by Guy Antibes
“I have a few times,” the man said, “but he never seemed quite the same.”
“A disguise each time, then,” Sam said. “So he could look like anyone. Are you sure he’s even a man?”
Singlestraw raised his bushy eyebrows. “I don’t recall a deep voice.”
Sam didn’t know how they could catch Plunk if no one really knew him. He hoped that Lord Lennard was still alive, so they could find out what the man really looked like. If Sam could ever get in the same room with Plunk, he would be able to know, but he didn’t think that would ever happen.
After getting a pollen-plaster, something that Sam had never heard of, he returned to the main gate of the keep. Harrison approached him.
“I see that someone shaved a bit of hair from your scalp,” the healer said.
Sam put his hand to his head. “They did! I must look—”
“Stupid? I agree,” Chief Constable Bentwick said. “However, we still need you.”
Sam tried to settle down, but all he felt was increasing frustration, tinged with anger. “We will never find Plunk. No one I talked to has seen him. If Lord Lennard is dead, then how are we going to know who Plunk is? The man can create any disguise he likes, and his disguises are nearly undetectable.”
“But not for you,” Harrison said.
“And how am I going to see all the men and women currently behind the keep’s walls? What if Plunk makes disguises for two or three or twenty? We fought disguised guards at Plunk's house. How will we know which person is the right one?” Sam said.
“You’ll have to figure it out,” Bentwick said. “If you want an apprenticeship, this is your big test.”
“A test?” Sam curled his fists. “You already offered the position to me.”
“I didn’t sign any offer. Did you promise the boy anything?” Bentwick said to Harrison.
“Not me,” the healer said.
Sam sat on the cobbled road and held his head. Emmy licked his hands. He could only groan with the ridiculousness of the situation.
“At least your dog still loves you,” Bentwick said.
Sam looked up at the gate. He had an idea. “Can anyone make the exploding wards?”
“Not everyone, but I can,” Harrison said. “Why do you ask?”
“Do the wards explode only one way?”
Harrison nodded. “Of course they do, outward. Why?”
“Then let’s put a bunch of wards on the gate with the exploding side facing in.”
“Why would you do—” Bentwick never finished his sentence. He looked at the gate. “Never been done that I know of,” the chief constable said. “Did you figure it out, Harrison?”
“I can’t say they’ll blow the gate down if that is what you mean.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “You just make lots of them and have our own archers shoot at once. Isn’t it worth a try?”
Sam watched as Harrison walked to the gate and plastered it with exploding wards. The active side faced into the wooden gate. Sam didn’t know if they would capture Plunk, but if they took the keep, The Fealty Mining Company owner would either face justice or flee. At this point, Sam would settle for either outcome. The king could commandeer the mine if Plunk turned traitor, if he hadn’t already, he thought. Another blow to the rebellion.
“We have archers ready,” Bentwick said to Sam. He turned to a row of archers. “Everyone ready? Let’s move a bit farther away from the gate.”
Sam was more than glad to do that. He didn’t want to be hit with splinters.
“Fire!” Bentwick said.
The arrows were shot. They hit the gate almost simultaneously. The explosions were deafening. Wood fragments rained down on them, along with a cloud of smoke. When it all cleared, the gate was in tatters. Most of the gate blew into the keep. Bodies were strewn all the way to the keep’s steps.
“Quickly!” Harrison said to Sam. “Identify those who are wearing masks!”
Sam ran over the shattered wood, and looking through his spying glass with one eye and using his regular eyesight with his other, he examined every moaning body. He pointed to those wearing disguises. He found five people among a little more than twenty.
The constables converged on the keep, and soon they had emptied the building of people. Bentwick had the stables checked, and four people were hidden under heaps of straw.
Forty-three people sat in the keep’s courtyard with their hands on their heads, while constables combed through the keep and its outbuildings three more times.
Sam had a pot of red paint and placed a ‘x’ on the foreheads of those with disguises. There were nine disguised people, including Lord Lennard, his daughter, and his wife.
“Where is Plunk?” the chief constable of Mountain View asked Lennard Lager.
“She has already escaped,” the ex-town lord said. “There is a bolt-hole down an ornamental well in the garden. It leads to a tunnel. I was going to use it, but Plunk said she would put wards all along the way.”
“She? Did you ever see her true face?” Harrison said.
Lager shook his head. “Never. I only saw her with a man’s face.”
Harrison grunted with a look of chagrin. “So Plunk was slight for a man.”
“He, or rather she, must have been the maid carrying the pollen,” Sam said. “I had a conversation with her. Come to think of it, she looked a little like Ionie Plunk.” He shook his head in frustration.
Lager held up his bandaged little finger. “Plunk is vicious and too smart. We never did get along.”
“Why did she hide in the keep when she could have fled from the city?”
“She never believed that Sam couldn’t see pollen and was shocked when she saw you walking in the halls of her house. She didn’t think you would leave without Harrison and thought she would kill you with the ward on his cell door. Plunk came to the keep to kill me. She would have, too, but you destroyed the gate far quicker than she thought possible. I would have been long dead if the constables took hours to tear down the gate. She is a vicious, vindictive woman.”
“And she will be out of Mountain View by now.” Harrison said it as a statement.
Lager looked at Harrison. “How did you destroy the gate? That was when Plunk really panicked and left.”
“Something Sam thought of. I’ll never tell you, old ex-friend,” Harrison said.
~
Harrison, Sam, and Bentwick shared a carriage back to Harrison’s cottage outside of Cherryton.
“Do I get my offer?” Sam said, his hands clammy with sweat. He had worried about it ever since Bentwick assigned him to get Plunk.
“Don’t worry about that,” Bentwick leaned over and patted Sam on his knee. “General Torrent would likely grant you a medal for bravery if you were one of his soldiers, but in the end, Sam Smith is only a helpful citizen. Blowing up the gate, however, that was a masterstroke. Torrent may still award you with something for that. Sieges will never be the same. Pointing blasting wards inward rather than outward is an innovation that may change aspects to military strategy.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “But someone will come up with a defense for that, eventually, like everything else.”
Harrison folded his arms, smiling. “You sound like a grizzled veteran.”
“I’m not grizzled, but I feel a little like a veteran,” Sam said.
“You are that, but don’t have any illusions about what your duties will be as an apprentice to my investigative unit. Apprentices are used to fetch and carry.”
“Just like my job with Harrison Dimple this summer?”
“Not quite like that.”
Sam sat back and grinned. “I’m happy with fetch and carry. My plan is to live with my brother in a place where I can keep Emmy. I think I’ll enjoy many happy years in Baskin.”
“Baskin isn’t like Cherryton,” Harrison said. “You’ll be sick of it in a season. However, I do know a person who will help you find a place to live if your brother will contribute to the rent.”
“Wh
o?” Sam said.
“Bentwick, of course. He owes you a lot more than a year’s worth of rent.”
Sam leaned back and looked out the window. “Excitement, travel, mystery. I look forward to my new life as an apprentice.”
T
HE END OF A BOY WITHOUT MAGIC
CHARACTER LIST FOR THE MAGIC MISSING SERIES
Cherryton
Sam Smith - Son of a blacksmith. Main Character.
Addia Smith (Addy) - Sam’s sister.
Marker Smith (Mark) - Sam’s brother. Two years older than Addy.
Truart Smith (Tru) - Sam’s oldest brother.
Rolph Smith - Sam’s father.
Walbur Scrivener (Wally) - Son of the town’s Lord of the Word,
Gobfort Carter (Gob) - Son of the transportation provider in town.
Harrison Dimple - Traveling healer who lives just outside of Cherryton
Yulla Featherstone - Teacher of Sam’s classes for his first and seventh year
Batchelor Bank - Schoolmaster
Glory Wheeler - Girl in Sam’s fifth year class.
Malora Washjoy - Baker’s wife
Tom Washjoy - Baker
Mountain View
Lennard Lager - Town Lord of Mountain View
Emmy - A Great Sanchian - a valuable hunting dog
Horner’s Rest
Bagbox - ‘lord’ of Horner’s Rest
Milla - healer in Horner’s Rest
Riverville
Magia (Mags) - Healer in Riverville
Faddon Bentwick - Chief Captain of the Constabulary
Rangerfield - Captain and commanding officer of the Riverville fort
Fussel’s Ford
Seedman - part-time constable in Fussel’s Ford
Betti - the local healer in Fussel’s Ford.
Oak Basin
Dantell (and wife) - merchants from Shovel Vale
Hiron Smith - blacksmith friend of Harrisons in Oak Basin
Pensie Smith - Hiron’s wife.
Link Cackle - glassmaker in Oak Basin
Mount Vannon
Tom Elbow - Mount Vannon constabulary clerk
Ionie Plunk Mount Vannon madame
Les Oakbrush - Pollen artist
Harget Temper - renegade constable
Jay Youngbud – miner
General Torrent – leader of a detachment of the royal army
Kennel
Ophie Kenson – village healer
Bowerville
Rassy – the innkeeper
Mountain View Return
Bannon Plunk - Rebellion Leader (aka Banna Plunk)
Excerpt from Book Two of the MAGIC MISSING Series
CHAPTER ONE
~
S AM’S EYES FOLLOWED THE CONTOURS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE as the carriage carrying Chief Constable Bentwick, two constables transferring to the Royal Constabulary headquarters, and him to Baskin, the capital of the kingdom of Toraltia. Gone were the gentle hills and dales surrounding Cherryton, his former home.
After a few days of rolling farmland, he wondered if he had made the right decision to join the constabulary as an apprentice. At least he’d be sharing a house with Tru Smith, his oldest brother. He looked up at the ceiling wondering how Emmy, his Great Sanchian hunting dog endured riding on the top of the carriage.
“We will sleep in Baskin, tonight,” Bentwick said. He smiled at Sam, who had turned his head from the view.
“Will we see the ocean?” Sam asked.
He hadn’t had the opportunity to spend any time on the eastern coast of Toraltia. He had grown up inland and the only real travel was the past summer on a tour of the mountain villages even further to the northwest of Cherryton with Harrison Dimple, a healer and a spy for someone in Baskin. The man had always been vague about who he really worked for.
“We will stop at Sharp’s Hill for dinner. It’s an hour to Baskin from there. You’ll be able to see the edge of the sea,” one of the constables said.
“Thank you,” Sam said.
The confidence that he had felt after helping Harrison and Chief Constable Bentwick stop a rebellion in the mountainous northwest of the country seemed to have gone stale. Even if Sam had wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to return to Cherryton. His family had cast him out, as had much of the rest of the town, anything to get rid of a boy who couldn’t see or make anything out of pollen, the magical material that permeated the world.
Surviving a lightning strike when he was a five-year-old, had scoured the ubiquitous ability from Sam. His plight hadn’t generated pity, but enmity from friends, family, and most of the town. His disability wasn’t contagious, but Sam felt that people treated him as if it was.
During his healing tour with Harrison, Sam had been able to contribute to discovering the rebellion plot in large part because he couldn’t see pollen-made things. At least he had found a glass maker who could coat glass with a wash of gold that enabled Sam to see pollen for the first time since his accident. Now as he approached fifteen, he found an apprenticeship when he had despaired of ever securing one.
~
The two constables had generally ignored him on the journey from Cherryton, but then there was the age difference. Tru wouldn’t have acted different from the constables since he was nearly ten years older than Sam.
Similar thoughts ran through Sam’s head as he gazed out at the thin line of gray ocean in the distance, and then up at the gates as they clattered through, and on Baskin’s cobblestone streets toward the Royal Constabulary.
“What do you think of Baskin?” Bentwick asked as the carriage came to a stop in front of a large five-story building. Dark blue uniformed constables walked up and down the steps along with Baskin’s citizens.
“Big. It’s bigger than anything we’ve driven through.”
“That’s the capital for you,” one of the constables said. “It is twice as big as any city in Toraltia. Don’t get lost!” The two men laughed at the jibe.
Sam looked at Bentwick. “You said I’d spend the next two weeks living here?”
The Chief Constable nodded. “There is a dormitory section on the fifth floor for visiting constables and a large room for our apprentices, but once you find a house you can move out after training. I’ll help you find something that will give Emmy some room to exercise,”
The big dog jumped off the roof and patiently waited for Sam to leave the carriage.
“I can take her to the dormitory with me?” he asked Bentwick.
“Not up to the fifth story. We have a stable in the back. She will stay there. It will be your responsibility to make sure she is taken care of. I’m sure you can accomplish that.”
Sam nodded.
~
The six apprentice constables stood in a line in front of Bentwick. Five wore uniforms and Sam didn’t. Since he was the only apprentice attached to the Constabulary’s Investigative Unit, members if the unit were not required to wear uniforms except for special occasions.
“I brought you all together,” Bentwick said, “to introduce you to your newest member, Sam Smith. He comes to us from Cherryton. We’ve never had an apprentice assigned to the Investigative Unit before, but Sam has proven himself up to the task during the recent rebellion in the mountains. I worked with him personally, and I think he will be an asset to the Royal Constabulary. Two others are new since I was gone on assignment. Please say your name, your assignment within the constabulary, your age, and where you are from.”
Sam endured the introductions. None of the other boys seemed friendly, but Bentwick had warned him to expect that. There was a reason constables had to earn a place in the Investigative Unit. He had assured Sam that his apprenticeship was earned, but Sam wouldn’t be telling the others that, so he had to endure their stares.
Later, after making sure Emmy had a straw bed in a corner of the stable, Sam trudged with his bags up the five floors to the apprentice dormitory at the top. The only apprentice in the room pointed to a bed with an empty open closet
. A trunk sat at the foot of each bed. Sam put his spectacles on to observe that three trunks were secured with pollen locks.
“Why are you wearing spectacles? Aren’t they something for old men who can’t read?” the boy, Mark Leadback, said.
“I have focus problems when it comes to pollen,” Sam said, skirting his disability. “I thought I saw pollen locks on a few trunks, but I prefer iron. I’ll have to buy one.”
Mark narrowed his eyes, but then raised his eyebrows as if it really didn’t matter. “I think they have plenty of locks downstairs in the supply room. That is where you’ll be measured for your uniform.”
Sam nodded and put his bags in the trunk anyway. “How long have you been an apprentice?”
“Since my fifteenth birthday, so a year. My uncle is a constable. Most of the others have constabulary relatives. It seems you are a special case.”
Sam pursed his lips. He’d have to talk about his issues at some point, so he sat on his bed and told Mark about himself and his adventures.
“You really fought in the rebellion?”
Sam nodded. “I learned just enough swordsmanship not to get killed, but I have a few scars.” He showed Mark his still-healing hand. “I have one like that on my stomach.”
“I heard you brought a big dog with you.”
“Emmy is her name. She is a Great Sanchian hunting dog. Chief Constable Bentwick said I could board her until I get a house. I’ll be living outside the constabulary.”
Mark nodded. “Two of us do that. There are only three that live in the apprentice dorm.” Mark smiled. “I can sleep in longer living here.” His face turned dour. “You’ll have to watch yourself. Constables like to play tricks on the apprentices, so be careful. It is not unknown for apprentices to do the same to newer apprentices. That includes me.”
“I understand. I’m used to ‘tricks’ as you call them.”
Mark nodded his head. “I suppose you are. Do you have any questions for me?”
Sam made sure he knew what time things started and ended, including when and where meals were served. Since Mark warned him about pranks, Sam would get confirmation of what the apprentice had told him. He hoped the constable-apprentice Mark would be nicer than his brother Mark.
