Ten Apprentices Page 12

  There was no hope for him, and yet Milles kept his arm around Stone. He would not leave a second time. He might be weaker, but he would not be cowardly. Not a second time.

  “Your mother is worried for you,” said a voice in the darkness after the feast was over and Milles was alone

  Milles looked up and stared at the silhouetted shape for a moment before he realized it was Jired. “She will get used to it,” he said.

  There was a long silence.

  “We were friends once,” said Jired.

  “Were we?”

  “I thought so. Until I got Snake. You used to let me come and watch Stone. You even let me ride him now and again. No one else allowed that. A horse belonged to one rider and that was all.”

  “It wasn’t for you. It was for the tribe,” said Milles.

  “Well, I thank you anyway. I have always had a spot in my heart for Stone.”

  Milles felt his heart pinch his chest. His fingers went cold with hope. “Does that mean you want to trade me for the trial? Snake for Stone?” Only afterwards did Milles realized that it was a ridiculous thought. Jired would never trade Snake for Stone. Even suggesting such a thing seemed an embarrassment to him now.

  “Would you trade him?” asked Jired.

  “Would you trade yours?” Milles asked in return, determined not to be caught again.

  Jired took a breath sharply, then let it out slowly. “No.” He patted Stone’s leg once more. “No. He is mine now. But Stone was the first horse I loved. I miss him still sometimes. I dream about riding him and making him mine.”

  “Snake is a better horse,” said Milles, again surprised into speaking an awkward truth.

  “Is he? He is faster, and younger, but he does not love me in the same way that Stone can love. He loves to ride fast, to win, to show himself off to the world. I do not think he cares what rider is on his back.”

  “But you are the rider on his back, so what does it matter?”

  Jired shrugged and stood up. He stared at Stone for a long moment. “One of the old men came to me last night. He told me the secret.”

  Milles could not believe that Jired would pass on to him any advantage that he had. He listened suspiciously.

  “The magic does not come except in extremity. That is why we are sent to the forgotten mountains. To bring us close to death.”

  Milles thought about the magic for a moment. The ability to see the future, to make sure that crops grew, that the tribe was protected against other warring tribes. What would it feel like to have such power? Hot and dangerous? He closed his eyes and searched for it, but he could feel nothing.

  “They lied to you,” he said to Jired. “They don’t know any more about the magic than you do. They only like to pretend that they do.”

  “Perhaps,” said Jired. But he did not leave. Milles had shown him no respect, and still he stayed. It was a strange thing, even for the only other young man his age in the tribe. Did he liked Milles so much? Or Stone?

  “I don’t want the magic,” Jired confided to Milles.

  “What? Why?” Milles was startled.

  “It would change everything. No one in the tribe would see me in the same way.”

  “And this is a bad thing? They must treat you better than they treat me,” said Milles.

  Jired shook his head. “But it wouldn’t be for me,” he said. “Not really. Only for the magic in me. They would always want something from me, and when I had given it to them they would go away and leave me.”

  “Perhaps they will leave you anyway,” said Milles.

  At that, Jired walked away without a word.

  Milles clung to Stone, brushing out his coat for what might be the last time. The cut above his nose that he had gotten when Milles rode him into a thorn meadow five years before had healed over, but was a reminder of the many injuries he had suffered and healed. He had never shown caution with Milles afterward. He had given his whole hearted effort every time. If Milles had told him to walk off a cliff, he would have done it in full confidence, not that he would survive, but that it was what Milles needed.

  For the first time, Milles felt the weight of that responsibility. It was separate from the weight of the tribe’s expectations on him. It changed the challenge in a way that Milles had not anticipated. He was less anxious and more, at the same time.

  He stood by Stone’s side, speaking to him softly as he stroked his nose, his ears, his side, his withers, his flank, his tail.

  “It’s only a trial. Only a trial. I will get a little magic and then we’ll come back together, Stone. You and me, together, like it’s always been. It will be that way, I promise. I promise.”

  He did not remember what else he said. He did not think it mattered. Stone understood the meaning more than the words. He thought that words were like music for Stone, soothing but unnecessary.

  The drums began, and Milles felt a catch in his throat. His vision blurred until he swallowed hard and forced himself to take a breath. Then he could see again. He put a hand on Stone’s mane and walked forward. Stone matched his pace effortlessly. There were several hundred members of the tribe, many noisy children or drunken adults, eager to touch Stone as the embodiment of the excitement of the trial. Stone did not make any complaint. He walked slowly through them all, and flinched only when a boy nearly of age to Milles slapped the horse’s side and laughed loudly.

  Stone lifted his head and stared at the boy for a long moment until he looked sorry.

  Milles thought that if it were Snake who had done it, the boy would have had a bite or a stomp from a horse’s hoof to deal with, and would look sorry because of that. But Stone had other ways of making himself felt. Milles would have to accept that.

  The older men in the village chanted words and Milles, mounted on Stone, could not tell what they meant. They drone in a way that made it difficult to hear the distinction between one word and the next, but it was also that Milles had become one with Stone and Stone did not understand the words.

  There was an abrupt stop in the chanting, and the drums began a faster beat. When they stopped, as well, Milles held tight to Stone’s reins. There was a slap behind him and he leaped forward and began to trot away. On the other side of the crowded tribe, Jired on Snake began to canter. The distance between them grew quickly, and Milles watched Jired’s back, held stiffly straight. And for once, Milles did not envy him.

  He let Stone choose his own pace up the mountain. They took the rocks and runouts steadily. For a time, Milles could see Jired ahead of him, but then he turned a corner and disappeared.

  Milles had never been to the top of the forgotten mountains before. There were clouds around the highest of them through most of the year. A few weeks in summer the peak was visible, but it was so distant and impossible to climb that it was still forgotten.

  Milles tried to feel for more magic. He thought of what Jired had told him, that the magic could only be reached in extremity, near death. Milles shook himself to clear the dark feeling that covered him, but it was only gone for a time. In the morning after, it rose with him from his bed on Stone’s side. And every morning after that, it grew darker and more pressing on his chest. He found it difficult to breathe, but he did not believe it was only that the air here grew thinner.

  On the fourth day, Stone led Milles to a tiny stream hidden by a crevice of rocks. Milles could not dismount properly, but slid to the ground and crawled to put his head onto the dirt and lap up the water like a dog. He slipped into blackness for a time and woke to Stone’s breath on his face. The horse had been licking him. He could feel the wetness all over his head. But his tongue looked swollen.

  Had the horse not drunk from the stream himself?

  Milles scrambled to his feet, then wished he had not moved so quickly, for his head ached. He put his head down and moved slowly, grasping hold of Stone’s mane and pulling him to the stream. There was very little water and it would soon be dried up, but they must use it while it was there.

&
nbsp; It was only afterward that Milles thought about Stone’s reluctance. The horse had wanted Milles to take more water, to make sure that he was refreshed before the horse was. Jired’s Snake would not have done the same, Milles felt sure.

  But Snake was already twice as high on the mountain and had no doubt found three times as many streams of better quality than this one.

  Milles let himself sleep, though it was midday, and climbed on Stone’s back again when it was cooler. They dragged forward for a few more hours, rested, and went again. Milles lost track of days and nights. They made no difference. If he could hold on, Stone continued to move. If he fell off, Stone waited for him to recover. They found two more streams like the first, and then there was a long time without ay water. Milles grew delirious. He thought it was delirium, anyway. But slowly it penetrated his mind that the images he saw were too much the same, and too persistently loud to come from himself.

  They showed him Stone, with a knife at his throat, blood dripping from his neck as he looked steadily into Milles’s eyes. And as he did so, Milles was filled with a purple fire of power that lifted his hands and made him taller and stronger and deepened his voice so that he could call out and command the wind itself, or so it seemed as the clouds churned overhead.

  Milles woke and saw Stone, his throat untouched, but his eyes as steady and knowing. He was having the vision, as well, Milles was certain. He, too, understood the price of magic. The price of saving the tribe. But Milles thought that it was only his rider he cared about. If his rider wished him to die, he would do it without resistance.

  “I won’t do it,” said Milles aloud, his voice a hoarse whisper through cracked lips. He said it to Stone first, and then to the sky, and then he looked down and shouted it at his tribe beneath them. The price was too high.

  He dreamed again, and this time he saw Jired holding a knife to Snake’s throat. And it was Jired who had the purple power of the magic then. Jired who was the adored one of the tribe, who could control the skies and the earth itself.

  Jired had taken longer to grow weak enough to see the choice, thought Milles when he was lucid once more. But now he knew it and Milles did not doubt that Jired would not struggle with the same dilemma. Even now, Snake was likely dead. If Jired could kill him. Milles thought of the vision that he had seen in Stone’s eyes. Snake might not accept it as readily. Jired could die and Snake might run away. And then what of the magic?

  The tribe still needed it to survive. Milles could not simply put off the responsibility to Jired and Snake. It was not merely about jealousy. He had to know.

  Yet each time he lifted his knife to Stone’s throat, he found it falling from his fingers. Whether he was too weak in body or too weak in mind, he could not tell. But to kill Stone, his horse, who would do anything for him, was too much. There were all the logical reasons to do so, and still they did not matter to him.

  Two nights later, Milles thought he heard a cry in the distance. He could not tell if it was a horse or a man. He waited and then he looked to Stone. Stone lifted his head and there was something in him that seemed disappointed with Milles.

  It was from that that he knew what had happened. Jired had killed Snake. He had the magic.

  Milles had no more visions. He and Stone were climbing down the mountain path when they heard the drums begin again. And the chanting, on such a clear night, was audible even as high as they were.

  At the rise of the full moon, a storm rushed in so quickly that it could only have been from magic. Spring had begun and it would be a fertile one.

  Milles and Stone walked slowly down, stopping at a few streams, weak, but together and alive. He could not tell what it meant. He blamed Stone for the fact that he would never have the magic now, that he would be forever known as the one who had made a choice to save his horse instead of his people.

  And yet he had made the choice himself and he knew he would make it again and again and again, as he had on the mountain.

  He neared the village four days later, and could see the tribe out planting. He met Jired at the door to his mother’s home.

  Jired was scarred terribly on his face. It looked as if his nose and cheek had been broken and he was still swollen with blood and pus. He would never look as he had before, handsome and young. But no one would care. The mark of the magic was on him. One movement, and the purple aura around him could be seen.

  “Welcome home,” said Jired. “To both of you.”

  Milles wished very much that Jired would go away and leave him. He was not interested in hearing his exultations, or in explaining his own choice. He wanted to rest and mourn in peace.

  “You made your choice and I made mine,” said Milles defensively.

  Jired nodded. “I would still trade you,” he said.

  “Trade me what? Your horse is dead.”

  “I would trade you the magic for Stone.”

  “It can’t be done,” said Milles. Of that he was sure. The choices had been made. The future had been set.

  “No, it can’t. But if it could, I would trade you. And do you know why?”

  Milles stared ahead.

  “Because your horse is still worth twice the magic. The magic wanted Stone more than Snake, but when you refused, it came to me. And now you still have Stone. I hope you are not ignorant of what he is. And someday perhaps you will see the truth. That you were the winner in the trial, not I.”

  Jired went away and Milles was left with Stone. He put his arm around the horse’s neck and breathed in the smell of him, and tried to find comfort.

  NOR WILL I EVER

  I am not human, nor will I ever be.

  I have wheeled feet and my fingers are made of jointed steel, neither nimble nor beautiful. I could never play an instrument with any beauty.

  My eyes are the closest to beauty that my maker came. It was important to him, so much so that he spent ten years in order to see eyes looking back at him that appeared human. One is blue and one is brown.

  He couldn’t decide which he liked better, he told me once. “One day you can make the decision yourself which you like. Or leave them, if you prefer.”

  There are no mirrors aboard the ship, but there are surfaces aplenty that are reflective. I stare at myself in them sometimes, marking the flaws.

  The eyes are truly the best. My maker outdid himself there.

  The skin tone in the molded foam is pale with freckles. He had no freckles, nor did any of the others who were waiting in their chambers for the voyage’s end.

  “They come from exposure to the sun,” he said. “Delicate skin is damaged and the freckles appear as a defense mechanism.”

  “I have never seen a sun,” I said. Though in two hundred years, we would land and I would step out from the ship with the others and see how a star looked from a planet that it warmed.

  My maker would not, however. His life had been extended, but not long enough to reach the final destination.

  We had already come forty-five years. My maker began on me when we were ten years into the voyage. Thirty-five years in the making, I was. A long gestation.

  “There was the computer and thousands of years’ worth of vids that I could have watched. They thought that would be enough. There were drugs, too, that would make me think of nothing but the moment, and would do no harm to my piloting of the ship. But I needed someone.”

  He had not woken any of the other passengers. There are over six hundred of them in their little rows in the hold. Ready to be woken, to be settlers in a new world. With them in the hold is all they need for a new civilization. Materials for buildings, seeds, even wombs with embryos already implanted in them.

  But my whole life is only my maker, and me, and the ship.

  He eats food from pouches, squeezing the liquid into his mouth with a distorted face. He glances once more at the labeling on it, which reads, “Curried tofu.”

  “Curried toothpaste, more like,” he said. He looked up at me. “You’re lucky you don’t have to
bother with this stuff.”

  I did not need any nutrients. I needed servicing every ten years and perhaps an upgrade to keep my memories from being sloughed off in a queue of decreasing importance. A bit of frictionless gel pressed into my earhole every month to take the place of the amount that evaporates or is eaten by microbes helps to keep me at maximum efficiency, but I could live until the end of the voyage without even that.

  “You might live forever,” said my maker. “Think of that.” He was in awe of his own creation. He looked at me frequently, stared for minutes on end without speaking. I knew he was admiring me, but not for what I was. He saw himself when he looked at me. I was a reflective surface like any other on board the ship, and he used me as a mirror.

  He put a hand to my face and held it there. His skin was warm and I could feel the beat of his heart. It was so slow. My own processors had a rhythm, but it circulated my body far more quickly than did his.

  “I love you. You know that, don’t you?” he said.

  “I know,” I said.

  He put his lips on mine gently. There was pressure, and a bit of suction. A sound like the squeak of the servos on the hull of the ship, which move from point to point to debride it.

  “You don’t kiss me back,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I will. Let me do it again.”

  “No.” He waves a hand. “It will come in time. And God knows we have plenty of time. When you are ready. Only then.”

  He sleeps for long periods of time, in order to extend his life.

  This is when I go down to the hold and walk up and down the rows of faces. They look more like me than like him, in a way. Their heads were shaved for the convenience of the doctors who hooked them into multiple sensors. They have a bit of stubble grown back, but their bodies have slowed to one hundredth normal speed.

  Most of them have closed eyes, but a few have eyes jiggled open by the ship’s violent launch into space from planetary gravity. Some of these have one eye open, another closed, or one eye half-open.