Episode Seven: The Loading

Hamar now went expectantly into each new class, no hesitation. Over the months his forehead gained tattoos, his capes changed colour and rank. Even if his classmates’ faces still seemed distorted to him he did enjoy the look on them each time he was announced to a new class and dropped his hood.

And so, he didn’t see his teachers diligently sowing the kernel of evil in him in every class. Like any other street boy Hamar had laughed when boys in Al Musar tripped, got the splash in the face; another’s shock had been fun back then. And was fun now when doing majic on these people.

But majic equals power, and now it was beginning to show itself as the domination of others it truly was, – his teachers either benignly observing or nodding approval every time he put something over on his classmates.

To be in the safe power position when a new vulnerability was shown to him was relieving for him indeed, and they knew to grow it one step ahead of his fear: first he’d feel a sense of safety, then power thrill, then privileged lawlessness, then arrogance, before the darkening into power-mindedness that would one day follow. The teachers’ long-term task was to channel Hamar’s pleasure until it went into an arcane glee, and because of worse things, intending to eventually ignite an unearthly keenness for great and sinister powers like their own.

There were so many abilities for him to take on.

Hamar went into classes where people shot streams of fire out of their mouths, where spectres like hyenas were made to grow huge and their snarling faces overlay those of the students.

All his teachers knew to stun with feats and wonders and then to flick him onto their line of reasoning behind it, or maybe used open-ended questions whose one answer he had to conclude for himself, – with the only answer possible, or by their finishing lessons with a chance word to open his mind and leave it open.

It was the same for all the students, a mesmer skill so that none had any real say over taking up concepts and practices alien to their own.

Though all classes furthered the process, nevertheless each schoolmaster’s motive was to prove to the students that their particular majic field was best and an advance over the others: power naturally enhanced anyone’s concept of themselves, always entailed pride, not even teachers being exempt from it.

In entering the privilege of it the students lost sovereignty over their minds without even knowing it was being taken from them. Each one got caught in the learning undertow, supposedly leaving old identity behind for a greater one ahead, – and the cross-over usually sealed with an intimidating atrocity they could only meet with acceptance when suddenly confronted with it. So also for Hamar.

To him, though, the way of the academy seemed benevolent enough, and it was feeling more and more natural as a real home at last. From classes in basic majic he soon welcomed the learning of the philosophies behind each school, each one a wondrous fairytale passed down from the ancient past.

Each school taught their own culture’s version of how the cosmos worked and how their abilities fitted the tale. “The Earth is carried on the back of a turtle; awaken the sleeping mind-force that moves the great turtle;” “The world is governed by five great spirits who control entry through the Upward Doors of Existence.” “Charm the great boatman of the River Styx with your siren-poem to enter and exit the Underworld and discover its secret chambers of wisdom.” Each master enthralled the students with the possibility of wonders yet again beyond them.

Hamar nevertheless discerned there seemed to be two main divisions to students, one trying for an exalted existence beyond their earthly self, the other just wanting more power on earth. In his head he privately nicknamed the high-minded sects the Scale Pan Schools, the practicers always trying to get their good deeds to outweigh the bad, supposedly gaining them a spiritual leg up, or more perception, or finally a higher existence when they died. The others were just witchery-minded.

He learned the Egyptians did the exalted kind, also the Indus people, as well as the followers of Bel and of Mithras, even the Greek majicians, in a roundabout way, though none of the score systems of the different philosophies matched, and some of the points were for doing perverse things that only they would think were good. But whether done for good or for harm, whether a philosophical path or a wizardry one, he was becoming aware both systems always offered the way to personal power beyond any other power, – a rising, open-ended path.

After having to keep a diary of his deeds for a day in one of these schools and racking up twenty-seven lies before the afternoon, beginning with answering he was already getting dressed when he was actually still on his pallet, Hamar determined not to commit to either kind. Learn, yes, – commit himself, no.

One day though, his choices about them and the Master would decide his eternal fate, a pivotal choosing he knew nothing about. So far.

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