The Iron Trial(22)

Aaron struggled against the fingers, trying to get free. A few of the other Iron Year apprentices moved together in a pack, advancing toward the second wyvern. Gwenda made fire spark between her hands, blue as the flame on the lizards' backs. The wyvern yawned at them lazily, sending out slow tendrils of breath. One by one, they began to rise through the air, shouting. Celia shot out a blast of ice as she rose. It missed, striking just to the left of the second wyvern's head, making it roar.

"Call!" He whirled around at Tamara's urgent whisper, just in time to see her dive behind a thicket of stalagmites. Call started to move after her, only to stop at the sight of Drew standing frozen, off to the side of the group.

Call wasn't the only one who noticed. The third wyvern, eyes narrowed in a predatory yellow glare, curled around to face the frightened apprentice.

Drew flung both his arms down, palms facing the ground, as he muttered frantically. Then he rose slowly off the ground, lifting himself to the wyvern's eye level.

He's mimicking being hit by the smoke, Call realized. Smart.

Drew called up a ball of wind into his hand and aimed. The wyvern snorted in surprise, breaking Drew's concentration and pinwheeling him in the air. Not wasting any time, the wyvern darted its head forward and snapped its beak, catching the very edge of Drew's trouser leg. The cloth ripped as Drew kicked the air frantically.

Call rushed forward to help - just as the second wyvern swooped down from the cavern ceiling, straight toward him.

"Call, run!" Drew yelled. "Go!"

It was a good suggestion, Call thought, if only he could run. His weak leg twisted as he tried to dart away over the uneven ground, and he stumbled, righting himself quickly, but not quickly enough. The cold black eyes of the wyvern were focused on him, its talons extended as it grew closer and closer. Call broke into a shambling run, his leg aching as he thumped his foot down against the rock. He wasn't fast enough. Looking over his shoulder, he tripped and went flying, slamming against gravel and sharp stone.

He rolled over onto his back. The wyvern reared up over him. Some part of Call was telling him that the Masters would step in before anything too serious happened, but a much bigger part of him was howling with fear. The wyvern seemed to take up his whole field of vision, its jaws opening, revealing a scaly maw and sharp teeth … .

Call flung out his arm. He felt a burst of dull heat explode around him. A wave of sand and rock cascaded up from the ground, hammering against the wyvern's chest.

The beast flew back and was knocked hard against the cave wall, before slumping to the ground. Call blinked, pushing himself slowly to his feet. When he was up, he looked around with new eyes.

Oh, he thought, seeing the mayhem unfolding all over the room, the fire streaking past and kids spinning in circles as they lost their concentration and their magic tossed them from side to side. He understood, all at once, why they'd been practicing in the sand room for so long. Against all odds, magic had become automatic to him. He knew the concentration it needed.

His wyvern was struggling to its feet, but now Call was ready. He focused, throwing his hand out, and three stalactites cracked free, slamming down and pinning the wyvern to the ground by its wings.

"Ha!" said Call.

The beast opened its beak, and Call moved to retreat, knowing he wouldn't be fast enough to avoid the monster's breath -



       
         
       
        

"Give me Miri," Tamara yelled, coming from the shadows. "Quick!"

Reaching for his belt, Call pulled out the knife and tossed it to her. The wyvern's mouth was open, smoke just beginning to curl out. With two quick strides, Tamara walked through the smoke to the wyvern and moved to stab the blade through the wyvern's eye. Just as it was about to hit, the monster disappeared in a great gust of blue smoke, returning to its element with a howl of rage. Tamara began to float upward.

Call grabbed her leg. It was a little bit like holding the string of a balloon, since she continued to bob in the air.

She grinned down at him. She was smudged all over with dirt and sand, her hair loose and tumbling around her face. "Look," she said, gesturing with Miri, and Call turned in time to see Aaron, free of the ice, sending a flood of small rocks toward a wyvern. Celia, from her perch, rained down more stones. In the air, they became a massive boulder that dispersed the creature with a single strike before it crashed into rubble against the far wall.

"Only one more," Call said, panting.

"No more," Tamara told him gleefully. "I got two. Although, I mean, you did help a little with the second."

"I could just let you go right now." Call tugged on her leg threateningly.

"Okay, okay, you helped a lot!" Tamara laughed, just as the room broke into applause. The Masters were clapping - looking, Call realized, at him and Tamara and Aaron and Celia. Aaron was breathing hard, glancing from his hands to the place where the wyvern had disappeared, as if he couldn't believe he'd thrown a boulder. Call knew how he felt.

"Whee!" said Tamara, waving her arms up and down as she bobbed. A moment later, the apprentices who had floated up to the ceiling were slowly floating down, Call letting go of Tamara's ankle so she could land on the floor feetfirst. She handed Miri back to him as the other apprentices landed, some laughing, some - like Jasper - silent and grim-faced.

Tamara and Call made their way toward Aaron among the hubbub of voices. People were cheering and clapping them on the backs; it was a little like what Call had always imagined winning a basketball game would be like, though he'd never won one. He'd never even played for a team.

"Call," said a voice behind him. He turned to see Alex, a big grin on his face. "I was rooting for you guys," he said.

Call blinked. "Why?" It wasn't as if they'd talked much, or at all.

"Because you're like me. I can tell."

"Yeah, right," Call said. That was ridiculous. Alex was the kind of guy who, back home, would have been pushing Call into a mud puddle. The Magisterium was different, but it couldn't be that different. 

"I didn't really do much, anyway," Call went on. "I just stood there until I remembered to run - except then, I remembered that I can't run." He saw Master Rufus circling through the crowd to approach his apprentices. He wore a small smile, which for Master Rufus was like leaping and cartwheeling down the hallways.

Alex grinned. "You don't need to run," he said. "Here, they'll teach you how to fight. And trust me, you're going to be good at it."



Call, Tamara, and Aaron went back to their rooms feeling that, for the first time since they'd gotten to the Magisterium, everything was falling into place. They'd done better than all the other apprentice groups, and everyone knew it. Best of all, Master Rufus had gotten them pizza. Real pizza from a cardboard box with melty cheese and lots of toppings that weren't lichen or bright purple mushrooms or anything else weird that grew underground. They ate it in the common room, friendly-fighting over who got the most pieces. Tamara won by eating the fastest.

Call's fingers were still a little greasy as he pushed open the door to his bedroom. Full from pizza and soda and laughing, he felt the best he had in a long time.

But the minute he saw what was waiting on his bed, that all changed.

It was a box - a cardboard box taped up heavily, with his name scrawled in Call's father's spidery, unmistakable handwriting:

CALLUM HUNT

THE MAGISTERIUM

LURAY, VA

For a moment, Call stood and stared. He moved slowly over to the box and touched it, running his fingers along the duct-taped seams. His father always used the same heavy tape to pack up boxes, like when he had to ship something that had been ordered from out of town. They were practically impossible to open.

Call took Miri out of his belt. The knife's sharp blade tore through the cardboard as if it were a sheet of paper. Clothes spilled out onto the bed - Call's jeans, jackets, and T-shirts, packets of his favorite sour gummi candy, a windup alarm clock, and a copy of The Three Musketeers, which Call and his dad had been reading together.

When Call picked up the book, a folded-up note fell from between the pages. Call lifted it and read:

Callum,



I know this isn't your fault. I love you and I am sorry for everything that happened. Keep your chin up at school.



Affectionately,

Alastair Hunt



He had signed it with his full name, as though Call were someone he hardly even knew. Holding the letter in his hand, Call sank down onto the bed.





CALL COULDN'T SLEEP that night. He was keyed up from the fight, and his mind kept going over the words of his dad's note, trying to puzzle out what they meant. It didn't help that Call had immediately eaten all but one package of the gummi candy he'd received, making him about ready to bounce off the cave roof without the need for wyvern breath to propel him. If his father had sent Call's skateboard (and it was annoying that he hadn't), he would've been careening into walls with it.

His dad had written that he wasn't angry, and the words he picked didn't sound angry either, but he sounded something else. Sad. Cold, maybe. Distant.

Maybe he was worried about the magicians stealing Call's mail and reading it. Maybe he was afraid of writing anything private. It was an understatement to say that his dad could be a little paranoid sometimes, especially about mages.