Page 17 of The Alchemists

Seb stared back, saying nothing. Eventually, he looked away as his tree dropped a single, dull-gold leaf.

“I’ll see you in class on Wednesday, then, Sebastian.” Chant stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked away.

LILY

The chapel fell silent as the dean of the college took the dais. If Lily were going to grow old, she imagined that she’d like to be something like Dr. Miranda Meade. Her very presence commanded respect. She was a tall woman with powerful shoulders and a bob of shimmering silver and steel.

“Welcome, all. I am honored to have command of Windermere at this auspicious time, on this auspicious occasion.” She attempted something like a benevolent smile at the assembled student body and faculty, but she did not have a face meant for smiling. “As you all know, this year Windermere celebrates its three-hundredth anniversary.”

Lily knew what was coming; they all did, but unlike the rest of them, she didn’t care. From her position in the loft, she scoured the many heads below her. Beneath a stained-glass mural celebrating the discovery of man’s affinity with Æther, she spied Professor Chant, safely back in tweed. Gemma sat with her fellow Cert-Years near the middle, and Daphne with her, though she was a sophomore. Freshmen were prohibited from participation in the Elumnara, lest it distract from their sapling study habits. Gemma’s hands moved fluidly as she translated for her sister. And there, front row center, was Allsaires, flanked on either side by his roommates.

“Our tercentennial, in addition to cementing Windermere’s continued prestige and prominence in the community, heralds, as you all know, a particularly exciting year for our favorite campus-wide tradition.” At this, roughly eight hundred heads craned to look at a very still one in the front row.

“This year, our annual game of academics and intellectual agility, our search for hidden answers, has both a twist to its rules and its prize.”

Lily stifled a laugh as the girl next to her leaned so far over the railing to look at the back of Allsaires’s head that she nearly pitched over. Every year there was a scavenger hunt, no holds barred, whose winnings could only appeal to those who already had everything—prestige.

The game was meant to test students’ mental acuity, mettle, and usually their command of Latin. Students only sometimes got seriously injured, usually from slipping off the slate tiles on the old observatory roof and into the rose bushes below. Only a handful of students had ever died, and the last had been nearly fifty years ago. Maria Cushing had been struck by lightning on top of the library during a thunderstorm.

Dr. Meade brushed imaginary dust off her spotless black dress and straightened the purple velvet scarf that draped around her neck. She cleared her throat. Her charcoal-gray silk over-robe shone.

“This year, of course, you all play for that mythical Golden Fleece—the Windermere Chalice, hidden somewhere here on campus by our venerated founder.” A current of excitement zinged through the crowd. “The first clue, provided by Windermere himself, will be available for all to see tonight, as the Archer’s Moon reaches its apex. Further clues will be meted out on the following two Hermetic moons. Beyond that, only the Founder knows.

“You may, of course, cooperate with your fellow students, but as always, the prize must be claimed by a single individual.” Here, Lily’s neighbor leaned nearly to her death once more.

“As always, the rules are few, but the penalty for breaking them steep. Violence against any member of the Windermere community is prohibited, as is psychological manipulation through Ætheric means. That is all. This year’s faculty advisor for the Elumnara is our newest staff member—Professor Caeden Chant. He will preside over all matters of rules and regulations, as well as all ceremonial aspects of the games, including tonight’s Revelation. I will now cede the podium to him to field any questions you may have.”

Chant rose smoothly and stood behind the pulpit, nodding graciously at Dean Meade before speaking, “I open the floor to you.” He offered the assembly one of his inscrutable smiles. Lily folded her arms on the banister, rested her cheek on her forearm, and went to sleep.

“Did people ever talk about this year’s Elumnara while you were in school?” Lily leaned against the counter, drowning her tea in honey.

Her mother looked over, one eyebrow raised, and set down her magazine. Even though they grew slimmer each year, her mother maintained a subscription to her favorite cooking publication. She was as slow to pick up on technology as she was reluctant about magic. Lily was pretty sure the two were linked somehow, but she couldn’t begin to explain why.

“The…what’s it, tricentennial?”

“Tercentennial.”

“Not at all. Twenty years in the future is a long way to imagine, especially for college kids.” If she was thinking about her own inability to imagine twenty years forward, she didn’t show it. “People talked more about the one before it, two-fifty.”

Lily stopped stirring her tea. “Was it different?”

“Every fifty years is a little different, but the hundreds are the big ones. But mostly people were talking about it because of the death.”

“Maria Cushing?”

Her mother nodded, then picked up her kitchen shears and clipped out a recipe. Lily twitched. “They say the Elumnara is cursed. Every fifty years a student dies.”

Lily dribbled tea back into her mug, partly because it was too hot and partly because it was hard to scoff properly with a mouthful of scalding water. “That can’t possibly be true.”

Magnolia shrugged. “Check the archives. You’re not thinking of competing this year, are you?”

“Of course not,” Lily huffed. How many curses does she think I could possibly activate in one year? “I don’t have any friends to betray.”

Inevitably, the Elumnara involved an element of treachery. Teams formed, sometimes large ones, dividing up research tasks and sharing information. Usually, the teams began to splinter around winter break into smaller ones that grew ever more secretive. Spring semester involved paranoia from all corners, until eventually someone claimed the prize, that someone, of course, usually being Sebastian Allsaires.

He’d won the last two years, and it was a record that no one had held previously, and one no one expected to be broken. The question on everyone’s mind, of course, was, can he do it again? What could be more resplendent than a trifecta three years running, in his final year, on the three-hundredth anniversary of Windermere’s founding? The symmetry! She wouldn’t be surprised if this year’s hunt was somehow thrown in his favor, just for the optics.

“Good, I don’t want you worrying about that nonsense this year or putting yourself in danger. These kids will be out for blood.”