Riddle Of The Owl - YA Fantasy

Chapter Eleven

Now was the hour of truth.

The queue was long and quiet. The tension almost tangible, like a blurry shadow that wafted out of people's skin. No one dared speak, or make eye contact, or breathe too loudly.

Alleria looked at the wall on her right. She couldn't stomach looking at other people. The wallpaper had an awful pattern of mustard-yellow squiggly lines. A little way to the left there was a horrid painting of a bowl of fruit hanging under an old clock that was ticking, ticking, ticking.

The old, well-polished wooden floor creaked like a giant cricket as the queue moved up. Alleria's turn came. Two old men and a woman were sitting behind a desk. She silently handed over her papers. The woman crossed out a name on a list, gave her a card with a number and pointed her towards the left door.

She entered the ladies' changing room. She had already left her jacket and purse in the cloak room. Grasping the card with both hands, she presented it before the three elderly women in charge. They told her to remove all her clothing down to her undergarments. One woman checked every inch of her body for crib-sheets or anything written on her skin before giving her a light-blue robe and light-blue slippers. Dressed in the colour of a Scholar, she was allowed to proceed to examination hall 5.

The hall was massive, with hundreds of numbered desks in neat rows. The distance from desk to desk was exactly two meters in every direction, there was a watchful examiner at both ends of each line and row so that at any given moment each examinee was under the scrutiny of four pairs of eyes. On the front of every desk was an angled mirror that would allow the examiners to see underneath the desks.

The exams for the High Academy were renown for being exaggeratedly strict, anyone suspected of cheating would be disqualified on the spot.

Alleria, with her heart hammering in her chest realised that hers was the desk in the front corner and she would have two examiners standing directly over her and breathing down her neck the whole day. Even more nervous than she thought possible, she sat, placing her card in the card-holder at the edge of the desk. There were three pens laid out on the right side of the desk for her use next to an inkwell. She checked to see if all was in order and raised her hand to get the examiners' attention.

Both looked down at her with steely eyes, "There's no ink in the well, sir." she squeaked meekly.

The examiner in front of her nodded firmly towards one of the attendants who all but flew towards them. Moments later a page that was probably her age was pouring ink into her desk, she looked at Alleria curiously before retreating.

When all the examinees were seated, a battalion of attendants marched in and began distributing papers to each desk. Then all was in order and the gong rang. An attendant tugged on a silken rope that pulled aside the heavy red curtain at the front of the hall behind which was written today's question in large letters on a plaque in a golden frame.

Alleria moved the paper to the correct angle, lifted the pen in her right hand, dipped it into the inkwell and, armed and ready, began to tackle the question.

**

The next day and then the next followed in the same fashion. Every day a different question and a different essay to write. A bruised blister had formed on the middle joint of her middle finger in her right hand.

She fell into the rhythm of the Exam, her body fused with the right amount of stress and excitement. She couldn't tell whether her answers would grant her a spot in the High Academy — but at least they were worthy answers she could be proud of.

And she would continue, even though tomorrow, on the last day, she was going to fail.

For the first time in the history of the empire, the question that was going to be asked in the Exams for the High Academy was in Theology.