The Judgment of the Seed
Chris snorted.
"You're the one who let it slip that I came out of prison."
Hailey's face went red.
"I was defending you. That's how it happened."
The girl started to protest, then ducked her head.
"I'm sorry."
"It was going to get out anyway."
Hailey looked up.
"Then why did you really kill him?"
Curiosity glittered in her eyes.
"He killed my friends."
"So you took revenge."
"Yeah."
Whatever stock Chris had lost, sunk clean underground, climbed back to the surface.
"You're not a completely bad person, mister."
"Yeah, well. Thanks."
He ate his fill at breakfast and slipped out of the dormitory, crossed the central plaza, and made for the district where round huts stood packed together. That, they had told him, was the Education Wing. He was following the others from Dormitory 1 when Lai stepped into his path.
"You go that way, mister."
"Why?"
"You're a beginner."
"And you?"
Lai preened.
"We've already grown out of being beginners."
"I'm no beginner either."
Hailey offered a piece of advice.
"Mister, a newcomer has to pass through the Evaluation Office."
"Is that right?"
"Yes."
She meant it, so Chris turned aside. The Evaluation Office stood a little apart from the other huts. He straightened his back and knocked. No answer.
"Ahem."
He cleared his throat and eased the door open a crack.
"Is someone there?"
"Who is it?"
The voice that drifted out was somehow familiar.
"A new student."
Chris pushed his head through the doorway, and froze. A face as foul as phlegm crawled out of a pig's throat was looking back at him.
"Harvey..."
The revolting mage who had burned Prince Mark's eyeball, and forced on him a memory-extraction spell that might have left him a halfwit, grinned at the sight of him.
"So it was you!"
The phlegm was delighted.
"Come in."
The plague beckoned.
Chris shuffled forward, then stopped about five paces short. Any closer and he felt hives would break out on his skin.
Harvey snapped his fingers.
The door Chris had deliberately left open behind him swung shut with a heavy thud.
"I heard you were locked in a cell... What are you doing here?"
"I was released."
"What!"
He looked genuinely startled.
"Has that much time already passed?"
"I was a model inmate, so they let me out a little early."
"Time certainly flies."
Locked away, time had crawled slowly enough to make his skin crawl. For the people outside, it seemed to have raced.
"So time is relative."
Something in the words had a faintly magical ring.
"Of course it is. When you're at play, time runs. When you're working, it creeps along like a grub."
He had thought he'd touched some insight. Hearing Harvey, it felt like nothing much.
"Did you get hired as a servant in the Training Wing?"
"No. I came with the standing of Spirit Awakening."
"Spirit Awakening! You felt mana? You?"
He enjoyed it when people were surprised.
"Yes."
Harvey shot him a sour look.
"Then do it."
"Do what?"
"Move your mana."
Chris drew a long breath and inhaled mana. He could feel it passing in and out through his mouth.
"It's real. When did you feel it?"
"Not even a few days ago. But what brings Mage Harvey here?"
"I've been named head of the Evaluation Office. From now on, you call me Director."
"Since when?"
"Yesterday."
The day Chris arrived at the Training Wing, the director had been swapped for Harvey. The feeling that settled on him was not a good one. Something unpleasant seemed to be on its way.
"They told me a newcomer has to come through the Evaluation Office, so I came. What do we learn here?"
"The Mikklonia breathing method. In our tower we shorten it to Mik. And we render the judgment that actually matters."
"What judgment is that?"
"The seed."
"I've heard of the seed, but I don't understand it. What is a seed, that it lets a person feel mana? And how does it turn people into mages? How is the attribute decided?"
"The seed is something you're born with. That's why they call a mage one of the chosen."
"Born with it?"
"Yes. It's settled the moment you're born. Dip so much as a toe into Seed Cultivation and you'll see it clearly. To be honest, I'm only at Thought Formulation myself, so I don't know the precise truth either. I'm repeating what I heard from my seniors. For now, let's concentrate on learning the breathing."
Harvey taught him with unexpected kindness. Old memories kept any warmth from taking. Smile all he liked, the man still looked ready to swing a staff without warning and crack a skull.
Chris memorized the method, listened to the cautions, was told to return in a week, and went back to the dormitory.
The Spirit Awakening apprentices were nowhere to be seen. Hailey had left the proctor's office empty as well. Yesterday she must have been waiting, tipped off that a new arrival was coming. Only the occasional worker wandered through. Among them Chris met someone he knew: a peer who had entered the tower with him, now working as a maid.
Lucy. That was her name.
He didn't let on that he recognized her, in case it embarrassed her. She returned the courtesy.
Chris climbed to his room and sat on the bed. Then he began to draw mana in and turn it, using the Mik breathing he had just been taught.
He did. And still.
Color flooded his face, then drained to white. Pulling mana in through the mouth and down to the lungs was easy enough. The trouble started after that. The mana would not flow as it should. Black spheres lodged in every corner of his body snagged the current, as if barriers had dropped across the road midway.
"Ungh."
A pained sound escaped him.
Damn it.
Halfway through, he switched to the Laphunian breathing method. It was no different. The black spheres went on obstructing the circulation of mana.
Chris got off the bed and paced. Then he drew a deep breath, pulled himself together, and sat on the edge of the mattress to take in mana by the secret art of Iron Body. This way, at least, the flow came easier. It caught here and there, but it still ran better than the other methods.
He drove mana at the sphere in his ankle, then let out a sigh.
"I'm screwed."
Since learning Iron Body, he had moved mana only by its secret method. It was more efficient than the Laphunian breathing, and he could feel strength gathering in his arms and legs. Once the black spheres formed, he had leaned on it harder still. To climb any higher he had to shatter those spheres, so he had clung to Iron Body from morning to night.
That was why he had never noticed this problem taking shape. His body had warped until both the Laphunian method and the Mikklonia method were difficult to learn. Only the secret art of Iron Body could lead him any farther up. But the only man who could teach him Iron Body was locked in a prison. There was the heart of it.
Tom could not leave that prison for a hundred and fifty years, and a life lived at Spirit Awakening ran out at a hundred. Chris would grow old and die before the man ever walked free.
Tom had said it himself. Once he was out, he would teach the rest of Iron Body. He would pass on the secret of leaping past Thought Formulation straight into Seed Cultivation. That was the bait.
If Chris wanted the secret, he would have to get him out.
"That son of a bitch dug a trap!"
What had Tom trusted, when he did Chris that kindness?
Human decency, affection, friendship, respect, loyalty, sympathy, pity...
No.
The heart that walks into a privy is not the heart that walks out. Tom had put his faith in human selfishness, and so, while teaching magic, he had dug a trap. Chris had stepped neatly into it.
"Shit."
Mages really were pieces of shit.
"Do I have to shatter the fifty-fifth step?"
Chris's thoughts sank deeper.
A week passed. Harvey held his palm out toward Chris.
"Put your hand out toward me and run Mik. Push mana out through your palm."
"Will it do if I push the Director's palm back?"
"Greedy, for a raw beginner. You only need to reach my hand. I'll pass you even if you don't shove it."
Chris moved mana with the basic Mikklonia breathing. Too many things caught along the way, and the mana never arrived at his palm. It thrashed against the black sphere at his elbow, then spilled outward.
"No good?"
Sweat beaded on Chris's brow.
"Yes. It's hard."
"Try again."
He tried again, and again, and once more after that. The farthest he could send it was his elbow.
"You. How many years since you entered the tower?"
"It would be about eight."
"Eight years to feel mana. I can't tell whether to call that remarkable or just pigheaded."
All the while, both of them had kept their palms raised.
"My arm hurts."
He dropped the arm and kneaded it.
"We'll stop here today."
"Yes."
"See me in a week."
Chris bowed and was on his way out when the man's mutter stabbed him between the shoulders.
"If it took eight years just to feel mana, won't it take another eight to clear the Evaluation Office's bar?"
Cold sweat broke at the mere thought.
He prayed it would not be so. A week later, he was still marching in place.
Harvey sighed.
"Do you know why the Evaluation Office matters?"
"Didn't you say it mattered because it judges the seed?"
"That's right."
He took down the frame on the wall—a great tree was painted on it—and a safe lay hidden behind.
"Is it all right to open the safe with me standing here?"
Harvey grinned.
"Anyone who's anyone already knows."
From the safe he drew a narrow slip of paper about two fingers long. The color was reddish.
"Know what this is?"
Chris shook his head.
"A seed evaluation paper."
"Ah. So that's what you use to judge a seed's attribute."
"Know what one sheet costs?"
He was seeing an evaluation paper for the first time. He could hardly know the price.
"I don't."
"Even a shoddy cheap one will cost you five gold coins."
Chris's tongue nearly fell out.
"That really is expensive."
"A high mage makes them by working costly herbs into costly mana stones. They can hardly be cheap."
Chris pointed at the paper in Harvey's hand.
"And that one?"
"Ten gold. Made from a fire-attribute mana stone."
"If someone with a fire-attribute seed uses it, does it react?"
"It does."
He took several more sheets from the safe.
"This bluish one is the water-attribute paper. Brown is earth. White is wind."
Chris's eyes brightened.
"Is that where the colors of mages' robes come from?"
"That's right. Your progress is so slow I took you for an idiot, but the head does turn after all."
Was that praise, or an insult?
Chris laughed, awkward.
"Ha ha ha."
"So you simply had no talent."
"And the price?"
"Much the same as fire. Around ten gold. Among attribute stones, the four great elements are relatively abundant, so they stay on the cheap side."
Chris's mouth fell open.
"You call that cheap?"
"Dark-attribute and light-attribute papers run past a hundred. Try to buy one in a hurry and you may be looking at two hundred, three hundred. I've seen a rare special-attribute paper go for a thousand."
"God above. So that's why they say raising a single mage costs your weight in gold."
"Spirit Awakening is the cheap end of it. Climb to Thought Formulation or Seed Cultivation and don't even ask. I'm telling you, you have to pour mana stones out like water. I am the chief disciple of the great black mage Sheikh, and even I am stuck with drudge work like this because I don't have enough mana stones."
"So mages work for a living too."
"Of course. Who was it that brought you to the tower?"
"Mage Randal and Mage David."
"Right. You think those two tramp around the countryside picking up apprentices because they're bored? It's all paid work. Paid in mana stones."