“What happened?”
“The two little ones were sick,” the soldier said, wiping a hand across his face. The helm had done little to shield him from Mia’s vomit.
She was shaking. Maybe he’d given her too much. She threw up again, retching violently.
“Leave them. If we need more, we can always come back, but we can’t have this infecting the rest of the camp.”
“How many more do we need?”
“Who knows?” the other soldier said, slapping his hand on the side of the wagon. “They just want the supply of corishan to keep flowing.”
The wagon started forward.
Boldan leaned over, and Sam locked eyes with him, trying to tell him without words that he needed to take the rest of the puke weed, but he couldn’t tell if Boldan got the message. He felt helpless, as if he couldn’t do anything right.
Sam crawled over to his sister, getting close enough to her to grab her, cradling her head as she continued to shake and shiver. He watched as the wagons disappeared, heading into the growing darkness.
“What happened?” she muttered.
“They needed people to work the corishan mines,” Sam said. “I’ve heard that they had been sending people into the nearby villages for workers, but I didn’t think they were coming for kids.”
“I thought they paid,” Mia said.
“Maybe they would have,” Sam said.
And would that have been so bad?
He tried not to think like that, trying to stay positive, but they needed money. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad for them to of been taken by the mining camp and forced into work.
But Mia…
Mia wouldn’t have survived.
“What now?” Mia asked.
“We stay until you feel better,” he said. “And then we had back.”
“What if they come again?”
“Then we’ll run.”
“I could have stopped them, you know.”
Sam sighed deeply. “I know you could have,” he said. “But if you used your magic, there’s no telling what they would’ve done to you. They think any kind of magic is the Nighlan out here.”
“Maybe they would’ve pulled me into the Academy.”
“The soldiers?” Sam shook his head. “They wouldn’t have pulled you to the Academy. They wouldn’t have done anything other than hurt you.” He helped her to her feet. They weren’t so far from Erstan now. Thankfully they hadn’t been dragged too far away.
“What about the others?” Mia continued.
“I left more of the puke weed behind,” Sam said.
“We not going to go after them?”
“How?” Sam asked.
“I could—”
Sam raised his hand, cutting her off. “You couldn’t use your magic on them. We’ve already discussed that.”
She crossed her arms indignantly. “You just don’t want me to.”
“I want you to learn how to use it the right way,” he pressed. “And I don’t want you to draw the attention of more soldiers. Only the attention of the Academy.”
“And what will that take?”
He wished he had an answer for her, but he didn’t.
“Sam?”
“Let’s get walking.”
He knew the answer about what it would take, but it wasn’t one he was going to share with her. Doing so would break some part of her, and he refused to do that to her. She was all he had.
What they needed was a miracle.
Chapter Two
They reached the edge of Erstan. From here, the village spread outward. It was like so many other villages near the edge of what was now considered Olway, but what had once been a part of the Barlands. Run down, poor, and filled with people who longed for a different life but were stuck out away from the niceties found deeper in the empire.
Mia shivered the entire way. Sam had to help her and silently cursed himself for giving her too much of the puke weed. Had he used it a little bit less, she might’ve tolerated it better.
“How long is this going to last?” she asked as they approached a rundown building. The stone had cracked, crumbling, exposing a massive old wall where a sheet of rusted iron rested up against it.
“Well, when I read about puke weed, it was a few years ago,” he said. “I should have paid more attention to the dosage.”
“Dosage?” Mia wrinkled her nose. Some of her color had returned, and she was starting to act a little bit more like herself. “Why would you need to dose this at all?”
“Some people use it to help with poisoning.”
“To help with it?” She shook her head. “How in Kal’s name would this help with a poisoning? It seems to me that it’s more likely it would kill someone.”
“It’s not toxic,” he said. At least, Sam didn’t think it was toxic. He’d have to go back to the library and search for that book again. Usually, he remembered most of the things that he read, but from time to time, he came across some areas that he didn’t study as hard as he should. Mostly because he didn’t think he needed it. Why would he ever have needed puke weed?
Other than to escape soldiers from Olway trying to force have and his sister into serving in a mining camp, of course.
“And there are some people who swallow different poisons who need to get rid of it. What would you be better, Mia, absorbing the poison or throwing it up?”
“I suppose,” she said.
“Besides, it worked.”
“It felt awful.”
“I know it felt awful, but it worked. They had to believe that we were sick.”
“How did you know what it was?”
“I told you. I saw it in a book.”
“How did you remember it, though?”
“I remember most things I read.” He pulled the rusted metal out just enough for his sister to duck into the darkness on the other side of the wall, and Sam glanced around before following her inside.
It wasn’t much, but it was theirs.
The building had long ago been abandoned. Some claimed that it had once been one of the Barlands royalty, though Sam doubted it. It had more likely belonged to somebody with money, as the main structure that had once been there was considerably larger, though most of it had cracked and crumbled, leaving them with little more than a room that was about the same size as the school. No one came close to it, though. Most villagers felt that it was haunted.
And it was. By them.
A broken table near the back had been propped up by a few logs Sam had scavenged, and he grabbed a bowl filled with dried bread and berries and carried over to Mia, handing it to her.
“I’m not hungry,” she muttered.
“You need to eat,” he insisted. “After what we went through, we have to get some food in our bellies.”
She scrunched her face up in disgust. “How can you think about eating after all that?”
“As I said, you need to eat. You just got rid of everything you had at lunch.”
“Everything? You say that as if I have all of this food.”
“You do have some food,” he said. “Besides, I have something else for you.”
He made his way behind the broken table, pulled out a box from underneath the table, and flipped open the lid, grabbing a stale cookie and carrying it to his sister.
“What’s this?”
He smiled at her. “Just a little treat for you. First, you have to eat the bread and berries. Then you can eat it.”
Mia eyed the cookie hungrily. They rarely had such treats, only when Sam could scavenge it. The only time when he was able to do that was when he had a few moments while helping Arne, the local alchemist, run errands. He tried to help him as much as he could, but Arne didn’t usually need all that much help, and he only accepted Sam’s help because he had proven to have a quick mind.
“You should have it. It’s yours. I’m sure you earned it by doing something exciting.”
He shook his head and closed his hand around the c
ookie. “Just take this.”
“Why?”
“Can’t I do anything nice for you?”
She eyed him for a second and said, “We could split it.”
“Let it be your treat.”
He moved away, taking a seat against the crumbling stone wall, resting his head back. He still hadn’t shaken the effects of the puke weed, and though he was feeling better, he didn’t feel great quite yet. His sister did need to eat, though. Sam could deal with his own suffering, but not his hers.
She looked at the cookie. Then she took a slow nibble.
“Hey. I said after you had the rest,” he said.
“Just a little treat,” she said with a cheeky grin.
It was times like these when he tried to think about what it had been like before.
That was what they called it. The before.
Their parents had been gone for a while now. Long enough that they had lost their home, everything within it, to keep themselves alive. Then they’d been forced to take to the streets.
Sam had done everything in his power to try to help Mia hide her burgeoning magical ability. If she could get an invitation to the Academy…
But no. Getting an invitation to the Academy involved demonstrating magic and power and doing so to somebody who had the ability to help. Sam doubted that they would find anyone like that around here. Others within Erstan wouldn’t understand. They might even be threatened out of fear of invading Nighlan beyond the borders of the Barlands.
Sam knew better than to risk that.
So they hid. They stayed in their broken palace, what they called this run-down place that was their home. And he protected her. When the school was open, they attended, though that was only infrequently, and whenever Devon had time to teach. He went from village to village, never asking for much, and frequently brought a stack of books with him, though Sam had long ago read through most of them.
“Sam?”
He looked up. Mia had a mouthful of the dried bread, and she had somehow managed to squeeze some of the overly ripe berry onto her cheek. It looked like makeup, another luxury they couldn’t afford.
“Tell me about Tavran again.”
“What you want to know?” he asked.
“You haven’t talked about it much lately. You used to tell me stories.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Mia. You’ve heard all my stories.”
“Just because I’ve heard them before doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear them again.”
He chuckled, leaning forward. Distantly, the sound of thunder continued to rumble. It seemed to be intensifying. They hadn’t had a big storm in quite a while, though Erstan was known for its storms. The strange drizzling rain was new, though. Unpleasant, as well.
“What would you like to hear?”
“Tell me about the Academy.”
“I have no idea whether what I know about the Academy is real or not.” He leaned his head back, closing his eyes slightly so that he looked at his sister through the half-lidded expression. “The Academy is said to be an enormous building situated at the heart of Tavran, a place where magic is welcomed.” He started the story the way he always did, knowing what she would say next.
“They would let me use it?”
Sam gave her the same answer he always did. “That’s where you learn to use it the right way.”
“I know how to use it,” she said.
He smiled, nodding. She did know how to access her magic. And she was powerful, not that he knew of such things. As far as he could tell, she had talent. Ever since Mia had first started demonstrating her connection to magic, Sam had taken to trying to read about it. He wanted to know what it took to be tested for entrance into the Academy. He thought that if Mia could go, he might have an opportunity to learn there as well.
But the more that he read about Tavran, the more that he questioned whether or not he would even be permitted to go with her. Without having any magic of his own, Sam would be nothing more than a weight on her.
“They would teach you to use magic in ways that help protect Olway,” he said. The fatigue from the day was starting to catch up to him, and he trembled slightly. “The Academy is built with four massive towers. You get to pick one when you go in.”
“Why would I pick a tower?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s because you get to pick what kind of magic you learn.”
“Why wouldn’t they all learn the same kind of magic?”
“Why doesn’t Mr. Simpson do the same kind of metal work as Mr. Borgen?”
“Well, Mr. Simpson is the jeweler, and Mr. Borgen is the…” She smiled at him. “I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to test me again. You’re saying that it might be magic, but there are different ways of using it.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m saying. To be honest, all of this is just conjecture.”
“It’s what?”
“It’s my imagination,” Sam explained. “I read about Tavran, read about the Academy, but we don’t really know. No one has ever come out of Erstan and gone to the Academy.”
“We don’t know that,” she said. “Our parents might’ve ended up at the Academy.”
“Would they have left us here?”
“Well…”
“They wouldn’t have,” he said firmly. “They went into the Barlands. They were lost.”
It wasn’t just getting lost. There was a danger in the Barlands. All knew it. None understood it. It was a darkness. A violence. You could reach the edge of the Barlands but from there…
There was the violence of the Nighlan.
And their parents had gone, leaving Sam with Mia.
Abandoning her with him.
He was the big brother, though. He was expected to keep an eye on his little sister and to make sure she had everything she needed. Sam was determined to try to do that to the best of his ability, though it felt like he failed more often than not.
“Let’s not talk about that,” Mia said, shaking her head. “Tell me about the Academy some more.”
Sam was thankful for the alternative. He found himself focusing on the thunder, the lightning that he caught glimpses of through the cracks in the stone down to the rusted metal that provided a layer of protection, his focus drawn toward the Barlands. Out there was the possibility that their parents remained.
But they wouldn’t have left them. Sam knew that as well as his sister did.
“Well, as I was saying, the Academy will pick for you. You’re given an opportunity to learn from some of the greatest arcanists.”
“I don’t know why you keep calling them that,” she said.
“Because they have arcane magic, like you.”
“I don’t have anything arcane,” she said. “I can use my ability—”
“I know how you can use it,” Sam said, raising his hand to calm her. “I was just saying that was what they called the power.”
“Fine,” she said. “If that’s what they call it, then they call it.”
“But to get there, you need to be tested.”
Mia wrinkled her nose. “Who would ever want to be tested to go there?”
“Well, if it means that you’re given a chance to study at the Academy, I would say quite a few people. Can you imagine what it would be like?”
She ate the stale bread. His stomach rumbled, and she frowned but took the rest of the bread into her mouth, chewing it. Sam wouldn’t have taken it from her, anyway. She knew that, too.
“The testing is difficult, but not impossible. What you need to do is demonstrate power. Real power.”
“I can show power,” she said.
“But then you need to find a way to reveal just how much power you have.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to show my power.”
“When you go to the test, you will need to.” He had told her this several times before as if the two of them would ever get into a situation where they would have a chance for her to be
tested. It would never happen. Not out here. But it was their dream. It meant that they would get away from Erstan. Away from the rain, the storms, the lightning. It meant that they would get away from the violence.
But it also meant that they would get away from the memories. Erstan might be hard and might be lonely, but it was their home. Or it had been.
Neither of them really felt like it was their home the way they once did. Now it felt like something else. Now it felt like it was a prison.
Sam was determined to save Mia from the prison, using whatever it took to do so.
“I wonder what they would ask,” she said, leaning back and resting her head on the ground.
“None of the books I’ve been able to find have said anything about it. I think we are too far out of Olway.”
“We aren’t that far,” she said.
“How long do you think it would take for us to travel to Tavran if we try to do it on our own?”
“I suppose a couple of days?” She rolled her head toward him, locking eyes with him for a moment. “But from the look you’re giving me, it tells me that it has to be much longer than a couple of days.”
“Much longer,” Sam said with a nod. “Weeks. And that’s by horseback.”
“Well, we don’t have any horses here, so I don’t think you can even say that. How long would it take if we were to walk?”
“Longer,” Sam said. It was part of the reason Tavran was impossible for them to even think about reaching. How could they ever get there if they had to walk? How could they ever get there if it involved spending months on foot?
And that was if they went in the right direction.
Sam suspected that he could find it. He had certainly read enough books, seen enough maps, to know what was likely, but as he had seen today, reading something in a book was quite a bit different than experiencing it firsthand. He had no idea if he would be able to make it that far or if he could even guide them all the way.
If he couldn’t, it was possible that they would just wander around aimlessly.
“Sam?”
Her voice was soft and a bit sad.
“What is it?”
“Do you think that we can really get there?”
“I think so,” he said, trying to sound as confident as possible.
Alchemist Apprentice (The Alchemist Book 1) Page 2
