The Apprentice to Zdrell

by David K Bennett

  Jonny was intrigued by the thought. He had wanted to try it before, but since people were made up of even more complicated things than wood or leather, he had not really wanted to try it. He was afraid it might hurt someone if he did it wrong.

  “I see you have thought about this before,” Master Silurian stood and paced. “Good. Let’s work out how you are going to learn how to do it.”

  They spent the next couple of hours looking at a couple of the texts The Master had bought at the conclave, books that talked about manipulating force directly and thus were ignored by most others. Jonny found some passages that gave him several ideas and wanted to work on them, but expressed his fears about hurting his subjects. As usual, The Master had a simple solution: use a small pig in the beginning. If the pig squealed too much, Jonny would know he was hurting it.

  § § §

  Jonny spent the next two days reading and learning from the books. They were written in Klathar, the High Wizard tongue, which made it slow going, but Jonny was getting better at understanding the language. One of the books mentioned some things Jonny found truly miraculous. The things that could be accomplished with Jonny’s talent according to this book made the throwing of stones seem like the most elementary exercise imaginable. Jonny was both excited and awed by the vistas opening to him.

  Putting the things written in the books into practice was a different matter. Both books were good for general description, but very poor in detail. There were no exercises to help get from point A to B. Jonny would have to figure those out on his own.

  Jonny found very quickly that using a pig as his first subject was probably not the best idea. He found this out when he tried to pick up a small pig with his hands. It squealed, a lot. He was not at all sure how he would tell the squeals of a pig that was just squealing because it was uncomfortable from one being harmed by his magic.

  Jonny decided to try something simpler, rats. Rats were easy to come by and they did not make too much noise. More importantly, Jonny figured he would feel much less put out if he hurt a rat rather than a pig.

  He started out lifting a cage with a rat in it. This was easy since the cage was metal and wood and Jonny had gotten quite proficient with them. Next, he tried to lift the rat itself.

  This turned out to be much more difficult. He tried different things, studied the books, and after a couple of weeks managed to successfully lift a rat. He was glad he had started working with rats because one of his first attempts did something to one of the rats that caused it to die that night. He later determined he had moved the rat’s internal organs without moving the rest of it. It was a grisly thought, but Jonny had found yet another way he could hurt others.

  After Jonny had gotten the basic technique down for moving a rat, he refined it by making the rat fly around in more and more complicated ways. He also practiced letting the rat run and then snatching it up into the air. When he felt comfortable with rats, he graduated to pigs. He started first with small ones, and in the end was moving around five hundred pound sows.

  When Jonny demonstrated to Master Silurian how well he was able to move the pigs, he told Jonny he was ready to move on to humans. Jonny was a little scared to try it after what had happened to the rat, but he knew The Master was right. The Master told him there was a new apprentice who had only been at the castle for a month. He was very small and would be an excellent first subject to work with. The boy’s name was Grelnick, his parents had just died, similar to Jonny, and Lord Feldar had decided he would be better used as an apprentice than a slave. The boy had already been under the knife a few times but seemed to have an unusually high tolerance for pain in one so young. The Master felt this would be a good match.

  Chapter 39

  Master Silurian accompanied Jonny and Grelnick for their first attempt. Grelnick was excited about his being made to fly, even though Jonny warned him that it might hurt. Grelnick said he did not think it would be as bad a being under the knife. Jonny was unsure. He remembered the rat.

  The three of them went to the large barn where hay was stockpiled for the winter. It was mostly empty since the harvest was just weeks away, but there were several large piles of hay. Jonny instructed Grelnick to climb to the top of one of the haystacks. Jonny looked at Master Silurian who nodded for Jonny to continue. He took a moment to clear his mind and focus his sight on Grelnick. For a moment, nothing happened, then Grelnick let out a surprised yelp. Jonny opened is eyes and looked at him. He was hanging about a foot above the stack of hay. Jonny looked to The Master and just then heard another yelp from Grelnick. Jonny had lost his hold on him and had dropped him down into the hay. The Master grinned wickedly and was about say something, but Jonny beat him to it by apologizing.

  “Apology accepted, Jonny,” The Master said, still grinning. “Keep your focus, and do not damage him. Keep working till you can take him from the floor to the hay loft and back down again with your eyes open or closed.” The Master left Jonny and Grelnick to work.

  It took less than an hour for Jonny to do what The Master had asked. He soon had the hang of moving Grelnick around as easily as he had the rats and pigs. He was ready to give it a rest, but Grelnick had other ideas.

  “Do it again, Jonny!” Grelnick kept saying. He was having lots of fun and did not want it to stop. Faster, slower, hovering, spinning, Grelnick kept coming up with new variations he wanted Jonny to try. Finally, Grelnick started to get motion sick from some of the more crazy rides and Jonny called a halt. He was happy with the day’s work.

  The next day when he and Grelnick went to practice, they had an audience. Word had gotten out about what Jonny was doing and as many apprentices as could sneak off from their duties came to watch.

  Jonny picked up where he had left off the day before. Within a short time, the other apprentices were begging for a chance to fly too. Jonny was at first reluctant, but eventually gave in. It was actually good practice since it was a little different getting each person in the air. As Jonny worked with different boys, he learned to more easily compensate for the differences between them.

  After lunch, Master Silurian came by to see what was going on, and shut down the show. He said it was good that Jonny had been working with the other boys, but now he wanted Jonny to try some more things. He brought Jonny and Grelnick out into the castle courtyard and asked Jonny to raise Grelnick off the ground. Jonny did. When Grelnick was about twenty feet off the ground Jonny held him hovering there.

  “Good, Jonny,” The Master began. “Make him go higher.”

  Jonny concentrated and doubled Grelnick’s height.

  “Grelnick,” The Master called. “Can you see over the walls yet?”

  “Not yet, Master, I need to be another twenty feet higher I think.”

  “Jonny, can you get him that high?”

  “I think so, Master,” Jonny answered, a little concerned because he knew that if he lost Grelnick now the fall would probably kill him.

  Jonny kept pushing Grelnick higher until he called down that he could see over the walls.

  “It is so amazing, Jonny. I’m like a bird. I can see everything. I can even see . . .” Grelnick’s voice trailed off. He had gone white as a sheet.

  “What’s the matter, Grelnick?” Jonny called.

  “Get me down, Jonny!” Grelnick screamed. “It’s too high! Get me down.”

  Jonny quickly lowered him back down to ground level.

  “I’m sorry, Jonny. I’m sorry, Master,” Grelnick said, after he stopped crying. “I was just so high. When you were putting me up, I was looking at the walls and the hills and all that stuff. When I looked straight down and saw nothing under me and the ground so far below, I panicked. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right, Grelnick,” The Master said. “You have been very brave so far. I thought you might get scared when you saw how high you were. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Few grown men would have gone as high as you did.”

  Master Silurian turned to Jonny. “Try doing the
same thing with some of the other boys. They might as well help since they are all watching,” he said, waving at the several boys peering out from various hiding places. “You should also try placing them on the archer’s walk and getting them down too.”

  Jonny spent the afternoon putting boys up into the air and placing them at various places around the castle. Many of them panicked when they were no more than twenty feet above the ground. It became sort of a game to see who would crack, and when. When Jonny finally called it quits for the day, he was very tired from the work, but he was now everybody’s best friend. The apprentices who previously had held him in awe now practically worshipped him. He was not only a powerful wizard, but he was fun, and he was one of them, sort of.

  § § §

  The Master had more ideas of how Jonny could expand his skill, but most of them were unneeded. The other apprentices were continuously coming up with new ideas for things to try, involving them, of course. After a week, Jonny had reached the point where he could do with the boys many of the same tricks he had perfected with knives and coins. He finished by having six boys rotating in the air as if they were all on a huge invisible wheel. When The Master saw it he was grudgingly impressed, but he also called a halt to that trick.

  Jonny was feeling fairly pleased with himself, but one look at the glint in the Master’s eye told him the fun was over. He was right; Master Silurian once again suggested something that immediately made Jonny want to rebel.

  “You want me to what?” Jonny yelped.

  “You heard me correctly, Jonny,” The Master said unperturbed. “I want you to make yourself fly.”

  “But, but how can I? I’ve never done anything to me before. I use my sight, and I make other things move, not me. I don’t move.”

  “That is exactly why I’ve waited this long before introducing this to you, Jonny. Having you fly has been my objective ever since I saw you first spin that coin. Sit down.”

  The Master motioned to the chair across from him in his main study. Jonny had been pacing back and forth during the entire discussion.

  “Jonny, you have been making others fly for over a week now. Isn’t it about time you found out if it is as much fun as they seem to think it is?”

  “But, Master,” Jonny moaned, “this is different.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why? . . . Well because it’s me. How can I push me off the ground when it’s me doing the pushing?”

  The Master stroked his beard. “You know, Jonny, if you were pushing boys somehow up off the ground I would have to agree with you. Then it would be like trying to lift yourself off the ground by grabbing your own hair, but, . . .” He paused and leered, pointing at Jonny, “you don’t actually lift anyone or anything else yourself, do you?”

  “What do you mean I don’t lift anyone . . .” Jonny trailed off as he started to see what The Master meant.

  The wizard was grinning like a cat that had just eaten a very tasty bird. “How is it that you lift things, Jonny?”

  Jonny thought of the reality of what he did. He did not lift anything, he just manipulated the lines of force that normally held things down so they did not do it so well, so things then just sort of floated up on their own. He did actually help things along the way as well as letting them loose from the force that naturally held them, but it was true he only exerted changes on the force lines, not the object itself.

  He said none of these things aloud, but The Master could see Jonny was starting to see how it could work for him to “lift” himself.

  “But, Master--”

  “No buts, Jonny,” he cut him off. “I can see you have the idea. I know it will be very hard for you. This is probably the hardest thing I have ever asked of you, but think of when you succeed. This is the dream of every mortal born to this earth, to fly as the birds, to go anywhere you want. Think on it, Jonny! How I envy you.”

  “You envy me, Master? But you’re the greatest wizard in this part of the world, maybe the whole world alive today.”

  “But, Jonny,” he said slowly, a wistful expression on his face. “I will never be able to fly as you soon will. It is true I have flown by other means, but never like you, and I am too old to master it now. Maybe if I had learned these things two or three hundred years ago, yes I think I could have done it, but not now, no not now.” The Master looked at his desk, his eyes seeing something else.

  “If it’s too hard for you, Master, how can I possibly do it?”

  The Master’s reverie was quickly broken. Anger glowed from his eyes.

  “How? You have already done it! Do you think I could do what you were doing with those boys today? No, don’t answer. I’ll tell you. I could not do it, not now, not in a hundred years. I still have not even figured out to how to move a rat, Jonny. I do not have your gift; I don’t have your talent, not here, not in this area. In potions, incantations, glyphs, and countless other areas I am still very much your master. In this one area, you are already the master, but this is only one small area, and it is not enough.

  “So, you must keep growing, keep expanding your abilities. I know where you need to go, but I can only direct you, I cannot lead or even follow. You must do it yourself. And you will.

  “Now go. Get over to the barn and do the same thing with yourself that you did with Grelnick. I don’t want you doing anything else till you can show me that you can leave the floor. Go!”

  Jonny left. In some ways, his world had been turned upside down, but the more he thought on it, the more it made sense that even The Master would have his limitations. So just how was he going to prove The Master right and that he could fly?

  He dared not do otherwise.

  Chapter 40

  The Master was right, in more ways than one. The more Jonny thought on it, the more he realized that since it was not him actually doing the lifting, he should be able to lift himself. But The Master was also right in that he had said he was asking Jonny to do the hardest thing he had ever asked. Lifting others was different from lifting himself in one very big way, his frame of reference. He had not realized it previously, but he had always held quite still when he first lifted something. He did this because he had to manipulate the force lines. When he moved, his relationship to them changed.

  Dealing with the change was not easy.

  Jonny quickly found he could move parts of himself. He could make his arm or his foot want to fly, but when his main body started to move his relationship with the force lines changed and he lost control.

  § § §

  In the midst of Jonny’s efforts, time had not stopped. The month of Gnil, the first month of fall, was ending. This meant Mid-fall day was fast approaching, and with it the Harvest Festival. Jonny had no intention of doing anything to call the slightest attention to himself this year.

  The one notable event this year was Roald’s departure. He was thirteen now and was being apprenticed as a clerk in the city government of Alavar. He had not come to the castle from Alavar, and so could apprentice there. His studies with Feldor made him highly sought after. Roald even had hopes of one day working in the government of Salaways.

  Jonny was very sad to see him go, though for the last six months they had only seen each other at meal and bedtimes.

  The night before the festival was an unusually somber night for the boys. Roald was packing his things. Roald, who had been a very messy boy when Jonny had first moved in with him, had gradually transformed into a very neat and organized person. Everything he owned was always properly folded and put away. The more he had worked with Feldor, the more he had become like the man. Jonny had joked that maybe Roald wanted Feldor’s job. Roald did not think it was a funny comment. He thought he would very much like to have that job, but he did not think Jonny knew how much Feldor did.

  Feldor was not just the steward of the castle Salaways. He was The Master’s personal representative in the government of the kingdom. In many ways, he ran the kingdom, much as it was run.