Llian had promised to wish Wilm well for the test but he had not come back, and Wilm was worried. Had things gone really bad with Thandiwe? She was desperate to get the mastership; was she desperate enough to harm Llian if he turned her down?

Wilm put on the clothes his mother had sat up late for many nights to make, working by the feeble glimmer of rush lights because they could not afford candles. He donned the dark green student’s gown and cap Llian had borrowed for him and felt a momentary pride. He was a student at the College of the Histories, even if only for the day.

The gown was threadbare and none too clean, and had an unpleasant mouldy smell. He should have washed it. Too late now.

Seven o’clock and Llian still had not turned up. It was a bad omen. Wilm could not wait any longer because the doors of the Great Hall, where the test was held, would be locked at eight sharp, and any student not inside by then missed out.

He trudged down the street, going over all the facts he had tried to cram into his unwilling head over the past week. At whose behest had Shuthdar made the Golden Flute that had turned the Three Worlds upside down? Had he made it for Rulke, or Tensor the Aachim, or was it Pitlis? Why had Shuthdar stolen it, and what precisely was the Forbidding that he had brought down over the world when he destroyed it? Was the Clysm part of the Forbidding or a separate event? How many times had the great Magister Mendark renewed his own life – ten times, thirteen or twenty-two?

The list of questions the examiners might ask was endless. Wilm had known the answers yesterday but this morning his mind was as empty as a lost sock. What was the point of going on and throwing good coin after bad? If he pulled out now, at least he would save the admission fee. One tar would be more than enough to get him home. If he camped out most nights and only ate bread, he might get home with most of the tar intact. He might have failed but he would not be completely empty-handed. That mattered, now that he had given up hope of winning.

Each candidate was questioned on stage in front of all the other candidates, and he had never been good at performing before an audience. He became flustered and forgot things he knew perfectly. It would be worse with all those strangers judging him.

He almost turned back. He would have, save that he could not bear to see the disappointment on his mother’s face when he confessed that all her savings had been wasted. Turning back would prove he didn’t have the guts to stick to anything. What would she think of him then?

Wilm reached the entrance of the Great Hall half an hour early and was dismayed to see dozens of candidates there already. A few unfortunates were not wearing robes but the majority were, and they were all better than his. Still, he was used to that. Back home he had always been the poorest at any gathering, and his clothes the cheapest, the most worn and mended. He joined the line.

“Hello,” he said to the girl ahead of him. “Where are you from?”

She was tall, and her gown was crisply ironed and edged with pure white lace. She looked him up and down, wrinkled her nose and turned away. A flush burned its way up his cheeks. She had judged him in a glance and dismissed him as unworthy of a single word. If, by some miracle, he did win the test, was the college full of rich snobs who would spurn him because he was poor and came from a tiny place no one had ever heard of?

Damn them all! What did it matter what anyone thought? He would show them.

The line inched forward. Two people were on the door – a handsome young man with swept-back wavy brown hair – a senior student, Wilm presumed – and a little old lady with a beaky nose, beady little eyes and feathery white hair. She was entering names and payments into a ledger half as long as she was tall.

“Name,” said the student briskly.

“Wilm.”

“Wilm who?”

“Tomyd. Wilm Tomyd. From Casyme. That’s in Bannador.”

“That’ll be one tar.”

The old lady looked up. “Wilm? You came here with Llian.”

“Yes,” said Wilm, wondering how could she possibly have heard his humble name.

“How do you come to know him?”

“I… I’ve done some work for an old friend of his. A man called Shand.”

“The legendary Recorder?” said the handsome student in astonishment.

“I just know him as Shand,” said Wilm.

The student whistled. He looked Wilm up and down, taking in his gown and rustic clothes but evidently forming a different impression to the tall snooty girl.

“Isn’t there provision to waive the admission fee in deserving circumstances?” he said to the old lady.

“Indeed.” She smiled at Wilm and put a mark beside his name. “No charge.”

The student put out his hand. “Good luck!”

“Thank you.” Wilm shook it in a daze, then turned for the door.

“Wilm?” said the student. “If you don’t win, don’t think it’s the end of the world. I took the test every year for five years and never even got close to winning. But then, as Old Sal here would tell you —”

“Stanzer is a scandalously lazy boy,” said Old Sal, though affectionately.

“Wouldn’t do a day’s work to save my life.” Stanzer waved Wilm through.

The unexpected kindness gave him a surge of confidence. He passed into an ancient hall with a high triple-vaulted timber ceiling supported on intricately carved beams. He gazed at it in wonder. Several hundred chairs had been set up, facing a stage at the far end. Half of the chairs were already occupied.

He counted the occupants. A hundred and sixty-one, and more boys and girls were streaming in all the time. Some were his age but many looked younger – some as young as eleven or twelve. Were they all competing for the one scholarship? If they were, it was hopeless.

The doors were closed. Three black-robed masters appeared on the stage, along with Stanzer, who carried Old Sal’s huge ledger, and another student, a young blonde woman with curly hair and a broad, smiling mouth. The masters sat at the main table and the two students at a smaller side table, the volume open in front of them. Wilm stared at the master on the right, a lean, cold-eyed fellow with a pair of waxed moustaches that stuck out six inches to either side of his cheeks like black knitting needles.

“The examination begins,” said the master in the middle, in a reedy voice that barely carried to Wilm. He was a tiny little chap with a bald, pointy head. “The names will be called in random order. Xix, Dajaes?”

A short girl stood up in the front row, stumbled over the hem of a robe that was too big for her and almost fell. She looked as though she was trapped in a tent. She climbed the five steps to the stage, bowed to the masters and stood with her hands folded in front of her, trembling visibly.

“What are the Forty-Nine Chrighms of Calliat?” said the master on the left, a statuesque woman with dark skin and iron-grey hair that stuck out in all directions.

“The Forty-Nine C-chrighms of Calliat,” said the girl, “are a series of linked enigmas and p-p-paradoxes so complex that – that, more than th-thirteen hundred years after Calliat’s death, only one has been solved.” She bowed again and waited.

“Silly girl’s learned it from an old textbook,” said a boy to Wilm’s left.

Wilm felt a surge of panic. The books he’d been able to get hold of had all been ancient.

“Wrong!” said the master who had asked the question. “The triune called Maigraith solved twenty-seven of them brilliantly, over a decade ago.”

The girl’s pale face crumpled. She bowed, said, “Thank you for correcting me,” and headed back to her seat.

Was that it? They only got one question each? How could the examiners decide so quickly?

“Rebt, Norbing,” called the master in the middle.

A large stocky boy hobbled onto the stage, supporting himself on a walking stick.

“What is the Gift of Rulke?”

“A stigmata on the Zain that —”

“Wrong! The Gift of Rulke, also called the Curse of Rulke, was knowledge given by Rulke to the Zain in ancient times, enhancing their resistance to the mind-breaking spells of the Aachim. The stigmata merely identified a Zain as having the Gift.”

The boy hobbled away, fighting back tears. And so it continued for hour after hour as the morning passed, then the afternoon. The tall girl who had snubbed Wilm only managed half a sentence before she was judged wrong. She let out a cry of anguish, ran from the stage without thanking her examiner and slumped in her chair, weeping. Wilm took no pleasure in her downfall; he only prayed that he could do better.

Outside the light faded; within the hall more lamps were lit. In all that time almost every student had been judged wrong. The judges had said “Correct!” only five times.

Only five to beat, Wilm thought. So far! He had been keeping count of the candidates as they went up. Two hundred and sixty-six had been tested, and there were only three hundred and three in the room. It must be his turn soon. Please, let it be his turn. He was hungry and thirsty and exhausted, and it felt as though his brains were leaking out of his head. If he had to wait much longer he doubted if he would be able to remember his own name.

And please, let it not be the cold-eyed master with the waxed black moustaches. He had not said “Correct” once.

“Tomyd, Wilm!” said the master with the black moustaches.

Wilm started, let out an audible gasp, then scrambled to his feet. He could do this. He just had to clear his mind and answer the question. Wilm tried to visualise the judge saying that crisp, beautiful “Correct!”

It was a hundred miles up to the stage, and all the way he could feel the eyes of the other candidates on him, judging him for his threadbare and mouldy gown. Heat was rising to his face and he could not stop it; he felt so self-conscious he hardly knew what he was doing and, hurrying up the last step, he caught the toe of his boot and fell flat on his face in front of the judges.

Laughter rippled through the assembled students. Wilm got up. Could things get any worse? He had to say something.

He bowed to the judges and said, with a confidence that astonished him, “At least I fell into good company.”

Only the statuesque master with the iron-grey hair smiled, and barely, but it was something.

The master with the black moustaches did not smile. His cold eyes smouldered and his thin lip was curled. “Recite the second paragraph of the Tale of the Forbidding.”

And Wilm knew it! He could not believe his luck. Llian had told him his own version on the way from Casyme.

“Which version of the tale?” he said. “There are several.”

His questioner looked startled. He turned to the other two examiners. The woman nodded. Was that a good sign, or a bad?

“The most recent one,” said the master with the black moustaches.

It could be a trick question, but Wilm had to go with what he knew. He began, and as he did Llian’s telling flowed into his mind. He looked out into the audience and fixed on one particular face, the girl in the front row who had been called first. He spoke as though he was a teller, telling her the tale as best he knew.

Wilm finished, and bowed, and knew that he had it word perfect, exactly as Llian had told it to him. He had done his very best, and surely it had to give him a chance. The master would say, “Correct!” He must!

“Wrong!” said the master with the black moustaches. “That is indeed the second paragraph of the tale, as told by Llian at the Graduation Telling on the seventeenth day of Thisto in the year 3098. However it is not the most recent version. It was told by Vizoria Di-lini at the Graduation Telling last year, where she changed ‘broke open’ to the more correct ‘tore open’.”

Wilm was crushed. How could anyone be expected to know that? He turned, tears starting in his eyes, then turned back and bowed. “Thank you for correcting me.”

One of the students sniggered, and to his mortification Wilm realised that his nose was running. Having no handkerchief, he had to wipe it on the back of his hand, which provoked laughter in a dozen places. He fled the stage, trying to retain his dignity, but had to wipe his eyes, and then his streaming nose again, before he got back to his seat.

This humiliation wiped out the triumph he should have felt after having done the very best he could. But one thing was absolutely clear – Llian, his hero, had made it all possible, and Wilm did not see how he could ever thank him enough.