Pale Lights - Book 2: Chapter 12

Angharad woke to the smell of breakfast.

Tossing aside her sheets – where Tristan and Maryam had found such a profoundly ugly shade of brown, she had no idea – she pushed herself up. Though she had slept in a bedroll laid on the ground, it had been a decent enough night’s sleep. The Pereduri still looked forward to securing a proper bed and mattress for the bedroom she’d claimed, possibly paired with sheets that did not make her feel like wincing.

Getting up, she washed herself with a cloth and a pot of tepid well water before putting on her new combat uniform. There was no looking glass in the room, or indeed much of anything except dust and the bags she had set down yesterday, but there was one downstairs she would use to verify nothing was askew. Coming down the steps – they creaked under her feet – she found that Song and Maryam were already seated at the drawing room table, chatting quietly over plates and cups of tea.

Song nodded her way, Maryam instead shoveling in a mouthful of eggs and rashers and loudly chewing. The Izvorica had been unreadable since Angharad faltered before her yesterday, which left her unsure of her footing around the other woman.

“Tristan still sleeps?” Angharad asked, nodding back to Song.

Their captain shook her head.

“He woke first,” she said. “He’s out digging in the garden.”

Very industrious of him, Angharad thought approvingly. Yesterday there had been talk of planting herbs and vegetables in the yard so they might have a supply even should the goods in Port Allazei grow too expensive. A most prudent notion. While it had not happened in Angharad’s lifetime, she’d heard that Frangoch Heights – the lands to the east of Llanw Hall – had closed its roads to merchants in her grandmother’s day and the sharp rise in the price of lumber and iron had almost ruined House Tredegar.

Being at the mercy of one’s neighbors for necessities was a dangerous thing.

The noblewoman helped herself to a plate in the kitchen, learning the meal was Song’s work when she asked, and sat with the others to eat. Conversation was halting but amicable and though Angharad polished off her plate rather quickly there was no snide comment from Maryam following. Though her cheeks yet burned at the memory of how she had shamed herself blubbering out her grief to a stranger, she dared hoped that the continued silence might mean they had reached a truce of sorts.

It was encouraging that last night Maryam had specified to the others that she was not merely Triglau but Izvorica, implying they had not known before. It had thus been a true gesture for the pale-skinned woman to tell her that, not mere window-dressing.

When Angharad brought back her empty plate to the kitchen, she found Tristan was in the antechamber wiping his boots. The Sacromontan was faintly sweaty, his hands and knees caked in dirt, but at least he had only gone out in his shirt and trousers instead of dirtying a uniform.

“Morning,” he greeted her. “Is everyone done eating?”

“Good morning,” Angharad replied. “Song will soon be finished with her tea, I believe.”

The gray-eyed man grunted in acknowledgement.

“Then I best get changed,” he said.

Well, if he was headed that way already… Angharad cleared her throat.

“I bought a comb yesterday,” she said. “In case you were looking for one.”

Tristan’s lips twitched.

“If my hair is known to be messy, then when it is combed it can serve as a disguise,” he told her.

She did appreciate that he attempted not to lie, though given her familiarity with exact wording his efforts were very much transparent.

“My father once told me the trick to getting away with that is using a truth that sounds like a lie,” Angharad advised him. “That way the adversary chases an untruth that does not exist.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Your father sounds like a wise man,” Tristan conceded.

It should not have made a difference, to hear the word in someone else’s mouth when she had just spoken it, but it did. Angharad was suddenly aching at his absence, and struggled to master herself.

“He was,” she finally replied, and left it at that.

And dead, sure to be, but the knowledge that there had been survivor from Llanw Hall threaded that grief with new uncertainty. Imandi Langa had told her a prisoner was taken by the men who had slain her family, but not who. A cousin, her uncle? A servant, more likely, but Angharad could not imagine those unknown soldiers thinking a servant of House Tredegar being worth much as a hostage.

Who would pay for their release with mother dead and Angharad herself disgraced? Unless they had known secrets of the house, and that was why they were kept alive. There had to be a reason House Tredegar had been struck at, for that slaughter had been carefully planned. But Angharad knew nothing, and the only answers at hand were in another woman’s grip – to be paid for, and dearly. And yet the urge to know was like an itch she could not scratch.

Within ten minutes they were all ready to leave, a merciful distraction from her thoughts. They were all armed, bearing the pistols Song had insisted they all acquire at the hip and their preferred arms besides. Angharad’s saber and their captain’s straight sword were no surprise, but the handaxe belted at Maryam’s side was. The Izvorica did not have the callouses of someone trained in wielding such a weapon, but there must have been a reason for her to pick it over more common blades.

Tristan bore a knife, but Angharad knew better than to think it his only one.

They crossed the garden and took the stairs down, first going down a series of convoluted passages and circling stairs – empty doors windows stared at them like unblinking eyes, every scrap of metal turned into rust-red strokes like blood spatter – before reaching the opening that Tristan had yesterday seen from the outside. It looked as if a courtyard had been carved a single saber’s blow, broken stacked rectangle-houses hanging open on both sides. Rusted metal wires, each large a fist, hung across the gap for some mysterious purpose and copper pipes peeked out like ribs.

It was not stairs they stepped onto down to the street but rubble, the stones large enough they served the purpose with little danger.

“If we are to remain here for several years it might be best to clear this out and put in proper stairs,” Angharad said.

She did not look forward to carrying mattress stuffing up this, or solid furniture for that matter. The Thirteenth was in a most dire need of chairs.

“We should first settle the cottage properly,” Song replied. “It needs a thorough cleaning and further furnishing.”

“Tredegar’s right,” Maryam said, shaking her head. “If it rains this all turns into a slippery death trap. We should look into putting up a rope rail, at least.”

Surprised, Angharad nodded her thanks for the support. The Izvorica curtly nodded back to. A pleasant turn, and perhaps a hopeful one.

Once they were out in Port Allazei they took to the streets eastwards so they might find Arsay Avenue, the road that led straight to Scholomance and was said to be regularly patrolled by the blackcloaks.

The Grand Orrery’s false stars cut a green swath this morning and it made it stand out all the more that the neighborhood around their new home were overgrown with trees and vines, like flowers grown on bones of stone. Twice Angharad caught sight of what looked like silhouettes watching them rooftops, but no one ever emerged. It took them only ten minutes to make it to Arsay Avenue, which they found quite busy.

Given the hour – it was now nearly six forty-five, according to Tristan’s watch – that was no surprise. According to the instructions Captain Wen had passed along, every student in Scholomance was meant to be in class by seven thirty.

A patrol of twelve armed watchmen was briskly marching down the avenue, but the others were all students. The Thirteenth drew eyes at having come out of ruins, but little more than that. They would not be the only ones indulging in shortcuts and detours. As they came onto the road they crossed paths with another cabal whose captain, a handsome Malani with carefully tended beard, came over to introduce himself with three companions.

“Captain Philani, Thirty-Eighth Brigade,” he said, offering up his hand.

“Captain Song, Thirteenth,” Song replied, taking it.

The man’s brow rose, perhaps in recognition, but the demeanor remained friendly. After a brief round of introductions, they agreed to move forward together.

“I am told the garrison made a deep sweep along the avenue last night to clear out the lemure nests, but beasts always creep back in,” Captain Phalani said. “There is safety in numbers.”

Certainly others believed the same, as Angharad glimpsed other groups trudging along the road that were too large to consist of a single cabal. As they set out she and Song ended up at the front with the captain, Tristan and Maryam instead keeping pace with the others.

“I have yet to see a lemure on the island,” Angharad admitted. “Though we are admittedly recent arrivals.”

“Shades are the most common,” he said. “But like the Malani breed, they flee groups and strike only at the weak or wounded. The real threats are the lycosi packs. The Ninth Brigade also spread word there is a briarid wandering along the western edge of Allazei, but it sounds easy enough to avoid.”

Angharad knew of the latter lemure, mostly by virtue of it looking striking on bestiary pages. Briarids were also called ‘hundred-handers’, both large and extremely territorial. The other name, however, she was unfamiliar with.

“Lycosi?” she asked.

“Wolf-like creatures capable of some shapeshifting if they have recently partaken of meat,” Song contributed.

The other captain nodded.

“One is hardly a threat to a trained soldier,” Captain Phalani expounded, “but they move in packs and are known to use cunning stratagems.”

Conversation continued pleasantly as they walked down Arsay Avenue, though after ten minutes or so they were forced to halt. There was some sort of road blockage from a fallen house, a crowd of students milling around the rubble. Both the Thirteenth and the Thirty-Eighth approached in curiosity, finding the reason for such interest – there was a wounded. A tanned girl had a mangled leg, perhaps broken by falling rubble, and a handful of students were seeing to her wound.

Around her were a pair of bloodied corpses, but they belonged to lemures and not men: harpies, feathered monsters with fearsome talons and some measure of intelligence. Some sort of ambush must have taken place here, Angharad thought. A disconcerting prospect, given that they would need to pass through here five mornings out of seven.

Students were beginning to circle around the collapse, though some enterprising soul instead made their way through the rubble-strewn avenue. That was half the reason for the crowd, as the easiest way across was somewhat narrow and an informal line had formed. They parted ways with Captain Phalani there, as he intended to cross the rubble while Song decided they would be going around instead. They backtracked for a bit then cut west, through a cracked stone courtyard.

There, however, surprise struck.

“Take a tracing, then,” Ferranda Villazur exasperatedly said. “It isn’t going anywhere.”

On the other side of the courtyard, beneath a pair of broken columns, the Thirty-First Brigade was inspecting some kind of mechanism. Zenzele was leaning against one of the columns, hat pulled down and looking half-asleep, while Ferranda was addressing a kneeling Tianxi that Angharad could only see the back of. Their designated lookout, however, did not miss the Thirteenth’s arrival.

“Well, well, well,” Shalini Goel grinned, pushing off the wall. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“I see we are too late,” Song solemnly replied. “The Someshwar’s already invaded.”

“We’ve come for your hats and women,” Shalini agreed.

She turned to Angharad, wiggling her eyebrows, and the Pereduri could not help but snort.

“It is good to see you as well, Shalini,” she said, offering her arm to clasp.

The short, curvy gunslinger took it. To Angharad’s surprise she was even drawn in for a quick embrace, just as quickly released as the Someshwari went off to greet the others. Meanwhile Zenzele had come to join the reuinion, and just as he traded greeting with Angharad they were joined by the last two of his brigade. Ferranda she was familiar with, naturally, but the fourth was a new face.

“Angharad, if I might introduce you to our fellow cabalist Rong Ma,” Lady Ferranda said.

The Tianxi was barely taller than Shalini, dark of eye and with short black hair combed to the side. With those slender eyebrows and delicate features, Angharad was honestly unsure if she was looking at a man or woman – or other, for that matter.

“Angharad Tredegar,” she said, offering her hand.

“Please, call me Rong,” the Tianxi replied shaking it.

The voice was soft and ambiguous, which did nothing to settle the matter. Angharad was going to have to ask.

“Rong is an Umuthi Society recommendation,” Ferranda said. “They’re headed for the Clockwork Cathedral track.”

Ah, there it was. Angharad nodded her thanks at Ferranda for saving her the awkwardness of asking a stranger their gender, getting a smile back.

“I must confess I do not know of this Cathedral,” she said.

“It is an internal distinction of the society,” Rong told her. “Tinkers of the Clockwork Cathedral concern themselves with entirely mechanical devices, whole those of the Deuteronomicon study mainly aetheric machinery.”

They cleared their throat.

“I hope you do not find me too forward to asking, but are you truly related to Captain Osian Tredegar?”

Angharad paused, taken aback.

“He is my uncle,” she replied. “How do you know of him?”

“He is a rising name in the Clockwork Cathedral,” Rong told her. “If not for the opportunity to attend Scholomance, I might well have attempted to enter his workshop as journeyman.”

One of these days, she thought, she was going to cease being surprised by the sheer depths of things she did not know about her uncle Osian. Yet today was not that day, evidently.

“He had sent word he will be passing by the island soon,” Angharad said. “I could make introductions, if you would like.”

Rong’s eyes widened.

“That would be very kind of you,” they happily said.

That set a rather friendly tone which extended into a round of introductions between the cabals, faltering only when the Tianxi was introduced to Song. The hand they had been about to offer went down, as if fearing to be burned by the touch, and the face of Angharad’s captain tightened. To their honor, Rong grasped the rudeness of the act.

“Apologies,” they said. “But everyone knows touching a Ren is…”

“Bad luck,” Song evenly said. “So I have heard. It is no matter.”

Angharad’s gaze cooled as she stared at the other Tianxi, who looked somewhat abashed but not in any way inclined to take back the snub. Perhaps her uncle’s schedule would not allow for an introduction, after all. Ferranda pushed through the tenseness with forced cheer, suggesting they walk to Scholomance together, and Song agreed. The mood had somewhat soured, but thankfully the walk to the outskirts of the school grounds was a mere few minutes long after they cut back east and returned to Arsay Avenue past the rubble.

Scholomance’s silhouette grew taller and taller, like a giant staring down, and around them ruins grew sparser and sparser until they were flanked by little more than fields of grass. Walking in the hulking school’s shadow, they approached the school through a wide paved yard. The span of Scholomance’s grounds was traced by a shallow canal long gone dry, Angharad saw, and there were but two stone bridges across it.

Before each bridge a tall bronze statue, most of them lost to time, and near them students were lining up to wait. Beneath the statues were pairs of blackcloaks with ledgers and equipment, which were handing the students something Angharad could not make out before sending them on their way. The Thirty-First picked one line and the Thirteenth another, bringing their common road to an end.

The parting was polite, but noticeably cooler than the first greetings had been. To Maryam’s honor, she seemed even more miffed by Rong Ma’s lack of etiquette than Angharad herself was. As they made to stand in line the noblewoman saw there were only two cabals ahead of them, but the process seemed slow-going. Angharad found her gaze drifting past the blackcloaks and students onto the school itself, at last getting a closer look.

Scholomance, she found, was beautiful.

She had not expected that. From a distance the school had seemed like a looming specter, dark and dangerous, and it was certainly that – but it was also poignantly beautiful. The heart of it was a cathedral of pale gray stone, but nothing like any she had seen before. At its summit of it stood a great dome made of flashing brass bones set in green tiles, large as small town, and from there the school unfolded like a madman’s bewitching dream.

Flanking the front gates were twin towers carved of stone so fine it looked like lace, but it was the front facade that had hundreds staring: it was made entirely of stained glass. Even the gates themselves, wide open as they were. Behind that splendor lurked ghostly lights moved by some unseen mechanism, their course making it seem as if the colors of the facade were themselves alive.

To the sides lesser halls spread out, their roofs set with the same green tiles with veins of bronze and strangely wide – some led into towers, of which there were many, and which were connected by a veritable maze of arched walkways hundreds of feet above the ground. Far to the east Angharad glimpsed a great sphere of glass touched with wrought iron balconies, the inside filled with what appeared an ocean of library stacks. To the west she made out the silhouette of a tortured spire covered in vines, roofless for the pale stairs spiraling upwards into nothing.

Everywhere Angharad looked there was something to see: a bronze statue tucked away between shadows, a stream of red flowers grown out of cracks in the walls or a path between two rooftops made entirely out of crystal chandeliers hanging from an archway above. The last of these was so strange that Angharad sought it out again, but no matter how much she looked she could not find it. Had she imagined it, her mind moved to confusion by the surfeit of wonders?

“That place,” Maryam Khaimov said, “is a cauldron of Gloam. Trust nothing you see.”

Angharad stiffened.

“These are illusions?”

Was some spirit inside her mind?

“Oh no,” the Izvorica grimly said. “We’re not that lucky. Everything is real – so long as our eyes are on it, as it bears the weight of observation. The moment it’s not, it will move as it wills.”

“Are you saying that school is alive?” Angharad asked.

“Something is,” Maryam hedged.

“It is a god. There is a god in there.”

They both turned towards Song, who even as she spoke had never taken her eyes off Scholomance.

“I cannot see its body, but I see its… tendrils, for lack of better term. It is everywhere in the school, like a vine grown inside a corpse and bursting out of the flesh.”

“Well, at least I no longer feel hungry,” Tristan muttered. “What do we need to watch out for, Song?”

The Tianxi grimaced.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have never seen anything like it, not even on the Dominion. It’s so deep I’m not sure if it infested Scholomance or if it is Scholomance. I can warn you if we approach danger, but nothing more than that. It moves.”

The noblewoman swallowed. That was… unsettling to hear. Would they truly be taking their classes inside the belly of the beast? Yet the conversation was not to continue, for while they spoke the line had advanced enough that they were moments away from being called on, their pair of watchmen by the broken statue – a head and arm were gone – shouting for them to approach. Song took the lead in doing so, Angharad close behind, and a mustachioed man bade them to stop when he judged them close enough.

“Brigade?” he asked.

“Thirteenth,” Song replied.

“All of you?”

Angharad nodded when his gaze found her, as did the others in turn. The watchman glanced at his partner, who put her hand in an old leather hat and after a heartbeat pulled out a pebble painted yellow.

“That’s four for yellow,” she said. “I’ll mark it down.”

Even as the watchwoman took up a ledger tucked away behind the statue’s foot and went reaching for an inkwell, the other blackcloak picked up a leather bag and pulled from it a handful of yellow ribbons. He counted four, shoved the rest back into the bag then passed them to Song – who in turn passed them out the rest of the cabal.

“Around your wrist,” the watchman instructed

Angharad cleared her throat while she attached it as bid.

“Might I ask,” she said, “the meaning of the color?”

“Yellow,” the watchman flatly replied. “The fuck do you think it’s supposed to mean, girl?”

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“Four hundred students are too many for a single teacher,” the watchwoman informed them without looking up from the ledger. “You are to be split in four groups of a hundred, which are differentiated by color.”

The man snorted disdainfully.

“Once you cross the bridge there will be officers bearing colored flags,” he said. “Head to the one in your color and they’ll sort you out for class.”

“Thank you,” Song replied, inclining her head.

“Don’t hold up the line,” the watchman grunted back.

Angharad spared him a dark look as they walked past him, which he failed to notice entirely as the pair began the same sequence for the cabal that had been waiting behind the Thirteenth. The four of them crossed the bridge, finding on the other side what they had been told. Spread out across the paved plaza were four officers under colored banners – red, blue, green and yellow.

Their man was the leftmost, an Aztlan in his late twenties, and to Angharad’s distaste he appeared quite disreputable. Not only had he brought a folding chair to sit on, propping up the flag against his shoulder instead of holding it up, but he was also smoking a pipe. It was worse when she approached and got a proper look. Between the stubble, the unkempt long hair in a ponytail – with the sides shaved – and the glasses slightly askew, the man looked more a brigand than a blackcloak. Even his uniform was sloppy, creased while his coat was meant for a man twice his size.

He waved when he noticed them, pulling at his pipe. Brown eyes moved from one to another, then he chuckled and blew out a perfect circle of smoke.

“Silver eyes,” he listed. “A mirror-dancer and the only paleskin on Tolomontera. Despite the absent tricorn, you must be the Thirteenth Brigade.”

Angharad blinked, taken aback. Had their reputation even reached the local garrison?

“We are,” Song confirmed. “A pleasure to meet you…”

“Professor Tenoch Sasan,” the man said. “By the color of your ribbon, it appears I will be teaching you Saga.”

A professor? But he looked so… Perhaps it was some Izcalli fashion, Angharad desperately thought, and it only looked like he couldn’t bother to dress presentably. At her side, Tristan let out a noise.

“Friend of Wen’s, are you sir?” he asked.

Professor Tenoch laughed.

“Sharp boy,” he praised. “What gave it away?”

“I’ve barely worn the tricorn on the island,” Tristan said. “That and Captain Wen is from the historian track of the Arthashastra Society, which fits the subject you teach.”

Angharad had not even known Captain Wen belonged to a covenant, so this came as somewhat of a surprise. Still, a Laurel? There was not a diplomatic bone in that man’s body.

“We came up together,” the professor confirmed. “Though until last night I hadn’t seen him in years, not since the tussle in Tariac that got him put out to pasture.

The Aztlan grinned.

“I do believe he’s gotten worse,” he said. “That’s quite impressive.”

While Angharad struggled in vain with how she was meant to reply to such a thing – agree, question, politely ignore? – the man cleared his throat.

“But you’re not here for old stories,” he said. “Let’s get you on your way to class.”

The professor jutted his thumb to the side, towards the open gates of stained glass.

“For today, you enter through there,” he said. “You’re headed to the western lecture hall, which means taking a left just after getting past the door. Before the great hall, to be clear. Don’t go inside it.”

He puffed at his pipe, afterwards exhaling the smoke through his nostrils. Angharad crinkled her nose at the smell of tobacco. It was a most distasteful vice. Father had greatly despised it, to the extent he had once tried to talk her mother out of even shipping the leaves.

“The path is straightforward,” Professor Tenoch told them. “About every ten feet there will be a metal stake hammered into the floor that has a yellow ribbon tied onto it. Follow that trial and it will lead you directly to the lecture hall that is your destination.”

The Aztlan then leaned in.

“Do not, under any circumstances, stray off that path,” he said. “Scholomance is not your mother’s salon: the school is very much alive and out to kill every soul within its walls.”

Angharad stilled at the blunt admission. She had felt the whole business to be sinister from the start but not expected to hear it so plainly said.

“Until you have learned to navigate the halls, never wander away from the stakes,” Professor Tenoch continued. “They force Scholomance to remain continuous in a radius around them, which stops it changing the layout so it can lead you into its depths to get you killed.”

The professor raised four fingers.

“Here are four rules that should help you live through the year, given out courtesy of my good mood,” he said.

Angharad straightened her back. Despite how he presented himself, she was not inclined to dismiss his words. Surely the Watch would not have taken him on as a professor were he as careless as he looked.

“First: never trust anything you hear or see outside a closed room. Scholomance can and will shift itself the moment you are no longer paying attention, but within the closed boundary of a room it cannot do so.”

A finger went down.

“Two: never go around alone or unarmed. The school willlead lemures and devils towards you if it believes it has a chance of getting you killed. It does this carefully – there are only so many that still wander into clutches and it find it difficult to herd more than one at a time – but it will absolutely take the shot if it believes there is an opening.”

A second finger went down.

“Three – just to be sure, all of you still have your plaques?”

Nods all around. In truth, as Tristan had confiscated one from the Forty-Ninth during their failed ambush their cabal even had a spare.

“Good,” Professor Tenoch said. “Keep them on you at all times, and should you ever find yourself somewhere that does not appear to be Scholomance try to have constant skin contact with it.”

Angharad frowned at the warning, which seemed a sideways manner of referring to the strange place Tristan had stumbled into by accident.

“You’re talking about layers,” Maryam said.

“Ah, right, one of you found the Witching Hour already,” Professor Tenoch mused. “Indeed, be careful of layers. There is at least one that can be entered through the school grounds and Scholomance will try to trick you into that so beasties can possess you. Having a source of high purity Glare light helps prevent this, if you can afford one.”

They could not, even when counting the coin Angharad’s uncle had sent her. Such things were steeply priced, even more so on isolated islands like Tolomontera. The last two fingers came down and the hand with them.

“Fourth and final,” the professor said, “you should prepare for the eventuality of having failed to respect the first three rules.”

Angharad blinked in surprise.

“You will be tricked by Scholomance,” Professor Tenoch said with ironclad certainty. “It is an ancient and vicious entity, one that has swallowed many secrets and treasures to barter with. It will find a way to tempt you into doing something unwise eventually.”

Song’s face was forcefully even, Tristan’s openly skeptical, and Maryam’s hidden – she had pulled up her hood. Angharad was, in truth, inclined to believe the professor. She trusted in her will to resist a spirit when encountering them and their tricks, but to encounter them every day for years on end? That was a different story. Water always found a way through.

“You can deny this, of course,” the professor continued, “and find yourself lost when that day comes.”

He shrugged.

“Or you can plan for the eventuality and perhaps survive. It is up to you.”

The professor reached inside his oversized coat, producing a match and striking it against his sleeve. He lit anew the pipe that had gone out, puffing at it carefully. He then exhaled a stream of grey, humming in satisfaction, and Angharad wrinkled her nose again. The smell truly was foul, and she knew it clung to everything.

“Go on, then,” Professor Tenoch said. “Try to enjoy Mandate class, I hear good things of your teacher.”

Angharad licked her lips, hesitating. But if she did not ask, how was she to know?

“Sir,” she finally said. “Why does the Watch want us to study here, of all places? Why risk our lives?”

The man studied her a moment, as if weighing her with his eyes,

“Have you ever stood on the precipice of doing something wildly foolish, Tredegar?” he asked.

She thought of a lake black as ink, its surface unstirred by the wind yet reflecting the stars above like a mirror. Of a shrine like broken teeth, whispering into the silence. She could have turned back, that night. Taken the boat to the shore, kept moving north. She had not.

Angharad swallowed, then nodded.

“In those moments, it is our nature for doubt to creep in,” the professor said. “Hesitation, that urge to live.”

The man smiled, revealing stained teeth.

“Scholomance,” Professor Tenoch Sasan said, “is how we kill that voice.”