glaze over. He was about to head again for the Library when there was a soft tap at the door. It was Dalquist, and Grimm was happy to see him: anything to distract him from the Rules!
'Dalquist, thank you for coming to see me again!' he crowed.
Dalquist beamed. 'Grimm, I have my first Quest!' he cried. 'I wanted you to be the first to know. I leave in three days.'
'How long will you be gone?' Grimm asked, his eyes wide and almost frightened.
'I'm afraid I don't know. I will come back to see you when I can, I promise.'
Grimm opened his mouth to speak, and the Questor raised his hand. 'I can't tell you anything about the Quest, so please don't ask me, Grimm.'
The boy did want to know about the Quest; the Book of Rules and Regulations had given brief accounts of the achievements of a notable Questor or two, and yet Grimm had no idea what they actually did.
Instead, he asked, 'Are you looking forward to it?'
Dalquist rubbed his chin as if his brown beard had begun to itch, and he lowered himself onto the chair by Grimm's bed. 'I want to do it because, for the first time, I will be doing a service for my House and my Prelate, instead of taking from it.
'On the other hand, I am prepared to admit that the Quest is not what I would have chosen for myself,' he sighed, evidently somewhat uneasy, 'but it is not for a mage to question his superiors. And it will make a true Questor of me at last.
'Part of me burns with eagerness to go, another is anxious in case I fail, and a third is scared witless at the prospect of going outside. I haven't seen anything except this House for eighteen years. And there will be women! They intrigue me and faceless temptresses sometimes trouble my dreams, but I know nothing about them except what I could learn from anatomy books.'
The distaff sex was, of course, just as much a mystery to the seven-year-old Grimm, but it seemed strange to live in an environment with no women or girls. 'Are there no girl Students or mages here, Dalquist?' he asked, although the prospect of the absence of females did not bother him too much.
'That's out of the question, Grimm.' Dalquist looked uncomfortable, but he carried on. 'One thing you will be taught later is that… shall we say, very close relationships with women are forbidden to Guild mages. They say that one kiss dulls the mind and… and anything more serious destroys a mage's power. I very much want to have a family some day, but I cannot until I have paid off my debt. A married mage is an ex-mage, although he can still remain a full Guild member if he so wishes.
'The Guild allows no female incumbents because of the risk of… dalliances amongst the older Students.'
Grimm frowned. 'What's a dalliance, Dalquist?'
'Well… it's a… it's a special kind of friendship, Grimm. Can we just leave it at that?'
Grimm did not know why Dalquist had become tongue-tied, but he decided not to press the matter. He nodded, despite being none the wiser.
Chapter 10: Magemaster Crohn
Over the next two weeks, Grimm explored every corner of the Scholasticate open to him, until it seemed as if he had spent his whole life there.
He flitted like the shade of a brown mouse through the corridors of the Scholasticate, familiarising himself with its myriad complexities.
Often, he secluded himself in some dusty yet comfortable nook of the Library, finding its marvels inexhaustible. On a few occasions, he played and tussled with some of the older charity Students, but at the age of seven, an age gap of a year or two was a vast chasm. He needed some friends of his own age.
At last, his homesickness began to fade, and he began to think of the Scholasticate as his new home, although he often thought of his grandparents and the smithy in which he had been raised.
Dalquist returned from his Quest a changed man. He carried himself with greater confidence, but he was quieter and reticent to talk about his adventure. His earlier good nature was still apparent, but, from time to time, a dark expression would flash across his face for no clear reason.
Dalquist told Grimm that he would soon be his old self again, but he wished to be alone for a while.
To a small boy, a fortnight can seem like an eternity, but it passed, nonetheless.
On the first day of his magical education, Grimm's solitude was shattered as he moved uneasily through the Scholasticate assembly hall amongst a vast multitude of Students.
The imposing, walnut-panelled hall was enormous, yet it barely seemed able to contain the milling throng of Students, Neophytes, Adepts and mages.
An imposing stage was at one end of the hall, but the Students seemed to know better than to encroach upon it.
Grimm felt like a ship in a stormy sea as he was buffeted through the crowd of chattering, shouting boys. Most of them had a confident air and wore expensive clothes; many had obviously met others of the throng before, and they talked in loud voices of earlier schools and good times so that Grimm felt quite adrift, dizzy and claustrophobic. He had never been comfortable with crowds, and he had never encountered such a horde of people in his life.
He wandered aimlessly around small knots of oblivious boys until his sleeve was tugged by an earnest, energetic lad. The boisterous student wore fine, colourful clothes of blue and red, and an unruly mop of red hair threatened to swamp a pale, freckled face as he was jostled from time by the restless throng.
'You new?' the boy shouted. 'Me, too. What's the matter?'
Grimm gesticulated towards the other boys and shrilled, 'I don't know anybody here.'
'Oh, you don't want to take any notice of this stuck-up lot,' yelled the redhead. 'I'm called Madar, by the way.'
'I'm Grimm Afelnor. I do feel a bit lost. I've never seen so many noisy boys in one place before.'
'Oh, they're big-mouths for sure. I've been in Lower School with a lot of these before. Where did you go to school?'
'My gramma taught me at home in Lower Frunstock. She's a teacher.' He felt rather small at this admission of lowly birth, eyeing the expensive satin robes that Madar wore with such panache.
Madar snorted. 'You're lucky. I hardly ever got to see my family at all. As soon as my Da got rich, he got a bunch of nannies to look after me. I got rid of most of them easy. A frog in their bed, a paint-pot over the door, a spider in their tea; they just screamed and ran out the door. It didn't do any good because Da always got someone else. Usually it was somebody with a harder hand.' He put on a mournful expression for Grimm's benefit at this tale of heroic defiance in the face of unbending authority, but Grimm could tell that the outwardly confident Madar was, in reality, as nervous as he.
A loud gong sounded from the stage, and the babble of voices stilled in an instant. Grimm and Madar turned to see an imposing grey-haired figure in white silk robes standing on the dais with a confident air of magisterial authority, his tall mage's staff at his side.
'I bid you welcome to another year in Arnor House Scholasticate,' the tall man boomed, every inch the image of a mage.
'For the benefit of those of you who have just joined us, I am Urel Shelit, Mage Illusionist of the Seventh Rank, called the Dream-weaver, Senior Magemaster of the Scholasticate.
'All of those names refer to me. You will find a lot of mages here with many names and titles, many of them among the ranks of our estimable Magemasters. Despite the panoply of appellations, they are still human beings, and you can take your troubles to them. Just be sure that you have genuine problems before you complain; do not bother them with idle chit-chat, at your peril!
'All of you are here for a minimum of seven years; charity pupils for as long as twenty-two. I know that seems a mighty gulf of time, but I can assure you that you will find your time so full that the years will seem to fly
