The Shattered Path

Chapter 14 - The Testing

The dark hallway smelled of sulfur and burned hair. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that. Several doors lined each wall, but only the door at the far end stood open, sunlight pouring in to drive back the gloom. A black carpet stretched from one end of the hallway to the other and no other adornments gave life to the gray stones. Dim and boring. It was the way of the wizard, it seemed.

Alara had assumed servants would be bustling all over since there would be a testing soon, but saw no one. She wondered if the Raujornians had taken everyone away, but dismissed the thought. It was silly to think such.

She pulled the heavy door closed behind her, drawing a groan from the hinges. She wished she could openly use her magic to close it. It would have been a simple task for her. Yet, it was another reminder of how unfair everything was. The door clanged firmly against the frame and the latch clicked. She sighed, feeling better with a closed door between her and the Raujornian outside. The guards would take care of him and maybe next time he would be more careful in the morning sun. She pushed away the thought that she had somehow caused him to collapse; such a silly notion.

Through the open door at the end of the corridor lay a great chamber known as the Hall. It was the only hall in the compound and for years the wizards had shortened the name to the Hall and now no one living claimed to know what it was supposed to be 'of'. And no one cared, either. Wizards were always too busy with studies or experiments. They did not worry about things like food, names, or fun. Alara was going to be a different kind of wizard. She was certain of that.

The corridor was silent except for Alara's soft slippers on the carpet. Stepping in the sunlight pouring from the Hall, she discovered the activity she had anticipated. Servants scrambled to finish their cleaning chores, waving brooms, mops, towels, and buckets. There were no decorations set out and few props. The chamber needed to be spotless, which was harder than it seemed, for the dust settled in the old building like a blizzard. She knew that all too well.

A marble walkway extended through the center of the Hall, dividing rows of pews. Syrs had said that the marble had been part of some grand design scheme which had been dropped long ago. The walls were the same gray stone which comprised the outside of the building, rough cut and bound by mortar. The chamber rose through the other three levels to the ceiling, allowing balconies for each level above the doorway in which she stood. A dozen paces above the floor, glass windows were spaced five paces apart, eight on either side of the hall, each two paces across and six paces high. At the far end stood a great stone platform, rising as high as Alara's chest, with stone stairs on either end. The ceremony would take place there. She had never stood on that stage, not even to clean it. That was where wizards stood.

There was one significant object in the Hall. It was really the only thing in the Hall. Against the far wall, atop the stone platform, stood a great crystal, five paces across and equally high, and as thick as Alara's hand was wide. Syrs had explained it as an ancient artifact, thousands of years old, having once been used to connect to similar crystals, allowing wizards to speak to one another over great distances as if they had stood face to face. The wizards at the academy had used it for scrying three hundred years ago, before the Raujornians had decreed no man would wield spirit magic in the southern kingdoms. Syrs had said that the crystal operated by attaching a hollow tendril of spirit magic to it and sending the other end of the tendril to the location to be viewed. Once there, the user had to spread the tendril into a finely woven net and the crystal would light up with the image the user had snared. It was such an incredible device if that were true. Few wizards had the skill in spirit to work such a net and almost none had the amount of power required to stretch a tendril far enough to be interesting. Well, if any had that skill, they surely didn't brag about it in front of the Raujies. According to Syrs, the Hall of Gathering Mages had tried to buy or extort the crystal from the academy for many years. They gave up he said after it had been rumored that the Raujornians had convinced them that their guild had no use for it.