Page 7 of The Mage on the Hill
Toby did a cursory sorting of the items, some of which he couldn’t even identify. He picked up what was probably an electronic component, though the shape reminded him of an alien spaceship made of glass. “What’s this?”
The statue impersonation didn’t crack. No help there.
“Okay. Got it. Process of elimination it is.” Pleased that his hands were steady, Toby did a more careful sorting and began to pick out the obvious items. “Bag of dirt. Oh, I guess it’s potting soil. Shouldn’t matter, though, right? Still Earth.”
He placed it with a fair amount of confidence at the top of what would be his outer octagon—the major arcana. A glance at Darius for approval got him nothing, so he shrugged and went on.
“Great. That’s one.” He picked up a miniature bottle of water next. “Easy one. Easy ones first. That’s how you do puzzles.”
Water went on the right side of the octagon, his second major arcanum. A little bottle of compressed air anchored the bottom right. Air, of course. So far, he had three points on the outer hub, the major arcana, each separated by a missing element.Good start. Now Fire….He reached immediately for the matchbox, then hesitated when he realized one of the other objects was a fancy lighter shaped like a dragon. Curious, he opened the matchbox. Empty.
“Right. So the matchbox is something else I’m too tired to think of yet. Dragon lighter gets the Fire spot.”
The rest of the items swam around in a sea of incomprehension for a few moments. Darius pulled a chair close to the bed and lowered himself into it, never taking his eyes from Toby and his work. Unnerving? Yeah. Understatement of the year, but Toby was determined not to fail his first test. A rusty nail caught the corner of his thoughts. Rusted, so it was iron. Iron was part of the Metal group in the minor arcana. He placed the nail below and to the right of Earth as his first anchor on the inner octagon.
The nail suddenly made a few other placements more obvious on the inner ring of the minor arcana. The crumpled bit of aluminum foil belonged in the Icosagens. A picture cut out of a catalogue was an oxygen canister—Chalcogens. The travel-sized tube of toothpaste represented fluorine for the fluoride in it—Halogens.
When he got stuck again, he reached for his tablet. “Can I use this? Is it cheating?”
Darius quirked an eyebrow at him, the expression even more disquieting than his stone face since the eyebrow was the one over his ruined eye. “Research. Yes.”
“Cool.” Toby couldn’t help a grin. Even little bits of communication weresomething.
He took pictures of a couple of the items to do image searches. The alien-spaceship-looking thing revealed itself as a vacuum tube, probably for an old radio. He’d heard of them, but he’d never seen one. Most of them used argon, so there was his stand-in for the Noble Gases arcanum. A little plastic tube filled with slender filaments turned out to be refills for a mechanical pencil. Graphite—Crystallogens. The internet told him that the matchbox used phosphorus as part of the striker panel—Pnictogens.
When he got to the gummi bear that looked like it hadn’t been polished, Toby had to do some searching. A laugh got away from him when he figured it out, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. No way he would’ve guessed that Darius would keep gummi bear calcium supplements in the house. There was his Alkaline. The Minor Arcana were complete.
Now he just needed to finish the Major, fitting Light, Dark, Life, and Animus between the symbols he’d already placed. The keyring flashlight was, well, Light. Duh. Of the three objects remaining—a tightly sealed wooden box no larger than his palm, a test tube with a budding plant, and a little figurine of two golden fish—the box had to represent Dark. The tiny seedling and the fishies? Which one was supposed to be Animus?
Ah. The fishies are a thing. His image search brought up listings about thegaur matsya, a Buddhist symbol for a fearless mind in the sea of existence, floating from teaching to teaching. That one got the Animus spot. The seedling got the Life spot between Water and Air. Though Toby picked the fishies back up to squint at the intricate etching before he finally settled them between Fire and Earth.
“Done.” Toby looked up with a triumphant smile, though his head ached by now. “Do I pass, Professor?”
Darius scowled and rose with the creaking hesitance of a man twice his age. He nodded at the web, placed all the symbolic items back in the bag, and tucked the lap desk under his arm. Then he pointed a finger at Toby. “More rest. Fewer explosions.”
“Got it, boss.” That answered the question of what he should be doing, anyway. Toby slid down into a burrow of soft sheets and down duvet. “Nestling in as ordered.”
He got a snort back for that—oooh, a reaction!—and a soft click as Darius closed the door behind him. What little the man said made sense, though. The magic explosion so soon after Toby’s last one at the guild had to have happened because he’d pushed himself too hard. Just about anything was pushing himself too hard right now. Hell, eating breakfast had tired him out. A huge yawn snuck up on him.
More sleep sounded good right then.
FUCKING MOLDHEADEDguilds.Bunch of dusty fucking skeletons masquerading as mentors. Darius did his best not to stomp down the stairs in case Toby had fallen asleep, but it was a near thing.
Emaciated, exhausted, with tremors manifesting during simple tasks, his foundling was past the point of most people’s endurance. How could the guild have let him get in such a state?
No. Stupid question. The Kovar Protocol.
In theory, Kovar’s method worked under controlled circumstances. The young person who was unable to settle into magical channels sat in a secure guidance chamber. Two or even three experienced mages from opposing points on the web channeled their disparate magic into the room, creating an uncomfortable field of magic dissonance. Thediscomfort, which often translated into terrible pain, forced the subject to channel their own magic, herding them into their natural arcana, major or minor. Sometimes both.
When it worked the first time, the world was bright and wonderful. The sun shone. Birds sang. But most young wild mages were unplaceable for a reason. Their channels eluded them. The guilds would bring in different combinations of mages, trying again and again, draining the subject physically and magically, until they reached the end of their strength. Rarely, that end led to finding the correct paths for the wild magic.
More often the results produced people like Toby, judged completely unplaceable and too dangerous to live. To be fair, people like Toby were rare to begin with. Most people came to the guild already comfortable with their place in the web. The problem was that because the condition was rare and the Kovar Protocol workedsometimes, the guilds were unwilling to consider other solutions.
The essence of wild magic was its unpredictable nature, which those rule-bound idiots refused to see. One method would never work for all students.
And you did so much better.Darius stared out the kitchen window, rubbing a hand carefully over the ruined half of his face.Doesn’t matter. If it all goes wrong, it’s just the two of us up here.
Better for that bright mind to be working toward saving himself, whether the effort was successful or not, than to be put down like an ailing pet. The raw power coursing through Toby reminded him far too much of Kara, though his resistance to placement was greater than hers had been. Clues to her arcana channels had been there from the beginning. Toby? Not a hint.
