Chapter 13
Henry settled into his new role as one of Rylan's journeymen without a lot of trouble. He found it a little difficult to get used to his new schedule, his former chores having been replaced with teaching apprentices instead. His days were filled with classes, some he found easy and some he found much harder... and he wasn't always the student when he was struggling.
After nearly a year of being out of the school and actually using his magical gifts, Henry considered himself much more mature and knowledgeable than he had been as a mere apprentice. Unfortunately, this new attitude had a tendency to rear its head when Henry was teaching.
"You really must be more patient with the apprentices, your Highness," Master Rylan told him, his tone appropriately deferential as far as Henry could hear. The prince knew that it wasn't the apprentices as a whole who had a problem, however, but was instead one young man named Christian.
"Christian needs to watch his tone," Henry replied, his voice a little harsh. "And the way he rolls his eyes when I say something is completely unacceptable. It's disrespectful!"
"And I do agree that you deserve respect, both as his prince and as his instructor," the master mage commented. "However, you should try to avoid losing your temper like you did today. Destroying part of a workroom in a moment of... pique is not the best message to send to the apprentices."
Henry took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying not to be angry over the incident a second time. He knew that he should remain calm, but sometimes it was just so hard when Christian was acting like a fool and getting the rest of the students off task with him.
"Maybe the first year apprentices would be better suited?" his master suggested, and Henry's eyes widened. He was going to be demoted! And for what? A simple demonstration of what he, as a journeyman and their better, could accomplish?
"I don't think that's necessary," Henry answered coldly. "I'll do a better job keeping my temper in check, but something needs to be done about Christian."
"I will speak to the boy," Rylan promised, and Henry took his leave from the master's sitting room a short while later.
Muttering to himself, Henry made his way back to the journeyman's wing of the dormitory and threw himself down into his favourite chair in the sitting room. There wasn't anybody else there at the moment, and Henry took advantage of the silence to close his eyes and reflect on what had been happening recently. Maybe he could figure out why he was having these problems if he thought about it some more.
Things in class got better after that meeting, though Henry never found out what Rylan had said to Christian. His own studies continued to progress, and Henry was happy that he never had another run in with Jerome, even when they were in the same class. Since Jerome was a Spirit mage and he was an Earth mage, they had no spells in common at this level, so only theoretical classes were shared by all of the journeymen in the same year. Theory was something that Henry excelled at, a fact that he could silently attribute to Cedric's teachings, but he would never admit that out loud.
On the rare occasions that the prince's thoughts turned to his former mentor and tutor, Henry hoped that Cedric was happy doing whatever it is he was doing. Henry honestly had no idea, Cedric having passed his master's test and leaving to strike out on his own within a week of their return from the walkabout. He thought that someone might have mentioned that Cedric was working in the agricultural area of the kingdom, and Henry shuddered, remembering the hundreds upon hundreds of times he'd cast that stupid growth spell during his time there. Cedric was welcome to it!
The farther Henry progressed into his studies, the more theoretical his classes became. There were only so many base spells for him to learn, the majority of a journeyman's flexibility coming from his or her ability to alter those base spells to do what was wanted. Henry had had a lot of practice doing this, and as the discussions turned to things like combat and defence, he didn't have any trouble picturing and describing how his base spells could be put to creative and altered uses. Even the despised growth spell could help to build and strengthen a palisade wall or grow thorns and brambles onto ladders that invaders were using to climb a city's walls. Henry received top marks, never having cast a single spell that he'd described. This happened for a few reasons, the most important being that nobody wanted the prince and heir to the throne hurt or killed in something like a mock combat.
Three years passed in what seemed like a blink of an eye, the routine of teaching and learning helping to blur the days together for Henry. But before he knew it, it was early spring a few months before his fifteenth birthday, and there was a new journeyman who needed an escort around the kingdom for his first walkabout.
Now in the position of mentor, Henry was privy to the meetings that Cedric had attended before leaving for their own journey. Henry was given maps, names of people he could contact in case of trouble, and a pouch of gold to buy things that couldn't be bartered for with the services of a pair of journeymen Earth mages. Henry wondered if there'd been any conversations about this second journey with his parents, but preferred not to ask. It would be disheartening if Rylan had had to convince the king and queen of the importance of this journey the way he'd convinced them the first time. Henry preferred to just head out and try to enjoy his year.
With the season being entirely different this time around, he'd had to think about the route he wanted to take. The mountains to the west would be treacherous this time of year, something Henry had firsthand experience with, and he knew that the people living on the western border could use their help to find weakened trails and the like, along with the usual work Earth mages did with miners. On the other hand, it would be time for planting very soon, and if he and Alec, his partner for this trip, could cast growth spells on the plants as soon as they sprouted, they may be able to save some from last frosts and hungry animals. That line of thinking decided him, and he led Alec north and east, into the agricultural belt.
Knowing that the timing Cedric had used would be the most useful for Alec's learning, Henry was able to move back and forth between the agricultural area and the herding area of the kingdom for nearly half a year. Alec was able to see a lot more of the animal husbandry part of the kingdom's work than Henry had seen, and it was something that the younger journeyman was drawn to in a way that indicated to Henry that Alec had found his particular gift.
The boys visited with Cedric when they came upon the master mage, though Henry didn't tarry for long, finding his former mentor's appraisal of the work he was doing with Alec uncomfortable. Cedric's rather pointed questions about how Henry was progressing with his little anxiety problem were even worse, and the prince and his partner left as soon as he could get away with it.
The time spent at the salt mines was just as interesting as it had been four years before, as was the time in the mountains with the miners. Henry loved working with the gem and gold miners the best, and he found that his affinity for the precious materials had grown in his time away from the mines. Henry knew that Cedric had proposed that spells involving precious stones and the like were Henry's particular gift, but it hadn't really manifested that way before. Now, there was no doubt, which made the prince happy. He'd been feeling a little like a freak, being the only journeyman without a known gift, but it looked like the knowledge of his gift, along with the rest of his magic, had simply taken a little longer to develop.
By the time winter had drawn to an end, both Henry and Alec were more than ready to return home to Master Rylan's school. Alec was eager to move on to the next phase of his journeyman training, but Henry just wanted to be done with it all. He'd journeyed around his kingdom twice now, had worked with all sorts of people doing all sorts of jobs, and he felt that he had a good idea of how his magic could help to improve the lot of his kingdom and his people. Henry felt confident that he knew the steps to take in order to fulfill the prophecy, and his newly confirmed affinity for precious things just made it all the mor
e obvious to him where his path to better the kingdom of Mythesti should lay. He just needed to pass his master's test, and then everything would be ready for him to start truly making a difference, finally living up to his parents' expectations that he would save this kingdom from itself.