The Phoenix Ring(12)

They just stared at the ring for a half hour until the sun started to set.

As they left, Aidan could have sworn the ring tilted a little towards him.



The week before the evaluation the two boys were sitting in room thirty-seven when Timothy sat up.

"I found it!" he yelled, falling off his bed.

"What?" Aidan said, more than a little startled.

"I've been looking for a spell that will really blow them away for you, and I have a perfect one. Actually, this is a curse, but it will work."

"Wait, I'm not cursing anybody, that's evil!" Aidan said, thinking of the way elders would mumble about curses when a child died or milk went sour too early.

"No, no, no," Timothy replied. "Curses and spells are just the opposite of each other. Spells add magic to an object or person, curses take magic away. Curses often have negative effects, and so myths have started to spread about them. Neither are good or bad.

"This particular curse is the base of all curses. It just takes away one person's magic. Normally it's very easy to block, but with enough power the user can take away another sorcerer's magic for a few hours. If you could manage to take away a wizard's or even warlock's magic with this curse, then there's no telling how many powerful sorcerers would want to take you on."

Aidan stood up and looked at the page Timothy was talking about.

It was called the leeching curse, and was very simple, just three words long. Mahor yok wenne. Magic come out.

"The stronger the curse the better the effect. It normally does not suck all the magic out of someone, but you might be strong enough to make every single spell useless. Here, try it on me," Timothy said, pulling a rowan wand out from under his bed and throwing it to Aidan.

Aidan pointed the wood at Timothy and closed his eyes.

"Mahor yok wenne," he said a little nervously.

He felt the power leave him in a torrent. Somewhere along the way there was some resistance, like a pile of dirt swept away in a raging flood.

Aidan opened his eyes. Timothy was on the floor.

The taller boy dropped to his knees.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Timothy said, rolling over. "I just never thought I could miss magic so bad. I guess this is what being an amogh feels like. Hand me that rowan if you haven't burned it yet."

Aidan passed over the wand, and Timothy pointed it at the fireplace.

"Ingo. Ingo!" he said.

There wasn't even a spark.

"Well, you can do that spell. But I'm not going through that again, if you wanna practice we're going to have to find some other idiots who think they can fight you and win. Shouldn't be too hard, most of the mages have big heads."

Aidan stared at his hands.

"Congratulations mate, you're a mage!" Timothy said with a forced smile.

But Aidan couldn't help wondering if he was a mage or a monster.





Over the next six days Aidan managed to find three different mages that thought they could withstand his "Leeching Curse." All of them ended up on the floor, completely drained.

Timothy was not much help to Aidan after his overly successful attempt at the Leeching Curse. He would disappear for an hour at a time and then show up for five minutes, only to get called away by his master. Aidan really didn't have a problem with it though, it gave him time to think.

He had been debating what to tell his mother since he arrived, but it was not until the day before his evaluation that he realized he could write her.

He wrote a simple letter describing, in short, angry, words, a little about where he was and what he was doing. He then took the letter to the adult dormitories.

Unlike the mages and apprentices that had to stay in dormitories in groups of two to four, the adults each had their own set of rooms within an odd pyramid shaped building. The inside of the building was a long hallway that opened up on either side to different quarters for each adult wizard or warlock.

Malachi's quarters were third from the end of the hall. Aidan knocked lightly and stepped in.

The inside of the office was unlike anything Aidan had expected. The walls were completely lined with shelves, on top of which sat cages that held every type of creature imaginable. The center of the room held a small desk with a stack of paper on it and a quill that seemed to be writing by itself. Malachi was standing to the left, dropping what appeared to be little bits of chicken into a glass cage.

"Marvelous, aren't they," he asked without turning around.

When Aidan stepped closer he saw that the inhabitants of the cage were little lizards just a few inches long. Every time a piece of chicken would touch the floor one would run forward and spew flame from its mouth until the meat was charred. Then it would take the chicken to a corner of the cage and ravenously devour it.