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He wondered if any of these corridors led in the direction of Master Rufus’s office Not a day went by that he didn’t think about sneaking in there and using the tornado phone But until Master Rufus taught them how to control the boats, Call needed another route
They walked through an unfaently upward, with a shortcut over an underground lake For once, Call didn’t mind the extra distance, because this part of the caves had a bunch of cool things to look at -- a flowstone formation of white calcite that looked like a frozen waterfall, concretions in the shape of fried eggs, and stalagreen fro slower than the others, was in the back, and Celia dropped back to chat with his he hadn’t seen before, like the holes high up in the rocks where bats and sala circular roo from it One had the word Gallery picked out above it in sparkling rock crystal The other read The Mission Gate
"What’s that?" Call asked
"It’s another way out of the caves," Drew, overhearing, told hiuilty, as if he wasn’t supposed to tell
Maybe Call wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand the rules of ic school When he looked closer, he sa looked about as exhausted as Call felt
"But you can’t just leave," Celia added, giving Call a wry look, as if she thought that every ti to consider whether or not he could escape that way "It’s only for apprentices on missions"
"Missions?" Call asked, as they followed the others toward the Gallery He re about them before, when she’d explained why all the apprentices weren’t at the Magisteriu the Chaos-ridden," Celia said "You know, htshade and kill a wyvern on your way back No problem But he didn’t want to make Celiato hie, with a ceiling at least a hundred feet above the off into the distance, with several s in the water, which stea on one crystal wall -- Call had seen theon the screen hadn’t actually happened in the version he’d seen
"I love this part," Taed the toadstools Jasper appeared and plunked hihtly puzzled but followed anyway
"You have to try the fizzy drinks," Celia said, pulling Call over to a rocky ledge where an enore dispenser, full of what looked like water, rested beside three stalactites She picked up a glass, filled it from the twist spout, and stuck it beneath one of the stalactites A spurt of blue liquid splashed down into the water, and athe blue liquid and the clear liquid together Bubbles rose to the top
"Go on, try it," Celia urged
Call gave the drink a suspicious look, then took the glass froed down the liquid
It felt like crystals of sweet blueberry and cara inside his mouth
"This is fantastic," he said when he was done sing
"The green is lass she’d poured for herself "It tastes like a -looking snacks on the ledge -- bowls of shiny rocks that were clearly spun out of sugar, pretzels wound into the shapes of alche with salt, and a bowl of what looked like crispy potato chips at first glance but were darker gold when you looked at them closely Call tried one It tasted alrabbing his wrist "We’rethe movie" She drew him toward the velvety toadstools Call went a little reluctantly Things were still fraught with Taht be better to avoid the attention to hi projected on the far wall Jasper kept leaning over to say things in Ta with Kai on his other side Fortunately, there were enough older kids around to make it easy for Call not to sit too close to the other apprentices in his group without it see intentional
As Call relaxed into his seat, he realized that theprojected exactly A solid block of colored air hovered against the rock wall, colors swirling in and out of it iic," he said, half to hi her knees, intent on the screen "You probably know him"
"Why would I know him?"
"He’s a Bronze Year One of the best students He assists Master Rufus solanced back over his shoulders In the shadows behind the rows of toadstool cushions was a taller chair The lanky brown-haired boy who’d brought the in it, his eyes intent on the screen in front of hi back and forth, a little like a puppeteer’s As he moved them, the shapes on the screen shifted
That’s really cool, the little, treacherous voice inside Call said I want to do that He pushed the voice down He was leaving as soon as he passed through the First Gate of Magic He was never going to be a Copper Year or Bronze Year or any other year than this one
When the movie ended -- Call was pretty sure he didn’t rea line with Ewoks, but he’d only seen it once -- everyone jurinned When he saw Call looking at hih the room to play with other fun stuff It was like an arcade, Call thought, but with no supervision There was a hot pool of water that bubbled withTa the the surface of the water Call stuck his legs in it for a while -- it felt good after all the walking he’d been doing -- and then joined Drew and Rafe in feeding the tame bats, which would sit on their shoulders while they fed thes tickled his cheek Later, Call joined up with Kai and Gwenda to play a weird ga around a ball of blue fire that turned out to be cold when it struck hiray uniform, but he didn’t ot to worry about Master Rufus, about his father, about boundhiined being aood at this stuff, one of the Masters, even But then he thought of his dad sitting at the kitchen table all by hi over Call, and felt awful