An Unexpected Apprentice

by Jody Lynn Nye

  The smallfolk girl summoned up all the resolution she had within her. “Then I must do it.”

  “Being useful again?” Lakanta said with a chuckle.

  “We smallfolk pride ourselves on it,” Tildi said lightly, but her insides were still writhing nervously. Edynn was not fooled by her tone.

  “Tildi, I want you to understand how dangerous it is to undertake this task.”

  “I am not harmed by my leaf. I know it may be different when we find the Great Book itself.”

  “That is not what I mean. You have already said how attractive the power felt to you from the residue that we encountered in Walnut Tree. That concerned me greatly. To have the absolute ability that the book would give you is seductive. You must be stronger than any of us. There could be a backlash of power when we touch its aura. It may seek to overpower you!”

  Tildi turned to face her seriously. “I know. Edynn, I am afraid of what could happen, but I will do it. I have reacted so often in the recent past, not acted after careful consideration, and if you had known me before I left home, you’d know it’s not the way I usually am.” Tildi shook her head. “I don’t know how I’ll manage if that happens. I know you will do what you can for me. All I can say is I’ll try. A lot of people are relying upon me. I’m used to that. I’ve been running a farm household since I was very small. Let me try.”

  Edynn smiled and put an arm around her. “I forget you are not as young a child as you look. I would be proud to have your assistance. Come, let us begin.”

  Serafina scowled.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Edynn’s style of teaching was not quite like Olen’s, whose practice was more of the “study it yourself and ask me questions afterwards” school. Edynn liked to go side by side through the parts of a spell. Tildi was reminded of how Teldo had taught her to raise objects, one very small step at a time.

  “First we must establish the identity of your fragment,” Edynn instructed her. “Like everything else, it has its own rune. Do you see it? Study it closely.”

  Tildi unrolled the leaf and held it in both hands. She had not paid much attention to it, but the handsome section of parchment did indeed have its own sigil. It appeared to her to sit in the upper-left-hand corner of the page, appropriately, as if it was the capital letter of a document she was about to write. It was a complex rune. I have. I am.

  “Mark it well. Unlike a page that is made separately, this one was part of a book. The rune is almost frayed there, and there.” Edynn pointed to a couple of zigzags on the edge of the symbol. “Those show where it was cut, but I am more inclined to think, torn out of the copy. The stitching or glue is long gone, and the paper is smooth with age. See what it tells you about the parent book?”

  Tildi nodded.

  “But the parent has a parent, a progenitor. Through the rune I want you to reach back to this page’s formation. Feel your way back to the day it was made. Be there with it.”

  Tildi stared at it intently. How funny that an object that had been around the house all these years had so many small characteristics she had never noticed before. Every detail seemed to burn into her memory.

  Edynn touched her shoulder.

  The rune seemed to open up like a flower, drawing her eye to look into its heart. She saw a blank page. A pen, gleaming snow-white and tipped in gold, touched down upon its flawless surface and drew the image of the yew tree. How deft the scribe, to be able to create such a complicated sign in just a few strokes. Brilliant color grew out from the golden lines, completing the image, that added in everything from the sky above it to the taste of the water the tree drank with its roots. Another parchment was set down just at the upper margin, with the same rune showing, but this one looked somehow more real.

  Tildi’s eyes widened.

  “I see it,” she said excitedly. “It’s the Great Book!”

  “Learn its rune. Touch it through the past history of the page in your hands. Can you?” Edynn’s voice seemed to come from very far away.

  Tildi put her left fingertip on the spot where the Great Book had rested. For the first time she noticed that there was warmth there. It was not quite the same as the feeling of magic, more a sensation of completeness that was satisfying in and of itself. How fascinating! There were voices. Tildi thought she heard someone say the word ink into her left ear.

  In the meantime, Serafina was busy. She had spread out the map on the ground. It was a good one, measuring the height of a man and one-and-a-half heights wide. She smoothed her hands across the surface of the chart. Silver lines sprang into being along the roads and other features.

  “Hey, now, that’s a good map!” Teryn exclaimed, forgetting herself. “Don’t ruin it.”

  “She is not,” Edynn said. “It’s an improvement, Captain. I promise you.”

  Each of the castles and towns indicated on the chart became more detailed as the pale sheen touched them, too. The silver lines ran off the edges into the grass.

  “It’s ready,” Serafina said, the long oval of her face concentrated. Her mother nodded.

  “Tildi! Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Tildi said dreamily. The voices were discussing which rune to add next. She could have told them to draw the temple that was just being built near Balierenn’s great river. It would be most beautiful there, beside the tree’s rune. She felt satisfaction as the lovely white pen came to rest in the spot she would have chosen, and began to write on the shimmering paper.

  Edynn’s voice was insistent. “Tildi, where is the Great Book now? Tildi! Show us on the map. Find it for us. Where is the book?”

  Reluctantly, Tildi dragged her mind to the present. Her body wasn’t her own, but she didn’t mind. She trusted Edynn. She let go of the leaf with her right hand and stretched out her forefinger to the chart.

  “There? In the south?” Lakanta said with dismay. “What have we been following then? I told you we ought to have tried the southern road.”

  “Wait,” Edynn said softly. “Wait.”

  A gold light appeared on the map where Tildi had touched it. It spread out more and more thinly over the surface until it had nearly vanished. Then, a few faint gold dots winked into existence.

  Edynn looked pleased. “I think these are other fragments of the book that Tildi herself carries, and possibly other copies as well. Here is ours. How interesting to see how many survive after ten thousand years. Ah, yes, there’s the one that Lokfur was studying in Knerit. Look, there!”

  Another dot, ten times as bright as the others, appeared in the upper-right quadrant of the map. It was also the only one that was moving.

  “There he is,” Edynn said with satisfaction. “Mother and Father, but you have led us a chase! Hmm, not the most hospitable terrain, is it? I know that area. The lands are broken from erosion, unsteady footing.”

  “He’s hundreds of miles away, lady,” Teryn said, measuring the distance between the first dot and the glow. “Seeing’s not the same as catching.”

  “How right you are, Captain. But we know where he is now.” She pushed the map back toward Teryn, who folded it so the section with the glowing dot was outward. “Tildi.”

  Tildi sat staring at her leaf. She was enjoying listening to the voices. They spoke an archaic version of human, but she understood most of their words well enough. Teldo would have loved to hear the scholarly discussion they were having about the merits of drawing runes. Was it better to use one long stroke, or a series of small ones?

  “Tildi, come back to us now.”

  It was lovely in the scriptorium, with sunlight pouring in the windows. The narrow hand holding the pen made a light line.

  “Tildi!”

  Tildi blinked, and found herself staring down at the leaf in her lap. There, to the right of the tree, the long-ago artist had finished the temple rune, and several others. She knew now what they were. She almost snatched up the roll of parchment and embraced it.

  “Are you all right?” Edynn asked. Tildi looked
up at her. “You were very far away.”

  “Did it work?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. Thanks to you. In the morning we can get a good start going after our thief.”

  “Why not set out tonight while we can?” Captain Teryn asked. Morag appeared at her shoulder, seconding the notion with a vigorous nod.

  “For one, the footing will be too difficult,” Rin said. “You humans! You do not ask your horses, because you can’t understand their answers, but they have more sense than you. For another, our wizards are all too tired for a long night’s run. For a third, the thraiks do not need light to see us, but it would be to our advantage to see them, since they can appear out of the air.”

  “But he will be farther away by then!”

  “Peace, friends,” Edynn said, holding up her hands. “We will go in the morning when we are fresh. We can see where he goes now.”

  Tildi drowsed on Rin’s back as they set out well before dawn the next morning.

  Captain Teryn had tried to hurry them at their breakfast. Tildi ate what she could of the half-cooked cereal before the bowl was all but snatched out of her fingers. She had been too distracted to protest. She was troubled by her dreams of a thin, blue-veined hand turning a book on its spindle, and had awoken drenched in perspiration. It was a good thing that the map could tell them where to go. She was in no fit state. ow the wizardesses could rise up day after day and look as if they had just stepped out of a hot, perfumed bath into clothes made fresh for them by the best laundress in town, she had no idea. The soldiers, of course, had no trouble maintaining their uniforms in trim, and spent evenings polishing and cleaning their kit while they listened to the others talk about things magical. Even Lakanta managed to remain neat and fairly tidy after days of washing in streams and hanging clothes to dry from her saddle. Tildi knew that she looked like a beggar’s brat by comparison, and studied the others in hopes of learning how to keep herself more presentable. No one in the Quarters would own her now. She was glad they were all hundreds of miles behind her. When she caught a glimpse of herself in a stream, she was ashamed.

  Edynn had sent a message to Olen. The dove-shaped burst of energy had flown off silently to the south. It contained a charm of silence, to prevent the thief ahead of them from getting an inkling that he was being followed. They rode as swiftly as they could, over the hilly terrain of the river valley, but it was still slow going.

  Rin made conversation now and again, as they cantered behind Captain Teryn. All Tildi wanted to do was think about the book, the one she had seen in the vision. She could still feel it. The power was there. It was warm, delicious, and comforting, like a cup of cocoa on a cold night. She wanted to take it into her own hands. She was sure it was not the same hand that she had envisioned during the spell to connect her leaf to the Great Book. It must be the thief’s. How lucky he was.

  That thought brought her out of her torpor. She sat bolt upright, blinking into the sunrise. What was she thinking? This wizard, whoever he was, had killed beasts and people and was endangering the entire world out of pure greed!

  Rin felt her move and turned her head to see. “Are you all right back there, smallfolk?”

  “Yes,” Tildi said. “How far have we gone?”

  “About twelve miles. The captain stares at our map as if she can will us to catch up with our quarry by mere thought.”

  “I wish we could. The only advantage we have is that he doesn’t know we’re following him.”

  The voices woke him from a sound sleep, but he already knew the moment he reached over to make sure the book was still beside him.

  They had found him.

  Some wizard had penetrated the layers of confusion and repulsion that he had drawn around him to stave off the spies.

  How could that be? He had hidden his trail too well to be followed. He was surrounded in the glory lent to him by the book, which was obvious to anyone while he was nearby, but he knew from the voices that no one could follow him once he had passed from sight. But something had managed to pursue him where all the other voices had failed.

  Nemeth rose from the rude bed he had fashioned for the night. He was getting used to changing objects with small alterations to their runes to make what he chose, so much easier than the traditional spells for transformation that took so much out of one. He had covered a lot of distance by taking to the air instead of walking. At first he had only hardened the air to take his weight, as his master had taught him. With a few modifications he had managed to make the air facilitate his travel, so that he was slipping along through the sky like a stone rolling down a greased chute. The process was far more comfortable than it sounded, but at the end of a day he was exhausted from having to maintain the spells. He had dared greatly, since the thraik were still appearing out of nowhere to seek him, but he was desperate to reach his goal swiftly. The inside of the fallen log he had found on his last stop had disintegrated to rotten fibers. It had been so simple to loosen the fibers more, until they were as soft as sheep’s fleece and just as warm. It was so comfortable his body protested at being made to leave it, but he had no choice.

  He commanded the wards to make themselves visible. The silver lines complied even before he finished the thought. They were intact. Then, how? How could someone have touched him? Even the thraik had been unable to detect his presence.

  To his horror, he considered the book. He took it from the hollow log as tenderly as he would a sleeping child, and concentrated. A connection of some kind had been made to the book itself, joining with it on a primal, elemental level. Some distant mage had done this! Nemeth felt that the book had been violated. The link was passive at the moment, but it was strong, too strong for him to pluck out. He must enfold the book in secrecy to protect it. He began to draw a new set of wards. He spread his hand over the long scroll and recited the ancient words. Energy began to flow from his hands, enveloping the book.

  The silver lines made a protective net, but it was incomplete. A nearly invisible thread protruded out from it, reaching toward the sky. Nemeth passed his hand through it, and recoiled from the shock it gave him. It may have been thin, but it held the force of a raging river. He was powerless to cut the book off from this link.

  Nor would the book accept his protection. The wards faded away as he watched. He would just have to make the spell stronger. Nemeth recited the words again, emphasizing the syllables firmly. Where they touched the thread the lines faded again and again. He could not cut the book off from the world. Even when it had sat under its mountaintop, it was joined to all things, living and nonliving. It was the soul of the world, right there before him, and the unknown mage had managed to tie into that connection. No matter where he took it, he could be followed. He felt betrayed and angry.

  He could kill that wizard!

  Nemeth’s stomach rose toward his throat, and a sick taste filled his mouth as he recalled the burned bodies that had fallen at his touch. He had done enough killing. Naturally everyone wanted the Great Book, but it was his!

  He forced himself to calm down. He must not retaliate. He had not been raised to behave like that.

  His life before the book had been unimpeachable. He had been ethical. He was only a seer, only a seer … but the book had put unlimited power into his hands. The voices were talking again. They wanted the book. He must frighten them off, frighten away the mage who had broken through his protection, send them back where they came from. He did not want to do again … what he had done before. No, they must be driven back.

  If he could not break the link, he must make use of it. It extended in both directions. Nemeth would make use of it. He would see who had done this seeking to spy upon him, and bring down upon them a warning. He did not have to know where the pursuers were. The book provided him with several models of beasts of terrifying mien that existed throughout the world. They would come into being where the wizard was. If he would not retreat, they would drag him into nonexistence. It wouldn’t be Nemeth’s responsibility i
f the wizard did not take the warning. If his deterrents did not work, then … death to them! No one would stop him from accomplishing his aims.

  Carefully, he sent his sight back through the fine line, and began to draw new runes.

  Rin trotted up the slope of a hill, then paused on a muddy patch to wait for Captain Teryn’s horse to make the final jump up to the crown. The broad, green meadow was wet. The horse’s rear hooves scrabbled slightly, scattering clods of earth before disappearing among a cluster of slender saplings. Rin gathered herself and made a single measured leap, landing easily on the grass among star-shaped meadow flowers that smelled sweetly when bruised by her hooves. Tildi’s bottom bounced several times on the striped back. She was glad of a firm handhold on Rin’s mane. Teryn glanced back, then continued on her way, glancing down now and again at the map in her hand.

  “I wish that she would let us lead,” Rin grumbled, settling her saddlebags more firmly on her hips. “I am faster, and more surefooted.”

  “I think she’s happier if she is ahead of us,” Tildi said. With the map guiding them toward their goal, she had been able to tuck the precious leaf away in her belt pouch with the other family treasures she cherished. “I feel safer with her and Morag to protect us.”

  “Bah. I do not need a human to defend me. Besides, I think that the wizard we are pursuing will be too much for them. It would be better for Edynn and Serafina to prepare. And you are more likely to know when we are close, aren’t you? What do you feel now?”

  Tildi thought about it. “I know that we are moving in his direction, that is, the book’s. I have felt it more strongly since last night. Rin, I am afraid of facing … him … but I can’t wait to see the book. In my vision it was so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Rin snorted. “It’s only a book.”

  “Curse you, Melune!”

  There was a crash behind them, and the peddler’s sturdy little horse bounded up the hill by itself. Rin trotted to a halt. Lakanta appeared shortly, her cheek and hands muddy, her braids askew, shaking her fist at Melune. The errant horse cantered up to Rin with her ears set at a saucy angle. Tildi and Rin laughed. Lakanta stumped toward them.