Mage's Blood by David Hair

the tolls and taxes from the traders?’
    Vann puffed his pipe. ‘What do they tell you at college?’ he asked, a question for a question again.
    Ramon snorted. ‘They tell us that Kore sent the emperor a vision that he had to save the world from the heathens.’
    Vann half-smiled. ‘It’s the oldest game in the world: claim your God is the only one and your enemies automatically become evil. I was there that day, in the first windships above Hebusalim. I’ll never forget it.’
    And he’ll not talk of it either
, Alaron thought. It was the day his wife, Alaron’s mother, was blinded.
    But Vann surprised him and continued, ‘The windship captains told us the sultan was massing an army of his own to send over the Bridge – they said we were protecting our traders from being slaughtered. We didn’t know if this was true or not, but those were the first years that bankrupt magi families started marrying into merchant families in return for sizable dowries. The East had made a lot of traders very much richer, and the traditional order was being threatened. Some people believed the only way to slow or halt that process was to disrupt the eastern trade.’
    Alaron waited for more, but his father fell quiet and they walked the rest of the way home in silence, Ramon sucking on a hardboiled sweet, Vann puffing his pipe. Alaron tried to imagine what it would have been like in Kesh, where his father had met his mother, fallen in love and saved her life.
    ‘Mercer! Pay attention!’ Fyrell barked.
    Alaron blinked.
Damn
. ‘Sorry sir, just trying to remember the formula for calculating vectors.’ He and Ramon had talked away most of the night, dreaming of their futures after graduation, but now they were back in the grim, moss-walled college. Turm Zauberin was an old castle, four hundred years old at least. Magister Fyrell,his least favourite teacher, had his feet up on his desk and was tossing random questions at the whole class as revision. Alaron hadn’t been listening for some time.
    ‘Nice try, Master Mercer,’ sneered Fyrell, ‘but we reviewed calculus last period. This is Magical Theory.’
    Ooops
.
    ‘Must I repeat the question?’ The five Pure sniggered. Ramon leant back, shaking his head.
    Alaron hung his head, flushing. ‘Yes sir. Sorry sir.’
    Fyrell rolled his eyes and stroked his black goatee. ‘Very well. We are revising for the exams – remember them? I asked you to name the four classes of the gnosis and what defines them – a very basic question. Do you think you could manage that for us, Master Mercer?’
    Alaron sighed.
Phew, easy
. He stood up. ‘There are Four Classes of the Gnosis. First is Thaumaturgy, which is concerned with the tangible and inanimate: the elements. The Four Studies of Thaumaturgy are Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Then there is Hermetic magic: the tangible and animate, which deals with living things, ourselves and others. The Four Hermetic Studies are Healing, Morphism – shapeshifting – Animism and Sylvanism – nature magic. Theurgy is the intangible and animate, using the gnosis to augment unseen forces – like strengthening one’s own gnosis, or healing the spirits of the living, curing insanity, calming people, or manipulating them emotionally. The Four Studies of Theurgy are Spiritualism, Mysticism, Mesmerism and Illusion. The last is Sorcery, which deals with the intangible and inanimate, where we use the gnosis to deal with the spirit world – the dead, in other words – to do things like strengthen ourselves, or find out about the past or the future or the now. The Four Studies of Sorcery are Wizardry, Clairvoyance, Divination and Necromancy.’
    Fyrell grunted with displeasure and looked at Boron Funt. ‘Mercer sounds like he’s reciting a textbook. Boron, tell me the omission Mercer made with Sorcery.’ He called only the Pure by their first names.
    Funt puffed himself up. ‘He said that the only spirits are dead spirits, Magister. He omitted the angels