Chapter 25
Umbros
The summons came two days later.
Not from the Warden this time â€" from a name he didn't recognize,
delivered on a plain card with no construct messenger, just slid under
the dormitory room door during dinner hour. Professor V. Shae. History
of Arcane Development. Room 14, East Wing. This evening if available.
He was available. He went.
Room 14 was an office, not a classroom â€" small, overfull with books and
papers in a way that suggested the space had outgrown its function some
years ago and both parties had agreed to ignore it. A woman was standing
at the window with her back to the door when he knocked.
She turned around.
She was maybe forty-five, Silver-rank â€" he could feel that clearly â€" but
the signature had the particular quality of something that had been
Silver for a long time and wasn't going anywhere. A mage whose rank
reflected maximum achieved ability rather than a point on a
developmental curve. Not weak. Just done growing.
She looked at him with the expression of someone who had been waiting
for a specific person and was checking whether the person who'd arrived
was the right one.
Whatever she saw satisfied her, because she pulled out the chair across
from her desk and said: 'Sit down, please.'
He sat. She sat across from him. She folded her hands.
'You were in the restricted archive three nights ago,' she said.
He said nothing.
'I'm not reporting it. I want to be clear about that before anything
else.' She met his eyes steadily. 'I have access to the restricted wing
and I was reviewing the untitled documents section two days after your
visit. I found the remnants of the text on the shelf.' A pause. 'A text
that has survived in that archive for one hundred and sixty years
survived contact with you for approximately ten seconds.'
He still said nothing.
'That's not a criticism,' she said. 'It's a data point.' She leaned back
slightly. 'My research area is the history of what is officially called
the Pre-Consolidation Era of arcane development. Unofficially, and in my
own notes, I call it the era before the Saints decided what magic was
allowed to be.'
Cyan looked at her.
'The six schools of magic taught at this Academy are not the complete
history of mana ability,' she said. 'They are the history that was
preserved after the Consolidation. Before the Consolidation, there were
seven recognized schools.' She watched his face carefully as she said
it. 'The seventh school was called Umbros. It was suppressed
approximately two hundred and eighty years ago. All academic texts
relating to it were removed from general circulation. The untitled
documents in the restricted archive are the remnants that weren't
destroyed â€" kept by an archivist who believed information should be
preserved even when powerful people wanted it gone.'
She waited.
'You know what I am,' Cyan said.
'I know what the seventh school involved,' she said carefully. 'I know
what kind of mana profile it produced in practitioners. I know that the
null result on a Runestone â€" a real null result, not a failed reading â€"
was historically associated with Umbros-type practitioners who the
Runestone system couldn't categorize.' She paused. 'I also know that
Umbros at its most developed was something different from what the
historical texts describe. The texts were written by people who feared
it. They're not neutral.'
'What are they?'
'Incomplete. Deliberately.' She looked at him steadily. 'The text you
destroyed â€" the one that crumbled â€" that was one of the more complete
records we had. I won't pretend that isn't a loss.' A beat. 'But you
being here is more valuable than that text was.'
Cyan looked at her for a long moment.
'What do you want?' he asked.
'To understand what you are,' she said simply. 'Not to use it. Not to
report it. To understand it, because I've been researching the seventh
school for twenty years and you're the first living example I've
encountered.' She held his gaze. 'And because I think you deserve to
understand it too.'
He thought about the crumbled book. The seven untitled spines. The
scrape marks where titles had been removed.
'Tell me about Umbros,' he said.