Alchemist Apprentice (The Alchemist Book 1)

by Dan Michaelson

  “I won’t get caught,” Sam said.

  “And don’t do anything stupid like coming through here and grabbing different books you aren’t supposed to be reading. There are limits to what younger students like yourself are permitted.”

  That was something else Sam didn’t know. “I’ll be responsible with it.”

  At least, he’d be as responsible as he could be until he had to leave the Academy, which meant that having access here was even more important to him.

  Another thought came to mind. “Does this connect to the outside anyway?”

  “As I said, it probably was far more extensively interconnected than it is now. Now it just connects to our tower, a few classrooms, and a few other places.”

  There went that hope. Had he the opportunity to sneak back into the Academy once he was exiled, he could use that. Not that he would ever tell her that.

  “You said it connected to the kitchen?”

  “It does, but there’s no real point in it,” she said. “We don’t need to sneak into the kitchen.”

  “We would if it was too late,” he said.

  She arched a brow at him. “Then don’t be sneaking out too late. Or grab what you need and bring it back to your room. It’s not like we have a shortage of food, after all.”

  Sam smiled. He wondered if he had ever stopped smiling.

  “And don’t be stupid when you come in here. Make sure no one sees you, and make sure that when you leave, no one knows that you’re there. There are always small grates near the doorway that you can use to make sure that no one is there. Use them.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Do you think you can find your way back?”

  “It’s just back down the stairs and to the left,” he said, though he kept his focus on the library.

  “That’s right. I could show you around a little if you’d like.”

  As excited as he was to wander into the library, there was something else in the offer he couldn’t pass up. “I’d like that.”

  She guided him back toward the tower, and there was a narrow stair that led upward. She paused at one point, pressing her face up against the wall. Sam couldn’t see anything, but the air had shifted. There was a hint of a breeze here.

  “The alchemy classroom is on the other side of this one,” she whispered. “I used to come here when the alchemists were giving some of their more advanced talks.”

  “I didn’t realize that they had advanced talks.”

  “Oh, they did. That was before, though, of course. Most of those were for a select audience. Never for students. Not for the advanced talks, at least. Only those who had graduated from the Academy, and who had a specialty in alchemy.”

  “I can’t imagine there would be that many.”

  “There weren’t. Alchemy has been a difficult subject for most to master. I think it’s because it takes so much diligence. Most come to the Academy wanting to understand the Arcane Arts and prefer to focus on angulation because it’s where you get the most reward, but without applying mathematics or chemistry or even alchemy, you don’t ever see your full potential.”

  “It’s all theoretical for me at this point,” he said.

  “Even though you were describing Porthor’s premise?”

  “I can read about a thing and not have an ability to do it,” he said.

  She laughed softly. “I suspect it won’t be too long before you can. Pretty soon, you’re going to be the one putting Gresham onto his back.”

  “About that. Thank you.”

  She took a deep breath and pulled herself away from the wall. It was dark in the tunnel, though Sam was having an easier time seeing. There was a faint light glowed, and it took him a moment to realize that it came from Tara.

  “I never cared much for him.”

  “Because he’s not as skilled as you?”

  She shook her head. “He’s talented enough. And worse, he’s probably talented enough to do what he wants, which is to serve on the council. It’s just that he knows it, and he has been lording it over others.”

  “He doesn’t much care for me.”

  “Because you come from the Barlands.”

  Sam fell silent.

  “I don’t really care,” Tara said. “If you don’t want to talk about it, then don’t, but I don’t want you to think that it matters to me. All I care about are people who want to learn. Considering how often I’ve seen you in the library, I figured you were at least interested in that much.”

  “What do you mean how much you’ve seen me in the library?”

  “Not like I’ve been looking for you in the library,” she said hurriedly, “but it’s hard not to see you coming here as often as you do. You don’t necessarily make a secret of your presence.”

  “There’s no point in that,” Sam said with a small laugh.

  “That’s what I was trying to say. Anyway, I can show you to another classroom. Angulation. I used to come to watch some of the advanced classes before I had progressed.” She laughed softly. “And Gresham used to wonder why I was able to progress so much faster than him.”

  “They don’t have access to something similar?”

  “Not from their tower. Or maybe they once did, but it was closed off. I don’t really know. And, to be honest, I don’t really care.” She chuckled again. “We have this for tolath. That’s it. Seeing as how we have so few in our tower, to begin with, it seems fitting.”

  “Why are there so few in our tower?”

  This was something that had been bothering Sam since he had been assigned to it, though he wasn’t sure that there were any real answers.

  “You saw what the testing was like,” she said.

  “That’s just it,” he said. “I didn’t really have the same testing. We were, I mean I was, brought out of the Barlands and then just told which tower I was going to be in. Not much more than that.”

  “So you didn’t have a test for placement?”

  He shook his head.

  “Strange. You seem like you’d be appropriate for tolath. Maybe they just decided that it made sense for you?” She shook her head. “Or perhaps they didn’t really care. We are a bit of an afterthought here, after all. Most of the time, that is. That is until we come for testing when we generally do well. Our success rate is considerably higher than it is in the other towers.”

  Sam was going to be the reason that the success rate went down. He wondered how Tara would feel about him then.

  “Come on,” she urged. “I can show you a couple more classrooms, and then I want to make sure that you know how to get out of here because I don’t want to be the one responsible for you wandering aimlessly through the tower. It can be dark in here.”

  “Can anyone hear us talking?”

  “I’ve never really figured that out. To be honest, you’re the first person I’ve shared the Study Hall with. Other than when I was first shown it.”

  “So you don’t know if anybody can hear us talking?”

  She patted one of the darkened stone walls, rapping her knuckles on it. “It’s pretty solid here. I think it would be hard for anybody to hear much of anything through here.”

  So he could move through here without worrying about somebody hearing him.

  Other ideas came to him, connected to what Havash asked of him.

  Assuming Sam was somehow able to stay within the Academy, having access to a tunnel-like this would be a boon for what he was trying to do. He could use it, reach the alchemy section, and try to uncover anything that would help keep Havash off of his back.

  “Hey,” Tara said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “You still there?”

  Sam blinked. “Sorry about that. I was getting lost in thinking about getting into the library after hours.”

  “Great,” Tara muttered. “I knew it was a mistake showing you.”

  “You didn’t have much choice, though, did you? Considering I found it on my own, and all.”

  “That’s the way you want t
o play it? You didn’t find anything. You stalked me.”

  “I came after you to thank you,” Sam said. “And when you disappeared on the stairs, I pieced it together. You couldn’t have gone anywhere, and given that this was an old building that probably had hidden passageways, I assumed you had found one.”

  “You assumed?”

  “As much as I could. Anyway, thank you.”

  “Just don’t end up getting caught,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  She guided him back, and Sam paid attention to where she turned, how she followed the contours of the hall until they reached the section that would lead back out onto the stairs of their tower. She crouched down.

  “Feel for the indentations on the stone,” Tara whispered. “When you find it, push inward, and then twist your palm.”

  “Do I have to activate it with the Arcane Arts?”

  That would add a new complication for Sam. If that were required, then none of this would even matter.

  “No. This was done with old alchemy, I think, so Arcane Arts aren’t really needed. I suspect it would help you find your way more effectively, but no one ever uses them in here.”

  “Why?”

  “Again, because it’s not really needed.” She got to her feet and looked over to Sam. She jabbed him in the chest with a long finger. “Don’t you go using your Arcane Arts in here, either. There are plenty of people who can detect them. We don’t need somebody from one of the other towers suddenly detecting us observing them from the classrooms.”

  Sam smiled to himself. “You definitely don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I don’t, do I? I’m not so sure. You’re the person who pushed Gresham.”

  “I didn’t push him.”

  “And I didn’t say that as if it were a bad thing.” She pushed on the stone, and it began to slide away.

  With that, she slipped out of the Study Hall and started up the stairs. Sam hesitated a moment before hurrying after her. He caught up to her, but she barely glanced in his direction when she reached her level, making her way down the hall and away from him.

  He headed up the stairs, toward his room, smiling to himself.

  He liked having a secret. Especially this one.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sam was tired. He had spent too much time wandering through the Study Hall, looking for where it connected, and searching for a way beyond so that he could reach the alchemy section but hadn’t found anything. It was exactly as Tara had claimed. Each time he reached where he thought there should be something more, he encountered another dead end. The hall simply stopped, leaving him blocked in.

  He had encountered Tara one time in the Study Hall, but not more than that. When she had seen him, she had nodded, clutching a bundle of books to her, before making her way back to the tolath tower. As Sam had been on his way to the library, he hadn’t bothered stopping her.

  In between searching the Study Hall, exploring it as thoroughly as he could, he had been studying. Their exams had begun, and he had done well with mathematics along with botany and chemistry and was preparing for angulation. The first three had been almost entirely theoretical, and the practical component had been negligible. At least, as negligible as could be, enough so that he was able to claim ignorance and had to hope that he didn’t attract any additional attention for his inability to use the Arcane Arts.

  Alchemy was next, followed by angulation.

  For whatever reason, Sam was more concerned about how he would perform in alchemy. Maybe it was because of Havash and how he would treat him, but Sam worried that the professor might be angry with his inability to have uncovered anything.

  Sam had prepared a response to that, though. He might not have been able to find anything within the alchemy section, but he had learned that there was no reason that Havash couldn’t have gone down there himself. He was fully prepared to question Havash on that matter.

  As he neared the doorway leading into the library, Sam thought that he heard a scraping. He paused. In the time that he’d been wandering through the Study Hall, he hadn’t heard anything else. He’d only encountered Tara the one time, so if there were others here who had access to it, he would’ve expected to have seen them by now. Besides, she had learned from somebody.

  Only as he stood in place, he realized that she hadn’t mentioned who else knew about it. Maybe she was the only one who had.

  The scraping didn’t come again.

  Sam opened the library, stepped inside the darkened space, and made his way through the stacks. He had long ago memorized his way through here, and coming in the middle of the night, long after a time when the library was supposed to have been closed off, felt a little like cheating, but he didn’t mind.

  He gathered a selection of books, all different topics on alchemy, and stepped back into the Study Hall. He closed the door, a steady grinding sound coming as the wall slid back into place, and started along the hall when he heard another scraping.

  It was distant. Sam had no idea how close it was, only that it sounded as if it came from a different section of the Academy altogether. The grinding could be many things, but it sounded almost like it was another door opening.

  Sam hurried through the hall, and when he reached a branch point that would lead him toward the kitchen, a direction he knew existed, but as Tara had suggested had minimal use to him, he paused and listened. If he were to go straight, he would reach his own tower, and then he could sneak up, get back to his room, and finish his study for the night.

  But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else there.

  He waited, feeling much like he had felt when he was waiting on Tara. He paced, moving back and forth along the hallway, but didn’t hear anything more. Just his own breathing and footsteps.

  As he started to chastise himself for his own foolishness, he heard another grinding. Sam heard it distinctly this time.

  He hurried through the corridor.

  The halls were fairly uniform here. All dark stone, with a little bit of light that trailed in through lanterns from the other side, and a faint undercurrent of something he couldn’t quite place. Maybe some spice, or perhaps something tied to one of the classrooms that were connected to this hallway. Every so often, he felt as if the air were moving, as if the tunnel itself were breathing.

  He made his way forward until he paused at another section of the wall. On the other side of this was the kitchen. It had taken him the better part of the first day alone in the hallway for him to uncover how to reach the kitchen, and he was pleasantly surprised to learn that it opened up into a closet. Thankfully, Okun and the others in the kitchen wouldn’t necessarily see him springing out of the closet on them.

  He didn’t know where the grinding had come from, though. It seemed to have been somewhere near here, though. Sam looked along the hallway, but he didn’t hear anything more. He waited, pacing, but there was no further sound that came.

  After waiting for a while, he headed back toward his tower. Maybe all he heard were more sounds through the greats that lined the halls. It was entirely possible that he had picked up on something there. He stepped out of the Study Hall, onto the landing, and hurried back to his room where he sat and poured through the books on alchemy, trying to pick up on something that would impress Havash during his testing.

  He drifted off, coming awake to a pounding on his door.

  Sam realized that he had the books of alchemy stacked open around his bed. He hurriedly stuffed them under his sheets and pulled the door open.

  James was there. “What are you still doing here? When I didn’t see you, I thought I should check… You’re going to be late.”

  Sam’s breath caught. He grabbed for his robe, threw it on, and went racing toward the stairs. “How late?” he asked.

  James jogged down the stairs alongside him. “Well, you were supposed to come after me, and…”

  Sam cursed himself. He had spent too long wandering the tunne
ls and reading and generally doing anything other than what he needed to, which was to get a good night of rest.

  By the time he reached the alchemy classroom, Havash had already started to fold up his belongings, stuffing them into a sack. He glanced over to Sam. “Mr. Bilson. I didn’t think that you wanted to proceed.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  He looked around, and he realized that he wasn’t alone. There was another man, older, with graying hair, a thin face, and bright blue eyes, who looked at Sam. And the only other person was the Secundum. He hadn’t seen him much in the days that Sam had been at the Academy.

  “I’m sorry, professors,” he said, nodding to each of them. “I overslept. I was up studying, and if you would give me the opportunity to—”

  “Tardiness is not an excuse, Mr. Bilson,” Havash said.

  “Please,” Sam implored.

  “Come now, Havash,” the Secundum said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “We have tested all of the others that have come through here. Let’s give him the opportunity as well.”

  “I’m not familiar with him,” the other man said. Sam hadn’t seen him in the Academy before.

  The Secundum turned to Sam, and he smiled with a warm expression on his face. “He was brought in by Havash himself.”

  “He’s the one you told me about,” the other man said, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

  “Him, his sister,” Havash said, waving his hand. “And it doesn’t matter. He’s too late for the testing.”

  “We know how stressful those exams can be, especially the first ones,” the Secundum said. He glanced over to the third man. “What do you say, Chasten? Do you think you can convince your friend Havash to permit young Mr. Bilson here to undergo the testing?”

  If Chasten were Havash’s friend, then Sam didn’t have a whole lot of hope.

  The older man turned his attention to Sam, and he watched him. A hint of color began to build around him. It wasn’t pale white, though. This was a pale greenish.

  That was new.

  Was he using the Arcane Arts in a way that Sam hadn’t seen before? Even with other master instructors, Sam had seen the pale white light coming off of them, so he couldn’t help but feel some surprise.