The Rossem Project

Settling In - Part 4

     There was a small herd of unicorns grazing in the field he had to walk across. He watched them as he walked past and they watched him back, but then his attention was taken by the dark and brooding Necromancy building which stood a little way apart from the rest of the teaching complex like a strange and rather unpopular relative shunned by the rest of the family.

     From here, though, he was able to get his first look at the research buildings which formed a second complex on the other side of the valley. Thomas paused to look at them, his heart hammering with excitement. This was the closest he'd ever been. Apprentices weren't allowed near them, for their protection and in case their clumsy, unpractised dabblings in magic upset the delicate energies being woven there, but Thomas had come to this spot many times during his student years, to gaze in wonder and to promise himself that one day he would go there and do his part to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Today, at last, he was going to keep that promise. He stood up straight, throwing back his shoulders like a hero out of an old legend, and stepped proudly forward.

     The teaching and research buildings were connected by a narrow paved road, and by an underground tunnel if you believed the stories. On the way he passed a couple of younger men in the silver and black robes of illusionists who nodded to him as he passed. Thomas nodded back, feeling ten feet tall and proud as a lion, and stood even straighter, striding on with an idiotic grin on his face.

     Only wizards walked this road! No-one else! The research buildings had no non-wizard staff. No cooks, no cleaners, no caretakers, nothing. Whatever needed doing the wizards did for themselves, either with magic spells or their own bare hands. The research area was simply too dangerous for anyone who didn't understand the dangerous and unpredictable nature of magic and who lacked the means to take a few elementary precautions. No non-wizard ever walked this road, therefore, and yet he, Thomas Gown, was walking it. I'm a wizard! he thought excitedly. I'm a real wizard! He had the feeling that he'd never really believed it before. Not deep down where it mattered. Not until this moment.

     He was halfway across when he passed the large grove of trees which had, until then, blocked his view of a large swathe of the valley and saw for the first time what they’d been concealing. There, on the edge of a narrow stream about a hundred yards from the village, was a cluster of military style tents, from one of which a pennant bearing the oak tree emblem of the Belthar was flying. Men were working feverishly at something that he couldn't quite make out at this distance, but he got the impression that they were building something. The sound of men barking orders drifted across the still evening air, accompanied by the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.

     "Matilda was right," he muttered to himself. "But what could they possibly be doing that a wizard couldn't do with a single spell?" He vowed to ask someone in the research buildings as he continued his way across.

     The end of the road was marked by a pair of giant stone eagles that towered over him as he approached. A casual visitor who happened to stray this way might have mistaken them for a pair of simple statues, symbolic guardians meant to scare away unwanted guests, but any of the regular residents of Lexandria Valley could have told them that their guardianship of the research buildings was a lot more than symbolic. Every apprentice and every contract worker was warned about them upon their first arrival, warned what would happen if they tried to pass them, and although there were always a few foolish children willing to give it a try, few were foolish enough to do so twice.

     The eagles were, in fact, intensely magical creations that had the power to discern wizards from mundanes. Any non-wizard who tried to pass would cause the eagles to come to sudden, violent life, the stone turning instantly to living flesh and feathers, and the hapless interloper would be caught up in their talons and borne helplessly to the cells, there to spend a few days brooding upon the wisdom of obeying the University's rules.