Wizards Conclave

Chapter 17
The Test of Magic

This door is protected by a powerful spell," Luthar explained to Coryn, indicating a normal-looking portal of wooden planks connected by iron straps. "The first part of your Test requires that you open it."

Looking over her shoulder, she noted the dour figure of Kalrakin staring at her intently. For the past day, while she rested and gathered her strength, she had not spied him, but she had felt his sinister presence in the Tower. Still, she had slept securely enough behind a stout, locked door. When she had awakened in the morning, there had been hot food in her room, and she had noticed with surprise that the gash where she had scraped herself against the tree was nearly healed. Luthar had eventually come to get her, leading her up flight after flight of steep stairs until they had come to this lofty hallway.

Kalrakin had been waiting here, and now she glared at him. "Are you going to stand there gawking? I don't think I'll be able to concentrate."

The tall, beak-nosed sorcerer stiffened visibly, but then turned and stalked down the hallway to the landing at the top of the stairs. "I'll stand over here if it helps your concentration in the slightest, which I doubt," he said, his expression twitching between smirking and glowering.

Coryn was already ignoring him, studying the blank door. There didn't seem to be anything magical about it, not even when she closed her eyes and tried to picture and explore any hints of sorcery in those planks, or around the small metal lock. Perhaps it was that this whole place was so magical that the mere spell on a door was lost in the haze. Certainly, she sensed unusual emanations surrounding her, encouraging her. The Tower still suffered, she knew, though she hadn't glimpsed the Master since Kalrakin's appearance. But she felt implicitly that her presence was a balm to that pain. Oddly enough, she was suddenly filled with confidence, and she viewed the door as an inviting portal, drawing her toward a world of wonders.

Safety awaited her there. Not perfect safety, to be sure, for the world was ever dangerous. But passage through the door would take her beyond the reach of Kalrakin's capricious violence. He would be left behind.

Her eyes remained closed as she walked forward, feeling her way. In her mind she saw the door outlined in white light. Raising her hands, fingers extended, she advanced one step, then another, expecting to feel the touch of smooth, cool wood. But she met no resistance. The glow expanded, encompassing her, and she felt a tingle of pure joy. Still nothing blocked her path as, with two more steps, the glowing aura completely surrounded and embraced her. In surprise, she opened her eyes to see that she was enclosed in a place of utter darkness.

At the same time, she heard an angry curse from somewhere behind her. Something smashed into a solid wooden barrier, pounding with a volley of repeated blows, and she had a vaguely satisfied image of Kalrakin throwing himself against the door, violently and futilely striving to follow her.

"Indeed, this must be my Test," she whispered, heartened by the sound of her own voice in the darkness. She felt a sense of ownership, of proprietorship. Though it was just a room, it was one of a very few from which the Master had managed to bar the trespassing sorcerers. And yet she had been allowed in. No, she had used her own magic to enter.

Coryn reached back to touch the door and murmured the soft incantation of a light spell. Immediately a soft, diffuse glow surrounded her.

She was in a medium-sized room, she saw at once. There was a single object, a large chest on a floor that was otherwise layered with a thick film of dust. Moving forward, she saw that the trunk was clean, as if it had just appeared in this long-disused chamber. Quickly she scanned the rest of the room, seeing no other exits or entrances. There was a round window in the far wall, secured by a wooden shutter so tight that no ray of daylight slipped through-if, indeed, it opened onto the outside of the Tower, as she assumed.

She focused her attention on the chest, kneeling before it, the knee of her torn trousers raising a puff of dust from the floor. A large clasp secured the lid, and there was a keyhole- but no key in sight. Coryn touched the clasp and a word came into her mind, one she had read in Umma's secret book.

She spoke it at once; the word made a strange sound, yet agreeable and even familiar on her tongue. A tiny light sparked, not at all unpleasantly, at her fingertip. She pulled the clasp upward, and it released easily. The lid was heavy, but with both hands she was able to pull it up.

Somewhat to her surprise, she saw the trunk was empty. Reaching a hand inside, she touched the bottom, comparing the depth of her reach to the outer dimension of the chest; there was no false bottom, so far as she could tell, yet she had reached deeper than the actual size of the trunk.

Puzzled, now, she got up, dusted off her pants, and went to the window. The shutter was fastened with a simple clasp, which she released. When she pulled, the shutter swung away, and she found herself dazzled by the morning sunlight streaming across Wayreth Forest. She was about halfway up the tower, she guessed, above the tops of the surrounding trees, so she could see for miles. A rolling carpet of green extended to the far horizon; one view was dominated by a range of low, verdant hills. The blanket of trees extended uninterrupted in all directions, as far as she could see.

Her window was far above the nearest balcony, sheer wall extending above and to both sides, so this was clearly no way out-unless, of course, she was supposed to fly. The fly spell she had memorized from Jenna offered a possibility, but she had no intention of abandoning the Test.

Making a complete circuit of the walls of the room, she found no singular features other than a few torch sconces- which she pulled at, experimentally-and the door through which she had passed. Coryn had no interest in leaving the room yet-to face the hostile Kalrakin, waiting in the hallway; besides, somehow she knew, just knew, that the next step of the Test had to do with something in this room. That seemed, pretty clearly, to mean the chest. She went back to the container, which was perhaps four feet long by three wide, and a little less than three feet deep. It was still empty, and that hollowness, that lack, made her a little sad all of a sudden-and in the swelling up of unexpected emotion she realized what she had to do. Stepping into the chest, she knelt and took hold of the lid. With considerable effort, she pulled it up and then lowered it, watching as the light from the window and her spell slowly vanished behind the descending cover. There was no terror in that darkness; instead it was like a warm blanket enclosing her.

The lid shut with a click, and with a start she heard the snap of the lock. In the next instant the floor beneath her dropped, and she found herself falling. In a panic she reached for the sides of the chest, but they had also vanished-or she had already plunged far away from them. A rush of air blasted her face, pulled her hair out straight, and loudly flapped the fabric of her tunic.

Another spell came into her mind, one she had heard Jenna use on this trip. Immediately she spoke the purposeful word of featherfall. In the next instant she was floating gently, righting herself, and quickly coming to rest on a flat, solid surface. She stepped to the side, slightly unbalanced, and her foot kicked a loose object on the floor. Coryn realized, with a chill, that another second or two delay, and she might have smashed into the ground and died.

For the first time, this Test began to seem like a very serious matter.

She needed to see better. Experimentally, she tried to mouth the command for her light spell, and was not surprised that she couldn't remember it exactly. Of course, it was an unfamiliar spell, and not at all an easy one; she would have to study and practice the spell some more before she would be able to cast it readily. But there were other ways to bring about illumination. She remembered the object her foot had bumped-it had sounded like a piece of wood. Dropping to her knees, she felt around on what seemed to be a floor of flat, mortared stones. Quickly she found a wooden shaft that seemed to be about the length of a club.

Another word of command from Umma's book brought a cheery blaze to the head of the shaft, making quite a serviceable torch. She held it up and saw she was in a very large chamber, so large that she couldn't see any sign of walls or ceiling within the dome of her flickering illumination.

Slowly she turned in a circle, trying to figure out which way to go; when she had completed the spin, she felt oddly certain that she was intended to head in the direction where she had begun the circle. Starting forward, torch held high, she tried to peer through that vast, surrounding darkness.

The sound came first as an indistinct roar, distant but clearly powerful. Almost immediately Coryn identified a surge of rushing water. Swelling in volume, churning so hard that it soon rumbled through the floor under her feet, the flood swept closer; already she could feel a change in the air, chill moisture sweeping against her skin, the noise a physical pressure.

She thought, momentarily, of the wild magic she had so long used to control water in all its forms; then instantly her gut lurched with a spasm of nausea. And suddenly she knew there was no place for wild magic in her heart, not now, perhaps never again. For a brief second, that thought filled her with sadness and sharp fear. Now she could see the huge wave, taller then herself, bearing down on her like a vengeful, white-haired hag.

"Gravitus-denu!" The levitate spell popped into her mind and out of her mouth in the same split second. Water surged against her feet, up to her knees, the white crest looming overhead-and then the churning maelstrom roared under her, as she rose swiftly into the air, above the surging waves.

She floated idly for a few minutes. The sensation of weightlessness was pleasant, as it had been when Jenna had cast the same spell upon her a few days earlier. How long had it been? She was losing track of time.

Staying low enough to see the surface of the water in her torchlight, but not getting her feet wet, she watched as the tempest settled into a placid lake and then, slowly, drained away. When she could see the wet paving stones reflecting back the glow of her torch, she lowered herself to the ground.

Continuing on her way she came to other challenges, meeting each with a spell. At first these came from her childhood reading in the hut, or from her eavesdropping on Jenna.

But then there were others, words and incantations that she had never heard before, enchantments that arose in her mind as needed. Where did the come from? Did they come from the Master? She wasn't sure. She wasn't sure she cared. She was filled with happiness.

She began to cast a variety of spells previously unknown to her. When a ball of fire exploded toward her, she summoned a protective globe that completely surrounded her. Invisible but strong, it held back the incendiary storm that would have charred her in seconds; and within the sphere she merely felt a mild, not even unpleasant, warmth. When, next, a deep chasm yawned before her, she delighted in crossing over it with the fly spell. When she came to another chasm a short distance later, she created a magical horse-a stamping, snorting creature of ephemeral mist-which she mounted. The steed surged through the air, carrying her to the far side. Making her way down a narrowing corridor, she then came to a wall of stone erected across her path; yet another new spell melted those rocks into sticky mud, and she tiptoed through the morass to continue merrily on her way.

Finally the corridor opened up to terminate in a small, square room. There was a door in each of the three walls-a red door to her right, a black door in the middle, a white door to the left. She thought of Jenna and Dalamar, their rivalry and hostility toward each other-and their contempt for her.

Without hesitation, Coryn turned to the white door and opened it.

She stopped in surprise when she spotted Kalrakin just a few paces away. The tall, bearded sorcerer was stalking away from her down a corridor in the Tower-it looked like the very same place where she had last seen him.

Abruptly Kalrakin stopped and turned, and Coryn suppressed an urge to back up and close the door. Instead, she stood there and faced him as he stomped toward her. Her eyes were drawn to his hands. Once again she saw that pearly stone as he flipped it hack and forth. She was awed, and frightened, as the angry sorcerer approached; the ominous stone seemed to he wavering and dancing in the air. Her breath caught with a sudden jab of fear.

But Kalrakin walked right past her, without so much as acknowledging her existence. With amazement she grasped that he couldn't see her, and she felt a thrill of stealthy accomplishment as she fell in behind him, following the tall sorcerer along the hallway.

"You were a fool to let that little bitch live!" he snarled. Only then did she notice Luthar, standing outside the very door she had penetrated at the beginning of the Test. She had descended far from that place, and wandered a long distance through caverns and that vast chamber, yet she was not surprised to find herself right back at her very point of origin.

"I am sorry for the suggestion, Master," murmured the rotund man, his face paling. Coryn saw a bruise on Luthar's cheek, and a nasty sear of a burn that had blazed along his hand and wrist. Kalrakin had already punished his companion. "But it seemed our best chance of opening the wizard lock."

"Bah!" the dour mage turned again, startling Coryn who was just a few steps behind him. But once again he showed no sign that he was aware of her presence. His face distorted by fury, eyes blazing, he stretched out his fist, fingers clenched around the stone. White light pulsed and the sorcerer grimaced with the strain of casting his most powerful magic. Paving stones rose from the floor, shattered against each other, shards flew through the air; a whole section of the hallway was destroyed by Kalrakin's wrath.

But his wild magic was an abomination here, Coryn told herself. She could feel the suffering of the Tower, pain buzzing in the air all around her; every fiber of her flesh wanted to strike out, to stop the man's rampage.

But as the pieces of stone flew past her, and some, to her astonishment, right through her, she understood she was not really in that corridor. Some arcane means allowed her to see what was happening, to observe, hear, and even smell in that place, but she could neither come to harm nor lash out at Kalrakin. She found herself admiring the Tower's ingenuity-and its inherent courage, standing up to Kalrakin's destructive tantrum and still resisting the efforts of the wild mage to gain access to key locations.

Another white door gleamed, right in the middle of the hallway-though Coryn was certain it hadn't been there a moment earlier. She went over to it, opened it, and passed into a large cavern. The dank air stung her nostrils with a powerful acidic stench. It was dark, but even though she no longer carried her torch-she wasn't sure just where she had left it, but it was no longer in her hand-somehow she could see clearly.

Her steps carried her across an uneven floor, around great spikes of stone that jutted upward; curiously, she noticed many more of these strange formations on the cavern ceiling, dangling downward. Coming around a large shaft, where upward and downward spires had apparently merged into a column, she couldn't suppress a gasp of astonishment, and fright.

She had heard of dragons, but the creature coiled in front of her was much more of a nightmare than anything she could imagine. The mere sight of it made her knees weak, and brought a clammy sweat to her palms as she clenched and unclenched her fingers. The serpent was green, massively snakelike, and was watching her through hooded slits of eyes. Every instinct, every nerve of her being urged her to turn around and flee.

Instead she stood there and met that monster's lazy, disinterested gaze with a steely glare of her own.

"I have slain your comrades. You will find their corpses over there," indicated the serpent in an oily hiss of a voice. A forked tongue slithered from between the toothy jaws, jutting pointedly to the left.

"I do thank you," Coryn said. She was about to start along the indicated path when some notion caused her to hesitate. She faced the beast and curtsied. "Thank you, Sir Dragon," she added.

The wyrm snorted, but she thought that it was at least a little pleased by the gesture. As she walked past the dragon, toward a narrower continuation of the underground cavern, the beast spoke, almost a whisper in her ear.

"If you had tried to flee, I would have killed you."

"I know," she replied, speaking the truth. Somehow the words came out calmly, despite the terrified pounding of her heart.

Very frightened, now, Coryn hurried down the winding cavern, and quickly found Jenna and Dalamar. The woman lay twisted on her back, while Dalamar slumped back against the cave wall beside her. Though she walked right up to them, they, like Kalrakin, showed no awareness of her presence. But neither did they seem to be dead, as the dragon had claimed.

She saw immediately that the red-robed wizard was badly injured but breathing. Jenna's face was streaked with sweat, her jaw clenched in pain. Her leg lay bent outward at a grotesque angle, and a massive bloodstain, looking like black ink, spread out on her crimson robe. Tears rolled from beneath her closed eyelids.

Dalamar, too, had been hurt badly. He lay limply for a time, then rolled up and turned away from Jenna, coughing hard, slumping forward to lean on both hands, hacking until it seemed as though his lungs would burst. Finally, he shook his head, wearily wiped the sweat from his brow, and turned back to the sorceress. Jenna's face was deathly pale, her expression growing slack. The elf dribbled a few drops of water onto her lips, then lay back with a groan and covered his eyes with his arm.

Was this a real scene? Coryn felt a horrifying twinge of guilt-was it somehow her fault that the two wizards had been so grievously hurt? She had a sickening sense that the answer to both questions was "yes."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. And she knew that she had to move on.

Between the two wizards, Coryn saw another white door beckoning her. She couldn't help casting a lingering look at the black-robed figure. He looked weak there, and she wished that she could offer him comfort.

Instead, she touched the latch on the door, lifted it, and walked through.

The sun was shining brightly; it was hotter than she had ever known it to be, as she continued across the unending sandy waste. This arid flatland had been draining her strength for hours. No tree, no hillock, no ridge, not a single formation rose above the featureless plain. She wondered if this part of the Test was simply a challenge to her physical endurance. Coryn stopped and thought about her problem for a moment, but she could picture no spell to magically conjure up food or drink. Much less a map, she thought with a chuckle.

So she stumbled along, wearily, for more hours. Her feet were blistered, and eventually she became so exhausted that she almost slept as she walked. But she wouldn't allow herself to rest for more than a few minutes at a time-as soon as her eyelids grew heavy, and her head began to nod, she pushed herself to her feet and resumed her relentless trek. Her belly growled. And her hunger was nothing compared to the parching thirst that left her tongue feeling like a piece of dried leather in the arid cavern of her mouth. Water-what a precious substance, yet so easy to take for granted!

Certainly, the wild magic of her former life might have led her to a spring, or at least indicated where she might dig to discover moisture, but she never even considered employing those former powers; in her mind, she had already cast them away, forever. She would die of hunger and thirst before she would go back to that vulgar pathway, even if it held the means to her survival.

In the instant of that understanding, she was confronted by another door, a portal that suddenly materialized to stand upright on the ground before her, bringing her stumbling progress to an abrupt halt. Dazed, she studied the door. It was not in any of the three colors she had come to expect; rather, this was a simple panel of wooden boards strapped together with bands of iron. Come to think of it, it seemed identical to the long-ago door she had opened during the initial phase of the Test.

She had no doubt that she would open this door, and again pass through, but first she took a moment to gather her strength, to marshal her thoughts. A glance to the side showed her that the white moon, Solinari, was just rising above the flat horizon, a full white disk that seemed to smile upon her, shower her with promise, kindness, and love. Allowing that beneficence to fill her heart, she reached for the latch and pushed open the door.

Now she entered a huge, dark room, so vast that all the walls were lost in the shadows of distance. She was alone. Turning to look at the door she had entered, she was startled to see it was no longer there-indeed, the wall behind her was as far away as the other boundaries of the vast chamber. Her torch was in her hand and she raised it up, spotting a small table a few paces away. There was a pitcher of water on that table and she snatched it up, eagerly drinking down half the contents, with much of the rest splashing onto her dirty, dust-stained tunic.

It was then that she noticed the chairs some distance away, many of them arranged in a ring, all facing the center of the room. She approached, and studied the nearest chair. It, and all the others, seemed to be carved from black stone, as if they were part of the floor rather than resting upon it. There were twenty-one of these sturdy seats, arranged in three sections of seven.

"For the three orders," she murmured in sudden understanding.

She imagined a great meeting, a Conclave of the three orders, and she even saw herself, Coryn, sitting as the head of that great meeting.

All of a sudden she realized the chairs were occupied, not by people, but by empty, yet animated robes. The three sections were divided between the red, black, and white robes. The three different-colored robes filled the seats, turned and moved as if engaged in lively discourse, empty sleeves gesturing.

And then the hoods of those robes-with empty holes where the faces should be-all turned toward Coryn. They watched her intently, expectantly. She felt a momentary panic-what was she supposed to do now?

That is when the three moons came into view, rising with impossible speed until they loomed over her. Even the black one was visible, because it was actually darker than the darkness yawning above. The white was brilliant, the red like a spot of fresh blood, and all were full, round, and nearing zenith.

She heard a groan, coming from across the room, beyond the chairs. She made her way around the ring of ghostly robes, ignoring the gestures, the pantomimes urging her to stay. Instead she crossed to the far wall of the room. A spot of light attracted her and when she drew near, she saw that this was not a door, but more of a passage right through the wall of the room. She drew nearer and gasped as she recognized the familiar interior of Umma's little hut.

She stopped, pressing her hand to her mouth, stifling a sob of dismay.

Umma lay in her bed, wasted and frail. Her eyes were bright with fever; sweat streaked her brow. She turned her face back and forth, and her eyes were vacant, unseeing. A violent chill wracked her skeletal body, and she coughed and gagged, straining for each wheezing breath.

"Umma!" cried the girl, starting forward. The gap in the wall shimmered; there lay a free passageway that would take her away from the Tower, take her home, to this place where she was desperately needed.

"Wait!"

A command came from behind her, pulling her around. She saw the Master there, the white-bearded visage coming toward her slowly, holding up a restraining hand. He leaned on his staff but shuffled forward urgently.

"But she needs me!" she said. "I have to go to her."

"You don't understand," replied the Master of the Tower. "The Test reveals many truths, to you and about you. And this is the part that may doom you!"

"How?"

"You have felt the power, the magic, as you have wandered these past hours, have you not? And here, in the Hall of Mages, you saw the wizards of the Conclave all turning to you-honoring you, attending you, seeking your wisdom?"

"Y-yes. I saw that, sensed it."

"This has never happened before," the Master declared. "That one so young, so unprepared, has nearly emerged from the Test in a position, not just of learning, but of power, command, and influence! All this magic, the accolades of your fellow wizards, all will be yours if you but finish the Test!"

"While this hole in the wall you see before you, this escape from the Tower, is a cruel deception. For if you leave now, if you go to your grandmother and turn your back on the Conclave, your powers will be wiped away. You will have renounced the magic, renounced the world, and gone back to your miserable little village in the Icereach to live out your years. Until you, too, die as an old woman on a wretched pallet in a pathetic hut!"

"It is not a miserable village!" Coryn snapped, furious. "And you have no right to stop me! It is the place that made me what I am-the place where I belong!"

"No… I have no right," said the old man with a feeble shake of his head. "But I thought that you should know the very real stakes involved."

"My grandmother is truly ill?" she asked, knowing it to be the truth.

"Oh, most certainly. Probably dying-the Test does not deceive in these matters."

"Then I must go to her."

"The choice," said the Master of the Tower, "is yours."

Coryn nodded. She thought of the flight spell, of the tower of wonders, and the wizards of the Conclave. But she knew where she belonged. Her shoulders slumped under the weight of her decision, but there was only one thing she could do. She stepped forward, through the opening in the wall, and reached out to soothe Umma's fevered brow.

But Umma was no longer there. Instead, Coryn stood in a hallway-the same place where she had started the Test, she realized. There was a table beside her that had not been there hours-days? — earlier, when she had begun. Three objects rested there: a clear bottle containing a blood-red liquid, a small book of midnight black, and a slender wand of white.

She was obliged to take these things, she understood, and so she picked up the bottle first. But where to put it?

Only then did she realize that she no longer wore her travel-worn shirt and torn leather leggings. With a sense of awe, she looked down, felt the smooth, plush material against her skin, a cloth caress that felt wonderful all around her.

She was wearing a robe that was perfectly, immaculately white.