Chapter Forty-Six - The End
Quindalore the Querulous seemed able to read Terry’s thoughts as easily as a newspaper headline. “It’s a good thing for you you’re an intelligent lad, Master Coates. A crime has been committed, and someone must be disciplined for it. That someone can be either you, or Master Stevenson, depending on how the …” he coughed into his fist, “the facts play out.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Life is not fair. However Ernie the Exemplary and Rowan the Righteous have posited a third scenario, one that you yourself stumbled upon too, just now. One that points the accusatory finger at Miss Abernathy herself.”
Terry waited. One thing he’d learned in his life so far, was the benefits to keeping one’s mouth shut until necessary. That was something he desperately needed to heed right now. He was not going to take the blame for abducting anyone, nor was he going to let a friend be punished for it either. He should have said nothing after saying she’d left freely. He’d already given too much away for no reason.
“In this scenario,” Quindalore the Querulous said, tracing on the desk with his finger, “Miss Katya Abernathy, wishing to evade a perfectly just punishment, manipulated a love-sick boy into helping her escape. She then manipulated another love-sick boy, for whom she perhaps had some genuine affection, into staging a rescue so that you would take the fall for her.”
He had to admit it sounded plausible. No. No, no, no. Katya wasn’t calculating. She was sweet, well-meaning, truthful, confused. For all Terry knew, they’d tortured this out of her. And it was him that Katya felt genuine affection for anyway, not Stevenus.
“Understand this, Master Coates.” Quindalore the Querulous folded his hands on top of the stack of files. “Whenever punishments are meted out for all to see, it isn’t merely about retribution. There is also the matter of deterrence. So that other Neophytes don’t wind up entertaining similar ideas or plots. Hers would have afforded only temporary pain and humiliation, hardly worth risking life and limb by venturing into the dangerous territory beyond these walls.”
Terry was about to scoff and say the lands hadn’t been that dangerous when Quindalore added, “Master Stevenson took great personal risk to assure your safety against the various elements and elementary beings. It is only with his knowledge that all of you survived. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.” Terry hung his head. He was tired, and thirsty and hungry, and his earlier clarity was fading faster than a sunset in the tropics. The only way he’d get out of here was by cooperating. And yet he couldn’t do it if it meant betraying anyone.
“So then. You agree that Katya manipulated you into helping her escape, and she invented this abduction scenario to save her own skin.”
“No!” Terry stamped his feet on the concrete floor. Only his sense of what was right would get him through this. The only time he could think straight was when he spoke his mind regardless of the consequences for himself or anyone else.
“Why not? What’s it to you?” Quindalore the Querulous asked, unruffled. His calm demeanour only made Terry more agitated. “In less than a month you’ll be back in your old life at Rosedale High. Playing video-games in the basement of your parents’ comfortable suburban home. Melissa will be nursing a broken heart from a failed summer romance. You’ll catch her whispering to her friends and then blushing whenever you pass by her in the hallway. She’ll have noticed you filled out over the summer.”
He inhaled through his nose until his lungs could take in no more air. He held his breath in until he began feeling light-headed, and blew out through his mouth. Who cared about that simpering teacher’s pet anyway. “Because,” he said, concentrating on what he felt, and all his adventures with Katya and Stevenus the past few days. “Because I know what’s in my heart. Deep down, I know what’s true and what isn’t. Yes, we escaped so that Katya could avoid being punished. Yes, I had a crush on her. Yes, I had to vie with Stevenus for her attention. But I can’t say it was any one person’s idea, or plan, or anything else. The decision to escape was spontaneous—we just decided, let’s get out of here. No one was manipulated, no one was forced. Each of us made our choices purely on impulse. Together.”
“Master Coates. Part of growing up is the realisation that we’re not infallible. Particularly when it comes to how well we know another person. The pair you trusted were each—”
“I’m good at reading people. I always have been. I went to a lot of different schools as a kid because my parents were always striving to live in a better neighbourhood or climb in their careers. I had to learn fast, sort out the bullies from the decent kids. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I am good at that.”
“Along with sixteen over twenty vision, and a flawless sense of direction, right? A sense of direction that still failed you upon venturing into the witch’s territory.”
Terry narrowed his eyes at his inscrutable face. Where was Quindalore going with this?
“Here.” The Master Adept of the Order of Nine took out a block of foolscap covered in neat, rounded handwriting from the topmost file. Very girlish handwriting written in blue ink. He set it on the table in front of Terry. “Miss Abernathy’s confession.”
His eyes began stinging and his throat tightened as he read the accusatory claims. While he had no idea what Katya’s writing looked like, various sentences were phrased the same way as she spoke. According to her words on the page, Terry had stalked her from the first day of wizard camp. She ignored his advances in favour of Stevenus, and said Terry spied on them and repeatedly tried to break them apart. He even saw mention of Julianne and the words kiss and tell.
Quindalore the Querulous smirked and arched one of his bushy eyebrows. “She was content to sell you out in less time than it takes to watch an advert on television.”
“I don’t care,” Terry said, shoving the paper back to him. “If you’re convinced that my version of what took place is wrong, so be it. All I can go by is what I saw and heard and witnessed and felt at the time. If she really believes that about me yet gave me no hint of it, that’s her choice. Not mine. I know I’m not a liar and that’s all that I care about. Like you said: in the fall I’ll be back at school where there will be plenty of other girls I can meet. And yeah, maybe with some muscles, they’ll actually like me.”
“Back at school, hm? What makes you so sure?”
“I … Well because you said …” Terry stammered. The Master Adept’s tone hadn’t carried the sort of menace implying Terry was about to face a lengthy sentence in the dungeon, but …
“Congratulations.”
“Sir?”
A grin spread across Quindalore’s face and he no longer looked at all Querulous. He rose to his feet. He held out his hand to Terry. “I said, ‘Congratulations’. I invite you to become an Initiate at Archon Castle.”
Terry’s jaw dropped and he slumped in his seat. Huh? He tried to sit upright, but all the muscles in his body had liquefied.
“You you accept?” Master Adept Quindalore the Querulous of the Order of Nine still held his hand out, his face beaming with the brightness of the sun itself.
“Thankyousir.” He felt as if he’d been turned upside down and shaken, then thrown back into his chair. He felt faint from shock as he shook the man’s firm, calloused hand. Congratulations. He was now a Wizard Initiate.
Quindalore the Querulous walked around the desk and crouched next to Terry. He rested a hand on Terry’s shoulder for balance. “No matter what went on around you, no matter what you were told, you stayed true to what’s in here,” he pointed to Terry’s head, “and in here,” he said, pressing his finger into the middle of Terry’s chest.
“I did,” he said, feeling a sudden rush of elation as the reality of what the Master Adept was saying sunk in. He’d made it!
Quindalore’s knee cracked as he stood again. “And that, my dear young man, is the basis of magic. Your heart and your mind. Along with a few other traits I’ll address presently.” He cleared his throat noisily and called, “Enter!”
This time when the door behind him clicked to open, it sounded like the unveiling of a showpiece at a museum or a new concept car. Ernie the Exemplary, Martin the Magnificent, and the dodgy crystal ball salesman filed in, though he wore a dark red robe now, instead of the black suit. The man he’d thought was a salesman extended his hand to Terry. “Rowan the Righteous. Congratulations, Master Coates, and we would be honoured if you were to join our ranks here at Archon Castle.”
“But you were the …” He was still too stunned to finish his thought. Or start any other thought for that matter.
“Part of the deception, my friend. The minute you showed such an inquisitive bent, we kept a close eye on you!” Rowan the Righteous’s onyx eyes glinted.
“But what about …” Her rosy-cheeked face appeared in his mind’s eye, every detail rendered as accurately as a photograph, yet his brain was unable to form anything as concrete as a person’s name.
“Ah,” Martin the Magnificent said, joining in the handshaking. “A very bright and promising young lady. When her chance came to point the finger at you, she merely said she wished that had been the case—she could only wish that you were so head-over-heels in love with her that you’d contrive to steal her away forever more.”
Terry leaned around to look out into the hall just as more burgundy-robed master adepts shuffled up to the doorway. A dark-haired girl in emerald green squeezed between them, giggling, hand over mouth, her face nearly crimson. She threw her arms around Terry and squeezed him tight, her strawberry-scented hair soft under his chin. Her embrace was that of a boa constrictor and if he died right now he’d be content with his life.
She pulled away again. Holding both his hands in hers, she cocked her head and bit her bottom lip. “We did it! Can you believe it?”
“No,” he said, gazing around stunned at all the grinning faces. No Stevenus. What had happened to him? This had to be all a hallucination and any moment he was going to be roused with a hard kick, and find himself still in that nasty damp cell or lying on those bales of hay in the stables. A slap on his back brought him back to earth. Stevenus bumped Katya aside to give him a hug.
After another round of handshaking, honorifics dispensed and congratulations given, Katya asked about all of the other neophytes, since some of them had worked so hard and followed every request to the letter. “Weren’t they give a chance, too? I can’t believe we were rewarded for going against the rules laid out in—”
“Bah, all of them are mindless sheep!” Quindalore the Querulous said. “The point of magic is to escape the drudgery of ceaseless labour! It isn’t what you endure that builds the character of a true wizard—a true wizard seeks ways to avoid all forms of tedious slogging, finding possibility where others believe it cannot exist. Magic is all about violating what we think of as ‘rules’ while still respecting the Order of Things.”
“Welcome, to Archon Castle,” said a smaller voice from somewhere in the corridor behind everyone. “We’d been watching all three of you closely much longer than you think.”
The crowd of Master Adepts split apart like the red sea to make way for a crystalline sceptre shimmering like live electricity. Pudding Bowl proceeded along the cleared path towards the three new Initiates, looking incredibly regal for a boy of—man? Just how old was he? —about five foot four in height and still with his funny blond haircut beneath a jewelled, golden crown.
Martin the Magnificent said, “Allow me to introduce Randolph the Resplendent, Ascended Wizard Master of the Order of Nine.”
“What!” Stevenus’s eyes almost bugged out of his head.
Terry just laughed, and laughed, his sides aching, his eyes tearing, barely aware of the soft fingers wrapped around his. The image of those peas flying across the dining hall in formation popped into his head and suddenly the thought of Pudding Bowl being the head honcho didn’t seem so implausible. In hindsight it was obvious he was a stooge of some sort—Terry had wondered that when he first met the lad and then quickly forgotten.
“Well I could remove my glamour, I suppose.”
Katya looked at Stevenus, whose stunned face was still pale with shock, and snorted. “Oh, please don’t. Not until the ceremony.”
Terry, Katya and Stevenus joined hands. All three of them bowed before Pudding Bowl, Ralphie Diggums, also known as Randolph the Resplendent, Ascended Wizard Master of the Order of Nine. Terry he realized he, too, was now wearing a silky green robe. He was officially an Initiate on the path to become a Wizard at Archon Castle. Whatever the future held, only weeks ago his experiences would have been beyond his imagining.














