They had known what to expect. Enim had told them, after all. And yet. As Torly and Yoor walked away from the work cabin's door, they were quiet. Very quiet.

Dark clouds shrouded the sky, casting the highlands into dreary shadow. A gusty wind shook the grass, whipping Enim's hair across his face.

"Some say," Enim broke the silence in a hesitant voice, "that there is a spell cast over these cabins. That they use magic. Dark magic." Gloomy mountains looked down on him. "There is an old mage here, Pramus. People have seen him fill the cabins with reeking smoke, dipping the children's tool in a potion, or marking their brows. They say he uses magic to give the jewels a special gleam, like the one in the eye of a happy child. The sparkle of life, of enthusiasm, of youth. He transfers it, they say. From the eyes of the child into the heart of the diamond."

Scrawny bushes held on to the hillside, their thin, bony branches whipped by the wind.

"You have been with old mages, Yoor. Learned from them, and about them, more than any of us. Could they hold such powers?" Enim's eyes were searching, uncertain.

Yoor looked down on his feet as he walked. His face darkened. He drew his arms around him, as if to keep from shivering.

"No." His voice barely more than a whisper. "And yes. They do."

Yoor swallowed. "I have been apprenticed in that mage's tower for only a few moons. But I almost did not make it out again. Even though this was just one lone castle, a tiny coven. Remnants of their ancient reign, of the realm the mages commanded at the age of the Feudals. And still. The atmosphere even in that ruin was so intense, so overpowering it almost devoured me. We were just a handful of acolytes. But everyone in there had dissolved into the spell. We only existed to serve the master. There was no other purpose, no other reason left in the world. He determined what was good, what was bad. Who you were, and who you could be. I came to fear him, to love him, to revolve around him with all of my being, trying to sense him, to please him, to divine what he wanted. And I'd fail, inevitably, and hate and despise myself for it, trying to redeem myself by being ever more obedient, more devoted."

Yoor's brow furrowed. "I spent my days shivering, fearful I might have sinned, angered the master, offended the demons. Who would then come down on me. The mage's whim and the demon's rage became one and the same thing, and the whole world dissolved into them. There was nothing else anymore."

Yoor raised his head to squint out into the distance, toward the ragged line where the mountains met the sky.

He clutched his arms around the chest a little more tightly. "Even though I knew the mage was casting illusions. Even though I had come to learn just that. And I did. But still. The mage's true power was not in the visible vision he created. It was in everything. In the frightful walls of that tower, in the hour he woke you at night. In the way he let you wait, kneeling, cowering, until you were yearning to fall down at his feet."

Yoor licked his lips. "Only then did the mirage appear. The demon."

Thunder rolled in the distance.

"That mage created a whole world of meaning. A reality so compelling you could not help but live in it. And behave in the only way it allowed you to."

Yoor drew a deep breath. "So, yes. Yes. I have seen old mages use magic powerful enough to shackle children to a cabin, where they keep on polishing jewels until their own lives wither away."

*

The storm broke. Enim, Torly and Yoor ran toward the edge of town in a downpour, seeking shelter in the first tavern they could find.

Wet and disheveled, they huddled together on the unheated kang in a corner, blankets around their shoulders and mugs of hot soup in their hands. Thick tears of rain ran down the windowpanes.

Yoor was looking out over the windswept hill, back up to the cabin. The laughter that always seemed to be lurking in his eyes had gone, to be replaced with a reflection of stormy clouds and dark memories.

He swallowed. "That apprenticeship was the most frightening time of my life, in many ways. Most of all because I was losing myself. Even when I had fled the tower."

Yoor stared down into his steaming mug. "I did not know who I was. What had happened to me. I knew I had found my power, the magic that was alive in me. I had learned the language of dreams, the summoning of visions, even though the mage never taught me. But that gift was so strong within me it burst forth at the slightest provocation. I knew this was my calling. But I was horrified, even while I was drawn irresistibly. That craft was evil. All the mages come before had used it as a stranglehold on people's minds and hearts. Centuries of oppression had soaked that practice. Every little gesture, every slanted rune seemed to hold vile powers, appalling memories. A legacy of dominion. I was so scared. Who would I become? Would I fall into the patterns of a vicious past if I so much as touched that magic?"

Yoor pulled the blanket tight around his hip. "I did not know how to move."

He raised an arm. From his shimmering blue palm, a trail of golden stars rose up to swirl around the windowpane. "So this is where I have turned. To pleasures and amusements. I have taken the dark heritage out of the dungeon, into the sunlight. To a bright and open meadow, a light-hearted, easy-going, naive and powerless place. I wanted that space to be the opposite of that tower in every way, to let the magic be reborn there, innocent and free."