Seph cleared his throat, feeling an intense pressure to respond. “I … ah … guess so,” he replied.
Seemingly undeterred by this lukewarm reply, Leicester continued. “We have agreed to consider this request. Does the petitioner understand what is required of him?”
Again, the feeling of focused pressure, the pressure to say yes. Instinctively, Seph pushed back. “No, not really,” he said. “Can you tell me?”
Leicester paused, as if this answer were unexpected, then responded awkwardly. “You are required to link your Weirstone to mine.”
Reflexively, Seph pressed his fingers into the skin of his chest, through the folds of the robe. His eyes fastened on a shallow stone bowl that sat atop the altar. And the knife that lay next to it. He licked his lips and swallowed. “What?”
Leicester shoved back the hood of his robe. “Through the speaking of charms, and the letting of blood.”
“Is that necessary?” Seph asked, struggling to maintain an expression of polite inquiry. “I just want to be trained in wizardry.”
Leicester rolled back the sleeves of his robe like a surgeon preparing for a procedure. “Wizardry manifests early,” he replied. “Most begin their training very young. You are far behind your peers. This system is a shortcut. It allows your powers to be used safely without extensive remedial training. We haven't the time for that.”
Seph had the sense that Leicester was choosing his words carefully. As if what he said might be technically true, but intentionally misleading. Seph felt a more subtle pressure, like an undercurrent of magic at work. His muscles loosened and his head swirled with inarticulate thought.
He mounted a faint protest. “So you're saying that if I don't go through with this … um … ceremony, you won't train me in wizardry?”
“I'm saying it takes years to develop skills enough to practice wizardry safely. I'm saying you are getting a very late start. I'm saying this is the way we do things at the Havens.” Leicester picked up the knife and nodded to someone behind Seph. “Bring the supplicant.”
Bruce Hays and Warren Barber materialized behind Seph and gripped his elbows. They dragged him forward, half lifting him up the steps and then pushing him to his knees in front of the altar. They stripped back his sleeve and pressed his arm against the cold, rough stone, exposing the inside of his wrist.
It was like a dream. Almost as if he were watching it happen to someone else. He barely felt the blade as it bit into his flesh, and his blood flowed into the stone bowl. He should have been horrified as Leicester spoke words over the bowl in some language of magic, dipped the crystalline head of the staff into the blood, and then lifted it to drink.
This is wrong, Seph thought. But he felt muddled and lethargic, limp and passive, carried along through the ceremony like a leaf in the current.
“Now, rise,” Leicester said to Seph, “and speak the words after me.” Barber and Hays lifted Seph to his feet and held him upright. Their hands burned through the rough fabric of his robe as a thought burned itself into his mind.
This was clearly some kind of pagan ritual. What, exactly, was he being asked to deliver into Leicester's hands?
He pressed his bleeding arm into his side. The crystalline head of the staff blazed, casting a greenish light over the participants. Something fluttered at the edge of his vision, like a scrap of black fabric. And again, and more, blotting out the torchlight. Bats. Clouds of bats, swooping about the heads of the alumni, silently dive-bombing the proceedings. Several of the celebrants covered their heads with their arms.
A sign.
Seph looked across the altar, to where one of the alumni stood watching. Peter Conroy. His face was a mask of dismay. When he saw Seph looking, his eyes widened behind his glasses. He shook his head, ever so slightly.
A warning.
Leicester spoke his magical phrase, then paused expectantly, waiting for him to echo it, like a vow in a devilish wedding ceremony. The hooded figures leaned forward in anticipation.
“No,” Seph said. “I can't.”
“Would you like me to repeat it, Joseph?” Leicester asked softly, encouragingly.
“No. I mean I changed my mind.”
For a moment, Leicester seemed too astonished to speak. “What?” The word seemed to spatter out into the mist.
“I refuse.”
A rumble of surprise rolled through the alumni, quickly stifled. Peter closed his eyes and breathed out, as if relieved.
Leicester's voice was calm and reassuring. “What's bothering you, Joseph? The painful part is over. When we're finished, we'll go back to the Alumni House and dress that scratch and make arrangements to move you in. Your training will begin immediately.”
“What's bothering me?” Seph shivered. It was raining harder now, plastering his hair against his forehead and soaking him nearly through. Somehow, it seemed to clear his head.
His arm still streamed blood, and he pressed it tight against his side. “You're drinking my blood. Asking me to swear some kind of oath I don't really understand. I can't be involved in a ritual like this. It's like, out of a screamer movie. To be honest, this is really freaking me out.”
Leicester's breath hissed out impatiently. “You said you wanted to learn about wizardry.”
“I do.” Seph looked around the circle of robed wizards, hoping someone would speak up in his defense.
“That can't happen unless we finish.”
Seph took a breath. “Then it can't happen.”
“Two weeks ago, I asked if you were willing to make a total commitment. You assured me that you were.”
Seph jerked free of Hays and Barber. “I think you need to tell me exactly what I'd be committing myself to.”
A muscle twitched in the headmaster's jaw. Leicester's voice was still soft, but there was a thread of steel in it. “You'd do better to ask about the consequences if you refuse.”
It sounded very much like a threat. “What consequences?”
“There's a reason wizardry training starts early,” Leicester said. “When untrained wizards reach adolescence, they … self-destruct.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps it's hormonal,” Leicester said delicately. “Perhaps developmental. It begins with uncontrolled releases of power. Then the magic turns inward and destroys the mind, resulting in depression and hallucinations. It's not unusual for untrained wizards to go insane.”
Seph thought of the warehouse. The destruction of the bell tower. It seemed that he'd had uncontrolled spasms of power all his life. And they seemed to be getting worse—more frequent. He scanned himself for symptoms. Since the warehouse fire, he'd been depressed. He'd found it difficult to concentrate. But wasn't that normal for a person with innocent blood on his hands?
“Joseph,” Leceister said, in the manner of a man who is trying hard to be reasonable. “Everyone else here has agreed.”
Seph looked around the circle of faces. Hays and Barber were openly smirking, eyes slitted against the rain. Some of the celebrants looked back at him stoically. Others, including Peter, looked down at their feet or off into the distance. It was not especially reassuring.
“I'm sorry,” Seph said. “I just can't.”
“Fine,” Leicester said venomously. “Then suffer the consequences.” The wizard took a step toward Seph, extending the staff. Seph retreated, but came up against someone—Hays or Barber—who held him in place. Leicester pressed the blood-smeared head of the staff against Seph's chest, over his wildly beating heart. Power pulsed through it like some kind of magical CPR machine.
“It won't be long before you'll beg for another chance.” He motioned to the rest of the alumni. “Come along. We're wasting time here.”
The alumni disappeared into the trees, leaving Seph to pick his way back through the wet forest on his own.
Chapter Six
Consequences
Seph woke in the pitch black, freezing and soaking wet. He pushed himself upright, his palms sliding against sodden, splintering wood. Moonlight intruded through two windows, high on the wall. He sat hip deep in frigid water, and more poured in through a great square hole in the floor. Still disoriented, he staggered to his feet.
He was in the boathouse. He recognized it from his visit with Trevor during the campus tour. He could make out the vague shapes of equipment hanging on the wall, see small objects already bobbing against the dark surface of the water.
He'd returned to his room after the aborted ceremony in the woods. How had he ended up here? And where was the flood coming from?
The water slapped against the walls, higher than before, almost to Seph's knees. His mind was slow to process. Was the tide coming in? Surely they would build a boathouse to withstand the tide. People who knew about oceans would know better than that.
His wet khakis clung unpleasantly to his legs. The water had reached his thighs. With difficulty, he waded to the door and pulled the handle. It didn't budge. He yanked again, bracing a foot against the doorframe. Stuck. Or locked. Panic fluttered under his breastbone. The water was rising, and he couldn't get out.
It didn't make sense. Surely this old building wasn't watertight. It ought to leak water like a sieve. Had he been drugged, spelled, carried here by the alumni on Leicester's orders? For what?
He squinted into the darkness, teeth chattering with fear and cold, looking for a way out.
He could swim out through the boat well, though he didn't like the idea of diving into that black water. By now it was so deep, only a disturbance on the surface told him where the opening began and the floor ended. He moved cautiously forward, feeling for the edge of the floor with feet that felt clumsy and numb with the cold. Blundering off the edge, he plunged feet-first into freezing water. He shot back to the surface, propelled by the current, and raked his wet hair out of his face. Folding himself at the waist, he tried to dive deep, but was thrust back to the surface each time, gasping for air. There was no escape that way. Coughing and spitting out salt water, he found the edge of the floor again. When he stood up, the water lapped at his collarbone. He needed to get to higher ground. He bumped into the fish-cleaning table, pulled himself up, and managed to plant his feet on it. Now he was immersed only to his waist, but he hit his head on the ceiling, and the water was still rising.