Call shook his head. “I don’t think so. He has a different life now.”
“It sucks when people are lonely,” Alex said. “My stepmother was lonely when my dad died, until she got on the Assembly. Now she’s happy running everyone’s life.”
Call wanted to deny that Alastair wasn’t happy with his new non-magical, antique-geek friends. But he remembered the tightness in his father’s jaw, how quiet he’d been over the years, the haunted way he looked sometimes, as though his burdens were almost too much to bear.
“Yeah,” Call said finally, snapping his fingers. Havoc rushed down the hill toward him, claws scraping on the wet ground. He tried to not think of his dad, alone, at home. Of what his dad had thought when Master Rufus came to tell him that Call didn’t want to even see him. “It does.”
He thought about it the next day, as he listened to Master Rufus’s lecture on advanced elemental usage. Master Rufus paced back and forth in the front of the classroom, explaining how rogue elementals were dangerous and usually had to be put down, but occasionally mages also found them useful to bind into service.
“Flying depletes our magical energies,” Master Rufus said. “For example.”
Aaron stuck up his hand, a public-school reflex. “But doesn’t controlling elementals also use up magical energy?”
Master Rufus nodded. “Interesting question. Yes, it does deplete energy, but not continuously. Once you’ve bound an elemental, keeping them requires less energy. Almost all mages keep one or two elementals in their service. And schools like the Magisterium have many.”
“What?” Call looked around, half expecting some watery wyvern to burst through the rock wall.
Master Rufus raised a brow. “How do you think your uniforms get cleaned? Or your rooms, for that matter?”
Call hadn’t much thought about it before, but found himself unnerved. Was some creature like Warren scrubbing his underwear? He was mightily creeped out. But maybe that was species-ist. Maybe he needed to be more open-minded.
He remembered Warren munching down eyeless fish. Maybe not.
Master Rufus went on, warming to his subject. “And of course, the elementals we use in exercises — but also some for defense. Ancient elementals, sleeping deep in the caves, waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Call asked, wide-eyed.
“For the summons to battle.”
“You mean if the war starts up again,” said Aaron tonelessly, “they’ll be sent out to fight the Enemy.”
Master Rufus nodded.
“But how do you get them to do what you want?” Call demanded. “Why would they agree to sleep for such a long time and then be woken up just to fight?”
“They are bound to the Magisterium by ancient elemental magic,” said Rufus. “The first mages who ever founded the academy captured them, bound their powers, and laid them to rest many miles below the earth. They rise at our bidding and are controlled by us.”
“How is that different from the Enemy and his Chaos-ridden?” Tamara asked. She’d somehow turned one of her braids into a lopsided bun with a pen, which now stuck out of her hair.
“Tamara!” Aaron said. “It’s completely different. The Chaos-ridden are evil. Except Havoc,” he added hastily.
“So what are these things? Good?” Tamara asked. “If they’re good, why keep them locked up underground?”
“They are neither evil nor good,” Rufus explained. “They are immensely powerful, like the Greek Titans, and they care nothing about human beings. Where they go, destruction and death follow — not because they wish to kill, but because they don’t recognize or care what they do. Blaming a great elemental for destroying a town would be like blaming a volcano for erupting.”