every conceivable shape and color wandering over the lawns, no beds of jeweled flowers wafting jets of strange perfumes into the air, no kindly elderly Mages wandering the grounds, trailing clouds of rainbows and Magelights…
No kindly elderly Mages at all. Crotchety, arrogant Mages in plenty, though.
... and no circles of eager Apprentices standing about chattering among themselves as they worked on great spells…
Lots of Apprentices scurrying from class to class, but that's about it.
And certainly no strange collections of Other Races, kept here out of sight of the common run of Armethaliehans.
Everything was just ordinary. And boring.
The only statues that might possibly be animated were the two lions that flanked the main gate, and Kellen had never actually seen them move, though rumor had it that if a non-Mageborn ever tried to pass between them, they would leap down and rend him to bits. It was unlikely that a non-Mageborn would ever get that far, though. Not only would custom and common sense—and the Constabulary—keep ordinary citizens away, there were simple wards all around the grounds, to turn back the drunk, the sick, and the mad.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard he'd tried, Kellen had never been sick enough to be turned back.
He stared blankly at his tutor, Undermage Anigrel. He stared blankly because he knew better than to stare with challenge in his gaze. Anigrel looked like a younger—and blond—version of Kellen's father; tall, lean, and saturnine, with just a hint of pointed beard and a pencil line of moustache. All the Mageborn were slender and fine-boned, their bodies shaped by no physical labor more arduous than lifting a wand or a pen. Their coloration was vivid; black, blond, or red hair running strongly in particular Mage families. They were elegant.
Kellen… wasn't.
His classmates called him 'farmer' and 'laborer' behind his back, and in truth, he did tower over most of them, especially since his last growth-spurt. Muscles meant for use, and honed by climbing walls and trees, and simply walking for miles through the City, bulked the fabric of his tunic and the loose-fitting trousers he preferred to the fashionable hose worn by some of his more daring classmates. He bet Anigrel wore hose—not that he'd ever seen his tutor without his grey Journeyman robes, or was likely to. Or wanted to, come to that.
Chired Anigrel wasn't from a prominent enough family to have family colors, and as a Journeyman- Undermage he wasn't yet entitled to colors of his own, so he wore the universal uniform of the Mages of the City, the long grey robes and sleeveless, floor-length vest that would someday— if he was fortunate and worked hard— bear the colors of a full-fledged High Mage. Anigrel was in high favor with Lycaelon, however, which meant that his personal fortune stretched to a finer style of clothing than most—soft grey linen in this weather, with a discreet trimming of darker grey and equally discreet silver-grey geometric motifs in fine embroidery on the front and back panels of the vest.
It occurred to Kellen at that moment that he hadn't ever really noticed the way that the differences between those who were in favor with someone of high position and those who were not were subtly displayed despite the plain grey 'uniform' that was supposed to be identical for every Mage, regardless of class or social background. Once again—as usual—fine words fell short of reality where the Mages were concerned.
'Begin again, Kellen,' Anigrel said crossly, and Kellen sighed and raised his Student wand. Anigrel began to chant the names of the sigils that Kellen was supposed to have memorized.
'Eleph. Vath. Kushon. Deeril. Ashan …'
As Anigrel spoke the name of the sigil, Kellen was supposed to trace it in the air. In this order they were meaningless, and not even the magick stored in the wand did more than permit them to glow in the air for a few moments before fading. But assembled together in set orders, they would make the key components of the first- level spells that every Student Mage had to master before moving on to the next level. Kellen was only a Student- Apprentice; not even a full Apprentice. He was unable to cast even the simplest spell of the High Magick—or at least, he was supposed to be unable to.
Kellen was very well aware that he should be long past memorizing sigil-lists by now. He should, in fact, be mastering the first-level spells and well into the groundwork for second-level spells, which involved more complicated structures of sigils and words of Power. And in fact he actually had mastered one or two second-level spells, even though he didn't really know the groundwork—though that was something he kept to himself.
The trouble was, of course, that all this business with tracing sigils in the air without much result was boring. When he'd been a lot younger, there had been a certain excitement in seeing the sigils glowing with magick as they hung in the air before him; there was even a kind of aesthetic pleasure in creating them, for like ornamental writing, they were pretty in an austere, yet baroque fashion. But that had been a long time ago. These days, Anigrel kept finding all manner of little defects to correct in the sigils he'd mastered, and lists of new sigils to learn. He was tired of it; tired of rote memorization and repetition without any results.
His mind kept drifting off to the very different sort of magick that he had found in The Book of Sun. There was substance there, a kind of magick you could get your teeth into. And it was a magick anyone could understand. There didn't seem to be any nonsense with memorizing books full of sigils and words of power.
The Book of Sun was the easiest of the three Books to understand, a primer on personal energy and how
