Dark apprentice, p.27
Dark Apprentice, page 27
“You realize the definition of immoral means—”
“I know what it means!” The outburst almost got her going again. He took a breath. Anger wouldn’t help, not here. “What I’m trying to say is—”
“I understand the sentiment of what you are saying.” Back to her formal diction. After an uncomfortably long silence, she said, “What view would you prefer?”
He didn’t have to think twice. “The ocean by the cave with the hot pools. I like watching the waves crash against the rocks.”
Medea nodded. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
He couldn’t let her leave, not like this. “What did you want to see me about?”
“Huh?” She fingered her hip pouch. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” Medea left and he rose to close the door. Across the common room, she threw something into the fireplace on her way to the library.
24
THE GIFT
Medea bit her lip and tried not to cry. When she’d found the book on the shelf, she hadn’t recognized it, but then she bought so many books it could be difficult to remember those she hadn’t read yet.
An unread book was just a cover—a promise of ideas or emotions. Like people, they introduced themselves and tried to put their best foot forward. It wasn’t until you spent time with them that you got to know their true nature.
Nikolai had been like that. On the surface, he seemed like the rest of her dark apprentices—completely driven, with no thought of others—and yet at times he showed a new facet of himself. Behind the Spotted Sow he’d saved that girl. He might not have understood why, but he was still compelled to do the right thing.
And now, he’d given her a book that was both a connection to her soul and a slap in the face. There were overarching themes of people becoming disconnected from each other, as she was, but at the heart was a story of censorship.
For the first time ever, she was censoring her teaching, and now Nikolai had thrown down the gauntlet. He’d chosen the medium she valued most, probably combing through hundreds of books to find one with the perfect message. He knew exactly what she was doing, and he thought it was wrong.
It was wrong. Restricting information—this wasn’t her. Who was she becoming?
With shaking hands, she set the book down. She had to do something for Nikolai. Such an auspicious gift demanded something in return. But what?
Of course! She would show him her gardens. There he would find the ingredients he needed to control the curse that chipped away at his life. Not that she could explicitly point out the plants he needed—that would be interfering—but she could give him an assignment that would lead him to the answer he sought. It was an assignment she gave most of her apprentices anyway, so it wasn’t as if she was doing anything different with him. She wasn’t breaking her rules. She was simply moving the lesson up in the queue.
Medea picked up the book and went to find Nikolai.
The distant creaking of stairs alerted Nikolai to Medea’s impending approach. He pocketed the list of poisons he’d been making and began to fill a cauldron with water before she got on him about the boiling exercise again.
“Nikolai?”
His back was to the door when it opened, but when Medea spoke, he could hear something off in her voice. Did she know about his late-night excursion to the cave? He’d spent hours scanning the cliffs with Magic Sight to no avail. There were no other entrances he could find, and no wards. If rock magic existed, he’d have to learn it next. Though he hadn’t seen any wards that would alert her to his trespass, it was possible he’d missed one in the dark.
He turned around, expecting to see fury. Instead, Medea’s face was strained, her eyes puffy. Had she been crying? He’d never seen her so upset.
“This . . . what you . . .” She held out a book, Fahrenheit 451.
It took a moment to register what he was even looking at, and then it clicked—this was the novel he’d procured in London, the one about book burnings. He’d placed it on her to-read shelf ages ago. His book had made her cry—wonderful!
He sat and put on a concerned face while Medea searched for the words to express whatever the hell she was trying to say. “Didn’t you like it? The bookseller said—”
“Thank you.” She clasped the book to her chest like a treasure.
What? She’d liked it? It was supposed to make her upset! But then why was she crying?
“You’re right.” Medea shook her head. “I . . . you’re right.”
Normally a phrase he loved to hear, but in this case, he had no idea what the context was. “You’re welcome.” What the hell was in that book?
She smiled at him wistfully. “I want to show you my gardens. We will be collecting plant specimens—”
What the fuck? Her mind made the most bizarre leaps.
“—your job will be to prepare and catalog all the plants.” Medea said this like it was a wonderful gift she bestowed on him rather than yet another boring task.
“Come.” She beckoned him toward the door.
Now? Since when did she alter their schedule on the spur of the moment? What the hell was in that book? He probably should have read it first.
She led him to the gateway room and pointed to the green lights on the maps. “Each of these is a garden. Familiarize yourself with which plants grow where, so you can replace potion ingredients as needed.”
He tuned out as she lectured about climate, only listening again when she brought up her security spells. The gardens were protected by a progressively harsh ring of wards.
The outermost wards induced hallucinations and a nagging sense of being hunted or watched, designed to scare people away. The second group of wards caused injury.
Here Medea sighed and crossed her arms. “Many people make the mistake of causing serious injury to feet or legs. You want trespassers to be able to get away. The wound should be bad enough that they turn around and seek help, but not so grave that they die and attract attention or can’t leave at all.”
The final wards killed and dissolved the body.
“You do all this, just to protect plants?”
“Not all the gardens, no. But the Mundane are encroaching everywhere. It’s a good way to scare people away from building in a particular area. They think it’s haunted or patrolled by dangerous creatures.”
How many mythological creatures had sprung up from Magi using such spells? Both the Scottish kelpie and Slavic rusalka fit the profile. People saw a creature, ignored the warnings, and then vanished, never to be heard from again.
Medea grabbed the peg and made a show of placing it somewhere in southern Mexico. “This is where we’re going today.”
As if he cared.
The door opened to a hallway of stone and Nikolai stepped through. Warm, moist air threatened to smother him. He took several steps before he realized the sense of wrongness that assaulted him whenever he left the island was absent. He cast Magic Sight. The hallway glowed with the same yellow as Medea’s island, only fainter. What was this place?
Medea led him along the corridor until it opened to a stone platform surrounded by lush jungle. Colorful parrots screeched overhead and alighted in the trees, where they vanished in the mass of green. The platform was part of a large stone structure, though it was impossible to make out much from their vantage point.
“People once came here to worship,” she said. “The very structure is permeated with their magic. Not a bad place to cast spells that need an extra push.”
They walked down a flight of stairs that seemed to go on forever, periodically broken up by more platforms. He looked behind them. From here he could finally recognize the shape—a great stone pyramid.
“Did you know the people who lived here?”
“No. I got here after they’d been wiped out. The New World was so vast, and I could only be in so many places at once.” Medea shook her head. “Tragic. All that knowledge lost.”
“But the gateway?”
“Ah.” She turned to him and smiled. “You can only create gateways on location, and gaining passage to the New World was damnably difficult as a woman.”
“Couldn’t you just . . . ?” Nikolai waved his hands theatrically as Medea had done during their first interaction. “Magic!”
“Those ships were close quarters. Bullying my way onto one wasn’t in anyone’s best interest. In the end, money won out. It always does.” There was a note of derision in the last statement.
Trees created a corridor over the stairs at the base of the pyramid and vines crept up to meet them. Under the canopy, the world dimmed as the foliage blocked out the sky. Stone changed to a thick carpet of leaves and roots, the yellow glow viewed through Magic Sight dimming fractionally.
Medea paused and looked about as if considering something, her bare toes flexing against the forest floor. Eventually she pointed vaguely to the right. “That way, I think.”
Was she guessing? How far would they have to travel across the jungle? If he thought the heat was unbearable when he first exited the gateway, it was nothing compared to now. Sweat soaked through his shirt in the brief time it took them to descend. Insects clamored for attention on every bare patch of skin.
Medea conjured a propeller-like blade and sent it spinning along the path in front of them, slashing apart the dense growth. They hiked for what seemed like hours. She took no discernible path, sometimes veering off in another direction without a word to show him a plant she’d spotted, at which point he was required to collect samples.
She flew gracefully from ground to root to tree, balancing on bare feet and steadying herself with one hand against a trunk. When a larger obstacle blocked their way, she simply flew over it. Nikolai attempted to levitate, but controlling his body while in motion was an awkward process. He ended up too far in one direction or another or went too fast and smacked into whatever they were trying to pass.
On the other side, Medea would be waiting patiently, suspended in the air, offering neither criticism nor help. After the third time, he snapped and asked why she wasn’t instructing him in an obviously Useful skill, and she replied that it wasn’t why they were there.
“Besides, you’ll remember the way much better if you walk it.”
Like he would ever willingly come back here.
Eventually he got a system down where he levitated straight up, then manually pulled himself forward using vines and lower branches before settling back to the ground.
At midday, he suggested they break for lunch and Medea informed him they were almost there. He’d begun to doubt she even knew where she was going. Fifteen minutes later, she stopped at the base of a large tree and beckoned him.
She pointed to the canopy and spent a good fifteen minutes detailing the life cycle of moss. Just when she seemed to be winding down, she tapped a cluster of leaves protruding from the bark of a nearby tree and launched into another lecture. He tried his best to pretend to listen, though he could think of little else beyond the oppressive humidity and the collection of bug bites begging to be scratched.
“Since you can’t fly up there, I’ll collect the moss and you can do the Bromeliads.”
Oh good, she’d finally stopped.
“The cuttings must be taken from the center, near the base. You see how the leaves make a little cup in the middle? Look inside.”
He peered inside the plant. The dense shade made it difficult to see anything, so he illuminated his hand and tried again—water and little black dots floating in gelatinous spheres.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“Frog eggs, remember? They increase the potency of the leaves. Make sure you collect samples from plants that have them, but don’t harm the eggs.” Medea looked around the ground for something. “Here!” She pointed to a section of root that had broken apart at the top and now contained a shallow pool of water. “Slide any eggs you find into there.” Her hand disappeared into her pouch and returned with a pair of pruning shears. “Keep these on you at all times.”
Medea rose into the canopy and began scraping moss off the tree limbs. The ground below her soon became littered with moss she found unacceptable for whatever reason. Pluck, sniff, throw. She was careful never to levitate directly above his position. Probably scared he’d look up and see the cobwebs between her legs.
“Try to get as close to the base as you can,” she called. “That’s where it’s the most potent.”
Repeating herself again. When he was immortal, he’d take steps to ensure he didn’t become just as senile. He sliced neatly through another leaf. Plants. He came to her for curses and necromancy, and she made him cut up plants—it was Petrov all over again. The sooner he discovered her angle, the better. The dungeon had been a dead end. If he wanted to know what became of her apprentices, he’d have to find out from the source. But how to do it without arousing suspicion?
“A lot of your lessons revolve around plants,” he called up. “Do you ever get apprentices specializing in nature magic?”
“No, sadly.” A clump of moss landed below Medea’s tree.
“Well, that’s a shame. All that knowledge gone to waste.” The gentle scrapes above ceased, and Nikolai chanced a look up.
Medea peered at him curiously, tool poised in her hand. “Thinking of studying nature magic?”
Lying would be too obvious. “No, I’m just curious. You said most of your apprentices are like me. In my experience, people recall the bad easier than the good.”
“You think my perception of these apprentices has colored my memory.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
She barked out a laugh. “No offense taken. It’s a good point. Logical. Of course, in my experience, people also remember things as being better than they actually were.” She tapped the blunt tool against her chin. “Let’s see, in the past few hundred years or so, there was a necromancer, a demonologist, a pyromancer—”
Names. He needed names. But as usual, she had none. This was how she thought of people, how she’d thought of him prior to learning his name, if she even remembered it.
“And what’s my name?” he asked.
Her recitation continued without pause. “—another necromancer, Nikolai—” At least she remembered him properly. “—that guy who was really into blood—I think he wanted to become a vampire—”
He paused his leaf clipping. “Is that a real thing?”
“No. You know much blood goes into a decent healing potion. Easy to see how the legend started. That didn’t stop him from trying. Got himself stabbed in a brothel in France, I think. Or was that . . . ? No, wrong century. Then there was the Botanist. He loved this place.” She waved her tool around. “Lots of rare plants.”
“You said you didn’t have any nature apprentices lately.”
“I only call him ‘the Botanist’ for his love of plants. Nature wasn’t his specialty. No school was. A bit of necromancy, a bit of demonology. A lot of defensive spells. Mostly, he wanted to sharpen his skill in combat. He was a decent student. I was sorry to lose him after only three years.” Her gentle scraping started back up.
Something wasn’t right. She’d briefly referred to the Botanist in the present tense. “He challenged you?”
“Not at all. Was applying for a job and figured he had all”—her voice strained as she yanked persistently on a vine—“he needed.” It came free suddenly and she flew back several feet into an adjacent tree. She coiled the vine about her hand and deposited it in her pouch before resuming scraping.
“What job?”
“Collective Enforcer.”
Nikolai’s head jerked up, his pruner catching an entire plant rather than a single leaf. The plant tumbled to the ground, a frog with it, neatly severed in two. “What?”
She smirked, evidently delighted to share this tidbit. “I told him he’d be blacklisted if he trained with me, but he wanted to try anyway. Apparently, he got the job.”
“Really? Where’s he stationed?”
“Oh, he’s retired now. Moved back to Germany.”
He resumed clipping. She’d given him enough to go on. The Collective was bound to have records of their past Enforcers. All he had to do was lean on Harper to ask his contacts within the organization.
They worked for a time in silence, the air an oppressive blanket of moisture. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face and back. He mopped his brow with a kerchief, for all the good it did in the humidity. As well try to dry himself off in the middle of a shower.
“Have we collected enough yet?” he asked.
“Nearly. I’m almost done.” She floated down and landed on a root while he stowed the last of the leaves in his pouch.
“Your turn,” she said. “Find the temple.”
“Excuse me?”
Medea spread her arms wide. “Look at where we are! This is the perfect place to practice your magical perception. Cast your senses wide, locate the temple, and return to it.”
She couldn’t be serious. He scanned her face to be sure. She was.
He thought back to her lessons in the forest and tried to regain that meditative state.
“Excellent!” she said. “Don’t take too long. It rains in the afternoons here. I’ll see you at home.” Medea zipped toward the canopy. The branches moved to allow her to pass and then she was gone.
Ditched. In the middle of the fucking jungle.
He whipped out his speed dagger and wand, taking aim at a nearby tree and pretending it was Medea.
“IgnisIgnisIgnisIgnisIgnis.” The flames erupted so fast they stabilized into a solid beam. He scored the tree and half a dozen others. The clusters of plants he’d been collecting sizzled and popped as they ignited along with their amphibian occupants. Birds cried out and fled the raging inferno. Only mana exhaustion forced Nikolai to stop.
