‘What?’ I asked and instead of goggling or opening mouth with surprise as it happens to astonished people I simply began giggling. ‘A wizard? Out of me? A minstrel or a tailor could sound realistic but a wizard?

One is not born but becomes a wizard,’ said Master Gaius with some offended notes in his voice. ‘Or do you think that a son inherits magic skills from his father just like it happens in case of ironmongery? No, far from that and dynasties do not exist in that whatsoever. All wizards are sterile if you understand what I mean.

No, I don’t’, I replied honestly. ‘I don’t know the word.

If you are a wizard you should forget about having kids,’ explained Master Gaius. ‘It is matter of either or. Once you have come through the rite of passage you cannot have kids any longer.

What a mess,’ I said, lowered my eyes and focused them on the buckle of my belt. ‘I have just tasted it…

Damn, stupid thing you are,’ exclaimed the wizard and made a deep breath not cry out. ‘Don’t mix sterility and impotency. Nothing will be out of order but there will be no result, understand?

Now I see,’ I nodded. ‘Anyway, what kind of wizard I am, Master? Well, I need to have some special skills… I don’t know… I have no idea of the disciple selection process but guess it’s not that simple. Well, shall I come up to the castle gates, knock on the door and say, ‘hello, I am baron von Rut, I came to study here?

Believe it or not but it will be almost like you have described,’ said Master Gaius and laughed out loudly. ‘Yes, you will come up to the door, knock on it and say these words. You will present a letter of reference, of course but I shall give it to you later.’

Such a nasty old fella he was as he was feeding me with small pieces of the information. A letter makes everything different, it verifies my personality and confirms that I am not a self-proclaimed scum.

‘As for the skills, I tell you what-a wizard is sleeping in practically everybody and many of people have hidden abilities and strength,’ kept on saying Master Gaius. ‘The question, however, is whether one wants to make the very first step and to initiate the gift awakening or to live calm and comfortable life and whether one will be given that chance or not?

You are telling something strange for me, Master,’ I chuckled. ‘Wizards have far less problems than ordinary people. You have some money and people around try to give their hand first if not kiss it. The authorities do not like you, that’s true but where are they now? In large towns only, I guess. Who will reject that? Even if your cock falls down.

You don’t have to worry about it,’ said the wizard with a sad note in his laugh. ‘Many people give it up, just believe me. You will see it with your own eyes before the rite of passage if you manage to survive until the end of the first year of education. All you have said is true although it is just a façade of our life and when you have studied its background you are likely to change your point of view.’

I can say nothing about the background but I believe that wizard’s life is real good.

‘As for your potential, it’s not that bad,’ said Master Gaius and stirred the burning logs in the fire. ‘I noticed excellent mental resistance, which is an important quality in the fight against the rivals of your kind, retentive memory and good reaction. Fire likes you and it means that you will easily master the spells from the fire arsenal.

Fire arsenal, is this what you said?’ I asked as, apart from curiosity, I needed that information for my survival. ‘What is it? What kind of arsenal is that? And besides, you said something about the prohibited ritual in the barn. And also I would like to know the difference between a ritual and a spell. And…

Whoa!’ cried Master Gaius and waved his hands. Too many questions at once is too much for me. Let me tell about what I think is important myself. Besides, you will learn a lot of things in class and why waste time?’

‘If I were you I’d ask Master about something else,' suddenly said Agrippa. ‘I’d try to find out the way you got the letter of reference and who wrote it for you. And would certainly ask why a baron from bedraggled Forest Area had to cross the entire continent to enter the very wizard school. Aren’t there schools closer to it? Or what has it been famous for?’

I felt myself an idiot at that moment, as Agrippa was absolutely right saying so. Those in Raven castle would not ask me about fire rituals but these questions, which might seem simple, would be certainly asked.

‘Let’s try to be consistent,’ said Master Gaius and turned the logs in the fire again, ‘if we start talking like that. Actually, the issue with the letter and why I need you I wanted to discuss the day after tomorrow but why wait? Besides, there is nobody to overhear us around.’

I became alarmed as that thing was much more interesting to me than any magical tricks or how they can be called. My nearest future and what followed depended on it.

However, Master Gaius, against my expectations, did not start providing me with detailed instructions or to explain how to behave with dwellers of Raven Mount still unknown to me. He started from the background.

Wizards turned out to be Ragellon own flesh and blood, that is, according to Master’s words, gods created ground and water first, then it was a man’s turn and after that the first wizards saw the daylight and the time difference between the last two events was minimal. Although I didn’t trust that information completely I nodded showing that it was quiet obvious for me. The wizards are the creation of the universe.

Anyway, it seemed to me that he overestimated the role of wizards in the history of the world. According to him, it was they who governed all the aspects of human being throughout millenniums and only during the recent three hundred years they relaxed the grip due to well-known reasons. Apart from that, they had enthroned kings, dethroned Black Lord and presented the mankind with all blessings of civilization including cereal crops and flavorings.

On the other hand, he told me a lot of interesting things seasoned with ‘we, the wizards’ and ‘how can it be solved without us’ but I did not buy it though.

For example, I learned that his words about the fact that almost everybody can become a wizard were not exactly correct. The number of wizards dwelling in Ragellon was restricted and was limited by gods. Very long time ago they said, ’if everyone can become a wizard what is the use of it?’ And so only a very limited number of a wizard staff applicants could start studying, this was how it worked. The number of the magicians left the world should be equal to the number of the coming ones, something like that. More than that, even if you are admitted to the educational institution it is too early to think that you have reached your goal. Less than half of the studentuses manage to finish their first year of education. The rest are rejected while taking the rite of passage or even earlier during the study. Some of them leave on their own having realized that they have bitten more than they could chew, some of them are rejected because of their poor studying abilities and some of them simply died. Yes, they died, as simple as that. The point is that nobody in these schools and academies is famous for compassion and the training conditions there are maximally similar to the ones in real life. Neither condescendship nor compassion should be applied to the magician-to-be as the wizard’s life is not for those who want to live a calm and peaceful life. It all happens only during the first year of study. Master Gauis said nothing about the following years at school simply dropping that only four of his fellow students managed to graduate and nobody else could survive until the solemn ceremony of handing in the crosier. I have no idea how many of them there were at the beginning but guessed that much more than ten. This was how the things were.

He also admitted that hardly anyone could teach magic and besides to get the license to teach the underbrush of the crosier was rather a complicated issue. First of all, that right is not given by the humans, they simply are not allowed to do it. The right to recruit disciples and to make real wizards out of them is literally given by gods. One of these fine days a man wearing a hooded cloak which hides his face can come up to any of the acting wizards and, on opening a red-leather box, produce a short sceptre with a precious stone embedded into its knob. It means that gods have chosen you as a youth's Dominieand from that time on you have a right to recruit disciples. Nobody knows what the criteria of such selections are and why the gods choose this and that wizard for that purpose but this is how it works and it works in that way and in that way only.

Besides, not every wizard uses that privilege as not everyone needs it. To have disciples is rather honorable, convenient and sometimes profitable but is always rather challenging. So some of the wizards refuse from having the sceptre right on the spot and in that case the messenger leaves his house without saying a word, others accept it but do nothing instead, I mean do not recruit disciples. In that case the sceptre simply vanishes from the wizard’s house to appear in the messenger’s hands some time later.

It may happen so that the gods admit their making the wrong choice having realized that Ragellon youth had been entrusted to the wrong person and that Dominiewill not be able to teach them at all or, on the contrary, can teach them something bad which happened two thousand years ago. A certain wizard, Vitaliy by name, had trained a dozen of wizards in his school who later became his inner circle and the main military force as soon as he proclaimed himself to be Black Lord. We shall admit that without these fellow fighters he could hardly conquer half of the continent and fight with all Ragellon wizards for a long time (interestingly but the gods did not interfere with that squabble). However, the end of the story was bad for him, that’s true. All of his disciples had been gradually murdered. Some of them were killed in a combat, others were deprived of their lives with an arrow to the back or with a cut throat while sleeping (as I said, the wizards die in these cases like humans. They are more resistant to poisoning but not to steel and they cannot protect themselves in such cases). After that he was captured himself. By the way, it happened somewhere here not far from the Western Ocean. He was captured and burnt on Mount Schtaufengroff which had been famous for the fact that in ancient times the gods were examining the earth they had created standing on it. He was being burnt for a long time and cursed his former fellow tradesmen, those who did not understand and betrayed him and even used foul language when he mentioned the gods as he had clearly understood that his eternal life would be so terrible that hardly anyone would envy it. On the other hand, the wizards have special relationships with death as far as I understood and it is the reason why the crosier bearers are so much eager to stay alive.

Interestingly to note that it was Vitaliy who put an end to the wizard’s ‘narrow focus’ as Master Gaius put it. In the old times there were air wizards, fire wizards, healing wizards and so on. By the way, Vitaliy was death wizard who was focused on necromancy, maliphency and the rest of unpleasant staff of that sort. Certainly not on the practical aspects of the issue but on counteraction to evil phenomena. However, he trained his disciples to become experts not in counteraction but in raising the dead in cemeteries, infecting their rivals with plague and other mortal deceases and spreading curse all around them and they did it rather skillfully. In general, these twelve boys and girls left their mark in history of magic Ragellon.

The next morning after the auto da fe each wizard of the continent to his utter astonishment realized that he did not remember the spells he had had in his arsenal and had some new ones from different fields of knowledge instead.

It was a terrible mess at first and the healers along with the weathers were affected with it the most as they lost their stable income but later there was a change of generations with another one that followed and it became quiet common although some rudiments were left intact (I wonder what that word means) and some wizards could do fire magic better than others, others were good at coping with illnesses and curses and there were the wizards who were eager to take part in local war conflicts using combat spells. At the same time, no one could boast with mastering any field of magic as it had become beyond the wizard’s abilities.

And the number of Dominies was reduced to five right after Vitaliy’s claim to conquer the entire continent because there were much more of them before his demarche. Today there are only five scepters and five schools of magic as simple as that. It can be less in some cases for example, when a Dominiehas failed to meet the gods’ expectations or a wizard is thinking whether to become one or not.

‘What if the sceptre is taken away from a Dominieright in the middle of a school year?’ I interrupted the wizard. ‘What would happen to his disciples?

The most gifted ones will be relocated to other Dominies and as for the rest… let’s say it was their bad luck, they would not finish their education,’ explained Master Gaius to me. ‘If that happened during their first year of education they would have to come back home and to try to adopt themselves to the new conditions and if it happened after the rite of passage it would make difference. Their basic set of skills would allow them to survive anyway and they would settle in villages or small towns. Certainly, they would never be given the crosier but can get a healing license or something of that sort.

Master, you keep on telling about that rite of passage,’ I asked cautiously,’ could you tell me something about it or is it a secret?

‘It’s not a secret at all,’ answered the wizard and laughed. ’Each of us had to come through it but none of us knew what its real purpose was. The gods but not humans were behind the process. If you happened to survive until the tenth day of May, you all would be taken to castle inner yard before the sunset for holding the ritual. A Dominiewould touch the forehead of each of you and would do it with the sceptre. That would be the moment of truth and everyone’s fate would be solved. Some of you would have to leave the school, others would be allowed to stay as apprentices and some studentuses would die.

Would they?’ I sniveled.

‘I haven’t heard about any rite of passage without it,’ confirmed Master Gauis. ‘For example, out of sixty fellow students who started the academic year only thirty-eight of us came to the square of Tirets castle, twenty-three took their seats at the festive table and I have already told you how many graduates left the school with crosiers.

Does that mean that fifteen students were killed?’ I asked in a horrifying tone.

Although the numbers themselves were rather terrifying as only four out of sixty reached the goal.

‘Certainly not,’ laughed the wizard. ‘Only three students died and two of them were the first whom DominieCauis touched with the sceptre. Five lads decided not to take the ritual at the last moment before its start and as for the rest, the gods did not accept them and that was it.

How can you understand that the gods…errr…,’ I stumbled at that point and didn’t know how to express my thought, ‘that you have succeeded?’

The wizard unbuttoned his camisole, flung the shirt under it and pointed with his finger at the state-of-the-art tattoo on his chest. I had never seen such a fine work.