to give up everything you worked so hard to accomplish,” he said, burying his face in the plum tumble of her hair. “We are Gythian foremost.”

She soaked his neck with silent tears, her fingers clawing into his shoulders.

'COLD RECEPTION'

A teenaged boy stood at the mouth of the cave, ice axe in his gloved hand, steel spikes buckled to his boots, furs wrapped round everything but his dark eyes. It had been more than a decade since the last daring hopeful had attempted to maneuver through the steep tunnels that wound upward inside the glacier atop which Reim, the ice mage of legend, made his home. It had been much longer since anyone had been granted an audience.

“She will kill me if you don’t come home,” said his stout Grangor companion.

“I’ve climbed scarier things than this.”

“It isn’t the climb that worries me. It’s what’s at the top.”

The boy patted the Grangor on his snow-dusted shoulder, then began his slow, slippery ascent.

When the boy popped his head out at the top, struggling for breath, he was eye level with a pair of furry boots. The famed ice mage himself waited, ripping apart pine cones and munching on the nuts. “Magister!” cried the boy, holding up one hand for help, “I have come to learn from you.”

“Lesson one,” grunted Reim, planting a boot in the center of the boy’s forehead. “Leave me alone.” With a little nudge, the boy slid back down the icy tunnel on his belly, his oofs and thuds echoing along with the mage’s laughter, all the way down to the Grangor’s feet.

“Um,” said the Grangor.

“I’m fine,” gasped the boy, and began again.

When he reached the top, he found Reim sitting by his tent cross-legged, eating lichen out of the first stomach of a half-frozen reindeer. “Magister,” he said, rising to his feet, “I have heard great tales of your magic.”

The mage chewed with his mouth open.

“I am Mageborn. I have reached the ninth level of Gythian mage discipline. I have passed the test of the Grangor hunter.”

Reim’s fluffy white eyebrows did not rise with interest.

The boy lost patience. “Or maybe you’re just a crazy old man. Maybe the wise ones tell the stories of you just to scare the kits.”

Reim pressed one finger to his nostril and honked a frozen booger out onto the boy’s cheek.

Insulted, the boy descended through the tunnels again. The Grangor sat by a little fire.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said the boy.

“Trying again?” replied the Grangor.

“Yes,” said the boy, and climbed again.

This time, he knelt in the snow before the ice mage. He unwrapped the furs from his head and pressed his face into the puffy new snow on the ground. “Magister,” he said, his words muffled, “I read about what happened to your son. Please help me to avoid his fate.”

Reim ignored him and went about his day. He gathered meat from his traps and snares. He ate. He napped. At sunset, he kicked the boy on his shoulder. “You want hypothermia?” he yelled in the deaf way of old men. “Come inside, you idiot!”

In a tent made of Grangor skins and tusks, Reim waited until the boy’s teeth stopped chattering.

“What’s your name!”

“Samuel,” said the boy.

“And you consort with the filthy cats?”

Samuel’s shoulders tensed. “The Grangor people are …”

“… are not people. And passing their little test won’t grow fur on your butt. So what are you?”

“I am Gythian. The Mageborn son of Archmage Lora, head of the war division of the mage guild …”

“You’re as Gythian as you are Grangor.”

“I can trace my bloodline back for ten Gythian generations.”

“Yeah? Who bakes the best crusty rolls on Via Lucia?”

Samuel’s eyes dropped. “I … I have been fostered in Trostan since I was four.”

“Then the servant who dumps your grand archmage mother’s chamberpot is more Gythian than you are.” Reim hacked out a laugh. “Mageborn. Bred like a dog. When Gythia finds something that doesn’t work, by golly they stick to it.”

“Your son was Mageborn,” whispered Samuel.

“If you don’t wanna end up like my son,” said Reim, closing his eyes, “don’t bother with the tenth level of Gythian mage discipline. Swab the deck of one of the ships hauling crystal out of Trostan. Tend one of those balmy Lillian vineyards. Heck, collect creature eyeballs with those walking furballs. Forget about magic, and forget about Gythia.”

“But my mother …”

“… didn’t want you, or she would’ve raised you.”

The snow-blanketed silence filled the tent.

Reim opened the flap of the tent. “Go home,” he grumped.

Resolute, Samuel crawled outside and wrapped the furs back around his face. The soupy gray sky flashed with green and red streaks of light.

“And be back at dawn!” bellowed the ice mage.

Samuel grinned back at the tent as the flap fell closed.

'THE NIGHTMARE'

Samuel returned to his room at sunset to find Lyra there, staring at the collection of ceremonial Grangor headdresses he’d mounted on one curved wall. He dropped his dripping snow gear on the floor and fell back on his unmade bed, flopping one arm over his eyes. “So there will be a lecture tonight,” he muttered. “Safety or obligation?”

Lyra picked her way with care across the disaster of stacked books, maps and papers, giving a wide berth to the skeleton of the mammoth seal Samuel had speared at his Grangor hunter trial. “Did you… eat this creature?”

“The tribe feasted after the trial. I ate the right flipper and the chief ate the left.”

Lyra shuddered. “I shall have your room cleaned. There is a spider above your bed.”

“It’s a sleep-spider. It gobbles up dreams and spins webs in the shapes of those dreams. I took it from the Netherworld. Don’t touch it.”

Lyra’s eyes blazed. “I told you not to dabble in the Netherworld. The nightmares and phantasms …”

“And dreams and ghosts and Valkyries. Magister Reim …”

“And I told you to stay away from that crazed old man. Is that where you were all week?”

Samuel chuckled, his arm still covering his eyes. “Add that to your list of disappointments. I have given up trying to please you. I rather think you are incapable of pleasure.”

“You do not have the luxury of adolescent insolence.”

“The obligation lecture, then.” Samuel responded with an exaggerated yawn.

Lyra exhaled through her nose, eyes closed, collecting herself. “No. That is the Archmage’s duty now.” She dropped a heavy but small steel machine onto the bed next to him and he removed his arm from his eyes to squint at it.

“What is that contraption?”

“It came with the latest shipment. They have managed to make holograms work, thanks to infused Trostanian crystal. They’ve had holographic messages in Mont Lille for years …”

“… and in Campestria far longer.” Samuel sat up in his bed to inspect the box.

“It is progress nevertheless, so our efforts here are not in vain.”

“Well then, let us see what my mother deigns to say to me.”

“Samuel.” Lyra rested a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was awkward and made them both flinch. “I think … I do not know if this message …”

“Don’t worry, Lady. I am not an orphan harboring dreams of mommy bestowing affection on me after fourteen years of no word.” Samuel snorted. “The Magister said I was bred like a dog.”

Lyra was quieted by that. She focused her gaze on the message box, her violet curls falling to hide her expression while Samuel hit the button with his fist. The platform buzzed with blue light that broke and spat before it came together to form a face. The Archmage’s face. He had no memory of it, and there was no color to her eyes, but the resemblance was obvious.

“Samuel.” The sound crackled with static. “Lady Lyra has kept me informed of your progress. Well done on passing the first nine disciplines. The Mage Guild depends on you passing the tenth. You shall return home to prove your worth in the final test before your formal induction into the guild. I trust Lyra has prepared you well.”

Home. He almost missed what came after.

“After you have received your rank, you shall be positioned as governor of Trostan and lead the effort to move the Grangor population to the frontier. You shall see to the expansion of our crystal mining in the Kall Peaks. Your rapport with the Grangor beasts will be essential to this effort. You shall return to Trostan with whatever contingent of troops you deem necessary to assist you.

“Our guild and our empire depend on your success, my son. With your help, Gythia shall return to its former glory.”

The picture blinked out of existence and Samuel stared at the place where it had been. “Move the Grangor population,” he breathed. “Has she ever met a Grangor?”

Lyra clasped her hands inside her long sleeves. “If it is necessary …”

“They won’t go. I have seen their souls in the Netherworld. They are rooted to this land by blood and ritual and the hunt.”

“You sound like one of them,” said Lyra, her tone measured.

He stood and paced the room. “I’d have to kill them all. My mother wants me to kill them all.”

“You are Gythian.”

Samuel whirled to face her. “Why should I have to explain to you that this is wrong?” he cried, and the words spilled out of him in a dark magic that formed into a treacherous churning orb that surrounded them both.

Inside the orb was the deep cave-dark of nightmares. Nothing Lyra had taught Samuel of Gythian magecraft explained that darkness, or the weakening beat of her heart. She snapped awake without realizing she’d been asleep, gasping and shaking, and whispered the words of warding. A green glow shone through the blackness, drinking it in, dispelling it.

Above the bed, the sleep-spider wove into its web a shimmering silken depiction of Trostan in flames.

'THE ARCHELIONS'

Samuel emerged from his rented island room sullen, his cheeks gaunt, dressed all in black. He walked past hammocks where the locals napped away the hot afternoon, couples snoring together in a tangle of limbs, mothers curled around little children like shells around peas. Away from the dwellings he found a handful of goats gnawing on shrubs; honeybees dove through tall bamboo to rummage inside of flowering beans, zucchini and asparagus. In the garden it was difficult to believe that the island was the shell of the giant and ancient titanback named Archelon, floating his annual way around the world.

He followed a path through the tide pools where barefoot children sprinted over the slick bone surface, squatting to inspect the bright slugs, limpets, anemones, sea slugs and stars. A small child held a sea urchin in one hand, drawing out meat from its belly with deft fingers and slurping it up as he watched Samuel step with care. Older children looked after nests of eggs larger than their heads.

At the highest point of the island, the smell of food cooking set his stomach to growling. Locals milled about, poking at a grill, laying out baskets, cleaning up children. A giant carp smoked to a golden brown crisp on smoldering coals laid in the center, its stuffed belly open; clams and oysters and heaps of pickled seaweed lay in steaming piles around it.

“Take cover, ladies. A raincloud approaches,” called a voice, followed by ladies laughing. “Join us, Samuel.”

Blossoms drifted down from a cherry tree under which sat a large man, two women and a basket of food. The three wore sarongs; the man’s was fuschia and wrapped round his waist. One of the women shaved his head with a straight razor. The other sat cross-legged, her hand outstretched, as the man manicured her nails.

Samuel paused in an awkward half-step before sitting at the edge of the shade. “I am afraid I do not know you.”

“You need not fear. I am Lance,” said the man. The woman pushed his ear forward to shave behind it. “Eat honey and cheese. It will sweeten you.”

“I will not eat today,” said Samuel.

“Are you sick?” asked the woman with the straight razor.

“No,” said Samuel. “Fasting preserves power and increases discipline.”

“You have all the rest of your lonely life to starve,” said the man. “How many days will you have for licking honey from the fingers of a beautiful lady?”

Samuel turned his blushing face away from the manicured woman, who dipped a finger in the honeypot with a sly smile. “Is she not one of your wives?”

“People are not possessions,” replied Lance.

“Are these not your children?” sputtered Samuel.

“The children belong to everyone, or rather, we belong to them.” The woman folded away her razor and a little boy slipped down from a branch onto Lance’s shoulders. “You will break your fast today, Sam. If you argue, we will take offense.”

“I prefer Samuel,” he said, but he could not refuse. He deposited a bit of fish into his basket and plucked meat from the fragile bones with his fingers like the others. Children crawled up on his legs and asked incessant questions. Lance made no move to save him from the onslaught, and before long Samuel could not help but chuckle.

After they had eaten, the crowd walked the long pathway down to the shell’s edge to watch the sea trolls hunt. They herded seals and held them under, drowning them before tossing them high in the air and catching them in their giant maws.

“I would not allow the children so close to those hunters,” said Samuel.

Lance kept an arm around Samuel’s stiff shoulder as though they were old friends. “The trolls come ashore once a year to lay eggs, and we care for them. In return, the trolls protect Archelon’s soft underbelly from predators, and we play together. Come, watch the jousts.”

At the shell’s edge, past the long line of docked barges, men tied woven saddles to the beasts’ great heads. Wearing bamboo armor and shields and wielding rattan lances, the men mounted the trolls and charged, their lances crashing into one another’s shields with startling cracks. Lance was the best of these knights; he took to the saddle as if born there, sending one opponent after another splashing into the water, his powerful arm locked around his weapon, a frightening grin spread across his face. His troll roared its pleasure and sprayed the onlookers with a wall of water from its slapping tail.

After the jousts, Samuel and Lance watched the moon rise together while the others wandered away. “How do you like our home?” asked Lance.

“It will not last,” said Samuel. “Archelon will not live forever.”

“The rings round the scutes tell us that Archelon has lived at least a thousand growth seasons, and he swims stronger than ever.”

“All things die.”

“Have faith, Sam.” Lance clapped the young man on his shoulder.

“That is no answer.”

“And yet, it is ever the correct one.”

'GYTHIAN LANCE’

On the last day of his months-long journey, Samuel dove to look into the eye of Archelon. Lance waited on shore, remembering the day that he had passed this same test: the eye gleaming at him, far wider than he was tall. When Samuel surfaced, gasping, Lance hunched down to help him out. “Did you gaze into his eye?”

“I saw it, and it saw me,” said Samuel, drawing on dry clothes.

“What did Archelon say to you?”

Samuel’s brow cocked. “I do not speak whatever burbling beast language he speaks.”

“You heard nothing in your heart?”

“I also do not speak whatever burbling beast language the heart speaks.”

“Well enough; you have presented yourself to Archelon and so you are one of us. Come.” Lance led him around the shell shore, pausing to rub the heads of sea trolls when they poked through the surface. “Archelon is too large to swim through Bladed Bay. At dawn, I shall escort you to the city by barge.” In the Gythian language he continued: “Your destiny is also mine.”

“I did not think to hear that language from an Archelion,” said Samuel also in Gythian, his words cutting sharp corners. On the docks where the barges hung, children took air in little sips before diving for pearl oysters, dripping nets dangling round their necks.

Lance led Samuel inside the cabin of one of the barges. “Long ago, when I was a young man, a Gythian like yourself bought passage on Archelon to see the world during his last year. He was a knight with a good heart.”

“Nothing like me then,” said Samuel.

“He taught me to wield the lance and shield and live by the knightly tenets of justice, courage, mercy, decorum, honesty, honor, loyalty and character.” A beatific light shone in Lance’s eyes. “And he told me about the city’s rich history of music and passion, enough beauty to inebriate the soul.”

“Did he forget about the wars, corruption and ruthless politics in his dotage?”

“It is true; there is much in the world to be set aright. How can I stay on Archelon when my duty is elsewhere? Look: When my teacher passed on, he gave me these.” Lance lit candles round the cabin and, as the light flickered a warm air of the sacred, opened a hidden compartment under the floorboards where armor, shield and a lance laid in repose. “Since then, I have made it my life’s work to collect Gythian artifacts.”

He hefted up the shield to display, but Samuel rifled through a neat pile of kitchen tools, a bronze candelabra, long-outdated maps and recipes, plumed carnival masks and a brass door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. He plucked up a rusted garlic press, snapped it open and closed. “Beautiful shield, and not a scratch on it,” he said. “Your fabled knight did not see enough battle to find those tenets difficult.”

“War is not the whole of a knight,” said Lance, unwavering. “I vowed to one day protect a Gythian, and in doing so earn knighthood for myself.”

“I do not need protecting.” Samuel threw the garlic press back to its spot. “I am not the Gythian of your dreams. I have not even seen the city since I was four years old.”

“You are he. I know it.”

“You do not know me, and you do not know Gythia, for all of your careful study of its garbage. Who bakes the best crusty rolls on Via Lucia?” Samuel grabbed up a book and paged through it fast. “The knighthood is just old families clinging to faltering fortunes. It has nothing to do with … what was that ludicrous list? Justice, honesty, decorum …”

Lance took the book from Samuel’s hand as if handling a sleeping baby. “That ludicrous list has everything to do with me.”

And so, at the first gray light, Samuel sat on Lance’s barge, folded in bad posture inside his dark cloak. Lance, wearing the full armor of a Gythian knight, steered the sea troll that pulled the barge through the treacherous black-toothed mouth of the city. The mist parted and a rose-gold light bathed the gleaming fountains and sculpture, the towers and spires, the churning water wheels. Lance’s breath caught in his throat; tears sprang unbidden to his eyes. His plain barge pulled up to the dock between luxury steamboats where a grand reception of dignitaries in elegant finery waited.

Samuel moved like an unwilling shadow behind Lance’s great steel bulk as they disembarked. Lance held up his hand in greeting, but all eyes locked on the hooded young man. The woman in the center stepped forward, one hand heavy with rings appearing beyond long silk sleeves to show her palm in proper greeting. “Welcome home, Samuel,” she said. “We feared the worst.”

“My thanks, Mother,” said Samuel.

'THE TRIAL’

Bright-plumed Titanbeaks pulled the mages’ litters through the Gythian streets: the Archmage in her own, Lyra and Magister Reim in the next. Lance insisted on riding in the third with Samuel; he craned his head out of the curtained window to gape at the complex of short military towers and training yards sprawled against the great obsidian wall, then the closed-up and somber Ministers’ Tower, the Cartographers’ Tower with its landings and patios housing all sizes of telescopes and finally the Mage Tower, taller by a hundred feet than any other and wide as a city block. It was adorned around each level with golden sculptures of past Archmages, each holding the ancient wand named Verdict.

Samuel entered the tower under the hard golden gaze of his sculpted mother and followed his escort into the grand center theater. The acrid taste of unfamiliar magic stung his tongue. Lyra and Reim stopped Lance from following; the three stood by the door.

A walkway edged with sculpted obsidian pillars led to two stone platforms, one higher than the other. Samuel stood on the shorter; atop the high platform stood the guild’s top-ranking mages, the Archmage at the fore, her robes removed to reveal the somber black lace vestments of judgment. “Samuel the Mage Born,” she said, her sugared tone echoing in the immense room, “your tenth trial begins now. If you pass, you shall receive your rank in our guild.” She stretched Verdict forth. “I hope you are prepared.”

Samuel pulled from his belt the wand named Malice. “So I am not to answer for disobeying you, Mother? For burning down Gythia’s hopes? Does it trouble you overmuch to acknowledge the failure of your bloodline?” He spun the wand between his fingers before clenching it in his fist.

A shadow fled from Verdict and landed in Samuel’s periphery a split moment before pain flooded his belly. He whirled to face his aggressor and stared into his own face, at Malice pointed at his own torso. There was no time to register this ultimate betrayal before his shadow double flanked and shot again.

Lance lunged forward only to slam full-force into a shimmering green wall.

“For every action, there is a consequence,” said Lyra.

Reim watched the fight, expressionless, white-knuckling his staff.

A rushing water sound filled Samuel’s ears. He circled to the right and his shadow self mirrored him; there was a flash, and a sting bloomed on Samuel’s leg, a pain that sank to his bones. He curled his tongue around the words of power and a burst of magic fled from his wand, missing the shadow by a breath. He dove and spat out another word: “Uruz!” Another shot just missed the shadow’s neck. The shadow returned the blasts and Samuel dodged. They traded dark magic fire until the platform was a blinding shower of light. He could not outwit himself.

But the shadow could not learn.

He feinted right and leaped away from his double, springing to the nearest pillar, cracking his ribs, two fingers curled around the canine teeth of a carved lion’s head. With the half-second he’d bought, he pulled himself up to crouch atop it.

“Kenaz,” he cried, and the air wavered, and around him were the souls of ancient mages, thousands of them with hollow eyes watching, and the darkness of the Netherworld enveloped him as he leaped. Light flashed from Malice and the shadow crouched, spun wrong and caught the full force of the spell in its back.

When the dark had dissipated, Samuel stood alone on the platform. The Netherworld, having been opened, lurked close, the phantasms murmuring hate and promising justice. Above, the Archmage extended Verdict again.

“So you present a test no one can survive to save yourself the embarrassment of convicting me.” Samuel’s bitter laugh seized as he held his broken ribs. “That is how Magister Reim’s son died, isn’t it? He asked too many questions.”

“If it is so,” said the Archmage, “then you should concentrate on succeeding.”

A second shadow fled from Verdict, forming beside Samuel. He slid back, Malice held in his fist like a blade, his eyes narrowed at his new opponent –

– and his arm dropped as he flinched away from the little boy who looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes: Samuel, as he’d been fourteen years past when he entered Trostan for the first time, Malice far too big for his little hands.

“Such poetry,” mocked Samuel. “I suppose I shall face my wise old future self next?”

“You shall have no such future if you fail,” called the Archmage.

Samuel sidestepped the shadow boy’s fumbling shots with ease. Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.

“I would rather fail,” said Samuel, and released the phantasm that twisted and curled into the skull-shape of nightmares, sailing around the shadow child and then the mages high above, lulling them all to sleep. The shadow disappeared and the Archmage fell.

The shimmering wall dropped. A spinning, churning hole appeared in the walkway by Lance’s feet.

“Go,” choked Lyra behind him. “Go!”

The Archmage landed in Samuel’s outstretched arms, slamming him to the floor. His shoulder dislocated from its socket, sending shocks of pain through his arm and spine. He snatched Verdict away from her, rolled away, yanked his shoulder back into place with an agonized gasp, then stumbled to his feet. “Where is she?” he screamed.

“Who?” gasped the Archmage, blinking, disoriented.

“Gythia’s little creature.” He bent over her, spitting the words into her face. “Trostan wasn’t the only iron you had in the fire. Where is the Storm Queen’s niece?”

The Archmage flinched away. “Gathering allies,” she whimpered. “The Halcyon -”

Samuel sneered and aimed both wands at the Archmage’s face. “Well done, Mother.”

Armor clattered as the knight rolled into position between them, weapon at the ready, shield high. Samuel stepped back, wands crossed in front of him.

“Reconsider, my friend,” growled Lance.

Samuel’s grim mouth cracked into a smile. “You are better than Gythia ever was,” he said, and fell back into the churning portal.

Reim stood at the portal’s source, palm out as Lyra’s face turned blue. Icicles hung from her ears and hair. Her book, encased in ice, laid useless on the floor. Samuel tumbled from the portal’s source at his feet, struggling for breath as he looked up at his teacher’s distressed eyes.

“Magister,” he whispered.

“Run, you fool.”

'REZA, THE FIRE MAGE'

ALTERNATE FATES

'SCHOOL DAYS' SAMUEL

'THE DOOR AT THE TOP OF THE STAIR'

On the cold Haunting Night, the students at the Gythian Mage Academy tucked up in bed with hot bricks by their feet and fires glowing in the hearths, their doors locked. The most provincial students had shoved bureaus and chairs up against the doors, as if that would protect them.

Not Samuel. He had not even unbuttoned his uniform wool coat. His wand, Malice, was snuggled in his buckled baldric. At lights out he’d pulled his quilt up to his chin and waited, listening into the dark, until he heard the girl-ghost’s whisper: The supervisor’s poured his drink. He won’t bother you now.

In the pitch black he unfolded his spectacles and crept through the academy where he’d lived since he was four years old. There was not a secret passage he had not explored before. Only at the winding stairs did he dare allow Malice to cast a faint glow, illuminating the spirits that waited at the edge of the Nether, for when the moon was dark on Haunting Night, the dead came to life again during the Witching Hour.

Samuel jogged up the stairs in silence, skipping the creaky ones, the breath of the girl-ghost in his right ear.

At the top was a door. He pulled a pocketwatch from his coat and held it up to Malice’s meager light. Two minutes to midnight.

Will you really go inside?

Samuel wiped dust from the door with his sleeve. There was no knob and no lock, only an inscription in old Gythian which he translated out loud in a whisper: “Who holds Verdict wields the power of the academy.”

He felt the girl-ghost swirl around between him and the door. He could see her edges flash in the low light. You got a word wrong, she said. Who holds Verdict wields the responsibility of the academy.

“Whatever,” said Samuel, untying a ribbon around his neck from which dangled a key made of onyx. “A day of chaos is just what this school needs. Now go inside.”

The girl-ghost hesitated. What will you do?

“Nothing bad,” coaxed Samuel. “Just some last-year pranks. Color Mrs. Llanfair’s skin blue. Turn Mr. Chepstow’s corgi into a rat. Mix up all the exams.” He looked again at his pocketwatch. One minute to midnight. He knelt down and slid the key under the door.

Cool, airy arms wrapped around his neck. And if I do as you ask, you will do as you promised?

“My love,” crooned Samuel, “the prank is but an excuse to fulfill your desire.” He saw, in the glow, the outline of her crooked smile. “Hurry inside or our accord will be broken.”

The girl-ghost reached out to touch his face, but the incorporeal fingers passed through his cheeks.

At five seconds to midnight, the girl-ghost slipped through the locked door.

At midnight, the staircase came alive with a throng of people. There were former students in antique school uniforms, teachers with flouncing dresses and gentlemen in coattails and top hats, for they had been dressed handsomely for their coffins. They paid Samuel little mind; they had but an hour to cavort and dance together. They filed arm-in-arm down the staircase and through doors, which they had to open, to the ballroom, where eerie music played, and the scent of roses drifted all around.

Samuel stared down at the ribbon until it slid all the way under the door. He heard the lock in the door turn, for the door could only be unlocked from the inside, and it swung open wide. There in the dim light stood the girl, a ghost no longer, in a tartan skirt and uniform coat like Samuel’s, the key’s ribbon swinging from her fist. She was gangly and pale, her elbows, knees, hips, chin and nose all sharp corners, her mousy hair cropped to her shoulders, and at the back of her head he saw a great wound in her skull. She’d fallen from this very staircase, generations ago, before she could taste her first kiss.

Samuel strode past her to the glass case where the wand named Verdict was displayed. Without hesitation he snatched the wand and slid it into his baldric. “Well done, my partner in crime,” he murmured, turning, closing in on her. He tilted up her pointy chin and brushed his lips against hers. She shivered and sputtered when he let her go, which made him laugh. “Let us be off to the ballroom and have a dance.”

“What if the Headmistress catches you?” she whispered, startling at the loudness of her living voice.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m the Headmaster now,” said Samuel, and the two joined the throng of living ghosts, dancing away the Witching Hour until the moment when the ribbon dropped from the girl-ghost’s incorporeal fingertips.