A Sorcerer Imprisoned

by Guy Antibes

  You are full of questions, Loria said.

  All is not what it seems. The older boys disappear in the afternoons. There are basement exercises, but no one has told me anything about them. I’d like to get the names of contacts in Applia sooner than later. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I have a feeling I won’t be in the Home in nine months. Ricky smiled to himself, hoping his premonition would come true.

  I’ll tell Saganet that you are surviving and to give me his contacts’ names. I’ll do the same with Father. I have to go now. Bye. Loria closed her side of the link.

  Ricky didn’t get a chance to tell her anything else. Maybe he had told her enough. He had communicated with her the whole time with his head on the table. He rose and commenced stacking the dusty volumes. By dinnertime Ricky had half the library books on the tables. He did come across a thin volume on sorcery that was over two hundred years old.

  “Can I take this to my room?” Ricky asked Henni.

  “Ha! I get to do something.” He pulled out a drawer and lifted a ledger. He only had to flip the page once. “What’s the name of the book?”

  “Sorcery - Everyday Uses,” Ricky said

  Henni looked up at Ricky. “Don’t you already know everything?”

  Ricky laughed. “I’ve only been taught very specific things. I’m good at what’s been taught me, but they have a whole degree at the Royal University for sorcery. I’m sure there is a lot I don’t know. What can a person learn in a year?”

  Henni nodded his head. “There is that. I hadn’t thought much about it since sorcery isn’t a popular topic here.” He finished his entry and handed the book over. “Keep it safe,” he said.

  “I’ll do my best.” Ricky wouldn’t leave anything out from now on in his cell.

  When he got back to his room, he found a slat underneath his bed that would fit the bottom of a dresser with a little trimming. Ricky used a little magic to burn away the wood until it fit perfectly. The trimmed pieces were stacked to keep the false bottom level. Ricky put the book beneath the slat on the lowest drawer. He hoped a casual observer wouldn’t notice anything.

  He ran to the dining hall, barely making the final call for dinner. Ricky retired to his cell for the night and locked his door along with the rest of the Home’s inmates. He removed the book and began to read.

  Professor Dari Calasay at the Doubli Academy taught basics, but she didn’t teach much that made up the little book. What happened in Paranty? Ricky thought. He read a list of occupations that sorcerers could pursue. He had not heard of a single sorcerer in Tossa engaged in the work that the book described. Was the pay that bad? Or was performance sorcery so sublime that sorcerers didn’t work in trade any longer?

  As Ricky read on, he saw whole fields of sorcery that he’d never realized existed. Not that he had become an expert in his time at the Academy, but there hadn’t been a whisper about any of this. Loria’s father, Baron Mansali, conducted the only business that Ricky knew, and that wasn’t looked upon with any kind of respect. Weaving, including coloring the threads, crafting jewels, there was even something called a motor that sorcerers could make work with their power. Page upon page of sorcerous opportunities lay on Ricky’s lap. and no one in Tossa, and maybe all of Paranty, engaged in any of this.

  He finished perusing the little book and lay back on his bed. All sorcerers had become were entertainers or teachers. His former healer, Mirano Bespa, was trained in Duteria. Only a few existed in Paranty. Ricky didn’t know what to make of all this. When there were such benefits to take advantage of, why did Paranty turn its back on sorcery? Were sorcerers really that evil? Ricky didn’t feel that way about himself or about any sorcerers he had ever met.

  He knew he could be a performance sorcerer and make all kinds of money, perhaps enough to buy back his father’s title, but no one seemed to be interested in using sorcery to do things.

  Ricky wanted to feel betrayed, but he didn’t know when the prohibition started, if there was a formal prohibition. Maybe sorcerers didn’t want to work. There were few enough, he thought. Suddenly performance sorcery left a bad taste in his mouth. At least Baron Mansali used sorcery productively.

  What would Paranty be like if sorcerers could use their sorcery to help people? To Ricky, sorcerers who taught only propagated more performance sorcerers. As Ricky thought more about it, the evil of sorcery seemed to be the repression of it. He didn’t understand what had happened. He wanted to know, but as long as he was a prisoner at the Applia Juvenile home, Ricky would have put away such thoughts. He wondered if he would have to put travel to Duteria or another kingdom to find out what potential sorcery really had.

  He had read enough. Ricky hid the book and fell asleep.

  ~~~

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ~

  A FTER A NIGHT OF BAD DREAMS that Ricky couldn’t remember, he returned to the library right after breakfast, bringing the little book.

  “I’ve brought it back,” Ricky said waving the sorcery book at Henni. “I’d like to make some notes. Do you have any paper and pencils or pen and ink?”

  “All three,” Henni said. “They are in the other closet.” He pointed to a closet on the other side of his desk.

  Ricky opened the door to discover stacks of old paper, even some parchment. The closet was as dusty as the library. “I’ll clean this out, too,” Ricky said and got to work.

  He spotted an empty box; perhaps it once held paper. “Can I put my notes in there? I don’t trust leaving anything in my room.”

  “And for a good reason. All the inmates are criminals,” Henni said, but then his gaze turned to Ricky. “Most, anyway. Sure.”

  That brought a smile to Ricky’s face, and Henni returned it. He had a secure place in the Home. He had only seen the one inmate who descended the stairs to the basement and visited the library on a dare.

  “Who owns all these books?” Ricky asked just before continuing to stack more books on the tables.

  Henni shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably the Juvenile Home. Do you think they are valuable?”

  “All books are valuable,” Ricky said without really thinking about it. “Most of these books are centuries old. There is value in ancient perspectives.”

  “I suppose you’re right if you are interested, but most people aren’t. I must admit to you that I am not,” Henni said. “I like my mean little life. Sniffing around in things you shouldn’t can cost you your nose and even more.”

  Ricky frowned. “Are you going to tell on me?”

  Henni grinned. “I’ve never been a tattletale. You find what you want. Just don’t include me in any experiments or whatever you sorcerers do.”

  “Don’t worry, Master Henni. I count you as my only friend at the Home. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve some work to do.”

  Henni shooed him away from the desk after Ricky filled the empty box with paper, parchment, and pencils. Ricky sat out of Henni’s sight and began to make notes from the book. He hoped that this wouldn’t be the only book on sorcery he’d find, but if he’d gone through half the books and found this one, he couldn’t expect to find more than another volume or two.

  Ricky didn’t need to copy the text, but he listed the sorcerous occupations. Spells or intonation charts weren’t mentioned, so lists would work as well as anything else. He spent the entire hour and finished his summary.

  “Time to get dirty,” Ricky said as he put the top on the box and slid it into the supply closet.

  He waved to Henni as he left and hurried across the Home to the gardener’s shed. He filed into line. The fellow students reminded him of his bruises. Some of those purple blossoms had already begun to fade.

  As he stepped out of the shed, following the others, he looked up at the leaden skies and at the raindrops pelting his face.

  “Go on. You won’t melt,” the gardener said. “Move to the east side.”

  Did weeds grow that fast? Ricky wondered. It looked like they did on the Home’s soil. Ricky
bent down and toiled. The spell that loosened the soil didn’t work as well in the mud. He grumbled and mumbled along with the others. If anyone had designs to prove themselves against Ricky, the wet weather dampened their spirits along with everything else.

  “Time to go in. You’ll need baths before your next class,” the gardener said. “Filthy scum,” he said under his breath, but loud enough for Ricky and other students to hear.

  “Where are the baths?” Ricky asked a fellow inmate.

  “Follow me. You won’t look forward to bathing here.” The boy shivered along with the rest as Ricky followed him, walking away from the building.

  They walked into a vast room attached to Building Four. Pipes snaked down from the ceiling into little cubicles.

  “Take a robe, a towel, and a knob of soap,” the boy said. “Scrub yourself clean and then wash your clothes. You can wear the robe to your next class. Clean your shoes off last.”

  Ricky looked down at his boots. His socks looked nearly black. Mud caked up to the top, even though the gardener had insisted on running their shoes through the scraper and the brushes before they stepped into the Home.

  Inmates occupied most of the bath stalls, but Ricky finally found one open. He latched the door shut and hung his robe from a hook. The floor consisted of a grate about a hand’s breadth from the stone floor. He imagined the floor sloped to a drain.

  Ricky looked at the water. He could see tiny pieces of debris. The rain pounded on the ceiling, and that prompted Ricky to gaze upward to see the piping coming from a few corners of the roof. The rainwater that soaked him to the skin outside would do the same thing in the tub.

  The water felt frigid, but that didn’t worry Ricky. He hummed a tune and willed the water to warm, a simple spell he learned before the Advanced Sorcery class had disbanded. The water steamed in the cold air of the vast bath hall.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Ricky heard from the next stall. “Mist is rising from a tub?” another voice said. The walls were too high for a casual glance, but Ricky looked up to see a boy’s eyes peeking over the wall.

  “What did you do?”

  Ricky looked up. “I know a few spells,” Ricky admitted. “Warmed up my tub a bit.”

  “Can you do it for me?” “What about me?” another boy said from an adjacent tub.

  “Quickly,” Ricky said.

  As a result of all the requests, he stepped into the surrounding cubicles and warmed them up. Even a girl asked him to heat up her water. By the time Ricky returned to his cubicle, his water had cooled a bit.

  He heated the water again and disrobed, sinking into the water. Ricky hadn’t realized how cold the Home had been until he wrapped himself in the liquid comfort. He soaped himself off and then stepped out of the tub and rubbed himself dry before donning the threadbare robe.

  Another shot of the spell, and Ricky washed his clothes. He began to hear the ring of chains and then the gurgling of water. Water flowed beneath the grate. Ricky noticed a chain fastened to the wall and gave it a yank. The dark gray water swirled down the large drain onto the floor below. As soon as the last bit went, he heard a faint slap and the water began to fill again.

  Ricky heard the other inmates exit their cubicles, but he remained to rinse his clothes and used a variation of the heating spell to dry his clothes before draining the tub again. The system surprised Ricky with its sophistication. He’d seen nothing like it before.

  He tossed the towel and robe into a wheeled cart, and the knob of soap into a box, as he walked out of the bath hall feeling clean for the first time since he had arrived at the Home. He smiled at the unexpected pleasure.

  He barely made it back to his third-hour class, nearly running into Master Risticca on his way to lock the doors. Ricky sat down, sweating, but this time it was clean sweat, like when he exercised with Saganet Crabacci, his guardian.

  “Sorry, Master Risticca,” Ricky said. “I was late coming out of the bath hall.”

  The teacher gave Ricky a curt nod and locked the doors. Others weren’t as lucky, evidenced by some pounding on the doors, which Risticca pointedly ignored.

  Ricky endured another session of Risticca’s philosophy of the right of the enlightened nobility. Ricky kept thinking about the rights of the common man instead. He restrained from asking the questions he wanted to ask during the concepts Risticca liberally forced on the inmates.

  “Young Valian,” Risticca said after he dismissed the class. “Warden Sarini wants you to tutor these students during the hour after lunch.” He offered Ricky a folder with a few pages inside. “Make sure you take attendance. The classroom is on the list.” He waved Ricky out the door.

  Ricky didn’t have any time to read the paperwork and get to lunch, so he juggled the folder, its contents, and a tray of what looked like another day of the same stew. He would be tutoring students learning how to read.

  Ricky only recognized one name on the list, Kela Torris. He smiled when he spotted her name among the six or seven inmates he would be helping. He finished lunch and sought out the room.

  The classroom looked like any other at the Home. He examined the stacks of books in the back and found a wide assortment. He separated out the Parantian primers and uncovered a box of paper and pencils.

  The extra class wouldn’t start for a quarter hour or more, so he wrote a few notes on the back of an empty page, listing the students and room. First of all, he wrote down the inmates’ names and made boxes out of horizontal and vertical lines to keep attendance.

  He sat back, thinking it ironic that just a year ago he was probably less literate than the inmates were now. He’d have to figure out why the students needed more help. Perhaps they were newly arrived at the Home.

  He heard the bell ending lunch and waited. Four inmates sauntered in. One looked at Ricky and sneered before leaving.

  “Can you give me your name? I’m taking attendance,” Ricky said, sticking his head out the door, talking to the back of the student. The boy kept walking.

  “Donto,” one of the boys said.

  Ricky scratched a question mark after Donto’s name, if that was the same boy.

  Kela slipped in the door and sat down without a word, surprised to see Ricky standing at the head of the room.

  “We might as well get started,” Ricky said. “I’m Ricky Valian, and I learned how to read and write last year. Since I did it, so can you.” He launched into a partial version of his story of being rescued by Mistress Doubli.

  “The first thing is to see what is keeping you from learning your letters,” Ricky said. “I want each of you to give us what you think you need from this class.” Ricky asked them for their name first and found that two of the students were missing. The real Donto was sitting in the first row.

  Most of the students were new arrivals at the Home. Another student spoke with an accent, a tall gangly boy, abandoned in Sealio. Unlike Kela, he had been caught burgling.

  Kela told the same story she gave Ricky. Something didn’t seem genuine about the description of her plight. Maybe Ricky would be able to find out.

  He handed out a test and asked students to write down the words he spoke and hand them in.

  The results were as awful as he expected. He reviewed the Parantian alphabet and spelled the words out for the students. He would come better prepared the next time. He dismissed the class, but Kela lingered after the others left.

  “I know the letters,” she said.

  “Then what don’t you know?”

  “How to pronounce. I don’t say word right, so I don’t learn,” Kela said.

  Ricky thought for a bit. “Then you will read to me, and I’ll correct you.” He thought about personal tutoring. “Do you have a friend who would be willing to sit with you? I’m uncomfortable being alone with you.”

  Kela’s face darkened. “I don’t have friends like that.”

  “Perhaps I can get the kitchen staff to let us use the dining hall after this class. Let’s go down and ask.”


  He grabbed a primer, and they walked down the stairs. The door to the dining hall was locked. That wouldn’t work.

  “I have another idea. Come with me,” Ricky said.

  They entered the library. “This is Guard Henni,” Ricky said.

  “Who is this?” The guard looked at Kela.

  “I’m tutoring a few language students,” Ricky said. “Kela needs to learn how to pronounce Parantian, and that requires sitting down and having her read to me. We need a chaperone, I think.”

  “You think right,” Henni said. “Are you enlisting me for your tutoring?” He gave Ricky a reassuring smile.

  “It will only cost you a little nap time.”

  “Sure. It will help pass the time having you down here,” the guard said.

  Ricky found another book, a novel that he remembered.

  “We can sit at this table. Just read the words, and I’ll correct you. It’s a matter of practice,” Ricky said.

  She nodded and began to read. Her pronunciation was horrid as a result of her thick accent. Ricky had her repeat the words. No wonder she hadn’t made any progress. He wrote down the worst words she used. They worked until Ricky could tell Kela was tired.

  “Remember practice, practice, practice,” Ricky said as he gave her the sheet of paper.

  She thanked him and left the library.

  “You have more patience than I have,” Henni said.

  “It wasn’t easy. She’s much smarter than anyone gives her credit,” Ricky said. “Her only problem is her accent keeps her from figuring out the words.” He flipped through the primer and didn’t see word lists. “Maybe we can find a dictionary here. That helped me when I learned.”

  Henni nodded. “Detention time.”

  Ricky laughed. “You don’t let up.”

  Henni lifted up a time sheet and waved it at Ricky. “I’ve got to report your progress.”

  ~~~