An Unexpected Apprentice

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “We’ll talk later,” she whispered. Magpie smiled at her. At least one of his parents was glad to see him safe and alive.

  “Hem!” the prime minister cleared his throat to hurry them along. Magpie met his eyes and gave him a wry grin. He knew that Hawarti sympathized with him. They had worked closely together in the years since Magpie had attained his majority, and liked each other. Magpie would have been better pleased if his mother had said he had the same personality as the genial Lord Hawarti. He knew the same notion was in both their minds: it would be wrong to present the possibility of bad news in public. The king would not like it. He had lost his tolerance for bad news years before.

  Magpie opened his stride to keep pace with the big man. Ahead of them, the pages and guards had had to break into a near run to stay ahead of the king. Doors flew open and curtains were swept aside as if by magic. The last door swung open half a pace before the king’s foot crossed the threshold. The guards drew their swords and held them by the hilts point up before them as His Majesty passed, then swung around to follow Hawarti and Magpie into the small room.

  Magpie looked around him. Little had changed there over the years. The king’s privy chamber had been, in happier days, where Soliandur spent rest day afternoons reading documents sent to him by his regional governors and sister or brother monarchs as his children played on the floor about his feet, creeping underneath the priceless burgundy silk draperies or spinning the world globe in the corner. He had let them use the royal seal and glass desk ornaments as playthings, and given them quills and ink to draw on the back of discarded letters. Magpie always felt a sense of loss to have been banned long since from the chamber unless specifically requested to come. Since the war the room had become Soliandur’s sanctuary. If he had not been so proud, Magpie thought sadly, Soliandur would have been able to share his frustration and grief, and lessen the burden.

  His father waved the guards back as he and the prime minister entered the chamber. The king sat down in the gold-trimmed, tapestry chair at the handsome bronze and wood desk that had been his father’s, his grandfather’s, and his great-grandmother’s before him. Hawarti took up his usual stance near the door, which the guards closed behind them as soon as Magpie had crossed the threshold.

  “Well?” His Majesty demanded, not father but sovereign. Magpie was not invited to sit. No matter: he’d sat on his horse’s back for more than a week returning home. It was a relief to be able to stand.

  “Master Wizard Olen sends his compliments, majesty. There is a grave threat abroad in Niombra, and he wishes to have all lands advised of it …”

  Hours later, his throat dry as leather, Magpie croaked out the last words.

  “ … He begs you, your ministers and governors, watchmen, or any sane and trusted observer to send word at once if any of them sees anything out of the ordinary that could be a manifestation of this very dangerous book’s power.”

  Soliandur looked displeased. He had not shifted his pose or changed his expression during the entire recitation, as if he was a statue instead of a man.

  “And is that all?”

  “All?” Magpie echoed, his dry throat rasping. “I hate to say it in such dire terms, my lord, but it’s not a doomsayer’s fantasy to say this book could bring about the end of the world.”

  The king waved a hand. “Olen has always exaggerated everything. And even if this book is dangerous, then what does it matter? Knowing about the book won’t change anything, and won’t help us in any way. All it can bring is more trouble.”

  “Sir, I have seen a demonstration of what the book represents. It is the most incredible magic—”

  “There, you see, you have said the word yourself: incredible. I don’t believe in it. Ah!” He held up his hand to forestall Magpie’s protest. “And any other powers he may want to ascribe to it are obviously a collusion between himself and his apprentice.”

  “Tildi. But it’s not a trick …”

  Soliandur wrinkled his nose. “Of course, it’s a trick! It’s clear he wants it for himself, boy, and he wants to scare the rest of us out of wanting to do the same. That way, if we come upon it, we’ll turn it over to him and be grateful to do it. Don’t you see that? Can’t you tell when you’re being played?” A pained expression passed over the king’s face.

  Magpie refrained from saying that the king had not been played, he had played himself, and continued to suffer for it, long after most people had gone about their business. Because Magpie loved and respected him, he felt sorry for him, but kept that sentiment to himself. It would only make things worse.

  “I … understand, my lord. I only report the events that occurred in the meeting, for your information. Whether you take action upon any of what I have told you is, of course, your decision. I only want to help.”

  “Help?” Soliandur echoed, with heavy sarcasm. “If you really wish to help, see if you cannot find it in your heart to visit your fiancée. There you may help.”

  “Has she sent word?” Magpie asked, his heart sinking.

  “Of course she has sent word! Not that she should need to. What kind of unnatural man are you, when you make no effort to communicate with the woman to whom you have pledged marriage?”

  “Father, because the matter is so likely to provoke overreaction in public, Olen asked that the conference be kept confidential except among trusted and thoughtful advisers. I didn’t want to send a message that might have been read in transit, and would surely have been seen by servants or others after it was delivered, that would have included my destination or my task.”

  “And yet you were about to announce the event to the entire court, like a herald!” Soliandur spat.

  Magpie bent his head. “You received me and asked me for my report in the audience chamber, Father.” Soliandur frowned.

  “Blame me for it, will you?”

  Magpie glanced up at Hawarti, standing at His Majesty’s shoulder. The prime minister sent him a look full of sympathy. There had been trouble while he was gone, and he was going to take the blame for it. Never mind; it was only one more stone in the load.

  Magpie straightened his shoulders. “Forgive me. I should have insisted that I must tell you alone. You have other matters to concentrate upon.”

  Soliandur reddened. “Don’t patronize me, boy.” He waved a hand. “Go. If the girl has any sense she’ll send you away, but it won’t be because I let you shirk your duties. Go.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Magpie bowed deeply. “I’ll try to keep her from regretting accepting my suit.”

  “Go!”

  Magpie strode back into the courtyard in search of Tessera, but the multicolored mare wasn’t where he had tethered her. He searched the stables, dodging around grooms walking horses, until he found Covani, the stable master, overseeing the shoeing of a skittish mare. He asked about his missing horse.

  “My lord, she was caked with sweat and dust,” the master groom said, with a reproachful frown. He was a rangy man with wide-set brown eyes, not unlike his equine charges. “She’s getting a bath and a sound rubdown, then out to pasture for a nice, calm feed. You’ve ridden her too hard without giving her a good clean for too long.”

  Magpie sighed. “That I have. There was no good place or time to care for her along the road. But I have to ride to Levrenn within the hour. How long until she’ll be ready?”

  “I’ll find you another steed, sir.”

  “What about Tessera?”

  The horseman shook his head. “You may push yourself like a machine, sir, but you can’t expect a horse to run forever on no rest. She’d break her heart open for you and bleed out her last drop, but it’s not fair to ask her, sir. She needs rest and care.” The master ostler gave him a summing glance. “It would not hurt you at all to have the same. Unless the matter is urgent?”

  Magpie grinned wryly. “No, and you’re right. I’ll go and be curried and eat my oats. I’ll be much more presentable to my ladylove that way. If I can stay out of my father’s path
I’ll go in the morning.”

  “That’s wise thinking, sir,” the master ostler said. With a sudden broad smile, he added, “I’m not supposed to know it, but the stableboys skip out work and nap on the hay bales back behind the tack barn just under the eaves. If another couple of bales happened to be occupied this afternoon I wouldn’t be able to tell who it was.”

  Magpie laughed. “I may yet have to take you up on your hospitality, Master Covani.”

  He did not have to go to any great lengths to avoid his father. As it was a workday, His Majesty would be in the audience room or his private office all day, then dine in state, with visitors of rank, if there were any. Magpie felt fortunate to recognize on one of the closed carriages at the side of the stable yard the family sigil of a wealthy mine owner who lived in Breckon, the eastern province of Orontae, where his brother Ganidur was governor. That would keep Soliandur’s attention firmly placed, and he wouldn’t be on the lookout for an errant son.

  Still, there was no point in taking chances. The castle was riddled with secret passages and staircases. He could reach his suite of rooms by means of a most aptly named privy stair, which led up to an ancient closet near his rooms that was now used as a storeroom. He sauntered casually along the western wall of the stone keep to a point behind the first guard tower and climbed up into the riot of bushes that grew along its foot. When he was sure no one was watching him but a few odd chickens, he popped a hand-sized stone out of the wall and pulled an ancient metal lever. He thrust his way through the thornbrake around the next buttress. A dark slit in the wall showed where the ancient door had come unlatched. With his fingertips he pried it open and slipped inside.

  Once he shoved the stone door closed, he was in utter darkness. The lightfastness of the passage was an element for which he had often been grateful in his wilder youth. He felt to his right for the narrow stair that ascended sharply in between the outer and inner walls of the keep.

  The way up was free of spiderwebs and dust. It had been cleaned and swept recently, Magpie was pleased to note, as he climbed up the steep staircase in the dark. The servants went along with the polite fiction that no one but the royal family knew where the secret passages lay. In fact, it had been Leweni, Covani’s predecessor, who had shown this particular doorway to Magpie when he was a boy. He had used it ever since, first for the usual run of boyish escapades, later for more important ventures where an unheralded exit from the castle was called for.

  The latter was the chief reason why his father could hardly stand the sight of him.

  Magpie’s sensitive fingertips found the rough surface of the door a step before he bashed his head into it. He felt for the padded catch, and emerged, blinking, into a small, dim, close stone room full of rolled mattresses and heaps of winter cloaks and blankets, all the things that were hidden away when they weren’t needed. How remarkably significant, he thought, wading through a heap of musty feather pillows like knee-deep marsh mud and throwing up clouds of dust. He, too, was an inconvenient sight that many people were willing to conspire to keep out of his father’s sight when he was not specifically of use. Until and unless Inbecca of Levrenn became his wife he was one of those needless items.

  He cursed himself for being bitter, but it stung that he was unable to gain his father’s regard. He understood that he was a reminder of how things had gone wrong. It was one of the reasons that he had found so many excuses to stay away from home over the past two years. If he had not loved his father and his homeland so dearly, he would have gone away forever. There were many places that would gladly offer him a home, and a world beyond them that he had not yet explored. Yet he had returned to this simmering pot, roiling with unhappiness under its seemingly placid surface, yearning for a time that had long gone, and a relationship with his father that had never been.

  Orontae had now been at peace for two years. Three years before that, war had overtaken the country. Like any conflict, it came about for the most foolish of reasons: a misunderstanding about borderlands, the very Wilds that were part of his father’s grand titles. Magpie had been educated since childhood to know the map of his homeland, which included the forests in the far southwest. They had traditionally been too remote to bother with, and remained the untrammeled province of dryads and elves for centuries, until recently, when trade by ship with more and more remote lands had begun to fascinate the rulers of Niombra. Merchants building ships found the tall, branchless conifers of Orontae’s deep woods ideal for masts, and the heavy, ageless oaks suitable for ships’ timbers. When the most accessible forests were logged out of decent trees, they were drawn to the virgin woodlands of the southwest. So, it seemed, was Halcot of Rabantae.

  By the time Soliandur’s woodsmen arrived to begin harvesting trees, half the forests had been stripped of all their best stands of wood. A few hapless workers still on site were arrested by guards and questioned. They had been hired from small villages not far from the woods, on the other side of the border in Rabantae, to cut the trees and send them downriver, to whence they knew not. To the investigators the destination seemed undisputed, since that river floated by Rabantae’s shipyards, and word had come from traveling peddlers that trade in nails and ship’s fittings seemed to have picked up there considerably.

  Affronted, Soliandur had sent emissaries to demand why his old neighbor had invaded his lands and stolen his valuable timbers. Halcot had responded with an insulting message asking why Soliandur did not know the extent of his own most ancient kingdom. The forests were his, and he intended to exploit them as he chose. Soliandur sent back a curt message referring to the lord of Rabantae in thinly veiled terms as a thief. Less diplomatic accusations followed, earning responses ever more heated. Name-calling ensued, and every resentment and petty disagreement of the past thousand years had come bubbling up like the stink in a cesspit.

  The two lands, for all that they sat side by side, historically had not had a peaceful relationship. Each thought the other was inferior human stock, a claim neither could bear out, since both the royal family and common folk alike had intermarried for centuries. The crossing between the borders was made as difficult as possible even for those who had legitimate reason to travel, involving presentation of papers, long explanations, and bribes that no one admitted to taking. Magpie had paid quite a few of those himself, and anyone who did not have the privy purse behind his finances had every right to resent their imposition, especially since trying to involve the authorities only increased the number of people to whom bribes had to be paid.

  Both tried, without success, Magpie was glad to note, to involve the third noble kingdom of humanity, Melenatae, on his side. Neither could raise the interest of the elves, the werewolves, or the centaurs in the dispute. The dwarves merely ignored the emissaries, leaving the doors to their mountain halls locked and unanswered. At least it remained a battle of humans versus humans.

  Ministers, distinguished by their skills in diplomacy, made the long journey between the capitals, braving weather, bad roads, wild beasts, and thieves, trying to smooth out the initial disagreement. Their efforts were without success. Halcot’s woodsmen who attempted to return to the disputed forests for more timber were attacked, and two men were killed. Loss of income was one thing, but loss of life stirred the righteous indignation of all of the southern kingdom. Halcot sent a declaration of war.

  Orontae had been ill-prepared for what Magpie had foreseen as the inevitable outcome. Terrifying rumors of secret attacks spread throughout the country. Guards had to be dispatched to keep peace in the streets while Soliandur decided how to respond. He called upon all of his ministers, including his court wizard, a man of foresight, for counsel. The king made numerous public appearances to quell fears, and managed largely by force of will to turn the people’s attention to defending itself. They had a common cause and a common enemy, not nebulous forces attacking secretly in the night.

  Once stirred to action, Orontae organized not only troops for the field, but a force of spi
es and information-seekers who operated through the office of the prime minister. Magpie enlisted himself with the corps. In his youth he had escaped from the royal court and gone about the countryside disguised as a troubadour who sang and played the jitar. In that persona, he was able to insinuate himself into the Rabantavian towns, even into the capital and the palace itself. He had gotten to know Halcot, even struck up a friendly relationship of sorts, as much as an anointed and crowned king would have with an itinerant wanderer and purveyor of news and entertainment. Halcot often called for private concerts for his family or himself alone. He paid well, so the traveling player was glad to oblige. He did not recognize in the man the child who had once played in those very halls during his father’s official state visits.

  Halcot was an old bore, in love with his own dignity, as he had proved once again in Olen’s great room, but he wasn’t a fool. From his first visit Magpie could tell he was troubled that the dispute had escalated so far. He refused to back down out of sheer pride, but was beginning to see that he had made a bad decision. Magpie felt rather sorry for him. In his opinion Halcot was more trusting than he should have been of a clever and witty observer who had the range of the whole castle during wartime. When he was not in the throne room or the grand audience chamber, Magpie sat with whoever wanted to talk, listening, never seeming to ask prying questions, but always leading gently toward garnering information on where the troops had been sent, what armaments they carried, and how long they had been gone. Magpie continued to make note of what he saw and overheard, but out of a sense of honor he refused to sabotage unguarded documents or change orders. He wrote and sang songs for those private performances to please the king, even making jokes with Halcot or one of his ministers as the butt, to take the king’s mind off the war for a while. He often felt closer to the enemy lord than he did to his own father.