Chapter 15
First Sight
It was bigger than he'd expected.
He'd constructed a mental image of the Academy from the pamphlet and the scattered things he'd heard, and the mental image had been wrong in almost every particular. He'd imagined something institutional -- functional, well-maintained, the architectural equivalent of a very serious guild hall.
What sat on the plateau above Valdren's Rest was closer to a small city.
White stone towers that caught the afternoon light and held it. Buildings connected by covered walkways, some at ground level and some elevated, threading the campus together like stitching. Mana constructs moving along the outer wall -- maintenance drones, he guessed, though at this distance they looked like slow-moving birds of light. And everywhere, threaded into the architecture in a way that made the whole thing seem to breathe, mana.
Cyan felt it from halfway up the approach road. A pressure that built as he climbed, steady and accumulating, like walking deeper into a dungeon. Not threatening -- organized. Controlled. The entire campus was saturated with deliberate enchantment, layer on layer of it, the work of hundreds of years of ranked mages adding to and maintaining the same infrastructure.
His palm was warm by the time he reached the gate.
The gate was manned by two guards in Academy livery -- Silver-rank both, he could feel that clearly now -- who checked his letter, checked his name against a register, and directed him to the admissions hall without much ceremony. He was not the most impressive arrival they'd seen that day. He was probably not the most impressive arrival they'd seen that hour.
The admissions hall was crowded. Students in various stages of arrival -- trunks being carried by enchanted constructs, families saying formal farewells, clusters of young people who clearly already knew each other from noble house connections or prior Academy events. The noise was significant.
Cyan stood at the edge of it and watched.
The mana in this room alone was staggering. Not just from the enchantments -- from the students themselves. He could feel the density of it, the sheer concentration of ranked individuals in one space, each one a distinct source with its own signature. Bronze, Silver, a handful of what he was almost certain were Gold. All of them generating their own mana as naturally as breathing, the thing he'd watched from a distance his entire life and never had.
His palm pulled toward it the way it always pulled. Quiet and steady and very, very hungry.
He closed his hand into a fist and kept it that way.
The admissions process for provisional students was handled at a separate desk off to the side, staffed by a single clerk who looked like she'd been doing this for a long time and had developed a comprehensive immunity to being impressed. She took his letter, checked his name, produced a room assignment and a schedule, and handed him a provisional student badge -- smaller than the standard badges, a different color, immediately identifiable as the lowest tier.
'Provisional orientation is tomorrow morning, sixth bell, eastern lecture hall,' she said. 'Dormitory B is across the main courtyard, north building. Meals are in the common hall, three times daily. Provisional students eat after general cohort.'
'Understood,' Cyan said.
'Do you have any questions?'
He had about forty. 'No,' he said.
He found Dormitory B without difficulty and his assigned room without much more. It was small -- two bunks, a desk, a narrow window overlooking the eastern wall. One of the bunks already had a bag on it. His roommate hadn't arrived yet or had already come and gone.
He sat on the empty bunk and set his pack down and looked at the room.
The mana pressure here was lower than the admissions hall. Still higher than anything outside the Academy. The walls themselves were enchanted -- not decoratively, structurally, the kind of enchantment woven into the construction material itself.
He put his hand flat against the wall.
The mana in the stone was old. Very old. It had been sitting in these walls for so long it had settled like sediment, compacted, different in quality from the active enchantments layered on top of it.
He took his hand away.
He was here. Whatever happened next started tomorrow.
He lay back on the bunk and stared at the ceiling and let the ambient mana of the Academy fill him slowly, like a tide coming in.
For the first time in a long time, the hunger was quiet.