The limit

Chapter 5

Call, almost at the back, hurried a little bit to catch up. He knew that being late was probably an advantage if he wanted them to think that he didn’t care about the tests or didn’t know what he was doing, but he hated the stares he got when he lagged behind. In fact, he hurried ahead so quickly that he accidentally banged into the shoulder of a pretty girl with large, dark eyes. She shot him an annoyed look from underneath the even darker curtain of her hair.

“Sorry,” Call said automatically.

“We’re all nervous,” the girl said, which was funny, because she didn’t look nervous. She looked completely composed. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched. There wasn’t a speck of dust on her caramel-colored sweater or her expensive-looking jeans. She wore a delicate filigree hand pendant around her throat that Call recognized from antique store visits as a Hand of Fatima. The gold earrings in her ears looked like they had once belonged to a princess, if not a queen. Call immediately felt self-conscious, as if he were covered in dirt.

“Hey, Tamara!” a tall Asian boy with floppy razor-cut black hair said, and the girl turned away from Call. The boy said something else that Call couldn’t hear, sneering as he said it, and Call worried it was about how Call was a cripple who couldn’t help lurching into people. Like he was Frankenstein’s monster. Resentment bubbled in his brain — especially since Tamara hadn’t looked at him like she’d noticed his leg at all. She’d been annoyed with him, like he was a regular kid. He reminded himself that as soon as he failed the exams, he’d never have to see any of these people again.

Also, they were going to die underground.

That thought kept him going down an endless series of halls and into a big white room where rows of desks were laid out in lines. It looked like every other room Call had ever taken a standardized test in. The desks were plain and wooden, attached to rickety chairs. Each desk had a blue book labeled with a kid’s name and a pen laid on top. There was a hubbub as everyone went from desk to desk, searching for his or her place card. Call found his in the third row and slid into the seat, behind a kid with pale wavy hair and a soccer team jacket. He looked more like a jock than a candidate for mage school. The boy smiled at Call as though he was genuinely happy to be seated near him.

Call didn’t bother smiling back. He opened his blue book, glancing at the pages with questions and empty circles for A, B, C, D, or E. He had been expecting the tests to be scary, but the only apparent danger was the danger of being bored to death.

“Please keep your books closed until the test has started,” Master Milagros said from the front of the room. She was a tall, extremely young-looking Master who reminded Call a little of his homeroom teacher. She had the same sense of awkward nervousness, as if she wasn’t used to spending a lot of time around kids. Her hair was black and short, with a streak of pink in it.

Call closed his book and then looked around, realizing he’d been the only person to open it. He decided he wasn’t going to tell his father how easy it had been to avoid fitting in.

“First of all, I want to welcome you all to the Iron Trial,” Master Milagros went on, clearing her throat. “Now that we’re away from your guardians, we can explain in more detail what is going to happen today. Some of you will have received invitations to apply for music school, or a school that concentrates on astronomy or advanced mathematics or horseback riding. But as you may have supposed by now, you are actually here to be evaluated for acceptance into the Magisterium.”

She raised her arms, and the walls seemed to fall away. In their place was rough-hewn stone. The kids remained at their desks, but the ground beneath them had changed to mica-flecked rock, which sparkled like strewn glitter. Shimmering stalactites hung from the ceiling like icicles.

The blond boy drew in his breath. All across the room, Call could hear low exclamations of awe.

It was as if they were inside the caves of the Magisterium.

“So cool,” said a pretty girl with white beads on the ends of her cornrowed braids.

In that moment, despite everything his father had told Call, he wanted to go to the Magisterium. It no longer seemed dark or scary, but amazing. Like being an explorer or going to another planet. He thought of his father’s words:

The magicians will tempt you with pretty illusions and elaborate lies. Don’t be drawn in.

Master Milagros went on, her voice gaining in confidence. “Some of you are legacy students, with parents or other family members who have attended the Magisterium. Others have been chosen because we believe you have the potential to become mages. But none of you are assured a place. Only the Masters know what makes a perfect candidate.”

Call stuck his hand up and, without waiting to be called on, asked, “What if you don’t want to go?”

“Why wouldn’t anyone want to go to pony school?” wondered a boy with a mop of brown hair, seated diagonally from Call. He was small and pale, with scrawny long legs and arms sticking out of a blue T-shirt with the faded picture of a horse on it.

Master Milagros looked as if she was so annoyed, she’d forgotten to be nervous. “Drew Wallace,” she said. “This is not pony school. You are being tested to see if you possess the qualities that will lead you to be chosen as an apprentice, and to accompany your teacher, called your Master, to the Magisterium. And if you possess sufficient magic, attendance is not optional.” She glared at Call. “The Trial is for your own safety. Those of you who are legacies know the dangers untrained mages pose to themselves and others.”

A murmur ran around the room. Several of the kids, Call realized, were looking at Tamara. She was sitting very straight in her chair, her eyes fixed ahead of her, her chin jutting out. He knew that look. It was the same look he got when people muttered about his leg or his dead mother, or his weirdo father. It was the look of someone trying to pretend she didn’t know she was being talked about.

“So what happens if you don’t get into the Magisterium?” asked the girl with the braids.

“Good question, Gwenda Mason,” said Master Milagros encouragingly. “To be a successful mage, you must possess three things. One is the intrinsic power of magic. That, you all have, to some degree. The second is the knowledge of how to use it. That, we can give you. The third is control — and that, that must come from inside of you. Now, in your first year, as untaught mages, you are reaching the apex of your power, but you have no learning and no control. If you seem to possess neither an aptitude for learning nor one for control, then you will not find a place at the Magisterium. In that case, we will make sure that you — and your families — are permanently safe from magic or any danger of succumbing to the elements.”

Succumbing to the elements? What does that mean? Call wondered. It sounded like other people were just as confused: “Does that mean I failed a test?” someone asked. “Wait, what does she mean?” another kid said.

“So this definitely isn’t pony school?” Drew asked again, wistfully.

Master Milagros ignored all this. The images of the cavern slowly faded away. They were in the same white room they’d always been in.

“The pens in front of you are special,” she said, looking as if she’d remembered to be nervous again. Call wondered how old she was. She seemed young, even younger because of the pink hair, but he guessed you had to be a pretty accomplished magician to be a Master. “If you don’t use your pen, we won’t be able to read your test. Shake it to activate the ink. And remember to show your work. You may begin.”

Call opened the book again. He squinted at the first question:

1. A dragon and a wyvern set out at 2 P.M. from the same cavern, headed in the same direction. The average speed of the dragon is 30 mph slower than twice the speed of the wyvern. In 2 hours, the dragon is 20 miles ahead of the wyvern. Find the flight speed of the dragon, factoring in that the wyvern is bent on revenge.

Revenge? Call goggled at the page, then flipped it. The next one was no better.

2. Lucretia is preparing to plant a crop of deadly nightshade this autumn. She will plant 4 patches of common nightshade with 15 plants in each patch. She estimates that 20 percent of the field will be planted with a test crop of woody nightshade. How many nightshade plants are there in all? How many woody nightshade plants were planted? If Lucretia is an earth mage who has crossed three of the gates, how many people can she poison with the deadly nightshade before she is caught and beheaded?

Call blinked at the test. Did he have to actually put effort into figuring out which answers were wrong, so that he didn’t accidentally get them right? Should he just put down the same thing over and over, figuring that had to get a low score? By the law of averages, he’d still get about twenty percent right, and that was higher than he wanted.

As he furiously pondered what to do, he picked up the pen, shook it, and tried to mark the paper.

It didn’t work.

He tried again, pressing harder. Still nothing. He looked around and it seemed that most of the other kids were writing fine, although a few were struggling with their pens, too.

It figured that he wasn’t going to fail the test like a normal nonmagical person — he wasn’t even going to be able to take it. But what if the mages made you take the test over again if you left it blank? Wasn’t that like refusing to show up in the first place?

Scowling, he tried to remember what Milagros had said about the pen. Something about shaking it to get the ink to work. Maybe he just hadn’t shaken it enough.

He tightened his fist around the pen and shook it hard, his annoyance at the test putting extra force into the snap of his wrist. Come on, he thought. Come on, you stupid thing, WORK!

Blue ink exploded from the tip of the pen. He tried to stop the flow, pressing his finger against where he thought the c***k might be … but that just made the ink shoot harder. It splattered against the back of the chair in front of him; the blond boy, sensing the inky storm that had just been unleashed, ducked to get out of range of the mess. More ink than seemed possible to come from such a small pen was spurting all over the place, and people were starting to glare at him