An Unexpected Apprentice

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “My lord, I have reports here from brother and sister wizards. It does no harm now to tell you that the book was hidden in Sheatovra. I first heard from a wizard I know, Indrescala, who lives at some remove from that secret mountain. She sent me word of a poor farmer who came to her claiming that the cattle in his field had been cursed. My friend visited that field, and found that the animals had been transformed horribly, as if their flesh was clay and some child had decided to remold them but did not know how. The ones that were still alive were in terrible pain.”

  Tildi let out a gasp with the other listeners.

  “The farmer said that glowing words appeared on each beast. Hence, you see, their reality had become within a hand’s reach of anyone who might wish to meddle with it, and someone did. She wrote to me to see if I knew any destructive magic that could cause such deformation. It began to put ideas into my mind. I wrote to others of my order asking their counsel. I must tell you, we fought coming to the conclusion we did, but we had little choice, given the evidence.”

  “What if it was just a curse?” Halcot asked.

  “The chances of that are so slim, and slimmer still when I tell you the latest dire news I have from the south. I received this only two weeks ago from Indrescala, and I did not hesitate a moment before sending for all of you.” Olen raised a scroll from among the papers on his lap. “My lords and ladies, the guardians are dead. All of them. The mountaintop was breached. The book is gone.”

  “Well, why don’t you just find it and put it back again?” the centaur lord asked with some asperity.

  “We have been looking for it,” Edynn spoke up. “All of us wizards, as well as our friends and helpers all over the world.” She gestured around the room. The magicians bowed, but so did the more humbly dressed visitors, such as the troubadour and the merchants. “It is no trouble at all to conceal oneself from magical scrutiny. I can do it myself. This is much more difficult. I could even have caused harm to a herd of cattle half a world away. That is very difficult, but not outside the reach of my talents. It is the glowing runes that prove that the thief went that way. The book must have been close to the herd for that to arise upon the poor beasts. That means that whoever did it is not only concealing his passage, but the trail as well. We must rely upon keen-eyed observers to tell us where to follow.”

  “Why could you not scry out the path of this thief?” Halcot demanded.

  “We have tried,” growled Komorosh, shivering in his bearskin. “The pulses of the earth tell us nothing but that a great power walks upon it, but not where.”

  “How can you possibly miss something like that?”

  Porrak, an older wizard in long brown robes, snorted. He had a long, gray beard that straggled over the breast of a worn, threadbare gray robe. “My lord, have you a spyglass?”

  “Yes, I have. What does that have to do with it?”

  Porrak pointed a long, broken, and chipped nail at Halcot. “Can you see all of a vista at once with it?”

  “No, of course not. I can see what’s in front of my lens.”

  “That is how it is with our magical farsight. We can see every inch of a landscape, but one inch at a time. I am sure in time we can spy out the thief’s passage. Soon, I hope.”

  “Again, you say the thief,” Lindora spoke up. “Who took this book?”

  Olen shook his head. “Alas, we do not know.”

  “The thief must be a master wizard of the most high level,” Serafina said, rising to her feet. “In order to penetrate the book’s defenses, even to touch it, one must have magical safeguards that are out of the reach of ordinary beings. We fear, that is, my mother and I fear, that it could be one of the Shining Ones. Knemet may have returned.”

  “But he’d be centuries old!” Balindor burst out.

  “That would mean nothing to them,” Olen pointed out. “I’m a few centuries old myself. And they had the benefit of being able to rewrite their own runes to be rid of the pains and weakness of old age. There have always been rumors of Knemet walking the earth. No one ever knew when or if he died, you know. Nor most of his companions.” He shook the parchment roll until it rattled. “It does not matter who took it, my lord. The important thing is to recover it before immeasurable harm can be done. We must find it, determine that it is the genuine article, and wrest it from its captor. On this the lives of every living being depends.”

  “Very well, then,” Balindor said, smacking his palms upon his knees. “We are getting down to practical matters. What does it look like, so that if we encounter it we can, er, bring it back?”

  “Ah,” Olen said. He flicked his hand, and a thick roll of parchment flew to his hand from the spot on the table where it had been waiting for just such a moment. Tildi watched approvingly as Olen drew a couple of runes upon the air and set the scroll between them. It unrolled and hung on the air like a line full of washing, but glorious washing, a fair analog for the garments worn by the lords and ladies in the room. Each of the runes had been carefully drawn in golden ink, and decorated with many colors, rendering it as beautiful as an illustration. She studied the open book briefly before it began to move slowly over the heads of the crowd, allowing everyone to see it.

  “This is a poor copy, but an ancient one,” Olen said. Balindor stood up and put out his hands to catch the flying book for a closer look, then snatched his hands away before he touched it. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s quite safe. This one has none of the power of its original. The parchment is just that: parchment. I wish you could see the true book. I’ve seen it in visions evoked with the help of the ancients’ diaries. Astoundingly beautiful. A masterwork. The Shining Ones were artists as well as philosophers of great ability. Here, see.”

  With a wave Olen created another book. The copy resembled it somewhat, in the way that the retelling resembles an adventure. The colors were more vivid yet. It seemed almost alive to Tildi. The visitors caught their collective breath. “Do you see? It is an integrated whole. Every part of it is lovely, well made, and well thought-out, and deadly dangerous.”

  Olen caused the book to spool slowly from one stick to the other. Tildi caught a glimpse of a rune she knew almost as well as she did her own name.

  “Stop!” she cried, then blushed, ashamed of her outburst. Olen turned mildly quizzical green eyes to her. She was ashamed for bursting out in public, without the permission of her master.

  “Go on,” he said. “You have the right to speak, Tildi.”

  “I know that sign,” she said, “or something very like it.”

  “You saw one of the runes in the Great Book? Where did you see it?” Olen demanded.

  With every eye following her, Tildi dashed out of the grand hall. She hurried up to her small room. From Teldo’s books she unearthed the precious leaf and carried it back past the curious faces to Olen. His brows rose almost all the way up his face.

  “Do you see?” she asked, holding it out to him and pointing to the hovering vision. “It is the same.”

  “Why, so it is,” Halcot said, coming up to peer from one to the other over the top of her head. “By the stars, it is beautiful. Pity there’s so little of it left. Is this the fate of your so-called Great Book, Olen? Was it cut up and scattered around the world for people to find?”

  “No,” Olen said. “Ah, Tildi, what a find! Let me make certain.” He beckoned, and the parchment copy floated back to him. He wound through it briskly, until he came to the page. “Yes, indeed. My soul, I never dreamed …” Tildi stood at his elbow, looking down at it. The single leaf practically glowed beside the copy. He gestured toward it. “May I?”

  “Certainly,” Tildi said, holding out the leaf to him. Olen made it hover in the air and turn about so he could see every angle, but Tildi noticed that he did not touch it.

  “Yes. My word, a true copy. Where did you get this?”

  “My—” Tildi stopped herself. She almost let the truth about Teldo slip. “My mother bought it for us from a peddler many years ago hoping it was
a storybook. It’s been in our household all this time.”

  “Ah. Is this what you learned the true language from?”

  “No, sir. We couldn’t read this leaf. I’ve got other books, plus a few other texts bought from traveling peddlers and from a shop in the Tillerton.”

  “You didn’t go there yourself, did you?” Lakanta asked shrewdly.

  Tildi met her eyes, much more comfortable to be addressed by a woman. “Oh, no. My brothers did all the trading outside the Quarters.”

  The blond woman nodded. “I thought so. Never saw a female smallfolk in all my days of trading. You’re the first.” She grinned, and Tildi smiled shyly back.

  “So you couldn’t read it,” Olen asked.

  Tildi shook her head.

  “Indeed not!” snorted a large, black-haired wizard, wrapped in a heavy fur cloak despite the day’s heat.

  “Indeed, yes.” Olen smiled. “Oddly enough, your mother’s instinct was correct. It does tell a story. Masawa, I believe this is your speciality.”

  One of the dark-robed scholars came up to look at it and studied it with a smile on his face. “I believe, yes, this describes the giant yew tree that stands with its roots in the stone on a small island in the center of the fork of the River Moor. I’ve seen it myself.”

  “In my land,” Lowan boomed.

  The scholar turned to bow to him, one hand upon the breast of his robe. “Yes, my lord. The tree is ancient, older than you may dream. It was born more than six thousand years ago. Its whole story is here in one beautifully drawn rune.”

  Tildi examined the rune. For the first time she was able to see tree separate from the rest of the image, as well as river and many other general signs, including the one that depicted sixty centuries. If she had written out this tale, she would have used several word runes and a few individual signs to spell out unfamiliar words such as Balierenn. It was an art to combine them as this scribe had done. She was pleased to be able to understand a little of it, after so many years. If only Teldo could have lived to be here and know all this about his most treasured possession!

  “It’s a story that can be told in many ways,” the scholar explained.

  “And you handled this?” Olen asked, with a glance of respect at Tildi.

  “Yes, we all did. It hurt a little at first. Tingly. Burning. But it was so pretty Teldo and I kept trying until we could.”

  “A mystery begins to reveal itself,” Olen said, nodding. “There have never been many wizards among your kind. It’s possible that this fragment of the Great Book, by mere contact, has unlocked talents in you that might never have come out in other circumstances. Time and Nature alone know what years with the book itself would have done.”

  Tildi was crestfallen. “I thought we … I mean, I thought I was meant to be a wizard.”

  “Tildi,” Olen said gently. “It’s a rare gift, no matter how you came by it. What you did, beginning at a very early age, might have killed a weaker person. You have increased your grasp of magic. That did not come by accident.”

  “Don’t see what all the excitement is over a shred of parchment,” Halcot snorted. “May I see it?”

  “Certainly,” said the wizard. “Go ahead.”

  The lord of Rabantae plucked the leaf out of midair, and immediately dropped it. His face contorted and his hands began to tremble. “Feels like fire,” he gasped. “My hands!” Tildi sprang up to see if she could help. The king’s fingertips were burned almost black.

  The young female wizard bustled forward and spread her hand over Halcot’s burned flesh. “Easy, now. Easy.”

  When she moved back, the skin had been restored to pink. “You’re going to have to build those sword calluses up all over again, my lord.”

  “Thank you, Lady Serafina,” Halcot said. His face was lined and drawn as he turned to Tildi. “The pain was terrible! How did you do that, young lady? You must be made of tough fiber.”

  “I … we didn’t think much of it at the time,” she admitted, with retrospective horror at what could have befallen her family. “It didn’t do that to any of us. Not even once. My mother would have thrown it away if it had.”

  “Intelligent design,” Olen said. “I told you, smallfolk were made to be tougher than they look. I must state, however, that the Great Book is many times more powerful than this.”

  The scholar clicked his tongue over the leaf. Tildi noticed he didn’t try to touch it, either. “Where did the peddler get this?”

  Tildi shrugged. “I didn’t know. We don’t see him anymore. We used to see him around planting, and again at harvest. It’s been,” she reckoned backwards, “about two and a half years since the last time he came. A nice man. Pretty close to our size, with big ears and a thick, blond beard and crinkly eyes.”

  “This comes long before the theft of the book, Olen,” Balindor said. “Two and a half years!”

  “There have been rumors that Knemet has been trying to find indications of the book’s whereabouts for centuries, my lord prince,” Edynn said. “It took him ten thousand years, but he seems to have found it.”

  “Now, Edynn,” another wizard said, clad in red livery. “We do not know that it is Knemet who has stolen it.”

  “I cannot hold out hopes like you, Crispian,” the white-haired wizardess said. Beside her, Serafina sniffed disdainfully. “It would take very powerful magic to have stolen it, not to mention an utter disregard for life to have harmed those poor cows. Do not forget them!”

  Cadwallan shook his head. “I cannot pretend to understand the magical arts. Why would proximity matter?”

  “Well, your majesty, lords and ladies,” Olen said, “allow me to demonstrate. I can tell by my art that this is a true copy, made directly from the book itself. Even though it is not the Great Book, it has power because it was in contact with it at one time.” He waved a hand, and sent the fragment to hover beside an unoccupied chair. “And when I put it near an object, you see how the rune appears.”

  To Tildi the chair’s faint rune began to glow brighter.

  “I don’t see anything,” complained Balindor, squinting.

  “The rest of us can,” Edynn assured him.

  “I can, too,” Tildi said. “I’ve been seeing runes like that on my travels, ever since I left the Quarters. In trees. Even in the sun. Do you mean it is my leaf that is making it do that?”

  Olen’s shaggy eyebrows went up. “This is very important. Very. It would mean that where the book passed, the runes are most likely rendered visible. We must discuss this later. No, highness, I did not expect that most of you could see them unaided. Here, my lord.” He took the scrying glass off the table and set it on the floor. He held out both hands and began to mutter to himself. The glass grew until it was taller than Tildi. The image of the chair was inside the globe, the rune in it aflame.

  “Ah, there it is!” Balindor exclaimed, as the symbol became golden to Tildi’s unaided eyes. “And you say that every living thing has a rune within it somewhere?”

  “Not just living things. Everything,” Olen said.

  “How is this pretty page dangerous?” asked a well-dressed merchant with a shiny, red face. “My scribes could turn out something just like this in a day.”

  “Your scribes could labor until the end of time, but without the talent to see and draw true runes they could not come close to evoking even a thousandth of the power that this book commands. Even this small leaf of a single copy is dangerous.”

  “Bah! Illusions!”

  “Would you like to touch it?” Halcot challenged the red-faced man. “I assure you, the burns on my hands were no illusion. They still ache.”

  “Yes, but handling it is one thing. How could it affect something that it does not even touch?”

  “The connection between the written word and the thing is made strong by proximity.” Olen brought the leaf to hover beside a foot-thick candle in a huge bronze stand. “Watch. Do you see the rune within it?”

  Tildi could. A si
mple glyph, gleaming coldly in the wax, broke through into ordinary sight. She had studied candle. There was little difference between the general symbol and this one.

  Lindora beamed. “Ah! How interesting. It is not at all the same as the chair. Are the runes in all things so different?”

  “Oh, yes,” Olen said. “Just like the runes you use to read and write today, but flexible and self-altering. Each to its own design and good time, as well. All things change. People grow, age, die. Plants bloom and wither. Stone crumbles, metal is mined, worked, rusts away. The runes show the alterations as they occur. Behold. I will make it larger so that you can easily see the changes I will make in it now. Tildi, fire.”

  Tildi was startled out of her reverie. Fire? When she had been doing it incorrectly all this time? She looked at him with dismay. He gave her an encouraging gesture. Straightening her tunic unnecessarily, she stood up. It was a simple spell. She had done it dozens of times on the way to Overhill, and a thousand times since.

  Don’t make a fool of yourself in front of company, she told herself severely. Ano chnetegh tal!

  All her practice proved worthwhile. The spell didn’t fail her. She managed to cast a light between the tip of forefinger and thumb. The green flame flickered into life as if she had been all alone. She was so amazed that it worked that well she nearly let it burn her before transferring it to the wick. The wizards in the audience nodded their approval, and the nonmagical visitors seemed impressed.

  “Do you see the change in the rune?” Olen asked.

  They all leaned forward to study it.

  “It has a little finger in the center of it now,” Magpie observed.

  “Yes. It’s red and yellow,” Merricot, son of Halcot, said with disdain.

  “A candle with a flame. We learned things like that in our reading lessons as children. This rune is fancier than most of the ones we use for every day.”

  “Now, see what happens when I change it.”

  Olen reached into the gigantic image of the rune. With a bold stroke, he enlarged the thin red stroke to a bold one. The flame at the top of the candle flared up into huge flame. The top half of the candle blew outward in gobbets of molten wax as if an invisible hand had smashed down on it.