The crowd waited for him to begin. The procession of a novitiate was enough of an occasion for the townsfolk of Noriburg to take a few minutes break from their daily chores.
Damir was not interested in the crowd, however. Let them wait a while, he thought to himself. For every novitiate this was a special moment—the second time they travelled up the Magician’s Path. Almost always, it was the most memorable journey they made. The first time anyone ascends the Path is upon admittance into the schola, signifying the beginning of one’s training in sorcery. The second time signifies that the training has been successfully completed and that you are close to real power. Ready to take up your position as a sorcerer.
Damir waited before taking his first step. He cast his memory back to the first time he made this ascent, five years before. For most of the boys who joined the schola with him, it was a moment of pride; parents and siblings watching on, waving and shouting. But Damir just remembered fear and heartache. The day before, his mother had taken him to this town and abandoned him here. Removed from his family and his tribe, surrounded by strangers speaking a different language, he remembered feeling lost and confused. He had fought back the tears that had threatened to humiliate him. As he stood waiting now, the crowd looking on, Damir relived that first memory, etched on his brain: acknowledging it, recognising how far he had come since then. Friendless, afraid, he was like the runt of the litter when he took his first step that day. If any of the townsfolk had stopped to look at him five years ago, they would most likely have put money on him being the first to fail. As it happened, that weakness turned out to be strength.
“Get on with it,” shouted someone from the crowd.
Damir hardly heard it. Such taunts were now background noise, like the wheels of a cart rolling past or the bark of a dog.
He turned his gaze to the Magician’s Path, three hundred and seventy-seven steps which curved upwards from the street and stopped at the gates of the Sorcerer’s Palace; the tallest, most impressive and most important building in the town of Noriburg. Five years ago he had been the runt of the litter. Now, he was the only one of his peers to make the second journey. Damir took one final breath and placed a foot on the first step.
The Magician’s Path had been used as a method of separating the wheat from the chaff for generations. But now, five years after he had joined the schola, Damir had no fears. As he ascended the steps, so that he now stood above the heads of the onlookers, he approached the first test. He remembered this well from five years ago. That time, a ring of fire appeared on the steps above them and the boys had to jump through in order to progress. Waiting at the back of the line, he had heard a kerfuffle, and shouting. One boy, his eyes wet, was shoved down the line until he stood next to Damir. The other boys had all jumped through the fire and now looked down, jeering.
Damir realised that the boy had not dared to jump through, so he approached himself. Flames licked out but the ring of fire seemed to be hanging in mid air, so that it was not clear what the flames were feeding on. He could feel the heat coming from the fire and was wary of getting singed. Still, he could see the other boys had managed to do it without injury. They now jeered down at him, seemingly expecting him to falter. Steeling himself, Damir jumped through to the other side, to the obvious disappointment of the others. He turned around to look at the last boy. Wiping his eyes on his arm, the youngster approached the ring of fire again. Unlike the others, Damir did not find his predicament amusing; he just did not comprehend what was stopping him from jumping through. The boy looked up and for a few seconds met Damir’s blank stare. Then, shaking his head, and with fresh tears, he turned and made his descent back down the Magician’s Path, to humiliation and with more jeers ringing in his ears. Damir looked up at the grinning faces ahead of him. Despite his youth, he realised that their reaction betrayed their own sense of fear. The failure of one seemed to give the others strength and confidence. In turn, this realisation, that they were scared just like him, gave Damir confidence.
This time Damir faced a similar illusion, but instead of a ring of fire there was a wall of fierce orange and red flame blocking his path. As he approached, heat poured from the wall in waves. He stopped. Despite being aware that the wall of fire was an illusion, his natural bodily instinct was to stop when he got within a certain distance. He had to force his body to walk again, using his mental discipline. It required some effort and for the first time Damir appreciated the failure of that small boy on the steps. He simply hadn’t been able to make his body move. As Damir closed his eyes and passed through the wall of fire, he could feel the flames burning him; felt his hair and clothes catch fire; felt his skin melting and peeling away under the intense heat. When he reached the other side he opened his eyes and checked himself. He was unharmed by the magic.
Innumerable times, over the last five years, Damir found himself to be stronger in such situations than those around him. This, he put down to his early years on the steppe lands. Raised in one of the Azarian tribes who made their living from the harsh environment, Damir had been toughened up by the experience, in a way that the ‘civilised’ town dwellers around him, with all their luxuries, hadn’t been.
He remembered the long days in the saddle, through rain or scorching heat, in the open grasslands of his home where there was no shelter. The tribe would only stop moving when it was too dark to see. Quickly raising their yurt, Damir’s parents would send him to his bed and he would sleep as soon as he lay down. The next day, they would move on again, herding their animals towards new pasture. It wasn’t just travelling in all weathers, there was also privation. Totally dependent on their animals for survival, they could not afford to kill them whenever they were hungry. Damir vividly remembered a particularly lean period, which must have been weeks long, when their food had gone. His parents drank only water and they fed him milk and cow’s blood.
When his father still loved him, he showed Damir how to safely draw the blood from the cow’s neck. He also told him how to take it from a horse. This was something any Azarian would be loathe to do, since the horse provided them with both transport and their military strength. Such measures seemed a long way from the affluent world Damir had experienced since arriving at Noriburg.
Damir easily negotiated the next trials, further tests of his magical powers set by the sorcerers of the schola which were in fact mere formalities for him. As he approached the last steps of the Magician’s Path he came upon the final test. Ahead of him the Path separated and multiplied until innumerable Paths appeared before him, challenging him to select the correct one. Pick the wrong one and he might wander eternally in some other dimension. But Damir could easily tell the right path from the wrong ones, his mind now so keenly attuned to the differences between reality and illusion that he could sense and feel the difference instinctively.
The final test on his first journey along the Magician’s Path had been, in its own way, equally straightforward for him. As the children reached this point five years ago, an apparition appeared before them and explained to them that if they continued beyond this point their parents would die. Was the statement truth, falsehood, half-truth? The children had to work this out for themselves. For most of them the outward self-assurance visibly shattered as they were faced with a stark choice between ambition and family. For young Damir, however, the choice was not so difficult. Abandoned by his parents, they were effectively dead to him anyway. He had no reason to worry himself about them—indeed, if they were to die it could be seen as a just punishment for their actions. Young Damir was the first to walk past the apparition and go on to reach step three hundred and seventy-seven. Seeing this, those boys who could follow him joined him at the top. Those who couldn’t retreated down to their families.
Older Damir now repeated the feat, completing his second journey along the Magician’s Path. This time he was the only one to do so. All the other boys who had completed the first journey with him had fallen by the wayside.
He rapped his knuckles on the gates of the Sorcerer’s Palace and waited to be admitted.
Damir knelt in front of Maelgwn the Sorcerer, one of the leading members of the Sorcerer’s Palace and Damir’s most fearsome teacher. Maelgwn’s tests had accounted for more students failing, and therefore leaving the schola, than any other teacher. Damir himself had come close a number of times. When he joined the palace school Maelgwn had taken an instant dislike to him, keen to get rid of the ‘filthy Azarian’. His feelings, as far as Damir could tell, had changed little. But Damir knew that a grudging respect had emerged over the years, as Damir began to excel in lessons.
The teachers encouraged competition amongst their pupils from the outset, undermining any sense of comradeship that might have developed. Damir was instantly marked out as a victim by his peers. Small and wiry, he was different: a foreigner, who could barely speak their language. Snubbed, humiliated and beaten, his was a lonely existence. He was nearly broken in those early weeks and months. The only thing that saved him was his intense interest in the lessons, to which he devoted himself. Outside his lessons he spent his waking hours practising his craft and this, combined with his natural ability, began to transform him into one of the most successful students.
Simeon, his most consistent tormentor, was a spoiled son of a minor nobleman, to whom most of the other students automatically deferred. But he was an average user of magic and in the world of the Sorcerer’s Palace this began to matter more than social position in the outside world. One day Damir caught him alone. Jumping him from the shadows of the cloister, Damir knocked him to the ground and pummelled his face until it was a bloody, pulped mess and Damir’s knuckles were stripped raw. Simeon’s shouts of defiance, then fear, stopped, but Damir still worked on his victim’s face until he was too exhausted to continue. The attitude of the teachers, which had allowed Damir’s beatings to go unpunished, now worked in his favour. They were largely uninterested in the attack on Simeon and the other pupils were now too scared of Damir to exact their own revenge. Simeon recovered physically but never regained his former confidence and dropped out of the schola soon afterwards.
Meanwhile, in lessons, Damir went from strength to strength, leaving the other pupils even more wary of the power he now controlled. By the end of the fourth year he had achieved a dominant position amongst the pupils, who gave him a wide berth whenever possible and avoided earning his wrath. In his final year he even delighted in taking them on in spell casting, contests which they usually backed away from. In the final months it was clear that the teachers had lost interest in anyone but Damir. The other pupils faded away until Damir alone remained, invited to tread the Magician’s Path a second time.
“Damir,” intoned Maelgwn, “you understand that you are to be set your final assessment, and that the successful completion of it will allow you to take your place among us as a member of the Palace?”
“Yes, master,” replied Damir.
Damir fully understood what was about to happen. He had proven himself as a sorcerer. Now his loyalty would be tested in some way. The sorcerers of the palace demanded his obedience. Obedience would see him accepted as one of them. Disobedience would lead to his destruction, for they could not allow a powerful magician to live outside their control.
“Two leagues northeast of Noriburg is a village named Berva. Set into the side of the hill which overlooks Berva is a portal. It is bound by certain magic spells. Your task is to open this portal. If you succeed you will have passed this final assessment. Lodgings in Berva have been provided for you. Do you have any questions?”
Open a portal? Too easy. There was a catch, but Damir understood that Maelgwn would not reveal this to him now. “I have no questions, master,” he responded.
“Very well. You may take a mount from the stables. You should go now. The people of Berva will direct you to your lodgings when you arrive there.”
Damir enjoyed the short journey to Berva. To be out in the countryside was a release from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the palace, where he was always being assessed; always judged.
When he arrived, he found Berva to be an unassuming place; he was in the centre of the village before he realised it. There was a small church but all the buildings were modest, one storey, timber affairs. It was deserted. Presumably most villagers were in the fields tending their crops, something about which Damir knew nothing. He reached the far end of the village and was contemplating riding off to search for the inhabitants when he saw a female villager walking towards him along the road. He waited for her. As she got nearer he saw that she was young, about his age, and pretty, with long blonde hair tied up at the back. She carried a basket and as she approached him, he could see it was filled with berries and mushrooms, suggesting that she was returning from foraging in the woods.
Unsure about the social niceties, Damir decided to dismount from his horse.
“Hello,” he began, “I am come from Noriburg…”
“Yes, you are Damir,” the girl interrupted, a slight smile playing on her face. “I am Maura. I will show you where you are staying while you are in Berva.”
Maura gestured for Damir to follow her and she turned off the road along a path. Damir walked by her side, leading his horse. She led him to a small cottage.
“We must see to your animal first,” said Maura, holding out a hand. Damir gave her the reins and she tethered the beast to the gate, around which was a suitable grassed area. She next fetched a bowl of water for him. Only then did she invite Damir to the front door of the cottage.
“This is your cottage?” asked Damir.
“Yes. You will be staying with me while you are in Berva.”
“Oh. Do you have family here?”
“No,” said Maura, “I live by myself here.”
Damir didn’t want to be rude, but he was too inquisitive to not ask further. “That is unusual. Do you mind me asking—”
“It is my father’s cottage. But he is rarely here.”
Maura led Damir inside. It was a well kept one-room house, dominated by a kitchen hearth that was scrubbed clean. Maura had set up beds at either end, straw filled mattresses which lay on the floor. Damir left his small carrying bag on his bed.
“It is very kind of you to put me up,” he said.
“You are welcome, Damir. I think there is time for me to show you the way to the Portal you have come to examine. Then I must get on with the dinner and other chores.”
Maura led Damir out of the village. Within minutes they were in the countryside, walking along a rough track. The land around Berva was soft and gentle compared to the harsh steppe where Damir was raised. Moving off the path they crossed a meadow, their shoes picking up the moisture from the grass under their feet. As they walked, Damir could not help taking glances at Maura as she walked along. She would occasionally stop to explain some feature and then set off again, her hips swaying slightly from side to side as she walked. Having spent the last few years almost exclusively with boys and middle-aged men, Damir felt it was a privilege to be sharing this walk with the girl.
The route Maura led him on now took them to higher ground, rockier than the lush grass they had passed through. There was no longer a path but Maura seemed sure about the direction. They came upon a rocky outcropping which rose ten feet tall. Maura put one hand onto the surface and moved along the outcropping, tracing her fingertips along the rock. As Damir followed her she stopped and gestured at the rock. At first he saw nothing unusual but as he focused on the surface of the rock, lines and images began to reveal themselves. Words and pictures emerged and the lines connected to show the shape of a door or archway in the rock. The Portal. Damir held out his hand and placed his palm onto the surface. He sensed the power that was present. It was a subtle and shifting magic, reluctant to reveal itself.
“I will leave you to your work for a while,” said Maura, causing him to start; his attention on the portal had almost led him to forget her presence. “But please return to the cottage within the hour.”
“Of course.”
“I—I know you are likely to get caught up in what you are doing and forget the time.”
“I promise,” replied Damir.
Maura smiled at him and began to retrace her steps back towards the village. This time it was the girl who held Damir’s attention. He did not begin to study the Portal again until Maura was completely out of sight.
The next few days were the happiest of Damir’s life. During the day he would head up to the Portal and spend his time puzzling out the riddles and magical incantations which had been set to keep the Portal closed. It was challenging work, but he enjoyed it and felt confident that he would find the solutions in the end. He worked non-stop and, through patience and perseverance, he would unlock two or three of the spells which had been placed about the rock, presumably by sorcerers from the Palace.
With a sense of achievement, having got nearer to the end of the task, he would head back down to the village when the sun began to set. Despite his work during the day, the truth was that it was the evenings in Berva that he enjoyed the most. Maura always prepared a good supper for him and he revelled in the fact that someone had spent time and thought into providing something for him. He would then do his best to help her with the end of the day chores: washing, tidying or fixing. She would poke fun at him when he got things wrong. Then they would sit, just the two of them, spending the evening in lazy conversation. Damir was perfectly open about what he was up to at the Portal since Maura already seemed to know why he was here. She was not especially interested in that, however; she wanted to know about his past; his family; his time in the Palace.
But Damir liked it best when Maura talked. She mainly told him stories about the other villagers: who she had traded food with; who had been rude to her and what she had said back; the foolish, everyday acts that went on; who was having a hard time and what she did to help. Damir would sit there, half listening, but also just watching her. He gazed at her expressions as she told her stories: her frowns, grimaces, and her laugh. He noticed how her hands waved around when she was particularly animated about a topic. Damir knew he was falling in love with her. He had no idea what to do about it—how to proceed—whether she had any feelings for him. But he didn’t really mind. He was just happy to sit in the same room, listening to and watching her, until Maura decided that it had got too late. They went to bed on their straw mattresses, on opposite sides of the cottage. Damir would close his eyes, think about how he would approach the Portal the next day, and he would go to sleep happy.
It was on the sixth day that Damir’s progress on his task came to a halt. It was not the magic; he had identified and removed every spell laid on the Portal he had come across. It was a few words. They had emerged in the surface of the rock the previous day, after he had unlocked one of the most challenging enchantments. It had taken a lot out of him and he had knelt in the ground, catching his breath, when he noticed the words appearing slightly above his eye line:
The Portal demands a sacrifice of the blood of the beloved
He had run through the line endlessly yesterday and again this day, but could not make out the meaning of it. There seemed to be no obvious riddle in it and he could detect no magic involved either. The words just stared at him from the rock. For hours he stared back. Then he gave up.
Frustrated, Damir made the journey back down towards Berva. It was only mid-afternoon, but he hoped that a change of scene might help. He walked along the track that led into the village. The end of the track joined the village road and as he got closer he noticed a man on horseback, looking in his direction. Damir walked over while the man waited for him. He got very close until he realised, with a start, that it was his teacher, Maelgwn. He had been the dominant figure in Damir’s life for the last five years and yet Damir had not recognised him. Berva had become like another world to the Sorcerer’s Palace in Noriburg. But, of course, it wasn’t another world at all. The only reason he was here was because Maelgwn had sent him and the old man’s presence was a sharp reminder of that reality.
“Damir,” said Maelgwn, his voice like grating stones, his eyes piercing and sharp, as if they were trying to cut a way through Damir’s body to look at his soul.
“Master,” acknowledged Damir, lowering his head.
Maelgwn took his time to say anything further and Damir waited in silence. “How does it go at the Portal?”
“Well, sir, at first it went well but I have now…become stuck on the task,” Damir admitted candidly.
He looked up to see the sorcerer’s response, expecting anger or some such emotion. Maelgwn, as ever, tried to hide his emotions but Damir knew him too well for that. Maelgwn was pleased and there was something else. Relief?
He wants me to fail, Damir realised.
“Well, you do not have long to correct this, Damir. In three days you must appear at the Sorcerer’s Palace with proof that you have unlocked the Portal.”
That was all Maelgwn said, there was no “or else…” But Damir didn’t need telling what the consequences of failure would be. The Sorcerer’s Palace wouldn’t allow a failed novitiate with significant magical power to go wandering around the world, stuffed full of their secrets. If Damir didn’t complete this task he would be tracked down and killed.
“I suggest you get back to your work instead of wasting your time around here,” said Maelgwn reprovingly. The sorcerer nudged his knees into the flanks of his horse and was on his way, travelling back to Noriburg. Damir watched him go. He turned around to head back to the Portal as he had been told. But he caught himself.
What’s the point? he thought to himself. I can’t stare at those same words for the rest of the day.
Damir carried on to Maura’s cottage. He hoped, he almost prayed that she would be there. He needed her to chase away a growing sense of despair. She was there, her back to him as she prepared the food for the evening’s meal. She turned around with a gasp when he entered the cottage.
“Damir! What are you doing here? You gave me a fright.”
“Sorry,” said Damir, grinning. He then lost his smile. “I—the Portal. I’ve got stuck on it. I don’t know what to do—”
“Oh, I see. Well you can come and help me peel vegetables then,” she paused. “You saw my father?”
“Your father?” said Damir, shaking his head. “No, I—”
“Maelgwn.”
“Maelgwn?” No other name would have shocked him more, and yet when she said it he somehow knew it must be true.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Maura shrugged. “I promised not to. I’m his sinful error. You must know sorcerers are not allowed families. He keeps me here, away from Noriburg, but close enough for him to visit and keep an eye on me.”
“Your mother?”
“She died six years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. Here, you can do these carrots.”
They worked in silence for a while, as Damir processed the new information and Maura allowed him to.
“Your father told me I have three days to open the Portal. If I don’t…”
“You will, Damir. I know you will.”
“Maura, I’ve got to tell you something. This time I’ve spent with you, I feel—”
Maura put down her knife and put a finger to his lips. Damir stopped talking. With her other hand she brushed his cheek, held his neck and pulled him into her. They kissed. Damir’s heart was racing as the restraint they had both shown until now was swept away. Maura led him over to her bed. She undressed, showing him her body. Breathless, Damir did the same.
They made love in Maura’s cottage. Damir finally said what he had wanted to say, “I love you.” He then began to cry.
Maura didn’t tease him; she lay with him and stroked his hair. But she didn’t understand why Damir cried.
At last, he understood the words on the Portal.
The Portal demands a sacrifice of the blood of the beloved
Maura was the beloved. Damir loved her. So did Maelgwn. This was the real task that had been set—a test of loyalty, not magic. Damir had to kill Maura to open the Portal. By doing so he would prove that his loyalty to the Sorcerer’s Palace came above everything else. The sorcerers had decided that Maelgwn would have to lose his own daughter to make this point. A sacrifice given by both master and student. No wonder he had looked relieved when Damir told him he had got stuck.
Damir cried. He felt sick to his stomach. He knew that if he refused he was as good as dead.
In the Sorcerer’s Palace in Noriburg, Damir knelt in front of Maelgwn the Sorcerer. He presented him with a chalice, a chalice that he could only have obtained by opening the Portal at Berva and therefore completing his final task. Both men knew it meant much more than that. Damir could see it on Maelgwn’s face as he struggled to control the shock and the grief. They waited in silence for a while.
“Stand, Damir,” said the sorcerer, his voice firm and unwavering. “You have successfully completed your final assessment. You are now a Sorcerer of the Palace. You are one of us. My brother.”
Maelgwn strode over to Damir, gripped his shoulders and gave him an embrace. He then pulled away; all emotion gone. No questions about Maura.
“We will arrange chambers for you. There is much for you to do; you will be kept very busy. Someone will call for you when we are ready to tell you more.”
Damir left the Palace and headed into town, feeling lightheaded. Maelgwn had lost a daughter and gained a brother. And he had accepted it. But that was not something Damir could ever accept. He entered the stables of the inn. Maura was where he had left her. She was still very pale; very weak; but alive.
Once Damir had realised the situation he was in, he knew he had to act fast. If Maura hadn’t agreed to the plan he would have gladly gone to his death. But she agreed. So over the next three days Damir bled her. He bled her like his father had shown him how to bleed a cow or a horse all those years ago in the steppes of Azaria. Opening a vein in her neck, he would quickly seal it again before she lost too much blood. Maura lay on her bed and he cared for her, gave her plenty to eat and drink. He would then go up to the Portal and splatter it with Maura’s blood. How much of her blood did it want? Deep down, he knew it would be a lot. He let her rest and recover and then he would take more. It was not until the fifth time that it worked. The door receded and Damir entered a tiny chamber where the chalice was waiting for him.
“How was my father?” asked Maura.
Damir shrugged. “Upset at first. But he accepted it.”
“So you have been accepted as a sorcerer?”
Damir nodded.
“Then you should stay here, Damir. It’s a great honour.”
“Thank you for saying that. But we’re not staying in this place a moment longer.”
Damir helped Maura onto her horse and mounted his. He led them out of the town, through the same gate his mother had taken him through all those years ago.
He now realised that he owed his mother his life. Magic was forbidden in the steppes but as Damir got older the signs were there to see. His father grew angry and bitter towards him; started beating him. Others in the tribe became suspicious. Damir wasn’t sure what price his mother paid to leave the camp in secret with her son, in the dead of night, and take him to safety. He had been so full of anger towards her he had blinded himself to the truth. She had taken him to the best place she knew, where he would have the greatest chance of survival. She had done all she could.
As they left Noriburg, Damir and Maura turned around to give the town one last look.
“They will find out what happened soon,” said Damir. “But if they want to find us they will have to look for us in the steppe lands.”
“If they do find us?”
“Then I’ll be waiting for them.”