The bars across Tesa's window were strong metal and well anchored into the stone wall. Tesa tried the door, too, even though she knew it would still be locked.
Orrie, she called again, hoping to feel his mind touch hers in response. Or maybe that magic was hampered by the protections on this place too? No. She shook her head. They had spoken just this morning. At least that was one thing they couldn't take away from her.
Once again Tesa tried to access her magesight, but even if the shields hadn't been in place, the panic and urgency that now gripped her would have made it difficult to shift.
She stopped in the middle of the room and forced herself to breathe deeply. There was still no answer from Orrie. Tesa wondered how far away he had flown. Usually, she could still talk with him from pretty far away.
After she had calmed down a bit, Tesa sat down to think. Blindly rushing to escape from here wouldn't solve anything. It had gotten her stuck in here in the first place. She allowed herself a wry grin. Neither would trying to fly away with Orrie in broad daylight. If they had shields blocking them from flying at night, what else could they do with their magic?
This set Tesa to wondering about the Yennar Lei mages and their magic. She knew that the Karume's spellstone spells were derived from the Yennar Lei system of bound magic, where the magic was locked into an object. The mages here must have even more sophisticated bound magic than the Karume, judging from what she'd seen just last night. They had shields just like the Karume did, but she hadn't seen a thing. And blocking her own magic? She hadn't heard of anyone being able to do that indirectly.
If she hadn't tried to break the rules, to go out on her own again, she probably would be with everybody else right now, learning about some of these things that she wondered about. Tesa sighed and pouted.
Voices in the courtyard drew Tesa to her window again and she saw that her companions were returning. As they drew closer, she ducked out of the window so they wouldn't see her watching.
A knock sounded on the door and then it opened. Neela came in, followed by a mage in much plainer roes than the ones their welcoming party had worn last night. They were mottled tones of gray, with white at the hems of the sleeves and white trim down the front.
Tesa glared at both of them and waited for one of them to speak. The man stared with calm interest but made no sign he wanted to say anything. Something was strange about his eyes. They were wide and round and, Tesa realized, yellow. She couldn't remember if she'd ever seen a person with yellow eyes. He continued to stare and she looked away.
Neela cleared her throat. "This is Mr. Mao," she said. "He's going to be your guard, so you can come out with me."
"Oh, so I need a guard now?" Tesa said.
"Hey, don't take it out on me," Neela said, raising her hands in protest. "I didn't make the rules and I didn't break them."
"Sorry," Tesa said. "So where are we going?"
"To get our licenses."
"Our what?"
"Licenses. To practice magic. Every mage here needs to have one. There are all sorts of different levels, and even people who aren't mages can use magic."
"What? How?"
"Just come on. You'll see."
Reluctantly, Tesa followed Neela out of the room. Mr. Mao waited until they had passed and then followed at a distance. Tesa glanced back at him only to catch sight of those unnerving staring eyes once more. She looked away and whispered, "Does he ever say anything?"
Neela shrugged. "I haven't heard him speak yet. This way."
Glenna was waiting in the courtyard and she fell in behind Neela, walking next to Tesa. Out of the corner of her eye, Tesa saw Glenna give her a searching look, perhaps a smile. Tesa avoided her gaze. She should tell Glenna about her brother. And her parents, too, now that Tesa thought of it. Tesa bit her lip. What about her own parents? Her eyes flitted to the sky once more, fighting the urge to call Orrie to her. There was no way she'd get out of here with him right now.
She looked around for Malía but didn't see her. She should tell her about the letter. Tesa frowned. She probably wouldn't listen, anyway. She couldn't do it in front of the mages here, either. For all she knew, they had been part of the plot. The mage ambassadors from Arethia had come here first, after all. She glanced back at Mr. Mao again in alarm. The same yellow eyes glowed back at her, unwavering.
Neela led them toward the corner of the courtyard where there was a hallway. The hall led into the building that surrounded the courtyard. A high roof stretched above them and a balcony from the second floor looked down on the hall. It reminded Tesa of the great hall in the dragon dwell, except here the floors were decorated in patterned tiles and the stone of the walls was light instead of the dark gray of the Arethian mountains. Dragon motifs abounded in the patterns in the tiles and the designs on the walls.
People filled the hallway, streaming in all directions, and a hum of voices filled the space. Everyone they passed wore robes of varying colors, and Tesa began to feel conspicuous in her riding tunic and boots. Necklaces and bracelets of jewels and stones glinted at the necks and wrists of those who passed. Considered a rare luxury in Arethia, jewels seemed commonplace here.
They turned a corner and another wide hallway led them into a new courtyard, this one much, much larger than the one that Tesa had become so familiar with during her short stay.
"How big is this place?" Tesa asked, taking in the sight of tall trees, walking paths meandering through elaborate gardens, and tables clustered throughout and at the edges. In windows along the walls, people served food to more of the robed figures.
"This is their main temple. It's where they train their mages," Neela said. "It's made up of several buildings, kind of like ours. Except they had more space to sprawl out, obviously." She paused after entering the courtyard and turned right, then left. "Ah, there," she said, and began to walk.
They crossed the courtyard on one of the stone paths that wound between colorful flowers, stone arrangements, and statues. The path even crossed a small stream by way of a carved wooden footbridge. Its railings bore carvings of twisting, coiling dragons.
Across the courtyard they went up a stairway flush against the wall to the second level of the building. They walked only a little farther before they came to a set of double doors.
The doors, wrought iron in an intricate design, again prominently featuring the silhouettes of dragons, stood open before them. Neela led Tesa inside to a spacious room with various arrangements of soft, plush-looking furniture.
There sat Renna on one of the chairs, his back rigid and a frown settled on his face.
"There you are," he said. "I've been done for awhile now, but I was instructed to wait to be sure you arrived with no problems. His hand went to a stone that dangled on a leather cord at his neck.
Neela smiled and leaned in to peer at it. "Ooh, pretty. What did you get?"
"Caster, but it doesn't matter. Of course it was expected, since any of the lesser designations wouldn't even be considered mages in Arethia."
"Were you worried, though?" Neela smiled.
"Of course not," Renna snapped. He looked to Tesa and she thought she saw his expression soften a bit. "I hope you don't have any more desires to disobey orders. This has been highly inconvenient."
Tesa shook her head, but her mind went back to the news she'd gotten from Fenn's letter. She glanced around the room. Mr. Mao and his watching eyes had stopped just inside the doors. He now stood with his hands folded and wore a neutral expression. Tesa frowned, being careful not to let him see. How could she tell anyone what had happened in Arethia without the Yennar Lei mages hearing?
If she could reach orrie, or the other dragons, she could speak through them. Where were they? How far had they flown? A sudden chill passed through her. Maybe that was part of the plan, too.
Tesa almost laughed then, for she realized she was beginning to sound like Eriya, seeing ghosts everywhere. The laugh quickly died as it hit her that Eriya had been right. About everything.
Her thoughts swirling, Tesa followed Neela's lead and sat down across from Renna on a couch. Glenna sat beside her and sighed.
"It feels silly for me to be here," she said. "I'm obviously not a mage."
Tesa turned to her and furrowed her eyebrows. Neela had said something as they'd been walking, but she had been distracted.
"Why are you here?" Tesa asked, only half caring if Glenna took offense.
Glenna's cheeks flushed and she glanced to Neela. "They explained it all this morning. Most people have some bit of ability with magic, even if it's not like what our mages in Arethia can do. Here, everyone gets tested, and assigned a rank, and a license. It's the necklace," she said.
Tesa glanced over at Renna's necklace. It reminded her of the stone necklace that Berick, leader of the Karume, had used to trap her and control her. She frowned. Yet another thing that made her slow to trust the mages of Yennar Lei.
Tesa hadn't even noticed that Mr. Mao had left the room until he returned, a young woman in bright red and orange patterned robes following behind him. She came to stand in front of Tesa, Glenna, and Neela.
"Welcome. You must be Tesa. The test proctors are ready to see you." She turned and began walking toward the door she'd appeared from without a glance back. Tesa looked to Neela, then Mr. Mao. The yellow-eyed watcher simply widened his eyes a bit more and looked after the woman. Tesa scrambled out of her chair and scurried after her.
The hallway here, though smaller, was every bit as elegant as the large main hallway they'd passed through before. The patterned tile floors shone at their feet under light that trickled in from decorated windows above. Several doors led off of this hallway, again reminding Tesa of somewhere in Areth, this time the palace hospital with its many wings.
As they neared the end of the hall, Tesa thought they would go around the corner, deeper into the building, so she was surprised when the young woman stopped ahead of her. She opened the door to the very last room in the hall.
They passed through another space furnished with comfortable furniture, this time decorated in fabric with beautiful designs and scenes. Instead of sitting down, the woman led her across the room to another set of closed doors. She knocked and they swung open. She stood to the side with her arm out, gesturing for Tesa to enter.
"They're ready," she said.
Tesa walked through and the woman closed the door after her.
When the young woman had mentioned a test, Tesa had been expecting something like the ones she'd taken in the mage school in Areth to determine where she should begin her studies. She thought she'd be asked to do things, perform tasks, demonstrate her abilities. Now she saw that this was going to be nothing like that.
Two women and one man sat at a round table in the center of the room, each one with a cloth mat spread out before them and several gems and stones arranged on the mat. Tesa saw the stones and clenched her fists. They looked just like the ones that had been used to create the shield around the dragon dwell, the shield that had allowed the Karume to steal away all the dragons. And Berick had had a mat and stones like that. Tesa eyed the people at the table, then glanced back at the door. Mr. Mao stood squarely in the center of it, blocking any easy path to escape.
"Please, sit," said the woman in the center spot at the table. Her robes were deep blue, with flecks of silver that seemed to sparkle when the fabric shifted. Her hands were folded before her, and on her fingers, deep blue stones glinted in the light from the windows behind them.
Tesa slowly pulled back the chair, still staring at the stones on the mats.
The woman in blue smiled at Tesa. "You're concerned."
Tesa pursed her lips but did not respond.
"You're concerned because you came from Arethia, where this magic is unheard of by many, or banned to those who do know of it, and a group of mages just used this same kind of magic to mount a massive attack on your livelihood and your way of life—your dragons. And now you see it here." She picked up a red stone, which glinted in the light of the room. It nested in her palm, the deep red seeming to glow even more vibrantly against her brown palm.
She was right, but it was more than that. Tesa didn't feel obligated to explain about her kidnapping and imprisonment by Berick.
"Here," said the woman. "Hold it." She held her cupped hand out toward Tesa, and Tesa reached out her own hand. The woman tipped her hand over and let it roll into Tesa's.
Tesa felt a tingling in the stone and looked from the stone to the woman, who nodded. So Tesa breathed in and closed her eyes, and let herself slip gently into her magesight. A smile came unbidden to her lips. She had felt powerless without it. It felt good to have her magesight back.
In magesight she looked down and saw the power that the little stone in her hand contained. No wonder she could feel it even before she'd shifted to magesight. Her lips parted in wonder and she leaned in toward the stone, the magic, to examine it further.
Here was pure fire energy, in a room with no hearth, all collected and concentrated in one spot. It was so much energy, and so strong.
The energy pulsed and roiled in the small space, and Tesa felt it calling for her to use it. She could reach out now and take it in her hands, make it hers. Unleash it, and she could burn through the whole room, overpower them and escape, burning all in her wake.
She closed her fingers around the stone and shifted out of magesight. She dropped the stone back on the woman's mat. The pull and temptation of the power in the stone released her when her physical contact with it stopped. A breath escaped her lips and only then did she realize she'd been holding it.
"So how do you get it all in there?" she asked the woman.
The three test proctors exchanged glances and then the middle woman smiled.
"The same way it wanted you to release it," she said.
Tesa's eyebrows furrowed, but as she thought about it, it made more sense. Only a mage who could use such magic unaided would be strong enough to contain it, too.
"You may examine these as well." The woman pushed three plain gray stones off the mat toward Tesa, and Tesa scooped them up.
These ordinary stones bore carved symbols, just like the stones the Karume used, and like the keystones that opened the magic doors.
She closed her eyes and her mind flashed back to that moment, months ago, when she had joined her magic with Makon and the other Medran mages to create a keystone that matched the symbol in the caves below Areth.
Now, she tried to remember how it had felt to create that keystone, what they had done to forge it, as she examined the symbols in these stones that the woman had placed before her. She tried to decipher what these stones were meant to do by looking at the magic tied to the symbols on the surface of the stone.
"Hm," she said to herself when she'd shifted to magesight. It was easy to forget that anybody else was in the room with her now that she was in the stones. Something was missing in these stones, something needed to complete the spell.
One stone was meant to create a light. The other, a sound. The third was meant to create movement. Tesa didn't understand it completely, but the three could also work together, she sensed. But they were all broken. It was easy to fix them, so she did. She nudged the magic and the symbols around so that the spells would work as they should.
The three proctors' eyes glowed when Tesa shifted back to normal sight and placed the three gray stones back on the cloth mat. The woman in blue picked up the red stone that Tesa had held before and placed it in a pile with the three stones, then seemed to concentrate for a moment.
The pile of stones began to glow and a low melodic hum emanated from them. The glow rose up in a red ball of light from the mat, spinning and sparking in the air above the table. The hum coalesced into a clearer note and became a melody. The ball of light uncurled into a tiny fiery dragon, who flew around the table lithe and graceful, before it dove back into the stones with a wave of the proctor's hands.
"Ah. So that's what that one does," said the proctor, and scooped the stones back toward her side of the mat.
"You didn't know?"
"I'm only a proctor. The casters who design the tests make each one different." She smiled. "Congratulations, you've earned a caster's license."
The man sitting to her left produced a leather cord necklace with a carved stone dangling from it, just like the one that Renna had worn. Tesa took it and held it in her hand, reluctant to put it on.
"You must wear it in Yennar Lei," said the man. "None may move about freely without their licenses."
Tesa relented under the weight of their gazes and placed it around her neck. She probed it with her magesight once it was on. It seemed harmless enough. Unlike the stones she'd just handled, this one simply bore the symbol and a bit of magic.
When the proctors released her from the test, Mr. Mao guided Tesa back to the waiting room. Neela and Glenna waited for her in the chairs. Renna had gone. Tesa showed them the necklace. Neela and Glenna each had one of their own.
"They tested you too?" Tesa asked Glenna, who nodded.
"I'm a senser," she said. "They said that means I can sense magic. Me! I must take after my dad a little bit, after all."
"It's mostly what we expected," Neela said as they left the rooms. Mr. Mao followed at a respectful distance. "What they call casters, we call mages. They just recognize several intermediary levels, too." She nodded toward Glenna. "Like sensers."
Tesa fingered her stone, which symbolized her right to practice magic as a caster here in Yennar Lei.
"So I can use magic here now," she said.
"Not so fast," Neela said. "This also binds us to follow the law of magic here. Until we understand their laws, Malía has ordered that we don't practice any magic while we are here." Neela glanced sidelong at Tesa as she said this last thing.
"Don't worry. I'm not inclined to ignore any orders right now."
"Good. Because we're about to get more of them. Malía wanted to see us after our tests."
"Great," Tesa said.
Behind them, Mr. Mao continued to pad along silently, and Tesa almost wished she were back inside her room, with time to think. As they walked, she came out of the spell of calm that she'd felt since her test and began to worry about seeing Malía. She still didn't know how she would relay the news about the capture of Arethia without the mages of Yennar Lei hearing, too. She recalled her idea about the dragons, and reached out to call Orrie's name. Still no answer.
Tesa wasn't even sure she wanted to tell Malía. She'd rather confide in Kiana, or even Renna. Her heart pounded more and more as they walked through the ornate halls of the main temple of Yennar Lei. Her time was slowly dwindling.