In general, cssrooms seem to follow the same yout.

  Rising levels of semicircur seats around the podium in the middle. The shape of the cssroom is simir to that of a small theatre. Rows of ascending slightly curved long narrow-looking sinewy tables are all carved from the guts of the cliff and broken only through the middle of the cssroom, making room for the rising passageway. The cssroom is richly lit with the brisk pale blue light of fully-charged Cobalts. This one could comfortably fit around ninety students, making twenty-five of us seem scattered. I like it that way—more elbow space is always welcome.

  Even though several weeks have passed since my first coming here, almost all of us are still sort of strangers to each other. I don't know how else to expin it.

  Our murmurs and whispers die as the bottom left door of the cssroom opens and swiftly closes to let in an unassuming-looking man wearing an unfastened long bck woolen coat with a high colr, over a brown fitted cotehardie with silver buttons down the front. That is adorable, the buttons are shaped into tiny owls.

  The Grandmaster of Cartography and Bearing walks with confidence, although I notice a slight slouch on his shoulders. He is a slender man in his lower fifties with a short, neatly trimmed, and sort of thinnish brown-bck beard, with only a few gray lines. The grandmaster's eyes appear intelligent and slightly snake-like. His eyebrows are scarce, having the density of a dead forest. After giving us all a polite nod and pcing a book he was carrying on the table, he rummages through its drawers for a bit.

  I pull a wax tablet out of my satchel. The Academy provided us all with a sturdy—velvety blue with a touch of purple—satchel made of wool felt with a fp over the top and a shoulder strap. I think the thing is stitched to be waterproof although it seems a tiny bit doubtful that rain will fall on us through the cliff-tall ceiling above.

  Since parchment is as dear as a consul's ransom, that is to say, wicked-expensive, it is mostly used for making books—not something they would let us use to scribble some dribble during lectures. Wax tablets are quite handy yet simple things—they are wooden tablets covered with a yer of wax so that you could take notes by scratching into them with a pointed golden stylus. I like erasing things from them, this is where the spatu-like arse of the stylus comes in handy. Linked loosely in two pces with a simple rope, the thin stonewood blocks always come in pairs since one of them also serves as a sort of cover-tablet, and to me, they look like a cute wooden notebook when closed.

  The wax tablets are small and csses long—sting almost an hour each—so I keep most of the stuff between my ears. Oh, we were given some parchment but that is only to be used to transcribe the most ''critical'' of notes. All the text I have on mine back in the dormitory is written in tiny letters.

  ''How is everyone?'' The grandmaster's head swivels from side to side.

  No one answers. Before he entered, the cssroom was a rge tree filled with trilling sparrows but now all our tongues seem to have been mispced somewhere.

  ''Ah well, it was rhetorical anyway.'' His gaze travels across all of us. ''My name is Decius Hadrianus and my task is to teach you all about the face of the world.''

  Grandmaster Hadrianus unrolls a rge, slightly stained map of Equiya and attaches it to a stonewood board. ''Can anybody tell me what this is?'' He has an annoying habit of sucking his teeth after every time he asks a question, rhetorical or not.

  ''It looks like a short dog bone.'' That brings out a few chuckles. The remark came from a grinning boy, sitting in the distant upper parts of the cssroom, whose smugness melted away after the grandmaster's icy gaze fell upon him. I think the boy's name is Jax or Jayson, I always confuse those two names since the name ''Jayson'' is fairly popur.

  ''Not quite.'' The grandmaster is clearly not amused. ''It is of course the map of our world. Can anybody tell me where are we on the map?'' Again ending the question with that irking sound.

  ''We are close to the northernmost part of Eastern Equiya.'' A brown-haired...flower-girl calmly states. She is sitting in the front row of the lower seating area, directly in front of the lecture floor.

  ''Correct. What is your name?''

  ''Zuri Anemone.'' I like her st name. Anemone is a winsome dark purple flower, one of my mom's favorites. I did not talk to Zuri much, but there's time aplenty.

  ''Now tell me Zuri—hope you don't mind me using your first name—do you know the name of our canyon?''

  ''The Scar Canyon,'' Zuri answers without a shred of doubt in her pleasant-sounding voice.

  Grandmaster Hadrianus pulls out a stick and drags it a bit across the top of a rge eastern ndmass taking up a good part of the map. He is teaching us formal names that rarely anyone uses. Our Valley is surrounded by the Wastes and I haven't heard anyone ever say: ''The Scar Canyon,'' it is just known to everyone as ''the canyon.'' My father told me there are a few temporary mining settlements scattered here and there across the Wastes since it would be pointless to build something sting in such a pce. There are also some temporary outposts in the upper third expanse of the Wastes, north of the long unduting Icauna river. ''Exactly.'' Grandmaster SnakeEyes goes on. ''To someone on the ground, it may seem our canyon stretches north to south but in reality, it is a jagged line going from north to south-east.'' One of us having a brain seems to have energized the old man. Although...The letters on the map seem to be easily discernible.

  Crap. I almost sm my forehead as the realization dawns. Sometimes it's so easy to forget, the rest of them do not have my eyes. The rest of them do not have my eyes—I repeat the thought to punish myself. I take a deep breath through my nose to try and calm my mind a bit.

  ''For many days of flight, on even the fastest of Winged, The Crown of the World dominates the ndscape, far to the west,'' the grandmaster lectures. The stick slides north to south in a long line. I've read this mundane scroll that compared the massive mountain range to a spine of the world itself. I think I like the word crown better.