Thomas sat alone in his cubicle for about five minutes before Elmias came in, carrying a wooden box by its worn leather handle. He put it on the table, opened it, and took out an old worn dusty spellbook. "Good morning," he said, cheerfully. "How do you feel?"

     "Fine," answered Thomas, and was surprised to find that he was.

     "Good." He handed him the spellbook. "This belonged to a chap called Aurellos, who graduated from here about twenty years ago. Promising chap, I thought, except that he came to a sticky end trying to teach civilised manners to a bunch of ogres. Luckily we were able to reclaim the book, which has been used ever since by students like you, which accounts for its being rather the worse for wear. It contains three spells that you haven't seen before. When you have one of them copied into your own spellbook, and have demonstrated your ability to cast it safely and correctly, you will be a fully fledged wizard. If you fail to learn any of these three spells, you will be given another spellbook with some different spells in it, and so on until you have tried every low level spell in existence. However, virtually no-one ever needs more than four tries."

     He took some other objects from the box. A bottle of linseed oil, a tube of carbon black, some powdered blue clay, a few seeds from a manarill bush, a small phial of clear liquid supplied by one of the University alchemists, a mixing bowl made from polished black marble and a mortar and pestle. "You will mix up your own supply of magic ink using these ingredients, the way you have been taught. Then, assuming you are successful in learning the spell, you will write it in your spellbook using this." He removed one last object from the box, a ten inch long cockatrice feather. "Now, do you understand everything you have to do?"

     "Yes master," said Thomas, staring at the ingredients and equipment. His hands itched to get started.

     "Good. Then I'll leave you to get on with it." He went to the door and opened it. "Good luck," he said, and left.

     Thomas found that, now that the test had actually started, his nervousness had totally left him, leaving him calm and relaxed. He refused to allow himself to become optimistic, however, and continued to tell himself that it didn't matter whether he passed or failed. This isn't a test, he told himself. This is just another of my class exercises, like the other four times I wrote spells into my book. He opened Aurellos’s spellbook and scanned through it. Most of it was complete gibberish, as he knew his own spellbook would look to another wizard. Each spell, however, had a heading that he could read, written with ordinary ink and in a different handwriting. Probably added by Elmias for my benefit, Thomas thought.

      There were eight spells in all. The first three, Intellectus, reveal and nocume, were taught to all students in the University and Thomas already had them. The next three, fiery grasp, lock and invisible servant, were new to him, and it was one of these that he had to choose. The last two were higher level spells, the first he had ever seen, and he turned the pages to stare at them longingly.

     They were longer than the others, covering four and five pages each, and included not only the words that had to be spoken during casting but also the material components required, if any, and complete descriptions of every movement that had to be made with every part of the body. Some spells could only be cast at certain times of the day or year, or when certain conditions were met, such as a thunderstorm being in progress overhead, and this information was also included, all in incredibly intricate, ornate lettering in a language so ancient that not even the greatest sages knew from what lost people or country it had come. Thomas gazed at them for a long time, looking forward to the day when he would be able to cast them and wondering if it would feel different to cast a more powerful spell.

     He sighed, and turned back to the spell he had decided to go for, invisible servant. It was the shortest of the three spells and he had an intuitive feeling that it would be the easiest to learn. He reached into a pocket of his robes and took out a polished triangular prism of rock crystal, three inches long and an inch wide. Apart from his spellbook, it was his most precious possession as it was an essential component of the Intellectus spell. Every apprentice made his own in the fourth year from a rough block of rock crystal, when he began to learn spells for the first time, and if it was lost or damaged, he had to make his own replacement. It took weeks, or even months, of patient rubbing with ever finer sand to transform it into a perfect prism and no-one wanted to go through it all over again it they could possibly help it, so they took very good care of them, keeping them wrapped in several layers of soft cloth and tucked away in their safest innermost pockets.

     Thomas was proud of his prism. Each face was as smooth as the surface of a mirror, and each edge was as straight and sharp as a knife blade. It had worked perfectly the first time he'd used it, whereas most of the other students had had to do some more work on theirs, carefully polishing with the very finest sand applied on a sheet of glass until they were as good as Thomas’s had been to begin with.

     He held it up to his eye and looked at the page of the spellbook through it. It looked the same, except that the ornate decorative lettering of the spell was haloed by a spectrum of colours, blurring them into each other. He touched the bottom of the page with the fingers of his other hand and spoke the words of the spell he'd spent the morning reading. He felt the prism grow warm as magic flowed through it, having its effect not on the spellbook but on his own mind, altering the way he perceived the world in a strange and subtle way. Nothing in the spellbook had changed, but he was now able to read what had previously been unreadable.

     He laid the prism down on the table and picked up the spellbook. The Intellectus spell would last for about two minutes, during which he had to read all through the three pages of the new spell. He didn't rush, though. He read slowly and carefully, making sure that he noted every word and every punctuation mark and the emphasis to be placed on every syllable. He reached the end just as the Intellectus spell lapsed, but that didn't matter. Having read the invisible servant spell once, he would now be able to read it again any time he wanted without needing to use the Intellectus spell again.

      There was no point trying to learn the new spell until the next morning because the casting of the Intellectus spell had fugged his head a little. Not much, hardly noticeable as he went about the rest of his day, but enough to prevent the perfect concentration necessary to read a spell, a perfect concentration that would only be restored by a good night's sleep. He visited the canteen for a quick lunch, therefore, then spent the afternoon mixing up a small bottleful of magic ink from the ingredients Elmias had left him, a long, slow process with dozens of steps, each of which had to be carried out in a very precise way. That took all afternoon, and by the time he'd finished it was getting dark outside and he was exhausted from the prolonged concentration. Did wizards really go through all this every time they wanted a little ink? He fished around in a pocket until he found a black pearl, the third of a wizard's three essential possessions, and dropped it into the ink to soak overnight. He then went back to his room to wash and change into clean robes, leaving everything except his spellbook and prism in the cubicle, knowing they would be perfectly safe there.

     He met Jerry and Lirenna in the dining hall and they exchanged progress reports over dinner, but none of them felt much like socialising. Making magic ink took a lot out of them and they were all feeling tired as the day's exertions caught up with them, so they split up and went back to their rooms for a quiet evening and a long nights sleep, ready for the next day.

     He woke several times during the night, though, fretting with worry about the day ahead, and after one period of intractable wakefulness during which he tossed and turned for over an hour, he'd glanced at his bedside water clock to see that morning wasn't far away and decided to give up the unequal struggle and go have a walk. His roommates were snoring gently as he slipped into his clothes and sandals and Thomas felt a moment of insane jealousy towards them. How could they be taking the test so in their stride when it was tearing the living soul out of him? How could they take such an important examination with such total lack of effort or stress? Conrast in particular was as calm and relaxed as if he was on holiday! In that moment, Thomas would have sold his soul for his roommate's confidence and self assurance, but instead he slipped quietly out into the corridor. Perhaps the clear night air would clear his mind and give him some peace.

     Outside, the brightest stars were still shining, but the red sun was high overhead and the eastern horizon was lit by a rosy pink glow where the yellow sun would soon rise. There was a large comet in the sky, having grown to its maximum size a few days before and now beginning to shrink again. Three smaller comets were grouped in a small cluster low in the west, the tail of the largest about as long as the largest moon was wide. The first few birds were calling to each other, a lonely sound but lovely to listen to, and Thomas paused where he was, trying to identify them and locate the tree or rooftop the cheery song was coming from. It took him nearly ten minutes, but eventually he spotted a tiny brown bird sitting in one of the brokenheart trees. It looked far too small and ordinary to be responsible for such a loud, beautiful tune, but as he watched he saw its tiny beak opening and closing in time to the song, its little chest puffing up as it gathered the breath ready for the next few notes. From somewhere came an answering song and Thomas spent another few minutes looking for its mate while the sky brightened and other birds added their own voices to the dawn chorus.

     Thomas's worries were lost in his wonder at the glorious symphony of birdsong. It seemed impossible that anything bad could happen to someone who'd been treated to such a marvel, and he felt a moment of pity for Conrast who was missing all this. Then it occurred to him that he'd missed it himself every other morning of the five years he'd been here, and that made him wonder what else he'd been missing while he'd been studying hard, to the exclusion of all else. Never mind, there'd be time to take it easy when he'd graduated, and all of a sudden it didn't seem like such an impossible task after all. The fresh, cool air had cleared his mind wonderfully, and he must have gotten enough sleep after all because he felt great, better than he could ever remember feeling before in his life! He laughed to himself as he heard the bell ringing in the dormitories, telling the other students that it was time for the new day to begin, and he hurried off to the dining hall, where he was first in line for breakfast.

     Thomas spent a while after breakfast reading his spells, memorising the changes that had taken place since the last time he'd done so, something he had in common with every wizard there had ever been, or ever would be. He did this even though he knew he wouldn’t be casting any of his own spells that day. It was just a habit that had been mercilessly drilled into him over the past five years, along with the memory tricks that made such a feat possible. As he did so, he contemplated the memory feat that allowed senior wizards to memorise up to a dozen newly changed spells every day! Any normal human would have found it impossible to do such a thing, but feats of memory had been at the centre of his training ever since his very first day at the University, even to the extent of having had spells cast on him to improve his mental faculties.

     The spells and the memory tricks had worked better on him than on most apprentices and, since he was still at the very beginning of his career and only had a handful of spells, only one of which had changed significantly since the previous day, he was finished in just over an hour. That meant that he had a little bit of spare time and he used it in the library, dipping in and out of some of his favourite books and glancing now and then at the connecting door leading into the next room, which apprentices weren't allowed to enter.

     The sheer quantity of knowledge contained just in this one room staggered him, and even in five years he'd hardly managed to scratch the surface. The rigorous training schedule he'd been forced to follow had left him little free time. Most of the times he'd been here before had been on special assignment, checking out the books he'd been told to read, which always seemed to be the most boring. Being able to read whatever he'd wanted had been a rare luxury. He indulged in it now, though, and it occurred to him suddenly that this might be the last time he would ever be in here.