Chapter 14: The Student

Lord Archmage Kalleas

Kalleas sat at his desk, an open folder in front of him containing the record of the young woman about to arrive for her audience. A thin folder. Only twenty-three pages — personal file, academic history, exam results, psychological profile, instructors’ recommendations. Though others her age hadn’t accumulated even that much. He had read it four times over the past month. And each time he found something new. Not because the text had changed. Because his understanding of it had.

Miya Lancaster.

Daughter of Simon Lancaster. He knew her father — he himself had taught the course Simon had taken. A talented man. Very talented. Kalleas had taken notice of him back then, twenty years ago, when Simon was in his final year — persistent, thoughtful, possessing that rare ability to see magic not as a set of formulas but as a living current. Kalleas had even considered offering him a teaching position at the time. And then Simon failed the Mage examination. And again. And again. And he remained an Apprentice. For fifteen years. Because the standard for becoming a Mage never changed — proof of raw power and the size of one’s internal reserve. And the fact that Simon handled the small reserve he had with such extraordinary skill, that he could give even a Magister trouble in a duel, was something no one intended to take into account.

Kalleas sometimes thought: if he had intervened back then, twenty years ago — told Simon that it wasn’t raw power that mattered, but experience, that he was already ready, that the examiners simply couldn’t see what he, Kalleas, could see — perhaps things would have turned out differently. Perhaps Simon would be at the Academy now. Teaching. And with steady practice, he might have developed the reserve he lacked and passed that damned exam after all. Perhaps.

But Kalleas hadn’t intervened. Because, as it always seemed to work out, whenever Simon went up for his examination, he himself was away from Veindor. Because there was always something more important than being present for the exams.

And now the file of Simon Lancaster’s daughter lay before him. And he didn’t know what to do with it.

He opened the folder again. Ran his eyes over the notes. Twenty-three years old. Enrolled two years ago — late, very late. Most students began at fifteen or sixteen. But with private instruction, with a core density that some graduates would envy. The instructors had noticed her immediately: diligent, analytical, psychologically mature beyond her years. She didn’t throw herself into risk, didn’t flaunt her talent, didn’t try to prove to everyone that she was the smartest. She simply studied. Absorbed knowledge. Just as her father had, twenty years before.

And then came the leap. Four months ago. Exams she had always passed with solid B’s began coming back with alarming, flawless A’s. Practical sessions turned into demonstrations of mastery far exceeding her formal rank as a student. And almost immediately after that — early promotion to Apprentice. At twenty-three. Most reached that rank around thirty. Usually by the time they graduated from the Academy.

Kalleas suspected Miya was capable of going for the Mage examination — the very rank her father had never managed to reach. Not merely capable of attempting it, but of passing it outright. And yet she had deliberately chosen not to. Apparently she’d understood that it was unwise to race ahead of the chimera pulling the cart. And that was exactly what he intended to determine — whether she truly possessed the magical power and skill necessary to attempt the Mage examination. Alongside that, he intended to propose a certain journey, after which sitting the exam would no longer look as strange as it did now. And, at the same time, to find out where she’d acquired that knowledge and those skills. He knew the Academy’s curriculum by heart — every course, every subject, and exactly what was taught in each of them. And what Miya demonstrated simply did not fit within the limits of what a student could possibly know from the curriculum alone.