The girl stared at the small glass globe and concentrated but nothing happened. She looked up at Azerick with plaintive eyes but she would find no sympathy there.
“Come now, concentrate! If you cannot do something as simple as making the globe glow then I have no use for you and that fat blob lying on the ground over there can have you!” Azerick growled cruelly.
“Milord, please,” the father pleaded.
The girl squeezed her big hazel eyes shut, bit her lip in concentration, and focused all her will onto the orb as tears of anger, fear, and desperation streamed down her small face. The globe suddenly erupted in a brilliance that lit up the entire block like a stroke of lightning that refused to flash out of existence. Closing his eyes against the powerful glare, Azerick knelt down, put his hand over the radiating glass sphere, and gently took it from her where it once again dimmed to nothing more than a plain glass ball.
“That will do, child, that will do,” Azerick assured her soothingly and petted her long, wavy blond hair then stood up and addressed the father once more.
Azerick pulled out a small pouch of coins and tossed it to the man. “There is probably a little over thirty crowns total in that sack. I suggest that you invest it in tools or whatever it is you normally do for a living. If I hear you have squandered it on drinking, gambling, or other pleasures I will come and take the rest of your family from you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, milord, I swear I’ll do right. What will you do with Ellyssa?” the man asked nervously.
“That is no longer your concern now is it?” Azerick replied harshly, but then softened as he realized that the man truly did want what was best for his daughter. “She will be educated far beyond what she could have ever accomplished with you. She has a talent that I will nurture so that she can become what she is meant to be. Be warned however, she is now mine. You may see her about the city at times but you will not approach her nor will you speak to her. In time, she may choose to reestablish contact with you but that will be her choice. She is not a slave but my apprentice. When she comes of age, she can decide what she will do, where she will go, or what she shall become.”
The man nodded, took one last tear-filled look at his daughter and walked away. Azerick guided his new apprentice past the fat lump of a man still cowering on the filthy, cobbled street and walked together back to the Golden Glade. Azerick looked down at his new apprentice and wondered what he had gotten himself into.
“So your name is Ellyssa?” he asked the girl who kept pace with him.
“Yes, sir,” she replied quietly.
“How old are you, Ellyssa?”
“Nine, sir.”
“Your father said you can read.”
She mumbled an affirmative and nodded her head.
“Do you like reading?”
She nodded her head again.
“Good, you will be doing a great deal of reading from now on.”
The girl did not bother to answer and they walked the rest of the way to the inn in silence. The inn was filling up with the usual dinner crowd as they walked in. Azerick motioned for the buxom older serving woman to come over.
“Mary, would you be so kind as the take this young lady and clean her up before dinner?” Azerick implored her.
Mary was a kind soul and would have helped regardless, but the fact that the young sorcerer was a good tipper did not hurt.
“Of course, come along, honey. Let’s get you presentable before setting you up with a real good meal, okay?”
Ellyssa followed the serving woman without protest. When they returned a short while later, the young girl had her hair washed out and brushed and her skin was free of dirt. With perfect timing, the meals arrived just after she sat back down across from Azerick. Azerick motioned that it was all right to go ahead and eat as he dug into his own meal.
The girl ate with delight but maintained respectable table manners. Azerick figured this was probably the first decent meal she has had in some time and the thought that he was able to provide her with it warmed his cold heart. He thought back to the days when he often went to bed with an empty stomach and sympathized with the hungry child.
Azerick ordered another bed set up in his room as well as a couple folding screens for modesty’s sake. Once they finished eating, Azerick took Ellyssa upstairs and showed her where she would be sleeping. He watched her eyes automatically settle on the books he had stacked along a shelf. Azerick crossed the room and pulled out a book titled Elementary Magic and handed it to the girl. It was the same book that he had “borrowed” from Magus Allister what seemed a lifetime ago.
“You can read this anytime you like but do not attempt any of the spells inside without me being present. This is the book that I first used to learn magic.”
“Are you really going to teach me how to use magic?” she asked wondrously.
“Yes, you have the talent and a strong one if I’m not mistaken. I can get you started but I will have to find someone else to teach you beyond the rudimentary. I imagine you will surpass my abilities before long.”
“Aren’t you a powerful wizard? You sent that fat man flying easily enough,” she asked, quickly overcoming her initial shyness.
“I am not a wizard at all, I am a sorcerer. I cast magic in a different manner than a wizard, though it looks similar,” Azerick told her before she could ask what the difference was.
Ellyssa sat down and read while Azerick lay on his bed pondering what to do next. He had an idea, the same idea he had gotten shortly after the girl’s father made it clear he wanted to sell her, but it was dangerous. He wondered if he had the right to place the girl in such danger to accomplish his own ends. His conscience warred with necessity, but in the end, it was sleep that won out.
Ellyssa stayed up reading long after the sorcerer fell asleep, so absorbed was she in the book he gave her. Her mother taught her and her big brother to read with a book of tales that she had owned since she was a girl. Ellyssa knew she was a good reader, but there were many words in this book with which she was unfamiliar. She would have to ask about them later. It was late and her eyes were getting heavy. She closed the book with reluctance and crawled into the other bed. It was softer than her bed at home and the blankets were thicker.
She thought about her brothers and her parents. She missed them already. They were good to her but she knew that times were really hard. There was never enough to eat and the house was always so cold in the winter. She hoped that the money the sorcerer had given her father would keep them fed and warm.
As much as it hurt, she understood that her father had done what was best even though it hurt him to do so. She was just glad that the fat man had not taken her. She could tell that he was a bad man. She was not sure what to think about Azerick. He was quiet, and though he did not seem friendly, he did not appear to be mean either. Maybe that would change once they got to know each other better.
Ellyssa woke and found Azerick looking through the sack that contained her clothes, a rag doll, and the hairbrush her mother had given her. She looked out the window and saw that the sun had already crested the horizon and heard the morning traffic out on the street. For a moment, she had thought that she had dreamt everything that had happened last night. She was not sure whether she was glad or disappointed to find that it had been real.
“What are you doing?” she asked as Azerick held up one of the dresses her mother had made her.
Azerick looked up at the sound of her voice. “I was looking to see what kind of clothes you had brought. What do you say we go to the clothiers and buy you some new ones?”
New clothes, she had never had new clothes in her entire life! Everything she had her mother had made out of spare materials and scrap pieces of cloth she had been able to buy or trade from the tailor’s shop. But her mother had made her clothes herself. She knew that love had gone into every stitch she sewed. Then again, love did not keep the cold out.
“Do I have to throw away my old clothes?”
she asked quietly.
“Not if you do not want to. You can keep them, or even wear them if you like. I just noticed that most of them are quite worn and might be a little small now,” Azerick replied, realizing that her clothes were the only link she now had to her family.
It was hard not to feel guilty over the harshness with which he had treated her father but learning magic required enormous concentration. He felt it necessary to sever those ties with a family that was forced to sell her so that her focus would be on learning and not divided. Azerick also wanted to drive home the importance of what the man was doing and what he was losing by selling his child. Was it cruel, perhaps, but it was necessary and it was a cruel world and the quicker Ellyssa learned that the better.
“I would like some new clothes if I may.”
“We will go right after we break our fast. Meet me downstairs when you are ready.”
Azerick left Ellyssa to get dressed and went downstairs. He already knew where the clothiers shop was, so that would be easy to find. He ordered them both a good breakfast and Ellyssa came down a few minutes before it was served.
She was wearing one of her better homemade dresses and had brushed her long golden hair. She smiled at the sight of the warm meal but sadness crossed her face when she thought of the thin porridge her family always ate, at least on the good days. Then she remembered how much money Azerick had given her father. It was a lot of money she knew, and now her family should be eating better too and that thought helped ease her sadness.
She smiled widely as she took a drink of cold milk from her cup. Milk was also something she rarely had when she lived at home.
Perhaps this would not be so terrible or frightening after all, she thought.
She set her cup down once she finished her milk and looked at Azerick across the small table.
“Excuse me, sir, but is this where we are always going to live?” she asked tentatively.
“You can call me Azerick, Ellyssa, and no, we will not live here for long I hope.”
“I didn’t think people normally lived at an inn, except the innkeeper maybe. So where is your home and when are we going there?” she asked.
Azerick sighed and thought for moment. “It is not far from here, but I do not know how soon we will be able to go there. There are some things that I must do first, things that you may be able to help me with.”
“What kind of things can I help you with? Does it need cleaned?” Ellyssa asked. “I help my mother clean our house and darn stockings. I hope you have good stockings. I don’t like darning. The needle makes my fingers hurt.”
“No, I don’t need my stockings mended and the home needs far more than cleaning, I’m afraid. It’s rather complicated and I am not sure how to explain it.”
Ellyssa looked at him quizzically. “But you are a sorcerer and I’m just a girl. If it’s complicated for you, what can I do? I don’t have magical power, even if I did make that ball light up.”
Azerick smiled at the girl’s forwardness. “Power is not always the answer. Some things can be accomplished easier just by being whom or what you are.”
Ellyssa pondered that statement as Azerick beckoned to her. “Come, if you are done eating we can go get you some better clothes.”
Ellyssa hopped off the chair with a smile of anticipation and followed Azerick out of the inn. They soon arrived at the clothier’s shop where the proprietors, an older man and his wife, remembered Azerick from the day before and greeted him warmly.
“Ah, Master Azerick, you are back already,” the man said as he got up from where he was cutting out a garment from a pattern. “I hope you are not here for your order yet, it will be at least a few days before they are ready. I have my son and daughter both working on them at this moment, but such things take time and I don’t allow rushed work. I have a reputation to uphold.”
Azerick smiled back as he shook the older man’s hand. “No, I am content with what I bought from your shelves for now, but this young lady here needs an entire wardrobe. If you can find a few things that will fit her now and measure her for the rest I would be grateful.”
“Of course, of course!” the old man crowed, ecstatic over the profits this new customer was bringing him. “Young miss, you go and follow my wife, Mildred, back to the fitting room and I’ll find you a few things you can wear right away.”
Mildred smiled down at Ellyssa, took her small hand, and led her away to fit her for the clothes that would be made for her.
“So what will it be, dresses, trousers, or both?”
“Both, there are activities that she will be doing that is ill suited for dresses,” answered Azerick.
“Oh yes I understand how kids are, even the girls, running about, climbing trees and such. I remember my Kathryn wanting to do everything the boys did and trying to outdo them at it as well. It’s a good thing we were tailors or she wouldn’t have had a fit piece of clothing to her name.”
The old tailor carried on as he pulled articles of clothing off the shelves, sizing each of them with a professional eye born of decades of experience. Ellyssa and Mildred came back just as the tailor finished wrapping her new clothes up in a paper bundle secured with twine.
“Give me a week and I’ll be sure to have everything you requested finished,” the tailor said as Azerick paid him.
Azerick and his young ward went back to their room at the inn where he helped Ellyssa with the words she had committed to memory that she needed help with. Azerick spent the day teaching some of the subject matter out of the same books that he had engrossed himself in when he was her age. Her father had not exaggerated when he had told Azerick the she was bright. In fact, she was downright brilliant.
She absorbed everything Azerick could teach her. He shuddered to think about what a waste it would have been had he not taken her in. As a commoner, a poor one at that, she could never have attended a prestigious school like The Academy or been able to afford a private tutor. Sure, she could have still developed a strong mind and a decent education on her own, but before she could have even come close to reaching her potential, she likely would have been married off to some laborer or perhaps a middleclass merchant, if she were very lucky.
Then again, with what Azerick had planned, will she even get that chance? What he proposed was very dangerous and he had no idea if it would even work. He would take all of the precautions he could, but he could only mitigate the dangers so much.
He sighed as he looked out the window at the setting sun. It did not matter; he had already made his decision when he took her in. Was he any different from Xornan? Was it hypocrisy to think that he was any better by using this girl for his own ends? Did he have a choice? He did of course, but the alternative left as sour a taste in his mouth as this one did. He was risking both of their lives, but hers was by far the one most at risk and he had not even given her a choice in the matter.
Which was the lesser of the two evils? Is there such a thing as a lesser evil? He could not very well tell her corpse that he was sorry but it had been the lesser of two evils.
Azerick turned away from the window and looked at the back of his apprentice’s head. “Ellyssa.”
“Yes, Master Azerick?” she replied as she looked up from the book she was studying and turned to face him.
“There is something I must do and I need your help to do it,” he said heavily.
“Is it something magical?” she asked excitedly.
Most people, especially commoners with little experience with things beyond their simple farms or labors, viewed magic and those who practiced it with a great deal of nervousness, superstition, and fear. But not Ellyssa. She had been a little nervous at his first display of magic, but as soon as she began reading about it and became more comfortable with Azerick’s presence, she absolutely relished the idea of using magic. In fact, she was so excited and anxious with the idea that she might one day learn to wield it herself that it made him more than a bit nervous.
“I hope that
I will not have to use much magic, but it is possible. It is possible that there could be a great deal of danger involved, especially to you. I will protect you as best I can, but there is still a risk,” Azerick told her frankly.
Ellyssa furrowed her brow and chewed her lower lip, which she always did when there was some heavy thinking involved. “Okay, what do I need to do?”
Azerick looked at her with surprise. “Don’t you want to know what it is first?”
“Nope, I trust you,” she quipped as she shook her head sending her long blond hair whipping about. “Besides, I belong to you so I have to do what you say, right?”
Azerick’s face turned red, partially in shame and partially in anger at himself. “Absolutely not. You are not my property, you are my apprentice and a free person to make your own decisions and decide your own fate. You are not a slave. I will advise you and try to teach you things, as is my responsibility as an adult and your guardian, but you are not a slave.”
“I still trust you. What do I need to do?”
“Honestly, just be as cute as you can be. And be very brave.”
“No problem, cute I can do,” she replied and batted her long lashes at him.
Azerick smiled at the precocious child as he picked out one of the dresses he’d bought at the clothier’s just for this purpose. The cuffs were lace and the bottom flared out in a frilly design that had been around for ages and never truly gone out of style. He also took out a colorful silk neckerchief that he used to tie back her long hair.
Ellyssa cooed over the dress and silk ribbon. It was a dress that she never thought she would ever get to wear, much less own.
“If our mission hinges on me being cute, this is gonna be a piece of cake!” she said as she admired herself in the mirror.
Azerick had to smile again at the little girl’s assuredness but sobered quickly as they prepared to leave. Peck brought Horse around and blushed deeply when he saw Ellyssa. Azerick doublechecked the bridle and saddle, tightened up the cinch strap, then lifted Ellyssa onto Horse’s broad rump to ride sidesaddle. Azerick mounted and the unlikely pair rode through the city and out the gates.
The Sorcerer's Legacy (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 2
