The Sorceress's Apprentice

by Joshua Jackson

  “I am Lieutenant Anselm and I gave no such order,” he barked, causing me to wince. Discretely I stripped off the gauntlet “What is in those packs? Wait,” he stopped, scrutinizing me, “you are a woman and we have no women in our army.” His eyes went wide with understanding. “Athala! IT IS THEM! THEY ARE—”

  “TOD!” I leapt forward, grabbing his throat. His eyes rolled back and Lieutenant Anselm dropped to the ground.

  “RUN!” I told Zimri, who was already trying to ditch the heavy, cumbersome armor.

  Both of us tossed down the shields and undid the breastplate as we made for the gate. Already a dozen soldiers were closing ranks in front of the gate ahead of us. Beside me, Zimri flung his spear at the centermost soldier, striking home with deadly accuracy. Automatically he held out his hand and I tossed him the spear I was carrying. A moment later, he launched that one, striking down another soldier.

  Undoing the last strap, I slipped out of breastplate, feeling lighter and freer. At that moment, I heard a sharp twang and felt a murderously hard punch to the shoulder that knocked me to my knees. A second later, pain exploded in my shoulder. With shock, I looked down to see a black arrow shaft protruding from my left shoulder. Zimri was over me in a second, his shield raised high as more projectiles thudded off it.

  Dazed, I blinked at him, trying to shake myself back to reality. “Schütze!” I called and the arrows started bouncing off the invisible shield a meter over our heads.

  “You okay?” Zimri asked, helping me to my feet.

  I answered with a flat glare.

  “How long can you hold it?” he asked, glancing up as another couple arrows bounced off.

  “Not long,” I grunted, already feeling the power I’d gotten from Anselm ebbing quickly away. “Can you cut a path to the gate for us if I break up the shield wall?” I asked, gesturing to the locked soldiers a half a dozen meters away.

  “Probably, yeah,” Zimri nodded.

  “Good.” I slung my pack to the ground pulling out a small glass vial full of black powder. “Close your eyes and cover your ears.”

  Before Zimri could question me, I tossed the vial towards the soldiers and shouted, “FEUER!” A small jet of flame exploded from my hand, wrapping around the vial. Not waiting to see if it worked, I spun around, putting my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes, and grunting as the arrow tore at my shoulder.

  Less than a second later, there was a deafening boom and even through my closed eyes, the night was lit up like that day. I turned back around, pulling my pack back on, eliciting more bolts of pain. Zimri was on his knees, looking stunned.

  “Get up!” I shouted at him, seeing the soldiers still dazed and confused but that wouldn’t last much longer.

  The Alkite gave me a blank, dazed look as he tottered on his knees for a second. Cursing all Alkites, I scrambled over to him, shaking him.

  “Get up! We have to go!”

  “What?”

  “Get up!” I shouted at him again.

  “I can’t hear you!” he yelled, gesturing to his ears.

  Growling, I grabbed him and hauled him to his feet, grinding my teeth as the arrow dug further into my shoulder. “GO!” I shouted, shoving him towards the soldiers.

  Sword drawn, he stumbled towards the soldiers like a drunk man. While he dealt with the four or five soldiers who had managed to their feet, I scampered to the downed soldiers, syphoning their life force before they could get up.

  “Schütze!” I called again, reinforcing the telekinetic shield protecting us, which bought us another few minutes.

  By the time I had finished with that, Zimri had finished off the last soldier and like the idiot he was, he just stood there.

  “The gate!” I screamed at him, running over to the gate. “Help me open the gate!”

  I dared not look back, knowing that dozens of soldiers were closing on our position. Above me, I heard arrows pinging uselessly off my shield. Even with the boost in power, it wouldn’t hold much longer.

  “ZIMRI!” I shrieked as I uselessly tried to life the crossbar. The arrow was shredding my shoulder muscles and I could feel blood soaking the front of my shirt. “HELP ME!” I howled in pain and frustration.

  He looked around stupidly, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. When he saw me screaming and frantically gesturing, understanding dawned in his eyes and he raced over to me. Together, we tried to life the crossbar but it was too heavy. Shoving Zimri back, I reached into my rapidly depleting reserves of life force, I threw one last spell.

  “Explodiert!”

  The gate shattered into a million pieces as my spell took effect. My last reserves of energy emptied and I slumped down, only to be caught by Zimri. Immediately I recoiled from his touch as he wrapped his arm around me, holding me up.

  “Hang on, I’ve got you,” he told me as he stumbled through the destroyed gate.

  He was tired too, I could tell from his pale, haggard look and he faltered as he dodged the dropping shafts. Firming up my feet, I leaned back into, trying to prop him up. Together we ran, stumbled, and ran on again into the night until the castle was nothing but a dim speck of light behind us.

  Chapter 17-Athala

  When I woke the next morning, I found Zimri gone. We had collapsed out of sheer exhaustion a few hours past midnight, physically unable to go on. I knew pursuit was possible but I was so thoroughly drained of even my own life force, not to mention blood, I just dropped. Zimri wasn’t far behind.

  I stretched and I couldn’t stop myself from crying out as the arrow shaft moved around, sending out waves of pain. Hyperventilating, I sat back trying to calm down, feeling miserable. My head ached, my lungs rattled with each breath, I was in extreme pain, and freezing cold. Unconsciously, I wrapped the cloak tighter around me.

  Cloak?

  I looked over to see Zimri’s cloak wrapped around me. Apparently he had wrapped it around me as a blanket last night. That was odd, I thought, wondering why he had done that. His idea of being a nice guy or…or he could be trying to soften me up, get me to lower my guard. Did he know I was planning to betray him? Was he trying get me to like him so I wouldn’t? I regarded the cloak suspiciously, wondering what his endgame could possibly be.

  Unable to put anything concrete together, I decided to put it aside for now. I was on to him, even if I didn’t know his endgame and I had more pressing issues, namely the arrow still sticking out of my shoulder.

  Shakily I got to my feet, fighting the vertigo induced by the lack of blood and sudden movement. The next few days we were going to have to move slow until I recovered. Given my condition, and probably Zimri’s too, we had no chance to outrun pursuit. But, I glanced up to see the sun well over the Tower of the Sea, if we hadn’t been caught by now, pursuit was unlikely. One less thing to worry about, at least.

  I stumbled over to a nearby rivulet of glacial runoff from the southern peaks and sat back down, breathing hard. Biting down on the cloak, I gripped the arrow with both hands and firmly pulled, screaming into the cloak as the weapon ripped new holes in my shoulder.

  Blood had clotted and dried, sealing the wound during the night but now it flowed again. Quickly discarding the offending arrow, I pulled both Zimri’s spare shirt off and the undergarment. Since his white linen shirt was already badly stained with blood, I decided it would work to staunch the bleeding. Soaking it for a moment in the icy gray water, I used it to clean the wound and then pressed it against the wound.

  For the next ten minutes, I worked on getting the bleeding stopped, cleaning the excess blood off, holding it against the hole, rinsing and repeating. I needed to sew it up, but my hands were shaking with fatigue and pain, plus it was a bad angle.

  “Oh, hey, there…you…are,” Zimri’s voice trailed off as he saw me, turning his odd shade of red and studying the clouds intently.

  “Good, come here,” I ordered. “I need you to sew up my shoulder.”

  “Uh, that’s going to be difficult,” he walked carefully over to
wards me, but still not looking at me. “You have something against shirts?”

  I sighed, frustrated. “You have already seen my body plenty and there is nothing new.” I looked down at the hole in my shoulder. “Well, not much new, anyway. You have seen everything there is to see; trying not to look has very little point now.”

  He swallowed hard and forced himself to meet my eyes. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

  “And I am not comfortable with an arrow hole in my shoulder,” I retorted. “Guess which one I care about.”

  “Fair point,” he allowed. “What do you need?”

  Holding the rag against my shoulder, I fished around my pack for the sewing kit, handing it to him. “Sew this closed,” I instructed, pulling the rag away.

  Zimri’s eyes went wide. “You want me to…what? I’ve never done that before!”

  With a roll of my eyes, I told him, “It is not complicated; just make the stitches tight.”

  “Uh, okay,” he replied nervously.

  With hands shaking far too much, he threaded the needle and punctured my skin, eliciting a sharp intake of breath. “Not so deep,” I admonished sharply.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, withdrawing the needle, trying again.

  Lips pursed and forehead beaded with sweat, he tried again. He was having a harder time with this than I, which amused me. Taking far longer than necessary, he finally tied off the last stitch. I looked down, assessing his work. Not particularly good but good enough. Now to change the bandages on my arms.

  “Is that my shirt?” Zimri asked, pointing to the discarded bloody garment.

  “It was,” I confirmed, “it was already ruined and served as a good rag.”

  “Oh,” Zimri took the shirt, giving it a disappointed look. “Maybe I can wash it.”

  While he busied himself with that, I wrapped clean linen bandages around my shoulder, wincing every time I twisted. Then, I unwrapped the bandages on my arm.

  “How are you not screaming right now?” he asked, looking back at me, eyes immediately riveting on the twin blistering and bloody lines with the flesh around a menagerie of reds, blacks, blues, and yellows. It was admittedly not a pretty sight.

  “The Mistress taught us to be endure extreme pain,” I gave a slight shrug, instantly regretting it. “I have suffered far worse.”

  The Alkite shook his head. “That’s just not right,” he commented to himself.

  “I would not have survived without that training, and neither would you,” I told him.

  Zimri had no answer to that but still looked at me like I was a lost puppy. “I guess,” he mumbled, “but it doesn’t make it okay. What’s our plan now?”

  “Plan?” I questioned while reapplying the Arev Eola.

  “Yeah, you’re my guide, sunshine,” he reminded. “Where do we go from here?”

  “My plan was to teleport straight to the Eisenpalast,” I couldn’t help the bitterness in my voice.

  “I’m not apologizing for keeping you from murdering someone,” Zimri stolidly retorted. He was now washing my undershirt. “What was the Plan B?”

  I sat back, thinking for a moment. “We have only one option,” I decided. “Well, I suppose we have two. We could walk all the way to the Eisenpalast but that would take most of the summer and we would likely not survive it.”

  “The other?”

  “Wiese is the next major city along the Branden Fluss,” I gestured to the shimmering ribbon far down the valley from us. “It is about 120 kilometers from here. From there, we take a boat to Marlis. The Eisenpalast is just outside. Overall, it should take us two, three weeks to get there, assuming nothing goes wrong.”

  “Since things have gone so smoothly,” Zimri remarked with a snort. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Aidan could pose a problem and it is unlikely we will be able to sneak up on the Mistress now,” I offered with an irritated sigh. “Two things that could have been avoided if—”

  “We are not murdering people so don’t bring it up again.” Zimri’s voice was like steel and his face took on the same hard, immovable expression he had when he’d threaten to kill me if I touched Elske. “Who’s Aidan?”

  “The other apprentice,” I supplied.

  “There’s more than one of you?”

  “There were ten at one point. The others were not strong enough.” I let that hang in the air.

  “Are there any towns between here and Wiese?” Zimri changed the subject.

  “A few. Why?”

  On cue, his stomach growled. “Because I’m starving and there isn’t much to eat out here. All I got was this stupid bird.”

  “What bird?” I didn’t see any bird.

  “This bird.” He appeared to be holding up nothing.

  Suddenly my eyes went wide and I grabbed it out of his hand. They closed around the feathery body of an invisible bird. A thrill of excitement ran down my spine.

  “You killed a vanishing pheasant?”

  “Well it’s a pheasant, it vanished, and I killed it, so yeah,” he shrugged. “Not much to eat though.”

  “We are no eating this!” I was thoroughly horrified by the idea. “I have been trying to get my hands on one for years! I must study it.”

  “And I must eat,” Zimri protested. “What do you want with this bird anyway?”

  “To learn how it disappears, of course,” I gave him an exasperated look. He could be such an idiot. “Surely that must have made even you a little curious.”

  “Not enough to forgo breakfast!” I retorted. “What am I supposed to eat?”

  “Find something else but you will not have his bird.” I gave him a challenging look, daring him to try and take the pheasant from me.

  He returned my glare for a moment before throwing up his hands in surrender. “Fine, whatever. There’s got to be something edible up here, at least until we get to a town. Come on, sunshine, let’s get going. I can’t imagine your General Fulco has given up his search.”

  “He is not looking for us,” I answered, remaining seated. “We would have been found already, if he were.”

  “So they’re just going to let us waltz through the Eisenberge unopposed?” Zimri was skeptical.

  “Not precisely,” I shook my head. “But what we are doing and where we are going is obvious. They know I am alive and I have an Alkite and I broke back into the Eisenberge. The only possible conclusion is that we are going for the princess and the Mistress. Assuming Aidan returns soon, he will be lying in wait for us at Wiese. At the very least, the Mistress will waiting for us at the Eisenpalast. Meanwhile, Fulco and his army have to protect the pass into the Eisenberge so expending troops in an unnecessary manhunt would be foolish.”

  Zimri sighed heavily and sat back down. “That’s a relief, of sorts. Of course, from here on, everything is a trap.”

  I considered some retort about how could’ve avoided all that but decided against it. I’d pushed him enough on that. “I have work to do,” I told him, focusing on the invisible pheasant in front of me. “Go find us something to eat.”

  “I did get us something to eat.”

  “Then you should be able to find something else,” I shot back. “We are not eating the bird so do not bring it up again.”

  He actually smiled at that, shaking his head. “Fair enough, sunshine,” he chuckled, standing. Zimri set out my undergarment shirt to dry on a nearby rock. “Here,” he said, “let’s see if this works as a sling.”

  The Alkite had taken his thoroughly wrecked spare shirt, washed it out surprisingly well, and then tied it into a sort of loop. “If you loop it over your shoulder like this.” He placed it over my right shoulder. “You should be able to hang your left arm in it.”

  Gingerly, I placed my arm in the makeshift sling. It was a bit awkward but certainly felt a lot better than letting my torn-up shoulder muscles bear the weight.

  Zimri frowned, rubbing his chin. “It’s not perfect, but it’ll work,” he guessed. “How does it feel?”<
br />
  “Better,” I admitted.

  “My cloak would be better but I imagine you need that to keep warm,” he remarked.

  I rolled my eyes at him. It was already in the high teens, which was about as warm as the Eisenberge got. “It is a warm day,” I told him with a shrug.

  “Speak for yourself,” he laughed. “I’m freezing. I’ll see what I can find.”

  What a strange man, I thought to myself as he hiked back over the Bogen Wiese. I stared down at the sling he’d made for me, trying to figure out what had just happened. He just gave without being asked or seeming to think of reward. No one had ever given me something like this before, not without being asked or commanded. It had to be part of some sort of scheme but I couldn’t figure it out what that was.

  At the same time, he seemed to be genuine. I had gotten quite good at lie detecting but there seemed to be no deception, no ulterior motive at work with him. He was kind to me because that is who he was.

  No, I shook my head. No one was kind like that, no one that survived long. He had to have some sort of scheme and if he was able to mask his intentions this well, maybe he was more dangerous that I thought. Looking back the direction he had wandered, I decided he bore much closer watching.

  Chapter 18-Zimri

  It took us almost two weeks to reach Wiese. The first week was spent recovering from our injuries, while the second week was spent chasing vanishing pheasants all over Berge Wiese. Athala was obsessed with figuring out how they made themselves disappear, so after thoroughly dissecting the first one, she sent me on hunting missions. Admittedly I’m not a great hunter with proper weapons; trying to kill invisible birds with a sword is near impossible. In the end, the law of averages was on my side and by sheer luck I managed catch four more, out of the hundred or so I chased. It was exhausting, time consuming, and utterly thankless as all Athala did was gripe about how pathetic a hunter I was.

  In the meantime, our clothes were worn to rags, often went a day or two without food, and froze in the icy nights. My face was starting to itch from the teenage beard I was growing and I didn’t want to think about how much weight I’d lost. Needless to say, I was glad to finally see Wiese.