The Sceptre of Samnos

The University Part 7

       Thomas sat alone in his cubicle for about five minutes before Elmias came in, carrying a wooden box by its worn leather handle. He put it on the table, opened it, and took out an old worn dusty spellbook. "Good morning," he said, cheerfully. "How do you feel?"

     "Fine," answered Thomas, and was surprised to find that he was.

     "Good." He handed him the spellbook. "This belonged to a chap called Aurellos, who graduated from here about twenty years ago. Promising chap, I thought, except that he came to a sticky end trying to teach civilised manners to a bunch of ogres. Luckily we were able to reclaim the book, which has been used ever since by students like you, which accounts for its being rather the worse for wear. It contains three spells that you haven't seen before. When you have one of them copied into your own spellbook, and have demonstrated your ability to cast it safely and correctly, you will be a fully fledged wizard. If you fail to learn any of these three spells, you will be given another spellbook with some different spells in it, and so on until you have tried every low level spell in existence. However, virtually no-one ever needs more than four tries."

     He took some other objects from the box. A bottle of linseed oil, a tube of carbon black, some powdered blue clay, a few seeds from a manarill bush, a small phial of clear liquid supplied by one of the University alchemists, a mixing bowl made from polished black marble and a mortar and pestle. "You will mix up your own supply of magic ink using these ingredients, the way you have been taught. Then, assuming you are successful in learning the spell, you will write it in your spellbook using this." He removed one last object from the box, a ten inch long cockatrice feather. "Now, do you understand everything you have to do?"

     "Yes master," said Thomas, staring at the ingredients and equipment. His hands itched to get started.

     "Good. Then I'll leave you to get on with it." He went to the door and opened it. "Good luck," he said, and left.

     Thomas found that, now that the test had actually started, his nervousness had totally left him, leaving him calm and relaxed. He refused to allow himself to become optimistic, however, and continued to tell himself that it didn't matter whether he passed or failed. This isn't a test, he told himself. This is just another of my class exercises, like the other four times I wrote spells into my book. He opened Aurellos’s spellbook and scanned through it. Most of it was complete gibberish, as he knew his own spellbook would look to another wizard. Each spell, however, had a heading that he could read, written with ordinary ink and in a different handwriting. Probably added by Elmias for my benefit, Thomas thought.

      There were eight spells in all. The first three, Intellectus, reveal and nocume, were taught to all students in the University and Thomas already had them. The next three, fiery grasp, lock and invisible servant, were new to him, and it was one of these that he had to choose. The last two were higher level spells, the first he had ever seen, and he turned the pages to stare at them longingly.

     They were longer than the others, covering four and five pages each, and included not only the words that had to be spoken during casting but also the material components required, if any, and complete descriptions of every movement that had to be made with every part of the body. Some spells could only be cast at certain times of the day or year, or when certain conditions were met, such as a thunderstorm being in progress overhead, and this information was also included, all in incredibly intricate, ornate lettering in a language so ancient that not even the greatest sages knew from what lost people or country it had come. Thomas gazed at them for a long time, looking forward to the day when he would be able to cast them and wondering if it would feel different to cast a more powerful spell.