The Sceptre of Samnos

The University Part 6

     The three apprentice wizards luxuriated in their newfound friendship. They could all feel something growing between them. None of them knew what it was, but it was with real regret that they were forced to separate, each of them having to study for the next day's testing. The Gods damn my luck! thought Thomas as he headed back to his room. We could have had five years, if we'd met earlier. Now, though, we've only got days, perhaps a couple of weeks if we go the same way home. How likely is it that I'm going to meet friends like these again? People who are so like me? Cursing fate was a fool's game, though, as his father was fond of saying. You could only accept what life gave you. He knew it was true, but it was no consolation as he spread his notes out on the table and tried to focus his eyes on them.

     They spent every free moment they could spare in each others' company over the next few days, begrudging every minute spent in study, and the result was that their preparations for the later stages of the test suffered. Thomas actually had to struggle to cast his remaining spells, and when the time came for him to cast his last one he found himself struggling to remember the correct intonation and hand movements, with the result that he came within a hairsbreadth of failure. The near miss scared him badly, and when he spoke to the others he found that they were in the same situation, and they all resolved to make up for their complacency. They stayed away from each other for a while, therefore, forcing themselves to concentrate on their work.

     They spent hours in their own rooms, poring through their notes and leaflets and studying the words of the spell they would be casting that day, words that had changed since the last time they’d read them. Magic changed all the time. The words and hand movements required to create a specific effect had a habit of changing, sometimes over the course of a single day. Fortunately, a wizard’s spellbook contained a powerful enchantment that allowed the words written in it to follow those changes, so that speaking them would still create the same effect. Spellbooks were among the most powerful artefacts that any wizard could possess, therefore, and it was impossible to follow that profession without possessing at least one of them. The spellbooks the apprentices were given when they enrolled had been created by some of the most powerful wizards in the valley. If they had had to buy them, they would have cost more than an equal sized block of pure iron. If they wanted to advance in wizardry, though, they would inevitably need more spellbooks, which they would have to buy on the open market. One of the first things a new wizard did upon graduating, therefore, was look for ways to make money. Lots of money.

     The fifth year apprentices had each mastered between three and six spells, but at present they could only hold enough of the magic force in their bodies to cast one a day, except Jerry who, like all nomes, had a greater capacity for stored magic and could sometimes hold enough for two, if they didn't require too much of it. As they grew in age and experience they would gradually develop the ability to hold more of the magic force in their bodies, maybe enough to cast dozens of spells in one day in the case of the very most powerful wizards, which was a prospect they all looked forward to with undisguised excitement.

     Thomas eventually reached the point where any further study was pointless and would only tire him out, so he decided to go for a nice relaxing walk. Outside it was clear and bright, with the yellow sun halfway up the sky in the east and the red sun low on the western horizon, just above the mountains. The entire valley was ringed with mountains, in fact the valley was nothing more than a tiny habitable zone, a tiny island of warmth and comfort, in the midst of a mighty mountain range whose nearest edge was three hundred miles away.

     This small and pleasant enclave, measuring only a couple of miles across, had been created a thousand years before, when the University had been moved from the heart of the Agglemonian Empire, the mightiest human civilisation that had ever existed. At that time, the Empire was being torn apart by savage civil war and wracked by long periods of anarchy between the reigns of one self proclaimed Emperor and another. The University, as the centre of one of the few bastions of power remaining in the world, had been a natural target for anarchists, terrorists, rebels, revolutionaries and mobs. On top of that, both those in power and those trying to take power had tried to recruit them into their ranks, and the words "If you're not with us, you must be against us" had been heard with sickening regularity. Eventually, it had become simply too dangerous to remain any longer, and so the entire University, buildings and all, had been moved thousands of miles to a spot far from civilisation, where they could live and work in peace, untroubled by politics.