CHAPTER 8 – A Frozen Summit

There was no reaction from the other elves when the illusory glade of flowers and floating stars dissolved away, not immediately, their silence made starker by the wintery clearing to which they had returned.

Almon found his voice first. “Must you dispute everything, child?”

The wizard was livid; his face had flushed dark red, and he threw up his suspended arm in irritation, casting whatever invisible thing had perched on his wrist into the night. He strode across to Saphienne with growing wrath. “Could you not concede me this pageantry? Would it have been so trying for you to hold back, content in the knowledge that you had seen through the spell?” He stopped before her, kicking at the snow. “Or did it not occur to you that I had planned the reveal? Why did you have to ruin things, Saphienne?”

Faylar was still looking around himself in shock. “It was a… dream?”

“A hallucination, you imbecile,” Almon snapped over his shoulder.

Looking at each other, Celaena and Iolas backed away. Everyone knew it was a dangerous thing, to anger a wizard, let alone to interfere with his magic.

Yet, for reasons she couldn’t explain, Saphienne was unafraid. “You’re angry at me, not him.”

“I know that!” His voice had risen to a roar. “Don’t you dare further condescend to me, you wretched child! Not one more remark! I won’t have it.”

Realising that she had provoked him too far, she kept silent, though she didn’t look away from him as he glowered and seethed.

Almon sensed she wasn’t intimidated, and his fiery anger slowly subsided, becoming instead the embers of dull rage. Without turning, he addressed the other children. “Iolas, Celaena, go back to your homes. Faylar, visit me on the morrow.”

Celaena turned pale. “I failed?”

Then Almon pivoted to her, and whatever was in his eyes made the girl start in fright. She recovered herself well enough to bow, and then she all but ran away, followed after by Iolas, whose eyes briefly met Saphienne’s — with clear concern for her wellbeing.

Faylar pressed his luck. “Thank you, Master Almon. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then he, too, departed.

Alone now, Saphienne and the wizard faced each other.

His voice was low. “How did you see through the spell?”

She folded her hands together. “You got the flowers wrong. They smelled right, they felt right, and they looked convincing. But lavender has different leaves, and grows from a shrub, not as a single flower.”

His brow was furrowed. “That was all?”

Saphienne shook her head. “I also… recognised the colour. The blue. Like the blue you’re wearing.”

The wizard took a deep, steadying breath. “You know the colours of magic?”

“No.” She shrugged lightly. “I’ve seen a fascinator before. Knowing what it does, recognising blue among its colours, seeing the flowers… I didn’t know, but I felt something was wrong. Then you mentioned reality, and it all clicked into place.”

Almon walked away from her, his breath visible in the cold air. His hand went to the bridge of his nose, and then he flinched with his whole body, glaring up at his shoulder and muttering something in a language she didn’t speak. He paced back and forth for the better part of a minute, grumbling all the while.

When he returned, his fury had subsided into familiar annoyance. “Had I reason to suspect you were so observant,” he sighed, “I would have disguised the spell. Red would have been the appropriate colour.”

“Red is the colour of… another type of magic?”

“Another discipline.” His lips were drawn, downturned. “Conjuration. Blue is the colour of Hallucination. But any half-decent wizard can alter the gross appearance of their magic, should he have need to.”

“I didn’t do it to spite you.”

He studied her face. “Why did you?”

“I needed to know what was real.”

Unexpectedly, he smiled. “Had you not taken me by surprise, your hand would have brushed across the flower. My force of belief is usually much stronger, but I hadn’t even considered the possibility that one of you would have cause to doubt my work.”

“Your belief in the hallucination?”

“The discipline of Hallucination hinges on belief. A wizard must know the illusion to be false, and yet believe anyway, in order to sustain the magic.” He looked up at the revealed night sky, contemplating the truer, more distant stars. “So too a wizard must not lose their knowledge that it is false, or the magic will unravel. The art of Hallucination lies in sustaining a waking dream, which requires a fertile imagination, and suspension, but not annihilation, of disbelief.”

Saphienne looked away. “I apologise, for ruining your theatrics.”

“I don’t believe you regret it, Saphienne, but I accept your apology all the same.”

“Why?”

Almon folded his arms. “You’re clearly, irrefutably proud. Offering up your pride when you don’t believe you were wrong, that means more than contrition.”

Too late to make a difference, Saphienne grasped what drove Almon to teach, and thereby what it was he looked for in prospective students. Yet the knowledge only puzzled her. “Why did you choose Faylar?”

“Faylar?” His expression was dismissive. “I simply owe the boy an apology. He is hardly intelligent, but he’s hardly an imbecile. My misdirected anger makes the fact that I’m refusing him all the more awkward.”

Saphienne felt as though the ground beneath her was beginning to shift. “Then, why wasn’t he suitable?”

“You tell me, since you’re so observant.”

She closed her eyes as she reflected on the night. “He kept complimenting you. While he did notice the differently drawn stars in my calligraphy, he dismissed their significance, and went on to argue with Iolas when he said my work was better. He stressed how well prepared he was, but when you asked him to rephrase an answer to your question, he floundered.”

“And so?”

Saphienne met his gaze again. “He was prepared — by someone else. He’s got a good memory for turns of phrase, so he knew the things to say, but they weren’t things he understood, because he struggles to learn, since he’s unobservant, and doesn’t know when to defer to more learned people.”

“You might be accused of that last failing.”

Smiling very brightly, she answered with levity she didn’t feel. “Well, whoever thought that would be wrong, and not worth deferring to — wouldn’t they?”

Almon didn’t return her smile, now keeping his emotions at a distance, but there was a hint of… not quite respect, though a sentiment similar to it showed in his eyes. “What of the others, then?”

Saphienne didn’t know what to make of events. “You sent them home, which suggests you’re done with them, but I had the wrong impression about your intentions toward Faylar. I can’t tell what you plan for them.”

“To examine them further.” He shifted his weight, his expression remaining even. “Both of them show promise for different reasons. Iolas interests me in particular. He clearly doesn’t want to be a wizard, not really, but he feels obliged to become one… and will try, even though he prefers calligraphy.”

The memory of Iolas’ willingness to concede his loss, together with his story about his father, supported what the wizard said. “Is he doing it for someone else?”

“I don’t yet know.” A hint of thoughtfulness crept into Almon’s voice. “The boy has will enough to stand up for himself, so perhaps he seeks my instruction for the sake of many other people, not to please one in particular. He would be happier with his inks and papers, but happiness and power seldom intertwine.”

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“And Celaena?”

“A by-the-numbers candidate for wizardry.” He permitted himself to smile at his own joke, then discarded his good humour. “I will, in all likelihood, teach her. She seems a little impulsive, and keen to make more of herself than she is… but I can hardly fault her for those tendencies. She might well learn more impressive behaviours from them.”

“Leaving only me.”

“Ah, the girl speaks as though she doesn’t secretly hope.” His tone was mocking despite his flat expression, and he loomed over her. “You still think I’m going to teach you, after all that has happened?”

Saphienne felt more unnerved by that question than she did by the prior threat of his anger. She swallowed. “Haven’t you been teaching me just now?”

“Or am I just throwing salt on the wound?”

“You haven’t made your mind up.” She felt the coin, still in her hand throughout all that had happened. “But you don’t want to, and you haven’t wanted to since before we met.”

“Correct.” His voice became colder than the field. “I dislike you, girl. At first I was being entirely unfair in my dislike, but now I can say for certain you have all the worst qualities that I despise in grown elves. I don’t believe you will grow out of them.”

Still, he was undecided, which Saphienne thought over quickly. “Which implies I have qualities that recommend me despite your dislike.”

“Regrettably so. You have several, rare traits of character held by only the finest wizards. Do you expect me to name them for you? Do you hope for compliments? I will not.”

“But you’ll enumerate my failings as it pleases you,” Saphienne retorted.

“Well, now I won’t. At least, not tonight.” He stepped away, turning his back to her as he gazed up at the stars again. “Perhaps not ever, if we have no further reason to associate. But I must make up my mind, which means I must ask you what I will ask the other two. I will give you this courtesy: consider your answer very carefully, for I will base my decision entirely on what you tell me.”

“I would like to ask a question, first.”