… All prior is prelude to what I now impart. All histories, all philosophies, all art. Upon this summit of elven endeavour, where the air is rarefied and the view unocculted, I see further than any who have come before, yet see only as a consequence of the limit of their vision. Galuin, Feneath, Varith, Corytho, and the forgotten sages who preceded our line were all wrong, yet necessarily so. They could not be other than in error, for theirs are the layers of rock that have risen toward the vault of the heavens.

  We reach within that vault, whatever the cost …

  * * *

  Fear was the weapon of the wood elves.

  She had felt afraid all her life, never once seeing it for what it was, but as Saphienne set out into the longest night to meet with her friends she finally recognised the imposition. When she was very young she had been a rigidly obedient child, fearful of losing the inconstant love that she was shown. That emotion – the terror of loss – poured from every elf she had ever known, pooling in the children they raised.

  And from those deepening oceans arose the same, for what could a child give that hadn’t been given them?

  Together with Filaurel and Faylar she had sung an ancient lament to the merchant Cosme and his son Felipe, and there was much honesty in the performance, for elves turned their griefs outward, terrifying mortals. How had Cosme felt when he first heard hidden elven voices upraised? What stories rained upon his fellows from his golden tongue?

  She had witnessed the wardens in the protectorates, masked with horns — when visible at all. How had Elisanna and Tomidia and Ysole and Robine and Felise felt when they beheld their keepers? What did they whisper, and when did they dare?

  And how had Saphienne felt, time and again, when she believed that the wardens were stalking her?

  “…All twelve of them…”

  She couldn’t help but admire the beauty of it. That twelve elves could deter tens of thousands from wrongdoing, calling for reinforcements only when needed? What an elegant solution. Fear of the unseen was more effective than any show of force.

  That was why the Luminary Vale allowed wizards and sorcerers to punish their malefactors who evaded the wardens: the punishment was deemed necessary. If such prominent members of the community could be harmed without reprisal, then the wardens were not everywhere, and their interdiction was not absolute.

  Saphienne had missed the obvious. When justice was served without the wardens, to those who didn’t know better, it appeared as though the Wardens of the Wilds were standing aside… or had been stood down.

  And that was why, as she ventured into the crowded streets, wrapped warmly in pale, hooded grey furs that were very much the common fashion of the hour, those few elves who recognised her exposed countenance often scowled at her. To them she was a icon of cruelty — for the wardens had waited until after her attackers had been tortured to arrest them, and had done so in consideration for her.

  For she was going to be a wizard.

  “Saphienne!”

  Not everyone who spotted her was hostile. Laewyn came dancing over the snow from where she had been queuing with Celaena and Faylar, throwing her arms around Saphienne and spinning about her, nearly slipping on the ice.

  “Easy!” Saphienne laughed as she steadied the masked girl. “Good to see you.”

  Laewyn’s eyes were glittering. “I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t.” Saphienne took her hand to walk her back. “Or, if you do? You can absolve your debt by never being so foolish again.”

  Faylar and Celaena both wore masks as well — though, unlike Laewyn, theirs covered their noses. The boy’s eyebrows lifted. “Saphienne? Don’t you care if you get sick?”

  Celaena pulled her mask down as Laewyn approached her. “Hyacinth said she’ll heal us if we ask — but only because she’s allowed to possess us. She won’t touch you unless you’re really unwell.”

  What Celaena didn’t know was that Saphienne couldn’t take advantage of that offer, not without risking the spirit becoming her accomplice. Saphienne merely smiled as Laewyn removed her flimsy covering to kiss Celaena, continuing to do so as Faylar jested about the myriad preferential treatments of girls for girls, smile wearing thin as he dragged the joke out, until Laewyn rolled her eyes and snatched his mask away to kiss him, too.

  Giggling nervously, Saphienne glanced to Celaena.

  Who saw that she was looking, and shrugged. “Personally? I don’t see the appeal.”

  Without breaking the enthusiastic kiss, Faylar flicked two fingers at his best friend.

  The group were in line for hot drinks from a stall, and Saphienne was delighted to discover that it was a new concoction made from sweet chocolate. The much put-upon woman serving them saw her reaction and sighed, fetching out the largest cup still available, warning Saphienne to hold it with both hands.

  She supported the cup on her left wrist, giving thanks as she went on.

  Thessa was unmasked, having recovered from her sickness, and she leaned on Iolas were they stood a little distance from a stage where an orchestra of some four dozen musicians were preparing their instruments, flutes and horns and strings and drums being tuned amid excited chatter. The siblings waved tiredly, both thickly insulated against the chill, Iolas pale behind his high scarf.

  “Are you sick?” Saphienne asked him as she moved alongside.

  “…I don’t think so.” He cleared his throat. “I just don’t sleep well when it’s cold. You should stand somewhere else if– why aren’t you masked?”

  So that the wardens would see her face. “Why isn’t Thessa?”

  “I’ve been sick already,” the artist replied.

  Faylar tutted. “You can still circulate it to people who haven’t.”

  She was stricken. “…I can?”

  Wordlessly, Saphienne handed the artist the spare blue mask she’d slipped in her pocket while preparing for the night.

  Celaena grinned at her as Thessa put it on. “Well, now you’ll be staring at blue — and up close!”

  Were it not for the fact that Iolas and Thessa were dressed so similarly to her, Saphienne would have liked to stand away from them. Yet the risk of her health was comparatively small, in balance with what she wagered.

  Alavara had said half the wardens were indisposed by illness, and that she was to be occupied watching over a woodland shrine. That left up to five Wardens of the Wilds in play, and given the size of the gathering, Saphienne had to believe that they would all be occupied by the assembly during the approach to midnight. If she was spotted leaving, she would be followed… but what were the odds they’d notice, in her chosen moment?

  Forebodingly, Wormwood had been vague about the aid she would render. “Thou shalt not know my labours, for none shall know them. Tarry thee not, and make haste in thy goings to and fro on the vale. I shall not save thee from thine own fault.”

  The promise was sufficient for Saphienne. Faulted or forgiven, she would be proven.

  Her reflection was interrupted by three notes blown upon a horn, and the celebrants settled as one, quieting as the conductor took to the stage and bowed; the orchestra awaited his gesture to begin.

  How beautiful that symphony, by the lantern light of the village.

  Delicate and tremulous, the movements stirred the year past as like a spell that brought forth the echoes left behind by the dead, yet the haunting melody was nostalgic, not sorrowful, rising through the seasons from the fluted winds of spring to the horns of summer sun and the drumming rains of autumn before descending to the long, low strings of winter. Ageless joy was in the flourishes with which the music played.

  Moved, Iolas slipped his hand into Saphienne’s tingling palm.

  Peace came over her. There was every chance that this moment she shared with her friends would be the last — and yet, she could not have asked for a finer scene. They were together with her, and they were well, and they were happy.

  And she missed Laelansa, and Taerelle, and Filaurel, and her mother…

  …And Kylantha.

  Helpfully, her hand began to spasm, giving her an excuse to pull it away, though not without Iolas squeezing in acceptance.

  Then a spell dimmed the lights, and somewhere in the distance, Almon set to work filling the sky with colours.

  * * *

  … Nothing is prelude. What was is, and what is will be, and what will be shall have become what was. The roots of the mountain begin in error, and ascend through error, and their crown is the highest error of all. Belief is error, perspective is error, what is revealed is error, what is received is error, and what is deduced is error. This is the continuum upon which I stand, and which stands upon me.

  How can I reach the truth, when the way of all things is to err? …

  * * *

  Her first steps were slow and smooth, backing through the awed throng of all ages who gaped up at the detonating stars that spread polychromatic, scintillating clouds across the heavens. She brushed by someone in the same style of heavy coat in which she was attired, murmuring “Hold this?” to them as she pressed the large cup into their distracted, accepting hands.

  Then she drew her scarf up to cover her face, bent her knees under her hem to lower her height, and walked steadily from the crowd in the hallucinatory darkness that had diminished the lanterns.

  She didn’t travel far before shouts broke out in the distance, and suddenly she wasn’t the only elf coming away from the stage. A figure in mottled white abruptly coalesced ahead, striding with purpose toward her…

  …And the warden passed by without a second glance, intent on whatever chaos the bitter bloomkith was causing.

  Three minutes later she was unlocking the door to the unlit library, and another after that she was in the storage closet, collecting the tools she needed. Her concealed satchel was empty but for her spell scroll, and the carefully selected, worn book she thrust inside nestled beside it with the needles, curved scissors, and a dozen spools of coloured threads that followed. A loose strut was easily pried from the shelves, and when she sang to it, she did so with confidence born of urgency and previous practice.

  Ascending to the upper collection, Saphienne took fifteen minutes to fetch down all the reference-only books she’d mentally catalogued, setting them on the table where she had often studied with Faylar; she hoped that no copies would be transmitted in the immediate future. On her return to the lower floor, she picked a romance at random from the selection of adult literature.

  Lastly, she unlatched one of the smaller windows near the back of the ground floor, then signed out the book she was legitimately borrowing, vexed to find that, in her haste, she’d picked up a story about two men.

  Well, variety never hurt anyone. No one was forcing her to read it…

  She relocked the door and set off across the village, walking at a brisk pace. She didn’t dare run. If she was identified by a merrymaker, so be it, for it was very important that she not rush. Saphienne had to arrive composed and in full command of her faculties, if she were to defeat a wizard.

  * * *

  Saphienne peered through the bushes in which she was hiding, mindful of how she sat so that her grey furs should break up her outline amidst the winter foliage. The towering tree across the grove seemed imposing, an invisible abjuration warding off the snow within thirty feet all around it.

  Rather than hunker down in the icy drifts, she would have preferred to wait near the kitchen by the garden… but she couldn’t risk her presence being observed by spirits, so close to the gravel circle and flowerbeds. At least her brief detour to Celaena’s home – there to hang a note saying she was indisposed in her bedroom – had allowed her to overwarm her inner layers, covering them again when she had begun sweating.

  Her agitation was a distraction from what she had to do. Closing her eyes, she meditated upon Peacock, upon his perception that Saphienne was shut away in her home, surely pouring all her efforts into her proving spell.

  Cold crept in, one breath at a time.

  Almon kept her waiting two hours; yet he amused her by humming to himself, off-key, as he strolled back, tipsily, from the direction of the village. Peacock was warbling along to whichever melody they shared, perched atop the staff his master carried, squawking and flapping whenever it drunkenly dipped.

  The wizard swayed as he went around the tree. Saphienne could hear him arguing with his familiar about the location of his keys, and then the rear entrance shutting hard.

  Her breath caught.

  Fortunately for Saphienne, Almon was as bound to his habits as any elf, and so a glow appeared in the parlour as he descended to light a single lamp and then the fire in its grate. She exhaled as she watched his silhouette unlock the way into the parlour.

  Inwardly, she settled on waiting one more hour.

  * * *

  Peacock had no concept that Saphienne was present as she leant the book, scroll, and shaped wood by the fireplace, and he remained seated atop the heavy chair as she went up the stairs to the sitting room. Muted snoring from somewhere overhead told her that Almon was fast asleep, else she would have hesitated to climb the next flight, thereby to pass the point of no return.

  She was now where she had never been invited, a trespasser.

  The winding staircase led to a landing with a single closed door, more steps rising further upward. Her guess was that here the wizard pursued the Great Art, and sure enough, behind the door was a chamber lit by a constellation of enchanted lanterns hanging from the ceiling, warm and inviting for all that it was bare. A cushioned blue mat lay in the centre of the floor where Almon meditated daily to prepare his spells; on the far side, below a wide window, the lectern that he often brought outside awaited.

  And on that lectern?

  A small book of bawdy poetry, ‘Verse for the Perverse.’

  Saphienne shook her head as she scanned the room, concluding that the spellbook she sought must be elsewhere. And given its importance, where else would he keep it, but by his side?

  She stole back to the landing–

  …Then stopped. Frowning, she counted off the contents of the chamber on her functional hand, then lowered finger after finger as she asked herself the most and least likely places where the grimoire might be concealed.

  She was grinning as she went back to the lectern and reassessed the book, fighting her increasingly explicable urge to search anywhere but there. Either Peacock was maintaining the spell, which she doubted, or the enchantment was strong but not–

  Shimmering, first the veil that obscured the importance of the book was parted, and then the hallucination that disguised it became transparent, revealing a thick tome with an azure cover on which appeared a simple legend:

  Property of Master Almon

  Wizard of the Eastern Vale

  She wasn’t foolish enough to open it.

  Having triumphed over the first two defences, Saphienne now faced a conundrum. The plan she’d prepared didn’t account for the book being veiled, and to continue regardless would be to strain credulity — yet she had no alternative. Would Almon explain away how it’d been noticed?

  As she took out her scissors and needles, she reasoned that the balance of probabilities tilted in her favour… assuming she followed every other step, without deviation.

  Filaurel had taught Saphienne the art of keeping books, which included repairing volumes that were damaged. She had therefore encountered the different ways in which they could be bound, and from this, together with her understanding of wizardly practicalities, she had deduced that spellbooks were unlikely to be glued. Had she known what lurked in her future, she would’ve paid closer attention to the spare loaned to Arelyn, but her hazy memory of the book carried by the healer Gaelyn proved sufficient.

  On close examination, she found that the left edge of the cover of Almon’s tome was indeed stitched with blue thread.

  Her bad hand trembled, and she held it to her chest until it steadied.

  Was she really as intelligent as Filaurel thought? If she wasn’t, Saphienne was about to end her apprenticeship in truly spectacular fashion.

  Carefully, she used the scissors to snip the binding.

  When nothing happened, she threaded a needle with one of the cut ends, then rolled it between her fingers to pull, tugging loose the strand. As the binding came away the spine separated from the cover, which now sat unmoored atop the sheafs. These folded pages had also been stitched, with purple thread, to a length of midnight cloth that was sewn in turn to the leather back attached to the spine; consequently, new pages could be fastened to the book.

  One by one, she cut loose and unwove the purple threads.

  The fabric fell away from the paper.

  Heart pounding, Saphienne closed the scissors, hooked them into the crease of a sheaf near the bottom of the stack, and gently prised the bundle loose, the rest of the book held together by weight.

  A complex sigil in violet ink entranced her as it slid into view.

  Terrified, she nudged the first eighth of the spellbook aside, then went for the next. She didn’t relax until the last slid away and she perceived the deceptive enchantments collapse — for they no longer had a tome to protect. When she lifted the cover, she was satisfied that whatever other protective spells had lain in wait were likewise extinguished.

  She collected all the disassembled pieces into her satchel, then gripped the top of the lectern and pulled it toward herself, lowering it silently to the floor.

  * * *

  The book she’d readied was not bound with such sophistication, and Saphienne easily dismantled it in the classroom while Peacock muttered to himself about chess. Weighing out the folds of text against what she’d taken was quickly done, and then she matched the spellbook’s severed threads to the spools she’d brought, and set about loosely stitching the cover onto mundane writing, impeded by her useless hand and her concentration on the nearby figment.

  Filaurel would be disappointed by her shoddy work.

  The cover, at least, she sewed meticulously.

  As soon as the task was done, she ripped out each page, feeding them to the flames.

  * * *

  Making footprints in the snow without leaving any telltale marks of her own was a challenge, but she left a hurried-looking trail straight to the river that ran the length of the Eastern Vale. Smashing through the ice in the middle was harder than she expected; when it finally cracked, she nearly fell into the fast, deep flow.

  Although physically easier, tossing loose tea all over the kitchen aggrieved Saphienne, as did scratching the paint on the outside of the rear door when she opened it into the kitchen, as did smearing spilled honey up the stairs and through the sitting room to higher still — but none of these vandalisms disquieted her as much as ending the game of chess in progress by arranging its pieces to appear scattered about the room.

  Then, at last, came the hardest stage.

  * * *

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  Her poor proving sigil was mournful as she kissed the unwrapped scroll, and she couldn’t avert her gaze as it crinkled and distorted in the fireplace, its magic dissipating with a resigned sigh of self-sacrifice. Saphienne hadn’t been certain it would die without fanfare, but her intuition was correct — for the spell had not yet been cast.

  Were Almon to divine the ashes, his investigation would confirm that a sigil penned by his hand had been burned there.

  Gathering up her belongings, leaving no evidence behind, Saphienne opened the shell of a spellbook and thrust it face-down into the fire, then spun and strode from the room, stopping outside to concentrate on the narrative she’d authored, willing that Peacock had experienced exactly what she’d envisioned.

  A moment later, shrieking filled the night, and she hurried off as the panicked familiar raised the alarm to his master:

  “Goblins!”

  * * *

  … The aether is an error. No such thing exists. Nowhere in nature can a division be made that will reveal it, for there are no divisions in nature.

  Yet I am divided from nature, that I may know it.

  And so I behold the aether that holds me …

  * * *

  Arranged on the table in the upper collection, the stolen innards of her master’s spellbook intimidated Saphienne.

  Almon had kept to his convention when he’d copied out her scroll, and so each symbol was gorgeously reproduced in ink matching the colour of its discipline: divining silver, conjuring red, abjuring orange, invoking yellow, transmuting green, hallucinating blue, translocating indigo, or fascinating violet. From there, elaboration and embellishment suggested the degree to which the spells belonged — with one sigil, at the end of the tome, so dizzyingly complex that Saphienne reasoned it must be of the Third Degree.

  It seemed her master, too, had been gifted a Hallucination spell he couldn’t cast.

  Her eyes lingered on the conjurations that shouted for her, then drifted to the row of fewest shapes in intriguing green–

  “I need to appeal to him; I shouldn’t slight his decision.”

  She reluctantly moved all but Hallucination aside, then added the hallucinatory sigils below and above the First Degree to the pile, leaving her with sixteen that she might try translating. A cursory review told her that she lacked the education she needed to make sense of them, but she was undeterred, confident that she ought be able to fathom the grammar as an extension of the fundamentals she’d been taught.

  …But not immediately. And she dared not keep them all, for the more were near, the greater the hazard that Celaena and Iolas might become implicated. They had not said so, but she was certain they were now practicing with the Second Sight.

  Saphienne slumped against the table, resting her weight on her good hand. Whether she would triumph was to be a matter of blind choice – she conceded, bitterly – for she had no way to be sure of the best option. She might accidentally pick a spell that was hopelessly beyond her; or, more likely, overlook the only one she could perhaps decode.

  Should she toss her coin? No; she wouldn’t let the world decide for her.

  Surfaced then the memory of the way her proving sigil had reached for her, and she dwelled on that recollection as she swept her gaze over the taunting discipline. No star yearned to guide her.

  Yet, one did not rebuke her impertinence like its peers. Aloof, distrustful, yet willing to grant her an audience, a single cipher returned her stare with an attitude Saphienne had grown to recognise across the term of her apprenticeship, replete with the only meaning that bridged the vast, furious chasm between herself and her master:

  Prove yourself.

  “…You.” She lifted the folded sheet, ignoring the marking on the other half. “I’m going to cast you. You’ll be my proving.”

  Indifferent to how the hallucination regarded her hubris, she used her scissors to sever the sigil from its partner, placing the rolled paper in her satchel.

  And then?

  Saphienne spent the remainder of the night splitting apart the rest and secreting them beneath the leather cladding the covers of the reference-only books — thereby to keep them secure in the library, where they wouldn’t be stumbled upon by her friends. Dawn was only two hours away when she climbed back out via the window she had entered, skulking from the village by a circuitous route to a different pane, left open at the top of a terraced garden.

  She felt freezing as she climbed the grand stairs to bed.

  Twelve days remained.

  * * *

  … The aether covers. The aether obscures. The aether is a dwelling. The aether is the turning of the world …

  * * *

  Had her ruse been successful? Saphienne refused to ponder. Let the wardens come for her if they would; she had a greater adversary to contest.

  Sealed in Celaena’s study, curtain drawn and a chair blocking the door, she spent the first day working to deconstruct the exquisite calligraphy, hypothesising that how the symbol had been written would provide a clue as to the order in which each element should be scrutinised. Fourteen hours were enough to conclude how it had been penned – edge to centre – and to tease out the features she had already learned.

  Her analysis coincidentally established that the sigil held several commonalities with the proving spell Almon had bidden her cast. While she wasn’t yet firm in her conjecture, she anticipated that the hallucination incorporated sound.

  More than half the symbolism remained a mystery, however, and Saphienne spent the next day pondering the enigma with reference to her notes on magical script, proceeding from the shaky premise that nothing new could contradict what had come before. Painstakingly, she inferred what was portended by intersecting strokes, embellished by the serifs and counters, developing a tentative theory by the time sleep called.

  Ten days remained.

  * * *

  Fortified against the cold by hot tea and the blanket from her bed, the following night saw Saphienne convinced that the central part of the diagram connected to the secret of the First Degree — for nothing she read there was congruous with the surrounding schema.

  She had distinguished three layers from the overall structure, comprised of gestures – which required both hands – depicting the perimeter, then concepts signified by thoughts and emotions, and then the very heart… where the signs skewed into formations she couldn’t interpret. Her only clue was that the innermost notation was an extension of the outer.

  Recalling that spells of the numbered degrees depended on supplementary comprehension, to be provided by the caster, she’d intuited that this section denoted how to sculpt the unfolding magic. Yet there she had been stymied for hours.

  The would-be wizard despaired. How could she clarify what was to be done, if she couldn’t even cast a proving spell?

  “…Proving spells just need to be cast… they are below the First Degree… unnumbered…”

  Her eyes widened, and she shivered as she took a fresh sheet of paper. Saphienne reproduced the core of the sigil in black, blew to dry the ink, then connected the empty spaces using charcoal lines.

  “…A pentagon; five — the intersection of life and magic in the magician.”

  Dread poured from the page as Saphienne understood: to cast a spell of the First Degree required that she complete its design.

  “…The heart is made of what I know. I have to add myself to this. I have to express myself in the casting. The spell is constituted by the wizard before it is cast.”

  But what, then, was the hallucination intended to do? All she could discern was that there were sounds, manipulated by motions and inner associations established within the…

  Saphienne blinked.

  Not specific sounds: any sound.

  The Hallucination spell created whatever aural deception she desired.

  Nine days remained.

  * * *

  “Do you worry you’re overcomplicating things?”

  Saphienne stared up at the morning-red sky, enjoying the heat of the sun where she lay on the wet grass outside the library.

  “Maybe you can just eat the sigil.”

  Laughing, she glanced over to Filaurel. “You’d kill me if I ate a book!”

  “It’s not part of one any more.” Her mentor gave her a withering stare. “You didn’t have the right to destroy it; I’m the only person who decides what matters and what doesn’t.”

  “Oh, fuck off.” Saphienne flicked her fingers at the librarian. “It wasn’t important — you’d put it aside to be overwritten. That’s more or less what I did.”

  “You didn’t have the right to copy Almon’s books, either.”

  “I need them. I wasn’t forbidden.” Angry now, Saphienne sat up. “And who are you to forbid me, anyway? Who in the whole world can tell me what I can and can’t do — who has the right to clip my wings?”

  Kylantha stopped glaring to giggle. “I do.”

  Saphienne snorted. “You wouldn’t ever.”

  “Haven’t I?”

  * * *

  She gasped, aching where she hunched over the table in the morning light, cold, and yet having soaked through her clothes and the blanket.

  There was no doubt now: she had a fever. When Saphienne had contracted the illness was a mystery, but her health was failing her at the most crucial time. There were only six days until her next lesson, until the deadline set by her master, and she had progressed no further in her contemplation of the First Degree.

  “…Books. I need the books.”

  She struggled to stand, wincing.

  “…Willow tea. Then cool water. A bath.”

  She stumbled to the shelves, stretching for a heavy playbook, then cradled it with both arms as she kicked the chair away from the door.

  * * *

  … The sigil is hollow. The aether fills the sigil, the vessel is immersed in the aether, and the aether is lost within itself. The magician must make a vessel of the aether to hold itself apart, that it might behold the magician who holds it …

  * * *

  Four days.

  “Even if, even if; my hand won’t work…”

  She was shaking, sweat dripping from her fingertips where they scanned the overwrought prose.

  “I need both hands to cast.”

  “You don’t need both to dance,” Gaeleath mused. “Or to fuck. You can even do them at the same time, if you’re talented.”

  She wiped her eyes, staring at the end of the table where they had been perched. She was alone in Celaena’s study.

  “Why does sex scare you so, Saphienne?”

  She looked away from them to the meditations before her. “You’re not real. I’m hallucinating.”

  “Even so, tell me: why are you a cowardly artist?”

  “…Not real…”

  “Because,” Lensa said as she scalded her neck, “she and I are much alike. Saphienne wants what she’s not allowed to have.”

  She pushed the vision away. “I can have anything I want. I can do whatever I want. It’s not them. I don’t stop myself because of them.”

  “No?” asked Athidyn, so much like Iolas where he lounged on the floor. “You never did answer my son: what guides your wisdom? You’re not obedient to the gods, and none of the moral philosophy persuaded you but the social contract — and you aren’t abiding.”

  “…Kylantha…”

  Taerelle slapped her. “She’s dead, prodigy!”

  Saphienne squeezed her eyes closed, fumbling in her pocket, feeling for the pouch–

  “Lynnariel’s daughter should have died with her,” Almon sighed. “That would have spared me from having to teach her how to fail.”

  Copper clattered on the table. “…I won’t. I won’t fail. This isn’t failure.”

  “No?” Peacock laughed as he strode toward her, his robes of shimmering green and yellow making patterns on her eyelids. “Then what is it, Saphienne? What are you doing?”

  She snatched up the coin.

  …As her breath calmed, she risked opening her eyes, seeing only the afternoon sun spilling through the thin gap in the curtains. She set the empty pouch down.

  “They’ll be back,” Kylantha warned her where the girl sat holding her hand. “You need a healer, and to rest.”

  She nodded. “I don’t have time.”

  “You have all the time in the world.”

  “No, we don’t.” She squeezed her in her palm. “You’re going to die.”

  “I’m not Ky–”

  “I don’t care.” Saphienne met her loving, brown gaze. “Pretend that you are. For me.”

  And Kylantha bit her lip. “…You want to be proven, but it might land the other way.”

  “We won’t let it.” She focused on the book, flicking to the next page with her free hand. “I’ll turn it the right way. Don’t I always?

  * * *

  “Two days — will you concede?”

  Saphienne tripped over one of the volumes that littered the floor, having swept them from their places so that she could see the semblance of the shelves without them. She caught herself on the back of a chair, then continued on to the table, where the cold water in the teapot burned her throat as she sucked it down.

  “I suppose not. You’re an irritatingly obstinate child.”

  “Remind you of someone, Almon?”

  She had gotten used to the voices. Sometimes, they were real, but this was one of the moments where she knew they were the work of the evil wizard, and so could safely ignore them as she focused.

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “Like you could understand. You merely study with Filaurel.”

  “Ass. She’s just moving in circles.”

  Saphienne raised her head. “…Circles… what was is, what is will be, what will be shall have become…” She slid the pot away, leaning over the book, and her notes. “…Unity, sympathy, dimension, resonance, magician, spirit, transcendence…”

  “She’s repeating herself.”

  She tossed aside the pages she didn’t need, some of them ripping loose. “…But there’s another number before them, their absence…” She found the lines. “…The mountain forms a circle with me, and a circle is an endless curve that passes through all dimensions…”

  “I’m worried about you. You’ve lost your mind.”

  “I’m fine,” she reassured Iolas. “I’m close. I’m so close.”

  “Seems like you’re far away.”

  She giggled. “They’re the same. All of it loops, and the loop closes. Even time dies.”

  “Don’t waste your time with her, apprentice. Tomorrow is the day of proving, and she’ll be dead by noon.”

  She kissed her fist where she held Kylantha. “Don’t listen to him, he’s not real. Celaena was lying when she agreed with you — she was too timid to say how the forming Second Sight really appeared to her. Elduin saw magic the same way you do, and you have his notes.”

  “Who is speaking?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “The voices all blend together.”

  “Cacophony? Or chorus?”

  Saphienne punched the table. “Silence!”

  And there was, for a time.

  * * *

  Where had the daylight gone?

  She was cold where she huddled on the floor, sigil in her hand; she’d been meditating for so long that she hadn’t noticed the sun had long ago set. No matter how she beheld the vested inking, Saphienne could not assemble the pieces into more than their sum, and the presence that judged her unworthy of its secrets would not yield to belonging in her mind.

  She stood from the furs, and trod over the embers of the fire, to where the shadows of the puppets were drifting across the empty bookcases that lined the walls of the cave. They were showing her an ancient story, where a girl was cast out to wander, and a broken spirit took shelter in her heart.

  Yet, she couldn’t see the face of the girl. Was it herself? Was it Kylantha? Perhaps she saw both.

  “…This a shadow.”

  Her eyes fell to the sigil.

  “…It’s a hallucination. It’s a lie. It’s only based on a truth.”

  She lifted it to her mouth, biting the edge with her teeth, and tore.

  The halves of her red composition drifted down to the classroom floor.

  Then: applause, like pebbles rattling beneath the receding surf.

  She looked, and the roof of the cavern broke apart, and the night sky shone far and true above her where she stood on the rocky beach, and there in the twinkling was the real sigil, absolute and eternal, regarding her with indulgence as she reached forth–

  And the heavens without became the heavens within.

  Filaurel embraced her from behind. “Well done. I’m proud of you.”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “I don’t know the secret. But soon, you will be.”

  Saphienne shut the open window, and pulled the curtain back into place.

  * * *

  … The spell is where magic touches the world. The aether is the world, the aether is the magic, but the aether is not the spell. I am in contest with the aether that contests me …

  * * *

  “Saphienne?”

  Celaena was somewhere high upon the cliffs.

  “Saphienne, I’m going to head to the lesson… are you coming?”

  Staring out at the tranquil sea, Saphienne let her mother help her up. “I’ll catch up with you — I’m nearly done.”

  “…Are you sure you’re alright? Sorry, but I haven’t seen you in days.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  When no further questions were shouted, she waded out into the waves.

  * * *

  Kylantha pulled her along the grove, giggling as she led. “It’s been fun.”

  “Has it?” Saphienne fussed with her mask. “I just feel tired.”

  “You can rest soon — forever, if you like.”

  “I’d like that.” Her feet dragged over the icy snow. “Will you rest with me?”

  Her best friend sighed fondly. “I’m always with you.”

  “…Thank you.” Saphienne leaned into the hallucination. “Thank you for pretending you were her.”

  Kylantha smiled.

  “Will there be sunflowers? And hyacinths? And a weeping willow, by the sea?”

  “And daffodils, if you like.”

  “I don’t know why, but that makes me sad…”

  “Don’t be sad, Saphienne. They grow for you. Every flower that blooms, know that it flowers for you. Forever, and ever.”

  * * *

  “–And as noon approaches, she arrives.”

  Iolas and Celaena were pale with concern where they peered over their shoulders, disturbed by the sight of her.

  “…Are you well, child? You’re somewhat gaunt.”

  She stared down at her spotless robes, draped loosely about her. “I was unwell.”

  “…You know what I’m to ask.”

  She lifted her head in defiance. “I’m ready.”

  Sorrowful compassion showed in her friends, while Almon delayed.

  “Ask me.”

  The wizard drew himself up to his full height. “Apprentice: are you ready to demonstrate your command of the Great Art?”

  “Yes.” She turned to the entrance. “Everyone, please join me in the garden.”

  Stunned, they were slow to follow as she made her way to the circle.

  She didn’t linger for them; Filaurel had gone ahead, and was eager to see her.

  * * *

  … I meditate upon the aether, for all my meditations are one meditation. What I meditated upon is what I meditate upon will be what I meditate upon will have become what I meditated upon.

  This is the meditation:

  The aether covers, and I am clothed. The aether obscures, and I see. The aether is a dwelling, and I indwell. The aether is the turning of the world, and I am unmoving.

  From this I discard the error of myself, and see …

  * * *

  “…Saphienne, though my time is my own, there is a limit to a wizard’s patience.”

  Almon, Celaena, and Iolas were uncomfortable were they stood watching her from the edge of the gravel — and not only because of the temperature. They had been there for the better part of half an hour, hushed with anticipation while she clasped her clenching bad hand with her good and bowed her head in concentration.

  She ignored the wizard. He wasn’t who mattered. Filaurel was with them, ready to rush forward and embrace her.

  Lowering his voice, her master turned to Celaena. “Have you seen any proof?”

  Celaena cleared her throat. “…She said she’d memorised her sigil.”

  “But, have you seen her cast the spell?”

  The older girl didn’t reply, which was an answer.

  Almon crunched into the circle. “Saphienne, the sun is at its zenith. Let us dispense with this charade. You fought longer and harder than any student I have taught before, and I must confess to respecting–”

  “Be quiet.” She was trying to listen, to feel.

  A sharp intake of breath. “…What did you say?”

  “All of you, stay quiet,” she said to the growing, whispering crowd all about her. “All I need is a moment of peace.”

  “That will suffice, child.” He turned on his heel. “You are no longer my apprentice.”

  Saphienne opened her eyes — and looked past the irrelevant, portly man who was leaving her behind, to where Filaurel was heartbroken, tears of disappointment and disdain glistening, unshed, in her eyes. Her mentor bowed as Sundamar appeared from the stacks.

  “…No.” Saphienne raised her hand. “No, I’m not done–”

  Almon snapped. “Yes, Saphienne, you are!”

  The warden caught hold of the librarian’s arm and pushed it up behind her back, and her grimace of sadness became one of pain as he walked her toward the exit from the flickering library.

  “No!” She stepped forward. “No, you can’t leave!”

  “Saphienne,” Iolas softly said as he approached, “it wouldn’t be a kindness to–”

  “An unkindness?”

  Tremble now as what was bludgeoned and blind sniffed in slumber, then uncoiled, scenting the blood that pumped weak yet spiteful in the cavern where it dwelled, inhaling as it was roused to wakefulness, tasting what deserved what it had long smothered.

  “…Saphienne,” Celaena started, “I’m sorry. This isn’t fair–”

  “Let her go.”

  Saphienne spoke, yet her voice was not one they recognised.

  Nearly at the door to his kitchen, Almon stopped, and he was stupefied where he gradually spun to face the girl.

  Yet Sundamar carried on, pushing Filaurel as the bookcases collapsed under the unbearable weight of what had accrued on their shelves.

  Iolas nervously touched her shoulder. “Saphienne?”

  And through the shattering collage of desks and shelves and flowers and books shone the redness of the immense sigil that awoke, incandescent, roaring with the force that had been stopped up since her conception, overflowing as it melted the shards and scoured itself on the world — scoured a word that was not writ in any elf:

  Fire.

  * * *

  See Almon, mouth open, fingers outstretched as he was frozen, lunging.

  See Celaena shielding her face with her sleeves, suspended where she toppled.

  See Iolas the visage of terror, betraying his recognition of a face he had beheld before, in a clearing hidden from the elves.

  See Saphienne, the murderous young girl, not yet fifteen years old. Flame was in the air, and so her white hair was tinted the violent red of bursting conjuration — like that of all the elves who dared refuse her.

  “Saphienne!”

  See now a transformation: at the sound of her name, Saphienne’s eyes lit up even brighter than the daytime, her face unguarded yet weeping as she twisted around. Time stood still, and she let it stand. Her attention was on the girl who was bounding through the molten fragments under the red sigil.

  Kylantha caught her hand. “Saphienne, is this what you want?”

  Saphienne hesitated.

  “If this is what you want to be, I won’t mind. You can be whatever you want.” She smiled her innocent smile. “But I don’t think it is… is it?”

  “…No.”

  “Then what will you make of it?”

  * * *

  Have you forgotten? It has been a very long time.

  I have not. I will never forget.

  In conquest, we come now to the fourth moment:

  Saphienne raised her left hand to the cerulean sigil that she had set in her own sky, seizing the whole of truth, and laid her other upon the scarlet breach through which her magic flooded.

  “I am what I make of the world.”

  And what was melted hardened, and what was hardened smashed to pieces, and desk and shelves and flowers and books took shape to flurry around her as she built across the ruinous gap.

  “The world is what it makes of me.”

  Shuddering, the redness roared and thrashed and bit, but the library of her mind was no fixed place, no set shape, and as the hole in her heart was filled the light that shone through was no longer red, but green — vivid green, verdant green, the colour of winter’s death and the first, most tremulous fingers of spring that reached and reached and would never rescind but that they were cut down.

  Tamed by a greater will, the sigil bowed to the heavens above, and became a mirror for what hung there.

  Then?

  Saphienne screamed as the snap of red became a flash of blue, and the billowing flames that caressed Iolas warped into a blast of noise that deafened him, and Celaena, and Almon, so potently insisted upon that the nearby windows appeared to fracture to the senses of all gathered.

  Somewhere in the inconsequential reality where the afternoon was hushed but for the cries of elves, Almon staggered, driven to his knees to clutch at his head.

  “What’s happening?!” Celaena yelled, mouthing to the wizard beneath the incomprehensible wall of sound.

  Iolas was unconscious before Saphienne, his hands upon his ears – which were bleeding from force of belief alone – while she held out her arms as though clinging on to her surroundings for dear life, her throat stripped by the howl of agony demanded by the casting.

  Almon waved Celaena to flee as he bellowed, “Peacock!”

  A bolt of blue, green, and yellow dove from the upper window toward Saphienne–

  To be annihilated on contact with the unstable hallucination.

  And the wizard understood.

  “I was the world in which I walked–” Almon rose “–and what I saw or heard–” he let go of his brow “–or felt came not–” he paced unbowed toward the circle “–but from myself; and there–” he grimaced with effort as he closed on Saphienne “–I found myself more truly–” he touched her brow “–and more strange.”

  Almon’s lips passed a fascinating instruction to the girl.

  Which she heard and – deciding that she wanted to – mercifully obeyed.

  * * *

  … The spell is not the magic. The spell is not the world. The spell is where magic touches the world.

  This is the Great Art.

  — Elduin

  End of Chapter 100

  No updates next week! Chapter 101 will release on Tuesday the 30th of December.

  Want to read on? with another five releasing the week beginning the 29th of December.

  Thanks for reading.