The food was luxuriously greasy. Charred pork chops with mashed potatoes, pickles, and some kind of tart red berry smash. I focused on the food to tune out the rest of the discussion. The bubbling feeling in my chest didn’t go away and I feared I would burst out laughing otherwise.
Once I finished eating, I handed the plate and utensils to a skeleton that had been hovering over my shoulder for a while. Well, sorry. It was difficult to eat fast, as the salt and the berries burned my lips. Luckily, the insides of my mouth weren’t as raw and cracked as the rest of me.
“What are you all going to do next?” Minnelil asked, having finished as well.
“I have a lot to revise,” Grit said. “Fek too.”
“But I was going to go to the beach,” he said, pouting.
“You can make a book club out of it,” Minnelil said. “You’re all reading the Scriptures, right?”
I nodded at her. “You said that I should start with the book exams?”
“That would be my suggestion, yes. You are in no shape to try channeling yet.”
“Yeah, the mana would just leak right out of your skin,” Fek added, circling a finger around my face.
“Gross,” Grit said.
“And yet somewhat accurate,” Minnelil said, sighing. “Anyway. I’ll come and give you my notes. You have three days until the exam and countless poetic parables about death to understand, so better get to it.”
I spent the following days mostly in bed. My skin was still tender, all my muscles sore. I got winded every time I walked up a flight of stairs, but at least I only had to do it three times per day when I went to eat.
Three meals a day. What a life.
Minnelil’s notes on the Scriptures of Death were almost as poetic as the book itself. She left to visit her home, so I couldn’t even ask what she’d meant by all the metaphors. Fek interrupted my reading every five minutes, but as it was always something about the book, it was fine. Grit held both hands over her ears, white brow furrowed so hard it was obvious even without the eyebrows.
I received a letter from the Bursar. Get well. Work will wait, it read. A surprisingly thoughtful note, all things considered. With everyone so afraid of her, how had she even gotten the news?
I kept reading, until the exam day rolled along.
“Feeling ready?” Grit whispered.
“Mhh,” I said. The Exam Hall was similar to the dining halls, a large open space with dozens of wooden desks lined in rows and rows. I sat near the front of the hall, with who knows how many people at my back. There was a long way to the single exit, far behind me.
It was stupid. I had stolen from wizards, escaped from guards, survived enough fights to make an adventurer proud, but I had to focus to keep from snapping the quill by clenching it too hard in my fist. I wished Lombarte was there, so I would have a reason to be anxious, but I hadn’t seen him even once. Maybe he’d learned his lesson.
I didn’t believe for a moment I would be so lucky.
I wanted to write, get it over with. Instead, I had to stare at the desk and wait for Ferne to signal us to start. A skeleton stood next to every desk holding a folded paper with both hands.
“Begin!” Ferne shouted, sweeping the hall with her hand.
The skeleton picked at the paper’s edges carefully with its bony fingers, starting to unfold it slowly.
I don’t know how I managed not to scream at it.
The questions weren’t what I expected. They asked me to interpret Fendribalis’ writings, give my opinions, apply them if I encountered an undead broken loose from its master’s control. I thought this was supposed to be about the book. What did my opinions matter?
Ferne paced on the stage, eyes half-closed. “You have an hour. You can hand your paper over to the skeleton and leave, if you finish early.”
My quill snapped when there were maybe half an hour left. I had answered two of the questions.
I was sweating, absolutely drenched. I finished one more question. Ferne glared down at me from the stage. The skeleton rested a hand on the back of my chair. If I yanked on the spine, the skeleton would probably fold in half, letting me escape. Many of the students had already handed over their papers. The skeletons placed them in neat stacks on a desk and walked to the corner of the room to stand in a tightly packed clump of bone.
“You have fifteen minutes!” Ferne called.
This was stupid, I thought for the hundredth time. Second to last question.
Explain what Fendribalis writes about the harmonics between the wordly runes and the Null.
I didn’t remember, but I wrote down how they made me feel. Described the tingling, the pressure behind my eyes, and how they trilled against each other. About the overtones sparking and how the timbre can be pleasing, if you’re into that sort of thing and a creep.
“Five minutes,” Ferne said, standing next to me.
I flinched, startled by her voice. The hall was practically empty. Grit had left, Fek had left.
Last question: Describe the effects of the Null on living things and the reasons why it has said effects. I stared at it. The quill drooped in my hand.
“Focus, you blunt brick. Leave the last one empty, and you’ve failed,” Ferne whispered.
I whipped my head toward her, but she’d already turned away. She walked to look over the shoulder of another student and I stared at the paper, scrunched the quill in my hand.
Yeah, it makes them damn angry, I wrote, pushing the quill on the paper with my whole arm. Kills them inside. And out, I added. Makes them hard and sometimes brittle. So watch it! I slammed the dot on the exclamation mark so hard the quill snapped again and the tip splintered.
“Two minutes,” she said.
I panted for a moment, and dipped the wrecked quill into the ink pot, scratching down the final words. Living yearn for the end. Nothing is it. Don’t drown in it.
I leaned back and the skeleton snatched the paper from me. How come it could suddenly move so fast? It walked and handed my paper directly to Ferne, standing near the exit. I avoided her gaze as I walked toward the door.
She glanced at the writing and raised her eyebrows. “Student,” she said.
“What?”
She waved my paper at me. “Good answer. Sorry about that. You looked like you needed a bit of encouragement.”
“That was encouragement?”
“According to Falar, yes. He said it would work wonders on you. Don’t you have a meeting with him next? You can tell him the good news. You’ve earned your credit.”
I breathed in deep, leaning my back on a wall. How had all that gotten under my skin? I would fight Lombarte and his two stupid goons any day of the week over doing another exam, or walking toward Falar’s study like I was doing now.
Jextor’s door was next to his. It was covered in thick frost, ice clumped all around its edges. What that was all about? I scratched at the ice with my nail to see if it was real.
It was, but I made myself stop and walk one door farther. Lecturer Falar, the sign on it read. The door wasn’t locked and opened smoothly as I pulled on it.
“Don’t bother knocking,” a low voice said from inside. “At least you’re still alive after that stunt you pulled earlier this week.”
“You knew that already,” I said, squinting into the gloomy room. It was as large as our dorm, with doors leading deeper into other rooms. A single dim orb of light shone, wrapped in a cage of thin wooden strips hanging from the ceiling. Bookshelves lined the walls and in the middle of the room was a desk with neatly organized piles of paper and a couple of large books, one open. In the corner were two comfy-looking armchairs with a floral pattern on them. “You told Ferne to call me a blunt brick.”
“You insult me by assuming such a bad insult was one of mine. Sit, and we’ll review your progress,” Falar said. He stood in the back corner, facing a bookshelf and almost hidden by the shadows, book in hand.
”You’ll ruin your eyes reading in the dark like that,” I said.
He chuckled dryly, snapping the book shut.
”I passed the test, by the way. Ferne said I’ve earned my credit.”
”Good for you. I expected as much. Fendribalis is not the clearest writer, but I had a feeling you would grasp the relevant parts intuitively. Make yourself at home.”
I sat on a chair set before the desk.
He walked toward the armchair, but stopped to sigh. He wheeled around and sat down on the chair on the opposite side of the desk instead. ”So, tell me in your own words. How have you spent your first week here?”
”Mostly at the infirmary,” I said. He scoffed as I continued. ”But I do have four credits now. Jextor gave me two for killing me.” I placed the credit slip on his desk, with Jextor’s flowing signature at the bottom.
”Ah, so that was the reason for the ward fraying. I should have guessed. That perpetual thorn in my side.” He wrinkled his nose at the credit slip. “Not to mention awarding two credits for that is ridiculous, but I suppose even he might have felt guilty. What is done is done.”
”You think I shouldn’t have got two for that?”
Falar took the credit slip, opened a drawer on his desk and dropped the slip inside. He clasped his hands on the desk, leaning back in his chair. ”The credits are how we measure learning and the advancement of your studies. They aren’t candy to be handed out for amusing behaviour. Still, the experience is part of the curriculum, so fine. How has working with the Bursar been?”
”Fine so far. I like her.”
”That doesn’t surprise me. You both have the personality of a serrated knife. Does the new ward still hold?”
I brought a hand to my throat, feeling the millstone hanging around it. I looked away and wrinkled my nose. The question didn’t deserve an answer, but I did have something to say about it. ”It’s making me feel weird. I don’t like it.”
”Want to know why? I had a feeling it might and have been doing some reading on the subject,” he said, tapping a finger on a pile of books on the table. The top one had Fendribalis Engelbred engraved into its cover, but no title for the book.
I wanted to say I didn’t, but that would have been stupid. Doing things out of spite would get me nowhere, not anymore. ”Tell me.”
He sat up straighter, the dim light gleaming off his dark eyes. Was he actually excited about this? ”A normal person’s mood isn’t affected by the Null. It’s rare to be so attuned to magic, but much rarer to be attuned to nothingness. It’s exacerbating your problems.”
Hearing the words felt like missing a step on the stairs. I forced the question out, thinking about every word as he tapped his fingertips together, waiting. ”You mean I’m angry and… sad because of the Null?”
”No. The explanation for that is much simpler. You are a dog that has been mistreated long enough for it to grow into a hateful, twisted little thing, biting at everyone who gets close. That connects you to the Null, not the other way around.”
”I liked being called a blunt brick better,” I whispered. I had meant it to sound defiant, but I could hardly breathe.
“And yet, you didn’t,” he said, leaning forward and pressing a finger to the desktop before me. “You’re intelligent and you know it and you’d bristle at someone claiming you’re not. What I’m saying now, you must be used to hearing.”
I stared at him, trying to keep the tears from reaching my eyes. I sniffed, lips pressing together. What right did he have to tell me these things, especially when I feared he was right?
He met my stare for a moment, then leaned back, his voice dropping back to a low drone. ”You are still getting used to your connection to the Null being all but severed. Your brain is giddy with life,” he said, flicking his hand back and forth next to his ear. ”I assume it won’t last, as you are still you, with all the obvious damage you are lugging around. But I’m grateful for this small respite. I didn’t expect to be able to finish this explanation.”
I was quiet for a while. I wasn’t feeling very giddy at the moment, but what he said made sense. I’d read Fendribalis as well. ”So, now what?” I managed to say.
”Now?” he said. ”Now we’ll discuss your studies. I’ll be responsible for preparing you to face the darkness out there. Facing the one inside is your own problem.”