The Sceptre of Samnos

The University Part 3

     An hour later, Thomas left the hall in a cold sweat, trembling at how close he'd come to failure. He had answered the first question easily enough, but the second had been a subject he'd only encountered once before, in his first year, a subject he'd thought to be of so little importance or interest that he hadn't bothered to study or revise it since. Hearing the wizard posing the unexpected question, he'd frozen completely, his brain locking up in panic. The answer was there, he knew it was, but it was buried so far down that it would take the rest of the day for it to surface and he knew his interrogator wouldn't give him that long. He'd barely started the test, and already he could see failure staring him in the face. Ignominious defeat. He'd seen, as clearly as if it was already happening, the wizard's eyes looking down at him in pity and contempt as he told him to leave the room, doomed to the shame and ignominy of another year of tuition, having to relearn stuff he already knew by heart. Sheer panic had gripped him, making him shake like a leaf as his blood was saturated with adrenaline. He had already seen half a dozen fail and walk out in a shocked, unbelieving daze, and he knew, with a terrifying certainty, that he was going to be next.

     But he wasn't. Somehow the answer had come to him, popping into his head by some miracle and out through his mouth before he was even aware of it and the teaching wizard had nodded his acceptance and moved on to the next question, leaving Thomas quaking with relief and disbelief. The other questions, although hard and testing, hadn't posed him anything like the same problem, and it had taken about a dozen, with queries and follow up questions, before the teaching wizard was satisfied that his knowledge was as broad and deep as it needed to be and dismissed him with a grunt of satisfaction.

     He almost danced out of the building, his soul singing with gratitude and relief, and raced down the rough stone path towards the dormitories, passing the statue of a young man frozen in the act of sweeping something up and looking round in surprise. Reaching his room, he stripped off his sweat soaked clothes and threw them into the laundry basket, then turned the tap to fill the wash basin with clean, cold water. A couple of tiny leaves from a pond plant came with it, which he ignored. The water came from a tank in the loft that was filled from Lake Magus by levitation spells in the supply pipe, and sometimes the spells that were supposed to filter it were a bit glitchy.

     He was washing the cold perspiration from his body when the door opened again to admit one of his roommates, Conrast the Haldornian. “Hey, Tom!” he said cheerfully, grabbing his arm and giving it a gentle tug. Tom had the choice of either letting himself be turned to face him or pulling himself out of his grasp, something he was tempted to do even though it might have seemed unfriendly. Contrast had the irritating habit of standing too close to people and staring them straight in the eyes, something that he'd overheard other people commenting on in a humerous fashion when the man was safely out of earshot. He seemed to have no concept of personal space, and no inhibitions regarding skin contact, accidental or otherwise.

     Tom rubbed the flannel over his face to mask his reaction. "You came a bit close there, didn't you?" he heard the other man say, almost laughing. "For a moment there I thought you were going to be staying on for another year. Glad to see you got through all right, though. Naturally, I got all my questions right, as you'd expect. There's been a wizard in my family for the past twelve generations and we've all passed first time..."

     “Twelve generations, yeah,” replied Tom, gently disengaging himself from the other man’s grasp. “I think you told me that once. Very impressive.” He grabbed a towel and began drying himself, noting that the other man had left the door wide open and that other apprentices were passing by in the corridor outside. Five years of enforced intimacy had left most of the apprentices with very few inhibitions and Tom was the same most of the time, but Conrast somehow brought out some residual childhood modesty in him. He rubbed his legs and waist dry and pulled a clean pair of briefs from the laundry cupboard, struggling to pull them on against his still damp skin. It wasn’t that he was self conscious or anything, but even so... “That’s quite some pressure to live up to, though,” he said as he towelled his upper body. “Imagine if you were the one to break the chain.”