Chapter 25
Umbros
The summons came two days later.
Not from the Warden this time -- from a name he didn't recognize, delivered on a plain card with no construct messenger, just slid under the dormitory room door during dinner hour. Professor V. Shae. History of Arcane Development. Room 14, East Wing. This evening if available.
He was available. He went.
Room 14 was an office, not a classroom -- small, overfull with books and papers in a way that suggested the space had outgrown its function some years ago and both parties had agreed to ignore it. A woman was standing at the window with her back to the door when he knocked.
She turned around.
She was maybe forty-five, Silver-rank -- he could feel that clearly -- but the signature had the particular quality of something that had been Silver for a long time and wasn't going anywhere. A mage whose rank reflected maximum achieved ability rather than a point on a developmental curve. Not weak. Just done growing.
She looked at him with the expression of someone who had been waiting for a specific person and was checking whether the person who'd arrived was the right one.
Whatever she saw satisfied her, because she pulled out the chair across from her desk and said: 'Sit down, please.'
He sat. She sat across from him. She folded her hands.
'You were in the restricted archive three nights ago,' she said.
He said nothing.
'I'm not reporting it. I want to be clear about that before anything else.' She met his eyes steadily. 'I have access to the restricted wing and I was reviewing the untitled documents section two days after your visit. I found the remnants of the text on the shelf.' A pause. 'A text that has survived in that archive for one hundred and sixty years survived contact with you for approximately ten seconds.'
He still said nothing.
'That's not a criticism,' she said. 'It's a data point.' She leaned back slightly. 'My research area is the history of what is officially called the Pre-Consolidation Era of arcane development. Unofficially, and in my own notes, I call it the era before the Saints decided what magic was allowed to be.'
Cyan looked at her.
'The six schools of magic taught at this Academy are not the complete history of mana ability,' she said. 'They are the history that was preserved after the Consolidation. Before the Consolidation, there were seven recognized schools.' She watched his face carefully as she said it. 'The seventh school was called Umbros. It was suppressed approximately two hundred and eighty years ago. All academic texts relating to it were removed from general circulation. The untitled documents in the restricted archive are the remnants that weren't destroyed -- kept by an archivist who believed information should be preserved even when powerful people wanted it gone.'
She waited.
'You know what I am,' Cyan said.
'I know what the seventh school involved,' she said carefully. 'I know what kind of mana profile it produced in practitioners. I know that the null result on a Runestone -- a real null result, not a failed reading -- was historically associated with Umbros-type practitioners who the Runestone system couldn't categorize.' She paused. 'I also know that Umbros at its most developed was something different from what the historical texts describe. The texts were written by people who feared it. They're not neutral.'
'What are they?'
'Incomplete. Deliberately.' She looked at him steadily. 'The text you destroyed -- the one that crumbled -- that was one of the more complete records we had. I won't pretend that isn't a loss.' A beat. 'But you being here is more valuable than that text was.'
Cyan looked at her for a long moment.
'What do you want?' he asked.
'To understand what you are,' she said simply. 'Not to use it. Not to report it. To understand it, because I've been researching the seventh school for twenty years and you're the first living example I've encountered.' She held his gaze. 'And because I think you deserve to understand it too.'
He thought about the crumbled book. The seven untitled spines. The scrape marks where titles had been removed.
'Tell me about Umbros,' he said.