Page 38 of The Ordeals
‘No.’ I swallow.
‘I’ve heard that sometimes they do this. Just spring them on you, and you have to be ready.’
I clutch my jacket collar tight around my throat as the breeze whips up suddenly, sending my hair scattering across my face. ‘So they like to keep us on our toes. What about Greg – will he be allowed to take part?’
‘They’re letting him stay on. That’s all I know. They haven’t sent him home. They’re treating him and administering a more potent infusion of wolfsbane. Which means—’
‘He’s still a hopeful.’ I narrow my gaze. ‘And they did harvest that wolfsbane from the poison garden in readiness. They knew it might be needed.’
Tessa blows out a breath, tiredness and worry etched under her eyes as she looks up at me. ‘The signs were there, the clues, but we didn’t work that one out, did we?’ I nod in agreement. ‘Meet you later to prep for the next round? That is, if you want to work together again?’
I smile and something inside me unwinds. Tessa survived. She survived, and so did I, and she wants to work with me again. Somehow … I have an ally. A friend. She wasn’t entirely honest about the extent of her relationship with Greg, but I can see that it was only to protect him. I can live with that. If there was someone here who I cared about that deeply, who I had that kind of history with, I would do the same. ‘I do. Definitely.’
‘Good,’ she says, swinging through the main door of Hope. ‘Because after that first Ordeal, I think we can be pretty sure the professors have a few tricks up their sleeves, and I think we’ll need all the help we can get.’
Chapter 13
An Academic Magpie
Heels tap across the floorboards on the other side of the door before it opens, revealing a woman not much older than me, unremarkable-looking, except for a slight smudge of ink next to the corner of her mouth, as though she has chewed on the end of her pen. Professor Lewellyn. She smiles, ushering me inside her study, and closes the door with a soft click in my wake. It’s a damp, dreary day at Killmarth and I’ve only just caught up on sleep after the first Ordeal. But here, there’s no rest for the wicked and when I received the summons for my first mentor session, I was more than intrigued. I was ready.
‘Before we begin, I want you to tell me what you see in here,’ Professor Lewellyn says. ‘I set the illusions for the Crucible in the parlours and the courtyard, but from what I observed that night, you brushed them aside like cobwebs.’
‘All right,’ I say, stepping forward. The study is bigger than I expected, a large window overlooking the snaking path through the sea and the small town of Marazia. The panes on the other side are peppered with sea spray, the streaks of salt warping the view, the town appearing twisted and malformed. Inside the study, one wall from floor to ceiling holds a huge number of books. Stacked one on top of the other, jammed into small spaces, even piling up on the floor in front of the bookshelf. Lewellyn’s own collection.
I drift over, running my fingertips over a couple of volumes, gold or silver foil lettering glinting on the spines of green or pale blue volumes. Many of them appear to be history books. I glance back at Lewellyn and find she is watching me with an interested smile.
There is a window seat with two crumpled cushions and a heartwood desk filled with parchment and notebooks, pens living in a jumble in a ceramic pot and a letter opener next to a ripped-open envelope, set down as if Lewellyn had just been about to extract the letter inside and read it. I note that it’s just her first name on the front, Hester. I bite my lip, eyes roaming past it, over the well-worn chair and the cluttered collection of framed prints on the wall behind the desk. It’s an academic magpie’s lair. Lewellyn is a collector, a hoarder of knowledge, and I have not yet found a single glint of magic to mark the signs of an illusion cast over it.
‘Give up?’ she asks from near the doorway.
I shake my head. ‘Not yet.’
The study looks to be free of all wielding, but did she ask because there’s something here for me to find, or because there’s not? I approach the window carefully, keeping it at the corner of my vision, and that’s how I see it: at an angle. I realise the view beyond is indeed twisting and warping, but not necessarily due to the salt streaks on the panes. There’s a shimmering, a pearlescent glow, and as I get closer, I catch the glint of threads weaving in and out. I point at the window. ‘Here. You’ve created an illusion here, on the glass.’
‘Well done.’ She takes a breath. ‘Now, remove it.’
I turn to her, frowning. ‘Remove the illusion?’
‘Yes. Remove the illusion I’ve wielded on the window and reveal the true view beyond.’
‘I’ve never done that before. Never even attempted to. I don’t know how.’ I swallow, turning back to the window.
‘Now seems like an excellent time to start then, Sophia.’
I sigh through my nose and tuck my hair behind my ears, trying to focus my leaping thoughts on the puzzle before me, and how I am to solve it. How can I justremoveanother wielder’s illusion? I can see it is one, know something isn’t real, but to remove it for any other person, even to remove its influence from my own mind, is a whole other skill.
‘I’m not sure I can. I didn’t even know it was possible.’
‘Try.’
Try. No repercussions, no threats if I fail. No reward either, not a stick or a carrot. Just …try. I press my lips together, moving closer still to the window, until I am standing squarely before it, the pearlescence of Lewellyn’s magic. When I focus, allowing my mind to quiet, for stillness to muffle the insistent clamour of my thoughts, I find the intricate web of threads. They’re so tightly, neatly woven, that they are almost like a cobweb, fine and delicate, every colour I’ve ever beheld. This is the shape of Lewellyn’s magic; it’s formed of cobwebs of illusion. I reach towards it, imagining a thread of my own magic darting out like a tiny needle, piercing the very fabric of her illusion.
‘That’s it, yes …’ she says quietly, encouragingly. I give it a short, sharp tug, and tear a hole in her illusion. There is a crackle across the window, and what was there loses form and substance, and I create another hole, then another, until the gossamer shape of the illusion falls away. Revealing the true view beyond.
‘You look out over the gardens,’ I say, stepping up to the window to gaze out over the real view. The sunken levels of each terrace and each walled garden are spread before me, reaching all the way down to the sea.
She steps up to the window next to me. ‘And now, we’ve figured out your particular specialism within illusion. You are excellent at seeing magic and unpicking it. That hardly cost you anything at all,did it? In fact, I believe you barely noticed the drain on your own magic. That’s why you were able to discern the real from illusion in the Crucible, even though you used your magic extensively. What costs you most, what drains you the fastest iscreatingan illusion, and holding it.’
