Chapter 29: Wherein Rat Makes Art

I was on the floor, on my knees, with my face pressed close to the wooden floorboards. Burgen lay on my bed with his boots on as he leafed through the pages of the day's newspaper. He looked over the top of the paper and peeked at what I was doing. I knew he was feigning disinterest, but it ate him up inside – he couldn't figure out what I was up to.

"If you're not going to tell me, I'm just going to leave," he threatened.

"Then leave," I said, my voice betraying the deep concentration I was under. Over the past few hours, my clothes had become dusty and my fingers white from the chalk I was using. I wasn't worried about Burgen leaving because the strongest thing about him was his curiosity.

"It's very pretty, but that's not how you make a Spirit Portal," he tried guessing.

"Good, 'cause I'm not making a Spirit Portal." I narrowed my eyes, blurring my vision on purpose. When everything was blurred I somehow knew how I had to draw it.

"It's not how you make a Transport either. It's not how you fold space and it's not how you make a Line of Flight."

He was close but still hadn't hit the target. I added one last line and moved back, I realised with delight that it was complete. As I undid a few knots in my neck, I surveyed my masterpiece. I had had to move the bed near the wall and roll up the carpet to have enough space for it. The chalk-marks covered the entire floor, starting from the very centre and ring after ring expanding outward giving the impression of a spider's web, or perhaps white lace on a lady's – or Burgen's – dress.

I looked out the window, surprised to find that it was dark outside. I had begun my project that morning upon waking and had not felt I was able to pause until now. At some point, Burgen had come into the room bearing sandwiches, on the pretext that he was worried about me. I could barely spare him my attention, only when he almost stepped on one of the lines was I forced to react, throwing him through the air and onto my bed.

He folded up the newspaper putting it aside and admired my work as I stood up groaning and tried to coax the stiffness out of my body. "It's very pretty, your artwork."

"Magic is art," I said, grinning – it was pretty; I never knew that I knew how to draw like that. "But it's not complete." I clapped the chalk dust out of my hands, massaged my knees and back. I was a mess, and I smelled too – it was somehow summer again, the windows closed so that the humid summer air would not destroy my chalk-work.

How was it summer again? When I was younger and out there on the streets, every season was a world, summers were bright, easy but terribly short while winters were always years and years long. In here, whether it was summer, whether it was winter, whether autumn or spring – time passed by in a hurry, as if the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, were each chasing one another in a mad race.

And in that strange way, nearly two years passed, I changed from being about ten or eleven to being around twelve or thirteen. I grew a lot, almost overnight. I grew so fast that my bones hurt every single morning. I was still painstakingly thin, still overly-flexible and fast moving, still very quiet when I walked. But I had already surpassed the Grand Master in height and these days I fancied that I was going to be as tall as Burgen – if not taller. Like every boy my age, I was anxious and impatient to become a man.

Although, in some cultures in the world, I already was a man – I had, after all, managed to kill someone.

"Are you going to colour in between the lines now?" Burgen asked.

I smirked. "Something like that." I massaged my neck a little more, before I loosened my shoulders and fixed my eyes upon my creation. I inhaled deeply, drawing as much air as my lungs could hold, and then as I exhaled slowly – everything happened.

The lines on the floor began glowing, at first; their whiteness simply became whiter and more pronounced against the wooden floor. But then it began emitting a soft golden glow, which grew stronger until the marks themselves were no longer on the floor and the entire lace circle was made out of light, rising into the air. The candles that Burgen had lit in the room blew out, yet the centre of room was unbearably bright.

Then it shrank, until it became the size of my palm, and the glow stopped, and we were thrown into darkness.

Burgen scraped his finger against the wall and lit it like a match.

"Marvellous," he said, facetiously. I waved my arm, sending the flame from his finger around the room, lighting all the candles on the way. Burgen leapt off the bed, capturing the flame in his palm. "Show-off."

I bent down and picked up the small paper-thin lace circle. "Now, for stage two."

"What're you going to do with that thing?" Burgen asked while the flame in his palm changed to all the colours of the rainbow as it danced over the back of his fingers.

"It won't be complete until we have both an entrance and an exit."

"A Channel! You're making a Channel!" Burgen extinguished the flame in his fist as he jumped to his feet in excitement. "But," he paused, "that's not how you make a Channel."

"It's my new and improved Channel," I said as I drew a small book off the shelf, opened it and pinned my paper snowflake in between the pages. "When it'll be complete, I'll be able to control who goes in and who goes out, I'll be able to close it and open it at will and most importantly, even if this room stops existing, it'll still be here forever."

"Where will the other end be?" Burgen asked.

"The Tournament Stadium."

"You crazy fool, that place is guarded by spells and wards. You're forbidden to go inside, you'll be disqualified."

"It doesn't have to be inside," I said, "I'm not doing it to cheat."

"Then why?"

I shrugged. Burgen had become my best friend, although the age gap between us was nearly ten years, he was my confidant in most things – but there were some things, some strange and uncanny things, that I had to keep to myself. I couldn't tell him that lately I was having these terrible, overwhelming fears, that lately I was having nightmares, every single night, about the sky growing blacker than coal and green flames bursting out from the ground. I couldn't tell him that I was afraid something was coming our way, something big, something dreadful – something that no one could defeat.

Mostly, because I was uncertain – I couldn't believe it myself, but also because I knew I'd sound crazy if I said it out loud. "I'm doing this because I can," I said. "And I want to see the stadium – at least from outside."

Burgen stared at me, he was no fool; he knew there was more that I wasn't telling him. But then, he shrugged and straightened his ridiculous robe – a yellow thing made out of silk with a thick bright green sash tied at his belly – and looked at me again, his face annoyingly concerned. "Well, Rat, how do we do this?"

I did not even try to convince him not to come with me. When it came to mischief, we were mostly in on it together. "We have to walk this thing to the stadium," I said, "perform the spell, and then walk back exactly the same route."

"Seems an awful hassle for a Channel you don't even need," he said dubiously.

"Only time will tell," I replied, "whether I'll need it or not."

***

I had learned many things in my time at the palace, many things about Court – it had seasons too – and many things about magic. Some the Grand Master taught me, some from Burgen and sometimes, some I simply came up with myself. But most important to me was that I had taught myself how to become a rat-shaped boy rather than a boy-shaped rat.

With my rat-senses still working fine as if I were a real rat yet light and darkness were no longer a serious issue. It was still a lot easier to be a rat in the dark rather than in light, but all I needed was concentration – and then I had it.

Rat-shaped, I dashed through the streets with Burgen at my side, shaped – to my dismay – as a cat. I tried to convince him that it would be an odd sight indeed to see a rat running side-by-side with a cat. He said that that was the only shape he could manage. Therefore, I tried to rush forward and make it seem as if Burgen was chasing me.

Animal-shaped was the best way to travel if you had to travel the entire way. Even though we had to do it by foot, we didn't need everyone knowing we were up to something. It was not that we weren't free to come and go as we pleased, but everyone in Court was fascinated with us, and we both agreed to do our best to avoid gossip.

Burgen didn't know the city at all. He had walked around it only a few times with me and had clung close to me like a frightened boy to his mother's skirt. He was a country lord, he had explained, unused to the crowded city life. Tonight, however, it seemed as if he had graduated from his fear of the streets.

Our journey to the stadium was uneventful, filled with nothing but padding feet on the cobblestones, whiskers and warm summer air. The stadium had been erected in a new part of the west of the city, near a new westside train terminal. It consisted of a cluster of new buildings, including housing for the champions who would be pouring in from all over the continent in a few months, three smaller arenas for the smaller titles and events, a mess hall, a large and luxurious assembly hall in which Wielders from everywhere could share the newest developments in magic, a botanical garden, displaying plants magical and ordinary that had been shipped into Auranora from the farthest reaches of the world. In the centre of it all stood the dark, looming shape of the stadium.

The city people referred to it as "The Wielder Village," for after the Tournament was over, it would be dedicated to the teachings and practice of magic. There was a Wielder Village in every city where the Wielder Tournament had taken place, and now there would finally be one in Auran city as well.

  We stopped outside the entrance to the Village. In these months before the Tournament it was guarded day and night, but getting past these guards would be simple. Magic wards had been placed throughout the entire Village, but the most powerful ones were upon the stadium. The Grand Master had taken us to watch when these spells had been placed. A bunch of old magicians in red robes so long that they swept the floor and hid their feet had come from the Wielder Tournament Committee and had worked tirelessly for weeks until even I couldn't decipher the complicated web of magic.

But I understood the spells well enough to know that as long as I kept to the spaces between the buildings, no alarm would go off and no one would know of my passage, even more so if I remained shaped like a rat.

"Maybe you should wait out here." I sent the words into Burgen's mind before the Village gate. One rat alone would be safer, and since I was more naturally a rat than Burgen was a cat, my transformation spell would be impossible to detect.

For a moment Burgen looked like he would eat me, then he meowed and jumped up onto a nearby windowsill. I knew it would take too much of his strength to maintain the form he was in and communicate at the same time, I did not expect a verbal reply. I rushed onward until the gate was before me, lightly skipping through the bars.

Inside the Village, the night had a different quality. Everything felt new and clean. The stones of the buildings were brighter in the full moon, the silence was more complete. The village had two gates, the city gate and the train terminal gate. Both gates were exactly parallel to each other, and the street that led from each was twice as wide as the widest city street. I went straight, allowing my eyes to see the slanting colourful ribbons of the magical spells. It was not difficult to avoid them.

In the eyes of every Wielder, magic spells look different. Some see them as dust, some as lights, some as shadows and some can't even see them at all, but rather hear them, or smell them, or taste them. As a boy, I saw them as ribbons, suspended in the air, tangling into each other or simply lying on the floor. They moved about constantly, changing colour, rising and falling as if pulled by an invisible wind. As a rat, I could still see the ribbons with my eyes, but I also sensed them with my ears. Rats hear sounds that no human can, sounds that do not have words to describe them; it was not a ringing or chiming or buzz. The closest I could come to explain it is that if air gently flowing inside a room had a sound, it would most likely sound like this: not the cry or howl of wind, but a subtle, white and dry sound, its depths and cleanliness depending on the nature of the spell I was hearing.

I finally reached the stadium's entrance, or as close as I dared come to it, and I put down the shrunken book I had carried the entire way in my mouth. The moment it touched the paved floor, it swelled back to its normal size.

I used my paws and all my strength to open the book – it was the smallest one I could find. I turned the crisp pages until my lacy creation popped out from between them. I snatched it up with my mouth and carefully placed it on the floor by the book.

It already knew what it had to do, the white paper lace circle expanded and expanded underneath my feet, until it was the size of the chalk circle I had drawn on the floor of my room. The it grew deep black and returned to its previous size.

The entire time I nervously watched the spells. They sensed my Channel and an inquisitive ribbon tentacles began drifting in my direction. I held my breath and didn't dare to move.

The Channel grew a deep black and began returning to its previous size.

The single magical ribbon was inches away from my back and pulling closer. I squirmed, my heart speeding. Did I miscalculate? Was this a terrible mistake? I was starting to regret my plan —