The taste exploded over his tongue. It was actually good. Really good. Crispy at the edges and a little bit sweet, like the way maple syrup tastes on sausages when everything runs together.
"Huh," Call said, taking another bite. The greens were creamy and rich, like porridge with brown sugar. Aaron was shoveling spoonfuls of it into his mouth, looking astonished.
He expected to see Tamara snickering at him for being so surprised, but she wasn't even looking. She waved across the room at a tall, slim girl with the same long dark hair and perfect eyebrows as she had. A copper wristband glittered on the girl's wrist as she lifted her hand in a lazy wave. "My sister," Tamara said proudly. "Kimiya."
Call looked over at the girl, sitting at a table with a few other students in green and Master Rockmaple, and then back at Tamara. He wondered what it would be like to be happy here, to be glad you were chosen, instead of its being a terrible accident. Tamara and her sister seemed so totally confident that this was a good place - that this wasn't the evil lair his father had described.
But why would his dad lie?
Master Rufus was slicing his lichen in a very strange way, segmenting it like individual pieces of bread in a loaf. Then he cut each of those pieces in half, and half again. This freaked Call out so badly that he turned to Aaron and asked, "So do you have any family here?"
"No," Aaron said, glancing away from Call as though he didn't like talking about it. "No family anywhere. I heard about the Magisterium from a girl I used to know. She saw this trick I did sometimes when I was bored - make dust motes dance around and form into shapes. She said she had a brother who went here and even though he wasn't supposed to tell her about it, he had. After he graduated and she left to go live with him, I started practicing for the Trial."
Call squinted at Aaron across his pile of mushrooms. There was something about the too-casual way he told the story that made Call wonder if maybe there was more to it. He didn't want to ask, though. He hated it when people pried into his life. Maybe Aaron did, too.
Aaron and Call lapsed into silence, pushing their food around their plates. Tamara went back to eating. From the other side of the hall, Jasper deWinter was waving his arms, clearly trying to get her attention. Call nudged her with his elbow and she scowled at him.
Rufus took a small, precise bite of lichen. "I see the three of you have grown very close already."
No one said anything. Jasper's gestures at Tamara were growing somewhat wilder. He was clearly urging her to do something, though Call couldn't tell what. Jump in the air? Throw her porridge?
Tamara turned back to Master Rufus, taking a deep breath as though steeling herself to do something she didn't particularly want to do. "Do you think you would ever reconsider about Jasper? I know it was his dream to be picked by you, and there's room for more in our group -" She stopped speaking, probably because Master Rufus was looking at her like a raptor bird about to bite off the head of a mouse.
When he finally spoke, though, his tone was cool, not angry. "The three of you are a team. You're going to work together and fight together and, yes, even eat together, for the next five years. I have chosen you not just as individuals, but as a combination. No one else will be joining you, because that would alter the combination." He stood up, pushing his chair back with a solid thwack. "Now, rise! We go to our first lesson."
Call's education in the use of magic was about to begin.
CALL WAS PREPARED for a long and miserable walk through the caverns, but Master Rufus led them down a straight corridor to an underground river instead.
It looked to Call a little like a subway tunnel in New York; he'd gone to the city with his dad on the hunt for antiques and remembered looking down into the darkness, waiting for the glow of lights that signaled a train. His gaze followed the river the same way, although now he wasn't sure what he was looking for or what it might signal. A sheer rock wall rose behind them, and water flowed swiftly past them into a smaller cave where they could see only shadows. A damp mineral smell was in the air, and along the shore were seven gray boats tied up in a neat row. They were constructed of wooden planks, each overlapping the other along the side and meeting at the front, affixed with copper rivets, all of it making them look like tiny Viking ships. Call looked around for oars or a motor or even a big pole, but he couldn't see any way to propel the boats.
"Go ahead," said Master Rufus. "Get in."
Aaron scrambled into the first of the boats, reaching out his hand to help Call inside. Resentfully, Call took it. Tamara got in behind them, looking a little nervous herself. As soon as she was settled, Master Rufus stepped into the boat.
"This is the most common way we get around the Magisterium, using the underground rivers. Until you can navigate, I will take you through the caves. Eventually, each of you will learn the paths and how to coax the water to take you where you want to go."
Master Rufus leaned over the side of the boat and whispered to the water. There was a soft ripple across the surface, as if the wind had stirred it, even though there was no wind underground.
Aaron leaned forward to ask another question, but all at once, the boat began to move and he fell back into his seat.
Once, when Call had been a lot younger, his father had taken him to a big park with rides that started like this. He'd cried through all of them, totally terrified, despite the cheerful music and the animated dancing puppets. And those had been rides. This was real. Call kept thinking about bats and sharp rocks and how, sometimes, in caves, there were cliffs and holes that dropped down like a million feet below sea level. How were they going to be able to avoid stuff like that? How were they going to know if they were going the right way in the dark?
The boat cut through the water, into darkness. It was the darkest darkness Call had ever experienced. He couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. His stomach lurched.
Tamara made a tiny sound. Call was glad it wasn't just him who was freaked out.
Then, all around them, the cave came to glowing life. They passed into a room where the walls shimmered with pale, bioluminescent green moss. The water itself turned to light where the prow of the boat touched it; when Aaron dragged his hand through the river, it lit around his fingers, too. He flicked water into the air and it transformed into a cascade of sparks. "Cool," Aaron breathed.
It was kind of cool. Call started to relax as the boat slipped silently through the glowing water. They passed walls of rock striped in dozens of colors, and rooms where long pale vines hung from the ceiling, trailing tendrils in the river. Then they would slide again into a dark tunnel and emerge into a new stone chamber where quartz stalactites sparkled like knife blades, or where the stone seemed to grow naturally into the shapes of curved benches, even tables - they passed two silent Masters in one chamber, playing checkers with pieces that flew through the air. "Got you!" said one of them, and the wooden discs started to rearrange themselves, resetting the board to the beginning.
As though it were being steered by some invisible hand, the boat docked itself near a small platform with stone steps, rocking gently in place.
Aaron was out of the boat first, followed by Tamara, and then Call. Aaron reached out a hand to help him, but Call deliberately ignored it. He used his arms to flip himself over the side of the boat, landing awkwardly. For a moment, he thought he was going to fall backward into the river, making a huge bioluminescent splash. A large hand clamped down on his shoulder, steadying him. He looked up in surprise to see Master Rufus watching him with a strange expression.
"I don't need your help," Call said, startled.
Rufus said nothing. Call couldn't read his expression at all. He took his hand off Call's shoulder.
"Come," he said, and stalked up a smooth path that cut through the pebbly shore. The apprentices scrambled to follow.
The path led up to a blank granite wall. When Rufus put his hand to the stone, it turned transparent. Call wasn't even surprised. He'd come to expect weirdness. Rufus walked through the wall as if it were made of air. Tamara ducked after him. Call looked at Aaron, who shrugged. Taking a deep breath, Call followed.
He emerged into a chamber whose walls were bare rock. The floor was completely smooth stone. In the center of the room was a pile of sand.
"First, I wish to go over the Five Principles of Magic. You may remember some of these from your first lecture on the bus, but I don't expect any of you - even you, Tamara, no matter how many times your parents have drilled you - to truly comprehend them until you have learned many more things. You may write these down, however, and I do expect you to think on them."
Call scrambled with his pack and tugged out what appeared to be a hand-stitched notebook and one of those annoying pens from the Trial. He shook it lightly, hoping it wasn't going to explode this time.
Master Rufus began to speak and Call scrambled to transcribe fast enough. He wrote: