The pinch of phosphorus and iron filings vanished in a cloud of sparkling lights as Thomas Gown spoke the words of the magic spell, moving the fingers of his other hand in carefully practised patterns to focus and direct the magical energy thus released.

A tiny point of brilliant white light sprang from his fingertip, flying through the air towards the large pile of brushwood and broken furniture heaped in the open field, and when it hit the bonfire exploded into orange flame, a wave of heat blowing over the wizard's face as he hurriedly backed away. In just a few seconds the bonfire was thoroughly ablaze, flames reaching twenty to thirty feet into the air, and wooden logs ten inches thick were blazing merrily, shriveling away to cracked, grey cinders as the fire hungrily devoured them.

"Wow!" exclaimed the wizard, impressed with the power of the spell. A spell which, he couldn't help but imagine, he hadn't so much cast as unleashed.

"Not bad," said Meatar Halten, his breath forming clouds of condensation in the cold, still air. He was also a wizard, also educated in Lexandria University but several years further advanced in the Art than his younger colleague. "In the time you took to cast it, though, you could have been killed a dozen times over by an oaf with a sword. You need a lot more practice. Those finger movements have to come so easily, so naturally, that you do them in your sleep. With practice, you'll be able to rattle that spell off in as little as two seconds."

"If there'd been an oaf with a sword coming at me, I'd have used firebolts," said Thomas, a little defensively.

"You can't rely on firebolts to kill a large opponent. And what if there are three of them?" He waggled a bony finger at the younger wizard. "Practice the fireball, young man. I've got to be back with my unit by the end of the week. You've got that long if you want my help."

"Yes, Master," replied Thomas humbly, looking down at his hand as he flexed his nimble fingers experimentally. "I'll work on it."

"Good," smiled Meatar, patting him on the shoulder. "You've got talent, no doubt about that. If you survive, you'll make a fine wizard one day. Off you go now and study those scrolls I gave you. I'll expect you back here at dawn tomorrow, and if it takes you a moment longer than three seconds to cast a fireball I'll turn you into a newt."

The younger wizard grinned as he gathered up his belongings and headed back to the dormitory. Around him, the grounds of Redhill Military Academy, informally known as the Wolves Den, stretched for miles in all directions. Patches of coniferous woodland merged together to block the horizon, and between them were fields of snow too thin to completely cover the grass. To his left was a small lake of crystal clear water frozen over with ice. A large waterbird of some kind was pecking at it with its strong looking beak, trying to break through to reach the fish below.

Here and there, groups of young men armed with pikes, swords and quarterstaffs were being tutored in advanced hand weapon skills, while overhead a flock of griffin riders struggled to keep up with their instructor as he taught them the finer elements of aerial combat. Off to his left, another young wizard, barely older than himself, was being given a severe dressing down from a greybearded mage in a crimson robe, and from somewhere off to his right came the sound of a huge swarm of frost flies swarming through the trees under the control of a cleric of Ramthara, Goddess of Life. Pack wolves, all of them, and he, Thomas, was now one of them! Being trained for some kind of important mission vital to the outcome of the war! The thought sent a thrill of excitement through him, tempered by the knowledge that he was soon to be separated from Lirenna. His oathkin. One day to be his wife, if they both survived the war.

A small group of officer cadets with dueling blades in their hands watched him as he walked back to the dormitories. They shouted mild obscenities at him and laughed, one of them muttering something to the man beside him that made him laugh louder. Thomas gave them a wide berth, remembering the warnings he'd been given. Redhill had been an officer training school for about a hundred years before its role had been expanded to include the Wolfpacks, and some of the older military families that had been providing young men to command the armies of Belthar for many generations still felt resentful at the intrusion into what they saw as their domain.

Serious incidents were rare, and were generally the fault of new pack wolves pushing the bounds of civility, since they tended to be uneducated in the finer points of etiquette while the officer cadets were proud and easily offended. Minor incidents of hazing were more common, though, and if the officer cadets occasionally went a little too far in their thinly veiled attempts to make the pack wolves feel unwelcome, a very sincere sounding apology would follow soon after. Hazing in the other direction was strictly discouraged, though, as about half the pack wolves had special abilities of one kind or another and using them against a mundane, a term the officer cadets hated with a passion, was strictly forbidden.

Fortunately the cadets paid Thomas little further attention as he passed them by, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he reached the area of the grounds that was reserved for the pack wolves alone. The dormitories were on the far side of the complex, and to get to them he had to pass by Operations, the building in which the activities of the Wolfpacks were coordinated and controlled. Since there were currently only fifteen Wolfpack teams, though, with only about two thirds of them out on misions at any one time, Thomas wondered what the dozen or so men of the administration staff actually did in there all day.

Reaching the dormitory, he entered and headed for the communal common room, the only place indoors where teamsters of both sexes were allowed to meet. Lirenna was there waiting for him, as she'd been every morning of the month or so they'd been there. Since learning that they were soon to be separated, assigned to different teams, they wanted to spend as much time together as possible.

The demi shae was sitting on one of the sofas, pages of scribbled notes spread out around her as she pored intently over a mid level spell, one of the new ones she was trying to learn. She was wearing white silken robes that flowed gracefully over her slender figure and had a white headband tied around her forehead, just above her pointed ears. The headband signified her status as having taken the first oath, committing herself to her chosen man, and the colour meant much the same thing in shayen society as it did among humans.

So intent was her concentration that she gave no sign of being aware of him as he crept closer behind her, his feet making no noise on the plush carpet. A few other people looked up, but they just smiled and returned to their own interests.

Reaching the back of the sofa, he crouched down behind it and waited a few moments to see if she was aware of him. He heard her soft breathing and the rustling of papers as she continued her studies and Thomas smiled as he rose silently to his feet. He looked down at the top of her head and reached slowly forward.

In a lightning blur of motion she reached up, grabbed his wrists and pulled him over the top of the sofa, throwing him onto the carpet and landing on his chest, pinning his arms to the ground with her knees and putting her hands to his throat. She grinned down at him, delighted by the look of astonishment on his face. "Since when did you think you could sneak up on a shae girl?" she asked, smiling sweetly. "Surely you've heard what they say about shayen hearing?"

"Where'd you learn to do that?" asked Thomas, blushing in embarrassment as she let him up and trying to ignore the room's other occupants, chuckling to themselves in amusement.

"Self defence classes," replied the demi shae as they sat back down on the sofa. "My tutor wizard, Grillita, says that there's no reason for us to be defenceless once we've used up all our magic for the day, so she put me in a self defence class with a group of clerics. Of course I won't be able to keep up with them as I need to spend so much time studying magic, but I've managed to learn a thing or two. Apparently, my small size and lack of physical strength is no handicap as you use your opponent's size and strength against him."

"As I found out to my cost," replied Thomas, and Lirenna giggled again. "Wain was right," he continued. "We've still got so much to learn. I just didn't expect it to be this intensive."

"Intensive!" laughed Lirenna. "You're loving It! All that time in classrooms, force feeding you information on every subject imaginable. They expected it to be an ordeal for you, and you're devouring it like a boghound in a fish house! This must be paradise for you. A dream come true."

"Well, it is rather enjoyable," Thomas admitted, and the demi shae laughed again.

"Have you reconsidered taking some self defence classes yourself?" she asked when she had herself back under control.

"If Meatar doesn't think it's worth me doing it, who am I to argue?"

The day they'd first arrived, the older wizard had told Thomas to strip down to his underwear. He'd then taken one look at his lean, skinny frame and told him to stick to purely academic studies. Thomas was happy to oblige. "It's Shaun and Matt I feel sorry for. All that time spent hunting shologs and goblins in the Overgreen forest and they get treated like the greenest raw recruits. You can understand their being upset."

"They think that the only worthwhile training is training received from official Beltharan instructors," said Lirenna. "Which is a little arrogant of them, I have to admit."

"Very arrogant," agreed Thomas. "And five years of training packed into six weeks! That's impossible!"

"Hopefully, all they've got to do is convince them that they're already as good as any regular soldier with a sword. Once they see how well they can fight, maybe they'll go easier on them. At least they've got it easier than poor Diana. Can you imagine it? Being made to spend almost all her time in prayer and meditation with a group of holy sisters. Being made to perform the most mundane, menial and repetitive labours. Because she needs to strengthen her faith? If there's one person in the world who doesn't need her faith strengthened..."

"Hey, I agree with you!" said Thomas, holding his hands up placatingly. "Have you seen any of them lately, by the way?"

"Not for a while. We need to get together again, sometime soon. Perhaps pop into Tara again..."

Thomas nodded, and glanced towards one of the windows. Through it, shining brilliantly in the morning sunlight, the tops of the tallest of the crystal towers of the capital city could be seen rising above the low hills on the western horizon. They were allowed into the city now and then, if they'd worked hard enough to earn one day exit passes, and Thomas thought back with fondness to their last such visit. They'd visited the city five times now, and they'd stared with as much wonder during their fifth visit as they had on their first.

He put the stray thought out of his head with an effort and decided to change the subject. "Hey, look at this!" he said, taking out his spellbook and opening it at the first page of his newest spell. "Fireball! I finally cracked it! You shoulda seen the bonfire go up when I hit it. It's fantastic!"

"That's marvelous!" agreed the demi shae in delight, taking his hands and squeezing them. "Your first mid level spell. How's it feel to be a mid level wizard?"

"Pretty good," replied Thomas, and they burst into laughter again. "I'm making good progress with my other new spells as well. I already know twice as many spells as when we first came here, and that's just the beginning. Look at these."

He turned the pages of his spellbook, well over half of which were now full of the strange magical writing. It wouldn't be long at this rate before he'd need another one, making him a two spellbook wizard, and once that happened it wouldn't be much longer before he needed a third, then a fourth. The more powerful the spell, the more space it took to write it down, so that wizards filled up books faster as they advanced in their art. The very most powerful spells sometimes required a whole book all to themselves, and older wizards sometimes filled up whole shelves with their spellbooks.

"Look!" he cried in jubilation as he reached his favourite spell, one he'd been wanting to learn ever since graduating. "I finally cracked this one today as well. Comprehension. At last I'll be able to read anything written in any language. Even some kinds of codes and ciphers. It's fantastic! No more having some great secret in my very hands and not being able to read it. Have you any idea how frustrating that is? But now that's all over. I'll never be caught out like that again."

"And it's a humble, low level spell," said Lirenna, grinning happily at his delight. "I think you're more excited by this low level spell than you are by the Fireball."

"Well, yes," Thomas admitted. "Fireballs can only destroy, but with Comprehension you can learn things, and knowledge is where the real power lies. After all this time I'll finally be able to read the Pardatano."

They'd found the book while exploring the deserted stronghold of the wizard Zebulon, the same wizard who had created Shaun's magic sword. The Pardatano was one of the most valuable, and most feared, books in the world. It had been written centuries before by a traveler mage, a wizard who had wandered the world in search of all its most terrible secrets, many of which he had set down in the book. Thomas had no fear of terrible secrets. For him, the most terrible thing was not knowing them. The threat remained whether you knew about it or not, and if you didn't know about it you couldn't take precautions against it. Thomas would have read the book from cover to cover in a single afternoon, except for the extremely frustrating fact that it was written in old Garonian, an extinct language.

"I had to beg Halten to teach it to me," he said, still smiling. "He kept saying that it was combat spells I'd be needing, at least until the end of the war. I had to rack my brains for logical reasons why I might need to read things written in a foreign language."

Lirenna nodded. Ever since the days of the Agglemonian Empire the common tongue was spoken by just about everyone everywhere, even if as a second language. "I'm glad it's a battle you won," she said. "It's not good for you to learn only combat spells. Wizardry means more than just blasting people to ashes, and you deserve to be able to pursue your own interests."

Thomas smiled gratefully. "Another thing," he said. "he thinks I'm ready to learn Cancellation. What do you think of that?"

"Wonderful!" agreed the demi shae. Cancellation was one of the staple spells. One of the spells that all Lexandrian wizards were required to learn as soon as they reached the necessary level of ability. It was a spell that cancelled the effects of other spells, scattering the patterns of magical force that allowed them to work. It was the magical equivalent to a blackboard rubber. It didn't remove the chalk from the blackboard, but smeared it out so that the words could no longer be read. The traces of magical force left behind could still interfere with the effects of other spells cast later, though, which was why there was another, much more powerful spell, the Cleanse spell, which removed all traces of randomised magic from an object or an area, permitting later spells to operate without interference. It was this spell that was used by the senior wizards of Lexandria University when preparing a site for a high level experiment or conjuration.

Lirenna then showed Thomas the new spells she was learning during their stay in Redhill, all of them low level spells as she was lagging a little behind her oathkin and wasn't quite ready for mid level magic. Grillita had given her a mid level spell to study, though. A scroll that she could keep between the pages of her spellbook until she was ready to learn it. It was the suggestion spell. A more subtle and efficient variant of the enchantment she'd used with such devastating effectiveness at various times during their adventures. She'd been poring over it for days now but so far, despite her most strenuous efforts, she hadn't quite managed it.

"I'm close, though!" she said, her eyes shining with excitement. "I can feel it! I just need a bit more practice, a bit more effort, and I'll have it."

Waves of excitement, happiness and joy passed back and forth between them, growing stronger with every passing second. They looked deeply into each others eyes and Thomas felt the love swelling in his heart until it felt as though he was going to explode with it. He wondered if it were possible to make love to someone through eye contact alone. If so, then that's what they were doing right now.

"I love you too," replied Lirenna, and Thomas realised he must have said it out loud without realising it. He almost burst into joyful laughter. He loved her at such a basic, fundamental level that the higher levels of his brain could no longer control it. Loving her had become as automatic and unthinking as the beating of his heart.

Then he remembered that they'd soon be parted. Assigned to separate teams and sent to far distant parts of the world, perhaps not to see each other again for weeks or months, even assuming they both survived the dangerous missions on which they'd be sent. The idea of being so far away from her, of not knowing what was happening to her, gnawed like a rat at his heart, but they still had a couple of weeks before they'd have to leave and they meant to spend as much of that time together as possible.

Lirenna packed her books and scrolls away, therefore, dropped them off in her room, and then they went in search of a private, secluded spot in the gardens of solitude where they would have to huddle together for warmth in the chill, morning air.