That Almon listened did not mean Saphienne convinced him, not immediately, though he did take seriously what she shared about High Master Lenitha, and Wormwood, and the influence of the primeval spirit over Taerelle and Hyacinth. The wizard fetched out the Tome of Correspondence to review what had been written on the night Saphienne copied his library, and when Arelyn arrived with the contents of his spellbook – bewildered – he thanked his former student, but declined to elaborate.

  Then he left his newly proven apprentice, climbing the stairs to think long and heavy on the implications of what she’d outlined.

  Two hours passed before he descended to the sitting room again, carrying most of the retrieved sigils and what Saphienne guessed was his new spellbook. He set them on his chair before he stood over her, arms folded.

  “I believe you’re telling the truth.”

  She tried not to show her relief.

  “Years ago, before you were born, Taerelle mentioned that she had won the mentorship of an old bloomkith; I ought to have followed up to determine precisely which.” His eyes hardened. “I did not. The matter slipped my mind. That is quite out of character for me — when Rophana announced she wished to go wildling, I interviewed her spirit. The more I reflect on that, the less I believe I erred.”

  “…You were fascinated?”

  “That it is my hypothesis. Fascinations need not be ongoing to have their intended effect: it can be enough to make a victim overlook a crucial detail at the right moment.” He paced to the window, where Saphienne watched his reflection against the winter night. “Then there is the matter of how Hyacinth participated in your introduction to Invocation. You may recall that I laid out hyacinths, bluebells, blackthorns, and violets; I was told there were four spirits ready for rite of passage. By right, whichever responded first would have participated.”

  “But?”

  “The other three may not have existed.” He met her gaze in the dark glass. “Violets are associated with cuckoos, a symbol of deception, due to the timing of their flowering; an obscure name for blackthorn is ‘mother of the wood’; and bluebells…” Almon smirked. “…They are sometimes called ‘wild hyacinths.’ Joined together–”

  “Deception concerning Hyacinth — authored by a mother of the woodlands.” Saphienne couldn’t say why, but she intuited that Wormwood found humour in invisibly signing her work.

  “Then there are minor coincidences… my predecessor in the Eastern Vale deciding to step away not long after I reached the top of the list for appointment…” His stiff posture suggested more, unshared. “To these, we may add the explicit interference of the High Master. You would not have met Taerelle so soon if I had not been told to investigate the clearing; the High Master personally encouraged you to continue recklessly; she granted you dispensation to read ahead.”

  Saphienne inclined her head. “You read it that way, too?”

  “The wording is too perfect.” He gestured to where the enchanted tome lay on the arm of his chair. “Plausibly deniable, but available to be pointed to should it suit her purpose. I have never had any direct dealings with the High Masters, but it’s whispered they are all supremely wise…” He turned to face her. “…Wise enough, perhaps, to make a senior member of the Luminary Vale plead for help, indebting himself on a personal level for his daughter’s sake, unaware that he sought permission to do precisely what was desired of him.”

  She swallowed. “…Celaena’s father is a master of–”

  “Fascination. The irony is not lost on me.”

  They were on edge in the silence.

  “Saphienne,” Almon finally said, “it should not be possible to both divine a personal future and change it, but the High Masters are capable of works that escape the understanding of lesser magicians. This is the divinatory territory of open prophecy, which I considered to be myth.”

  She blinked. “…I’ve been prophesied?”

  “Sever the term from religious connotations.” Absentminded steps carried him to the chessboard, where he lifted one of the more colourful pieces from the drawer of the table on which it was placed. “Priests casually refer to auguries as prophecies, while wizards use the term to refer to any augury of an individual that binds their future. True prophecy is rare, and usually brought about by an individual consenting to an augury of their future.” He set the violet piece in the middle of the board. “An open prophecy predicts what will befall an individual… without binding them to that course. Theoretically, a diviner would be able to see the future, then choose whether or not to accept that it should come to pass.

  “I cannot say for certain,” he continued, “whether this has been done to us. We do not know how many of the High Master’s works were to effect an outcome, and how many were hedged against uncertainty. But the sophistication… the depth to which individuals would have to be predicted, in order to align them…”

  Saphienne closed her eyes. “…I thought I’d caught out Wormwood, when I invoked her… was that part of her master’s plan? Is this conversation–”

  The Tome of Correspondence rang.

  Master and apprentice looked at each other, their dread undisguised.

  “…Less and less a myth,” Almon murmured as he lifted the book, opening to the latest page. His lips pursed. “…Your new master has been arranged, and will be arriving via portal five days from now.” He paled as he read aloud. “‘We congratulate Master Almon and his apprentice Saphienne on their successful navigation of complicated circumstances, and trust they will soon be satisfied with the fruit of their patient endurance.’”

  The familiar clearly inherited her sense of humour from her master. “Is it written by–”

  “No.” He snapped the book shut. “A formal notice. They’re never signed individually, and the scribe who writes them merely passes on each message.”

  Anxious, Saphienne stood. “…What do we do?”

  Indeed — what could they do?

  * * *

  This is what Almon decreed:

  Presuming that she had been manipulated into disloyalty, Saphienne was forgiven for her betrayals of his trust. He sanctioned her copying of his library, her reading ahead in the syllabus, her ‘borrowing’ of his sigils, her scrutiny of them, and excused the destruction of one of their number.

  He did not, however, easily forgive her for the mess she made of his home, and for the burning of his spellbook.

  In recompense for her vandalism, Almon had Saphienne detail the method by which she’d evaded Peacock, restitch the sigils into his new spellbook, and then he extracted a promise she would spend a week gardening once spring arrived… disturbing circumstances allowing.

  Otherwise? The wizard wrote down their suspicions, signed the account with his apprentice, affixed his seal, then vowed he would find a way to see it delivered to the consensus should calamity befall them. How he might manage this was an unanswered, possibly futile question, but Almon insisted that refusing to try would be throwing away any agency they might yet have.

  Thereafter, he informed Saphienne they would be safest proceeding as the Luminary Vale had instructed…

  …Which dissatisfied her, so she requested a second opinion.

  * * *

  Turbulent snow, and flowers that bloomed through a thousand colours, before settling on the same white as covered them.

  “You did not tell me what you risked…” Hyacinth was too shocked for poesy where she held to Saphienne, blossoms trembling. “…You wished to spare me…”

  Hyacinth was unsurprised that Wormwood had been teaching her for reasons other than altruism, but still disconcerted that the ancient spirit had been manipulating Saphienne from afar.

  Yet not enraged, and soon calming. She knew something she couldn’t share. “There is more to this than you know — I see more than you do, for your having enlightened me.”

  “Why can’t you tell me? If it’s the ancient ways–”

  “I am not prohibited by ordinary means.” Hyacinth fretted where they sat on the field together. “More than mere convention binds me… but I do not think you have to be concerned about High Master Lenitha.”

  Saphienne blinked. “No?”

  “Nor do I think you need be too apprehensive…” She squinted. “…The motive may be benign. I cannot be certain, yet there is a possibility that all of this was done in simple kindness, albeit not simply done.”

  Saphienne canted her head, sceptical and suspicious. “…You’re subject to a spell?”

  Hyacinth gave nothing away — not even through the embrace of possession.

  “The sort of spell a High Master could cast?” When no answer came, she slowly lay back on the flowers. “You could be forced to say that.”

  “…I am no different from my sisters.”

  “Well that’s hardly reassuring.”

  The spirit reached for her hand. “If you wish it, have my secret name, that you may change me…”

  Saphienne stared at her. “…And make you tell?”

  Hyacinth could not speak.

  “…That inclines me to trust you, but there’s no way to know whether…”

  “Yes.”

  And there, once again, lay the question central to Saphienne’s life:

  Was it all the work of an evil wizard?

  Taerelle had taught her to trust, even when she felt she shouldn’t. For all that the senior apprentice was herself manipulated by Wormwood, Saphienne was still persuaded by the woman’s answer to her existential dilemma.

  “…This is na?ve,” the girl sighed, “but I’d rather live in trust than fear. I don’t want power over you, Hyacinth, so I’m choosing to believe I can depend on you not to mislead me — or that, if you are misleading me, you’re just as much a victim as I am.”

  “…Had I the roots to pray so, I would.”

  She took the bloomkith’s hand. “If this ends in ruin? I forgive you.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure it was noon?”

  Almon glowered at Saphienne where he stood beside her in his garden. “Entirely certain. The message was unambiguous.”

  She covered her nervousness with politeness. “…Would it be rude to ask the exact wording?”

  Her soon-to-be-former master rolled his eyes. “‘Saphienne’s new master will be arriving in the Eastern Vale by portal, five days hence, to attend upon Master Almon at noon.’”

  Saphienne squinted up at the sun, then craned her head toward the house. “…Could those be–”

  Almon swore as he grabbed her sleeve, hurrying her into the kitchen and up the stairs, there pausing to compose himself in the sitting room as they heard Peacock chatting amiably with someone in the classroom below.

  “… Lovely young girl, when she’s not sneaking around.”

  The woman conversing with the familiar spoke with clipped, deliberately enunciated diction, yet her voice was low and velvety. “She has a penchant for subterfuge?”

  “More of a natural talent! Before she cast her first spell, she worked out how to evade me from first principles.”

  “Indeed?” Her tone warmed considerably. “And she is only fourteen?”

  “Closer to fifteen now.”

  “Yet fourteen.”

  “If we’re being precise–”

  “There is no other way to be.”

  Having heard enough, Almon strode to the top of the stairs and began his introductions. “Good afternoon, and welcome to the Eastern Vale. I am–”

  “Master Almon, hallucinator, Second Degree…”

  As Saphienne quietly followed the wizard she caught sight of the woman who would be teaching her, intrigued to find she was dressed in a practical, long-booted garb, largely comprised of black fabric and dark leathers, the only clue as to her specialism being the dim purple lining her shoulder-length, hooded mantle and ribboning her elbow-length gloves where she gripped Almon’s wrist.

  Her gaze was grey beneath her crown-braided hair, and focused on Saphienne as she finished her introduction. “…While I am Vestaele, fascinator, Third Degree.”

  Saphienne couldn’t repress her recognition. “You authored ‘Of Delusion’?”

  Dignity ruffled by Vestaele, Almon refused to evidence any displeasure for Saphienne’s failure to introduce herself in the proper manner, instead smiling fondly as he released the sorcerer’s hand and swept his arm to the girl. “And this precocious youth is – but of course – Saphienne.”

  She bowed as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Vestaele shallowly reciprocated, her eyes narrow. “I am indeed. You have noticed my work on these shelves?”

  Were this woman to be her new master, Saphienne would begin as she intended to proceed. “Actually, I’ve read it.”

  An outside observer would not think the look Vestaele gave Almon was anything other than mildly curious, though Saphienne knew she was taken aback to hear a freshly proven apprentice had been entrusted with advanced magical theory. “…Is that so? How very interesting.”

  The wizard held the lapels of his robe. “Young Saphienne is something of a prodigy, and was granted consent to read ahead by High Master Lenitha.”

  A faint twitch of Vestaele’s cheek was the only indication she was stunned. “I see.”

  Then she crossed to Saphienne, footfalls silent despite the heaviness of her boots; the sorcerer was indulgent as she placed her hands on her hips and addressed her future apprentice. “To business, Saphienne. Let us see how well you have been taught my–”

  “I read independently.”

  “…How well you have taught yourself my work.” Vestaele held the faintest glimmer of annoyance, tempered by the open-minded scrutiny she gave the girl. “Please summarise my thesis, and offer your commentary.”

  Behind Vestaele, unseen by her, Almon grinned — and Saphienne received his command.

  “As I understand it,” Saphienne began, clasping her hands behind her back and squeezing her fingers, “Larimon’s ‘Sigil as Empty Vessel’ and Rovalia’s theory of magic as an unique emergence inspired you to approach the subject of spellcraft from an unorthodox perspective: via the unique symbolic associations of each magician.

  “Your implicit thesis was that Rovalia had overstepped — that differences in apprehension of the symbolic are responsible for distinctiveness in spellcasting, but this does not mean magic itself is idiosyncratic. Your explicit thesis, which was much less interesting,” she candidly remarked, “was that the inability of Fascination spells to directly compel spellcasting indicates that the performance of magic is not contingent on symbolic connotation, but rather denotation. Therefore, subtly changing the connotations of symbols is not a viable means to alter a spell.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “As reductive as I’m being,” she asked, “am I in the right copse of the woods?”

  A long pause ensued.

  “…I would say so,” conceded Vestaele.

  “Then,” Saphienne shouldered onward, “my commentary is that I’m convinced by your unstated thesis: you excellently highlighted the shortcomings of Rovalia’s conceptualisation of magic. However, I’m unconvinced about connotation in spellcasting, and I’d propose that one might employ the methodology of Galuin to test your thesis.

  “Say a cooperating magician detailed the full symbolism of a simple spell. One might interrogate their associations with those symbols, then diagram the resonance of the spell when cast. Then, with their consent, one could fascinate the magician to alter the connotative component while leaving the denotative untouched, and observe what, if any, changes resulted to the resonance.

  “In doing this,” she concluded, “I’m confident that the limits on connotation in spellcraft could be surveyed — though I anticipate that the extent to which connotation is impactful varies according to the individual magician. My intuition is that it would only superficially affect your spellcasting, Master Vestaele, but would profoundly change Master Almon’s.”

  Wide-eyed, the sorcerer was unintentionally sharp. “Why?”

  “Your punctuality and intentionality strike me as adverse to ambiguity, whereas Master Almon’s magical praxis depends upon uncertainty.”

  Vestaele said nothing, studying Saphienne, while Almon beamed his satisfaction.

  Then the sorcerer smiled, and she laughed, crisp and gentle, folding her arms and tilting her head. “I was not due to take an apprentice, and I had wondered why my attention was required when there were other, sufficient sorcerers available; but you would be wasted on them, wouldn’t you?” She spun to the wizard. “Let us sit comfortably.”

  “Of course,” Almon replied as he led them to his sitting room. “And, having welcomed you to the Eastern Vale? Welcome to teaching Saphienne…”

  His apprentice wanted to skip up the stairs behind them.

  * * *

  Declining tea in favour of water, Vestaele waited until they were seated before explaining how she had been translocated into the village at sunrise, there to undertake the necessary research into Saphienne’s genealogy.

  Almon sympathised with her wasted effort. “Unfortunate. If you had come directly to me, I could have shown you my notes–”

  “I read them.” She sipped her water, then balanced her teacup on her knee, where it remained level throughout. “They were my starting point. You provided them to the Luminary Vale when you accepted Saphienne as your apprentice.”

  The wizard’s eyebrows raised. “Then, why replicate my research?”

  Vestaele answered with a diplomatic smile. “They were insufficient. Their content was factual, but ended when you established Saphienne’s lineage could not be definitively traced beyond the woodlands.”

  Saphienne nearly dropped her cup. “You went further afield?”

  “Physically, no.” Vestaele had a small satchel at her side, and she unbuckled it to withdraw a sheet of paper that Saphienne recognised as old by its visible grain. “Let this be your first lesson: a wizard concerns herself with what can be established through fact and logic, but a sorcerer is unconfined. While I wasn’t able to speak with your mother, I interviewed your priest, Elder Tolduin, and profiled both her and you from what he said.” Unfolded, the page showed Old Elfish. “From there, I searched the records beneath the village hall, working under the inference that your mother had been left to be found by Wardens of the Wild from this vale.”

  “Found?”

  The wizard dismissed his apprentice’s question with an observation of his own. “That seems more assumption than inference…”

  “You would think so.” She smiled at where Saphienne was perched on the edge of the couch. “But I knew – based on Saphienne’s mother, and from the report of her first casting – that she was very unlikely to be a sorcerer by the grace of woodland spirits. Of the remaining possibilities,” she tapped the record, “my hunch was that she had an ancestor who was notably accomplished in the Great Art. By reviewing the register of magicians prior to travelling here, I arrived with a likely candidate identified.”

  Now even Almon was transfixed.

  Vestaele recited from memory. “Master Kythalaen, born one and a half millennia ago, precise date of death unknown — but believed to have reached her sixth century. An accomplished conjurer, she left the woodlands when she had attained the Fourth Degree with her wizardry… and departed in haste. Reading between the lines? I suspect consent for her journey was granted retrospectively.”

  Almon glanced wryly at Saphienne. “…Perhaps precedential…”

  “Her remains were retrieved and interred in the Vale of Tears,” the sorcerer relayed, “but the enchantments found with them evidenced that she had attained at least the Fifth Degree. I scrutinised her necklace, and can attest as much.”

  Saphienne couldn’t restrain herself. “Why do you think Kythalaen was my ancestor?”

  “Two reasons.” Vestaele, amused by her eagerness, was unhurried. “Prior to leaving the woodlands, she returned home — to the Eastern Vale, having been born here not long after the village was founded. I expect some of the local elders, older than your priest, will remember her.”

  Saphienne’s breath had caught; she forced herself to exhale. “…And?”

  The sorcerer lifted the portentous page, translating as she read aloud. “‘Lo, fair maiden Kythalaen, long-leg! Wide her hip and curving her cheek, yet narrow the jaw tonguing–’ as in, speaking disrespectfully to ‘–the elders. Unending the burrs in her mouth for the foolish, uncaring for dress–’ meaning, social standing ‘–in her high revel. Swifter than the river she, more peril to tread than ice in the blackness–’ an old term for wintertime ‘–though gentle she roves by elf and beast.’”

  Almon coughed. “While a compelling portrait, that hardly–”

  “‘Canny the wyrd of her eyes,’” Vestaele interrupted him. “‘Be they copper-rot, or moss-grown, or laurel, or leaf-shade, or emerald, or sea-tossed, never have her kith and kin agreed upon their green.’”

  There were no further objections.

  Beguiled, Saphienne could scarcely whisper, “How did she die?”

  Vestaele was unmoved by the history she set aside. “She was burned; the ground around her warded remains was vitrified, and betrayed signs of dragons’ fire.”

  * * *

  Both Saphienne and Vestaele were eager to proceed to a demonstration of the apprentice’s potential, but Almon asserted his authority by insisting that the event should be used to teach his students. While the sorcerer was unenthused, she respected his intentions as a fellow teacher, and so agreed to return on the appointed day.

  In the interregnum, Almon ceased playing chess, and instead sat Saphienne down in the parlour and reviewed the content of every last book she’d copied, probing her comprehension for weakness across three days. To his chagrin, deepening astonishment, and perhaps unadmitted pride, Saphienne had correctly interpreted all that she’d read.

  “While you are infuriating,” he confessed, “I cannot think of any magician who has amassed such a remarkable understanding in such a short span of time. You have more to learn, but in this area, you already exceed the weakest of my senior apprentices. In keeping my promise at the start of your apprenticeship, only out of respect for the Great Art: superbly done, Saphienne.”

  “…May I ask a tangential question?”

  He nodded as he slid ‘Meditations on the Aether’ back into the bookcase.

  “Do you anticipate Vestaele will judge you by my early performance?”

  The wizard stopped, drumming his fingers on the shelf.

  “…Yes, but that was not the reason for this revision.” He bent to stoke the fire. “Granting that the path ahead is unclear… whatever happens next, I would prefer that my time with you have not been wasted. Should you ever join me in membership of the Luminary Vale, I wish to be able to say to myself that I was not merely an obstacle you overcame during your rise.”

  And here, marvel:

  Saphienne rose and bowed to Almon. “Master, for good and ill, I can say with utter certainty that I would not be whatever magician I am becoming were it not for your opposition. I do not like you… but you were more than an obstacle. A wizard’s time is her own, and I have not wasted my time under you.”

  He remained facing the fireplace. “…Wretched child.”

  “Says a foolish man.” She ascended the stairs.

  As she went, she heard his muttering. “…Several, rare traits of character…”

  * * *

  Was that why, on the morning she was to demonstrate her sorcery, Saphienne found a newly tailored set of dark grey robes hanging in the hall, accompanied with a note of congratulations from the wizard’s brother?

  No, she decided. Almon must have requested them shortly after she woke from her healing sleep.

  …But, the dark blue stitches of the lining did give her pause to wonder.

  Downstairs, Taerelle was pacing in the sitting room. “Prodigy! Come here: let me take a proper look at you.”

  Saphienne obliged, blushing as the senior apprentice paced around her, feeling the woman’s superior gaze linger on the long braid she had made of her hair.

  “…Appropriating the confidence of your betters, are we?”

  The coin was reassuring in her left hand. “Yes.”

  “Flatterer.” Taerelle peered down the steps to the kitchen, then pulled Saphienne into a firm hug. “…Don’t be nervous. Our master has informed us this is to be followed by a group lesson, and he expects the senior apprentices to exceed whatever the junior apprentices advance. None of us will be paying attention to you, the person: we’ll be too busy observing your spellcasting.”

  “But that’s the problem! Taerelle, I don’t have a sigil memorised.”

  “You don’t need one: you’re a sorcerer.”

  Saphienne pulled away. “I’m not — I’m really not! Almon isn’t sure, either, but he’s insisting we go through the motions.”

  Confused, Taerelle stared. “…If you aren’t a sorcerer, what are you? There’s no possibility you can be a wizard; you aren’t conscious of the secret of the First Degree–”

  “Magic shifts in response to our thoughts and feelings.”

  Panicked, the woman in black clamped her hand over Saphienne’s mouth, pallid as she once more checked they were unobserved. “Don’t say it out loud! Never speak the secrets of the degrees — nor write them!” She needed a moment to reclaim her poise, then lowered her arm. “Every magician must uncover them on her own. To do otherwise risks power falling into unready and unworthy hands; do you understand?”

  Rattled, she nodded.

  “…You might be a wizard after all…” Taerelle shook her head. “But how? How in the world could you fathom that, before even casting a spell?”

  “It came to me in the garden.” She shivered at the recollection. “I wasn’t myself. I was so angry… so heartbroken… and when I felt the magic answer, I knew it was a form of sympathy between magician and magic that completes spells of the First Degree. While it wasn’t fully conscious,” she conceded, “what I did with my first spell was. You saw the sigil I tore?”

  Warily, the senior apprentice admitted she had.

  “Then you know: that was the spell I cast. Almon supposes that I’ve internalised it, like sorcerers do, but he’s wrong.” Angst made her shut her eyes. “I can’t cast without a sigil memorised. I’m sure of it. Which means I’m about to–”

  “Apprentice!” Almon called from the door to the garden. “We’re ready for you now. Taerelle, kindly take your place as well.”

  Saphienne’s tutor clasped her shoulders. “Prodigy? Try. If it doesn’t work, advocate for yourself.” Taerelle pressed her brow to that of the girl whom she held. “You’ve overcome greater trials than stage fright. Comport yourself with the exceptionalism you embody, Saphienne.”

  Something of the cool control in the senior apprentice was transmitted to her junior.

  “…Better.” Without a backwards glance, Taerelle strode for the garden. “Come along, prodigy. Your peers are waiting.”

  Steeling herself, the proven apprentice – no, magician – trailed after, reciting her praxis as mantra. “I am what I make of the world; the world is what it makes of me. I am what I make of the world…”

  * * *

  Spells had been cast in the garden. Saphienne could not see them, but as she neared the door leading from the kitchen she felt their presence resonating in her chest, intensifying the closer she came to the gravel, in which half a dozen concentric circles had been traced.

  Twenty other apprentices were gathered outside, divided between robes of black and the same dark grey she wore. Celaena and Iolas grinned at her from their place among the junior apprentices, while Taerelle was busy inserting herself front and centre amid the senior ranks, who begrudgingly made room for her, Rydel rolling his eyes.

  “Take care not to break the bindings as you enter,” Almon instructed her, “or the notionally fine work of these dubiously fine minds will have gone to waste.”

  From the concentrating expressions among the senior apprentices, Saphienne could tell who was responsible for the abjurations she carefully stepped over, acutely aware of the invisible boundaries as she passed through their differing textures — and of being watched by their makers. One young woman in black was also attired in flowers, daisies coiling through her wild tresses, her gaze yellow from spiritual possession…

  Even Rophana, it seemed, had come back from going wildling; had come back to witness the danger of an inexperienced sorcerer.

  Once Saphienne was in the centre, Almon cast his own spell, surrounding the bindings his pupils had fashioned with a more durable abjuration as he dragged his shoe through the gravel. “For the benefit of the gathered juniors,” he announced when done, “Saphienne will explain what is to occur.”

  One last imposition from the wizard, before she was to be Vestaele’s problem. “I presume that the abjurations placed by the senior apprentices have been arranged from least to most confident, that they might fall in succession should the potency of my magic overwhelm them, backstopped by a spell of your casting, Master.”

  Cheerful in his summery blue robes, Almon grinned. “Quite so! Master Vestaele, if you would like to proceed?”

  The sorcerer had been waiting near the flowerbeds with her head bowed and arms crossed, the hood of her short mantle drawn up over her ears. She brushed it down, then strolled to the perimeter of the defences. “Thank you, Master Almon.” Although she responded to his invitation, she had eyes only for Saphienne, the divination in them glittering. “I invite all present to examine this scene with whichever spell is appropriate for their facility with the Great Art.”

  As one, the crowd whispered and gestured, Saphienne absently pleased to see she had been correct — Iolas and Celaena had been practicing the Second Sight.

  “Saphienne.” Vestaele interlinked her fingers. “Close your eyes.”

  Repressing her trepidation, Saphienne obeyed.

  “Recall the events that transpired when you last stood here,” Vestaele urged her, voice lowering and softening until it became drifting smoke. “Recall the sunshine; recall the cold; recall your tiredness, your frustration–”

  “I wasn’t frustrated.”

  Murmurs from the assembly; a nervous giggle.

  “…How did you feel? Tell me.”

  “I was exhausted.” She felt the day anew. “I wanted to get it over and done with. I knew that I would succeed, but I didn’t have peace to concentrate on the sigil; I was distracted by... my fever.”

  “And then,” Vestaele pressed, “Master Almon declared your apprenticeship was concluded.” She allowed the memory time to emerge. “How did you feel?”

  Fearful, distraught, angry. “I was confused at the time, so I felt he didn’t have the right to do that. Angry.”

  “How did the anger feel?” Vestaele had begun to wind about the circles, widdershins, as though rolling back the sun across the sky. “Describe the sensations.”

  “Heat.” She sank further into the memory. “An itch in my fingers, my teeth.”

  Someone whispered — and was shushed.

  “Anger inside. My throat burned; my chest was tight.”

  Vestaele had paused behind her. “Trust yourself to that feeling. What comes to mind? What image did it provoke?”

  “Red.” She dwelled on the afterimage of the great, sundered sigil. “The shape was red, and spiralled, but it wasn’t in our magical script. It was enraged, wounded, hungry. It meant…”

  The crowd hung on her words.

  “…Whatever it meant, it’s gone now.”

  “Focus; it’s still there–”

  “No.” Saphienne opened her eyes, peering back at Vestaele. “No, I unmade it. It was going to hurt Iolas and Celaena. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Around her, the apprentices shifted, uneasy; her friends were rapt as they listened.

  Vestaele, however, was irked. “An illusion of harm. You believed it would hurt them–”

  “No, it was a sigil of conjuration.” Saphienne folded her arms. “I remember. I unmade it from myself, then replaced it with the sigil I had memorised the night before — a Hallucination spell of the First Degree. I didn’t want that to be my magic, so I made it otherwise.”

  Now multiple figures were whispering, and from the corner of her eye she saw Almon frowning as he stroked his chin.

  “…Very well,” Vestaele acknowledged with a low bow. “I apologise.”

  “No apology is–”

  “Not for that.” The Master of Fascination straightened, finishing the spell she had woven while her hands were concealed. “For this…”

  Rage leapt from the piercing gaze of the sorcerer–

  And Saphienne blinked.

  Casting her attention around herself, intensely irritated by everything she saw, Saphienne was scathing. “…Is this supposed to make me lose control of my temper?”

  Gasps from the senior apprentices — except for Taerelle, who was smiling so widely and viciously she appeared as though she wished to both embrace and throttle the girl she had tutored.

  “That’s your great plan? Overwhelm me again? Really?”

  Vestaele was nonplussed, her expression wooden.

  “I think not.”

  Saphienne rejected the fascination, having decided it was beneath her dignity — and finding its emotional content weak in comparison to the seething ocean that had writhed within her of late. The spell collapsed in view of all the gathered students, preceding an uproar that Almon made no attempt to restrain, struggling and failing to curtail his amazed laughter at the sight of another magician utterly defeated by his apprentice.

  “How,” Vestaele managed, “did you shrug that off?”

  Sufficiently recovered as to be embarrassed, Saphienne blushed. “…I’m not very receptive to fascinations…” Her smile was awkward. “…Sorry.”

  That was enough for Iolas and Celaena to double over, howling.

  * * *

  “…She must be using it as a form of magical implement,” Vestaele opined.

  Saphienne ignored the sorcerer as she sat on the gravel with her master’s spellbook, searching for the replacement of the sigil she had wrestled with.

  “Clearly, teaching her as a wizard has had a detrimental effect.”

  Having refused to proceed until furnished with the sigil she required, Saphienne had eventually won Almon around, prompting him to send a gleeful Taerelle to fetch down his grimoire. As she beheld the spell with fresh eyes, this time, she demanded it present itself as her servant, ready to make the world more pleasant to her ear — and the sigil sang her praises as it slid into her mind.

  She had taken but a minute. “I’m ready.”

  Taerelle reclaimed the spellbook and retreated beyond the circle as Saphienne stood.

  Vestaele uncrossed her arms. “Good. Envision a single, simple sound, and relinquish–”

  Irreverently, Saphienne flicked her fingertips as she aligned herself in the shape of the sigil against the green, willing that her magic spill into the world as her other, damaged, yet not useless hand turned the coin within her palm–

  A cymbal tinkled, startling all present.

  “Good!” Vestaele relaxed with a weary smile. “Anticlimactic, but sufficient. Your reserves are exhausted–”

  “I can cast again,” Saphienne retorted.

  “Do not strain yourself. You lack the necessary control–”

  A brazen horn sounded, louder than the previous hallucination, yet perfectly realised.

  Wizard and sorcerer were both confounded.

  “…Your endurance is impressive.” Vestaele beckoned her to leave the circle. “You may stop pretending at comfort.”

  Slowly smiling as she examined the sigil, still intact within herself, Saphienne remained where she was. “I’m not pretending. I could do more. Better, too.”

  “Do not overreach–”

  “Master Vestaele,” Almon interjected, “if I may? Saphienne is not prone to exaggeration. She is a better judge of her capabilities than you or I.” He did not begrudge Saphienne the respect she had earned from him. “Apprentice? While you yet remain my apprentice: cast as you will.”

  And so, she did. Twice more, hallucinatory noises filled the garden, first repeating the words her master had just spoken, and then the cursing roar she had provoked from him when she had planted a figment of a hyacinth upon him, months ago, during the summer solstice.

  After, Saphienne was tired. “…I can do one more.”

  Everyone else was hushed, even the junior apprentices aware that they were privy to a mystery unfolding.

  Saphienne closed her eyes, remembering her walk back from that very first contest with Almon; how the trees had danced their shadows on the snow; how her heart had hummed, to know Filaurel waited; how she had felt like music might explode from between her fingertips…

  She waved them, composing and conducting, and the orchestra of the winter solstice haunted the wizard’s garden, which fell under a spell of nostalgia, awe 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…

  To then fade, but never truly cease.

  End of Chapter 102

  It's been immensely satisfying to see people starting to figure out why the story is paced the way it is, especially over on the Patreon. The next dozen chapters will be illuminating, I think.

  Chapter 103 on Tuesday the 6th of January.

  Thanks for reading!