Marlen stepped back into Yulda’s office and closed the gate behind him with a snap of his fingers. Maziar didn’t seem to be taking as much interest in the girl, and Marlen had spent more time explaining the devices to her than he’d intended. She wasn’t likely able to use them efficiently, but he would sleep better knowing that she wasn’t going to burn the Tower down.

“How did it go?” Yulda asked him. Her earrings softly tinkled as she tilted her head up at him.

“The young miss is settled,” he said. “She’s curious about her environment, but I can’t say she wishes to be here.”

“Can you blame her? What about Maziar?”

“Disinterested.”

Frustrated, Yulda picked up the pen on her desk and threw it across the room. Glad that it was the pen and not something of any particular weight or value, Marlen picked it up and placed it back on the desk.

Glaring at him, she said, “I threw it for a reason.”

“Yes,” he affirmed. “And now you can throw it again if you wish.”

Yulda sighed. “What should I do with him?”

“You can’t make up for the past,” Marlen said, knowing that a large part of her patience for her son came from her own self-blame. “And coddling him will only make him worse. In his defense, however, I don’t believe he’s done this intentionally. Maziar likes to play tricks and rile the noble children, but he’s never hurt anyone. He tends to do things for a reason.”

“You’re referring to the complaint from the Zyers boy?”

“Indeed.”

Shortly before they arrived, it was reported that Cardin Zyers had a scuffle with Maziar. It might have led to heavy consequences, but the situation was not all that it appeared to be.

“Kasslir Elutai came forward while you were speaking with Ennette and Maziar,” Marlen said. “He says he wants to take any blame for what happened in the Tower of Agnon. Elutai was certain that Maziar wouldn’t have gotten involved if Zyers hadn’t used him as bait.”

“Which is exactly why Zyers used him,” she grumbled. “And then, of course, it’s favoritism when I don’t punish Maziar, regardless of what actually happened.”

“Maziar’s concerns about you being held responsible for his actions aren’t invalid,” Marlen said. “He does stupid things—he’s not actually stupid. He very well recognizes the fact that anything he does falls onto you tenfold—and short of expelling him, nothing will ever be enough for those who seek to replace you.”

“And even when he behaves, he gets dragged into someone else’s shit,” Yulda said, spinning in her chair. “I can’t shield him from this familiar fiasco.”

“You cannot.”

“But how do I save him?” she asked the ceiling. Interlacing her fingers over her chest, Yulda leaned back in her chair and looked at the shiny wooden ceiling.

“Speaking of grounds for expulsion, it seems that while he and Maziar were having their little spat, Zyers targeted Ennette.”

“He did what?”

“I can check the legal procedures,” Marlen told her. “It’s somewhat of a blessing that the Zyers boy acted rashly; we can at least remind him that he’s on thin ice himself. Aside from that, I don’t think there is much you can do until we find out how to break that contract of theirs.”

“Yes,” Yulda started grimly. “That contract.”

Something was wrong, and they all knew it. Someone either wasn’t telling the truth, or there was something else they were missing.

“Perhaps visiting the circle he used would be of help?” offered Marlen.

“I planned on it, but I wanted to make sure you were here before I left. The last thing I need is for someone to start poking around while I am gone.”

“Do you think it was, perhaps, someone else?” Marlen asked in a quiet voice.

Yulda stopped spinning her chair and crossed her arms. “No matter what Maziar did or did not do, there isn’t any way I can think of for him to have had enough power to summon anything from across even a single plane, let alone one I’ve never heard of.”

“Then our thoughts are the same,” Marlen said, looking down pensively. “Even I haven’t heard of ‘Earth,’ and I’ve traveled many planes.”

“But if Maziar didn’t have the power to do it—if even you don’t have the power to do it—then how would it have happened?” Yulda asked. “The only possible way I can think of is that he had someone help him come up with the rest of it.”

“Even then, when you start talking about reaching through layers of planes, that’s a bit ridiculous,” Marlen said. “Even if you and I were to attempt to pull something through layers of planes in an instant, I would only expect us to manage to pull through three or four. That’s nothing compared to what we are talking about with Ennette.”

“Multiple feeders then? But how many would that take—and why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Speculation without evidence is worthless. I suggest you inspect the scene yourself; I’ll keep the others from making a ruckus. You can call me if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Marlen,” Yulda said. Marlen bowed and took his leave.

* * *

Yulda stood and took her coat from the back of her chair. Shoving her hands through the sleeves, she tried to think of all the possibilities.

What, exactly, was she looking for? A conspiracy? Was there someone out there who may have been hoping that he summoned something of greater power rather than a greater distance? But to what end? And why Maziar of all people?

She grabbed her staff from its place beside the bookshelf and headed out.

The first thing she did was head to the base of the Archon's Tower, where the heart of the Tower’s formation was. If there had been an infiltration, the whole of the Tower could be under threat—but the various circles that made up the enchantments remained intact.

With that confirmed, she went to the Tower of Agnon, where the summoning ritual was held.

Nothing seemed out of sorts. It needed a good cleaning, but that was the students’ responsibility. She made a note and moved on. It would make a good punishment for Maziar and the Zyers boy later.

Entering the tower through its arched doorway, Yulda was struck by the strong smell of sweet incense and a wall of cool air. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, but even when they did, nothing looked out of place.

Zerathon had left Maziar’s circle where it was in case Yulda could make heads or tails of what went wrong. However, even that was as Maziar said: textbook.

“Oh, that clever little brat,” she muttered as she saw that he had doubled every circle and marked it with extra fine break lines that were hardly noticeable. There were also small dots of ink placed in the crevices, almost entirely invisible if she wasn’t specifically looking for such tiny flaws; but the closer she looked, the more she saw.

Maziar was right: The circle he drew shouldn’t have worked on multiple levels.

It was a crying shame that the boy had lost the majority of his magic. If he hadn’t, she was sure that he would have been one of the greatest magi of their time.

She felt a simultaneous twang of pride and sorrow as she thought what he must have been like as a boy. What kind of hopes and dreams had he had, with the world fawning at his feet?

Yulda knelt and touched the circle lightly—then tilted her head as a strange energy pulsed through the tips of her fingers.

That’s not right. That’s not right at all.

The Tower of Agnon wasn’t without its oddities and legends. Most of the towers in the Northern Tower were far older than they looked, preserved by magic throughout time. Some were said to have been brought by powerful dimensional-affinity casters from other planes.

One might ponder why they would transport piles of rocks, wood, and metal from one plane to another, given that most had nothing all that special about them—but when a bunch of bored, drunk, magical people with more power than sense gathered, strange things were bound to happen.

Most of Agnon’s secrets had to do with astral magic. Though the science of it wasn’t yet fully understood, the tower generated power when the stars aligned in certain ways. Because of this, Astral spells cast in the tower would be enhanced.

But familiar summoning spells weren’t astral magic—and it was the core of the tower that generated that power, not the building itself.

Then what? Yulda wondered, spinning around to see if there was something she missed. If the energy was coming from the floor… But there wasn’t anything wrong with the floor, either.

Unless… could it be?

“It could be,” she decided, muttering to herself. “That there was an illusion spell on the room…”

…and if there was, it could have been etched into the floor, gathering magic all along.

Though rarely used for the same purpose, light and astral magic had an inseparable relationship; they shared a power base. The tower’s amplification mechanism that was used to fuel astral magic could easily be siphoned off to create illusions.

The idea that some hooligan could be running around casting spells under the nose of the tower’s staff was worrying enough. If someone was formidable enough to cast a light spell that could fool even her, then that was a horrifying thought.

Gathering a ball of light mana in her hands, Yulda knelt on the ground again. Pressing her hand flat against the floor, she sent a shockwave through the stone. The floor rippled with light and shadow as if her hand was a stone cast into still water—and the illusion dissipated.

“Shit,” Yulda breathed, staggering back up and staring.

Never before in her life had she seen such a thing.

Absent illusion, the lights in the room were now completely dark—all of their mana absorbed by a single, massive magic circle formation glowing brightly underneath Maziar’s dark one. It shone with brilliant iridescence as it radiated colors of light.

It was intricate and complex, and the words were written in a language that Yulda didn’t know, but the structure of the thing was clear enough.

It was a summoning circle.

Whatever was going on, Yulda was almost certain now: Ennette had not been summoned by accident.

Maziar had summoned her by someone else’s design.