Beena held out her palm and conjured her sigil token, identifying her rank and right to enter. Izzi followed suit, careful not to meet the creature’s eye.

A slow exhale of too much spent breath stirred Izzi’s scarf and protruding locks. She held her own breath and slitted her eyes in defence.

The nasnas slumped back against its chains, its half-mouth curling into something that might have been a grin, might have been hunger.

“Pass,” it rasped, “novices.” That last word was delivered with a hiss of palpable distaste.

They hurried past.

Desks and benches of varying antiquity and stability stood seemingly at random around the chamber floor, and clustered here and there on the platforms that circled the walls above. Izzi had her favourite spot on the third level, the highest novices could ascend without provoking the nasnas to spike its spindly fingers in warning. Books and journals shelved beyond that were strictly prohibited, ostensibly because magians from those ancient eras followed fewer scruples, their teachings prone to leading novices down dangerous roads. Precisely what dangers those paths held was never explained. Many of the oldest tomes were penned in the forbidden old tongue—a language now carefully suppressed, for its words supposedly held secrets too near those perilous paths.

They passed a group of three young mages who had amassed a towering collection of old journals on a rickety desk, and were desperately flipping through them, their faces lined with anguish. With a shared glance of agreement, Izzi and Beena kept silent and went the long way around the entire level, careful not to bump into any squeaky chairs or tables, knowing the mages could commandeer them to an important quest on a whim, and any chance of additional study for the next day’s assessment would be lost.

Other than those three, and a scattering of single mages or older magians quietly studying under portable lanterns, the Grimoiren seemed empty. Only the occasional cough, creak of furniture, or rattle of the twitchy nasnas’s chain disturbed the dusty silence.

Although the works of individual scholars were generally kept together, with the oldest long-dead authors of course higher, the collection in the Grimoiren was not in any particular order. Unless you had a specific clue or guide, to find what you needed took magic. 

Driven as ever, Beena wasted no time. She sat across from Izzi with elbows to the tabletop and fingertips to forehead. Her eyes were closed, the tips of her black hair brushed the dents and scribbles, and her tiny mouth mumbled some questing spell. 

Izzi looked into the darkness for inspiration. She pinched her chin. Today Mogh Kalu had taken them to the realm of the wiles, but the actual test had been determined by the wile itself, a creature seemingly beholden to the magian in some way. She analysed the pattern of his teachings over the last days and tried to predict what might be in the assessment. Many of them, like today’s, had touched on deception, on not being tricked into missing something.

Pay attention, came into her mind again. 

Here, deep in the Magekadeh, a host of wards, captive creatures of the sundered realm, and other magical barriers prevented questing thoughts from outside. That was doubly so inside the Grimoiren, protecting the wealth of magian magic. So either some presence had snuck through the defences of the strongest magians of the kingdom, or the words were from inside her head, the thoughts ultimately her own.

Pay attention, the idea kept repeating, but what was she missing? She twisted her fingers into sigils that represented eyes, and silently mouthed a simple magian questing spell.

Hidden fires melting sands,

Secret names of burning kings.

Behind the flaming feathers of Anqa. 

I see the glass emblazed with light.

The formless clouds of sign and sequence,

Become the clearest sky to me.

It didn’t seem to have any effect. Not at first.