scholarship.

scholarship.

"You have an unusual gift, young man," Merlin had told him, "but remember that with that gift comes a

great responsibility. Never try to overreach yourself. That was merely a slap on the wrist. I'll be far less

forgiving next time."

There never was a next time. Paul had learned his lesson well. He became very careful about using his

gift indiscriminately and, in time, he disciplined himself to refrain from using it. His sensitivity had grown

over the years and he had discovered that contact with the inner recesses of other people's minds could

be profoundly disturbing. There were some things in people's subconscious minds that were very deeply

buried and were better off left that way.

Paul worked hard at the college, devoting every waking hour to his studies. While other warlocks

congregated in the campus rathskeller and went out on dates, Paul remained in his tiny apartment, hitting

the books. He had no social life to speak of. Before he took his graduate degree, he had already stood

for and passed his certification as a lower-grade adept. He graduated at the top of his class and entered

upon a wizard apprenticeship with Merlin, working as a teaching assistant at the college.

When he passed his certification as a wizard, offers of employment started to come in. However, he

remained at the College of Sorcerers, working as an assistant professor and continuing his studies until he

was ready to stand for certification as a sorcerer. He passed with flying colors. At that point, he could

have accepted any one of dozens of offers from large corporations eager to pay him a handsome salary,

but he missed New Mexico. He told Merlin that what he wanted to do most was teach, but he wanted to

do it back in Santa Fe.

Merlin was pleased with his choice. The demand for adepts to teach was great and the salaries they

could command were considerably higher than what other teachers could hope to make, but schools still

could not compete with the corporate sector, which could provide high-grade adepts with truly luxurious

life-styles. There was a great need for adepts in industry, as well. Fewer and fewer of them were going

into teaching, especially in the smaller towns and cities. The Bureau of Thaumaturgy did not yet have a

branch in Santa Fe and Merlin arranged for Paul to be accepted as a Bureau agent, cutting through the

red tape so that Paul could open up a small office of the Bureau at the college in Santa Fe and thereby

conduct his own certification exams for his students. Merlin also helped him with the school

administration, setting up the curriculum for a College of Sorcerers. It was not much of a college. Paul

would be the only teacher, until such point that some of his students would become sufficiently advanced

to teach themselves.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out the way that Paul had hoped. People with the innate talent for magic use

were relatively few and he was forced to turn away many hopeful students because they simply did not

possess the ability. In his first year at the college, he had no students at all and the administration wasn't

very happy, but they kept him on for the prestige of having a sorcerer on their faculty. Paul was forced to

teach courses in reading and composition. And because he felt guilty accepting a salary significantly

greater than those earned by other professors for teaching the same course, he insisted upon the school

paying him the same salary as the other members of the faculty. The school didn't complain. However, in

his second year, when he took on his first few students, the administration balked at paying him the salary