Thus was it ever in the country of Brodonia. The rain never stopped. The sun never shone. And the people were forever miserable.
Magic did not work here, either.
“I feel so unhappy I could kill myself,” apprentice Peadul complained. “Why do the Brodonians continue living? Or at least why don’t they move elsewhere?”
Despite his gloom Harmasch chuckled. “The people here like their misery,” he explained. “It is their mental climate, and if they travel abroad they always want to return to it, just as we want to return to the merriment of Cherie, our own country. Still, it is good to travel and experience foreign emotions.”
“Well, I still feel like killing myself.”
“To be honest, I also will be glad when we reach the border.”
The train continued to trundle on its way, swaying through fog and rain. Occasionally it stopped at some wretched halt around which clustered a few decrepit hovels, where pale faces streaming with rain peered in through the windows, as if the train’s arrival was the only bright spot in their owners’ wretched existence.
After what seemed like an interminable time the engine again ground to a standstill, hissing steam. They had reached the frontier. Before allowing the train to proceed, dour-faced border guards visited each carriage in turn, taking names and searching luggage.
Such was the routine. Anyone who entered Brodonia was recorded, anyone who left Brodonia was recorded, in case he had stolen something, or had committed some other crime, or was attempting to rescue a Brodonian from the country’s weather.
At length the train chuffed slowly forward. For those on board it was like passing through a curtain. No transition could have been more sudden. The passengers entered bright sunshine and saw green meadows sprinkled with flowers, while the chill faded away behind them.
Looking back, the frontier could be seen as a wall of rain wavering its way from horizon to horizon.
Harmasch chuckled as his mind emptied itself of despondency. Peadul, too, grinned with relief.
At first Harmasch’s native chortling gaiety reasserted itself and he regaled Peadul with quips and jokes.
Soon, however, the mood endemic to Pastorale, the country they had now entered, laid itself on him.
This was a mood of tranquil delight in nature. The magician and his apprentice gazed delightedly at sunny meadows and neat green woods reeling past. What a change from miserable Brodonia!
Admittedly Brodonia was not the worst. Their journey had taken them through Feroce, a fiery land of roaring volcanoes and crashing lightning where the ruling emotion was one of angry exasperation. It had caused not a few of the train’s passengers to come to blows.
The transit of Pastorale lasted less than an hour. Briefly they crossed a corner of Wymptia, a land of fatuous silliness where pink snow fell without pause even though the climate was warm and balmy.
The whimsical Wymptia mood passed the instant they crossed the frontier into Neutralia.
Neutralia: a small country, hardly more than a region, with no emotional climate of any kind. This was an eerie experience to come upon so abruptly, possibly one which only a trainee in magic could withstand.
The train pulled into Klyston, Neutralia’s single town, and ground to a halt at the central station.
Harmasch cleared his mind of distractions and aimed a thought at his apprentice.
Well, here we are, Peadul. Keep your wits about you.
Yes, master, Peadul thought back.
“Good, Peadul!” Harmasch congratulated out loud. “The atmosphere is marvellously clear here, is it not?”
And indeed it was. Magicians from all over Erspia were stepping down from the box carriages and on to the broad platform, making for a spacious plaza lying next to the station. All around them stood the white stone buildings of Klyston. The air was clear and bright, but somehow empty of quality, as though all mood colour had been extracted from it.
Perfect for the testing of magical ability.
After a shouted warning to any who had yet to embark or disembark, the train chuffed out of the station to continue its endless circling of the world.
The examinations were already in progress, some candidates having arrived by horseback or on foot.
The place was familiar to Harmasch. He had been tested five times here, in order to reach his present grade of Magus Adeptus. He made his way with Peadul among the tables that had been laid out, and presented himself at the registration desk, displaying his certificate of wizardry with its five degrees.
“My apprentice here, Peadul Hobsot, applies for marking in the first degree.”
Wearing a green shift, the registrar examined the certificate carefully. He scanned the plaza. “Place number seven is vacant. And please, Magus Adeptus, do not forget your cap.”
“Of course,” muttered Harmasch. He dipped into his bag and brought out his conical headdress with its five gold-coloured pentacles. He set it on his head.
Coloured balls were dancing in the air over the examination tables as they walked to table number seven.
The examiner was a slim, middle-aged man who himself wore the cap of a Magus Adeptus. He smiled indulgently as Peadul settled himself nervously in the candidate’s chair.
“This shouldn’t take too long, young man.”
Harmasch took the observer’s chair a short distance away. In times past magicians had been known to cheat in favour of their apprentices, ‘nudging’ the results by using their own faculties. Any examiner worth his salt would soon detect such chicanery these days, but by convention a patron did not sit at the table.
“Now then,” said the examiner affably, “I want you to recite the words I am thinking.”
He closed his eyes, and Peadul did likewise. After a moment Peadul began to speak.
“The science of magic is the art of discipline of the mind. If the mind is not disciplined, magic cannot be performed. The magician learns to sustain a single thought for as much as an hour or more. He learns to extend his thoughts and mental images to the external world and to achieve effects through them.”
Peadul paused, then spoke again in a different tone.
“Say, this is rather interesting.”
The examiner opened his eyes and frowned. “Hmm. You seem to have picked up a stray thought from somewhere.” He glanced in slightly reproachful fashion at Harmasch. This was a mark against Peaduclass="underline" being unable to distinguish between one person’s thought and another’s.
“Let us move to the second test.”
The examiner tipped a boxful of coloured balls into a curved hollow in the middle of the table. “Now. Let me see you perform the motions known as Petals Dance in the Wind.”
Peadul smiled. He had practised long on Petals Dance in the Wind. He fixed his eyes on the pile of balls, readied his mind, and reached out with his telekinetic faculty. The balls rose in the air and began gyrating in a complicated pattern, mauve following mauve, russet following russet, cobalt blue following cobalt blue, in winding streams. Intense effort of will was called for, each stream being moved independently but harmonising with the others. Smoothness of movement was required. The examiner would note any jerkiness or sudden drops indicating that the apprentice’s telekinetic grasp had wavered.
Unfortunately just such dislocation occurred now. Kinks appeared in the gyrating streams. There was confusion in the dancing balls. Colours became mingled. With a gasp Peadul relinquished his power and let the balls cascade back into the recess.
He turned, not to the examiner, but to Harmasch. “Someone is interfering with my control!”
The two older men looked first at one another, then all around them. A little further off, standing between the tables, was a man who glanced furtively aside, as if trying to make himself invisible.