On the bank, Ahmet looked up. There had been a momentary twinge at the edge of the ward that kept the crocodiles at bay. He put the scrolls aside and stood up. Sophos swung past in the air, yelling, and splashed into the water. The other boys jostled each other to catch the rope. Ahmet scanned the waters. Sophos burst up and swam strongly back to shore. The twinge came again. Ahmet reached out with the Eye to encompass the area.

Dwyrin gathered himself again, lungs straining, heart pounding like his father’s forge hammer, and thrust down with his arms, his legs hanging limp, trapped in deep mud. Again he strove and sank only deeper. Gods, he wailed in his mind, free me! A dark haze clouded his mind. His ears were filled with pain and he desperately wanted to breathe in. Fear washed up in him, eroding his concentration. He began reciting the settling meditation. If he would go, he would go at peace.

A dark shape arrowed through the water toward him. Dwyrin swung to face it as it came surging through the thick silt. Ahmet’s face appeared out of the dimness and his strong brown arms swept the boy up. Ahmet kicked his legs and the boy came loose, sucking out of the muck like a reed shoot. Together they shot toward the surface.

The office of the master of the school was dark and close, its walls hung with long papyrus scrolls, each unrolled from ceiling to floor. On them gods and goddesses, demons and kings, priests and devils looked down with wide staring eyes. Ahmet knelt on the clean-swept stones, his sandals behind him at the edge of the door. His long dark hair, tied back now in a brass clasp, hung damply over his shoulder. His eyes were fixed on the narrow cracks between the paving stones. His hands rested on his knees.

The headmaster tapped a message scroll bound in twine interwoven with purple string against the edge of the low desk. He was slight, with smoothly carved features. His eyes, tucked back under yellow-white brows, were sharp and bright. His long nose betrayed his Nabatean parentage. His thin hands, veined and spidery, picked idly at the edge of the heavy embossed wax seal on the message tube.

“You felt, then, something brush against the ward. Could this have been someone working against the boy? A rival of his clan? A personal enemy?”

Ahmet looked up, his clear brown eyes calm. “No, master, the boy is of no family of import. Neither ransom nor advantage could be gained from his death or suffering. His father is a blacksmith in distant Hibernia. His family is poor. They would have no enemies here.”

The headmaster raised an eyebrow at this. “Poor and a barbarian? How did he come to the school, then?”

Ahmet shrugged, spreading his thin-fingered hands.

“Imperial witch-hunters found him. They paid the bounty to his family and sent him here. The Office of Thaumaturgy out of Alexandria pays for his tuition. We have five or six such boys among the younger students.”

The master pursed his thin lips and tapped the scroll tube against his chin. His eyes narrowed as he eyed the wall carvings and paintings. He turned back to the dormitory master who knelt before him. A smile briefly creased the deep lines around his eyes. “Someone then, within the school. A jealous student? A local, angered by some slight?” The master pushed the tube into the woven basket at the end of the desk. It would wait.

Ahmet was silent, considering. “The boy, Dwyrin, is not unpopular among his fellows. There is one who might hold a personal grudge, but he is a second-year student as well, with no power to speak of.”

The headmaster’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward over the desk, resting his thin arms on the dark fine-grained paneling. “Who holds this ‘grudge’? Why have you not informed me of this before?”

“The matter is truly of little import, master. The Hibernian boy slipped out after curfew a few months ago and stole some oranges from the orchards by the river. When he returned he tried to make it seem that one of the other boys was the culprit instead. I caught the Hibernian, of course, but not before I had switched the other boy.”

“For this… switching… the other boy holds a grudge? Who is this other boy?” The headmaster’s eyes narrowed. Ahmet looked away, finding the shadowed corners of the room very interesting.

“Speak, Ahmet.”

“Kyllun of Cilicia, master.”

There was a hiss of breath, almost unheard. Ahmet flinched inwardly.

“The Macedonian praetor’s son? By Horus, Ahmet, you were given strict instructions to treat that one with gloves of silk! His father is notorious for his temper. Sending his son here, to our little school, is a mark of favor that we cannot refuse.“

The headmaster settled back in his chair, sinking into the deep cotton cushions. His eyes flicked back to the message scroll. “Tell me of these two boys, everything, how are their grades, who is better in the classroom, who is the quickest, everything, Ahmet, everything.”

“Well,” Ahmet began, “first there are three boys involved, not just two…”

Ra had fallen behind the western horizon, carried on his boat of light into the underworld, by the time that Ahmet finished. At last, after a long moment of silence, the headmaster rose from the chair and paced beside the desk, bare feet slapping softly on the dark stones. Ahmet remained kneeling. His hands were damp again. He fought down the urge to wipe them on his kilt. the headmaster stopped before one of the scrolls showing the tributes given Pharaoh by the princes of Meroe. Gazelles, ibis, hippopotami, ibex, and all kinds of creatures paraded across its crinkled surface. He turned to the junior boys’ dormitory master, his thin lips pursed. “Tomorrow, Ahmet, you will take the Hibernian boy into the temple, down into the deeps, to the vaults of initiation, and you will elevate him to the second sphere of opening. You will invest him with all the graces and powers that go with such state, you will gift him with the third eye of perception. You will invoke the power that lies sleeping in his heart. You will make him one of us, the illuminated ones.”

Ahmet stared, eyes wide with surprise, at the thin figure of the master. The headmaster’s voice, thick and heavy, still rippled and throbbed in the air around him.

“Master,” he said, almost choking, “the boy is not ready! He is only a second-year student, no better or worse than any of his classmates. He has improved of late, true, but no more than, say, Patroclus of Archimedea. He still has two years to go to be initiated in such a manner!”

“Yes, but you will take him into the deeps of the temple tomorrow and you will make of him a sorcerer of the second order. By my will, I have spoken and you will obey.”

Ahmet bowed his head. The master of the school was the master of the school and Ahmet had sworn an oath to obey him. The master gestured for Ahmet to rise and gripped the young man’s shoulder with his own gnarled hand.

“If the boy cannot survive the passage to the second sphere his death will be on my head, not yours. I have ordered and you have obeyed. Go with a clear heart, my young friend, and be glad for this youth, who will make such great strides into our world.”

The master smiled, eyes crinkling up, lips twitching, but Ahmet did not respond in kind. He bowed and stepped out of the room through the woven reed curtains. His face was still and composed. Outside, Ahmet bowed to the secretary squatting by the doorway, pens and papyrus sheets near to hand.

“Honored N?s, send word to the keepers of the vaults that tomorrow at full sun I will come to them with one who will ascend, Ra and Thoth willing.”

The secretary bowed his shaven head and began writing the messages that would have to be sent.

Dwyrin woke, head grainy with fatigue, limbs leaden. He had not slept well, tossing and turning, unable to find his way into the realm of Morpheus. It was very early, the thin dawn light gray in weak bands between the slats of the window coverings. The muted rumbling of snoring boys surrounded him. He rolled over and started, coming fully awake. At the foot of his bed stood a tall figure in a long checkered cloak of red and black. A sun-disk of bronze gleamed in the pale light on the broad smooth chest. The figure’s head was curving and black with a long neck and sharp bill. Deep black eyes, shining like marble in water, glittered under the overreaching hood.