After that, he was escorted back and was left for a day in his room to absorb the news, and then to huddle through the night with his head full of tormenting thoughts. With no answers to his many fears, and no tellings of the specifics of the royal murder ritual, the awfulness of him being an outsider in their terrible place was again back with him. Heir or not, special student or not, he again felt himself but a young village boy surrounded by arcane killers and with no hope of escape, – the biggest certainty being that, after what he’d just heard, they would never be letting him out!

The next morning a shaky Hamar Mi-sha Baltshazar emerged from his room bearing the great weight of his high role that was now both his new cause and what would forever be his one saving grace. Deftly, it had been presented as his only guarantee for surviving their captivity and their arts, while at the same time offering him a golden route, – to somewhere on high.

From then on his one aim was to get to that power over death at all costs! It was the only thing that would save him from them no matter what the future held, and from any threat of the Master having him killed ahead of time, – Hamar’s cooperation guaranteed the Master’s own survival.

When later he would at last receive the secret of the Supreme Death Ritual and its power to release a person from every earthly hold, it would be his possession to bank away as the highest power in the world until his own time came to rule and, secretly, blessedly, hopefully, empower him to get free while he yet lived! But he had to admit, his role also carried the hope of an astounding new life and also ownership of the greatest power that could ever be known.

All was upgrade, and this latest ordaining meant a great stepping up toward the most that could ever be his.

By then he was on a new level of living, memories of his homely hovel now as if belonging to a bygone world. Now there would never be a return to that hunt for still-edible garbage, never the scald of fear when exposed in plain sight at a crossroads or trapped down an alley, – as if all his life he’d been a person of complete sets of clean linen clothes each day, had always eaten roasted meat, never had sucked up muddy water from his cupped hands, and instead had only swigged spring-water from goblets.

At long last he had a family complete with highly respected names who respected his as being even higher, every one of them reckoning him, even admiring him. Whatever uneasiness remained in him about the Academy, nonetheless the past of Hamar, dirty hungry Hamar, was being steadily erased from his soul.

Every day, every week, brought increase into the highest knowledges known to man. He began to glory in the idea that no one aboveground, no matter their royal rank or legendary wisdom, knew what he was able to know in the tunnels none of them suspected were beneath their dirty feet. His horizon was an ever-spreading future one, – albeit with a dark cloud at one edge and a spectacular sunset waiting at the other.

But his double motives, about future escape as well as high destiny, didn’t fool his tutors! Their ancient tribe understood the subtle workings on the scared mind very well, the Red Priest understanding it best of all. Fear of dying was, after all, the underlying cause behind anyone wanting superhuman power, – such power being the ultimate answer against the worst that life could ever do, and all other powers lesser beneath it.

“No”, assured the Red Priest, addressing his teachers, “tell him all you want to, now. Hamar won’t betray us or bolt from this place”. Via either of his two motives they knew the boy had arrived at sure commitment, spiritual ambition. Step by step he could be led into doing forbidden things, even horrific things, each time as if he was freely making his own choice to do it and thereby affording no rebellion toward his captors.

“Trust. His heart will adjust smoothly and naturally, our path is secured!

….

Hamar indeed paid attention in classes, studied on into the night while others slept, drew his hex signs superbly around his room, memorized Vedic chants and intonations. If he gagged at swallowing foul potions made from dried-up body parts he didn’t let it show. Things no young boy should know, he sucked in and valued.

Back in his room he reviewed everything he learned and did manage some last attempts at keeping himself separate from the uglier sides of it all, but the Red Priest’s scrutiny and influence couldn’t be stopped by either the stone walls or Hamar’s skull. Invisibly his thoughts were tracked, and steered by Aktiarh with spells. Revelations in dreams happened. ‘Inspirations’ about majic’s domain suddenly ‘occurred’ to him, and opened him even wider.

….

Within a year the new thrills got to him and the pace increased. Wonder-doing was like a drug that made him want to see more, master it faster, and all of it speeding his growth. It was a freer path, too, – he could rest that he’d be preserved from whatever punishments came down on the others for any disgust shown when they were presented with the same things or hesitated from joining in, and that he’d be rescued from disaster whatever the mistakes he made, – he knew a freedom the others didn’t have. But it also excluded him.

“He thinks himself great, doesn’t he, the beggar king!” some of the boys complained behind his back, and their overheard words threw him back on himself. Everyone, after all, needs friends.

Inside himself it made him hold on to the last thready feeling of being the son of the parents he knew himself to be, but nevertheless the pull grew strong of being the royal student changing like a locust within its own shell, one day to fly beyond them all.

And inevitably, he came to feel he was as powerful as the powers he dealt in. A young mistake, but a foolish one that soon caught him out.

By that time he’d won back some credit with the others by mentally willing cramps and pains into his teachers so that they suddenly walked like ducks in front of the class; he could chant a counter-rhythm under his breath so that pupils stuttered their spells, creating absurdities; he once blew volumes of ectoplasm from his lungs and filled a classroom so the teachers had to grab torches and hold their breath in burning the cold, greasy, coating off the walls before they ended up inhaling it. He restrained himself from harming anyone outright, acquired some mates, but he was beginning to slip his bounds.

….

After months of his teachers putting up with this, they decided to act. Hamar had to be humbled.

The Red Priest was alone in his chambers one night in the early hours, completing his last duty before bed of releasing the giant, spectral, nightcrawler worms to eat away the day’s build-up of majic residues in the halls, when a swirling light appeared into his room and expanded to spew out Bela, Hamar’s senior conjuring tutor, stumbling out onto the carpet.

Aktiarh raged, “What are you doing here! How dare you enter here unasked!”

“Please Most Noble, forgive, forgive,” pled Bela, struggling to maintain a low bow as he gathered up his robes. “I have news you must know,” he breathed, “of Hamar!”

Aktiarh would have burned Bela with his stare if the man hadn’t said Hamar’s name; instead he sobered himself and began adjusting his robes, “You have something to report? I warn you Bela it better be important! If you ever try to come in here dodging the sentry arcs at my door again…!” Aktiarh sneered at Bela’s nervous face. He didn’t like the fat teacher, – always hysteric, always working himself into breathlessness about something. “Spit it out, then!”

Bela swallowed. “We were working on the Akkadian chants, the ones for conjuring giant wadi djinns,” he locked his spaniel eyes on the Priest’s face, and Aktiarh rolled his eyes.

“And? And?” said Aktiarh. “Speak up or so help me I’ll scorch you where you stand!”

“He, he did so, then decreed absurd natures for them, wild ones, – conjured up three, then four, then five…”

“Bela!”

“Hamar didn’t stop, that’s the point! He disobeyed me! He’s always doing that, and not just to me! I tell you he isn’t fit to learn from us, thinks he doesn’t have to! Him and his ‘unique’ abilities.”

Aktiarh’s eyes blazed. “Is this all you have to tell me! A student you can’t control? The boy is a master majus, Bela! You dare speak ill of him!”

“Merciful One, a thousand pardons! ten thousand unworthy pardons, forgive me, forgive me please!” Bela said, collapsing himself into his customary pathetic cringe with one pleading hand aloft.

Aktiarh scowled and looked away, then wearily said in a sing-song, “What is it you have to say, Bela. Make it brief.”

Bela licked his lip as he rose up, trying not to squeak but doing it anyway. “He started calling up the more exalted ones! It seemed comical at first, got them doing things, but then he commanded the Cardinal powers to stand in front of him, of Wind, and Fire, and Water!,” he searched for that to register in Aktiarh’s eyes, but they were shut, “and ordered them to roar through other classes and down the hallways! Ordered them, Most Noble!,” his eyebrows went as high as they’d go. “Unforgivable! They obeyed him, too. Caused havoc! Despite us all! Do you see what I’m saying?”

Snitching made Bela feel stronger. “If Morpeth hadn’t come out of wizardry class and scared him about how he’d have to be killed by these same great powers one day, and overcome it, he’d never have stopped!

Now Aktiarh raised his own eyebrows. “What did he do then?”

Bela squirmed, looking to left and right.

“Bela?” said Aktiarh, turning to look at him.

Bela raced out the words. “He made a nest of baby cockroaches fire out of Morpeth’s ear and poor Morpeth went wild crushing them before he could think. A Chief Wizard, Aktiarh!” He was fully puffed up now, imploring with his whole body.

The Red Priest smiled to himself as he faced the wall again, imagining old Morpeth frantically winding his hand around on his bushy ear hair to get rid of them. He didn’t speak.

Emboldened, Bela blustered, “He is not of the right line I tell you! None of us know whether he’s high or low! All he does is play with the lesser majics like a…a…conjuror, a spell-caster, a meddler with chants and hexes. No respect, no awe!” Bela looked like a red-faced fishwife. “He doesn’t seem to grasp the higher pathway at all!”

Aktiarh rubbed his chin. “Something we must see to.”

“But what if he’s just one of them, content to be some ‘local potentate’?”- he spat out the words. Bela mistook Aktiarh’s tolerance as being approval. “What if he can’t grasp the upward path, doesn’t respect the arch-powers? Would you have us show him the forbidden things, Aktiarh!”

Aktiarh blazed, “Dare to use my name!”

Bela shrivelled, “Most Noble, Most Noble!”

The Red Priest thought for a moment. Then said, “Go bring him.”

Bela looked sick, and squeaked, “But it is after midnight, Most Noble.” Few majicians liked being on their own in the halls when the big ghostly nightcrawlers were loose where they might drop on you and suck your powers out.

“Go!” ordered Aktiarh.

Bela whimpered to himself and began turning on his foot to do a spin, mumbling a chant.

“Not the short-cut portal, Bela,” said Aktiarh wearily, “use the door.” Bela stumbled to a stop as Aktiarh commanded, “And don’t ever forget the right order of hall chants again for handling the arcs!”

The fat teacher blushed red, and then headed through the doorway. Outside, he stuttered words and jerked with each sting from the tangling arcs as he raced nervously up the slope to the other corridors, the hungry moans of the night-worms getting louder as he went.

….

When he desperately knocked on Hamar’s door there was no answer. Pressing his eye to the lattice he saw Hamar lying motionless on his back in bed. As Bela peered closer he saw the boy’s eyes were open like white marbles staring at the ceiling. A pale silvery form was snaking out of the boy’s stomach!

‘His astral cord! By all that crawls, what’s the brat up to now!’

Bela chanted for the door to unlatch, surprised to find two sentry arcs had been securing it. As he went and stood over Hamar’s empty form he looked up to the ceiling where the gently undulating cord was exiting.

“So he’d go out-of-body, would he. And to where?” Master Majicians, even young ones, were never to leave the Academy during their lifetimes; only ordinary majicians were allowed back among ordinary people.

Just then Hamar’s silver form dropped through the ceiling and his soul thudded back into his body, bouncing it on the bed! The silvery torsos of a few other students appeared above him laughing, and then on seeing Bela they instantly disappeared!

Bela watched Hamar draw-in a deep hissing breath as his eyelids fluttered and the brown irises re-centered in his eyes. When Hamar slowly looked over at him Bela barked, “Explain yourself, boy! What are you playing at!”

Hamar regarded him blankly, his earthly mind not yet up to speed. He clumsily attended to his cord instead, retracting great glowing loops of it back into his navel.

“What? What in the world… ?” said Bela.

“It was in their rooms,” Hamar answered, finding his voice. “For a joke. Before we went I stretched it out and put loops of it in their beds and all around their rooms. They never suspected! “

“You did what? It is forbidden to touch other people’s astral cords! Tearing them can kill!”

“I know,” said Hamar, the last of the loop disappearing back into him as he sat up more alert. “And they know it too, Bela. That was the point!” he laughed. “They must have gone crazy trying not to break mine!”

Bela looked at him, astounded, and then was livid. “You, boy! And what do you mean, ‘you went’… ?”

Hamar hugged his knees to his chin and stared unperturbed at the wall. Then, whimsically, “Jason and the other Gaddites wanted to travel out in astral form to have some fun and they asked me along. We flew to some farms, nothing serious, harassed a farmer, frenzied some goats and pigs,” he laughed, “and afterwards we flew over some mountains and came home. That was all.”

“Hamar!”

“Oh relax Bela!” Hamar said, resting back with his arm behind his head. “What would you expect. Nobody can just stay down here forever. It’s still night-time, we were invisible, no harm done. Don’t tell me you never did it.”

“Never!” Bela stared. “And you are never, never to do it again! No night raids. You or the others!” Then, drawing himself up as straight as his belly would permit,”And I am Chief Conjuror, to you. Not ‘Bela,’ you pup!”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be doing any more,” said Hamar, inspecting his fingernails. “Jason was getting on my nerves anyway, always trying to ‘accidentally’ lean against me to absorb some of my anointing without me knowing. Ha. As if I can’t feel it go. But he won’t now. The cord’s loops would’ve scared him witless.” He rolled over with his chin on his hand, dreamily, “Especially as I looped it around his own cord.”

Bela sputtered and went white.

Hamar laughed hard, “When I snapped mine back just now he must have spun like a Greek windmill to get clear of it!” He looked back up at Bela. “What do you think, eh?”

Bela glared harder, puffing up even more.

Hamar finished chuckling and sat back up, mistaking Bela’s silence for interest. “You know, Conjuror, I won’t be old and ugly before I get to use all this. There has to be a way to be allowed back outside, the first to walk the streets in daylight. It could be done. Think what it would be like,” he mused to himself, looking at the ceiling, “me, a young Master, in Al Musar.“

Bela got hold of him by his tunic and hauled him to his feet, “You are wanted, young man! By Aktiarh.” Hamar’s face drained as Bela shoved him out through the door and down in the direction of Aktiarh’s hall of sentry arcs.

Episode Eight: Exposed!

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