The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(5)

“Come on,” the guard said. “You walk between us and the apprentice goes in front.”

Call dug in his heels. “Something’s wrong,” he said.

“The place is on fire,” Jasper said, looking behind him. “I’d say something’s wrong.”

Call went on. “I’ve been listening to a panel of mages tell me how invulnerable this place is for weeks. How nothing can break into it or destroy it. It shouldn’t be on fire.”

The guards were looking increasingly nervous. “Quiet down and come on,” said one, hauling Call out of his cell by the arm.

“?‘Fire wants to burn,’?” said Jasper, looking intently at Call. He was quoting the Cinquain, the five lines of text that described elemental magic. The guards gave him a look. They must have remembered it from school.

The air was getting hotter outside Call’s cell. People were running in the hallways now, and yelling. All the other cells had been emptied of their inhabitants, prisoners marching in lines toward the exits.

“I know that,” Call said. “But this place shouldn’t burn.”

“We’ve been warned about your silver tongue,” said the guard, shoving Call ahead of him. “Shut up and move.”

Chunks of melting rock and metal were starting to fall from the roof. At that point, Call decided to stop worrying about why this was happening and began to worry about making it out alive. Call, Jasper, and the two guards hurried along the corridor, which was getting hotter and hotter. Call stumbled along, his bad leg sending shooting pains through him. He hadn’t walked this much in months.

There was a crash. Up ahead part of the floor was disintegrating in a fountain of burning cinders and chunks of fiery stone. Call stared, knowing he was right — this was no normal fire.

He just hoped he was going to be around to say I told you so.

The guards who’d been holding him let go. For a moment Call thought they were going to try an alternate path through the prison, but instead they bolted ahead, almost knocking over Jasper. They jumped across the collapsing floor just as it gave way entirely, landing safely on the other side. They got up and dusted themselves off.

“Hey!” Jasper yelled, looking incredulous. “You can’t just leave us here!”

One of the guards looked ashamed. The other just glared. “My parents died in the Cold Massacre,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can burn to death, Constantine Madden.”

Call flinched back.

“But what about me?” Jasper shouted as they walked away. “I’m not the Enemy of Death!”

But they had disappeared. Jasper whirled around, coughing. He looked accusingly at Call.

“This is all your fault,” he said.

“Good to see you facing death bravely, Jasper,” said Call. The upside of Jasper being here, he thought, was that Jasper never made him feel guilty, even when he probably should. It was impossible not to believe that Jasper deserved everything that happened to him.

“Use your chaos magic!” Jasper coughed. The air was thick and full of smoke and soot. “Devour the walls or the fire or something!”

Call held his hands out. His wrists were chained. A mage at his level couldn’t do magic without his hands.

Jasper muttered a rude word and spun away, throwing his right arm out straight. The air in front of him seemed to vibrate and then solidify. A bridge over the collapsed part of the floor hung shimmering in the air.

Call didn’t pause to marvel over the fact Jasper had actually done something useful — and not just useful, but actually impressive. He ran as fast as his leg could carry him, reserving the right to be amazed later.

Neither Call nor Jasper were that sure of the way out, but the fire had narrowed their choices. They bolted down the way open to them. Call gritted his teeth against the pain and tried his hardest not to stumble. The air was hot enough that even opening his mouth to speak hurt.

They came to a propped-open door that looked heavy and magical and almost impossible to get through in time if it had been closed. With relief, they scrambled through. Jasper knocked away the blockage, slamming the door behind them and buying them a little relief from the heat and the smoke.

Call panted, hands on his knees. They seemed be in one of the back passageways of the Panopticon. He could smell bleach and laundry detergent, all mixed up with smoke and burning. Corridors snaked off in all directions and there were no windows. A massive pillar of fire had suddenly formed in the corridor just ahead of them.

Jasper stumbled back, letting out a cry.

They were done for. They were going to be burned up, trapped in the hall between blazes. Call remembered navigating the fire maze of the year before, how he drew on chaos to take all the air out of the room — a desperate act that worked to put out the fire, but took all the air they needed to breathe along with it. Without Aaron’s intervention, they would have died.

Call wished for his magic right then, wished for it despite remembering how he’d misused it.

Fire wants to burn. Water wants to flow. Air wants to rise. Earth wants to bind. Chaos wants to devour.

And the line of the Cinquain he’d added, just to be funny:

Call wants to live.

The line haunted him. He pulled against his bonds, but they were as firm as ever, his magic out of reach. The fire ahead of them unwound like a snake, growing taller and taller, fire spreading from its upper part like the unfolding hood of a cobra.