Ninety Days of Water

The Table of Eight are afraid of magic. The powerful are always afraid of the talented. That’s why the Table ratified the Protocol, whose full name sorcerers refused to mention, lest it lend the document some legitimacy. Among the Protocol’s more heinous goals was its intention to label all magical talents as ‘nuisances’ when not formally educated. In truth, ‘abominations’ is closer in meaning to the word in its context. In the Emperor’s grand vision, Blackmouth was to take on a new, imperially funded role, ‘rehabilitating’ the gifted, thus ceding a good deal of its independence- in exchange for coin, of course.

It wasn’t just those of us who feared political control who abhorred the new regime. The Arcane Lady, Lady Morganna, and her assistant, Miri the Dreamweaver, also had cause for anger. The Protocol proposed the abolition of non-healing female magical traditions, including prophecy and clairvoyance, which the Emperor no doubt viewed as threats. If he had his way, the Lady and Miri would be evicted from Blackmouth, along with their Apprentices. Further, Blackmouth itself would be deprived of one of its most notable resources. There would be no more prediction or soothsaying to counter imperial lies. No-one would have access to the female lines of magic from which the men of the Table were barred.

The powerful are always afraid of the talented.

That is the theme, and the hook, for this segment of my narrative. I intend to drive it home like a barb between the scales of a writhing fish, the better to pry them from its tender flesh, as I once learned to do in my youth. In fact, this brings me neatly to the next item of history I wish to recount for you. It occurs that I should tell you a little of my own origins, the better that you may find me believable.

It was a fisherman who first taught me how to tell stories, before I was swept away to Blackmouth to learn the more mysterious ways of runes. ‘Pictures are great bait,’ he would say, ‘and they can make the most idle fish come to life, so talk about them. Pictures are appealing, but they’re nothing without something steely behind them.’

That was over a decade ago, when I was training for my first Apprenticeship. Jhirra was my Master then, and together we worked at the fish monger’s just outside the palace walls in Tyrian City. The wholesale markets were mostly a place where low-ranking merchants yelled their voices hoarse, children played and old men stood around scratching themselves in doorways. I was thus immensely glad to have an insightful teacher. My days in the marketplace were far less tedious for his prescence, as Master Jhirra wove nets and shaved the scales off his earlier catches with a long, curved knife, all the while spouting memoirs for my benefit.

It was nearly a year before a passing Blackmouth sorcerer discovered me. The throngs parted around him like shoals before a shark, and to my child self, he was just as menacing. His black handprint was more claw-like on his bald, boulder-like head than were the marks of other sorcerers I had seen. It was even more shocking because, as I would later learn, many concealed their brands in places their clothes normally covered, and thus did not immediately appear to be branded at all. The hand seemed to reach up from my discoverer's broad, neckless shoulders, as though it belonged to a struggling victim he had pinned down, and clapped its imprint over one of his slitted eyes.

He was aloof as he strode between the tables of fish, oysters, mussels and abalone, the barrels of wriggling eels and livid squid and octopi, whose exudations had stained their water black. He passed the hanging nets and strings of onions, the piles of gourds and hunks of salted meat, and the heaps of oranges carted in from where the weather was hot and stifling. He barely noticed the way he cleaved the crowds. They were beneath him and barely relevant- like the river to an expert oarsman who carves his passage through it. Then, as though he were a hound sniffing the wind and it had just turned, his neck snapped, and those eyes pinned mine with the accuracy of needles.

‘Who are you?’ he had demanded, much as Vaghiiss had done, more than a decade later.

Those words have been a familiar motif in the tapestry of my life, woven in from many angles. Wherever I go, it seems, I stir interest, or create ill ease. People require to know my name and where I come from, not as a means of making my acquaintance, but as a way of keeping me at bay. They only want to know which pigeonhole I belong in.

Although I was young, I was familiar enough with the question. Out of respect for the sorcerer’s station, I was compelled to answer, but I was skeptical.

‘Achevon of Scullingway, in the Gorge,’ I replied warily.

‘Well, Achevon,’ the sorcerer has obliged me with a smile that didn’t extend to his eyes, ‘I am Master Arrick, the Image Master. What do you think of that?’

I didn’t think much of it at all, and I told him so. Of what relevance was it to those of us who scrabbled among the bilge and offal? I think, then, that I might have asked him if he intended to buy something. I was all but oblivious to my own Master, who had blanched white with horror by this stage. All that registered with me was the fact that he had stopped his picking –pluck, pluck, pluck– at the net he had been working on.

For a moment, the silence created a void in which I no longer felt defiance. My confidence fled for cover, and I was left exposed and trembling. Then, that grave countenance lit up, as though someone had stuffed a candle inside a pumpkin lantern. All the misshapen parts -the flat nose, the wide, thin lips and beetle-black eyes, and the asymmetry of the sorcerer’s facial hemispheres, one of which was marred by that raking hand- came together in a grin.

‘I might wish to make a purchase,’ he replied elusively. ‘First, however, let me ask you something. Are you aware that you have an aura?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I countered, without meaning to seem rude. It was just common sense, as far as I knew. It seemed a bit to me like asking whether I had a soul.

Master Arrick chortled in the way that only boulder-like men can. He had a deep-throated rumbling laugh, like a mountain threatening an earthquake. ‘Not like yours,’ he said.

Later, as he led me away from my aunt and uncle’s house, I learned that he had indeed purchased something in the marketplace that day. He purchased me.

He had bought the remainder of my Apprenticeship from Master Jhirra, he explained, and I was going to be trained to be something entirely different to a fish monger. I would be a little older than the other Apprentice mages, but only by a year or so, and so that would present no problems. At the end of my first season, I would be shown the full terms and conditions of continued study, as well as the fees. If these suited me, a contract would be drawn up for me to sign.

‘But I can't pay tuition,’ I had protested, spotting the issue at once. ‘I’m just a boy, and not from a well-off family.’

Poverty had taught me to be more shrewd than precocious. Most young sorcerers, I knew, were from wealthy families, or at least prosperous farming communities. Fathers who wished their sons, and sometimes their daughters, to be mages would have a seer inspect them when they were younger than I was then, and, if the results were promising, they would apply directly to Blackmouth, Lightshale or Firepeak. Children such as I were only aware of magic in an abstract sense. It had no bearing on our day-to-day lives, and it wouldn’t do us good to have ambitions.

There must have been a mistake, I thought, as I perched on the bumpier end of Master Arrick’s horse, hanging on awkwardly, for I had never really ridden before. The stones flew beneath the horse’s hooves, occasionally sending up sparks when they were struck, and the winding trail looked precarious. It seemed an unwise time to startle my new benefactor, whose stiff back might as well have been a wall in front of me.

‘Just a boy!’ Master Arrick exclaimed, eventually, in response to my statement. ‘You are no such thing. No mere boy has an aura like yours. It’s the deepest purple I’ve ever seen. Blackmouth is always on the lookout for such as you.’

I wanted to ask more, but I was unwilling to wear out my welcome with pestering, and the hill we climbed was growing steeper. At last, we reached the summit, and the view that spilled out from it took my breath away.

Until that day, I had never seen real mountains, or real rivers, crisp and clear with melted snow. I had never seen so much depth in a landscape, or so much empty space cupped between peaks. Only, as I gradually noticed when my eyes adjusted to the initial impact of the landscape, the air wasn’t empty, exactly.

It was full of light.

Light had never seemed so tangible to me before. The setting sun bled over the entire scene, running down the jagged cliffs and the gentle, rolling slopes, and painting the angular feet of the Aerie Alps in stark relief. It was as though somebody had cracked an egg over the horizon, dribbling yolk all over the land. The white of the egg was suspended in the clouds, where fog hung like cobwebs, curdling like foam around the sinkhole of the valley. Eagles dived though it, and they were huge birds, monstrous in size, and certainly bigger than any I had seen out on the docks. Their wingspans as wide as a man is tall, as far as I could judge.

There was also something else set in that vision, an object so intensely dark that it seemed diminutive, shrinking away from all the glory of the dying day.

‘Do you see that?’ Master Arrick pointed at a man-made structure, apparently a castle, straddling the edge of the steep tableland. I nodded. ‘That’s Blackmouth Academy,’ he said. ‘That’s where we’re going. By tomorrow evening, you will sit at a table in the kitchens, overlooking the Great Entrance. You will wear a robe and eat with the other Apprentices. The next day, you will begin your work and lessons. Mark my words if you don’t excel at them!’

I could say nothing. It all seemed too fantastic to be true, but it was. By the end of the week, Master Arrick had kept every word of his promise.



I also met Tellesing during my Apprenticeship, but not before I saw his portrait strung up in the main hall. There were few paintings and decorations in the black sandstone castle, and of the handful available to me, his likeness was the most fascinating.

The man was exceptionally tall, with a tight, black jacket that strapped over his breast, and a midnight cloak that enveloped him in its thick folds. His hair was black and feathery, like mine, so that I was smitten with the similarity. He might have seemed frightening, were it not for the youth that cradled his knowing expression, and the hint of tolerance that was visible there. In the overcast greyness, he did not appear to cast any shadow against the sandstone walls.

He had his sleeves rolled up, and while his shadow was curiously absent, its after-image could be glimpsed, burned into the skin of his forearm. There, against sinews still taut from adolescence, a black hand-print stood out like a tattoo. As the older Tellesing had later explained, being the first young sorcerer to bear such a mark had been a burden for him. He couldn’t help but think of it as though the thing he had condemned to the dimensional dungeons four years prior to the painting had reached out to seize him, searing him with its grasp as he had taken his Oath.

‘Seldom,’ said the old Tellesing, silver strands falling into his ice-bright eyes, ‘I had to remind myself of the impossibility of this. Shadows are not conscious beings, young Achevon, vested with volition and will. They are not ghosts. They do not even possess the kinds of spirits that rocks and trees and rivers have. A shadow had no more a soul than a severed limb- it is just a reflection, eclipsed by something tangible. You would do well to remember that.’

He had glanced down at my own forearm, which was pale and soft-skinned then, without any scars or blemishes. I had felt more than a twinge of pride when I saw my brand for the first time, in the same location as my idol's.

The other sorcerers at Blackmouth Academy had similar markings, of course, for they all belonged to the Order of the Black Hand, which had existed long before the tradition of taking shadows as additional payment had begun. As each had taken up the mantle of arcane scholarship –for none was older than Tellesing, save Master Ulrik, who was the school’s founder and as eons-old as it was– their badges had manifested differently.

Master Orim, shrewd and shriveled, had a mark corresponding with the shape of his own palm, so that from a distance, his hand might appear blackened and diseased. It was especially striking when he held it up in forbearance, as he so often did. The Master reveled in telling the young students, who knew nothing of the Order’s initiation save its cost, that he had reached through the Veil one day to touch palms with the Devil. Master Ericksson, grey, erudite and diplomatic, was distinguished by the likeness of a hand that seemed to shake his own. He used it often to stroke his long beard, lending its authority to deep, introspective thought.

The other scholars I saw had various imprints on their faces, hands and forearms- some on the left side and others on the right, according to their dexterity. They were mostly relaxed, unobtrusive shapes- mere bluish blotches, or stains, perhaps. None of them had such a clear and violent brand as Tellesing’s, which seemed to dig its charcoal fingers into his white flesh, clutching tightly, lest by releasing him its proprietor would fall into an abyss.

Master Ulrik alone lacked a handprint, but he wore many other marks in place of one. His bloodless, wrinkled skin shone pearlescent, for it was nearly entirely composed of scar tissue, criss-crossing and overlapping so that he appeared many-angled, like a roughly whittled carving. To the students with their souls intact, he was a grim effigy of all that was twisted and sold. So many pacts and bargains with demons had reduced his body to a husk, as, one by one, his principles were cut out and bartered in rituals of his own devising. Now his tortured bodily remains were held upright like a scarecrow, crucified on vanity and self-glorification. He was an excellent teacher, but none admired him.

One night I sat with Tellesing in his comfortable study, and he relayed to me the tale of his initiation, which I will now convey to you. We sat in chairs of leather, surrounded by curtains of deep, purple velvet. My Master had his long legs crossed, as was his accustomed way of sitting, and a faraway look in his twinkling eyes, from which youth still sprang in endless fountains. His sleek, silver hair fell in a curtain, swept back behind one ear. He was not wrinkled or bent. Though age had lent him a certain ruggedness, he was still the spitting image of the young Tellesing in his portrait. His crow familiar was also with him, as it had been for decades, its feathers blue-black and ragged with age, its eyes beady. It perched on his resting arm, while his other traced circles in the air.

‘Master Arrick says you are a promising candidate for a Journey of Runes,’ he began. ‘I will tell you this story, therefore, because I am the only Master of Runes presently at this Academy, and as such the only accountable storyteller and memory keeper in our tradition. However, I also wish to impart to you –and particularly you– a lesson. Be careful what you bargain with. Sacrifice is not a matter to be taken lightly.’

I nodded eagerly to show my comprehension, an action which caused me to sink further into the over-large chair I occupied. My small hands gripped the arms to prevent me from toppling into it completely. I was barely thirteen.

Tellesing smiled. ‘My story begins with a day that was both beautiful and sunny, one of the first since winter’s spell had broken. I was little older than you are now when I sat in the library tower, wedged into the frame of the window with the cool sandstone at my back– for that is where I liked to sit, you see.’ The Master paused there, and let his eyes alight on mine. I returned his smile feebly, because I was nervous, but secretly I was comforted. It pleased me to learn that the teacher I most sought to emulate had enjoyed my same boyhood misbehavior.

‘Below in the courtyard, the lawns were a spritely green,’ Tellesing continued. ‘Other, mostly younger students laughed and frolicked in the shade of a stately, sprawling oak. I watched them jealously, because I could not enjoy the blissful weather- I was not unburdened as they were. I had come upstairs for a reason. I sat in my favourite of the many, secret arches cut into the library tower, an open, airy vantage that I alone had guarded in all my five years of pupillage. Ambitiously, I had come there to read, but the sun was too powerful, and in the brilliant light, the pages only scorched my brain.'

'What were you reading?' I asked. My Master only indulged me with a smile. The answer was coming, I knew- just not yet.

‘I pored through book after book, searching for the solution to my problems. Each volume I picked up, I discarded in turn. Each spell I found was useless to me. The wind licked playfully at the corners of a page I was perusing, and I closed my last grimoire. With a word, I sent it back whence it came from, and swung my legs off the ledge, dismounting the arch. I set off to wander the grounds with my thoughts, hoping simultaneously for distraction and inspiration. Behind me, my shadow dragged, slinking lazily through the light that streamed in from all angles in the high tower... Do you like libraries, Achevon?’ he had asked me, suddenly.

‘Yes, sir,’ I managed.

‘I do too,’ he had replied, sounding almost absent-minded. ‘Remind me to show you later the tower to which I refer, if you haven’t discovered it already.’ Here, he grinned, and an echo of mischief flickered across his creased face.

‘Yes, sir. Thankyou, sir.’

‘Thoughtlessly, I descended the hidden trellis from the locked top room,’ Tellesing resumed his tale, smiling at the clues he left me, ‘where the volumes containing all the most potent spells were kept. How thrilled I had once been to discover that place! Now, it was only a prison built of past respite. I had been arrogant, you see, leaving the hard work until it was too late, until any reasonable chance of success had passed. Despair weighed on me, numbing my passage into whatever hellish afterlife surely awaited.’

At this point, I had clung even more tenuously to the arms of my chair, determined not only to prevent my fall, but to sit forward and listen more closely. I wanted to ask what it was that had weighed so heavily on my Master’s mind, but I fancied I had learned not to interrupt.

‘I passed through the vast atrium, coming 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 my heels on the flagstones rang out emptily, and was immediately drowned in the cavernous, hollow space. This was the room in which I would face my final ordeal, mere weeks in the future. Perhaps it would even be the room to swallow my soul, I considered, as easily as it drowned my footsteps. Crossing it seemed to take the longest time.

‘Outside, the warmth ought to have delighted me, but I could not shake the chills that winter had left in my bones. The others who walked and ran around, or relaxed on the lawn, were light with liberation. Formal classes had ceased, and 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.

‘For many of them, the Trial was a far-off inconvenience– a speck on the horizon. It was little more than a legend, made real only by the whispers of the older students whom they knew to endure it. Seldom, I would pass a boy or girl my own rank. When they caught sight of me, they would turn ashen-faced with horror, smile sympathetically, or look away in shame. Guilt had caught up with them for allowing me to accept eternal punishment on their behalf.

‘I wondered, then, why I had done it. Of course, I could not pinpoint what had made me volunteer for such a fate. It was pride, perhaps, I thought. Pride compelled me to take up the mantle, and arrogance made me confident that, in the role of vindicator, I would succeed.'

'Succeed at what?' I bit my tongue as soon as I said it, but I couldn't help myself. I hadn't learned as well as I thought. Tellesing stopped for me.

‘Why, at the Trial, of course,' he said. 'I was not to succeed at passing it, however. I was to succeed at losing the race.' Without pause for the next interruption forming on my lips, he continued. 'Maybe it was love that drove me to self-sacrifice. I would not stand to see the others, with their faces drawn in tension and fear, as Master Ulrik articulated the shapeless, ominous notion that had been growing steadily in all their minds as their final year approached.’

Here he paused for emphasis, and I flushed sheepishly. It was unusual for one Master to admit scorn for another, let alone to make fun of him, but the way Tellesing had painted Master Ulrik was humorously familiar. I could certainly picture him in the role.

The lightened mood seemed to give me more courage to speak up. ‘Excuse me,’ I ventured, ‘but I don’t understand. What were you afraid of? What was the Trial like then, and how did it differ to what we have now?’

Far from admonishing me, my Master had seemed gratified. ‘It was an ancient, cruel tradition,' he explained. 'In fact, I will let Master Ulrik tell you himself!’

I gulped at the prospect. Dread must have widened my eyes, for Tellesing laughed and shook his head. Then, he put on a voice- the most flawless impersonation of our haughty founder I have yet to hear, not that many dare to enter such a competition:

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

He proceeded in his normal voice. ‘Tall and robed, the figure of our Master was like a dark hole cut out of the outside world, framed by the massive double-doors that yawned behind him. I am sure you are familiar with the sight. Masked by the indoors gloom that illuminated our pale, young complexions, he was the grand opposite of everything we were- grizzled and wiry where we were supple and untested, grim while we yet had need of hope, stoic where anxiety clouded our minds. He wore darkness like a cloak, and walked with nightmare like an old friend.’

I nodded conspiratorially. It was an accurate description, but the truth was so shocking to me that I couldn’t muster words to greet it. A soul as payment? It seemed an unnecessarily high price, even in exchange for magic. I wondered what Master Ulrik did with all the souls, a new one being won every year. Did he gloat over his collection? The room was suddenly colder and less cozy than it had been when I was invited upstairs. I wondered why the fire in the grate did nothing.

‘So it is written,’ rasped Tellesing, in Ulrik’s voice, ‘so it must also be done!’

Then, again, his dramatic tone subsided. ‘That familiar intonation rang out like a death toll,’ he explained. ‘It was the tragic coda to our 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 and sealed it out for good.

‘For the first time, the Academy, which I had previously thought of as my only home, seemed undeniably like a prison. Its isolation, high up in the hills, was no longer tranquil, but bleak, while its strong walls, built of history and secrecy, were not safe, but impenetrable. The grates set in its stained-glass windows only served to make it more cage-like. I turned the implications of the Master’s speech over in my head. 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 would die inside each one of us.

‘As you might have predicted by now, this was too much for me to bear. Above all else, it was the hopelessness that I could not abide. I would not stand to see the death of empathy, or of idealism. I would not step aside while such things were needlessly slain, and the spirits of my brethren withered in the agonising wait for the date of their judgment. Most of all, I would not permit them to become like our Master, crippled by bitterness.

‘In the days that followed, silence stifled our studies and drained our concentration. My adoptive brothers and sisters were unnaturally sober. I knew how 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 moral burden. Nobody could be certain who would finish last in the race.

‘That was the way of all arcane things, Master Ulrik would remind us. Such was the danger implicit in the double-edged sword of sorcery. That was what we must learn to expect, if we wished to wield magic as a weapon and a privilege among other men and women. We must learn the cost of risk. Naturally, I disagree with him, but you must understand, young Achevon, that is still his view of the world. Not even a change in the tides can reverse such a strong undercurrent.'

I nodded, and tried to understand.

‘Yet, I will not digress. It is worth noting that, at the time of my Apprenticeship, Blackmouth had only just begun to accept female pupils. The Trial was therefore even more unfair. The girls and the smaller boys, I noted, seemed the most wan in the days that followed. Inevitably, they would straggle behind the tall youths, such as I, who could easily outpace them in a sprint across the flagstone expanse. As the weeks passed, the girls grew thin and shaky with the effort of holding up their confidence, as though it had swelled to encompass the weight of the world.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I interjected, instinctively.

‘Not at all,’ Tellesing agreed. ‘It wasn’t fair for such fear to stem from an agreement we had all made as mere children, or that our families,' he paused again, for I knew even then that Tellesing was an orphan, like me, 'made for us. That was why I had to act. At breakfast one morning, I told them that I would be the one to go last. I vowed it in front of everybody. Spoons clattered, ignored by eyes that were round like saucers. I assured them again and again that I would be the final boy out Blackmouth's front door. I would make certain that every last one of them left before me.

‘I don’t know why they believed me. I think that, perhaps, they didn’t have a choice. Confusion contorted the frowns of some of the others, while alarm had wiped still more expressions clean. Naturally, some had protested, but I lied to them. I told them that I had a plan.

‘And now, you will see the root of my dilemma,’ he concluded.

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. ‘You were bound by your word, but you didn’t really have a way of escaping.’

‘Very astute. Of course, you are right.’ He sighed. ‘I didn’t have a plan. It pained me, but not as much as it should have done. You see, there was one other thing that obliged me to make an offering of myself. When the spring came and the year was ended, I knew that 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, or straddling the fjords, or scattered in the wide, open fields, where wildflowers blossomed and thickets bounded from the shining coast up to the mountains.

‘Of all my classmates, I alone belonged wholly to this place,’ he gestured widely at the walls, the floor and ceiling of the room, ‘for the simple reason that I had no other. I alone had been pitied by the Master, and so I alone had a debt to satisfy. If a soul must be reaped, I concluded, why should it not be that which grew here?

‘In the heartbreaking way of endings, the world became more beautiful to me as the final days trickled by. Now, spring was upon me, and my eyes stared out at a transformed scene. Bright leaves glistened on the trees, here and there still folded in dewy, green buds. The mist was clearing from the highlands, so that the hills seemed to thrust me upwards on a platform while the leas rolled steadily down the slope, exposed to me. Even my peers were more themselves than usual, and I thought fondly of how I would miss them all. In fact, I will let you in on a secret,’ he said, leaning in so that the bird on his arm was startled.

I cocked my head. My ear-length hair fell into my face. ‘What is it?’

‘There was also a girl,’ he admitted. I didn’t know how to respond at first.

‘Who was she?’ It seemed like the polite thing to say. I could not have been more surprised by the answer.

‘You might know her,’ my Master said slyly, ‘as Miri the Dreamweaver. She resides with Lady Morganna in the low cavern, and has done so for as long as I have been tethered here. She and the Lady still stroll about the Academy sometimes, although they prefer their own quarters, and you will never have lessons with them. They are independent from the hierarchy we Masters cultivate,’ he explained, ‘and refuse to teach male children.’

I had indeed encountered Miri, and thought her very old, but not exactly crone-like. Her hair was thin and wispy, reminding me of nothing so much as spiders’ webs. She always wore long robes, so milky white that she looked impossibly ashen by contrast, but she was still graceful, in a manner. She was so light that she floated upon the air like cotton fuzz. It was bizarre to think that she had ever been anything other than ancient. She seemed almost on the brink of becoming a ghost.

‘Would you have guessed,’ said Tellesing, his voice assuming an abstract quality that might have been reminiscence, ‘that her hair was once as vibrant as fire? It was always perfumed with the breath of flowers, and adorned with autumnal things like lacy fungi and dragonfly wings.’ I thought of the insect wings that Miri still wore in her hair, although, as I knew her, they reminded me more of the remains of bugs spun into her web-like bun. ‘She was fire to my ice,’ Tellesing sighed.

‘I needed her then to inflate my collapsed spirits, to support the wasted structure of my body when my cheeks pinched and my bones showed, as though my heart had imploded and was sucking at them from the inside. I needed her especially as she would soon be as inaccessible to me as the dark side of the moon, glowing only in memory, if then. The fleeting nature of our bond, of which I was painfully aware, only served to rend me so that I needed her more badly. Each time we embraced, I held her with all the gravity of a dying sun.

‘We were fused opposites. She was shorter than I was, and her head tucked underneath my chin so that we fitted together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. With she in robes of brilliant gold and I dressed in heavy midnight, we folded together like life and death, lunar and solar, day and night, beginning and end. We were as interdependent as light and shadow, and one of us would soon disappear...’

I shifted uncomfortably, feeling somewhat like an eavesdropper while my Master rambled on. For all I could tell, he was lost in recollection. It was only when he shook his sleeve over his wrist, so that the crow cawed indignantly, and made his next statement that I realised he had never been lost at all.

‘It was she who gave me the idea,’ he revealed. ‘If we had not been such opposites, I might never have thought about shadows at all. They were so much a second nature to me, for I was always the darker, brooding one of us.

‘On the last day before the equinox, the Apprentices stood arrayed in the hall. Some seemed apprehensive, but I adopted a bold, upright posture to show that I did not intend to fail them. In single file, they twisted and turned to get a better look at me, trying to determine whether they should be frightened or cheerful. For myself, I existed in a dream-like state. The present eluded me. I seemed to exist trapped between the quickly vanishing past and the indomitable future.

‘I nodded at my peers, but I was quiet. Master Ulrik was not know of our conspiracy until the very last moment. For the safety of my brothers and sisters, and for the sake of my own, tentative interests, I meant to catch him by surprise. Finally, he gave a sign, and we fell silent.

‘You will remember,’ Tellesing wheezed, taking me by surprise this time, ‘the bargain we made on the day you each came to me for instruction. The day for you to fulfil that bargain has come. 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, but the very last soul to set foot over the threshold will not leave this place. It will belong to me for all eternity. The rest of you are free to make your ways in the world as suits yourselves. You may return as graduates, or you may never return at all. The choice is yours.

‘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.”

‘These syllables fell dully in the hall, having no resonance, only a great and terrible mass. My senses heightened, so that I was conscious of every aspect of his being, from the long, black hair –for it wasn’t always silver– brushed behind my ears to the stifling fabric that was suddenly tight across my chest and the cuffs of my jacket where they rubbed my wrists. I flexed my toes, testing the hardness of the leather that bound them and thinking on the importance of the steps they would soon take.

‘Like oil aflame, every fibre of my body was keen to exhaust itself before it could be smothered. Energised thus, I fought to maintain a calm surface while every nerve in my body ignited as though struck by lightning. Doubt sparked in my mind, as I had expected it would, finding ready fuel in the panic suppressed around me. My heart rose in my throat. What if I failed? What if my cleverness won me only chastisement? Could I trust myself to stay back, or would my heels carry me away of their own accord?’

I held my breath, imagining what it might feel like to have such thoughts.

‘And then, if I was captured,’ my Master went on, ‘would I spend my days in torment? Would I feel anything at all? Would I remember my friends throughout the eons of labour that would be my prize for a boyish attempt at heroism? Or would my mind erode, becoming nothing more than an empty container for madness to echo inside?

‘A crack like a whip sounded, and in a shattering instant, my fate was sealed. The others sped ahead. Boots scrambled on the flagstones, and the room was full of dust disturbed in a flurry of robes. None looked back. One by one, I saw them cross the threshold and feel the warmth of the sun upon their faces. Soon, only two, steady footfalls remained as I paced the vast length of the hall alone. I felt my Master’s eyes upon my back. My legs began to shake, but I kept my gaze fixed on my only hope.

‘I had been right about one thing- the only thing that 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 I crept. I focused on the golden puddle that warmed the stones in the hallway, avoiding the stricken expressions of my peers as they turned to face me, their momentary joys defeated.

‘I was almost there when Master Ulrik cleared his throat. When I turned, I saw that he looked unusually old –for normally in those days he just looked wizened– and had raised an outstretched hand 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 as they were with the centuries of pacts that had town his physical features and ties with reality, were searching. “You are the last boy left.”

‘“But, Master,” my protest was more tremulous than I anticipated. I was so very young. “I am not the last one out.” Unable to confront my Master’s grave mistrust, I chose instead to address my peers, who stood safely amassed on the steps beyond the doors. “See,” I explained, “my shadow follows me. It is he who is the last to leave today, and to whom you are entitled.”

‘All eyes rested on the Master, waiting for his verdict, but his creased countenance was grim. He seemed to lean in on himself, balancing on a crumpled core. For a long while, he was at war, making no signals to be interpreted. Then, like swift, revealing dawn, the silence broke.

‘“‘Very well,” he barked. There was something in the twisting of his mouth that approached a smile, though there was no joy there, only satisfaction. A cheer erupted from outside, but inside the hall I held my breath, chancing no reply. The hand that had been raised in a grasping gesture now withdrew inside its voluminous sleeve. I still remember his exact words. “I see that I have taught you well,” he 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.”

For the next scene, Tellesing had prepared another apt description of our Master. ‘Bloodless lips like pale, fat worms moved in an inaudible chant,’ he said, smiling and forming illustrative shapes with his hands, ‘and I felt something ripped away from me, like a dimension of my soul. When the sensation had passed, I noticed nothing lacking in feeling. However, when I turned on the spot, I saw that, like a ghost or a phantom, I cast no shape upon the ground. Experimentally, I waved, and found that nothing rose from the ether in answer; no vacant, puppet motion to mirror my own.

‘Some of my fellow graduates drew back in a suspicious huddle. A few frowns even puckered with what might have been jealousy, but mostly, there was disbelief and gratitude for a collective victory. A callous suggestion of a smile curved Master Ulrik’s lips– be that as it may the most unbelievable part of this tale. I thought I glimpsed in it the shadow of something else. In a sense, we were alike. We were both men altered by bargains, but while he was scarred, I stood surrounded by brilliance. I exited the toothless archway of the Great Entrance, and joined my equals.

Tellesing had been so enervated by the telling of his story that I had almost forgotten his true age. It took me by surprise when he sighed once more and slumped into his armchair, his mirthful expression becoming serious. ‘The hour grows late,’ he declared.

He was right. I emerged from my own reverie and saw that the candles around us had melted into sputtering stumps. The velvet drapes were more black than purple, and the crow was nodding, its beak tucked beneath its glossy wing.

‘Do you understand the moral of the story?’ Tellesing asked.

‘I think so,’ I muttered.

‘Good,’ he said abruptly. However, he made sure to add, ‘Sometimes sense is more important than magic. You remember that, young Achevon.’ I nodded. ‘Now, away with you! An old man needs his rest.’

He had smirked as I had left the room, bowing and bidding him goodnight, my robes swallowing my hands and bunching up around my skinny waist as I bent forward. I hurried down the spiral stairs back to my dormitory, my footsteps muffled by the darkness.



I reflected on past lessons as I walked with Fletch along the cliffs, as far away from Blackmouth as civilisation allowed. I thought of the hills and the far-off mountains and coastlines, flung across the crown of the earth in a wide circlet, that had been visible from the highest storeys of my former home. Perhaps we were now at the edge of that ring?

The cliffs we stalked rose out of the flat tidal pools furthest from Lightshale, where the water became choppier. They leaned dangerously, poised to dive into the ocean, but Fletch and I were used to the highlands, and this didn’t bother us. Even I, who was less athletic, had no fear of falling. The sea snapped at the shrapnel below the overhang, gnashing its broken teeth, but it could not snap at us. In the distance, we could hear waves crashing, and snatches of sound like music; drums or sticks banging together in a rhythmic way.

‘Whoa, watch it!’ I teetered on the edge of a precipice, and Fletch grabbed me with a firm hand, tugging me back.

In a spell of dizziness, I caught sight of the pointed rocks leering below. Pictures are great bait, I thought, but they’re nothing without some thing steely behind them. The unsettling sight would not claim me that day.