From a Distance

Chapter 11

As they pulled onto the road, Master Rockmaple stood and began talking about the school, explaining that Iron Year students would be staying through the winter because it wasn’t safe for them to go home partially trained. He also told them how they’d work with their Masters all week, have lectures with other Masters on Fridays, and participate in some kind of big test once every month. Call found it hard to concentrate on the details, especially when Master Rockmaple listed the Five Principles of Magic, which all appeared to have something to do with balance. Or nature. Or something. Call tried to pay attention, but the words seemed to wash away before he could commit them to memory.

After an hour and a half of driving, the buses pulled into a rest stop, where Call realized that in addition to not having luggage, he also didn’t have any money. He pretended not to be hungry or thirsty while everyone else bought candy bars and chips and soda.

When they reboarded the bus, Call sat behind Aaron.

“Do you know where they’re taking us?” Call asked.

“The Magisterium,” Aaron said, sounding a little worried about Call’s brain. “You know, the school? Where we’re going to be apprentices?”

“But where is it exactly? Where are the tunnels?” Call asked. “And do you think they lock us in our rooms at night? Are there bars on the windows? Oh, wait, nope — because there aren’t going to be any windows, right?”

“Uh,” Aaron said, holding out his open bag of cheesy-garlic-bread-flavored Lays. “Chip?”

Tamara leaned across the aisle. “Are you actually deranged?” she asked, not really like she was insulting him this time, but more like she honestly wanted to discuss it.

“You do know that when we get there, we’re going to die, right?” Call said, loud enough for the whole bus to hear him.

That was met with a resounding silence.

Finally, Celia piped up. “All of us?”

Some of the other kids snickered.

“Well, no, not all of us, obviously,” said Call. “But some of us. That’s still bad!”

Everyone was staring at Call again, except Master Rufus and Master Rockmaple, who were sitting up front and not paying any attention to what the kids were doing in back. Being treated like he was nuts had happened to Call more times that day than it had happened to him in his entire life, and he was getting sick of it. Only Aaron wasn’t looking at Call like he was crazy. Instead, he crunched a chip.

So who told you that?” he asked. “About us dying.”

“My father,” said Call. “He went to the Magisterium, so he knows what it’s like. He says the mages are going to experiment on us.”

“Was that the guy who was screaming at you at the Trial? Who threw that knife?” asked Aaron.

“He doesn’t usually act like that,” Call muttered.

“Well, he obviously went to the Magisterium and he’s still alive,” Tamara pointed out. She’d lowered her voice. “And my sister’s there. And some of our parents went.”

“Yeah, but my mother is dead,” said Call. “And my father hates everything about the school. He won’t even talk about it. He says my mom died because of it.”

“What happened to her?” Celia asked. She had a package of root beer gummies open on her lap, and Call was tempted to ask her for one because it reminded him of the sundae he was never going to get and also because she sounded kind, like she was asking him because she wanted him not to worry about the mages, rather than because she thought he was a raving weirdo. “I mean, she had you, so she didn’t die at the Magisterium, right? She must have graduated first.”

Her question threw Call. He’d lumped it all together and hadn’t thought about the timeline much. There had been a fight somewhere, part of some magic war. His father had been vague about the details. What he’d focused on was how the mages had let it happen.

When mages go to war, which is often, they don’t care about the people who die because of it.

“A war,” he said. “There was a war.”

“Well, that’s not very specific,” said Tamara. “But if it was your mother, it had to be the Third Mage War. The Enemy’s war.”

“All I know is that they died somewhere in South America.”

Celia gasped.

“So she died on the mountain,” Jasper said.

“The mountain?” asked Drew from the back, sounding nervous. Call remembered him as the one who had been asking about pony school.

“The Cold m******e,” said Gwenda. He remembered the way she’d stood up when she’d been chosen, smiling like it was her birthday, her many braids with their beads swinging around her face. “Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you heard of the Enemy, Drew?”

Drew’s expression froze. “Which enemy?”

Gwenda sighed with annoyance. “The Enemy of Death. He’s the last of the Makaris and the reason for the Third War.”

Drew still looked puzzled. Call wasn’t sure he understood what Gwenda had said either. Makaris? Enemy of Death? Tamara looked back and caught sight of their expressions.

“Most mages can access the four elements,” she explained. “Remember what Master Rockmaple said about us drawing on air, water, earth, and fire to make magic? And all that stuff about chaos magic?”

Call remembered something from the lecture at the front of the bus, something about chaos and devouring. It had sounded bad then and it wasn’t sounding any better now.

“They bring something from nothing and that’s why we call them Makaris. Makers. They’re powerful. And dangerous. Like the Enemy.”

A shiver went down Call’s spine. Magic sounded even creepier than his father had said. “Being the Enemy of Death doesn’t sound that bad,” he said, mostly to be contrary. “It’s not like death is so great. I mean, who would want to be the Friend of Death?”

“It’s not like that.” Tamara folded her hands in her lap, clearly annoyed. “The Enemy was a great mage — maybe even the best — but he went crazy. He wanted to live forever and make the dead walk again. That’s why they called him the Enemy of Death, because he tried to conquer death. He started pulling chaos into the world, putting the power of the void into animals … and even people. When he put a piece of the void into people, it turned them into mindless monsters.”

Outside the bus, the sun was gone, with only a smear of red and gold at the very edge of the horizon to remind them how recently it had become night. As the bus trundled along, farther into the dark, Call could pick out more and more stars in the canopy of the sky out the bus window. He could pick out only vague shapes in the woods they passed — it was just leafy darkness and rock as far as Call could see.

“And that’s probably what he’s still doing,” said Jasper. “Just waiting to break the Treaty.”

“He wasn’t the only Makari of his generation,” said Tamara, as if telling a story she’d learned by rote or reciting a speech she’d heard many times. “There was another one. She was our champion and her name was Verity Torres. She was only a little older than we are now, but she was very brave and led the battles against the Enemy. We were winning.” Tamara’s eyes shone, talking about Verity. “But then, the Enemy did the most treacherous thing anyone could ever do.” Her voice dropped again so that the Masters up in the front of the bus couldn’t possibly hear. “Everyone knew a big battle was coming. Our side, the good magicians, had hidden their families and children in a remote cave so they couldn’t be used as hostages. The Enemy found out where the cave was and instead of going to the battlefield, he went there to kill them all.”

“He expected them to die easily,” Celia added, jumping in, her voice soft. She’d obviously heard the story lots of times, too. “It was just kids and old people and a few parents with babies. They tried to hold him off. They killed the Chaos-ridden in the cave, but they weren’t strong enough to destroy the Enemy. In the end, everyone died and he slipped away. It was brutal enough that the Assembly offered the Enemy a truce and he accepted.”

There was a horrified silence. “None of the good magicians lived?” asked Drew.

“Everybody lives in pony school,” Call muttered. He was suddenly glad that he hadn’t had enough money to buy any food at the rest stop, because he was pretty sure he would have thrown it up now. He knew his mother had died. He even knew she’d died in a battle. But he’d never heard the details before.

“What?” Tamara turned on him, icy fury on her face. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Call sat back with his arms crossed. He knew from her expression he’d gone too far.

“You’re unbelievable. Your mother died during the Cold m******e, and you joke around about her sacrifice. You act like it was the mages’ fault instead of the Enemy’s.”

Call looked away, his face hot. He felt ashamed of what he’d said, but he felt angry, too, because he should know about these things, shouldn’t he? His father should have told him. But he hadn’t.

“If your mother died on the mountain, where were you?” Celia interrupted, clearly trying to make peace. The flower in her hair was still crumpled from her fall at the Trial, and one corner of it was slightly singed.

“In the hospital,” Call said. “My leg was messed up when I was born and I was having an operation. I guess she should have just stayed in the hospital waiting room, even if the coffee was bad.” It was always like this when he was upset. It was like he couldn’t control the words coming out of his mouth.

“You are a disgrace,” Tamara spat, no longer the chilly, restrained girl she’d been throughout the Trial. Her eyes danced with anger. “Half the legacy kids at the Magisterium have family who died on the mountain. If you keep talking that way, somebody’s going to drown you in an underground pool and no one will be sorry, including me.”

Tamara,” Aaron said. “We’re all in the same apprentice group. Give him a break. His mother died. He’s allowed to feel any way he wants about it.”

“My great-aunt died there, too,” Celia said. “My parents talk about her all the time, but I never knew her. I’m not mad at you, Call. I just wish it didn’t happen to either of us. To any of them.”

“Well, I’m mad,” said a guy in the back. Call thought his name might be Rafe. He was tall, with a thicket of curly dark hair, and he wore a T-shirt with a grinning skull on it that glowed a faint green in the dim light.

Call felt even worse. He almost said something apologetic to Celia and Rafe, until Tamara turned to Aaron and said fiercely: “But it’s like he doesn’t care. They were heroes.”

“No, they weren’t,” Call burst out, before Aaron could speak. “They were victims. They got killed because of magic, and it can’t be fixed. Not even by your Enemy of Death, right?”

There was a shocked silence. Even people who had been involved in other conversations in other parts of the bus turned around and gaped at Call.

His father had blamed the other mages for his mother’s death. And he trusted his dad. He did. But with all of their eyes on him, Call wasn’t sure what to think.

The silence was broken only by the sound of Master Rockmaple snoring. The bus had turned onto a bumpy dirt path.

Very quietly, Celia said, “I hear there are Chaos-ridden animals near the school. From the Enemy’s experiments.”

“Like horses?” Drew asked.

“I hope not,” Tamara said with a shudder. Drew looked disappointed. “You wouldn’t want a Chaos-ridden horse if you had one. Chaos-ridden creatures are the Enemy’s servants. They’ve got a piece of the void in them and it makes them smarter than other animals, but bloodthirsty and insane. Only the Enemy or one of his servants can control them.”

“So they’d be like evil-possessed zombie horses?” Drew asked.

“Not exactly. You’d know them by their eyes. Their eyes coruscate — pale, with spiraling colors inside of them — but otherwise they just look regular. That’s the scary part,” put in Gwenda. “I hope we don’t have to go outside much.”

“I do,” said Tamara. “I hope we learn how to recognize and kill them. I want to do that.”

“Oh, yeah,” Call said under his breath. “I’m the crazy one. Nothing to worry about at the ole Magisterium. Evil pony school, here we come.”

But Tamara wasn’t paying attention to him. She was leaning out from her seat, listening to Celia say, “I hear there’s a new type of Chaos-ridden where you can’t tell from the eyes. The creature doesn’t even know what it is until the Enemy makes it do what he wants. So, like, your cat could be spying on you or —”