A quick glance showed Gavin he was laying atop the blankets and covers, fully clothed. He left the bed as gently and quietly as he could and turned. Kiri lay sleeping on the other side of the bed, wrapped up in the covers. He lifted his right arm and saw the black, rope-like Void-scar; it was thinner than he remembered.
So, it wasn’t just a bad dream. Gavin caught a whiff of himself as he examined the Void-scar and shook his head. Woof…I need to buy Kiri something nice for letting such a foul-smelling soul borrow half of her bed.
A short time later, Gavin emerged from the washroom clean, dressed, and ready to face the day. He walked across the chambers to place his sleeping garments in his room and pull on socks and shoes before returning to sit in the armchair across from Marcus. It was several more minutes before Marcus closed the journal and laid both it and the quill aside.
“I’m sorry about making you wait, Gavin,” Marcus said as he stood and stretched. “I had a particularly compelling train of thought I wanted to record before it was lost to the day’s events.”
When Marcus remained standing, Gavin stood as well, as he said, “It’s all right, Marcus. It gave me the opportunity to work the last bits of sleep out of my head. So…are we going to begin by studying geography today?”
Marcus shook his head as he started walking toward the suite’s door. “While we could spend several weeks straight discussing only geography, I’m of the opinion the best learning environment is one that covers multiple subjects. From here on out, we’ll follow a set schedule. Every morning will be devoted to your studies of the Art, but the afternoons will rotate through geography, history, politics, and current events.”
On the ground floor, Marcus turned and led Gavin deep into the Tower’s lower levels. They went past the two floors that served as storage halls and exited the staircase on the third underground floor. At specific intervals, they passed doors on either side of the well-lit hallway. These doors were engraved with all manner of runes Gavin didn’t understand, and the whole area made him feel as if his blood were on fire.
“Where are we, Marcus?” Gavin asked as they made their third left turn and the floor started angling down. The walls shifted from the smooth, solid stone that made up most of the College’s construction into a hewn-rock passageway, which made Gavin think they were entering a cave.
“We’ve just passed the summoning classrooms,” Marcus said as he continued walking. “They’re heavily protected to ensure that none of the class ‘projects’ escape into the College proper. The first rooms we passed are used to teach the basic summoning spells, whereas the protections in these last three or four are designed for the…well, no class ever summons anything that would require those rooms.”
“Oh,” Gavin said. “Those are the rooms for the powerful summoning spells?”
“Quite so.”
The floor’s angle of descent gradually steepened as they progressed down its corkscrew path, though never becoming a dangerous grade, until it leveled and straightened without warning. Some thirty feet ahead Gavin saw a massive door with even more runes etched into its surface than the powerful summoning rooms they’d passed a short time ago.
As the pair approached the door, a man-shaped specter faded into view on the right-hand side of the door. The specter was just visible enough to see it ‘wore’ a kind of plate armor, with two swords strapped across its back.
The specter addressed Marcus, saying, “It has been some time since you last visited this place, milord. Have you come to request my duties as Master of the Field?”
“No, old friend, not today,” Marcus said. “This young man is my apprentice, and the arena’s the safest place available for a novice to practice Words of Power.”
The specter bowed deeply at the waist before turning and reaching into the door. A massive clack-thud echoed all around them, and the door began to rise up into the ceiling.
Gavin now found himself standing in a massive cavern. Aside from the fifteen-foot-wide path that allowed individuals to enter the space, stone bleachers seven levels high stood in sections centered on what would be the site of the main event. The arena floor was loose dirt, though not so deep the bedrock beneath it couldn’t be felt, and in the very center of the space a thirty-feet-wide copper ring was set into the floor with only an inch or so rising above the dirt.
“Wow, Marcus,” Gavin said as he turned all around on his path toward the arena ring, “this is amazing. Who made this? No, wait…I’m guessing Kirloth and his apprentices were involved.”
Marcus smiled a bit, nodding. “You’re quite correct. Kirloth, Mivar, Roshan, Wygoth, and Cothos created the arena after the principal work on the city and College were complete. Up until then, all wizard duels took place about half a league from the city down the highway that became the Tel Roshan Road. Now, tell me what you sense with your skathos.”
Gavin stopped and closed his eyes, concentrating on his new sense. “It feels about the same as our suite in the Tower. There’s the general ambient ‘noise’ you told me was normal for Tel. I can tell we’re under the city, but I can’t gauge how far.”
“Good. Now, step into the ring.”
Gavin did as instructed and gasped. “Marcus, it all went away! It’s quiet in here.”
“The ring in the floor you crossed was imbued with powerful anti-magic effects. Those effects don’t block magic; they simply ensure any effects created outside the ring will not affect anything inside the ring and vice versa.”
Gavin grinned like a starving child presented with a feast. “I really like it here, Marcus. Can I live down here?”
“Gavin, you are not a dwarf,” Marcus said, his tone severe for a moment before he broke into a small laugh. “It is peaceful down here, though.”
A few moments of silence passed before Marcus shook himself.
“Now, as to your lesson today. Everything the College teaches today is based upon the old ways. The history classes teach that Kirloth and Bellos devised a new magic after the Godswar, something less dangerous than the Words of Power. That’s utter rubbish. Kirloth, Bellos, and Mivar devised a new way of accessing the power the Words manipulate.”
Marcus took a deep breath and, glancing around the arena, indicated for Gavin to follow him to one set of stone bleachers. He indicated Gavin to sit and began the lesson in earnest.
“Bellos received a number of insights upon his ascendance to the ranks of the divine. Among them was the knowledge that as the years progressed fewer wizards would be born, and those wizards who were born would gradually be weaker in the Art than those who came before. Now, as the new God of Magic, it was Bellos’s responsibility to ensure magic did not fade from the world; there were multiple reasons why the loss of magic would be a very bad thing, but those reasons are a discussion for another time. Suffice it to say, Bellos needed a new source of magic-users.
“At that point in history, the only arcanists were wizards; no one ever considered that there might be another way of using magic. Bellos came to Tel Mivar to discuss the problem with his former mentor, and since Mivar had just completed the final volume of his Histories and was looking for a project, the three of them began work into devising a new system of magic.”
“But I thought the College taught that Bellos and Kirloth devised the new system alone,” Gavin said.
Marcus turned to face Gavin, frowning. “How did you hear that?”
Gavin shrugged. “I heard students talking in the dining hall. I gathered they were discussing homework assignments.”
“Over the last four hundred years or so, there’s been a rift slowly growing between the Council of Magisters and the Great Houses. The way they see it, Bellos is a god, and Kirloth is safely dead, but Mivars still exist. They see no reason to do or say anything that might give House Mivar any more of an advantage than it already has. The history curriculum here is a product of that, but as I was saying…