Ten Apprentices Read online

  I didn’t deserve her.

  And I couldn’t bear the thought of her laughing in my face.

  So I said nothing.

  I protected myself, rather than her. Or my love for her.

  And that night, she went out. She did what she said she would not do. She challenged him. She went to his horrible little fortress fifty miles away, beyond the first mountains. She challenged him to a duel of magic the next day, and then she came back to prepare.

  I found her in the basement in the morning and she told me about it flatly, as if she were telling me what food Emmaline liked best.

  “Why now?” I asked. It made no sense to me. “Is it because of the woman?”

  “In a way,” she said. “But not truly.”

  “Why then?”

  “Will you believe me if I say it is because I decided that I would enjoy nothing more than to see his face before he died?” she asked me.

  I thought about it. I almost believed it. Then I sighed.

  “You know me too well,” she said.

  “Then why?” I asked.

  “Julane,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No. I don’t think you could. You haven’t studied him as I have.”

  “Tell me,” I said. I demanded it, as I had never demanded anything from her before.

  Her eyebrows rose. “Aren’t we the bully today?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It was not the first time I apologized, but it was the last. When she was alive, that is. When it still mattered and she could hear me.

  “He lived too long,” she said. “He learned too much, and grew too powerful. And so he killed more people than he would have, if someone had killed him early on.”

  “You’re facing Yuri because you have to save the world?” I asked, astonished. I had never noticed her seeing anything beyond her own view before.

  She sighed. “I’m killing Yuri because someone has to do it.”

  “But why you?”

  She didn’t answer for a long time. Then she said, “Because I wasn’t killed by Julane. Another killed him first. My master.”

  There was love in her voice. I was insanely jealous, and I writhed with it.

  “He was also my father,” she added. “I hated him for my name, but I loved him for everything else. He was a kind man, not inclined to foolish duels. He died when Yuri died, but he stopped him.”

  “How old were you?” I asked her.

  “Thirteen,” she said. “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Zord,” I said, feeling my heart beat in my throat.

  “A ridiculous name,” she said. “Almost as bad as mine. A hero’s name. Your parents must have loved you.”

  I wept, because I knew she was right, and because I had hated them since the moment I had stood in the marketplace, waiting for someone to take me as an apprentice.

  “Let me come with you,” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  I didn’t ask her again. And she was too busy preparing to think of putting a spell on me to keep me back.

  I stayed well away from her.

  But as soon as she stepped out the door, I looked to see the direction she was going. I ran downstairs and made the spell for strength, with Emmaline’s indulgence. Then I grabbed the book by Julane that she had put on the shelf. I had a good memory for visual organization, and I remembered exactly where it had gone.

  The book was titled “Resurrection, Immortality, and Deification.”

  I tucked the book under my arm, gave Emmaline enough meat to keep from starving for a week or two, and ran after Francine.

  She was saving herself for the duel. I could have done the same. It might have made a difference. I might not have needed that book then. I could have stood at her side at the duel and fought with her. She would not have liked it. She would have said it was not fair, two against one. But in the heat of the moment, she could not have stopped me.

  No, who am I fooling?

  It would have made no difference.

  I was in the beginning book of spells. I would only have gotten myself killed. Either she would have done it, or he would. And then he would have killed her, all the same. And there would have been no one left to work the resurrection spell.

  I ran behind her, far enough that I didn’t think she would hear me. I didn’t want to have an argument with her about whether I was coming or not. I knew she could stop me if she was determined enough. She wouldn’t even have to kill me to do it. Or hurt me. I was sure she had enough creative spells to freeze me or just send me back to the beginning so that I could never catch up. Or bleed the strength of my spell away from me.

  There were several times when I thought I would lose her. It was a quarter moon, but it was a clear night. Cold, and beautiful. The countryside smelled like home to me, and I could hear the sound of happy animals around me.

  But she couldn’t possibly have not noticed that I was following her, could she?

  She was an advanced magician, going to battle the worst of the worst. She couldn’t have been fooled by a beginner like me?

  But if she knew that I was behind her, then she chose not to stop me.

  Did she do it because she thought I could help her? Even distract Yuri for a moment?

  I don’t think so.

  Did she know that I loved her? She seemed oblivious of it most of the time, but there were hints now and again, that she knew and chose not to speak of it, not to embarrass either of us.

  But I never knew her well enough to understand the workings of her mind. There could be a thousand reasons that she might have had and I could never guess at them. I loved her, but that did not mean I was like her.

  I knew we were coming close to Yuri’s castle when the smell around us changed. There were more hovels, and more animals. The smell of desperation had long ago faded. Now it was only the smell of hopelessness, of sweat, and terror.

  She stood at the gate and called out Yuri.

  When no one answered her polite words, she grew cruder. I had heard her use some very sharp language, but I had had no idea the extent of the vocabulary she knew. Pig farmers could learn from her, and I thought that she should write a book on it. She could make cursing poetry. She was an artist. Magic did not know what it had in her. It did not value her truly.

  At last, Yuri appeared on the other side of the wall. “Ah, so here you are. I did not know if you would come, so I did not wait up all night.”

  It was nearing dawn and the faintest of pink showed in the mountains behind us.

  “Come out!” called Francine. With more colorful adjectives describing Yuri’s interests in particular sexual maneuvers.

  “Come in!” he called back to her.

  “In your own castle? You must be mad!” said Francine.

  “If you want the challenge, my castle is where it will be. With my new wife to watch it,” said Yuri.

  I think he knew that it was just the right thing to get her to do what he wanted. But he went on, goading her.

  “She is a frail little thing, only thirteen years old. Her parents did not wish to marry her to me, but alas, they died recently and I had to take guardianship of her.” He smiled.

  I had stopped a distance back.

  I had no desire to rush forward. I was shaking with cold and fear. I wanted nothing more than to run away and have nothing to do with magic ever again.

  I was a coward.

  The most I can say for myself is that I did not do what so tempted me. I did not leave her. I could not have lived with myself otherwise.

  “You think I am fool enough to come into your own castle and battle you, where your wards are set and you have spells waiting to spring on me?” she asked.

  “Battle me here or leave me be,” said Yuri.

  “I will send word to the world of your cowardice. I will write volumes on it. Your name will be known throughout the history of magic,” threatened Francine.

  “No one will write of me. The
y are afraid of me.”

  “I will write of you,” said Francince.

  “And am I to quake because of your words?”

  Francine made a motion with her hands.

  I froze. Did she mean to call to me? Was I supposed to come to her and stand with her? Go into the castle with her?

  I did nothing.

  And she did no more. She did not look back.

  “Think what a victory with so many obstacles set against you will mean,” said Yuri. “A woman set against a man years older than her, with all in the world on his side. An abuser of her own kind. If she were to defeat him, what would the histories of magic have to say of her?”

  I saw her shoulders stiffen.

  He had her. I knew it, and she knew it.

  But he had had her already. She would not have left without fighting him.

  Would she?

  I do not know.

  “Men write histories of magic,” she said. “Not women.”

  “Change that,” challenged Yuri.

  “Yes,” she said. Then again, louder, “Yes, I will!”

  The gate was lowered and I watched as she stepped across. I did not move until the gate was back up and she had disappeared. Not until I heard the first cry of pain, and knew it was hers.

  There was fire. Flashes of lightning from the bright, cloudless sky. Thunderous explosions when two forces of magic struck against each other.

  I was at the gate then. I listened and told myself that it was no wonder she had never said she loved me. How could she love a man like me? A boy?

  Then the noise ceased.

  It was before noon.

  I sank to my knees. I did not feel the passage of time. It was sometime after dark when her body was thrown from the gate, not even opened all the way. It dropped into the moat, and I saw it bobbing, turned to food for the fish.

  Coward that I was, there was no more threat to me now, and I jumped to action. I leaped into the water, floated above the muck and searched for her body, my arms thrashing as I swam blindly. I struck her body at last, pulled her head against my shoulder and pulled her back across the water, until I could feel the bank at my back.

  I pulled her lifeless form out, stretched her out.

  Her eyes were still open, as was her mouth. I wanted to hear her laugh.

  I turned her over and pressed the water out of her. I had seen it done before, by a local magician near my parents’ home. One who had little magic, and more knowledge of medicine. But he said he earned more money as a magician than a physician.

  And he did not save the girl’s life he pushed water out of. He said it rarely worked, but her parents pressed the money on him. They insisted that he try, then spat at him afterwards.

  I did what he did, pressed the water out, then turned her over and pressed air in.

  It did nothing.

  She had been killed by magic, not lack of air.

  I pressed a hand lightly to her damp hair. “How I love it,” I said. Now. When it mattered not at all. I kissed her lips. I spread her out, her arms to her sides, and then went for the book.

  I did not hate myself yet, because I had not given up hope yet. For some reason, I thought that I would find in the book what she had not. Power without disaster.

  I opened it with wet fingers, staining the vellum pages as I went through them. I found the first spell on resurrection. It warned that it worked only on animals. I went to the others. But they required ingredients I did not have. And did not know of. And there were marks written in her hand, disparaging the results listed. She had tried some herself, and had never found resurrection to work. She blamed Julane. She wrote in notes of what she thought might be the true spell, but they were scribbled out. Useless.

  The only spell she had not tried was the spell for animals’ resurrection.

  It required my blood and hers. And morning sunlight. Water. Grass. And “true feeling for the animal in question.”

  I had true feeling.

  I took out the small knife I kept in my boot and flicked at my finger. A drop of blood came out.

  I turned the knife on her, then mixed our blood together.

  The morning sun rose.

  It had been a full day since she had died, or nearly so.

  I added grass and water.

  Nothing happened.

  The mixture sat in my hands, inert.

  I could not bear it.

  I thought of taking her body back to her home. I thought of burying her in the garden of the farmhouse. I thought of taking over her library, and learning enough that I could challenge Yuri myself one day.

  Ridiculous.

  Then I heard the sound of voices from the castle. And another body dumped in the moat.

  Was it possible?

  Had she killed him, before she died herself?

  Or had she done enough damage that he could not repair it?

  I ran to the moat and saw his body floating there. It had been savaged by human hands. Not magic.

  She had weakened him enough his people could do the same. Perhaps his new young wife had taken a cut at him herself.

  I hoped so.

  I left him there for the fish and went back to her.

  That was when I saw the smoke rising above the mixture I had left on her chest.

  And then her eyes opened.

  I whispered her name.

  She smiled at me, and I thought I had done it.

  Then she giggled. A little girl’s laugh.

  Her eyes were vacant.

  “Francine,” I begged.

  “I like you,” she said. She rubbed a hand on my chin, then down my neck, and my chest. And lower.

  I stopped her there.

  “Not Francine,” I said.

  I do not know who it was. I do not know how Julane twisted the spell to his own use. Or perhaps it was my fault. I used a resurrection spell for an animal, not for a woman. I got a girl, which is better than I deserved.

  I took her home. I fed her and kept her from seducing me every moment, as seemed to be her only wish. Francine was gone. Her body was here, but her self was not. The spark that touched me would never be back.

  I was left with a woman I could have. And I did not want her.

  It was another cliché, and I did not know that it could hurt so much.

  JONAS

  Black with a white star on his head that marked him as chosen, he was not meant to have a name. I spent all my time with him, slept in the stable with him, spoke words to him I dared speak to no other. Not that there was another. I, too, was chosen, and high as the calling was, it was a lonely one.

  Which was why he had a name, despite all.

  Early on, I called him Star. It was a child’s naming. Two years later, I thought of him as Lightning Falls. More poetic, and striking, dramatic, as full of power and masculinity as I longed to be.

  After that, it was Black. Simple and easy to say. Easier still to mumble and make sure no one overheard. I’d learned caution by then.

  Now he is Jonas.

  My own name.

  I was forbidden contact with others. The loneliness was part of the calling. It made us pure. Good for the god’s sacrifice we were destined for.

  I did not know the time that it would come. The prophets knew, but they told no one. It was said even the king was not told, for it might be that his son and heir would be chosen once.

  Though it had never happened, in the history of the kingdom. It was always a poor child, like me, living close to the castle, but without family to object to his fate.

  They told me that it was an honor, that it proved that the prophets were still true, and that they listened to the god. They chose one who had no other reason to be looked upon with favor.

  They also chose one who would not be missed.

  I was dressed well. Fed well. Bathed daily, which seemed a ridiculous imposition to me. I hated the feel of the water on my body, hated being naked. It was the one time during the day that I was away fro
m Jonas, for he, too, had to be bathed.

  They would not speak to me while they sluiced water over my head or while they soaped me. The three other boys changed each day, so that they would not come to know me nor me them. Now and again, the same boy came, with some months in between, but it did not happen often.

  I did not bother to name them, even in my head.

  I was dressed in silk afterwards. My pillows were silk. I had a fine mattress to set on the floor of the stables beside Jonas. Sometimes I shared it with him, but even the mattress was changed every week.

  I ate as well as the king himself, perhaps better, for I had meat at every meal, and wine to go with it. Never enough to make my head spin, and at first, I will admit, I did not like the taste of it. It seemed sour and spoiled. But I drank it anyway, for they did not bring me water. Water was not pure.

  Once a week, the priest came to read from the scriptures to me. The scriptures were written long ago, in a language that no longer sounds anything like the one I speak, if it ever did resemble it. Now there are times when I wonder if I could understand my own language, even if it were spoken to me. It has been so long since I spoke aloud, even to myself.

  The scriptures are what are familiar to me now. I do not know if the meanings I take from them are those that are intended, but I look forward to hearing them. They are the only words shared with me, except those Jonas tries.

  He seems to know as well as I do the danger of speaking when others are present. His stable is away from the others, in a wing of its own.

  If I lean my ear close to the walls, I can hear other horses.

  Other boys, as well. Some of them cursing, as they did their duties of mucking out the stalls. Others singing tunelessly.

  And once, two of them enjoying themselves together, as boys will sometimes do.

  I listened for a bit to that, then felt my cheeks go hot with embarrassment, and slipped away, more careful than ever to make no sound.

  The chosen one is to be pure. But I had not lost my own purity, whatever I had heard. And if they thought I needed a few sounds to make me think of such things, they are idiots. I may have been chosen when I was seven, but that does not mean that I did not grow into a body of fourteen as any other boy will. And if I cannot leave the stables, I can dream of leaving them.