While her friends honed their skills in the temple’s cellars, the wizardess, Alessia Mistlewood, sat on the window seat in her assigned quarters. It was nice to feel the sun on her back as she watched her apprentices working to keep their minds from what had just happened.

  One of them, a solid girl with brown hair and eyes, was bent over a piece of embroidery, given to her by the temple priests. She sewed each stitch as though she wished to forget the last and wasn’t seeing the picture on the cloth before her.

  Her brown hair had lost its chestnut gleam, and her brown eyes no longer held the laughter for which she had been known. Her name was Zarine, and her sleep was still troubled by the nightmare through which she’d lived.

  Every now and then, she’d glance anxiously over at her mistress, or across at the slightly older girl sitting at the table. Dark-haired and gray-eyed, Sindra was the oldest of her fellow-apprentices. She was frowning at the book before her, as if trying to understand the arcane theory it contained.

  A parchment, ink and quill stood beside her, occasionally she’d return Zarine’s glances, or look down at her notes, or cast a wary gaze over the young boy sitting at the edge of a pool of sunlight.

  He was practicing spell-lets, minor forms of spells designed to prepare apprentices for the gathering and control of larger amounts of magical power. He was summoning and banishing tiny pools of dust. His name was Varan.

  Sindra’s next glance showed he was getting bored. He was forming the pools of dust into increasingly elaborate patterns, until it was obvious he’d gone beyond spell-lets. The dust forms he created showed he was gathering and using the same amount of arcane power as required by most basic spells.

  His erasure of the patterns was also reaching that level for he was not simply wiping the dust away with single sweep, but following the lines of his creation until his destruction of the pattern was almost as complex as his creation of it.

  She glanced at Alessia, and saw the Mistress’s gaze had been taken by something beyond the window.

  “Mistress?” she called softly, but Alessia didn’t respond.

  She seemed lost in thought as she stared out the window into the forest beyond.

  “Mistress,” Sindra repeated, and waited until the wizardess looked up from her brooding to answer.

  “What is it, Sindra?” she asked, her voice quiet with remembered horror.

  “See how accomplished our Varan has become?” Sindra asked, gesturing toward the youngest apprentice.

  Varan grinned, pleased to have caught her attention. Seeing he had Alessia’s attention, also, he set the dust into a frenzy of complex swirls, creating the most complicated pattern he had yet to make. Sindra let out a soft breath of relief, when she saw Alessia smile.

  “Very nice, Varan, but can you remove it as prettily?” the wizardess asked.

  Varan’s grin grew wider.

  “Watch,” he replied, and Sindra knew he was going to try something far beyond what he’d been doing before.

  With a sequence of elaborate gestures, and the warble of a chant none of them had taught him, Varan snapped his fingers in a staccato pattern over his design. The dust leapt from the floor in patterned sections, then swirled into the sunlight and hung there until he gestured, again.

  With another series of gestures, Varan caused the dust to swirl briefly into the design he’d lain out on the floor, and then disappear in a fading glow of light. He glanced triumphantly across at Zarine and Sindra, then turned toward Alessia for approval.

  He looked so triumphant that Sindra had to suppress a smile. That became harder when she followed the boy’s gaze and caught the drop-jawed amazement on the wizardess’s face.

  “Well, mistress?” he asked, and Alessia closed her mouth with a snap.

  A faint frown creased her brow when she saw her youngest apprentice watching her, a glint of victory in his eyes. She cleared her throat.

  “Well done, Varan,” she replied, managing to keep the amazement from her voice. Her next words were full of cool assessment. “I’d say you managed that magic quite nicely.”

  Varan’s face fell, and Alessia relented.

  “It was astounding, Varan,” she told him. “I haven’t had another apprentice do so well before. You will make a great mage.”

  Sindra didn’t need to look into her mistress’s mind to read the uncertain certainty there.

  Varan was going to be a great mage…but what form would his magic take?

  “What form, indeed?” came the agreement of another mind.

  Sindra startled, looking around the room before settling on the window. Given the room was empty, it was the only place the voice in her mind could have come from. Someone was watching them!

  Despite her suspicions, the only living thing outside the window, was the furry ginger form of a red squirrel. Sindra stared at it, noticing the intent way the small creature observed them.

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  “Are you…” she began, staring at the little creature.

  The squirrel adopted a smug look, and flipped a forepaw over its ear. Its whiskers twitched in apparent amusement, then it scampered down the tree. Before she could say anything, it had reached the window ledge outside.

  There, it tapped on the casement, prying it open and slipping through.

  Sindra made it out of her seat and was heading toward it, when it leapt down to the floor, its shape changing to the agile form of a young man.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling as he answered her question. “I am.”

  He glanced across the room, and his smile faded to alarm as he registered Alessia’s reaction.

  The wizardess had come out of her seat, retreating across the room to stand, hunched in a corner, her knuckles jammed between her teeth as though to prevent a scream. Likewise, Zarine had slid out of her chair, leaving her embroidery on the table as she prepared to cast a defensive spell.

  At least, that’s what Sindra thought it was meant to be. She reached across to slap her fellow-apprentice’s hands out of their pattern, disrupting the spell.

  It was Varan who saw what his mistress intended. After extending himself to form the elaborate patterns from the dust, his mage sense was stretched taut, sensitive to the slightest current of power in the air…and his mistress had just become a seething mass of energy.

  Looking toward her, he saw her hands move in the first gesture for a new spell. The sense of power coming off her made his mage-sense ache, as did the aggressive destruction the power suggested.

  His mistress was afraid…and the newcomer might be benign, but the wizardess wasn’t going to give him a chance to prove otherwise.

  Varan pushed himself to his feet, the oppressive sense of his mistress’s magic beating at his head. Whatever it was she was about to cast, Varan knew he needed to stop it.

  The newly-arrived shape-changer was faster.

  He raised a hand, smiling gently as he spoke a single word.

  Power rippled out from him, and Alessia’s hands stopped moving. Her voice faded to a panicked mumble before she could complete whatever it was she sought to cast. The gathered magic began to unravel.

  Varan sensed it coming apart, and couldn’t help it. He’d never seen so much power gathered in one place before. If he could only…

  He reached for it, his mage sense protesting at this added extension, but Varan ignored its warning. He was too focused on the pattern he was going to create this time.

  Warned by a mage-sense of his own, the shape-shifting wizard felt the power move, sensing the current of wild magic move toward the boy. Released from Alessia’s control, the magic surged and rolled. Knowing it was too great for any apprentice to wield, the strange mage reached out and gave the child a gentle shove.

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough to stop him from keeping the spell in his mind.

  Varan shouted in protest, the magic spilling from his control, losing the shape he’d tentatively been trying to form.

  “You’ve done enough today, Varan,” Sindra stated.

  The newly arrived mage looked at the girl he’d first seen from the window—the one with the gift of mindspeak.

  “Thank you for your support, my lady.”

  He tried saying it with a smile, and was rewarded by a fleeting smile in return, but the expression was quickly gone, the stern frown replacing it not an improvement.

  “Perhaps you’d better introduce yourself and explain who comes here uninvited and in such an inadvisable fashion.”

  The strange mage opened his mouth to reply, only to close it again as a gentle breeze wafted past them, vanishing out the window through which he’d entered. Both he and Sindra pivoted toward its source.

  It was clear Zarine wasn’t going to wait for an introduction…and that her next spell wasn’t going to be so benign. Once more, the strange mage spoke a single, gentle word, and froze one of her companions in their place.

  “Don’t worry,” the stranger assured Sindra. “They’ll both be all right.”

  “And you?” Varan demanded, even though he didn’t get up from the floor. “What were you doing spying on us?”

  His eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Are you a peeping tom?”

  Sindra and the strange mage exchanged glances.

  Sindra arched an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “I…I’m not a peeping Tom,” the mage sputtered. “I’m…”

  He sighed.

  “I was passing by, as a squirrel, you know? When I caught sight of this shimmer, and, well, you know squirrels and sparkles. They just can’t help themselves…”

  “And…when you’re in that form, neither can you?” Varan challenged sharply.

  The mage blushed.

  “I’ll tell you what, when you’ve made your first shift, you can tell me how you went resisting your chosen form’s temptations,” he retorted.

  Varan rose into a crouch, his eyes growing dark and a snarl forming on his lips. The strange mage stepped closer in alarm. “I didn’t mean, now.”

  “Varan!” Sindra cried, giving the boy a hasty nudge with the toe of her boot. “That’s enough magic for today.”

  The boy gave her a rebellious stare.

  “I mean it,” Sindra warned. “And the mistress will say the same, so don’t ignore me.”

  She turned back to the mage.

  “And?”

  “And so I scampered up that tree there, and took a little look…”

  “A little look?” Sindra challenged. “Then how did you know to disturb Varan before he could hurt himself trying to wield more than his mind could hold?”

  The mage rolled his eyes.

  “I…well…Okay, I admit it. It was more than a little look, but those patterns…” He cast Varan a wary glance. “Your mistress is right, you know. You will one day become a formidable mage.”

  The boy gave him another rebellious look, and he hurried to explain.

  “I’ve been sitting up there for just over a full turn of the hour glass.”

  As soon as he’d said it, his eyes widened and his face paled. “Oh no…I’m going to be late.”

  “Late?”

  “A meeting.” The mage tried to brush it off with a glib wave of the hand.

  Sindra decided to let it go, changing the subject, instead.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Why?” the stranger repeated. “Because I was curious, because the patterns the boy was making mesmerized me for longer than I care to admit…or because I’m unbelievably nosy. Take your pick.”

  He paused apologetically.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Given where we’ve come from,” Sindra replied tartly, “that was a fool’s dream.”

  “But I wasn’t to know that,” the mage said softly. “If I had, I might have chosen to make a…less dramatic entrance.”

  Sindra sighed and indicated the statue-still forms of Alessia and Zarine.

  “It will have to do,” she noted. “Now, if you could release my friends?”

  “Of course, of course,” the mage hurriedly answered, uttering the phrase required to end his enchantment.

  Alessia uttered a small gasp, then clasped her hands and studied the young mage. Zarine stumbled sideways, catching the edge of the table to steady herself before she fell. The girl gave the strange mage a resentful scowl, then returned to her seat and picked up her tapestry.

  The mage watched as she re-seated herself, and then turned to Alessia.

  Sindra stepped back to her seat signaling Varan should join her at the table.

  “Write down what you learned,” she instructed, if only to give the boy a task not involving magic.

  The strange mage bowed to her mistress, and Sindra observed as Alessia favored the young man with a forced smile. What she could not see was how their kevaragan friend reacted when Zarine’s message wind reached his ear.