Alchemist Apprentice (The Alchemist Book 1)

by Dan Michaelson

  Alchemy.

  “Get Havash,” Okun demanded.

  That was all the warning Sam needed. Okun was with Havash.

  And the Secundum had attempted to attack Sam.

  He started down the hall when he noticed another burst of pale white light.

  Not that way. Sam turned, raced into the kitchen, into the closet, triggered the door open. He hesitated. There was a glowing greenish light.

  Whatever was happening was happening now. He raced along the hall, heading toward the entrance to the Study Hall when he nearly collided with Tara.

  “Sam? What is—”

  Sam didn’t allow her to finish. “It’s the Secundum. He’s with Ferand.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You have met him, haven’t you?”

  “I know how it sounds, but it’s Ferand’s brother. And he wants the key.” Sam held his hand out, and he motioned toward the kitchen. “And there is a cook from the kitchen who is tied into alchemy, and—”

  “I get it,” Tara said. Raising her hands and cutting him off. “Something happened.”

  “We need to get the almanac,” he said.

  “Let’s go.”

  He frowned to himself. “I… I don’t think we can. We need to get the almanac, but we also need to get Havash.”

  She frowned. “Do you trust him?”

  “I wasn’t sure. But he’s been looking into things, and the Secundum doesn’t care for him very much. That, and Okun wanted me to get him.”

  “And Okun is the—”

  “Alchemist.”

  Tara bit her lip. “We need to split up, then.”

  “I don’t like it,” Sam said, shaking his head.

  “You get the almanac. If you think that you can.”

  “I have to try. I know where to look.”

  “I can go get Havash. I can alert the other instructors, as well.” The entire Academy building trembled again. “Well, we might need to act quickly,” Tara said.

  “Go,” Sam said.

  She leaned toward him, wrapping him in a quick hug, and then stepped back. “Don’t die. It’s been a while since I had somebody to talk to.”

  He swallowed. It was more than just him not dying. He needed to protect the Academy. This was going to be his sister’s home.

  He raced forward.

  When he reached the entrance to the library, Sam paused only a moment to trigger the opening. He looked around, thankful that the library was darkened, and then hurried toward the door.

  There was nobody there.

  The library was dark, quiet, and he was thankful for that.

  He looked at the symbol on the door. Was the same one that he had seen in the alchemy tower, in the hidden storage room, and the same symbol that he knew was somehow tied to the almanac. Now Sam had only to get inside, and he could figure out why the others wanted it.

  He would have to protect it somehow.

  Or Havash or anyone else would have to protect it.

  He heard a door open. Somebody was coming into the library.

  Sam looked at the door. Tara had tried to use the arcane arts on it, trying to force it open, but nothing at work. But he was one who had a key, wasn’t he?

  Sam hurried toward the door, and he pressed his hand up against it. There came a flowing of cold, and then the door began to glow with a greenish light.

  It was so fast that it startled him. Then it slid off to the side.

  The other side of it was a narrow hall.

  Sam hurried inside and closed the door behind him.

  Once there, he couldn’t see a thing.

  He looked around and focused on the key, pushing outward, trying to trigger it.

  When he did, there came a burst of greenish light. It started to glow, tracing a faint form of energy around him. Sam used that, and he searched for anything that would reveal what was here.

  He found the door.

  Not just one, but a line of them. A hidden part of the library.

  Five doors. Each of them made out of iron, and each of them with different symbols upon them. He had to figure out which one to open. Which symbol would be the one that he needed to use?

  He thought about what he was looking for. An almanac. Not just that, but alchemy almanac. What he needed, then, was to trace down the type of symbol that would be similar to alchemy.

  He hurried along the hall, but he still couldn’t see much. It was too faint.

  He continued to move his hand in the same pattern that he had before, causing that greenish light to explode. Each time that he did it, he focused on one of the doors, searching for some way for him to find the answer and a way past.

  Distantly, he heard another explosion. It was a deep, steady sort of trembling.

  It was building. Sam had to work quickly.

  He had no idea who else had been coming to the library, but if they knew that he had the key…

  Another explosion thundered.

  This one was closer.

  Sam focused again, keeping his gaze locked on the wall.

  When he triggered the key again, he found a symbol. It was the third door in. The center one. And as he saw it, he realized something.

  All of the doors shared symbols of alchemy.

  Two of them were for books he’d seen. The other three were not. But the door in the middle, the one that he had just seen, had shown a glimpse of other symbols of alchemy.

  Sam looked at the key, brought it up to the door, and focused on trying to activate it. He tried to do something, but nothing happened.

  Sam pulled his hand back, looking down at it. How was it going to work?

  Explosion thundered again.

  It was in the library. He was certain of it.

  Sam brought his hand back to the door.

  It had to work. He had the key, didn’t he?

  He focused, trying to figure out what he had done before in order to cause the device to trigger. He pushed his hand forward.

  Nothing happened.

  Sam pounded on the door with his other hand. “Why won’t you work?”

  A distant voice came to him.

  Zero tenet.

  Because he didn’t believe.

  It was tied to what he had been learning all along but in a different way than what he had studied.

  Sam had to believe.

  That was going to be the key.

  He focused.

  As he did, he pushed his hand out again, thought about what he had read. He had gone through countless books in the library. So many on angulation, on mathematics, botany, on chemistry, and a hundred different books on alchemy.

  This was alchemy. And Sam understood it. He could do this.

  He believed.

  He felt the pressure up against the door. He felt the strangeness within the key.

  And then light began to build.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sam pushed open the door.

  It came open slowly, gradually, and then he looked inside.

  It was small, no larger than the closet he’d found in the alchemy tower, and there were about a dozen different books.

  The pale light that had faded from the door was no longer enough for him to be able to see much, and Sam focused on the device in his hand, and he pushed the same triggering energy out of it, trying to think about what he had done before. When he did, there came a burst of green.

  It illuminated the room. It was a pale green light, and it dispersed, hovering long enough for Sam to look at the books that were here. Most of them looked old, and he grabbed the nearest one to him, finding that it looked no different than many of the alchemy books he’d read in the library.

  When he saw a reference to the almanac, he realized that he didn’t have the right one. The pale greenish light continued to fade. Sam hurriedly grabbed for another book, and he pushed on the device, trying to trigger it again.

  As before, the glow burst, illuminating the room with the greenish light, enough that Sam could make
out the details on the page. This was another older book, and he flipped through it until he saw another reference for the almanac.

  Not this one, either.

  He set it down and realized he wasn’t going to have time to go through each of the books, regardless of how much he wanted to.

  Distantly, he heard thundering in the building.

  It was a trembling, steady and cascading, rising with intensity the longer that he stayed in place. He could feel that sound building around him.

  He could hear something within it.

  He pushed on the device again, activating it, and when he did, he saw more of the room.

  At that moment, Sam focused. Which of the books might this be? One of them had to be the almanac. And as the light began to fade, he locked onto one of them. It was slightly larger than the rest, and it had a leather strap that closed the cover.

  As he lifted it, he tried to open it, but the strap didn’t come free.

  Sam looked down at his hand.

  It was the key, wasn’t it?

  He pressed it up against the cover.

  When he had triggered the door open, Sam had needed to focus, to find some way to call upon the power that was within him so that he could convince the device to open. It was about belief.

  He might not have the power of the arcane arts, and if he did have anything, it was subtle, but what he had was belief.

  In himself, certainly, but also in alchemy.

  If there was one thing that Sam had always appreciated, it was alchemy.

  He held the key down on the book, and he focused, feeling something surging from his hand. It happened slowly, causing a pale greenish light to flow from the palm of his hand, from the device, and into the almanac.

  The leather cover began to shift, like gears twisting across the surface before the strap sprung free.

  Sam pulled the book open. There were still enough of the pale greenish light in the room that he was able to make out the pages. He expected something similar to what he’d seen in the other books. A list of ingredients, ways of mixing it, and perhaps something even more profound, but what he wasn’t expecting was a series of symbols.

  Unreadable symbols.

  Several of them reminded him of the symbols that he’d seen on other books, but there wasn’t a sequence to them that he could piece together.

  This was the almanac?

  He felt fairly certain that it was, especially as there didn’t seem to be anything else that might be the almanac, but if that was the case, why would they be written like this?

  Unless the alchemists had some other way of translating it.

  Of course, they would. Sam couldn’t. He wasn’t an alchemist. Even though he might have access to the book, he wasn’t an alchemist.

  As he stood wishing he had more answers, he heard his name called.

  Tara?

  He tucked the book under his arm, and he headed toward the first door, poking his head out. There was nothing.

  Sam headed to the main door, and he pushed it open, pausing.

  A figure stood on the other side of the desk. “Tara?”

  He stepped out, and only then did he realize that there were two others on the other side of the desk. One of them was Muriel, and she was glowing with the power of the Arcane Arts, with lines of energy crisscrossing in front of her. She was facing Tara, and it seemed like Tara was using some pattern to hold her back.

  “Muriel? What are you doing?” Sam took a step forward, keeping the almanac tucked under his arm. “I know that we shouldn’t be here, but there has been an attack—”

  “They know there’s been an attack,” Tara said through gritted teeth. “And they’re both a part of it.”

  Sam looked over to see Muriel shifting her attention, and her eyes widened slightly when she took in the almanac in his arm.

  “He has it,” she called out.

  “See?” Tara said.

  Muriel tried to take a step toward him, but whatever Tara was using managed to hold her back, but Sam wondered how long that would be the case? Tara was just one person, and there were two masters of the Arcane Arts on the other side of her. From what Tara had said, Muriel was skilled, so she would be able to do more than most.

  And that wasn’t to say anything about the other one that was there. He had on the deep gray robes of the master instructors. Sam had seen him around the Academy, though he didn’t know his name.

  He focused on the device. He triggered it, pushing power outward. When it slammed into Muriel, it threw her back, and she crashed into a table behind her.

  He spun and did the same to the other man, who went flying away, landing in a heap.

  Tara breathed out, and she turned to Sam. “Thanks. What I was doing wasn’t as easy as it looks.”

  “It didn’t look easy at all.” He looked around the library. There were other surges of pale white light suggesting that there were more users of the Arcane Arts around him. “What is going on?”

  “I went for Havash like you suggested, but he wasn’t there. And when I came in here, I heard other people in the Study Hall, and…” She shook her head. “It’s not good, Sam. With all of the attack, the Academy is getting evacuated. We aren’t supposed to be here. They won’t know that we are.”

  “That’s what they want,” he said. “Getting the Academy evacuated would let them access the almanac.”

  “Well, it worked,” Tara said.

  She spun and spread her hands off to the side of her, suddenly glowing brightly. Another sheet of crisscrossing patterns formed in front of her. It blocked something that burst toward them. Sam pushed outward, and a blast of the pale greenish light exploded from his palm, slamming into the attacker coming at them.

  Sam didn’t recognize the man, but he fell.

  Tara grabbed his hand, and they both darted toward the back of the library. He looked over to see that Muriel had already gotten up and disappeared.

  “Well,” Tara said. “Any thoughts here?”

  “I think we went the wrong way,” Sam said. “We probably should have gone back toward the entrance and out.”

  “I don’t think there is any way to get out,” she said. “I tried, but the door was locked, and I told you that they had people in the Study Hall.”

  They reached their usual alcove, and Sam took a deep breath. They were trapped.

  “We can make a run for it,” Sam said. He looked up, noting that there were pulses of pale white light all around the library. “I can track where they are.”

  “What makes you think that they can’t do the same with you?”

  “They can’t see the light,” he said.

  “What if it’s something else?”

  He didn’t get a chance to counter. There came another burst, and this time, a voice followed it.

  “I feel him,” a hoarse voice said. Ferand. “Near the Annex.”

  Sam grabbed Tara’s hand. He saw an opening in front of them, and he darted in between the stacks of shelves, only to be caught from behind by some blast of power that sent them both stumbling forward. Books came crumbling down from the shelves, piling up around them. Sam scrambled forward, pulling on Tara’s hand, dragging her with him.

  He popped up between the shelves, he saw two others.

  From there, he couldn’t tell where else to go.

  He hurried forward. He looked for openings in the pale white light, ones that would suggest there wasn’t going to be an attacker there, and he twisted, only be caught again. This time, he felt it in front of him. Sam reacted, punching forward, triggering the key, and a burst of the greenish light exploded from his palm, slamming out from him, striking somebody.

  He stepped out from the stacks. The table in front of him, and Muriel, along with another user of the Arcane Arts, stood across from them. They blocked them from reaching the entrance to the library.

  “All we want is the almanac,” Muriel said, panting slightly, eyes wild. “Once you give it over to us, we’ll let you go
.”

  He could feel Tara tensing. “That’s all you want?”

  He turned slightly, enough that he could see flashes of white behind him. They weren’t going to have much time. It felt as if it were closing around him. How many were here?

  “Just the almanac,” she said. “You don’t even know what you’ve gotten yourself into,” Muriel said. “I’ll convince them to let you go.”

  “We need to keep moving,” Tara said.

  “I know,” Sam whispered.

  He took a step toward Tara before spinning, and he pushed out again, activating the key. Another bloom of greenish light exploded, and Muriel reacted, creating some crisscrossing sheet of power in front of her.

  But Sam hadn’t targeted her. He had targeted the other person.

  The burst of green slammed into him.

  When Muriel frowned, the sheet of pale white hesitated, flickering, and then Tara struck, using her own blast of angulated power. Sam wasn’t entirely sure what she did. That wasn’t the kind of angulation that he had learned before, but he followed what Tara did with his own burst coming off of the key. When it struck, it shattered the shielding around Muriel and sent her flying backward. Tara created another sheet of angulated power and spread it out across Muriel, anchoring it to the ground.

  “I told you I never liked her,” Tara spat, shaking her head.

  Sam snorted. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They headed toward the entrance to the library, and behind him, Sam saw a burst of light. But it wasn’t just what he could see. He felt something as well. It was a faint tugging on the key as if someone were trying to activate it.

  It wasn’t glowing, so it wasn’t activated, though he could feel some pressure and a tingling in his palm. It felt as if the rings around each of his fingers were constricting some way.

  Tara pulled on him. “We need to move,” she said.

  Sam looked behind him. All of this because of what?

  There came an explosion, and one of the shelves tips, books going scattering everywhere. There was another and another shelf tipped over, more books flying all over. Everywhere was chaos. Everywhere was destruction.

  All for this for one book?

  How powerful was it? It was just a jumble of symbols.