Horus Maxwell

Horus Maxwell is a grandmaster of the Archon in the Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel") campaign, counted among the leading scholars of conjuration. He does not teach ordinary lessons. His works are much cited, among them The Nature of Things and a book asking whether conjuring is calling, bringing into being or creating; in it he argues that conjuration neither creates as the gods do nor turns energy into matter, but brings in things that exist on other planes and that return when the caster's concentration ends.^{1 2 3}

He is a big man, close to six feet tall, a little stout, clean-shaven and cheerful in manner, and his robe is covered in written runes. Its colour, close to purple, is the purple of the arcane rather than the imperial purple. His focus is his pipe.^{4 5}

The thesis board

Horus chaired the board of three that heard Castor's two theses for the mastery, with the grandmaster Marnor and the guest Imralis Silvarel of Starsong; only he would give the mark, a single mark from nought to a hundred, and only the board could ask questions. A mark below seventy closed the master's exam for that year.^{6 7 8 9}

The first thesis, an encyclopedia of arcane foci, filled the hall with students and mages. Castor argued that a focus is a bridge through which a caster channels magical energy into an outward effect, and traced the same idea through the holy symbols of clerics and paladins, the natural tokens of druids and rangers, the foci of bards, sorcerers and even warlocks, a subject the board reminded him was forbidden in the Empire on pain of death. Horus pressed him on how material components could stand in for a lost focus. When someone in the hall joked about having bards arrested, Horus made a gesture and the speaker vanished.^{10 5 11 12 13 14}

The second, the Thesis on Magic and the Elements, he could not accept. After the board had argued for an hour instead of the usual quarter, he told Castor the first thesis was very good and should become a book at the Archon, but the second was rushed and incomplete: not so much wrong as full of claims that no other mages had yet tested, in a field that might take a lifetime. Having consulted the red master by Sending, he gave Castor a choice: qualify for the master's exam now, or work a few more years for a higher mark. Castor chose to go now, and Horus gave him a combined mark of 79.^{15 16 17 18 19 20 21}

He then made his real offer: if Castor survived the exam, he should join Horus's own research circle as his pupil. Herrenhal, he said, was a great mage who had opened a road but could no longer walk it, and too inconstant to leave so large a subject to one man. Castor asked for time, and Horus allowed him to answer after the exam.^{22 23 24}

The descent to the exam

Horus led the examining party, with Marnor and Imralis, then holding the seat of Blue, down to the sunken city beneath the Archon. He woke the protective magic of a great open boat, which sank on a lift into the deep, and with a whistle drove back the water from the dock to open the drowned city.^{25 26 27}

He explained that the exam is held under the sea so that its magic cannot leak out, and that the teachers do not set it, lest favour creep in. An ancient creature that can read minds sets the exam and guards the city under an old agreement, in return for being allowed to dwell there; the agreement is written on a marble wall in salt-stained script.²⁸

Before leaving Castor, he warned him formally that the exam could destroy body, soul or mind for ever. Withdrawing would count only as failing this exam, not as losing the right to try again. He gave him a second whistle to call for help if he could get out but not climb out unaided, with no promise of rescue, and set beside him a black candle that would burn for exactly three hours.^{29 30}

After the exam

When Castor came back, Horus greeted him with a smile, judging from his return that he had passed. The board read the terms Castor had agreed below and were pleased with them. Alone with him, Horus renewed his offer: no one could promote the youngest master to the powerful better than he could, with ties from the emperor's household to Merlas, and he would steer Castor's voyage plan towards those who could support it. He did not ask him to give up the way of the Lore Master, only to work more systematically.^{31 32 33 34}

At the ceremony Castor announced that he would go on with Herrenhal. Horus had not expected it and looked angry and surprised; he left with a meaningful nod, thinking the choice wrong but with no intention of standing in Castor's way.^{35 36 37}