The Gate
Oslovia, Fraussen, and Berleux.
The Federation's three nations had each prospered in their own fashion, yet the order among them was anything but equal. Berleux, given over to primary industry—stock-raising and the like—and home to the thinnest population, stood on the smallest footing of all. The nation's very name was proof: Frauvia, Fraussen and Oslovia braided into a single word, with Berleux nowhere in it.
Oslovia, where industry of every kind was in flower, had carried the war against the Empire to victory. Even so, one feat of arms was not enough to seize the Federation's central place.
The birthplace of magical scholarship.
Geopolitics, the balance of nations—what did any of it matter? That short, spare title alone was enough for Fraussen to stand at the Federation's heart. At the center of that renown lay the city of Fraussen, and in the city of Fraussen stood the Fraussen Federal Magic University.
Institutions for the teaching of magic were many within the Federation. If all one wanted was to learn the art, there was no need to insist upon the Fraussen Federal Magic University. But its founder was Jean-Pierre Ochelimet, the Father of Magic Theory, and it was only natural that the students who gathered there in hopes of becoming his direct disciples should stand far above those of any other school.
The Federal Magic University was a kind of holy ground—the pride of the Federation, and a sanctuary for students of magic. As if to prove as much, it had a gate. The so-called Gate of Knowledge.
A gate in name alone. It was nothing but two enormous pillars of granite, and upon them, a line each.
LEFT PILLAR — Let those who would learn enter here.
RIGHT PILLAR — Let those with no will to learn not draw near.
Save for the words Ochelimet himself was said to have struck in with chisel and hammer, they were plain stone columns and nothing more. Yet the Gate of Knowledge, twenty feet high, was a majestic symbol in its own right, and in function a checkpoint as impregnable as an iron fortress. Since the war, it had never once permitted an Imperial to pass.
"It's raining already, and the morning's barely begun. Take an umbrella."
Susan pressed the words on me. I stood at the living-room window and looked up into a clouded sky. A steady, nagging drizzle. In Fraussen, set in the dry heart of the Federation, it was the first weather in a long while that felt like the Empire.
I went on gazing out, and Susan seemed to take it for an ill omen. A worried sigh escaped her.
"How are you feeling?"
"Well enough, I think."
"Did you sleep properly?"
I nodded, but her face stayed dark.
"Honestly... the timing couldn't be worse. The weather holds mild, and then every year, right around now, the temperature falls off a cliff—and today, of all days, it has to rain."
She was afraid the rain would ruin the examination for me. November the first: the day of the Federal Magic University entrance exam. Susan was one of the few who knew with what resolve I had driven myself at my studies these past two months, and the knowledge only deepened the worry on her face.
I could say it without hesitation. Needless worry. I shook my head.
"You don't have to worry."
"Hm?"
I had only been staring out the window because the Empire's scenery had risen in me. Rain was no omen of ill. If anything, it was a good one. Who was I, after all? The boy who had weathered the rainy season beneath a bridge, who every time the rain came down would light up, drag out a book of magic, and set to practicing.
I put it into a single sentence.
"I concentrate best when it's raining."
"...Heh. I see. I suppose you do need that kind of confidence, if you're going to apply to the Federal Magic University."
Susan smiled faintly, came over, and pressed an umbrella into my hand.
"Do your best!"
It was still early morning—an hour better called dawn—and storm clouds had swallowed what little sun there was. The twins would be lost in dreamland, and Lena, who had spent nearly a month putting all her strength into steadying the Eastern Telegraph Office, was surely asleep as well, worn through.
Even so, wasn't it a considerable happiness to have even one person see you off?
"I'll be going."
I said it as I threw the front door open.
Crash!
A racket burst from the stairs, and a tangle of figures came spilling out. Ellie, the tomboy of the twins—and Sally and Lena, looking very much as if they had been hauled along, one in each of her hands.
"Big brother! Good luck on the exam!"
Ellie flailed both hands in greeting. Sally, still drunk on sleep, never even opened her eyes and only lifted a hand in a small wave. I waved back.
And then my eyes met Lena's.
She stood there awkward, a blanket draped over her shoulders like a cloak, the very picture of someone dragged out of sleep. I wasn't sure I had ever seen her so unguarded. The same thought seemed to strike her at nearly the same moment, and color rushed across her pale cheeks all at once.
"......"
"......"
An awkward silence held for about three seconds. I was the one who waved first.
"I'll be back."
"Ah. Uh."
Her eyes, already large, went wider still. Lena shook her head, then waved with a faintly brusque air gathered about her.
"...Go on, then. Y—Eugene."
A smile rose to my mouth of its own accord. I shut the door and opened the umbrella. Umbrella in one hand, and in the other a bag with my writing things and the papers I had to submit; Mrs. Dieman's hat on my head. I stepped out into the rain.
I'll admit it. I have no sense of direction.
I had thought myself clever with streets, on the strength of old memories weaving through the alleys of Lehman—but how many ordeals had I suffered since arriving in the Federation? Count the times I had lost my way, and both hands would not have been enough.
It was different now. Two months since I had settled in Fraussen. The city as a whole was still well beyond me, but the ground around the Oslo household I had mastered with room to spare. There was not a trace of hesitation in my steps toward the Federal Magic University. Losing the way, at this point, would have been the harder task.
Government offices might be scattered all over the city, but the Federal Magic University sat upon Fraussen's axis. A vast boulevard ran from Fraussen Station through Rapian Square to the university itself. Follow that road, and you arrived at the main gate as a matter of course.
As I walked the rainy street, people about my own age began to catch my eye, one and then another. Past the square, as I drew near the university, their numbers swelled until the avenue was packed with nothing but students. I could only stare.
Were all of these examinees?
The Federal Magic University took something like seven hundred new students. Set against that, the applicants looked as if they would clear seven or eight times the number without trouble—and every one of them was someone who believed they had a chance of being chosen.
"......"
A haunted pallor seemed to cling to their faces. Perhaps it was no illusion. Perhaps, in their eyes, I wore a similar one.
I kept walking, and before I knew it the grounds of the Federal Magic University opened before me. By then there was no need to look for the way at all. Hundreds, thousands of people were flowing in a single procession toward the registration office inside. I joined the line and went with them.
To sit the entrance examination, you had to submit your registration slip at the office, confirm your identity, and check where you were meant to take the test. It was work that ate no small amount of time, so even now—an hour and a half before the exam was to begin—the office was full.
"Examinee number 1217. Torricelli. Confirmed."
"Examinee number 2944. Sartre. Confirmed."
Five or six members of staff, and students waiting in line before them. Somehow it called up the sight of an immigration checkpoint. I was standing in that wash of déjà vu, waiting for my turn, when—
"......"
Eyes gathered on me, as they always did. Enough to make the back of my head prickle. Until I folded the umbrella, no one had spared me a glance; that they were looking now made it painfully obvious the cause was my hair, and a hollow laugh nearly escaped me. I still had the hat on, so few had actually realized. But the wariness that reached me was of another order entirely.
It was not reluctance. It was not even a light disgust. Contempt. Rejection. Or something like sheer incomprehension—violent feelings of that kind made up the greater part. I had not so much as passed the Gate of Knowledge, and already, merely for setting foot on the grounds, this?
I understood. Magic was the Federation's pride itself: a pride that must not be soiled by a barbarian bloodline, so fiercely held that they had laid a ban on magic upon the Empire. How much more so here, at the Fraussen Federal Magic University, called the very fountainhead of magic? This was the Federation, so they would take me not for an Imperial but for mixed-blood at most, with an Imperial parent or grandparent—and even then, it had come to this. Had I not been larger than average, my body tempered by bouts with Dorothy and by labor in the coal mines, it might not have ended at looks alone.
I wanted to protest the way of the world. I could not. The wellspring of this vast hatred was the tragedy the Empire itself had wrought.
There was nothing to do while I waited in line, so for the first time in a while I let myself be caught in an ethical snare with no answer, and followed the thought down. Then—
"Next student, please!"
My turn had come before I knew it. I took out the registration slip and my papers of identification and set them before the clerk. The clerk, who looked about Dorothy's age, wrote something in a clumsy hand, stamped a seal, and spoke.
"We'll confirm your identity. A simple procedure. Please remove any ornaments—hats and the like—for a moment..."
I did as I was told. Only then did the clerk see my face. More precisely, the gray hair laid bare for all the world to see.
In the next instant I watched, quite literally, more than half the people in the office turn their heads toward me. The clamor of a hundred and more vanished, and a sudden quiet came down. The clerk, breath caught, slowly found words.
"You are registering for the entrance exam. Is that correct?"
I was at a loss. Was there no sense at all that the question was rude? The people around, at least, seemed to share in it. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Sharp, hard gazes came at me as if to run me through.
I had been in this situation before. At times like these, gentleness served better.
"...!"
I answered with a bright, easy smile.
"Registration for the entrance exam. If you would."