Then these, too, popped, and once more the mage drew out a new string, this time milky and streaked with purple.
When those vanished there were no more.
“There,” Thetheran said. “Now you try it.”
Dumery blinked, and reached out for the tongs.
The hair had vanished, along with the drop of stuff, so Dumery picked up a new one from the felt. He was unfamiliar with the tongs, so it took several attempts before he managed to pick up one, and only one, strand.
He dipped it in the little bottle and drew up a drop of the reddish gunk. He announced, “Fulg the walkers nose arbitrary grottle.”
He waved one hand in a circle while wiggling the fingers of the other.
He touched the hair and goo to the piece of wood and said, “Kag snort ruffle thumb.”
Then he waited for the spark to appear.
Nothing happened; the thick stuff on the hair dripped onto the wood, but that was all.
He waited, but his hand quickly grew tired, holding the tongs steady like that, and at last he had to put them down.
“It didn’t work,” he said.
Thetheran was staring at him.
“My boy,” he said, “you are a phenomenon. A curiosity, really.”
Dumery blinked. “What?” he asked.
“You are a fluke, an aberration. You have absolutelyno talent for wizardry whatsoever!”
His previous blink had been from startlement; this time he blinked to hold back tears that were suddenly welling up. “What?” he said again.
“Lad, I tested you first with a simple spell with that dagger,” Thetheran explained. “It should have glowed green, at least, when I touched you with it. If you had the talent strongly, it would have been golden, and if you were destined to be one of the great wizards of the age it would have glowed white-hot. You saw what it did-a flicker of blue, no more, and it stayed as cold as iron.”
Dumery stared up at him, uncomprehending.
“I thought perhaps I’d misspoken the spell, or something else had gone wrong,”
Thetheran continued, “so I tried again, with your heart instead of your head, and still got nothing. Well, I thought, perhaps you’re a special case. So I gave you a chance to show me a spell. I took the hair and blood of a beheaded murderer, and a piece from the scaffold he died on, and I worked one of the simplest little spells I know, one that can’t go wrong easily, if at all, and then I let you try-and you gotevery single step wrong! Not one word of the incantation, not one gesture, was right! You didn’t even speak the second stanza until too late in the procedure. And with some of the most potently charged ingredients I have on hand, short of wasting dragon’s blood, you raised not a single spark of eldritch energy. Not one little twinge.Nothing.”
“But...” Dumery began.
“It’s amazing,” Thetheran said, shaking his head.
“Let me try again!” Dumery said. “Please! I’ll do it better this time, I swear I will!”
Thetheran stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Go ahead,” he said.
Eagerly, blinking away tears, Dumery picked out another hair with the tongs.
Maybe, he thought, the power wasn’t there because I didn’t know what these things were. The hair and blood of a beheaded murderer-gods!
He trembled slightly at the very idea.
He dipped the hair in the bottle of blood and drew it out, and Thetheran coached him. “Pfah’lu gua’akhar snuessar bitra rhi grau k’l,” the wizard said.
“Fall oogah acker snoozer bid rory grackle,” Dumery said. He watched closely the gestures Thetheran made, and tried very hard to imitate them.
“Khag s’naur t’traugh f’lethaum,” Thetheran said.
“Cog sonar to trow fill them,” Dumery said, just before he touched the drop of blood to the bit of scaffold.
Again, nothing at all happened. Dumery stared at the bit of wood in abject disappointment.
When Thetheran started to say something, Dumery burst out, “Let me try a different spell! This one’s too hard to start with; let me try another!”
“It’s an easy spell, boy,” the wizard said, and when Dumery started to protest he held up a silencing hand. “It’s an easy spell. But we’ll try another, if you like.”
Dumery nodded.
He fared no better with Felojun’s First Hypnotic than he had with Haldane’s Iridescent Amusement. The ingredients were simpler-a mere pinch of dust from the floor-and the incantation shorter, being a single word, but still, Dumery failed utterly.
“Face it, boy,” Thetheran said after the third unsuccessful attempt. “You have no knack for wizardry. Teaching you wizardry would be like trying to make a minstrel of a deaf man. There’s no shame to it; it’s just the way you were born. It’s not just that you don’t hear the words clearly, nor that you get the gestures wrong; it’s that the magic doesn’tlike you. You don’t feel it, and it avoids you. I don’t know why, but it’s true; I can sense it.”
Dumery had run out of protests. When Thetheran jogged his elbow he got down from the stool silently; he followed quietly when the wizard led the way back through the curtain and into the parlor, where Doran was sitting, watching the fire.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Thetheran said when Doran looked up expectantly, “but I’m afraid your son is not suitable for an apprenticeship with me.”
Doran blinked in surprise.
“He seems like a fine lad,” Thetheran explained, “but he has no innate aptitude for wizardry. It’s just not in his blood. I’m sure he’d do well in any number of other fields.”
Dumery stood, silent and woebegone, as Doran looked past the mage at him.
“You’re sure?” Doran asked Thetheran.
“Quitesure,” Thetheran said.
“Well,” Doran said, “thank you for your time, anyway.” He glanced at the silver tray, where the crystal goblet had clearly been used. “And theoushka, too; it was quite good, and just what I needed on a day like this.”
“Thankyou, sir,” Thetheran said, with a trace of a bow, “and I’m sorry I couldn’t take the boy.”
“Well, that’s all right, I’m sure we’ll find a place for him.” He gestured.
“Come on, Dumery, let’s go.”
Dumery stood, not moving.
His father said, “Comeon, Dumery!”
“It’s notfair!” Dumery wailed suddenly, not moving from where he stood. “It’s notfair!”
Doran glanced at Thetheran, who gave a sympathetic little shrug. “I know, Dumery,” Doran said. “It’snot fair, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Now, come on.”
“No! He didn’t give me achance! He said the words so fast I couldn’t even hear them properly!”
“Dumery,” Doran said, “I’m sure the wizard gave you a fair test. He’s as eager to find an apprentice as you are to be a wizard, and he wouldn’t send you away without good reason. Now come along, and we’ll go home and figure out what’s to be done about it.”
Reluctantly, Dumery came.
Out in the street, during a lull in the downpour, Doran called, “Well, now that wizardry is out, you’ll need to give some thought to what you want to do instead.”
“No,” said Dumery, emphatically, “I won’t. I want to be awizard!”
His father glared at him silently for a moment.
“Youcan’t be a wizard,” Doran said. “You heard what Thetheran told us.”
“That’s just Thetheran,” Dumery said. “He’s not the only wizard in the World.”
“No, he’s not the only one,” Doran agreed, “but he’s a good one, and he knows his business. Don’t be an idiot, boy; we’ll find you something else.”
“No,” Dumery said again. “I want to be a wizard, and by all the gods I’mgoing to be a wizard!”