I apologise for going missing for a couple of weeks. I’ve had a few family problems, and while not entirely resolved, I’ve now got a bit of energy back.
So here is the final part of Carthinal’s Practical Test.
Carthinal has successfully negotiated the labrynth where the test takes place and faced and defeated several enemies as well as using his intelligence to solve some problems. Now he is faced with the final test.
The corridor widened and became a large circular room with four doorways leading from it. The four doors were closed, but in the centre of the room was a circular device made of metal. On the top was a second circle of metal, slightly smaller, with an arrow engraved on one side.
Carthinal looked carefully at the device and it became apparent that the piece of metal on the top rotated over the lower one. There were four lines engraved on the lower circle across the diameter and at right angles to each other. Carthinal did not touch it yet. He needed to know more before doing anything. He looked around the room, and saw that there was writing all around, just above the height of the doors.
At that moment, his rush torch went out.
He lit another and, noticing that he was getting down to the last few, he approached the wall to the left of the door through which he had entered the room and held up the torch. There was a two-line rhyme, which read,
‘The spring wind blows cross mountains wide
‘Through land of horse where barbarians ride.’
Continuing round the room, he pieced together the following,
‘From icy mountains encased in snow
‘In winter, do the cold winds blow.
‘The summer winds are soft and warm
‘They blow from desert and waving palm.
‘The autumn winds are rough and wild
‘They bring doom for man and child.
‘So turn me round and I will show
‘The proper way that you must go
‘But get it wrong and sorry be
‘For you must fight or you must flee.’
‘It’s some sort of puzzle to locate the correct door,’ he muttered to himself.
He paused to consider the words again. He wanted to be absolutely sure he got it right as he did not want to face the consequences of a wrong choice.
‘“Turn me round.” That’s probably the device in the centre. It must be like a combination lock. I don’t suppose there’ll be any help in listening for mechanisms working. It implies that a door will open anyway, and if it is wrong, dire consequences will result. OK. Then the other rhymes must give the directions. The second one must be the south wind as the Great Desert is in the south. The Barbarians with their horses are over the Western Mountains, so that must be the west wind. The one from the icy mountains must be the north wind, which leaves, by a process of elimination, the east wind for the final one. Ah! Got it. The clue is in the word “doom”. The Mountains of Doom are to the east.
That means it refers to the compass directions in the order: west, north, south and east. That must be the direction I turn the wheel.’
The problem now was locating north. There had been so many twists and turns that Carthinal had lost all sense of direction. ‘Bas, I could do with you now!’ he said, thinking of the ability of dwarves to locate direction underground. ‘Or I could do with a lodestone.’
He considered for a little longer, then decided that the mages would not have given an impossible task, so maybe there was a lodestone, or some other hint, hidden somewhere and he had missed it.
After searching the room carefully, nothing became apparent, so he backtracked to the corridor that he had missed. He entered it holding his light high and walking with care, on the lookout for enemies.
There did not seem to be any danger down this tunnel. Suddenly, his light glinted off something in the wall of the tunnel. It was the door to a cupboard cut out of the rock. It was the metal ring to the left side of the door that glinted. He did not know whether there were any traps on the door, so he took his dagger and, standing to the side and as far away as he could, he raised the latch. The door swung open. He waited for a few seconds until he was sure that nothing was going to go off belatedly, and then held his light so that he could see into the space.
At first, he saw nothing, but when he put his hand into the cupboard and felt around, he came across a small object. On withdrawing it, he saw that it was a small case with a glass lid, and suspended inside the case was a small piece of lodestone, one end marked with red paint.
‘Just what I was looking for!’ he remarked, feeling rather smug.
He retraced his footsteps until he came back to the large round room, and now he could establish which way north was. He put the lodestone down, and turned the upper wheel until the notch was pointing to the west. After that, he rotated it to the north, then south, then east.
There was a rumbling sound. Carthinal held his breath, and the second door to the right slowly swung open. He waited for a few seconds, but nothing came out. He put out the torch so he could use infravision better and carefully approached the tunnel.
No heat sources to be seen, so he cautiously entered. Feeling his way, Carthinal crept along a tunnel that wound backwards and forwards, sometimes seeming to go back on itself a number of times. By now he had lost all sense of time, but decided that since no one had come to collect him, he must still be within the six hours, although it felt that he had been creeping along dark tunnels for days.
He stopped for another drink and looked around. Still no heat sources. He lit another torch, noting with dismay that it was his last, and praying to Majora he was near enough to the end for it to last.
After a short while, a wall appeared in front of him. He stopped, thinking there had been no side passages for him to miss.
He noticed a cool breeze around his feet. Looking down, he saw a dark shadow towards the bottom of the wall to his left. He knelt, and sure enough, there was a low passage, only high enough to crawl along. Carthinal did not like this idea, as he felt vulnerable being unable to run, and with insufficient space to cast spells or throw his dagger.
Memories came unbidden as to how mages sometimes died in the practical test. The more he tried to push those thoughts away, the more they stalked him, like ghosts, quietly and almost imperceptibly. He broke out into a sweat, and felt himself shiver.
‘This is no good,’ he scolded. ‘If you want to pass this damned test, you’ve got to go in there! Remember you promised Mabryl to do your best to get through.’
With that, he hitched his robe out of the way so he could crawl, and put out the light, as there would be no possibility of using it safely. It would have been humiliating to set himself on fire and have to be rescued. With that thought, he entered the tunnel.
‘Thank the gods for infravision. This would be a dreadful ordeal if one couldn’t see anything.’
Occasional small heat sources could be seen, but they were just spiders and beetles.
Carthinal’s skin crawled as he thought of them getting in his clothing and onto his skin. Second only to undead, Carthinal hated spiders.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours of crawling, but was in reality only about fifteen minutes, the crawl way ended in another large room.
At the exit from the crawl way, Carthinal paused and looked.
‘Oh shit!’
Ahead of him was a large shape glowing red. It turned its eight red eyes towards where Carthinal crouched by the tunnel. It was a gigantic spider.
‘Oh shit!’ he re-iterated as the creature ran towards him across the room.
He remembered the true seeing spell he had on a scroll. Reasoning the mages would not deliberately try to kill their apprentices, he quickly pulled it out and read it.
The spell took effect as the spider was about to strike.
To his relief it disappeared.
It had been an illusion after all.
Behind where the spider had crouched was a door.
Carthinal ran across to it, looking around for any more nasty surprises, and pulled the door open.
Light flooded into the cavern, blinding Carthinal for a moment, and he staggered over the threshold. Hands guided him to a chair, and voices were congratulating him for being the first one back.
Slowly it dawned on him that he was out of the tunnels, and had succeeded in completing the practical test. His sense of relief was immense, and he offered up a prayer of thanks to Majora for his success. It was several minutes before he realised what it meant. He had passed his test and was now no longer an apprentice.
‘I did it, Mabryl. You said I would, but I didn’t believe you,’ he murmured.
‘What did you say?’ A voice spoke from by his side.
‘Oh, nothing. Was I talking aloud?’ He turned to see who had spoken.
It was the mage who had overseen his test, Yssalithissandra.
‘Well done. You got back with half an hour to spare. We’re expecting some of the others any time now. How are you feeling?’
She sounded genuinely concerned, so Carthinal stood and told her he was feeling fine.
He stretched and looked towards the other doors. One of them was opening, and through it came Olipeca. She looked very tired, but not completely spent.
He guessed she had not needed to use all her spells either. Her examiner escorted her to a chair, and spoke reassuring words to her.
She seemed to realise she was out of the test tunnels and within the given time. Her face lit up with a smile. Her hair had come loose from its customary tight and severe style. It hung loose around her face, and the ecstatic smile as she realised she had made it through in time, made her look almost pretty.
One of the other doors opened and through it staggered Grimmaldo. He managed to get over the threshold but collapsed into the waiting arms of his examiner, and was all but carried to a chair. He had made it with only a few minutes to spare, but he had made it.
Carthinal looked around. There were three of them back, and there were five arch-mages.
Carthinal was going to ask where the sixth arch-mage was when another door opened and he came in carrying something. He put it down on the floor, and the others could see that it was Laurre.
He was lying very still. The mage said something to the others which the now ex-apprentices could not hear. Then he came over to where they were waiting.
‘I am very sorry to tell you that your friend, Laurre, did not make it through the labyrinth. He died in the ambush section. A great pity. We always regret the loss of a student, but the tests are essential as I am sure you appreciate.’
‘What about Ebrassaria and Hammevaro?’ asked Grimmaldo.
As he was speaking, and the final few seconds ticked away, one of the last two doors opened and Hammevaro literally fell into the room, and was immediately violently sick on the floor.
One of the mages called for an apprentice to clear it up as he lifted Hammevaro to one of the chairs, where he immediately passed out.
‘Well, he’s just made it,’ Grimmaldo whispered, ‘but what about Ebrassaria?’
In answer to his question, one of the wizards entered the final door and a few minutes later emerged with Ebrassaria clinging onto his arm.
She looked the worst of them all, barely able to stand, and paler even than Grimmaldo looked before entering.
The arch-mage accompanying her led her to a chair and sat her down. He gave her sips of water and talked to her quietly.
She did not seem to realise what was going on or where she was at first, then suddenly it seemed to dawn on her that she was out of the labyrinth and that since she had required an escort out, she had not passed the practical.
She burst into tears.
Yssalithissandra spoke quietly to the others. ‘Of course, this means she has failed to pass this test as she did not get out of the labyrinth in time,’ she sighed. ‘A great pity as she did so well in the theory. Still, a mage needs to be a practitioner as well as a theorist. She can always retake another time.’
As the group of newly promoted mages left the room Yssalithissandra approached Carthinal.
Grimmaldo, and Hammevaro left to collapse somewhere to sleep, and Olipeca to find her master to give her the good news.
‘I have something that Mabryl was bringing for you,’ Carthinal told her. ‘An old spell book he thought would help you in your research of the lost knowledge.’
‘Really?’ replied the woman. ‘How odd I should turn out to be your examiner. Come to my rooms later and you can give it to me. We can talk about Mabryl. I knew him well when he was in the tower and would like to catch up on his life after he left here.’
‘Thank you,’ Carthinal answered, ‘I would like that.’
He realised that he was telling the truth. He was now ready to deal with Mabryl’s death and actually wanted to talk about him.
If you would like to know what happened to Carthinal after the test, the first book of The Wolves of Vimar series is available from your favourite online store as a paperback, hardback, e book or audio book. Just click on the button below, or on the cover on the sidebar.
Did you enjoy this chapter? I decided to eliminate it because it added nothing to the actual story, nor much to the character of Carthinal.
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Dragons Rule OK. V.M.Sang (author) 