Pearls at Caerdonel Academy
Two weeks ago, classes recommenced at Caerdonel Academy. The final days of spring usually marked the time to make the journey out of the mountains and back to the riverside capitol city of Phan. What a city! No street is empty of people, and the low houses across the landscape resound with joyous sounds. Nearer to the centre, neon signs and western office buildings share real estate with local temples and alchemy shops. Then, in the very midst of the city, situated atop, beneath, and around the river Zhaoqing, is the magnificent campus of Caerdonel. Its most majestic building, a castle of stone and brilliant metal surrounded by gardens, sits proudly on an islet on the river. The castle’s red roofs and bronze defences are reflected perfectly in the clear waters of the river, and the thin, needle-like tower that rises from its central court can be seen throughout the city.
At the base of this tower sits a handsome black pedestal with five sides. Carved into each side is a fearsome dragon clutching a pure white pearl, iridescent with silver light. While the claw of these creatures did not seem to grasp the pale spheres tightly, it was practically impossible to unfasten them from their position. You see, each year, the Archwizard of the Eastern Council and Headmaster of Caerdonel Academy, Tseten the Unbreakable, set five puzzles for the students to decipher – with the first to solve a puzzle being the claimant of the pearl. There was one puzzle for each school – mystica, arcana, alchemy, diplomacy, and philosophy. Possession of such a pearl would grant potent magical benefits for the entirety of the academic year, so naturally, the entire castle was swarming with students at that time. I typically chose to avoid it altogether – my skills were barely enough to pass classes, let alone solve riddles!
Fifth years at Caerdonel were allowed their own dormitories, so my home in the city was a small apartment on the western bank of the river overlooking a dirty plaza with a thick-rooted tree. On my first day of classes, I fastened my little brown neck scarf and made my way to meet my mentor.
As a novice mage, my scarf was barely long enough to be fastened around my neck, its brown colour signifying my vocation in kinetic magic. Meanwhile, the scarf of my assigned mentor of magic, Dr. Simon Albumen, a westerner with a thick beard that covered his ugly face, had a brown and grey scarf that was about a metre long. Apparently, before the revolution, the emperor had a scarf of hundreds of colours that was fifty metres in length!
When I first met Dr. Albumen, he welcomed me into his office, a small space in the main castle with an odd-looking writing desk and a small window. “Please, come in, Dua Huang.” His accent was strange and slow. “I will be instructing you and overlooking your progress in energetica this year. Now, I have no intention of spending laborious hours honing your mana skills. Instead, you will spend your time reading what I assign you. Each week you will report what you have read, and I will assign you more reading. If you wish to practice casting spells, do so in your own time. Understand?”
I nodded and soon found myself in the castle gardens surrounded by more books on arcane theory and movements of mana than I had ever read before – and only one hour into the new semester! My other classes were more forgiving. On Monday, my two-hour lecture on arcane theory only ended with a single book to read, and geography’s homework was to simply bring in a jar of soil for the next class on Ielenday afternoon.
It was after that (rather dull) class on soil composure that I first heard the news: Xiao Wei, two-time claimant of the arcana pearl, had gone missing!
“His entire house was ransacked!” My friend, Meishi exclaimed. “All of his projects and heirlooms were stolen… who would do such a thing?”
“The real question is, who could do such a thing?” I responded. “Xiao Wei is a pretty good mage, even by graduate standards. This couldn’t have been just any two-bit thug.”
Indeed, I had shared a charms class with Wei before. His projects were unimaginably complex, imbuing those cheap bronze sheets with mana in masterful ways. For last year’s charms class, he produced a white-banded bronze wand that could refine the output of a spell to produce the most appropriate response to a given situation. He’d used it to solve the arcana pearl’s puzzle about a month into fourth year, which was a fairly astounding speed given previous attempts.
Meishi and I were sitting at the base of Master Bai Delan’s wizard pagoda – one of many that littered the riverfront in this part of the city. We sat chatting for a while, watching the fishing boats go under the bridges on the river. Meishi had decided to specialise in harming curses – a well-sought specialty in Phan – and had been assigned Bai Delan as her mentor. Apparently, Bai was a better mentor than Albumen, offering actual instruction and training. Meishi reported she had managed to kill a mouse by the end of the lesson. Meanwhile, I could only manage some weak telekinesis or a good old fashioned boiling spell before becoming exhausted.
After a while, Meishi paused to look out over an argument down by the riverbank where two fishermen argued. “I suppose it’s a simple case of qui bono, isn’t it?” She eventually said.
“Huh?” I responded, unfamiliar with the phrase.
“It’s a legal term. Whoever benefits from Xiao Wei’s disappearance should be under suspicion of guilt. My money’s on whoever was hoping for his spot on the dux board, but I guess we’ll see in time.”
After that, we parted ways. I returned to my apartment and cooked myself some rice. I practiced boiling the water magically, but I could hardly maintain the heat level required to cook it properly. As I ate my undercooked rice, I thought about Xiao Wei.
How haven’t the authorities found him yet? Even if he’s been killed, they should have advanced enough scrying to locate his approximate location…Whoever’s taken him must have access to some fairly advanced warding schemes.
I shook my head, letting the thought go. The authorities are on the case; they will find whoever has done this. Putting my bowl back on its shelf, I went to sleep.
The next morning, I attended the large training hall where my energetica classes were held. More practical than other classes, these kinds of magic classes had a fairly traditional organisation, modelled off old martial arts guilds. A single arcane master instructed a class of about 100 students who silently followed their directions on the correct movements and incantations for a spell. Then, each student was assigned a sparring partner with whom they would practice their magic on the bamboo mats. The environment was highly disciplined, and always under the control of the hall’s master, who had total awareness of every mote of mana in the room. If any accident were to occur, the master was always able to react without delay, being perfectly attuned to the entire space.
I had signed up for Master Long’s course on the hex spell, which would be shared with the warding class. The first hour was spent practicing the movements, our wands tucked safely away. Then, we were assigned sparring partners. The hexers would attempt to break through their opponent’s wards – whichever opponent could take a hold of the stick in the centre of the sparring circle would win.
“My name is Telian Jia. You would do well to remember this moment.” My opponent introduced himself. He was a tall boy with long black hair and a silvery novice scarf. We both were wearing the white academy training uniform, but his seemed to fit him much better, his strong physique filling the thick cloth garments well.
I nodded at him, then assumed a sparring position with my wand. Telian Jia did likewise, his rosewood wand poised for combat. We eyed each other coolly as the student referee moved to place the wooden staff between us. Holding it out in front of him, the referee looked to me, then to my opponent, then dropped the staff.
“Begin!”
Before I could even let off a hex, a mighty and invisible force threw me off my feet. Suddenly, my wand was spinning across the floor, and I felt the unmistakable strength of a warding spell binding me flat on my back. Telian Jia walked smugly across the room and picked up the wooden staff before dropping the ward.
“Well done, young man!” Master Long announced as the boy twirled the staff with ease. “You may have a serious shot at top of the class at this rate.”
The days passed by.
Charms class was quiet and boring without the energising brilliance of Xiao Wei. The workbenches which lined the courtyard where we trained our skills were growing warmer in the early summer sun. A swooping river bird flew by overhead and landed on a nearby roof as the bronze plates were passed around. We were about to continue into the second half of the lesson on levitation platforms when the instructor was loudly interrupted.
“He’s claimed the arcana pearl! Telian Jia did it!” The boy bounded into the courtyard through the circular arch at the south end, his arms waving about.
The entire class raced out into the street, dropping their bronze plates and tools in the hopes of seeing this legendary feat. When we reached Caerdonel castle, its mighty red roofs glistening in the midday sun, the crowd was already spilling out onto the bridge over the river. I stopped to clamber onto a great stone statue of a square-looking lion, peering over the heads of the crowd to see further into the castle.
Through the bronze gates of the ancient riverside castle, I could see Telian Jia standing on the pitch-black pedestal in front of Tseten the Unbreakable’s front door. The boy’s pale robes swung wildly as he tossed the pearl up into the air with his left hand then summoned it back to his open palm to the cheer of the crowd. And in his right hand, clutching it with smug pride, was a black-banded bronze wand.