Izzi dismissed the servants and clicked the door closed behind them for a moment of privacy. She collapsed into the plush armchair in her reading nook, flicked her fingernails aimlessly across the fabric on the arms where her mother’s elbows had worn it thin, and tried to think clearly. Bright sunshine slanted across her face. She rested her eyes, feeling the warmth on her eyelids. They wanted to stay closed, and she wondered how many hours of sleep she’d actually got. Enough to face her assessment clear eyed? Enough to succeed?

With the summoning charm tickling at her mind like a feather, on top of the lack of sleep, would she even be able to concentrate at all?

She bit into her bottom lip, then put her head in her hands, her silver bangles sliding down her arms. In the clarity of day she told herself the summoning charm could not be real. It was just the wishful scribbling of some long-ago acolyte, with no more power than the notes the cook wrote in the margins of her recipes. She dared a glance over at the spine of the book, shelved again with the journals. Children’s fables. It was all just a stupid prank. Perhaps she had played it on herself. 

But the book seemed to stare back at her. The Waves of a Thousand Oceans. Just trickery to carry her a trap? Or was there still something to unlock there?

If the charm was real, then she certainly would not dare bring an ifrit into her father’s house, for all that she resented how he had treated her mother. Ifrit djinn were well-known deceivers, with unending powers. It could only end in disaster. 

She looked up at her hand. The scrap of parchment with the scribbled summoning had somehow found itself there. She did not remember taking it out, but that was her hand, and that was the charm—wasn’t it? It was just the lack of sleep. 

It was decided then—she could not leave the dangerous thing unattended. She folded the charm into a long silk headscarf and wrapped it into her hair as usual, leaving only a single red-streaked lock visible. 

She completed her preparations for the day.

✨

Izzi arrived only slightly late, to see Beena with her hands shaking.

“It’s Mogh Kalu,” Beena whispered. “It feels so wrong. The assessment task is—too much.”

Nele looked even smaller than usual. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, her eyes still for once, staring at nothing. 

“Oh, come on,” Izzi said in exasperation, grabbed them by the shoulders, and strode forward.

The air crackled with tension. The remaining students, the most gifted, praised and prized from all the youth of Zakra, having won through the ranks from acolyte to novice against all odds, were now huddled together like spring lambs. The meagre glow from the few light shafts made their swarthy skin pale. The extent of the chamber was hidden as always, but a dark shape in carved leather stepped out from behind one of the inscribed pillars.

“Late again Izbel.” Mogh Kalu said, his tufts of white fluffy hair drifting in a manner she dare not find comical at that moment. “No one else wants to stand forward, so you’re first.”

Izzi nodded. She’d rather just get it over with. As she moved toward the others she saw their tenseness become anticipation. They were happy to see a spectacle unfold, if it was at her expense rather than their own.

“Since you are late, I’ll need to repeat: today’s assessment task requires trust and teamwork. You must choose one of your fellow noviciates and channel a water-wile. The spirit must enter and speak through your subject.”

Izzi’s heart started to thump. No wonder the others were spooked. Kalu had mentioned this kind of spirit possession early in the term, as an aside, and then dismissed it as a mere detail. Now he was including it in the assessment?

“You must have the water-wile cast a spell of plenty, replenishing the cisterns of the city. Then you must banish the spirit and safely restore your subject. Be warned, the ritual is delicate, today it is for real, and a misstep could result in dire consequences for your classmate.”

Magister Kalu held out a battered tin cup. “This vessel contains water from the king’s pool above.”

Izzi knew she could do this, at least she knew the spells and how to deal with a wile, but she balked at the idea of having the wile possess one of the class. What if something went wrong? Who would she choose?

She looked at them one by one. It was no surprise none seemed particularly keen. This was not so much about who Izzi trusted, but who trusted her.

“Choose,” said Kalu. “Otherwise, you will be the possesssed subject and I’ll choose another at random to perform the ritual.”

Izzi looked at Beena, with her wide Kythian face, perpetually happy but tiny mouth, and deep-set dark eyes. Those eyes sparked with concern and her lips were tight.

“Do it,” Beena whispered.

It was now or fail, all of her long years of struggle for naught.

Izzi nodded and bowed her head to her friend. Then she reached out and accepted the cup. She passed it to Beena.

“Drink, just a sip.”

Izzi recovered the cup and threw it with the remaining water onto the stones of the floor at their feet. Then she closed her eyes, balanced her mind on the point of a pin, and began the incantation, calling out to the plane of existence where the wiles gathered. In her mind’s eye she saw them swirling around her, ugly and misshapen creatures seemingly made of dirty bedsheets, but they were the wiles of the wind. She looked down to those writhing at her feet. They were finned and floppy, with dark bulbous eyes and the teeth of sharks. Izzi knew she should choose a minor being, but immediately the largest and boldest of them rose up and spoke. 

“Who are YOU to dare the realm of the wiles?” it boomed.

Izzi was ready.

“I will not give you my name, creature,” she said, “but I will tell you I am the daughter of a sorcerer who commanded the oases of the desert, and you will obey me as you did her.”

“Really,” said the fishy spirit, “a shred of history, is that all you have? Hardly an imposing being, are you? I can’t think what you could possibly have to bargain with. Perhaps you offer more than you intend?”

Izzi’s tired mind thought for just a merest moment about the charm in her scarf.

“Scarf,” said the wile, its bulbous eyes narrowing, water flowing freely from their corners. “What is that tucked in your scarf?”

Oh, no. A moment’s loss of her pinprick focus had betrayed her. She had to divert its attention quickly, before she brought the conversation from her head and out into the hall for all to hear.

“Forget the scarf,” she said. “Greater boons await one of your omniscient cunning, chiefest of all wiles, if you can keep up in this game.”

The wile laughed, a noise like the crashing of waves on a jagged reef. “Start your game, child, but be prepared to lose.”

Izzi swallowed, steeled herself, and returned to the proper sequence of a wile possession. “I grant you power to speak through the mouth of the one before us, who drank of your water.”

The spirit vanished from her mind vision, and Izzi opened her eyes. Before her, Beena stood slightly sagged, as if hanging from invisible strings. Her eyes seemed even darker than usual, and her lips were slightly open.

“What is your name, fish?” Izzi asked.

“I am Tenebezkian,” said the water-wile in the sweet voice of her friend, “master of the deeps that swirled here before they dried to desert sands.”

Izzi knew she had to hit the target early, aim straight for the bull.

“But I bet you are weak now, and have no power to grant water to the cisterns of Zakra.”

Beena gurgled an wet laugh. “Weak? I will wager with you, if that is your game,” she said. Her body had stiffened now, and she appeared to stand taller than usual, looking down on Izzi. 

“If I can fill the cisterns of the city, then you will give me this body to keep,” her friend’s voice stated it as if it was already fact. 

This was exactly the kind of disaster she’d been supposed to avoid. Now she had to be strong. If she could not counter this threat, she would forever lose her truest friend. Kalu would consign the possesssed Beena to the deepest dungeon under the Magekadeh, the sorry end for failures like this, and Izzi would need to live on somehow, knowing her friend was in perpetual torment far below the city. She could not let that happen at any cost, even to her own destruction at the hands of the wile. 

Calm, she berated herself. Stay calm—panic will not save Beena. 

“I will not provide so high a stake,” she countered. “If you can grant a mere five hundred barrels of fresh drinking water to the cisterns of Zakra city only, then you may swim in the cisterns for a night. But you may not harm any who live in our walls, or in the armies without, or in the lands around.”

She knew a bargain with a wile had to have the strictest terms, yet they had to believe they had the upper hand. It would now ask for more.

“Grant me swimming in the oases of the lands around also, and we have a bargain.”

“Yes, but for only one night,” said Izzi. 

“Agreed, a night of my choosing.”

“But the water must be delivered now,” Izzi countered. Otherwise she would fail the assessment.

“Actually,” said Tenebezkian through Beena, “I have grown fond of this body already, and I think I shall keep it anyway. Unless of course, you give me what you have hidden.”

Unconsciously, Izzi placed a hand to her neck, covering the spell folded into her scarf.

“That’s right,” cried out the voice of Beena with glee and greed. “Give it to me! I will command all the waters!”

“No!” Izzi shouted. She had to save her friend. She pressed on the charm within her scarf, and mouthed the entirety of the hidden charm.

The hall darkened as if clouds had obscured the light-shaft prisms. A deep rumble rose from beneath the hall, slowly became louder and louder as if something gigantic approached through the rock under the desert.

Then a sharp clap echoed through the hall, and for a moment it seemed to shake like the ringing of a giant temple bell. 

But no ifrit djinni appeared to save Beena.

“That was disappointing,” said Tenebezkian. “Oh well, although you are naught but the troublesome daughter of a dead sorcerer, I accept your terms.” 

Kalu stepped forward at last, his arms folded. “Disappointing? Stupid wile, that thing would have consumed you.”

The wile shrugged Beena’s shoulders and pulled her mouth into a too-wide smile. “Anyway, I win.”

Beena crumpled but Izzi caught her before she hit the floor.

“I’m okay,” Beena said breathlessly, rubbing at her arms, “but what happened? Did you get the water?”

“Yes, she did,” said Mogh Kalu. “And she also got a suspension for attempting to summon an ifrit into this sanctuary. If I had not stopped it, this would have ended so badly, perhaps for the entire kingdom. An ifrit is a dangerous being that would make that water-wile seem like a mere ripple, and Izbel fully knew the consequences. 

“But she saved me!” Beena said. 

“Even so, the risk was too high,” said Kalu. “Izbel, daughter of Penza the Merchant, son of Enzel the Executioner, you are today suspended from the Magekadeh for the remainder of the season.”

His words hit Izzi like a hammer. Her relief at Beena’s safety collapsed into anguish. Not sent down. Suspended.

Just like that, everything she had worked for—gone, at least for now. 

The hall wavered around her. Kalu’s face was stone. Beena’s face was pale with shock.

“Report to the gates immediately,” Kalu said.

She walked with shame, seeing only the door, hearing nothing as if she was deaf. 

No one patted her on the back.