Year of the Griffin Read Online Free

“Foundation Spellcasting with Wizard Wermacht in the North Lab.”
    â€œWhere’s that?” Claudia inquired shyly.
    â€œAnd have we time for coffee first?” Olga asked.
    â€œNo, it’s now,” said Elda. “Over there, on the other side of this courtyard.” She stowed the timetable carefully back in her bag. It was a bag she had made herself and covered with golden feathers from her last molt. You could hardly see she was wearing it. The five others gave it admiring looks as they trooped across the courtyard, past the statue of Wizard Policant, founder of the University, and most of them decided they must get a bag like that, too. Olga had been using the pockets of her fur cloak to keep papers in—everyone handed out papers to new students all the time—and Ruskin had stuffed everything down the front of his chain mail. Claudia and Felim had left all the papers behind in their rooms, not realizing they might need any of them, and Lukin had simply lost all his.
    â€œI can see I’ll have to be a bit better organized,” he said ruefully. “I got used to servants.”
    They trooped into the stony and resounding vault of the North Lab to find most of the other first-year students already there, sparsely scattered about the rows of desks, with notebooks busily spread in front of them.
    â€œOh, dear,” said Lukin. “Do we need notebooks as well?”
    â€œOf course,” said Olga. “What made you think we wouldn’t?”
    â€œMy teacher made me learn everything by heart,” Lukin explained.
    â€œNo wonder you have accidents then,” Ruskin boomed. “What a way to learn!”
    â€œIt’s the old way,” Elda said. “When my brothers Kit and Blade were learning magic, Deucalion wouldn’t let them write anything down. They had to recite what they’d been told in the last lesson absolutely right before he’d teach them anything new. Mind you, they used to come back seething, especially Kit.”
    â€œIt is not so the old way!” Ruskin blared. “Dwarfs make notes and plans, and careful drawings, before they work any magic at all.”
    While he was speaking, the lab resounded to heavy, regular footsteps, as if a giant were walking through it, and Wizard Wermacht came striding in with his impeccably ironed robes swirling around him. Wermacht was a tall wizard, though not a giant, who kept his hair and the little pointed beard at the end of his long, fresh face beautifully trimmed. He walked heavily because that was impressive. He halted impressively behind the lectern, brought out an hourglass, and impressively turned it sand side upward. Then he waited impressively for silence.
    Unfortunately Ruskin was used to heavy, rhythmic noises. He had lived among people beating anvils all his life. He failed to notice Wermacht and went on talking. “The dwarfs’ way is the old way. It goes back to before the dawn of history.”
    â€œShut up, you,” ordered Wermacht.
    Ruskin’s round blue eyes flicked to Wermacht. He was used to overbearing people, too. “We’d been writing notes for centuries before we wrote down any history,” he told Elda.
    â€œI said shut up !” Wermacht snapped. He hit the lectern with a crack that made everyone jump and followed that up with a sizzle of magefire. “Didn’t you hear me, you horrible little creature?”
    Ruskin flinched along with everyone else at the noise and the flash, but at the words horrible little creature his face went a brighter pink and his large chest swelled. He bowed with sarcastic politeness. “Yes, but I hadn’t quite finished what I was saying,” he growled. His voice was now so deep that the windows buzzed.
    â€œWe’re not here to listen to you ,” Wermacht retorted. “You’re only a student—you and the creature that’s encouraging you—unless, of course, both of you