CHAPTER Five
I felt considerably more confident once I’d left the library and began the hike back to my little attic garret. Both books were tight under my arms and, although I had to take care to grip them tightly, I passed several mages who didn’t seem to notice anything peculiar. Of course, they all veered considerably far out of my way when they saw me coming and averted their eyes to avoid meeting my gaze, and I knew that once I’d passed them they were all staring at me in wide-eyed fascination, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t then be able to catch their eyes. So far, however, no-one was shouting anything about the crazy bitch who wasn’t really a mage trying to steal things and hide them about her person though.
I was particularly glad that the thumping headache was showing no signs of returning, despite my muffled alarm that it really had been caused by the Fae book alerting me to its presence. I kept whispering in my head that I was being ridiculous, but I didn’t really manage to fully convince myself. However, I did feel a sense of churning nausea that resembled an odd sensation of oily seasickness at the thought that my thievery would be discovered. I was pretty sure that I’d pushed the Ministry of Mages to the limits of its patience with me. I didn’t have much of an idea about what they would do if all this training stuff didn’t work out, and truthfully I didn’t really care all that much about what happened to me. Other than Mrs. Alcoon, there was no-one anymore who depended on my existence or who would probably even miss me that much if I was gone. Imagining a tiny violin playing in my ear, I scowled. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, I really wasn’t. I was just facing reality. Solus was a Fae, therefore notoriously fickle, and would forget me in a heartbeat. Alex would probably be thrilled that he’d no longer be held accountable for my actions. Betsy and Tom had each other and would do fine while Julia was far too capable on her own, even crippled as she was, to need me underfoot causing the problems that I repeatedly seemed to involve myself in. And Corrigan…well, I didn’t really know what he’d think. Regardless of all of them though, if I didn’t make it through this training then Mrs. Alcoon was finished. That was completely unacceptable. Therefore, it was imperative that I kept my nose clean and didn’t do anything else stupid. Like getting caught sneaking books out of the library.
I considered whether I should have just left the books where they were. The fact that both of them had materialised under my nose – and that fate had conspired to force me to trip over right next them to them - suggested to me that it hadn’t been an option. Certainly not if the headache had been going to continue anyway. No, I had done the only thing I could do. And the overwhelming curiosity to discover exactly what lay inside the Fae book was searing its way through me.
I swung round past the dining hall and took a quick peek inside as I went past. The entire room was empty and it seemed pretty clear that I’d missed lunch by at least an hour. I knew I had Illusion and Divination 101 classes to get to, but I reckoned that I could easily make it back to my room first to drop off the books and hide them somewhere safe before I found out where I was really supposed to be.
As I reached the staircase up to the dormitory level, I noticed with a sinking feeling that Thomas was standing there, arms folded, watching my approach. His back was ramrod straight, exactly as if the metaphorical poker up his arse reached through his spine and into his skull. That probably accounted for the lack of brain cells, I figured sardonically.
I made it just past him and was on the step beyond, when he decided to speak.
“So I hear that your classes yesterday didn’t go so well?”
Smug bastard. I resisted the impulse to turn and just carried on walking, ignoring him completely. Unfortunately, he decided to join my ascent up the stairs and continued to talk.
“That’s a real shame, you know,” he said, without a trace of apparent emotion in his voice. “It’ll be interesting to see how you do this afternoon though.”
I ignored him and continued walking up the stairs, keeping my arms closely clenched to my sides. It was probably fortunate for both of us that when he grabbed my shoulder, I was sentient enough to not react physically.
“What?” I snapped.
“Look, Mackenzie, I’m sorry.”
I paused, entirely befuddled. Thomas continued, “I shouldn’t have done that. With the whole, you know, shave your hair thing. It was immature.”
Well, score one for the idiot in a frock. I stared hard at the mage, trying to work out what he was up to now. “Yeah, it was, Thomas.”
He flicked at an invisible strand of hair. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Perhaps we can start over.” He took his hand off my shoulder and thrust it out, palm extended upwards.
I fixed my gaze on his hand. I had no idea whether this was some kind of trick or not, but I was pretty sure that if I reached out to shake his hand in a gesture of peace that I would lose my grip on the filched books. I didn’t think that he’d be so friendly if they fell to the floor and exposed my sneaky theft. I prayed to myself that he couldn’t actually read my mind while my bloodfire swirled nervously around, flickering through my veins with dulled heat. I cleared my throat, “Well then, I apologise if I hurt you.”
His hand remained outstretched. “Fortunately we have some dedicated healers whose talent is virtually unsurpassed.”
I thought of Julia and had my doubts at that, but I shrugged anyway and hoped he’d go away. No such luck, however.
Thomas had apparently worked out that I wasn’t going to shake his hand in return. He shrugged and withdrew his arm, but there was a flash of something indefinable in his eyes. “Still, it did have one positive outcome,” he said, his voice somewhat flatter now.
I turned to face him, exasperation getting the better of me. “What? What positive outcome did it have?”
His eyes gleamed. “You will start Protection lessons tomorrow after all. And they will be with me.”
Oh f*cking hell. “Great,” I muttered. “Except I think I’ve proved that I’m better at Protection than you.”
“At attacking, perhaps. But being truly gifted at Protection involves learning how to hold back and use control.” He bared his teeth in what I suppose could be called a smile. “So that’s what we’ll be doing. I will be making you learn how to control yourself. I’ve realised that it’s not fair for me to judge you so harshly. Of course it’s not your fault that you act like an untrained creature. After all, you did spend all that time with the shifters. It’s no wonder you have base feral instincts.”
Bloodfire roared in my ears with the unfiltered rage of a thousand angry devils. The only thing that brought me back from the brink and saved Thomas – and me - this time was that at that particular point one of the books tucked under armpit chose that moment to suddenly begin to slide down. I clenched my arm tighter to my side and willed it stay put, biting my tongue until I tasted the hot iron rich blood.
“I hope that we can put all this unpleasant business behind us and become, if not friends, then collegiate colleagues instead.” He reached out to squeeze my shoulder again, but this time seemed to think better of it and let his hand drop back down to his side.
It took every fibre of my being to not flinch, and to instead grit my teeth and smile back at him. The book slipped an inch further down and I could feel the trickle of sweat behind the nape of my neck.
I cast my eyes down so I didn’t have to look at him. “I thank you for your gracious tutelage, Mage Thomas.”
He was silent for a moment, clearly wondering whether I was taking the piss or not. Then he shrugged nonchalantly and nodded to himself. “You’d best be on your way then, Initiate.”
I didn’t want to move until he did. I was sure that if I started walking back up the stairs, there was no way that my now sweat-damp skin would be able to keep the book gripped in place. Perhaps I could mimic conformity and make it appear that I was waiting for him to go first to show respect. He stayed motionless for a heartbeat longer, but my fake tractability must have worked, because he eventually moved off and back down the staircase, calling out behind him, “Looking forward to tomorrow, Initiate!”
The bloodfire flared inside me for a moment, leaping up to my throat, then I tensed my body to attempt to keep the book in place for just a few minutes more, slowly turning and walking up the stairs and away from Thomas.
Fate was finally smiling down on me as the entire dormitory corridor was empty of people. Everyone had to be out studying or in lessons. With the risk of discovery lessening by the minute, I picked up speed and eventually made it back to my small little room. Of course, by the time that I did so, the second book had started to also slide its way down my side, whilst the first was virtually at my hip. As soon as the door closed behind, I let my muscles release their grip and both copies fell to the floor from under my robes with staggered thumps.
Then I reached out towards the bed and yanked it from its place, flipping it on its side and screamed.
*
Once the tension and potential bloodfire eruption had both been released, I calmly straightened the frame of the bed back to its original position and scooped both of the books up from the floor. I thought through what Thomas had said and struggled to make sense of it. Out and out aggression I could deal with. I knew how to react to that; for goodness’ sake, my blood knew how to react to that. Let’s face it, I’d had more than enough practice over the last year or two. But coping with someone who was passive aggressive was new to me. What I was supposed to do? On the surface he was apologising and handing out an olive branch. Which, I conceded, I’d probably ruined somewhat by refusing to shake his hand. The barbed comment about my ‘feral instincts’ however? If it hadn’t been for the books clutched under my sweaty armpits, I wasn’t sure what I’ve had done. There was a good chance that the Arch-Mage would have been scraping what was left of Thomas from off the polished staircase and I’d have condemned Mrs. Alcoon to spending the rest of eternity in stasis. I frowned to myself, vowing to do better next time. What was it Shakespeare had written in Macbeth? “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t”. Well, if Thomas wanted to play that game then I would rise the challenge.
I forced him out of my mind and focused instead on the matter in hand, turning the books thoughtfully over. The Fae tome continued to hum against my skin, although not unpleasantly. I scanned my small room. There were absolutely zero hiding places anywhere within its confines, other than perhaps under the pillow, which just seemed both ridiculous and pointless. Musing it over, I decided that the smartest thing to do would be to hide them in plain sight. There was nowhere I could put them where they wouldn’t be found, so if I pretended ignorance and just left them lying around as if I hadn’t just sneakily spirited them away, then perhaps no-one who entered my room would think anything of them than a little extra study materials. Maybe I could feign ignorance and pretend I hadn’t heard Slim tell me in no uncertain terms not to remove any books from within the library’s walls. I nodded to myself, then left them both casually on the bedsheet. Each one felt rather unpleasantly moist from the contact with my body. I’d just have to hope that there wasn’t any lasting damage to either.
From outside I heard the distant tolling of a bell, and then a clustered buzz of chattering and voices as the next lesson changeover took place. That meant I had just enough time to get myself to my Illusion class. I wasn’t entirely sure where it was, but maybe I would bump into Mary along the way so I wouldn’t be too late. I’d have to hope I didn’t see Thomas again too. Casting a quick glance back at the books to reassure myself that they were both there, and sending them a quick promise that I’d be back to look at them properly later, I left the room and headed off in what I presumed was vaguely the right direction.
I still felt unpleasantly damp under my robes. As I walked through an arched courtyard area towards the building where my lessons had been the day before, I attempted to take a surreptitious sniff of my armpits to see if they really were as bad as I was imagining. My actions didn’t go unnoticed, however, as a group of green-robed initiates whose acne explosions advertised their youth started snickering loudly. I glared at them and they abruptly stopped. I tipped my chin up and increased my stride, trying to make it look as if I knew exactly where I was going. I’d be damned if I’d ask any of these pimply teenagers where I was supposed to be.
Several minutes later, I was regretting my stubborn stance. Any initiates who had been milling around had since disappeared, and I had absolutely no idea where I was. I ducked into one door that looked vaguely familiar and found myself inside the strangest interior that I think I’d ever seen. Every surface was blood red: the floors, the ceilings, the doors. Even the sodding doorknobs gleamed scarlet. Swallowing hard, and hoping that I’d not suddenly just discovered that the Ministry was actually some kind of bizarre sacrificial cult instead of the upright and upstanding organisation it proclaimed itself to be, I darted right back out again. I most definitely had no need to investigate the dark depths of the academy. Ignorance is bliss, I told myself firmly.
I tried re-tracing my steps, but just seemed to be going round in circles as a few minutes later I ended back up at the scary red room. Cursing aloud at my lack of spatial awareness, I briefly wished that I’d already had a Divination lesson. Maybe then I could conjure up some blue snaky light to show me where to go. But then, given the lack of magical prowess I’d so far displayed, it was barely credible that I’d be able to manage even that. I ground my teeth together. I’d travelled through other planes, for f*ck’s sake! How could I not manage to navigate my way through one sodding school? This was getting ridiculous. I tried to imagine the layout in my mind’s eye. I positioned the main building, with the dormitories at the front. The weird garden where I’d taken the oath was behind there. The red room was here where I was. Yesterday, I’d been…nope, I was drawing an absolute blank.
Abruptly, up ahead I spied a group of students emerge from another door, walking away from me. I felt a brief surge of hope. Maybe if I followed them, I’d end up somewhere useful. I realised that such rationalisation was probably fatal, but I appeared to have little other choice at the time. I was tempted to jog up to them to ask them where to go, but for some reason I couldn’t quite make my legs move fast enough to gain on them.
“Coward,” I whispered to myself. They were just kids. What did I think they were going to do? Clique me into submission?
Someone pointedly cleared their throat. My head snapped to the right but there was no-one there. I turned round, feeling like an idiot but again there was no-one else even vaguely near me, and the students up ahead had rounded the corner and disappeared. Then something whizzed past and hit me smack bang on the middle of my shaven head. Okay, this wasn’t funny any longer. Frowning, I lifted my gaze upwards and saw that, looking down upon me, was an old wizened looking face.
“Well?” it said irritably. “You’re late. Get up here.”
I threw out my hands in a gesture of utter exasperation, trying to convey that I didn’t have the faintest idea how to get up there. The owner of the face sighed dramatically and flicked a hand in the air. And just like that, a door appeared in front of me. For f*ck’s sake.
“What did you expect?” called what I now presumed to be my teacher, with what could only be described as a cackle, face disappearing back inside. “This is Illusion.”
I stood there for a moment, clenching and unclenching my fists. Oh, hysterical. I glanced down at my fingers and saw little flickers of green flame appearing and disappearing. Goddamnit. I was absolutely not going to let my temper get the better of me. No way Jose. I straightened my shoulders and entered the now clearly delineated doorway. The whole red rooms thing had probably been another ‘funny’ trick. I wondered if this happened to all the initiates or if I was getting extra special treatment just to point out how little of a mage I was now or was ever going to be. Muttering the whole way, I stomped up the stairs and entered the room that I was pretty sure the face had called to me from.
Inside was a tiny hunched over figure wearing the now familiar black robes of the fully confirmed mages. It was difficult to judge whether the figure was even male or female to start off with, until the cackling started up again. Okay, female then. I ran my tongue around my mouth, trying to stay calm and not let the continual grating laughter get to me. It was far from easy.
Finally, the figure waved me over to a wooden chair. “Sit there,” she said, with an imperious tone that belied her somewhat frail exterior.
I could feel some inner part of me rebel at even this one small order. Did she think I was a child like the other students? The old woman looked at me. It occurred to me that there was something very odd about her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Her eyes were a sharp blue, even if the skin around them was wrinkled and pale. I bet not much got past this witch. I battened down the overwhelming urge to spin on my heel and walk right out of the room and instead did as she bade, chewing on my tongue to prevent myself from saying anything I might later regret.
The woman cackled again, briefly, then gave me a small bow and withdrew a round stone from within her robes, and placed it on the floor about a metre in front of me. I felt my insides droop with resignation. Another bloody stone.
“The key to Illusion,” she intoned solemnly, “is belief. Believe that you can transform the stone,” she flicked a finger and the thing began to grow before my eyes, “and then you shall achieve. Have faith,” she flicked another finger, and the stone bizarrely elongated itself, twisting one way then another, “and who knows what can occur.”
I leaned forward. What once had been just a lump of rock was now a tiny bonsai tree, its limbs misshapen into a typically elegant Japanese contortion. She snapped her fingers and it returned to its original shape. I tried to look blasé, but I was pretty sure that I completely failed.
“Hold out your hands,” she instructed.
I did as she bade, and she dropped the rock into them. It felt cool and heavy.
“Now close your eyes, and believe. This is not stone. It isn’t hard or cold to touch. Consider the surface. It’s soft and warm, like a blanket.”
I rubbed my fingers over the edge, feeling the minute porous bubbles against my fingertips. It still felt like a rock.
“You do not believe!” she stated sharply.
“Give me a break,” I huffed, eyes still closed, “I’m trying.”
“There is no try,” came the old woman’s voice.
“Let me guess,” I said drily, “there is only do.”
“You mock me.”
I opened my eyes. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make fun of you. I’ve just heard that saying before. I’ll try – I’ll do harder.”
She pursed her lips. In that instant I realised what it was that was ever so slightly odd and off-putting about her face: she had absolutely no eyebrows or eyelashes whatsoever. For some odd reason, I found this really rather terrifying.
“It is of no matter. Your time is up.”
“What?” I spluttered. “I only just got here.”
She whipped the stone from my hands and secreted it away in her robes again. “You were late.”
“Only because you hid the f*cking door!”
The woman gave me a baleful glare.
“I’m sorry,” I apologised. “I didn’t mean to swear. But I would like another shot. Please.” If nothing else, at least mage was prepared to talk to me, unlike the others I’d met so far. I had to start learning something if I was ever going to get out of here.
She just looked at me. I looked back. Clearly, she wasn’t going to change her mind. I eventually nodded in resignation and left.
Once I got back outside I kicked the wall of the building in frustration, then cursed at myself as my foot answered back with smarting shot of pain. I took a moment to attempt to compose myself but the burn of my bloodfire remained, lingering like heartburn in the centre of my body. Running my hands over my bare skull, I tried to pull myself together. I had to get to Divination now, and I was damned if I was going to be late again.
Fortunately this time things seemed a little easier. I followed the cobbled pathway, heading back towards where I presumed the main building was. Almost immediately I noticed a large red-brick building to my right with a sign hanging over the doorway that proclaimed itself to be for Divination. It seemed somewhat ironic that the one mage discipline that taught you how to find things was the one place that actually managed to signpost itself properly so that you could find it.
Standing outside was a diminutive looking mage, rubbing his palms together. As I got nearer, he smiled slightly and bowed.
“Mackenzie Smith?”
I nodded and tried to smile back, although I was aware that it was probably more of a grimace at this point than a full on grin.
He gestured towards the door, encouraging me to enter. Instead, I gestured back at him, playing the polite game of insisting that he go first. Not that I was trying particularly hard to be polite, of course, I just didn’t enjoy the sensation of having people behind me where I couldn’t see them. Especially when those people had inexplicable and dangerous magical powers. After several almost comedic moments where we silently told the other to ‘please go ahead’, the mage gave up and went in first.
Once inside, he bowed again and introduced himself as Mage Higgins. He had a friendly face, with laughter lines at the corner of his eyes and a mouth that seemed to be permanently smiling. His demeanour was somewhat standoffish, but I could forgive him for that given my academic record so far. At the very least, he was the most approachable teacher I’d had so far and, despite the lingering traces of fire inside me, I felt considerably more relaxed.
“What do you know about Divination?”
I thought for a moment, casting my mind back to what I’d seen Alex do and what had happened when I’d been trying to escape through the Clava Cairns up in Inverness. I shrugged. “It tracks things. Or people. If you want to find someone then you wave your hands a blue light comes out and leads you to where you want to go. Oh,” I added, remembering what Mary had told me, “it also means that you can see into future and read minds.”
I felt ridiculously pleased with myself. There! I knew something and I was not the class dunce for once. Mage Higgins, however, frowned at me in displeasure. “Divination is an art form. It enables the user to ascertain the potential truth, whether that is in the fore-telling of the potential days to come, an understanding and empathy or a situation, person, place or thing, or the discovery of elements unfound. It is not as crude as fortune-telling or mind-reading.”
I barely managed to avoid rolling my eyes. That was what I’d said, just in not so many words. I swallowed down my thoughts, focusing on the relief that what was inside my mind was my own after all, and waved my hands in the air with a flourish. “Of course, Mage Higgins. An art-form. That is what I meant.”
He stared at me for a moment, brow slightly furrowed, as if he couldn’t work out whether I was being serious or not. I gazed back innocently. Eventually he gave up. “Very well, then. In order to begin with Divination, the most complex and sophisticated of all disciplines, one must start at the beginning.”
He lifted his hands up into the air, and connected his middle finger with the thumb on each hand, forming a sort of circle. All at once, a beam of floating blue light appeared from each hand, rising dramatically into the air and circling around the mage’s head.
“The atmosphere is made up of rivers of silent consciousness. Tap into that consciousness and you can twist it to your purpose.”
As I watched, the swirls of blue light joined together to form the shape of a perfect circle, then dissipated into mist and re-formed into a square.
“So the atmosphere is alive?” I asked, cautiously.
“Not in the sense that it is a mere creature like you or I,” answered Higgins. “It is far more complicated than that. Think rather of it as particles of being instead of a being. Each one is interlinked and each one can be put to use.” The blue square became a helix, connecting lines together almost ad infinitum. “Look behind you,” he commanded.
I turned, and realised that there was a painting on the wall. I took a step closer to examine it.
“It’s a wonderful piece, isn’t it?” Higgins sighed in happy ecstasy. “Escher created it as a lithograph around the same time as his Waterfall piece. He gifted it to us before his career took off.”
“Escher was a mage?”
“You’d be surprised at how many artists have formed part of our community at one time or another. That, Initiate, is what comes from appreciating the true aesthetic of the world.”
I gazed at the painting. It depicted a natural scene, unlike other examples of Escher’s works that I’d previously come across, although this one maintained the same intricacies that had catapulted him to fame. Water cascaded down, across and up a fast-flowing river, with rocks and trees penetrating out at unusual and unfeasible angles. I found it virtually impossible to take in the whole image at once, and instead had to focus on small individual parts at a time.
“Once you appreciate the connections within and without our world, then you can begin to manipulate and control them. Why do you think there are so many planes and dimensions?”
I started. I’d not really thought about it before. They just existed, much in the same way that France did, or Alaska. The ‘why’ of their existence seemed like a pointless question. I turned back to face the mage, who was smiling at me benignly.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Everything’s connected and interwoven. Like an eternal tapestry.”
“Yes! You get it!”
I really didn’t. But he seemed pleased and I figured I could fake it. I nodded, trying to appear thoughtful and wise. “This is a revelation to me, Mage Higgins.”
He clapped his hands together. “Most excellent. Now we can begin.” The mage half turned and pointed towards the window. “Between here and the outside world just there, are the brooks, streams, rivers and currents of being. If I do this,” he flicked a finger and sent out a trickle of blue light, “then you will see that it travels along the currents. The inveniora finds the currents in order to travel and reach its destination.”
I could see that the bolt of blue did indeed seem to waver and shimmer along the air as if it were floating steadily down a river of air. The light reached the window and dissipated slowly. “So the blue snaky light is called inveniora?”
“If you must use such basic terms to describe it, then yes. The blue snaky light is inveniora.” When he pronounced the term, Higgins’ voice took on a tone of hushed reverence. This was indeed someone who loved his day job.
“Okay,” I nodded vigorously. “I get it.”
“Then discover it for yourself, Initiate. Send out your energy and find the current.”
Sighing inwardly, I really wished that he would stop calling me ‘Initiate’. Still, this lesson was already going considerably better than the last one so I managed to keep my irritation level to a tiny simmer. “Uh, how do I do that?”
“Reach inside yourself,” said the mage. “Pull out the part of yourself that is connected to your integral energy and send it out to join the world. It remains as part of you, but it also enters the currents of consciousness.”
Okay. Integral energy and currents of consciousness were equally baffling, but I thought I had a vague idea about what he meant. I concentrated on my stomach, where I felt instinctively that my ‘energy’ resided. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself pulling out an invisible thread that made its way up through me, past my heart and through my shoulders and down my arm and…I flicked my fingers and shot it out.
Nothing happened. Higgins raised his eyebrows and folded his arms. I took a deep breath. This really didn’t sound that hard. Out of everything I’d experienced so far at the academy, Divination seemed about the only discipline aside from Protection that I had any hope of understanding, so I had to try harder.
I did the same again, visualising the same thread, just more slowly this time, giving it the opportunity to take shape and become real. Yet again, there was nothing. A flame curled inside me, the residue of my earlier annoyance from Illusion. I tried to ignore it, this time pulling my magical inveniora thread from the soles of my feet, allowing it to gather impetus as it travelled up and up and up and through and…f*ck it.
“If you get frustrated,” stated Higgins calmly, “then you cannot tap into the currents.”
“I’m not frustrated.” I yanked violently from inside myself this time, picturing not a skinny thread of blue light but instead a fiery ball of bloody flame. And this time I really could feel it. The sphere of bloodfire travelled through my system, singeing my gut and searing my lungs until I had to hold my breath. Then I forced it out at maximum velocity down through the veins in my arm.
A sparking red light appeared in the air. I beamed, proud of my efforts and turned to Higgins to seek his approval. Instead of pleased satisfaction on his face, however, there was a look of growing alarm. I turned back to see my own inveniora growing. It wasn’t just a snaky light of red, it was a blossoming and overpowering cloud. Tendrils reached out across the entire room, hitting the pockmarked walls and bouncing back, then multiplying further and further. They danced their way through the air in every possible direction.
“Stop it!” yelled Higgins.
“What? How?” I shouted back, now almost unable to see him through the veins of red. The acrid smell of burning reached my nostrils and dread filled me. Oh God, not again. I flailed my arms around, panicking, trying to gather back in the inveniora.
“I can’t breathe,” choked the mage.
F*ck, f*ck, f*ck. I reached out desperately to try and get hold of the trails of light, but it was to no avail. They just seemed to be growing and growing. Taking a deep breath, I ran over to roughly where I thought the window was and felt my way along until I was sure I had it. Then I drew back my fist and punched through, smashing a hole through the glass, which in turn ripped through my skin. Blood ran from my hand, spattering onto the floor, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. Instead I focused on trying to use my mind and arms and every part of me, to push the inveniora out into the open air and away from Higgins.
Bit by bit it seemed to start working. The clouds of red light shoved their way out through the small hole. I tensed my body and leapt up, kicking through the rest of the glass, shattering the rest of it until there were only a few shards left clinging to the edges of the window frame. The remainder of the scarlet haze escaped, rising up into the sky as it did so in a ball of hazy mist. For a second I watched it, checking that it wasn’t going to continue to enlarge or re-form or do anything remotely dangerous. Mercifully, instead, the edges started to show signs of evaporation as it mixed with the rest of the atmosphere. Thank f*ck.
I turned back to Higgins who was curled up, foetal-like on the floor, muttering to himself. I pulled him up to his knees and looked into his eyes, searching for any signs of damage or pain. He coughed painfully and stared at a point somewhere behind me.
“No,” he moaned. “No, no, no, no.”
“Ssshhh,” I soothed. “It’s okay, it’s gone. You’re okay now. We’re okay.” From outside in the corridor I could hear some shouts and calls of concern.
“No,” he groaned again.
I looked back and saw with a sinking twist what it was he was actually complaining about. The Escher lithogram, even protected as it had been behind a plate of glass and frame, appeared irrevocably damaged. Its finely etched lines were dulled and the paper had taken on a red hue, almost like a rash. The rocks and trees were virtually obscured now and the confusing twists and turns of the water no longer appeared to distort reality and perspective. Instead they were smothered by taints of crimson smudges.
The door banged open and two black robed mages who I didn’t recognise came bursting in. They took in the scene with one glance and glared at me with seething hatred. I held up my hands, palms upwards. “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t! I was just doing what he said.”
Higgins continued to moan. They scooped him up between them and pulled him out of the room. Then Thomas entered, mouth twisting as he looked around.
“Mage Thomas!” I babbled. “This isn’t my fault. I tried to stop it, I broke the window, I’m sorry but I didn’t mean for this to happen.” All I could think of were the Arch-Mage’s last words to me about just having one final chance left.
He strode over to me and looked down. “You’re telling the truth,” he stated grimly.
“Of course I’m f*cking telling the truth! Why would I do otherwise?”
“Why would a simple Divination lesson cause such havoc?” He shook his head at me.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped again.
He sighed deeply and put his hands on his hips. “Come on. I’m going to escort you back to your room. It’s probably best if you stay there for the rest of this evening. We’ll need to get that blood cleaned up as well.”
I glanced down at my hand and the blood now covering half of my arm that was continuing to drip remorselessly onto the floor. Shit. Panic seeped through my consciousness at the thought of the repercussions spilling that amount of my stupid Draco Wyr blood might have. Thomas offered me his arm to help me up, but I had no other choice but to ignore it and clamber to my feet myself.
A spasm of irritation crossed his face, however there was nothing I could do about it now. Past experience had taught me that whenever others came into contact with whatever weird shit was within my system then strange stuff started to happen. The last thing I needed was an untrustworthy mage knowing more about me than I needed him to.
“It’s fine,” I muttered. “I’ll make my own way back.”
“Suit yourself.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. Loudly exhaling the angst and anxiety of the afternoon, I followed him out.