She almost didn’t believe it when Archmage Orynhel peered down at his papers, adjusted his spectacles, and called, “Sciona Freynan!”
She jolted from her seat like an electrified conduit. “Yes, Archmage Supreme!”
Withered fingers beckoned her to the floor, and Sciona stepped into the circle toward her destiny—or toward the end of everything.
“This, my Eleventh Decree as Lord Prophet Leon’s sole surviving disciple, pertains to the lines numbering 234, 235, and 301 in Leon’s primary spell journal.
My decree is that, henceforth, no mapping sequence of Leon’s invention shall be altered in its replication nor duplicated except in application for its intended purpose, which is the survey of God’s Bounty. For the Prophet wrote no spell except according to Feryn’s Will. Therefore, while Leon’s writings, which are the Will of God, endure, Tiran shall endure. He who would alter the mirror of Godhood invites calamity, for he does the work of devils.”
- The Tirasid, Law, Verse 13 （64 of Tiran）
STANDING IN THE center of Leon’s Hall, Sciona felt paradoxically smaller than she ever had and big enough to eat the world. Instead of looking directly at any of the greatest men in Tiran, she let the white of their robes blur together into a general brightness.
“Archmages of Tiran, I stand before you to test for the rank of highmage.” Her voice shook faintly, and she only steadied it by reminding herself that as soon as she got her introduction over with, they would let her at the spellograph. Everything would be alright when she just got her hands on those steel keys. “My name is Sciona Freynan. I studied at Danworth Academy and then here at the University of Magics and Industry.”
Where applicants had studied before the university really shouldn’t have been a consideration. It was just a quick way for the testers to determine the applicant’s social status. There was a stark economic divide between common students who attended public schools and those with the connections to secure a spot at Danworth.
“Excuse me, Miss Freynan,” Archmage Eringale stopped her. “Your paperwork says that you studied at a public school—East Havendel Public School of Magics—and Danworth Academy?”
“Right. Yes, Archmage.” Sciona held her chin up as Bringham had told her, even as nerves writhed through her gut. “I transferred to Danworth through their scholarship program in my second year.”
Papers shuffled among the archmages as a few of them made notes and others seemed to sit up a little straighter. Danworth only accepted five public school transfers per year, and, back when Sciona had applied, the number had been only three. She hoped this made her someone to take seriously. Not just a token nod to equality.
“Thank you, Miss Freynan,” said Archhmage Eringale. “Please, continue.”
“I’ve spent the last five years working in Archmage Bringham’s laboratory. For four of those, I’ve served as his lead manual sourcer.” Bringham wrote beautiful, demanding action spells that streamlined Tiran’s textile production. Someone had to find the energy to test those spells before they went into factory conduits. “My areas of specialization are industrial siphoning application and experimental mapping spell composition. Thank you again for your consideration today. With the Mage Council’s permission, I will now approach the desk.”
Orynhel nodded his silver head, and Sciona stepped forward.
This time, Archmage Scywin claimed the first prompt, using a click of his timepiece conduit to reset the desk.
“Miss Freynan, before you, you will find twelve pine twigs in a bowl,” said Tiran’s Master Siphoner. “Using the Kaedor mapping method, ignite the twigs so that they burn slowly.”
Sciona’s hands were on the spellograph before he finished the sentence. She was awake now. She was home. The mechanical give of the keys beneath her fingers settled the sea of her nerves, leaving only the mirror clarity of the task before her.
Action sub-spells for fire were easy to write; as Jerrin Mordra had demonstrated, it was the sourcing sub-spell where things usually went wrong. A smidge too much energy and Sciona would reduce the twigs to ash in seconds. Much too much and she risked self-immolation, which would be an embarrassing way to flub the exam. Fire spell done, Sciona hit the break key, stamping a horizontal line into the sheaf and marking the beginning of the sourcing sub-spell.
Kaedor mapping spells adhered to a rigid structure that made their composition easy but their use in siphoning difficult. When Sciona activated the mapping spell, the Otherrealm filled the coil before her in glowing white and gray, but inevitably, the simplicity of the Kaedor Method produced a sub-par view of God’s Bounty. White shapes crawled and shifted in the gray, indicating potential energy sources, but all were ill-defined. In Sciona’s preferred mapping methods, those energy sources came up crisp, bright, and easy to pinpoint. This was like looking at lantern lights through a thick fog.
Sciona suspected that the blur of the Kaedor Method was precisely why Archmage Scywin had wanted her to apply it to such a fiddly precision action sub-spell. Other mages called Scywin ‘the Sniper’ for his ability to hit the perfect energy source in any mapping coil through any mapping method. He wanted to see if this upstart sourcer could do the same.
The appraising gaze of the Sniper should have terrified Sciona. On some level, it did, but Sciona’s determination converted the fear directly into focus. After years of applied mapping for Bringham, she knew how to pinpoint the right shape and brightness in the swirling gray. This was where armchair mages like Mordra the Younger fell short—and where Sciona shone.
She saw her mark and struck its coil coordinates into the spellograph before the light could move or fade: 40.5 by 23.1. Her thumb stabbed the activation key, and the magic whooshed into effect. Like the end of a straw placed to her coordinates, the sourcing spell sucked the targeted energy from the Otherrealm through to Sciona’s action sub-spell. The mapping visual vanished as a finger-sized flame sprang to life in the center of the bowl of twigs. A tidy success.
Sciona breathed easier as the little flame consumed the twigs before her and the archmages made their notes, but it was a small catharsis. Give her something difficult. Now, the insatiable thing in her screamed. Now, now, so she could hurry up and overcome it.
Archmage Bringham went next.
“Before you, you will find a slab of obsidian.” He waved his wand to produce the black rock along with a pair of scales. “Bisect it.”
Sciona glanced up at her mentor in surprise. This was the same spell Jerrin Mordra had just bungled—and she noted Mordra the Ninth shooting Bringham a look of irritation. A few other archmages muttered their disapproval, but Bringham had told Sciona to let him worry about them. So, she ignored the ripples of discontent among their ranks and focused on the magic at hand.
Jerrin Mordra’s mistake had been siphoning too much energy into a narrowly confined cut. Subjected to the sudden excess of pressure, his granite slab had exploded. Given the density of obsidian, Sciona’s task would require a lot of pressure focused to the width of a knife-edge… or a modest amount of pressure focused to an edge no wider than a molecule. The latter ran the risk of slicing straight through the desk and into the floor, but Sciona banked on her targeting precision and defined the edge as one molecule in width.