The demonstration of Thanida’s magic had just ended, but the thunder of applause from the stands had not yet died away. Even I had been impressed: many people possess rich imaginations, but few can show the whole world what lives inside their heads. Perhaps only fantasy writers can.

  As more students placed their bets, the numbers on the board became even more lopsided. The bookmakers were already treating Thanida as a sure winner, with odds of 1.12. The crowd considered us all but defeated. There was hardly a soul in the stands willing to bet on our victory.

  Elesya reminded me that I too had to give a small public demonstration of magic. Otherwise it would be taken as unsportsmanlike behavior, and the referees might punish us—even by disqualification.

  “Won’t you try one of your encapsulated spells?” Elesya asked.

  “Why waste precious energy?” I replied sharply. “Have you forgotten I’m a non-mage? All the magic I can perform depends on energy stored in the crystals in my pockets. I foresee a difficult fight with Thanida, so I don’t want to risk anything.”

  I paused, then added in a low voice, “Besides, I don’t want Thanida to form an exact idea of our magical abilities. The less she knows, the better. If she underestimates us, she’ll make mistakes that will work to our advantage.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “Bread and circuses—that’s all the crowd needs,” I said sardonically. “The audience is satisfied with the illusion of magic as much as with real magic. You’ll see.”

  I moved to the center of the arena and, bending down, wrote Thanida’s name in the sand. The letters were large enough to be seen from every corner of the stands. Then, with a few quick motions, I erased the name and gathered the sand into a small mound. I took two handfuls from the top and walked a few paces in front of Thanida. Looking her in the eye, I raised my hands above my head and let the sand blow into the wind.

  “I close my eyes, only for a second and all the stars fade away” I began to sing in a hoarse voice, a ’70s tune, pretending to go into a trance like a shaman performing an invocation of evil spirits. Since I didn’t remember the exact words, I improvised my own version.

  The spectators began to mutter in discontent, convinced I was calling on black magic again. I had taken care to translate the verses into their tongue so they would understand the meaning of the song perfectly. Still, the strange context in which I intoned them made my words sound more like a threatening prophecy or even a curse.

  I took another fistful of sand and flung it toward Thanida.

  “Dust in the wind, we will all scatter like dust in the wind…” I continued the song, my voice so plaintive that the melody had taken on the tone of a lugubrious and malevolent incantation at once.

  Thanida threw me an irritable look threaded with fear. She didn’t understand what I was doing, but she suspected I was using some evil spell meant to weaken her powers or bring her misfortune. Yet she was not fully convinced I was serious—or merely mocking her.

  I stepped away from Thanida, still facing her. I used a trick performers call the “moonwalk”—a technique that gives the impression of walking forward while an invisible force pulls you backward. The audience was deeply astonished; they had never seen such a walk before. I executed the steps with extreme fluidity—almost perfect—and no one guessed the trick.

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  The murmurs of dissatisfaction swelled into a din of boos. “He uses demons even when he walks!” someone shouted from the crowd. Several voices demanded I be disqualified, but since demonic magic was not forbidden, no action was taken. Smiling inwardly, I ticked this new skill—demonic walking—off my CV of malevolent talents.

  I turned to the crowd and, arms wide, made a broad gesture as if addressing them all.

  “The sins we hide, all the gods will see them when the masks fall. All who lied, will watch their shadows in the twilight's call.”

  The mournful song I sang unnerved the students, making them acutely uncomfortable at the thought of their own transience. Admittedly, I had adjusted the delivery to sound more depressing than it really was, adopting a tone that foreshadowed imminent disaster.

  “Coins or gold, neither will save you from the endless cold,” I sang, making a vaguely threatening gesture toward the dean’s box.

  I turned abruptly toward Thanida’s team and continued walking along the edge of the arena. In a thundering voice, I began to recite El Cid in Spanish, raising my hand toward the sky. Since Spanish sounded somewhat similar to Latin, the spectators grew curious when they heard a language they couldn’t understand but found strangely familiar. As I spoke, I scooped up handfuls of sand from the arena, lifted them above my head, and let the grains fall slowly through my fingers.

  When I finished my summary of El Cid, I began quoting aphorisms from a well-known Spanish writer of the Baroque era. I had memorized a few of them back in school, and now was the perfect time to put them to use.

  “The whole world is a web of deceit; those who do not understand that do not understand the world!” I shouted in Spanish, to the spectators’ astonishment. “To know, and to know how to show that you know — that is to be worth twice as much!” I continued, reciting another line.

  “What language is that? It sounds a lot like ours!” a student from the front row shouted to Elesya.

  Elesya stepped closer to the fence separating the arena from the stands and answered with a perfectly crafted lie:

  “It’s the language of the Ancients! Our own language comes from it. Only a few mages still know it today,” she added, smiling with a superior air.

  “And what is he saying?”

  “He’s using ancient incantations to gather his magical power. He’s even drawing energy from the spectators,” she replied smoothly.

  Panic spread through the front rows. The students began climbing higher up the stands, pushing one another to get away from the range of the supposed spell. Some pulled their hoods over their heads, others clutched their amulets to their chests, whispering hurried prayers to the gods. The low murmur of unease turned into a full-blown commotion — it no longer looked like a show, but the beginning of a catastrophe. Still, a few skeptical voices in the crowd claimed it was just another one of my tricks.

  I nearly burst out laughing when I heard Elesya’s inventive explanation for the Spanish language. If only the students knew that Spanish actually descended from Latin... But in their magical world, history had unfolded differently than in ours, and Spanish didn’t even exist. And even if it had, Wyrmlithus students considered learning a foreign language utterly pointless. Fortunately for them, their own version of Latin was widely spoken across the nearby kingdoms, so communication was rarely a problem.

  Then, the booming voice of the herald echoed across the arena, bringing an end to the magical demonstrations:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, both teams have now showcased their magical abilities. Betting will close in one minute. All that remains is to begin the long-awaited duel between Thanida and Sam!”

  So, the show was over. Now it was time for a real fight. And I could already sense it would be tougher than I’d expected. For all her arrogance, Thanida was far more skilled in magic duels than the incompetent mages of Wyrmlithus. In a way, I had miscalculated — by avoiding the weaker academy teams, I’d ended up facing a much stronger opponent.

  Just then, moments before the betting closed, a murmur rippled through the crowd: Ribathrum had just wagered 50,000 sesterces on my victory. At the current odds, if I won, the Sphinx would walk away with six times that amount. It would be a disaster for the betting house. Some students began to suspect that the Sphinx knew something they didn’t — but it was too late. The betting was closed.