The Menhir at Sweyn Holm
an excerpt

Three men sat behind the long table. The first chair was empty; my father could not judge us, or he would be sitting there. The man in the second chair had the mark of a Prior Adept on his face, but it was green instead of the normal white. The next man had a similar mark, but blue, and the last one a red mark. They all looked down at me severely. It wouldn't do to mess up any of my answers, especially as my brother—Tavi, who was sitting next to me—had not, so I was sweating.

“What is the difference between a charm and a spell?” The man with the green mark asked.

“A charm draws energy as it does work, but a spell takes all the energy it will ever need all at once, when you cast it.” I answered quickly and confidently; that had been an easy one.

He nodded. Then the man with the blue mark asked me, “What is the nature of the constitution?”

I gulped nervously. This was not an easy question at all. “The constitution is, well, it's the thing that makes all our magic work. It lives in the menhir, and it listens to anyone with a Priory mark on them.”

He frowned slightly, but nodded. I'm sure my answer was nothing like the real wording, but it was the general idea. It wouldn't do when I went for my Superior or Adept status, but for Proper status, it was fine.

The man with the red mark, which made him Autumn, I suppose, I recognized as a friend of my father—but the expression on his face indicated that he had no intention of going easy on me. “How are menhir created?”

I thought for a moment, biting my tongue. “I think that the four Seasons of the Council have to perform a ceremony to create them?”

He nodded curtly. “You may rise.” My brother and I stood; now was the hard part. My father handed me my paper, the one I had worked on under their watchful eyes for weeks and weeks.

“Desarevu!” I spoke confidently, directing the symbols that came streaming out towards the rock that I had brought for the transformation. The rock started to break apart, becoming liquescent and swirling around with the symbols. A new form began to emerge; the torpid mass solidified into a bright red backpack. The council members picked it up and examined it; the inside was larger than the outside.

“Hey! You stole my idea!” My brother hissed at me, but didn't say anything loud enough for others to hear.

My father handed him his sheet, and he repeated the word, directing the symbols at the rock he had brought. Initially, it looked just like mine, swirling around and around, but then the symbols turned darker, and they kept coming and coming off of the page. My brother looked alarmed and began clutching his stomach.
“Something's wrong,” my father said, a growing note of alarm in his voice. “Someone get some candy!” My mother ran to get her purse, but Tavi collapsed onto the floor. I didn't have to fake my expression of horror; I certainly hadn't meant to hurt Tavi.