The Sorcerer's Shadow

Wedged in the corner of the wide windowsill, a black figure slumped like a ragdoll, or a bookend supporting the masonry. Heavy boots –the tall kind, with buckles, not laces– anchored his feet where they were crossed at the ends of his skinny legs. Shadows pooled around him in the daylight, flowing like an extension of his long cloak.

Tellesing sighed, following the progress of his breath as it swirled through the open window to join the springtime air. In the seasonal crispness, he was conscious of the cool sandstone pressing against his back. A leather-bound book lay on its spine beside him, open at the page where he had abandoned it in favour of the view. Below in the courtyard the lawns were a spritely green. Other, mostly younger students laughed and frolicked in the shade of a stately, sprawling oak.

Tellesing watched them jealously. It was a beautiful, sunny day, one of the first since winter’s spell had broken, but he could not enjoy it. He was not unburdened as they were.

Instead, he had come upstairs, to his favourite of the many, secret arches cut into the library tower, to the open, airy vantage that he alone had guarded in all his five years of pupillage. Ambitiously, he had come here to read, but the sun was too powerful. In the brilliant light, the pages only scorched his brain.

Inky sigils twisted and crawled across the white parchment like restless tentacles. Squirming through the depths of Tellesing’s subconscious, they knotted themselves in his stomach like so many, slimy hagfish from the bay. They spoke of submarine forces, of kraken and other beasts that he might compel in an instant, but they were not the right kind of magic.

Opposite them, further scribblings lifted off their page, drawn partway free by their reader’s hesitancy. Despite his lack of focus, Tellesing had a special affinity for the various runes and inscriptions. They hovered easily at his bidding. Angular and venomous, they quivered, tasting at the atmosphere like vipers’ tongues. Yet, these were dark symbols, and he was reluctant to use them if he could help it. They too were useless.

The wind licked playfully at the corners of the page, and Tellesing closed the book.

There was nothing for it. He would just have to let his mind rest. With a word, he sent the grimoire back where he had found it, and, swinging his legs off the ledge, dismounted the arch.

He would wander through the grounds with his thoughts, hoping for distraction and inspiration. Behind him, his shadow dragged, slinking lazily through the light that streamed in from all angles in the high tower.

He descended the hidden trellis from the locked top room, where the volumes containing all the most potent spells were kept. How thrilled he had once been to discover this place! Now, it was only a prison built of past respite. He had been arrogant, leaving the hard work until too late, until any reasonable hope of success had surely passed. Despair and fatigue weighed on him, numbing his passage into whatever hellish afterlife awaited him.

Rejoining the main castle via a rotting gate in a concealed courtyard, Tellesing passed through the vast atrium. At last, he came to the entrance hall. Here, more daylight spilled in through the open double-doors; just as it penetrated the castle’s every other orifice.

The clicking of his heels on the flagstones rang out, and was immediately drowned in the cavernous, hollow space. This was the room in which he would face his final ordeal, mere weeks from now. Perhaps it would even be the room to swallow his soul, as effortlessly as it swallowed any audible trace of him. Crossing it took the longest time.

Outside, the warmer weather should have delighted him, but Tellesing couldn’t shake the chills that winter had left in his bones. The other students who walked and ran around him, or relaxed on the lawn, were light with liberation. Formal classes had ceased for the year. Some of them would be returning home, to farming and merchant families in the city and the delta. Others had paid their board to remain over the spring break, and had a full month of untroubled sleep and uninterrupted leisure to look forward to.

Many of them were younger teenagers, for whom the Trial was a far-off inconvenience– a speck on the temporal horizon. It was little more than legend, made real only by the older students whom they knew to endure it.

Seldom, Tellesing would pass a boy or girl his own age savouring the bright afternoon. When they caught sight of him, they would turn ashen-faced with horror, smile sympathetically, or look away in shame. Guilt had caught up with them for allowing him to accept eternal punishment on their behalf, and now nobody was enthusiastic for graduation.

Why had he done it?

Even now, he wasn’t sure what had made him volunteer for such a fate. Perhaps it was pride. Pride compelled him to take up this mantle, and arrogance had made him confident that, in the role of vindicator, he would succeed.

Or, maybe it was love that had driven him to self-sacrifice. He could not stand to see the others, their faces drawn in tension and fear, as the Master had articulated that shapeless, ominous notion that had been growing steadily in all their minds as their final year approached.

It was an ancient, cruel tradition.

‘And the very last boy -or girl- to reach the threshold of these doors will concede his essence to me, until the end of time. For, as it is said, the last soul to reach the daylight stays.’

Tall and robed, the figure of the Master stood like a dark hole cut out of the outside world, framed by the massive double-doors that yawned behind him. Masked by the indoors gloom that illuminated the pale, young complexions around him, he was the grand opposite of everything they were– grizzled and wiry where they were supple and untested, grim while they still had need of hope, stoic where anxiety clouded their minds. He wore darkness like a cloak, and walked with nightmare like an old friend.

‘So it is written. So it must also be done.’

The familiar intonation rang out like a death toll– the tragic coda to their saga. With it, optimism was extinguished, and naivety vanquished.

The fortified doors creaked shut on their hinges, bearing down on the crevice of light between them until they slammed shut with a deafening thud, sealing it out for good.

For the first time, the fortified Academy that Tellesing had previously thought of as his only home seemed undeniably like a jail. Its isolation, high up in the hills away from the city, was no longer tranquil, but bleak. Its strong walls, built of history and secrecy, were not safe, but impenetrable. The stained-glass grates set in its windows only served to make it more like a cage.

He turned the implications of the Master’s speech over in his head, falling in step with his peers as he did so.

The Trial was real. It was just as it was rumoured to be. Although only one apprentice would ultimately surrender his soul, a sliver of humanity died inside each one of them that day.

Above all else, it was this that Tellesing could not abide. He would not stand to see the death of empathy, or of idealism. He would not step aside while such things were needlessly slain, and the spirits of his brethren withered during the agonising wait for the date of their judgment.

Most of all, he would not permit them to become their Master, who was the effigy of all that was twisted and sold. So many pacts and bargains with forces and demons had reduced his body to the sum of his ego’s scars as, one by one, his principles were bartered in rituals of his own devising. Now the tortured husk that remained was held upright like a scarecrow, crucified on vanity and self-glorification.

In the days that followed, silence stifled their studies and drained their concentration. Most of Tellesing’s adoptive brothers and sisters were unnaturally sober. He knew it was because it hurt them to think of the injustice in the deal that would be their first as sorcerers, if they survived it. For many of them, it was more than a theoretical iniquity– nobody could be certain who would finish last in the race.

That was the way of all arcane things, their Master would repeat. That was the danger implicit in the double-edged sword. This was what they must learn to expect, if they wished to wield magic as a weapon and a privilege among other humans. They must learn the cost of risk.

The stronger teenagers were morally wounded, but it was the girls and the smaller boys, Tellesing noted, who were most wan. Ever since the Blackmouth Academy had accepted female children as pupils, the Trial had been far less than fair. They would straggle behind the male youths, who easily outpaced them in the race across the flagstone expanse.

For this reason, few girls were brave enough to request tuition. As the weeks passed, they grew thin and shaky with the effort of holding up their confidence, which swelled to encompass the weight of the world.

The squattest, fattest boy in the cohort also seemed to whiten as he engorged, consuming more and more food at each meal. He was beyond inducements to exercise, paralysed by the toxic of fear that made him bloated like a corpse. He walked as stiffly as the girls did nervously, as though battling an early onset of rigor mortis.

It wasn’t fair. Those three words poured over and over through Tellesing’s mind, like sand falling through an hourglass. It wasn’t fair. The deadline was fast approaching, its momentum flowing from an agreement they had made as children, and he was powerless to save any of them.

It wasn’t fair.

The sand accumulated in the bottom of the bulb, filling it up and threatening to burst it. The pressure was too much.

‘I’ll do it.’ Tellesing choked out the words one day at breakfast. ‘I’ll go last.’

Spoons clattered, ignored by eyes that were round like saucers.

‘When we all run out the doors at the Trial,’ he clarified, ‘and the last boy has to stay, and the Master will keep his soul, as the price for teaching us all, it’ll be me. I will go last. I’ll make sure of it that every, single one of you leaves before me.’

He didn’t know why they believed him. Maybe they just chose to, or maybe they had to. Maybe they trusted him. Poor, swollen Alphonse had frozen mid-bite, tears and oatmeal sopping down his pudgy face. Confusion contorted the frowns of some of the others, while alarm wiped still more expressions clean.

‘But, Tellesing,’ they had protested. ‘You can’t go last! You ought not to lose! You’re fast and strong. You know as much as any of us.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, and, now that he thought about it, he knew that that was why they had placed so much faith in him to begin with. ‘I’ll be fine. I have a plan.’

It had been the only lie he’d ever told them. Even as he said it, those portentous doors, visible through the dining hall archway, had gaped in denial. They were mocking him, laughing at him. Anger balled tightly inside his chest, summoned from a thousand sources.

There was one other thing that he felt obliged him to make an offering of himself. When the spring came and the year was ended, the others would be returning home. They each had their places in the world, nestled in the bustling, seaside metropolis, where shipping bells sounded, where the air was salty and the water in the harbour foamed choppily, straddling the fjords, or scattered in the wide, open fields, where wildflowers blossomed and thickets bounded from the shining coast up into the mountains.

Of all Tellesing’s classmates, he alone belonged wholly to this place, for the simple reason that he had no other. He alone was an orphan pitied by the Master, and so he alone had a debt to satisfy.

If a soul must be reaped, why should it not be that which grew here? If anyone need resign to work as a captive, a slave in the dimensional dungeons, then there was no better candidate than he. Yet, still he had hoped, in that simple time, when it was merely the making of a promise that was required of him, for some last-minute exoneration.

Now, spring was upon him. Tellesing’s eyes, more sunken and sharper than they had been when he was sixteen, stared out at a transformed scene. Bright leaves glistened on the trees, here and there still folded in dewy, green buds like chrysalises. The mist was clearing from the highlands, so that the hills seemed to thrust him upwards on a platform while the leas rolled steadily down the slope, exposed to him. In the clear air, the distant bay was visible as a glittering crescent.

Something else had changed, too. She had not been present in the dining hall that day. Instead, she was ensconced in her room, the last sanctuary from the fears that had crowded her. Now their roles were reversed, and she had thrown the doors and windows open to possibility, and come out freely into the world.

She bounded towards him, blithely trusting, a new lamb that had not yet learned timidity, or of the concept of wolves. Red hair crowned her like a halo of flames, falling and fluttering about her lit face like autumn incarnate.

‘Tel’,’ she sang out as she danced about him. ‘You’re outside! Isn’t the weather lovely?!’

She had a smile that made him want to sing too, but he was voiceless. ‘It’s great,’ he gulped eventually, yet apparently unconvincingly.

‘Oh, but you know what I mean,’ she encouraged him. ‘I just love a fresh spring! Everything smells different. The air feels different. Ah!’ Her eyes closed like lidded butterflies as she inhaled. ‘Can you smell the earth? It’s like life.’

Only Miri would dare to speak to him of such things. Pure, innocent Miri, who never wore glamours, for she was a living enchantment. Tellesing smiled, indulging her, and himself as well.

He pulled her into a hug with all the gravity of a dying sun, savouring the perfume of her hair as he stroked it.

‘Will you tell me what your plan is yet?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been in the library tower these past weeks, I know it. How are you going to beat him?’ Even as her eyes shone about his stiff profile like moons in orbit, he shook his head.

‘No, dearest.’

He needed her belief in him to inflate his collapsed spirits, to support the wasted structure of his body when his cheeks pinched and his bones showed, as though whatever had imploded in him was sucking at them from the inside. He needed her especially as she would soon be as inaccessible as the dark sides of those moons, which would glow only in memory, if then. The fleeting nature of their bond, of which he was painfully aware, only served to rend him so that he needed her comfort more badly.

Shorter than he was, her head tucked underneath his chin. They fitted together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle– fused opposites like life and death, lunar and solar, fire and ice.

She in a shawl of threads as golden as his cloak was midnight, they stood folded together like day and night, beginning and end. They were as interdependent as light and shadow, and soon one would disappear.

The days raced by as the last grains of sand in Tellesing’s hourglass slipped between the bulbs, existing only in free fall. He didn’t know how the present escaped him. For an extended time, he seemed to exist trapped between the quickly vanishing past and the indomitable future.

It was the last day before the equinox, and the students stood arrayed in the hall. Some seemed apprehensive, but Tellesing knew that they could tell from his bold, impassive stance that he did not intend to fail them. In single file, they twisted and turned to get a better look at him, trying to determine whether they should be frightened or cheerful on his behalf.

From the middle of the line, he nodded reassuringly, but subtly. The Master must not know of their conspiracy until the very last moment. For the safety of his brothers and sisters, and for the sake of his own, tentative interests, Tellesing meant to catch him by surprise.

‘You will remember,’ a craggy, croaking voice announced, ‘the bargain we made on the day you each came to me for instruction. The day for you to fulfil that bargain has come.’

There was much swallowing and shuffling as the soon-to-be graduates straightened attentively.

‘As per our agreement, on the day that you graduate, you must face but one Trial. You each must cross the hall to the Great Entrance, as you have done countless times these past five years. The very last soul to set foot over the threshold will not leave this place, but will belong to me, and, thus to Blackmouth, for all eternity. So tradition dictates. The rest of you are free to make your ways in the world as suits yourselves, and to wield the secrets of our Order for no greater price than your food and board.’

Appearing wise and terrible as a bluestone carving, the Master intoned again, as though granting a mercy, ‘Only the last boy -or girl- shall I keep.’

The syllables fell dully in the hall. They had no resonance, only a great and terrible mass.

His senses heightened with the fervour of anticipation, Tellesing was conscious of every aspect of his being, from the long, black hair brushed back behind his ears to the stifling fabric that was suddenly tight across his chest and the cuffs of his jacket where they rubbed his wrists. He flexed his toes, testing the hardness of the leather that bound them and thinking on the importance of the steps they would take moments from now.

Like oil aflame, every fibre of his body was keen to exhaust itself before it could be smothered. Energised thus, he fought himself to maintain a calm surface as every nerve and neuron ignited as though struck by chain lightning.

Doubt sparked in his mind, as he had expected it would, finding ready fuel in the suppressed panic around him. His heart rose in his throat. What if he failed? What if his cleverness only won him chastisement for his foolishness? Could he trust himself to stay back, or would his heels carry him away of their own accord?

And then, if he was captured, would he spend his days in torment? Would he feel anything at all? Would he remember them –Miri, Alphonse, and all the others– during the eons of labour that would be his prize for his boyish attempt at heroism? Or, would his mind erode like a whetstone, becoming nothing more than an empty container for madness to echo inside?

There crack like a whip, and in one shattering instant, Tellesing’s fate was sealed as the others sped ahead.

It was too late.

The Master’s hand was raised, black-palmed, and they were off. Boots scrambled on the flagstones, and the room was full of dust disturbed in a flurry of robes and exertion. Tellesing caught a final glimpse of Miri’s flame-red hair and the tan trousers she wore in place of a gown. Then she flew away from him, as did the rest.

None looked back.

One by one, he saw them cross the threshold, and feel the warmth of the sun upon their faces. Soon, only two, steady footfalls remained as Tellesing paced the vast length of the hall alone.

He felt his Master’s eyes upon his back. His legs began to shake, but he kept his frozen gaze fixed on his only hope, up ahead.

He had been right about one thing– the only thing that still mattered. It was midday, and as the double doors had groaned open to permit the escape of the first students, a wall of heavenly light spilled in, casting long streaks behind them. It was towards this light that Tellesing crept. He focused on the golden puddle that warmed the stones in the hallway, avoiding the stricken expressions of his peers as they turned to face him, their momentary joys defeated.

He was almost there.

‘Ahem,’ the Master cleared his throat.

Turning feebly, Tellesing saw that he looked unusually old. His outstretched hand was raised remorsefully.

‘Ah, Tellesing,’ he began wearily, ‘you disappoint me! You were one of my best, but these are the rules...’ He shook his head, and his pale, bloodshot eyes –strained with the decades of fragile pacts that tore at his every physical feature and tie with reality– were searching. ‘You are the last boy left.’

‘But, Master,’ the protest came more tremulously than Tellesing had imagined. ‘I am not the last one out.’

Unable to confront his Master’s grave mistrust, he chose to instead address his peers, who stood safely amassed on the steps just beyond the doors.

‘See,’ he explained weakly, but bravely, ‘my shadow follows me. It is he who is the last to leave today, and to whom you are entitled.’

Miri’s face lit up like a festival lantern, while triumph smirked in pockets of the throng, but some of the others were not convinced enough to celebrate. Their eyes rested on the Master, waiting for his verdict, but the old man’s creased countenance was grim. He seemed to lean in on himself, balancing on a crumpled core.

For a long while, he seemed at war with himself, making no signals to be interpreted. Then, like swift, revealing dawn, the silence broke.

‘Very well,’ the Master barked.

A cheer erupted from outside, but inside the draughty hall, Tellesing held his breath, chancing no reply.

The hand that had been raised, claw-like, in a grasping gesture now withdrew inside its voluminous sleeve. ‘I see I have taught you well,’ its owner conceded. ‘You have taken a great risk today, for great reward. As is your scope to bargain, you will go unimpeded. In return, I shall be keeping him.’

Bloodless lips like pale, fat worms moved in an inaudible chant, and Tellesing felt something ripped away from him, like a dimension of his soul. When the sensation had passed, he noticed nothing lacking in feeling. However, when he turned on the spot, he saw that, like a ghost or a phantom, he cast no shape upon the ground. Experimentally, he waved, and saw that nothing rose from the ether in answer; no vacant, puppet motion mirrored his own.

Some of his fellow graduates drew back from the threshold into a suspicious huddle. A few frowns even puckered in what he thought might have been jealousy, but mostly, there was disbelief and gratitude for this collective victory.

‘Son of the Order of the Black Hand, Tellesing, you are henceforth free to depart whither you will.’

A callous suggestion of a smile curved his teacher’s lips, and Tellesing thought he glimpsed in it the shadow of something else. In a sense, they were alike now. Both men were altered by bargains, but while one was scarred, the other stood surrounded by brilliance.

Exiting the toothless, subjugated archway of the Great Entrance, Tellesing appeared to drift towards the familiar pack of sorcerers. They were now, as always, his equals.

He would never forget the day that sense, not magic, saved him.