Riddle Of The Owl - YA Fantasy

Chapter Four

The dining hall was grand and there were far too many guests for it to ever be considered a small dinner party. Willum led Alleria to sit at the high table and made sure she had a glass of juice in her hand. These rich people, for all their fine clothes and manners seemed awfully rude to Alleria. The way their vulture gazes followed her, the way they whispered among themselves behind their fancy gloves was nothing if not low behaviour.

But she ought to become accustomed to this. From the moment money had been placed upon her head, she had been bought. She had stopped being a person and had become a thing. It wasn't considered gossip if what one talked about was a very expensive ceramic vase.

She almost had to remind herself that it was her choice to be here. Zalee had reminded her what she had wanted for herself but it was only her decision to come here, to challenge herself, to expand her little world and learn more and more. She had broken the glass roof of her village life to face discomfort, uncertainty and fear, just to see how far she could go in her hunt after new knowledge.

A lady in a bright green evening dress and with a head of golden locks took the seat on Alleria's left and placed her hand on her shoulder. "Nice to meet you, Alleria. I'm Selma Malluri," she whispered softly. "You're doing well. Be ready, Aresso is going to present you to them, and then they'll talk to you."

No sooner did she finish the sentence than Malluri tapped his wineglass with his fork. "My dear friends and colleagues, I present to you today a very special guest. She came all the way from the rural Hegdery Prefecture, this young lady is about to become the youngest scholar to study in the High Academy in all the history of our fine empire. Please meet Miss Alleria Bellencreek."

"- Oh, how adorable."

"-She really does look young."

"- I imagined a prodigy to look brighter."

"-From the countryside, how quaint!"

"Nice to meet you Miss Bellencreek," said a woman wearing a long hot-pink evening dress decorated with a plume of black feathers and showing off the entirety of her back. "I'm Simola Luvaric."

"Nice to meet you, Simola Luvaric," Alleria answered mechanically.

"How old are you, dear girl?" asked a middle-aged man next to Simola Luvaric.

"I'm fifteen and one half, sir."

"So, you like studying?" asked an elderly woman with snowy locks.

"Yes ma'am."

"What sort of things do you study, my dear?" Simola Luvaric stole the conversation back her way.

"Currently I'm studying the subjects required for the High Academy Attendance Exams."

"I heard it takes years to study for and is very nearly impossible to get in."

"Only one in a million get in, is what I hear."

"And it's all the finest minds in the empire too."

"But how do the Exams work?" asked a bosomy woman in a pink frock standing next to a very short auburn-haired man. "What's it like?"

"There are five Exam days and in each day, there is one question asked," Alleria explained. "Depending on the question, examinees are required to a present a coherent thesis. Though any claims that are made must be supported using previous studies and all material that is quoted or cited must be done from memory alone."

"You mean to say," said an elderly, pot-bellied gentleman in a tailored suit, "that you're required to commit everything you study to memory so you could blindly use it for your thesis or what-not during the exam?"