#corruptwizards

Common sense kicked into gear in Terry’s brain and he remained under the canvas awning. He should call his parents first. They could either pick him up here, or he could meet them in that village where they’d lunched on their way in. Or his dad could book a hotel room for him until he caught the next flight from out west. And a way to get to the airport. From his vantage point behind the courthouse on Main Street, Terry studied the road in each direction. To his left lay a populated strip of Inns, pubs and General Stores, where he could slip among the dozens of families milling about. Cellular phones and other modern gadgets were prohibited here, but once upon a time people had relied on coin phones in public places. He didn’t see any booths, but one of the inns must might have one. He cursed himself for not paying more attention during fifth-grade history. What if telephones didn’t exist in the Pioneer era.

There was only one way to find out. He headed up the street towards a log cabin halfway up the next block. A Perkins Tavern sign hung from the front, swaying gently in the breeze. At the sight of a flash of red, he froze. The robe of an Adept. He turned around and walked quickly in the opposite direction. Beyond a cluster of houses at the edge of town, the road cut through a field and into the woods. He should be able to find another village or town and call his parents from there.

After taking one last glance around, Terry hied it through knee-high grass into the safety of the forest. He walked along the grassy ridge between the two deep ruts of the lane, taking in the sweet forest smells. He was free, but now what? Already that giddy thrill of escape was fading. Reality was kicking in. He should have planned better, at least grabbed a flask of water or a link of sausages before fleeing. If he had any sense he’d head back now and just say he got lost. Unfortunately a week of drudgery and exhaustion had depleted the rational part of his brain. He continued.

Birds tweeted and crickets wheezed as the trail wound between giant evergreens. Sunlight blazed down in shafts creating a mottled landscape that made it hard for him to orient himself. The terrain grew hillier. Terry clambered up, breathless, wishing the lane had switchbacks instead of going straight up. Had they come down this same lane on the cart? He regretted dozing on their way in. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The path levelled off again. Terry spotted a clearing ahead, the sun radiating down onto golden yellow grass.

A breeze carried sounds of tinkling on metal and whickering horses. He was already coming to another village. He emerged from the forest into a field and beyond a cluster of low wood houses. He shielded his eyes from the blinding overhead sun and stumbled towards the cluster of brick and limestone buildings in the distance.

A sense of déjà vu flooded into him at the sight of the wide dirt road flanked by rickety wooden houses. Everything looked overly familiar, including the horse-drawn carriages shuttling people around and the neatly hand-painted signs. He’d seen similar log cabins and colonial style stone houses this morning on his way in. He tried to relax. He was being paranoid. These old-timey villages were bound to look the same. His parents had taken him through multiple state capitals and all of them had nearly-identical domed white buildings with Roman columns and wide marble staircases.

He wandered along the main road, his eyes landing on a sign swaying gently in the breeze. “Perkins Tavern,” he mouthed. In spite of the hot afternoon sun, his blood ran cold. He forced himself to calm down. Like Disney World in Florida, Disneyland near his own hometown in Anaheim, and the one in Europe, these towns must be copies of each other right down to the pub names. Three or so blocks farther along, he spotted a limestone courthouse and behind it a market with the same wooden stalls sheltered by cloth canopies …

… and Katya sitting bored on the stool behind half-empty bushel baskets of potatoes and zucchini.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING!”

A shadow loomed over Terry. A fearsomely strong hand grabbed the scruff of his tunic, lifted him up off his feet, shook him like a dog worrying a bone, and dropped him back down. Terry stumbled forward onto his hands and knees. Gravel dug into his palms. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the familiar poppy-red satin edged with gold, which filled him with a dread similar to looking down a loaded gun from the wrong end. Only when he looked straight at the adept did he see the plain brown robe.

“I—I needed to take a leak,” Terry stammered. “And c-couldn’t find where to—”

A foot to his backside kicked him forward and he sprawled onto the grassy verge. A pair of arms lifted him back onto his feet. He turned and, to his shock, Ms. Huston was dusting off her robe. Her small grey eyes narrowed almost to slits as she pointed to a whitewashed building across the road from the courthouse. “In there,” she said in a quieter, more feminine voice. “Is the sign marked ‘privy’. Did you not listen to a thing on the way here?”

“Sorry,” Terry said, not wanting to get into even more trouble by adding miss or ma’am in case he chose the wrong one. “I was looking for something spelled with two v’s, not one.”

Ms. Huston let out a cackle that reminded him of the evil green witch in the Wizard of Oz. “You are a stupid one! It’s not my imagination, the neophytes really do get worse each and every year!”

“May I go?” Terry asked, hoping his desperation to get out of her sight came across to her as his being in dire need of heeding nature’s call.

She folded her arms across her chest. A sly, cruel smile spread on her thin lips. She cocked her head. “You may. Go.”

Terry bolted upright and stared around, disoriented, as Martin the Magnificent’s voice echoed in his ears. They’d stopped in a pioneer-style village, the kind he’d visited on school trips where everyone dressed like it was the early eighteen-hundreds. In a tone that reminded Terry of one of those boring documentaries his parents would watch on remote tribes who wore more beads than clothes, Martin the Magnificent explained that several towns in this land were very old and kept their traditional ways. And no, Pudding Bowl, they were not Amish or Mennonites.

“I’ve heard of this place.” The boy beside him nudged Terry’s side with his elbow. “Tourists pay through the nose to 'experience' how people lived hundreds of years in the past. The inn down the road is almost three grand a night! And that’s during the week—Saturdays is twice as much!”

“That’s insane,” Terry said. He’d had beyond his fill of rustic by now, but this was exactly the sort of thing his parents and their friends would go for in their scramble to impress each other on Instagram.

“They even mint their own currency,” the other boy added.

Dust billowed in their wake as they went along a dirt road past an assembly of brick two-story buildings with white columns flanking the entrances. They rounded the corner and came into a large square. Each side was jammed with rickety market stalls, the oilcloth canopies flapping gently in the breeze. Clucking chickens hopped past. Somewhere on the far side, Terry could hear goats or sheep.

They stopped on a side street near the center of the square. All the neophytes began loading the baskets onto flimsy wooden tables under the direction of the Adepts, who were dressed in friar’s robes including a rope belted around the waist. He joined Katya and Pudding Bowl at the far end of a row of tables shaded by thick, grease-stained fabric. Countless smells invaded his nostrils—wood smoke, flowers, animal poo, meat, frying eggs, syrup, bacon and rotting fruit.

According to a clock tower at one edge of the square, it was ten in the morning. Terry revelled in the festive atmosphere, almost forgetting all his accumulated aches and pains. The market quickly grew busy, imbued with a Disneylike quaintness. All the patrons wore costumes suited to the era, no doubt provided as part of their three-thousand-a-night stay at one of the inns.

Ms. Huston set a cash box on the table for them and Terry sifted through the various coins. They bore rough images of old fictitious kings along with the heads of various animals, laurel wreaths, dragons and other assorted symbols. He was even given a small allowance. On his first break he purchased a pair of thin-soled leather sandals that would be perfect for sneaking around Archon Castle grounds late at night.

They spent the morning selling vegetables, trading in bronze pennies, iron ingots and even the odd silver coin. It was only when Terry went to make change for a clipped gold coin at a booth near one of the inns that he learned what the currency actually amounted to. In his somewhat flawed math, he calculated that a straw basket containing four potatoes cost nearly twenty dollars. Archon Castle must make a killing from the sales of vegetables alone! And here Terry and other others were paying to work there! He’d had just enough time to scoop all the tiny coins into a fabric drawstring bag when the shutter in front of him slammed down. The faded red paint on it read, “Closed for Lunch”.

Terry backed away and gawked around, his heart racing. He had a purse full of coins, and was just one boy of dozens wearing these stupid scratchy breeches. Eyeing a family of tourists, he realized there wasn’t any way of telling who was a neophyte and who was a tourist. Now he was glad he’d kept to himself, especially around his superiors at Archon Castle; he was invisible to them. This could be his one chance to take off.

Not for a second did he consider whether this was a good idea or not. He slipped around a sandstone building that looked like an old courthouse, and looked up and down the wide dirt road in each direction. He was smack in the middle of town. Beyond blocks of storefronts in each direction were empty fields and then woods. Finding his way back to the main road shouldn’t be too hard. Keeping in the shade, he peeked once more in the direction of the market stalls. Nobody was looking his way—not the Adepts, not the boys he’d ridden in with, not even Katya. Katya was glued to Stevenus’s side, laughing about something, her beautiful face lit up like a ….

By breakfast, last night’s excitement had worn off. Terry saw no sign of the red-haired boy in the dining hall and wondered where he’d been taken. He wasn’t the only one missing. Only about half the benches and tables had people sitting at them now. While this raised the odds of his securing a spot as Initiate, where had they gone? He listened intently, yet overheard no mention of anyone being absent. Nor had Katya made any comment. Very odd. While picking his way through a bowl of gruel the texture of wet sand, Terry listened in on Stevenus, who was explaining the process of selecting Initiates, going by stories passed down by his great-great-great-grandfather.

“Since the nineteen-seventies,” Stevenus said, “one spot always goes to a girl no matter what, so no one can accuse the organisation of being sexist. Usually it goes to the best-looking girl. It’ll be especially difficult this year, I’d imagine, considering all of you are equally stunning.”

Terry watched, bemused as Katya and the four mean girls shot each other dirty looks. He clamped his lips together to stifle a laugh. This could get interesting. He counted twenty-seven girls altogether, including them and Katya. Huh. Their first morning in the dining hall, Katya had counted nearly forty. As he tried to count the number of boys left he’d have to compete with, Stevenus continued, “A second position always goes to a member of the old guard. Of course you’re not going to find anyone willing to admit it, but no magician in his right mind is going to support any institution where their own offspring aren’t granted some form of advantage.”

Must be nice, Terry thought. He had no interest in following his parents’ footsteps. His mum was a realtor who dealt with obnoxious clients all day and his dad was involved in questionable business deals with people who were even worse. Terry’s one outstanding talent, beyond having sixteen-over-twenty vision, was reading maps and orienting himself geographically. Something GPS rendered pretty much useless. Besides learning to be a wizard he’d considered a career in journalism, an industry famous for its nepotism. No doubt the third Initiate position would also be decided by politics. So far Stevenus had yet to say either way. Stevenus was back to discussing his favourite subject, Stevenus.

“I know of three genuine rivals,” Stevenus said, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. Although he sat two tables over from him, Terry hadn’t missed a single word so far. “There’s also a forth I suspect, but I haven’t been able to identify whom, as of yet.”

Struggling to smooth the bitter edge of his voice, Terry asked, “Does anyone get chosen by merit?”

Stevenus jerked. He turned around to face Terry and cocked his head. “Of course! All spots are granted to the most deserving. Archon Castle would never fall prey to cronyism or after long enough, nothing would function properly. It’s just that ... other criteria are a deciding factor in a close race.”

Terry was about to ask what those were when Stevenus’s mouth twisted into a wry smirk. “Naturally, ‘merit’ means whoever is most skilled at toadying to superiors, right?” He elbowed the blondest mean girl and everyone at the table laughed. “This place mirrors the real world in most ways.”

Yeah, hilarious. Terry hadn’t even tried talking to any Adepts, he hadn’t dared, yet he had a sinking feeling Stevenus was right. At the very least, he should try getting into the Wizards’ good books, the way his dad did with every newly-elected politician back home. He felt suddenly stupid; other kids were excusably naïve; he should know better. He kept thinking Archon Castle would be different from the rest of the world, it was why he’d been drawn here. He bowed his face, his eyes starting to sting.

“ATTENTION EVERYONE!” Martin the Magnificent appeared by the main entrance to the dining hall, signalling it was time for all of them to assemble in the courtyard. Terry stood and braced himself against the table. This was what he’d chosen in lieu of lounging by the pool all summer, or playing video games with his friends on his new VR console. He was past the age where he should have given up on the idea he was going to learn magic. Terry shambled into the courtyard. Ms. Huston stood next to a wagon piled with brown fabric saying, “Take one outfit apiece, and leave your robe.”

They were doing something different today! Finally! He stripped off his robe, took the clothes from her and examined them. Breeches and a tunic made from rough brown cotton. He was tired of the stupid blue robe, whose sleeves were always getting caught on something. He followed the other neophytes into the bathing area where he quickly washed and changed, and set his jeans and t-shirt into one of the cubbyholes lining the far wall.

Outside again, the sun burned into his eyes and radiated onto his skin.

“EVERYONE. OVER HERE.” Ms. Huston clapped her hands together. “Today you are to learn the art of metallurgy.”

Excited whispers hissed all around, but Terry eyed the empty horse-drawn carts entering the courtyard with a heavy heart. Katya joined his side. “Let me guess: something to do with coins.”

“Coins would be nice,” Terry said, traipsing after the carts. Ms. Huston held the bridle of one of the horses, chatting to the driver as she walked alongside him. They were heading to one of the rickety barns near the garden. Terry tried to find a way of joining their conversation, but it didn’t sound as though they were speaking English to each other.

“Told you,” Katya said in a sing-song voice. “Today it’s market day in that tourist village we all passed on the way in. Archon Castle sells vegetables there and keeps all the profits. No prizes for guessing who has to work the stalls.”

“How do you know?”

“Stevenus warned me last night.”

Terry sighed in response. When she wasn’t complaining about something, she gushed about the Chosen One, great-great-great-grandson of someone or other and he couldn’t decide which was more annoying. All the girls vied for his attention, and ignored the rest of the boys. Terry was already tired of watching them moon over him. Hope was a tease, he was beginning to realise, worse than bully-boys playing keep-away with a child too young to understand what they were really doing. Just when he thought magic was in his grasp, someone tore it away and tucked it behind their back.

Two black-robed creatures hauled each of the barn doors open. Without a word of instruction necessary, all the neophytes began loading bushel baskets of onions, beets, cabbages, carrots, sweet corn and assorted herbs onto one of eleven horse-drawn carts. Crimson-robed Adepts sat in the driver’s seats and took the reins. The neophytes clambered on, sitting at the ends of the wagons with their legs dangling out or, more precariously and painfully, perched on the buckboard sides. Terry chose a spot on the very last wagon, which gave him the perfect vantage point to survey their surroundings.

Reins jangled, hooves clip-clopped, and wooden wheels clattered out through the main set of gates. The castle quickly fell away from his sight, vanishing into the forest. One thing Terry was not going to miss was the nearly constant underlying stench of sawdust, coal and horse manure. They rounded the bend and descended the gravel trail. The same creepy blackbirds were still perched along one of the sprawling branches. As they passed under a canopy of maple and oak tree trees, he tried to recover some of the sense of wonder he’d felt on his way in.

The ride grew smoother. He swept his gaze across the parking lot to where a pair of maintenance vans were parked at the far edge. At the sight of them, he stiffened. If he hopped off now, he could be in one of those vehicles, hot-wiring it and on his way back out before anyone else noticed. Provided it had been left unlocked, that is. He stayed put, feeling guilty he even knew how to do such a thing thanks to the son of his dad’s best friend. They crossed the paved lot and turned onto a trail leading through the woods. He struggled to stay alert, fighting against the lulling way the cart rocked, the gentle wheeze of cicadas and the fresh forest breeze. The perfect setting for a nap.

At last they came to the outer wall. It was far more imposing than he remembered, some fifty feet high and made of giant stone blocks as smooth as a tiled shower stall. Again he caught himself in daydreams of escape. And he wasn’t the only one. The boys next to him whispered that the Master Adepts could watch the entire perimeter from a giant crystal ball in their study. Boys who misbehaved were sent to the dungeon. Girls who misbehaved were kept in a workhouse under lock and key. While Terry had no way of knowing whether or not that was true, glass domes dotted the top of the wall. Each of them gleamed like miniature suns, blinding his eyes if he tried to look at them directly.

Elbowing the boy next to him, Terry whispered, “Were you tempted to flee when they were pulling up that drawbridge on the first day?”

“Nah,” he said, looking startled. “Stevenus said they don’t get to go home straight away. They finish their summer breaking rocks in a quarry outside one of the villages.”

The other one frowned and hunched his shoulders like a bullfrog. “I’m surprised there was anyone left who didn’t know that.”

“I forgot,” Terry said sheepishly. He leaned back against the assorted bushel baskets. The air was cool in the tunnel as they went through the wall, but it made the sun feel even hotter once they came out the other side. Steel doors rolled shut, triggered by some unseen device. Instead of turning right and following the road south down around into the valley the way he’d originally come, they turned left, up a rutted dirt lane that wound into the forest.

One day melded into the next. Every day from dawn to dusk was spent chopping and hauling wood, watering plants, shovelling coal, harvesting vegetables, and doing endless sweeping indoors and out. All under the guise of learning alchemy. In spite of his exhaustion, Terry found himself unable to sleep one night. The air was stiflingly hot. The stench of hay, wood smoke and manure hung in his nostrils. All day he’d tuned out Katya’s griping, but now that he was alone with his thoughts, he feared she was right. This was not a magic school, but a scam. Katya was convinced Wizard Camp was nothing more than a front for slave labour. She’d witnessed kids harvesting vegetables and fruits in quantities way beyond what was needed to feed the entire castle even if those black-robed creatures ate like elephants.

Soon he was wondering whether the wizards really did take new people on. Even if sorcery took place on the premises, how much was going to be shared with newcomers? According to the unofficial Archon Castle forum, Initiates’ robes were dark green. He hadn’t seen any yet. If he spotted just one, he’d be satisfied they at least existed.

To the gentle sounds of snoring neophytes, he slipped on his robe and crept out of the stables. He felt the same sick tension he felt whenever he cut class at school. He was scared of being caught, but also thrilled he was free to explore wherever he pleased. True freedom was like a roller-coaster ride—terrifying, but a lot of fun.

The air outside was suffocating. No wind blew, not even the slightest gust, as if the air itself had grown too heavy to move about. In the haze a fat gibbous moon looked as if a giant had smudged it with his thumb. Moonlit clouds cast the sleeping castle grounds in an eerie yellow glow. The cobble stones were hard on his bare feet. As he crept around one side of the stables, he debated whether to go back and fetch his shoes. Shoes would be noisier, but easier to run in if he had to. He kept to the shadows around the edge of the main courtyard, stopping near the entrance leading down into the kitchens.

The wooden doors were closed and padlocked. He continued along. Beyond the kitchens and dining hall, he came upon a much larger building made of limestone. This one was even more impressive than the Great Halls at Oxford. The gothic architecture—all high, pointed arches, spindly columns and gargoyles occupying every available corner—was awe-inspiring to the point of intimidating. It was Gormenghast come to life and then some. He crept up the stairs to the grand front entrance, keeping as close to the columns as possible. He held his breath and listened. All he could hear were crickets or toads chirping, and the quiet rustle of his robe. He gingerly pulled at the iron ring fastened to one of the main doors. It was locked. So was the other one.

Temporarily free from all the drudgery and toil, he gazed out at the vista of turrets, spires, and crenellated walls, amazed he was actually living here. In the distance, a crackling, fizzing sound erupted. A small explosion went off, followed by cursing. Real magic did go on here, he thought with a flush of excitement. He’d try to see what he could before going back to bed. He hurried across the road in the direction of those sounds. In the darkness, the keep was barely a silhouette against a starless sky, towering behind rambling stone buildings. A maze of alleys ran between. The forge was in there somewhere, along with a kiln and a glassworks. He’d passed all of them enough times by now. Closing his eyes, he listened to the faint tink-tink-tink until he could figure out where it was coming from.

Keeping his feet squarely on the worn cobblestones, he followed a narrow lane that twisted between seemingly endless two-story stone buildings. It ended at a much broader road. Somehow he’d gone the wrong way. Instead of tinkering, he thought he could hear voices chattering, along with someone strumming an acoustic guitar. He came right out onto the road and the music was coming from a building on the far side of the square. This one was even more amazing, looming out of the ground like a cathedral designed by Tim Burton. The narrow arched windows stared out at him like watchful eyes.

Terry continued around to the far side to a smaller though still impressive stone building of three stories. Going by the evenly spaced windows all around, he guessed it was a dormitory. Light flickered in one of the ground floor windows. Beyond the diamond panes of glass, a trio was sitting around a bright lantern. One wore the crimson robe of an adept. The other two were in robes of forest green. So they did exist! Terry was about to sneak closer when he heard two sets of feet tromping towards him. He ducked into the nearest alcove and pressed himself against a rough wooden door. He watched, not daring to breathe, as two Master Adepts strolled by. They mumbled in some language that sounded like a cross between Russian and Japanese. They marched a red-haired boy Terry’d seen sitting within the Chosen One’s orbit in the dining hall. His hands were bound behind his back with a length of rope.

As soon as they were gone, Terry hurried back the way he came. He was just about to slip past the giant building with all its spindly columns and buttresses when a voice boomed in his ears: “RETURN TO YOUR BED AT ONCE!” His heart flew up into his throat. His stomach seized into knots. He looked around and spotted a shadow flitting across the moonlit courtyard. A shadow cast by …