The Tower and the Fox: Book 1 of The Calatians by Tim Susman

Author:Tim Susman [Susman, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9972794-6-7
Publisher: 24 Carat Words

10

First Spell

On Monday, they were taught their first spell: a basic levitation spell, the other one Kip already knew. He chafed at the slow pace, at the small wooden blocks they were given to practice with, but when Coppy reminded him that he’d said his magic gathering was better after last week, he forced himself to practice at the same pace as the other students.

His prior knowledge of the spell allowed him to spend some of his practice time watching the others in the class. Most of them were having difficulty gathering magic still, and spoke the spell while their hands were not glowing. Coppy and Emily did quite well, and Malcolm faltered but appeared to be learning quickly. Farley and Jacob Quarrel, a tall, thin student, did the best of the others, which surprised Kip. Farley had not done very well at gathering magic at first, though he’d gotten his hands to glow a steady lime-green by the end of the week. Here he was reciting a spell—out of a book, but still—and his wooden block rose, wobbled, and fell. Yet that was more than most of the others were able to do.

And then there was Victor Adamson.

Victor alone had not managed any kind of glow to his hands the previous week. Now he sat reading the spell book, and though Kip could not see his expression from behind, the boy’s head was bowed, his shoulders bent, his whole frame turned inward in concentration. He sat in the front row, directly before Master Patris, and though the old sorcerer strode through the class berating students for their failures, Adamson was as ignored as the Calatians, though his wooden cube never so much as budged an inch from his desk.

When Cobb sat back in his chair, his cube stubbornly unmoved, Patris suggested he revisit the methods of gathering magic. When Quarrel managed to lift his cube and then drop it with a clatter, Patris told him to practice his focus and concentration. But though Kip and Coppy kept their cubes aloft, they were never recognized; though Emily’s and Malcolm’s wobbled, they were never given instruction; though Adamson’s never moved save when he picked it up with his fingers, he was never reproved.

Kip wanted to ask him about his studies, but that afternoon, the questions of Adamson and Farley were driven from his mind. Master Argent took them up to the library.

For the other students, the staircase up was nothing new; they all lived up those stairs, and talked all the way up them about spells or letters they’d gotten from home. But for Kip, simply getting to see another part of the tower kept his senses alert, his ears perked and whiskers twitching at every motion. He looked at the stones, at the nicks and marks left by knives and hands, and wondered if Saul had left any trace of his short time here. If he had even been up this stair; the students had previously stayed in one of the outside buildings, one of the ones that was now a pile of rubble in a shattered foundation.

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