"Do you understand?" someone said.
Damon looked up to where Sabra, Jervis, and Annarais sat watching him. Sabra had spoken.
The question "Do you understand?" was one that Master Wane put to them frequently-when he had just thwarted one of their fledgling attempts at magic. There were only two answers to the question: "No," which meant you were still an apprentice, and "Yes," which would mean you were now a wizard. None of them had ever correctly answered the question.
"Dammit," said Damon, standing up and brushing the grit off his leggings and elbows. "A rock? Did you throw something at me?" He looked accusingly at Sabra. She met his gaze, but her face was impossible to read.
"Well," she said innocently, "the first time you show that trick to Master Wane, he's going to smack you on the head with his staff to test your concentration. I was doing you a favor."
"Go to hell," muttered Damon. He put his hand on his forehead where the rock had hit him and then ran it back over his close-cropped head.
"All right, I will," said Sabra. "Maybe I can find hell over among those boulders." She jumped up and stalked off down the beach, gone in a moment among the big, black rocks behind them. Her footsteps were soon lost in the sound of the glacial runoff that tumbled over the cliff and cut through the rocks below on its way into the sound.
"Congratulations," said Annarais, raising two fists in a victory gesture. She was smiling with genuine approval.
"Yeah," added Jervis. "I bet you can't wait until Master Wane gets back so you can show him that stunt."
Damon looked away. Tears of frustration burned his eyes. He no longer heard the soothing surf. Instead he was back in the training room, in front of the mirror with Master Wane. As the mage closed the curtains over the mirror he said, "You will never become a wizard." Master Wane had leveled that judgment the day before he left, and Damon was grateful the other apprentices had not been there to hear it.
"Sabra always steals the show, doesn't she? Don't let her get to you."
Damon came back to the beach at the sound of Annarais's voice. "Yes," was all he could muster before the waves slipped from his ears once again.
He had tried, again and again, to prove he had what it took, that certainly he, of all the apprentices, would become a wizard. In that rare moment alone with his teacher, Damon had almost burst with pride when Master Wane had told him that he was ready for a special test. First the master shaved Damon's head. Then he led him to the draped mirror in the training room. The mage pulled the black curtain aside and revealed the glass.
"Whom do you see?" the teacher asked his student.
Damon blinked. Something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what. He looked in the mirror and saw himself. He. had long, brown hair, just as he always had, and that seemed right to him. "I see me," said Damon. "Us." He wondered what this test was all about.
"And what day is it today?"
"The fourth day of the month, the day of the full null moon."
"No," said Wane, running his hand over Damon's bare pate. "Today is the fifth. The null moon was full last night. And you have no hair left on your head. You are seeing yesterday."
"Master?"
"This mirror shows you as you were yesterday," said Master Wane. "The common mind believes the body's eyes. You become what you believe, and so you think it is still yesterday. The mind of the mage knows better than to believe what the body sees. The mirror does not sway it. I see this body of mine as it was yesterday, but I know myself to be what I am today."
Master Wane closed the curtain. "You will never become a wizard."
A moment later, Damon realized what day it was and touched his shaved scalp. In front of the mirror he had lost himself.
"Never…"
Damon, unconsciously running his hand over three weeks of growth on his head, remembered the present… and Jervis's words. "And it's not just some stunt, Jervis! You try it if you think it's a stunt."
Jervis didn't answer. He was looking out over the sound. Jervis was the least likely to become involved in petty competition, Damon thought. He opened his mouth to apologize for his sharp words, but Jervis spoke first.
"Master Wane has been gone a long time," Jervis said quietly, as if he didn't realize he was speaking aloud. "I don't like it."
This was the longest Master Wane had ever left them alone. He had been gone more than three weeks now and had neglected to tell them when he would return. His only words were of visiting his colleagues at the School of the Unseen, but they had all seen the carrier pigeons he occasionally sent flying from the top of the tower.
Sabra had told them the Kjeldorans used those pigeons. She had been picked up by Kjeldoran troops in the months following the flood that had washed her village into the sea. It was the Kjeldorans' alliances with Master Wane that had brought Sabra to the old mage's tower on the hill. The apprentices assumed the master had political business in Kjeldor, but three weeks was a long time to be away, even for politics.
Damon tossed a pebble at the surf. "Jervis, you know Master Wane doesn't want us talking about what he's doing or even knowing about it. His allegiances have nothing to do with us. If he didn't know what he was doing, he wouldn't have been around to take us in." Damon thought briefly of the first wizard who had found him, when he had just been orphaned. That wizard had preferred less tasteful magic and had eventually sold Damon to Master Wane. The memories made him shudder.
Annarais stood up and stretched. "He's probably going to look back in time and see that we were here on the beach when we were supposed to be studying."
Jervis pointed a thumb at Damon. "We are. studying. He's demonstrating a new trick for us. That's studying, isn't it, Damon?"
A voice boomed from down the beach, "It's bobble-dy-cock!"
The apprentices jumped in recognition of Master Wane's voice and his favorite term for tomfoolery. Damon looked past Annarais, who spun around. Moving swiftly toward them from among the tall, dark rocks was their master. He had always reminded Damon of a seagull, loud and a little dirty, with hair the color of ground-up oyster shells.
"Who is the wizard who makes the sky blue?" demanded Master Wane. He raised a gnarled staff to the sky and shook it. He'd put that question to them many times before, and they were to have solved it by the time he returned. "Damon?"
"Welcome back, Master Wane," Damon said lamely.
"To leave is to return. Who is it?" shouted the wizard, pointing his staff at the apprentice.
"I do not know, Master." Damon dropped his gaze and looked at the pebbles on the beach.
"I'm going to beat you ten times," said Master Wane, swinging his staff for emphasis. "Then maybe you'll know. Annarais! Who is the wizard who makes the sky blue?"
Annarais cleared her throat. "The sky is like a great mirror, and it reflects the blue of the ocean." She tilted her chin upward sharply as if confirming her theory.
"You," yelled Master Wane, "I shall beat twenty times. Jervis! Who is it?"
"The sky is not blue, Master," said Jervis in a voice that was almost firm.
"And this rock," replied the master, picking up a good-sized stone from near his foot, "is not hard!" He let it fly at Jervis, who dodged expertly. "Thirty times!"
"Now," continued Master Wane, looking around, "where is my most promising pupil, Sabra? She's as smart as she is beautiful, and that's saying a lot. I'm sure she knows the answer. What did the three of you do-drown her out of envy?"
Sabra? Master Wane had no favorites. Damon lifted his eyes from the sand to take a closer look at the wizard. Had Master Wane taken a bath while he was away? The sense that something was amiss grew into a certainty.