I opened my mouth, but the words at the back of my throat seemed to be functioning less as a means of communication than as a dam across a river, obstructing the flow.
I could not force them forward. Nor was I sure what shape they would take, if they ever broke free.
“Do you understand what the trial will entail?” Professor Bollinger asked, and I could only shake my head.
He sighed and looked at the other instructor for some tacit approval before continuing. “We are not supposed to speak about the trial in advance of it, but your classmates have at least some vague understanding of what’s coming, based on rumors they’ve heard over the years. Rumors you can no longer remember. So I say this not to give you any advantage, but to try to restore the balance between their understanding and yours.”
“And to give you a grasp of the grave threat the trials represent to anyone who is unprepared,” Professor Edmiston added.
Her colleague nodded. “The Black Trial is about spiritual death, so that you can be ‘reborn’ during the White Trial, in the purification phase.”
The goal, I understood, being the perfection of the human mind and body. Or at least, the elevation of both to a standard worthy of an enduring position at the Alchemary.
“You and your classmates will each be administered a poison. Arealpoison,” he insisted, and his somber expression gave me no reason to doubt the claim. “You will then be given a chance to concoct an antidote to the poison so you may cure yourself. Obviously the goal is not just to demonstrate your skill and save your own life, but to do that in time to avoid permanent damage from the poison.”
“Or death,” Professor Edmiston added, somewhat unnecessarily.
“Do…” I cleared my throat, fingers digging into the leather of my satchel, where my nails no doubt left their imprint. “Do students ever actually die during the trial?”
Professor Bollinger nodded. “Every year.”
“You need not be among them, Amber,” Professor Edmiston added. “But I’m afraid that at your current skill and comprehension level, there’s little chance of any other outcome.”
Despite the logic in their warning, indignation pricked at my nerve endings. “You’re trying to frighten me?”
She sighed. “We’re trying to reason with you. You’ve always been a flawlessly logical pupil, and your memory may be gone, but your intelligence clearly is not. You can understand the deficit you’re facing. The very slim chance of your success. Of your survival. Your fate is in your own hands, child.” Her tone very nearly pled with me, independent of her words. “Pride and ego are not worth dying for.”
Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes, but I blinked them back, fighting the grim conclusion that true comprehension of the Black Trial brought with it.
I could quit, or I could fail. And failure, under this particular circumstance, would come for me in the form of my own demise.
I thanked my professors for their concern and assured them I would thoroughly consider their warnings as I moved forward. But that Iwould be, at least for the moment, moving forward. Because while death might be the ultimate reward for my hubris, I could quit at any point up until the moment I was offered that poison, and quitting before I knew without a doubt that I would not survive would be pointless.
Everything I had ever wanted was to be found at, andonlyat, the Alchemary. That had always been true. Now, however, the school also represented my best and possibly only chance to recover my memory.
The instructors dismissed me with identical disappointed expressions, which seemed to follow me as I moved down the center aisle toward the door, past table after empty table, my satchel thumping against my right hip. I pulled the heavy door open and stepped into the hall, fighting tears again, now that no one could see me, and…
I gasped, startled to see Pryce Wishart coming out of the classroom across the hall. He smiled when he saw me, but then he went about his way without a single word or glance back.
Dread pooling hot and thickly viscous in the pit of my stomach, I peered into the room he’d just left and found only an empty classroom, with no sign of a recent class or meeting in progress.
As his steps faded in the direction of the central staircase, I could not shake the feeling that moments before I’d emerged from Professor Bollinger’s classroom, Pryce’s ear had been pressed against the door.
After the midday meal on Saturday, I returned to my bedchamber to find that a letter had been slid under my door. The seal—bronze-colored wax imprinted with a version of the Toolkeepers’ crossed-hammer sigil—told me that it was from my father.
I’d found no such correspondence among my things, upon waking with no memory, which meant either that my father had never written to me before or that I had not kept his letters.
I settled at my desk with a tight feeling in my chest and broke the seal. That feeling expanded into a soft pressure as I scanned the familiar handwriting.
My Dearest Amber,
I am writing to you from a carriage, on my way toward the southern reaches of the kingdom, to where I have been called to supervise the construction of a new public bathhouse. Please excuse any stray marks as the result of skittish horses and an uneven road.
I have given Martyn your love, and we are both delighted by your invitation to the Alchemary’s Family Weekend festivities. We shall endeavor to attend, if at all possible. While I regret the cause for my recent visit, I welcome any opportunity for your company, and it has been far too long since I last saw your face.
I have, since the day you were born, been able to measure my own worth from the weight of your gaze, and on my return journey, your honey-colored eyes haunted me, as they so often did when you were a child. I greatly regret the rift between us. And while I cannot strike past mistakes from our history, nor can I return memories I was never privy to, Icanoffer you this memory from your childhood, which I have always treasured:
When you were but five or six years of age, there came a rainy morning when you were forbidden to go out, and you were quite cross about the circumstance. To appease you, your mother gave you a scrap of parchment and a chunk of charcoal and told you to draw whatever suited your fancy. I returned for the midday meal expecting to find your parchment covered in flowers, rabbits, and perhaps a vial or two from your mother’s apothecary shop.
