That day was typical of many days to come. Serali spent her mornings cleaning the tower, working her way from the bottom up, and her afternoons were occupied by a variety of peculiar things that Janus had designed as tests.

After nearly two weeks of this, Serali was relieved to be summoned to Janus's workroom and told that the testing was finished.

"Well, the easy part is over, and now you're going to start working," said the mage with a grin.

"As if I haven't been doing plenty of work already," returned Serali. "I think I've cleaned nearly every object you own."

"Well, as far as that goes, once you've settled into the routine, I'm planning on giving you things besides cleaning to do, but that's some time off yet. For now you need to decide what areas you are going to concentrate on. I've said I want to train you in as many areas as I can, and I'll try to teach you a little bit of everything, but you'll need to concentrate on just one. And that brings me to my point. Serali, you have an amazingly broad range of aptitudes."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you can be almost any kind of mage you want. You test out fairly well in everything I'm familiar with except necromancy, and you have abilities in a few areas where I have none at all. I can't train you in something that I'm not familiar with myself, but I'm quite accomplished in Elemental magic, Ritual Wizardry, Ritual Sorcery, and Enchantment, any of which you could master easily."

Serali shook her head. "I don't know what any of those are. You'll have to explain it to me."

"I'll go through the whole list, so that you can begin to familiarize yourself with all of them, even the ones you can't do." He sat up and assumed a lecturing air. "We'll start with the elemental magics. I'm most familiar with elemental wizardry, which is the use of rituals and components to control elemental forces. Although unlike non-elemental wizardly, when working with elements, the most important thing is your mental control. The words, components, and gestures are more of an assist, to help stabilize the magic and focus the mind. After that you have Elemental Sorcery, which is the control of the elements through elemental spirits form the planes of the elements. There is also a little known field of elemental magic that refers to an entirely different system of elements that is based on some rather odd theories. I don't understand it myself, but I'd bet you'd be good at it with a competent teacher.

"You've a truly great aptitude for elemental magery and direct elemental magic. Usually a person will be a master of a single element, and able to work a little with one other. I was expecting you to be fire first and then air, which you are, but your mastery of air is better than usual, and you have a small ability with earth magic as well. That is very odd. Usually no one can do two opposing types, and earth and air are opposites. You don't have any antipathy for water either. Strong fire mages are usually violently opposed to water. You can't work it, but you don't react badly to it either. That's very odd.

"You also, as I'd already guessed, have an incredible talent for bardic magic. Beyond any I have ever seen before. Did you know that you have a perfect sense of pitch? That's not even the beginning of your talents there, and I truly regret that I can't train you in bardic magic myself. I'm absolutely terrible at it, but at some later date, you might want to think about taking at least some musical training from someone else. Bardic magic actually comes in two kinds, in one, music is used to cast spells, in the other, enchantment is used to make the listener see and feel what the bard wants him to see and feel. You could very easily do either. And that leads to the next kind of magic, enchantment. Enchantments are a ritual magic, and take all of their power from the person that the spell is cast on. They don't affect the material world so much as they affect the perception of the material world. The spell I used on that bandit was an enchantment. You have a modest talent for it, if you want to develop it.

"Ritual Wizardry, which is what I use the most, is another kind of magic. It is the one you probably have heard in the tales, involving chants and strange components. Ritual sorcery is much the same, except you use the chants to summon spirits and they do the work for you. I know sorcery, but I don't deal in it much. Beings from other planes are too unpredictable, I don't like to depend on them. You have a fair aptitude for ritual wizardry, and a small gift for ritual sorcery, so you could do either, though you'll be better at wizardry.

"Then there's witchcraft, which you have a fair aptitude for as well. I'm not very familiar with it, though I know a few basic hexes, and there's quite a lot about it in that theory book that you have, but you probably shouldn't concentrate on that, I won't be able to teach you properly. Shamanistic magic I have no talent for, and neither do you, so we don't have to worry about that, and while I can do a few necromantic spells, you haven't any aptitude for that sort of thing whatsoever, so we won't worry about that either.

"And that fairly well covers the subject, I could train you in two kinds of elemental magic, or sorcery, wizardry, or enchantment. Which would you prefer?"

Serali shook her head. "I never even thought that I'd have any talent at all, and here you tell me I can do almost anything I'd like. Give me a moment to think about it."

"Certainly. I suggest you sleep on it, actually, and you can tell me over breakfast."