Chương 9: Practical Exam

The benches were stone, set in a row along the eastern edge of the plaza beneath an awning of woven branches that filtered the morning light into warm bars across our knees. The spot Metys had saved us was at the far end, mostly empty now because she'd gone off somewhere — talking to her Shadow, getting water, I wasn't sure. Eydric sat down, then I sat down beside him while our Shadows took up positions a few feet behind us and went still. Eydric didn't say anything.

I didn't say anything either, because I was trying to think of what to say, and the longer I thought about it, the harder it got. He'd just pulled me out of a swarm of strangers and I owed him something for that, but everything I came up with sounded either too formal or too pathetic, so I sat there with my hands on my knees turning phrases over in my head while the silence got heavier. This was… excruciating. I turned in my seat and looked at Eydric's Shadow, because she was at least a problem I could solve.

Her face was much friendlier than Gowyn's: softer around the eyes, with lines that suggested she smiled often when she wasn't on duty.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I don't think I caught your name earlier."

"Sera, Young Lord."

"It's nice to meet you, Sera. How are you finding all of this?" She tilted her head, considering the question, and then she did smile, just a little.

"It's been a long day already, and it isn't yet noon. But it's a good day. I'm proud of him." She nodded toward Eydric without looking directly at him.

"He worked hard for this." Eydric grunted softly, but I could see the corner of his mouth lift. I turned the other way and looked at Gowyn.

"Gowyn? How are you finding it?"

"Fine, Young Lord." He didn't add anything. He stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting for me to require something else of him.

"... I see." I turned back to face forward and tried very hard not to look like I'd just been stonewalled by my own attendant in front of company. Eydric was looking at Gowyn now, studying him openly without bothering to hide it.

"Your Shadow looks like an Aridis." I nodded as Eydric leaned forward slightly.

"Are you an Aridis?"

"Yes," Gowyn said. That was all. He confirmed it and waited for the next question, which apparently was going to come from me, because Eydric was looking at me now with one eyebrow raised. I turned in my seat to face Gowyn properly.

"Gowyn." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

"What's our relationship? Are you from one of the branch families, or—""I am your cousin, Young Lord." Oh…

"I am the son of Vaerys Aridis. Your father's older brother." Oooh… My uncle Vaerys. The one who had been heir until I was born, and the elders had decided that my father, who had produced the Axiom, deserved the higher seat. I had never met him. Nobody had ever told me his name. For two days I had been sitting across from his son in a carriage, while his son opened doors for me, bowed when I entered rooms, presented documentation at checkpoints on my behalf, and not once had he…

"Gowyn, I—" BRRRRROOOOOOOHHHH My words drowned in the sound of the horn before I could finish. Three long, deep blasts that rolled across the plaza and cut clean through whatever I'd been about to say. I leaned slightly back toward Gowyn without looking at him.

"We'll talk about this later."

"As you wish, Young Lord." I didn't have time to do anything about his reply, because everyone in the plaza was already moving toward the centre of the courtyard where the third blast of the horn had pulled them. Eydric stood up, so did I, while Sera and Gowyn fell into position behind us, and we walked.

The crowd condensed as the benches emptied and by the time we'd reached the front of the gathering, every surviving candidate from the morning was packed into rough rows facing the same balcony where Gressil had stood before, and nobody was talking anymore. The doors opened. Gressil walked out first, his robes and spectacles and expression unchanged from earlier. Veyra and Bryce followed. They took their positions at the railing, and Gressil rested his hands on the stone and looked down at us.

"Candidates." The plaza went absolutely still.

"The preparations for the practical examination are complete. I will explain the rules once and I will not repeat myself. If you miss something I say in the next few minutes, you will go into the grounds without it, and you will discover the consequences in person. I suggest you listen." I straightened my spine without thinking about it.

"You will be sorted into teams of three. The teams have been assigned by the faculty. You will not be told why your teammates were chosen for you. They are your teammates, so you will work with them, you will defend them, and the loss of any one of them will cost you points." He paused.

"Each team will be issued a badge per member upon their announcement. The badge identifies you as a candidate in the practical examination. If you lose your badge, by any means whatsoever, you will be removed from the grounds and the exam will end for you. Guard it as you would your life, because in this exam, it is." A murmur tried to start somewhere in the crowd but Gressil's eyes flicked toward it, and the murmur died.

"Each team will receive a map. The map shows you the terrain of the grounds, the boundaries, the extraction points, and the major hazards. It will not show you flag locations, nor will it show you supply caches. It will also not show you side objectives. You will find these things by exploring." He held up a folded scroll, briefly, then lowered it.

"Twenty flags have been hidden in the grounds. There are thirty teams. You will do the math." He waited for a bit, then…

"A flag is worth thirty points to every member of the team that brings it back to extraction. Each team may claim only one flag. Attempting to claim a second will result in a penalty severe enough that you will not benefit from greed. The moment a flag is touched, the team that touched it becomes visible on the maps of every other candidate in the grounds, identified by their team number. You will not see other teams on your own map. You will see only your own number, lit up for everyone else's eyes.

You might be hunted from the moment your fingers close around the cloth." I felt a wave move through the crowd as a hundred candidates absorbed that.

"Stealing a flag from another team is permitted. Ambush is permitted. Combat is permitted. You may form temporary alliances with other teams, you may break those alliances, and the proctors will not intervene in any of it, but there is one exception." His voice didn't rise, but everyone in the crowd leaned forward.

"If you attempt to kill another candidate, the proctors will know. We have spent six hundred years developing the techniques to distinguish combat intent from killing intent, and we are very good at it. The penalty for attempted murder during the practical examination is permanent disqualification, immediate extraction, and a black mark on your house's record that will follow your family for a generation. There is no appeal, nor defence, nor second chance. Do not test this."

The silence after was heavier than before. It hadn't occurred to me before, but why would anyone want to kill anyone in a simple exam? Right?

"Severe injury will also result in extraction. The proctors stationed throughout the grounds will decide when a candidate's condition has become dangerous. You will not negotiate with them. You will not refuse them. If they decide you cannot continue, you cannot continue." He let that one hang.

"Side objectives are scattered across the grounds. Shrines, beasts, puzzles. Each completed objective is worth one point. They require effort, time, and skill. You may complete as many as you wish. They are intended for teams who fail to secure a flag and need to recover what they can." Behind him, Veyra had taken out a fresh scroll and unfolded it.

"The examination begins at ten o'clock and ends at midnight. Any candidate still inside the grounds at midnight will be automatically failed and extracted. You will be transported to the entry points shortly after the team announcements conclude. From there, you will advance under your own power, in your team formations." He lowered the scroll and looked out across us.

"That is everything you need to know. The rest, you will learn in the grounds, or you will not. Master Tull will now read the team assignments." He stepped back as Veyra stepped forward. She didn't introduce herself or add anything to what Gressil had said. She simply lifted her scroll and began to read.

"Team One. Aaren of House Corven. Bellis of House Nerin. Calen of House Marsh. Approach the balcony to receive your team token, your map, and your badges." The three named candidates moved out of the rows and walked forward. They didn't know each other. I could see it. They didn't look at each other, and they walked side by side without coordinating. Three strangers about to spend fourteen hours together in the woods.

"Team Two. Dessa of House Vashren. Ferren of House Hoyl. Lir of House Solenne." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Lir stepped out from a few rows ahead of me. The faculty had not put her with Rael. They had separated the two Solenne candidates I'd noticed so far, which felt deliberate. The teams kept coming. Two. Five. Eight. Eleven and so on.

I watched Metys called for Team Six, paired with two boys I didn't recognize, and she caught my eye across the plaza and gave me the smallest nod before she walked forward. I tried to nod back without looking like I was reaching for her. Fourteen, sixteen, nineteen. Each new team was a small scene in itself. Relief on some faces, dread on others. And anxiety on mine, as my name was still not called, and I wondered who I would end up with. Twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-seven… What if… what if I was last?

What if the faculty had specifically arranged for me to be last, so the entire plaza could watch my team get pulled together one piece at a time? What if—"Team Twenty-eight. Howl of House Aridis." Oh, that's me! A ripple moved through the crowd. Aridis this, Aridis that. They were going to do that every single time, weren't they. I stepped forward two paces and waited for the rest.

"Eydric of House Vael." Oh, thank God. Relief hit me before I'd processed it. I was reasonably sure I could trust Eydric if I could trust anyone in this place. One real ally. I could work with that. Eydric stepped forward and stopped beside me, his face giving away nothing.

"Rael of House Solenne." God! What are you doing?! I did not let my face change, but inside my chest a small, cold feeling settled into place. Of course it was Rael. The Solenne boy who had probed me during the introductions and nearly made me look like a fool in front of strangers. For some reason, this felt to me like no accident at all. Rael walked out from a few rows back, stopped on my other side, glanced at me briefly with that polite expression of his, then winked, which caught me off guard.

"Team Twenty-eight, approach the balcony." We walked. A proctor was waiting at the base of the balcony, an older woman in dark robes with a brass tray balanced on her forearm. Three small iron badges sat on the tray, each one stamped with a single glyph at its centre, alongside three folded squares of parchment. She lifted the first badge with two fingers and looked at me.

"Your name."

"Howl Aridis."

"Step forward." I stepped forward and she placed the badge against the centre of my chest, directly over my heart, and pressed it gently into the fabric of my tunic. There was no clasp or pin that I could see, but when she removed her hand, the badge stayed where she'd put it, fixed in place by something I couldn't feel.

"Thank you," I said. She had already moved on to Eydric, who gave his name, stepped forward, and accepted his badge with the same quiet thanks. Rael's was last. The proctor placed it on his chest, glanced briefly at his face, and turned back to her tray without comment. A second proctor handed Eydric a folded map. A third pressed a small bronze disc into Rael's palm. Our team token, with the number twenty-eight stamped into the metal in deep, clean lines.

"One token per team," the first proctor said, her eyes moving between the three of us to make sure we were listening.

"When you bring a flag to extraction, the token must be presented with it. Without it, the flag counts only for the candidate carrying it at the moment of delivery, and that candidate receives the thirty points alone. The other two receive nothing. Guard the token accordingly. It cannot be replaced." Rael's fingers closed around the disc and dropped it into the inside pocket of his jacket with the small care of a person who had already decided exactly where he was going to keep it for the next fourteen hours.

"Proceed to the western arch," the proctor said.

"Wait there with the other teams. The transport will activate when all assignments are complete." We turned and walked. The western arch stood at the far end of the plaza, set against an old wall I hadn't paid attention to before. It was wide enough for six people to walk through abreast, made of pale stone polished smooth by what I assumed were centuries of candidates passing under it, and the moment I got close I could see why the proctor had called it the transport. The arch was inscribed with glyphs.

Hundreds of them layered over each other in concentric patterns, woven into the joints and packed into every corner where two surfaces met. Some I recognized: basic stabilization, distance-binding, mana-channelling. Most I didn't, and the ones I didn't recognize were doing things I had no framework for. The latent mana in the stone hummed gently against my skin, dormant but waiting. I wanted to look at it for an hour, but I most certainly did not have that much time left.

Twenty-seven other teams were already standing in front of the arch in loose clusters that mirrored the team groupings from the announcement. A few of them were talking quietly, and most were just looking ahead at the stone. Metys was somewhere in the crowd with her two boys, but I couldn't find her from where I was, and I didn't try. We took a position near the back. Eydric stood with his arms crossed and his eyes on the arch. Rael leaned his weight slightly onto one leg and looked between the two of us.

"Well," he said.

"Looking forward to working with you both."

"Likewise," I said, because that was what you said. Eydric didn't say anything. Rael looked at him.

"Eydric. We're going to be living together for the next fourteen hours. You could try."

"I am trying."

"You're brooding."

"I'm preparing."

"No, you're brooding." Eydric exhaled through his nose and turned his head.

"Take this seriously."

"I am taking it seriously. I'm just doing it with a more pleasant face." Rael spread his hands.

"One of us has to. We'll be crawling through swamps in an hour. You can scowl then."

"Rael..."

"All right, all right. Eydric Vael, no fun at all. I forgot." Rael turned back to me, still smiling.

"You'll have to forgive him, Howl. He gets very serious when there are points involved." I looked between the two of them.

"Have you two met before?" Rael's smile didn't move, but Eydric's eyes flicked to him without his head turning.

"Once or twice," Rael said.

"Our families move in some of the same circles. Why?"

"No reason." It was clearly more than once or twice. They had the rhythm of people who'd been bouncing off each other for years. But it did not seem hostile in a harmful way, so I figured it could be a plus for teamwork. Up on the balcony, Veyra had finished reading the team assignments. The last team, Team Thirty, was just walking back from the badge proctor with their token in hand. I watched them join the assembly near where we were standing, and the plaza grew quieter than it had been all morning.

Gressil stepped back to the railing.

"Thirty teams. Ninety candidates. The grounds are waiting." He looked out over us one last time.

"Good luck." He raised his right hand, and the glyphs on the arch ignited. It happened all at once. Every line of every glyph flared bright silver, then bright blue, then bright gold, the colours cycling through each other faster than I could track, and the entire arch began to spin. The stone itself didn't move; the glyphs did, all of them at once, rotating around the inner curve of the arch in counter-spiralling rings that picked up speed with every pass.

The hum I'd felt against my skin became a low, building thrum that I could feel in my bones. I was still staring when Rael spoke beside me, and I could hear something almost like a laugh in his voice.

"You've never used one of these?"

"No."

"Hold on to your stomach." The arch flared one final time, and then everything I'd been looking at became light. There was no plaza, no floor, no candidates, no Eydric or Rael — only a roaring in my ears and colours I had no name for spinning past me on every side. Gold and violet and a green so bright it felt like sound. My stomach was somewhere in my throat, my hair was in my eyes, I was falling and rising at the same time and I had no idea which way was up.

Some part of my brain was screaming that this was wrong and I should not be here and I was going to die. But the rest of me was delighted. Then everything stopped. The colours collapsed inward and I was on my hands and knees in soft earth, surrounded by the smell of damp leaves and old wood. Sunlight filtered through a canopy of branches above me in scattered patches, and somewhere not too far off I could hear someone else hit the ground with a thump and a quiet curse. I sat back on my heels and breathed.

My heart was hammering, my hands were shaking, and I had never been more frightened in my entire life. I had also, possibly, never had more fun. I pushed myself up to my feet, brushed the leaves and the loose earth off the front of my tunic, and looked around at the forest I'd just been dropped into. Rael landed somewhere off to my left. I heard him before I saw him: a grunt, a thump, then a long, drawn-out groan.

"Whooo," he said.

"I hate that thing. I hate it so much." I turned and found him sitting on the forest floor with leaves in his hair, picking a twig out of his collar with no particular hurry.

"For an institution like Sartheon," he said, brushing himself off and standing, "you'd think they could afford a transport built in this century. Not the Old Vellis Arch. The same arch they've been using since my grandmother's grandmother. The wards are sloppy, the spin pattern is wrong, and the landing scatter is enough to make you wonder if the faculty are sadists or just lazy."

"Both, probably," said Eydric. He was a few paces behind us, already on his feet, settling his bag back onto his shoulder. He didn't look thrilled either, but he wasn't picking leaves out of his collar.

"Both is more honest than what they tell us," Rael said, finishing with his hair and squinting up at the canopy.

"They claim it's tradition, but it's just negligence." I watched him for a moment longer. He was funny when he was complaining, which I hadn't expected. Without wasting much time, we regrouped and pulled the map out. Eydric unfolded it across his forearm and we leaned in. The grounds spread across the parchment in soft inked greens and browns, with hand-marked symbols at the edges for the extraction points and small terrain notes scattered through the interior.

There was a faint pulse of warmth at the centre of the page that I recognized as a tracking glyph, anchored to our team token. A small dot the colour of red wine sat near the western edge of the map, blinking once a second. That was us.

"There," Rael said, putting a finger near the dot.

"We're at the western edge. North of us is open ground, and..." He trailed off, because his finger had drifted up the map and stopped at a label written in narrow, sloping script. I leaned in to read it. The Thornwood. Hey, I knew that name. Nana had told me about the Thornwood when I was nine, in one of the older adventure books, where a young scout had crossed a place called the Thornwood on his way to a duel and had been chased through it for three pages by a creature the author had drawn with too many teeth.

I had stared at the illustration for an entire afternoon.

"Oh," I said, and my face must have given me away, because both of them looked at me.

"Oh?" Rael said.

"The Thornwood. I've read about this place. Or, well, places like it. Nana's books had creatures that lived in zones with names like this one. They were the most exciting things she ever read to me."

"Creatures," Eydric repeated.

"Yes! Pack hunters. Very territorial. Ferocious. Faster than most horses. They moved in groups of four or five, and they used to be everywhere along the eastern provinces before the great houses cleared them out. I have always wanted to see one."

"Howl." Rael's voice had changed.

"Yes?"

"By any chance, were the creatures in your book about the size of a large dog, only longer, built low to the ground?"

"Yes."

"Grey-green hide with a darker stripe down the spine?"

"Yes."

"Long stiff tails for balance?"

"Yes."

"And a curved claw on the inner toe of each foot, larger than seemed sensible?"

"... Yes?" I was beginning to find this odd. Rael had said he didn't know what I was talking about, and he was now describing the creature back to me in textbook detail. The Solenne in my head took a step forward and reminded me that the Solenne were like that. Information was a currency to them, and they hid what they had so you wouldn't see them coming. I was about to ask him about it when Rael spoke again.

"Howl. We may be in a small amount of trouble." He raised his arm and pointed past my shoulder. Eydric and I followed his finger toward the trees on the far side of the clearing. About sixty paces away, half-shadowed beneath the low boughs of a tree at the edge of the clearing, one of the creatures was crouched on the body of another. Its head was lowered and its mouth was bloodied, but it wasn't eating. It was looking at us.

"Howl," Rael said quietly, without taking his eyes off the thing.

"Remind me, please. How do these creatures of yours like to kill?" I swallowed.

"They... pin you down with the front claws. And they use the back claw on each foot to..."

"Yes?"

"To open you up."

"Marvellous," Rael said.

"That's marvellous." Ding! Golden text bloomed across my vision. [Quest Issued] Objective: Defeat the beasts [0/7] Rewards: New skill (Rank B). +1 Strength. +2 Mana Pool. Failure: Probably severely wounded. …Marvellous indeed.