Fletcher hissed in frustration as the symbol he had etched flickered in the air, then died.
‘Again, Fletcher. Concentrate!’ Arcturus barked. ‘Remember the steps!’
Fletcher lifted his glowing finger and drew the shield spell glyph again. It hung in the air in front of his hand as he fed it a slow stream of mana.
‘Good. Now fix it!’ Arcturus growled.
Fletcher focussed on the symbol, holding his finger in its exact centre. He held it there until the symbol’s light pulsed briefly and Fletcher felt it lock into place. He moved his hand and watched the symbol follow his finger, as if held in front of it by an invisible frame. Sweat trickled down his back like a creeping insect, but Fletcher ignored it. It was taking everything he had to hold his concentration.
‘Push the mana through, steady now! You need to feed the glyph at the same time.’
This was the hardest part. Fletcher felt as if his mind would split in two as he tried to juggle a simultaneous flow of mana both to and through the glyph.
It wavered once again, but Fletcher gritted his teeth and forced a thin stream of opaque substance through it and out of the other side.
‘Yes! You’ve done it. Now, while we are ahead, try shaping it,’ Arcturus urged.
There was not much shield energy to work with, but Fletcher didn’t want to risk pushing more through, in case he destabilised the connection. Just as he had done with the wyrdlight in his first lesson, he rolled it into a ball.
‘Well done! But this isn’t wyrdlight. For shields, you need to stretch them out. Go on, you might not get another chance to try this lesson.’
But Fletcher could not hold the glyph steady any longer. It flared briefly, then dissolved into nothingness. Moments later, the shield ball did the same.
‘All right. We will try again next lesson. Take a break, Fletcher,’ Arcturus murmured, his voice laced with disappointment.
Fletcher clenched his hands into fists, furious with himself. All around the atrium, the other students were having much greater success. The nobles were the best, of course, practising by varying the thickness and shape of their shields, having already been versed in spellcraft at home. Malik was particularly gifted, producing a curved shield so thick that it was hard to see through it.
Most of his friends were already able to create a shield with every attempt, except for Rory and Atlas, who managed on every other try. Fletcher, on the other hand, had only succeeded once in the past three hours.
He settled on a bench on the far side of the atrium and watched despondently. Ever since Rook’s lesson all those weeks ago, things had been going steadily downhill.
First there had been the scrying stones. Rook had gone down the line of commoners, allowing them to pick stones from a box of spares. Fletcher had been purposely left for last, leaving him with only a purple fragment the size and shape of a silver shilling. To see anything at all, he had to hold it up to his eye and peer through it like a peeping tom at a keyhole. On top of this, the commoners were forced to practise scrying in the summoning room while the nobles sent their demons to explore the safer parts of the ether.
Of course, there had been the next lesson with Arcturus. The captain had not been angry with Fletcher, but he had given Fletcher much to worry about.
‘I’ve never liked Inquisitors, and Rook is the worst of them. There were three institutions set up by old King Alfric: the Inquisition, the Pinkertons and the Magistrate Judges, all of them rotten to the core. King Harold inherited them when his father abdicated the throne, but rumour has it that he does not like the way they do things. If Rook tries to stir up trouble, King Harold won’t take notice. I’m more worried about old Alfric getting involved, but he rarely leaves the palace, so hopefully he won’t get to hear anything. Don’t worry, Fletcher. You haven’t done anything wrong. I just hope that Rook doesn’t send Inquisitors to your old home and start tearing the place apart.’
Those words had haunted Fletcher for several weeks and had changed his mind about sending Berdon any letters, in case they were traced back to him, or vice versa. If Rook found out about his crime . . . he didn’t want to think about what might happen.
Of course that hadn’t been the only thing that had dampened Fletcher’s spirits. Goodwin had loaded them down with work, demanding endless essays on demonology and giving them scathing criticism if they ever got even the slightest thing wrong.