Dark apprentice, p.19
Dark Apprentice, page 19
He caught sight of a bare foot and followed the view up. Medea glared at him, fists clenched at her sides, breathing at the steady pace of someone barely containing their anger. “Don’t DO that.” Contempt dripped from her words. “Don’t ever make me do that!” She looked on the cusp of saying something more, then she was gone in a swirl of red.
16
DISJOINTED
He was going to die on this godforsaken island. At least that’s what Nikolai’s brain told him during the dark moods. The pattern, so clearly linked to the potions before, was gone. All that remained was the unrelenting sameness that was Medea’s training schedule.
Up early, then to the lab where Medea was already waiting, nose in a book. She rarely looked up at his entrance. Some vestigial reflex made him greet her every time. She either grunted, didn’t respond, or launched without preamble into a briefing on what they’d be doing that day.
The water-boiling exercise was frustratingly difficult. Medea was quick to “help” with a cuff to the back of his head. He often wondered if boiling really did build mana or if it was a habit she’d latched on to and refused to let die. A search in the library revealed that the practice started in antiquity as a purification ritual before making potions.
“From there it expanded to cooking and drinking water,” he said when he brought his findings to Medea. “That’s probably why ancient Magi lived longer than everyone else—they were killing water-borne pathogens without realizing it.”
Medea looked skyward with a groan. “I know. Don’t you think I know? I was there. In case you hadn’t noticed, those are my notes you’re paraphrasing. Mana-building is still a benefit, and you must practice daily if you wish to improve.”
That day he’d needed no external help getting angry enough to boil water.
As soon as the potions were finished, it was outside for practical lessons. Medea stalked around him, making corrections as she saw fit. Some of the things she told him didn’t make any sense, either due to her inability to accurately put her thoughts into words, as if her very concept of magic defied explanation, or because she couldn’t recall a word itself, rattling off variations in different languages until she found something satisfactory.
“Not that spell,” she said one day as they sparred in the meadow. “The one you cast before.”
“Which one?” He’d cast half a dozen in the last round.
“The, uh”—she held a fist to her forehead for a good twenty seconds—“the boom-strike spell.”
“The boom-strike spell?” Half the time he thought she was fucking with him. He’d once made the mistake of offering to read her mind. The look she’d given him had managed to be both affronted and murderous. “Could you be a little more specific?”
“Yes, with the forky things.” She splayed her fingers out in front of her.
He peered at her curiously. “You mean Lightning?”
“Yes, that.”
At noon, they broke for lunch. Nikolai sat and ate while Medea fiddled with a stalk of grass and continued to lecture. She never summoned anything for herself, doubtless so she could blather on unhindered. After lunch they moved to the library, where she helped him select books for study and drilled him in Latin for an hour before retiring to her room for the rest of the day.
That’s how it went on a good day, anyway.
Thanks to the affliction, his reality was a fragmented blur. There was no consistency in the timing or duration of his episodes, and periods of lucidity were tainted by the knowledge that at any moment he could be robbed of his faculties. He lost track of time. Some days he awoke a prisoner of his own mind, incapable of rising from his bed. Other times it struck in the middle of a lesson, often when he was on the cusp of grasping one of Medea’s lectures. Whenever his brain filled with doubt and self-loathing, Medea grew increasingly bad-tempered. She’d clench her jaw and insist he push through it. When it became clear he could not, she’d storm off, acting for all the world as if it were his fault for interrupting her instruction.
Every uncorrupted waking moment had to be maximized. Food was summoned directly in hand and consumed on the go. Showers were a luxury he could rarely afford. The bouts of malaise left him feeling more drained than a day brimming with work, yet he forwent sleep and pushed himself to the point of exhaustion, drilling ceaselessly or spending hours in the library, only to wake with his head on the table, cheek in a puddle of drool. Medea took on a manic energy of her own when he was feeling well, trying to cram as much as she could into whatever time she was given, but she refused to make any changes to her schedule.
One week the affliction kept him bedridden past noon every day. Medea’s dogged insistence that they begin in the lab meant they had no time for practical lessons, for she still retired midafternoon.
“Why do we always have to start here?” he finally demanded. Medea stood at the sink with her back to him, filling a cauldron with water. “Why can’t we start with sparring?”
“You need to make your potion allotment for the day.”
“What for? It’s not like I’ll have a chance to use them.”
“We’ve been over this. Potions first. I don’t want you to run out.”
“Run out? Are you kidding me?” He shoved his hand in his pouch and started pulling out potions. One by one he set them on the center worktable.
“Why are some of those the wrong color? I told you to use harp root.”
He ignored the question, punctuating his words with vials. “I. Don’t. Need. Any. More. Potions.” Soon the table was half-covered.
“Stop. You’ve made your point.”
He ignored her, digging out more potions. On and on they came. Once the worktable was covered, he moved to the back counter and started unloading them there. Laid out like this, it was amazing she hadn’t run out of empty vials yet.
“I said you could stop.” Medea watched him with an ever-deepening frown. In the sink behind her, water ran over the sides of the forgotten cauldron as the faucet continued its deluge. “Really now, this is ridiculous.”
“Yes, it is. It’s ridiculous you’re still demanding I make potions. It’s ridiculous we don’t spar while we can. It’s ridiculous that I have to waste an hour on a good day learning Latin.” He set the last potion on the counter with flourish and upended the pouch, jiggling it for emphasis, then leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.
“There’s more to learning magic than simply sparring.” Medea turned back to the sink and swore, hastily cutting off the water. She dumped the excess out of the cauldron and waved a hand. His potions began to parade back inside the pouch. When a space had cleared on the worktable, she set the cauldron down.
He glared at it.
“We can’t skip the lab, but,” she said firmly as he opened his mouth, “you can forego making potions until you’ve run through most of your current supply. I trust you to keep track of what you need. And make any new potions with harp root.”
It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Maybe he could press further. He relaxed his expression and pulled up a stool in front of the cauldron. “Thank you. This hasn’t been easy for me. I’m doing the best I can. Instead of retiring early every day, would you mind working with me later in the afternoons? Maybe an evening or two?”
Her body immediately tensed. You’d think he was asking the world of her.
“I’ll work as late as I can,” she finally said.
The victory was short lived. Medea would stay with him for an extra hour, two at most. As the day stretched on, she either ceased to follow the conversation, as though she’d mentally wilted, or else she grew increasingly irritable, snapping both verbally and magically.
It crossed his mind that she might be draining him to keep herself young and that he’d interrupted some sort of afternoon replenishment ritual. Many cultures had legends of ancient beings who fed upon youth to extend their own lives. While he was not strictly opposed to the idea—whatever kept him alive would be worth it—he did not want to fall prey to such a spell himself. From what he’d seen with Magic Sight, the whole island was enchanted. There was no way of escaping it, save through the gateway door, which Medea kept locked and warded.
He had to get out of here, if just for a time, and see if the affliction wore off. But how to get Medea to unlock the gateway room? Could he say he missed family? She wouldn’t buy that. He could say he just needed a day off to take care of some things, but after so many hours lost wallowing in bed, she would accuse him of being lazy.
He was still mulling over the problem one day as they practiced in the meadow. The malaise had not yet struck, and Medea was in a good mood. She was teaching him about shields, a topic she thoroughly enjoyed, evidenced by the animated way in which she spoke of them.
“People have no idea how versatile they can be! I use them for everything—blocking out sound, in place of shoes, preventing unwanted physical contact—they’re just so . . .”
Her brain was doing it again, struggling to find the word, and her hand struck an expectant pose.
“Wonderful?” he offered.
“I was going to say functional, but that doesn’t quite encompass it. Multifaceted? Anyway, today I’m going to show you how to create shields that block specific things. Generic shields are too light.” She made a slashing motion with her arm. “To be really effective, you need a shield that blocks a few things very well—usually physical blows or magical damage. Of course there are different types of magical damage, but for the most part you’re blocking energy. You need one shield that blocks magic. And farther from your body, you need one that blocks physical blows—”
“Are you saying I should have multiple shields?”
“Absolutely! Layers are essential. One shield is worthless. Make ten, and layer them with a space in between, like so.” She gestured to herself, as if he could see her invisible shields.
“A moment,” he said, and cast Magic Sight. She probably already knew he could cast it, and it would give him a better glimpse of her defenses, or so he hoped.
“Ah!” Nikolai cried out despite himself. Medea was worse than the hovel had been. It was like looking into the sun, if the sun was standing six feet away.
“I’m glad you’ve learned that spell. It does take some getting used to though. Try to have it on at all times.”
“On?” As before, he found himself squinting. Hard to concentrate with her blazing right there.
“You’re not quite ready for it yet, as you don’t have the mana to sustain constant spells, but further into your training I will school you in which spells to maintain at all times. They’re mostly defensive. Magic Sight is one of them, though with practice you can sense magic perfectly fine without it.”
A memory clicked into place. “Is that why you didn’t watch my duel—er, sparring match back in Haven?”
The corner of her mouth twisted into a smile. “Is that why you destroyed my chair? You didn’t think I was paying attention?”
“That was an accident.”
She palmed her face. “Again with the lies.”
A magical blow to his gut made him double over. “Do you always have to do that?” he said between gritted teeth.
“Yes. I’m trying to build an association between lies and pain, although I’ll admit it’s not working very well. Usually it only takes a couple days before apprentices start flinching whenever they lie.”
“Maybe I was telling the truth.”
“You expect me to believe you send lethal spells at your sparring partners?”
“When I know they can dodge them.”
Medea shook her head, resigned, and Nikolai realized he was killing her good mood. If he wanted her to unlock the damned gateway door, he was going about it all wrong.
“Yes, I was aiming for your chair. You had your nose in a book the whole time, and I thought you weren’t watching me. I got pissed. Sorry.” The apology felt lame and stupid.
“Well, I was. I can sense spells just fine without my eyes. Now, back to shields.”
Medea pointed to the boulder and bid him watch. One by one, she cast shields over it in layers so sheer they were difficult to discern against the backdrop of the island glow.
Nikolai bent to examine them closer. “Why the gaps?” She’d left about an inch of space between them.
“They’re imperative for blocking high-velocity projectiles. Bullets have a lot of kinetic energy for their size and can easily break through a standard shield if it’s not strong enough. Using multiple shields, with a cushion of air in between, slows their advance.”
“Can’t you just push more mana into the shield?”
“Yes, but it’s not very efficient. Since you don’t know where the bullet will strike, your mana has to be evenly distributed over a larger area, which makes the cost exponentially greater. Bullets can be dealt with in other ways, but that’s another lesson for another time. For now, I want you to focus on crafting a shield that repels magical attacks. We’ll add more shields later.”
He conjured a shield, and a bubble sprang to life. Unlike Medea’s shields, which had been barely visible with Magic Sight, his was completely opaque. “I can’t see shit in here.”
“Dismiss Magic Sight.”
“How?”
“Will it to stop. Or just focus on something else. It’s all in your head, not your eyes. Try to look at me.”
And suddenly he could. If he focused on Medea, he would “see” her in all her blazing glory, but if he wanted, he could switch back to the shield. “This is . . .” But he couldn’t think of what it was.
“It takes some getting used to. Ready?”
He nodded.
Medea launched one spell after another at his shield. Smaller fire spells, then larger fireballs. Each time she would have him tweak the shield slightly so that the next round could be blocked better. Eventually Medea dubbed his shield “satisfactory,” which was high praise coming from her, and switched to lightning spells.
Her good mood had returned. Casting seemed to bring that out in her, or maybe it was the act of throwing potentially deadly spells at him. He could sympathize with that. Sometimes you just needed to punch something. Nikolai took a breath to ask her about the locked door.
“Oh, before I forget,” said Medea, “remind me tomorrow to show you the gateway room, if you’re not . . . indisposed. It’s past time you had a day off. Both of us, actually. Every day you’re well I feel like we have to make up for lost time. I’m afraid I’ve been working you too hard.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” he said. Lightning slammed into his shield, forking into a dozen tiny paths leading off in every direction.
Fucking telepath. Making the first move allowed her to deflect blame when he inevitably became ill and couldn’t go. “How dare you accuse me of sabotaging your trip,” she’d say. “It was my idea!” The move was so goddamned transparent he was insulted she’d used it. Well, he’d drag his ass through the gateway one way or another.
17
GATEWAYS
Nikolai lay down to sleep, certain the next morning he would wake to find his mind clouded. It would be the perfect excuse for Medea to keep him here. She would shake her head and tell him that he couldn’t possibly go out in such a state, but don’t worry, rest, she could teach him how to use the gateways another day. Perhaps that was why he woke so early.
He had no way of telling the time, but the lab and library were empty, and it was dark when he peeked outside. Nikolai dressed quickly and summoned breakfast, eating hastily in the common room. A quick tug on the gateway door revealed it was still locked. He hadn’t really expected it to be open but felt compelled to check.
Reluctant to leave the common area, he perused the bookshelves. Mundane works, mostly fiction published within the last several years. He snorted at Animal Farm. No need to read that shit—he’d lived it. Amusing that capitalist countries believed their politicians didn’t use the same tactics. He grabbed a random book and sat down to read, though his mind was too occupied to concentrate on the words.
Would Medea really let him go? Unlikely. But what to do then? He’d have to figure out a way to get past her wards. There had to be something in the library, but it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Did the wards respond to touch or presence? If it was the latter, he could maneuver Medea to stand near the door one day, tricking it into thinking she was the person to open it. Maybe the door itself could be blasted open. The damage would be obvious, but at least he’d be through.
The sound of a door opening drew his attention. Medea emerged on the landing above. “It takes a day off to get you up this early?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get a bit of reading in.” He raised the book in his lap.
“How is it?”
“You mean there’s a book in this place you haven’t read?”
That earned him a chuckle. “Those are my to-read shelves. I read fast, but not fast enough.”
She descended the spiral staircase. He replaced the book and joined her at the warded door. It opened to reveal a circular room. A round table with an ornate box sat in the center, but otherwise it was devoid of furniture. On the opposite wall, blue runes framed a doorway.
Nikolai entered and turned in place. The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with maps spanning the globe. There was no consistent size or style to any of them. It took him a moment to realize the room itself was one large map of the world constructed of dozens of smaller maps. A decorative border of tiles circled the wall above the maps, just below the ceiling.
Tiny lights twinkled on the maps in green, red, white, and flashing yellow. Sometimes they marked cities, other times they marked locations of no obvious significance. A trail of lights followed the Silk Road from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to China.
Europe was overwhelmingly represented and contained the most lights. Its maps were disproportionately larger and more detailed. In the East, lights were mostly restricted to large inland or coastal cities, probably following some long-ago trade route. The United States had the second-most dense collection of lights, with a higher concentration on the East Coast. Except for Antarctica, each continent had at least one light.
