“Let’s go.”
The lesson was over.
Chapter Eight
The Apprentice
Jack grimly advanced on Hastings, body angled to present a smaller target, elbow up and blade extended to prevent escape to the right, his small shield protecting his chest. The wizard kept him honest, made him work for every forward step. Steel came together, shrieking and sparking, and when Jack thought he had his teacher trapped in the corner, Hastings spun away from the wall, blade hissing toward Jack at waist level. Jack had to leap backward to avoid it, and Hastings was on the outside again, with the room at his back, and Jack against the wall.
“This . . . room’s . . . too . . . small!” Jack gasped, forcing him away once again.
“You’d never get near me in a bigger room,” the wizard replied, teeth flashing in a smile, although they had been at it for more than an hour. “You can’t always pick where you fight, or who you fight ...or even ... how you fight. But do the picking . . . whenever you can.” Still teaching, but his breathing was noticeable now, and perhaps he was slower in blocking blows, parrying the flames. So maybe he was winded, just a little. “We’re going to have to end this . . . you know. Your mother . . . is expecting you.”
“Do you yield?” Jack’s shoulder was numb from the hundred collisions it had already absorbed. He was feeling the weights on his wrists and ankles, designed to build muscle and ready him for a heavier blade. Even the foil was growing heavy, or maybe it was his arm, almost too heavy now to lift.
“Your mother . . . can wait a little longer.”
Slowly, Jack drove Hastings across the room until he was once again in a corner. Jack thrust forward with his sword hand, and Hastings moved to parry it. At that moment, Jack straightened his shield arm, which exposed his chest but freed his nondominant hand. Flames spiraled out from his fingertips, and Hastings’s foil hit the floor. Hastings raised his hands in surrender. “I yield, Warrior,” he said, smiling.
Jack let his point drift to the floor. “Thank God,” he said. He snatched up a towel and swabbed off his face. His hair was plastered to his head and his shirt was soaked. The floor was slick with sweat. The room stank of it.
“Next time we’ll work some more with the axe,” the wizard promised. “I think you’re beginning to master two-handed play.”
“We were playing, were we?” Jack grinned. “That’s the first plaisance I’ve won.” He felt the need to point it out, in case Hastings hadn’t noticed.
“You’ve come a long way, Jack.” Hastings was always sparing with compliments, and followed with a demand. “How are you coming with your reading?”
“I’ve been trying.”
“I didn’t ask you to try.”
Jack scowled. “It’s like Shakespearean English without the poetry,” he complained. The work with the wizard was mostly physical, but Hastings had recently given him a slim volume called Rules of Engagement. It was the bible, where Weir tournament warfare was concerned, addressing elements of garb, weaponry, and battle etiquette. The weaponry was explicitly limited to medieval hand weapons, such as swords, slings, maces, and so on.
Hastings didn’t respond, so Jack persisted. “I don’t understand why they haven’t updated them.”
“The rules are intended for tournaments,” Hastings said patiently, wiping off the foils, returning them to their case. “They are not meant to be modern. Weapons are not allowed to overshadow the skills of the warriors.”
“But aren’t some weapons better than others? What about Shadowslayer? What’s fair about that?”
Hastings shrugged. “That’s a special piece. But still within the rules.”
“What about the rest of it? You can’t deny that’s out of date.” He pulled the book out of his gym bag and thumbed through it. “Listen to this: ‘Enchanters were created for the entertainment of wizards.’ And, here: ‘A wizard guarantor may choose to keep and protect an enchanter in exchange for service rendered.’That can’t be right. And the rules governing the relationships among the guilds are unfair. They all favor wizards.” He’d heard of things like that, obsolete city ordinances that were still on the books. Rules that prohibited interracial marriages or riding horses into church, for instance.
“You don’t have to like the rules,” Hastings pointed out. “They were written by wizards, so of course they are biased. And I didn’t ask you to read the whole thing. Only the tournament regulations.”
“Those are bad enough. What’s all this about calling up dead warriors for practice bouts? Why is it necessary to have a rule that only live warriors can be used in battle?”
“We’ll talk about that when the time comes.” By now everything was packed up. “We’d better get going. You’re late already.”
Jack could tell Hastings was losing patience, but somehow he couldn’t stop himself. “I don’t understand why I have to learn about tournaments, anyway. Do you think a wizard is going to challenge me to some kind of duel? I’m more likely to be taken by surprise. Maybe you should be teaching me weaponless warfare, like tai chi.”
“Maybe I should. Perhaps I shall. But I didn’t come here to debate with you. Let’s go.” Hastings laid a hot hand on his shoulder, pushing him out the door.
It was always this way. The wizard never answered his questions. Hastings was relentless in coaching him about every aspect of his new trade: weapons, equipment, conditioning, and strength training, but shared nothing about his own background.
Jack had tried to ask questions early on about Hastings’s family, about where he’d received his training. He’d been met with a stone wall. The focus was always on Jack. He sometimes had the feeling that Hastings was working him like a problem, gradually peeling layers away until he was entirely revealed. Or maybe whoever he used to be was being stripped away. He just wasn’t sure who had taken his place.
He hadn’t heard from Aunt Linda since their trip to Coal Grove. She’d abandoned him to Hastings. Was she still running from Wylie? What if he had caught her?
He wished she would call. He felt lonely and ill at ease. Even his relationship with Nick had changed. In the old days, the apartment over the garage had been a sanctuary. Now, some nights he went directly from lessons in warrioring to lessons in wizardry without a break. Like this evening.
Nick’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Remember, of all the Weir, only wizards can use charms to harness and control magic. For the other guilds, magic is personal and hands-on. More of a physical power. Less versatile. Are you listening, Jack?”
“Less versatile,” he repeated dutifully, biting into another chocolate chip cookie. It seemed he was always starving lately.
“Wizards are sophisticated crafters of magic, which is why they have been able to dominate the other Weir for centuries.” Nick found a marked passage in Jack’s Weirbook. “Now, let’s go over what we covered last week. Transformare: the art of turning one thing into another.”
They were working their way through the Weirbook, chapter by chapter. Spoken charms for moving objects about, confusing the enemy, barriers, and attack charms. Charms small enough to try out in the apartment over the garage.
“When are you going to teach me some love charms?” Jack asked, thinking about Ellen.
“We’ll save that for when you’re older and more responsible,” Nick observed dryly. “Charms of ensnarement are entirely too tempting for the average adolescent. You’ll just have to rely on your own personal charm for the time being.”
“I’m just trying to be efficient,” Jack growled. “Between soccer and school, and warrior and wizardry training, plus reading all the books you give me, there’s no time for anything else.” It seemed that Nick had new books for him every week—treatises on magic, potions, and philosophy—dusty volumes that must have lain unopened for years.
“There’s always time for the most important things,” Nick said mildly.
“Don’t give me that time management crap.” Jack sighed and put his face in his h
ands. “All I do is study and work out with Hastings. I never sleep. My grades are slipping. I mean, am I going to have to study like this forever?”
“Wizardry manifests early, remember,” Nick replied. “Most apprentices begin working with this when they are very young. You have a lot of catching up to do. And because of your warrior stone, your powers of wizardry are relatively weak.”
“Maybe I should just quit school, now that I’m learning a trade.” When Nick didn’t respond to this, Jack rose and began pacing the room. “I don’t understand why I have to do it at all. Aunt Linda told me I have to be ready to defend myself against someone who might attack me. I don’t know who and I don’t know when. Frankly, I don’t think anyone is after me at all. Maybe Wylie was after the Shadowslayer and I just happened to be in the way. I’m only sixteen, and I’ve only been in training for a couple of months. Any wizard would be stupid to think I was a threat, or much of an asset, either.”
He paused. “Mom says any time you buy weapons, or build an army, you begin to look for an excuse to use them. Plus, you pose more of a threat to others. The more training I get, the more likely it is that someone will come after me. That’s what I think.” He looked sideways at Nick, to assess his reaction to that theory. He’d been working on it for some time.
“So. Linda hasn’t told you about the Game,” Snowbeard said. “Sit down, Jack.” Jack sat down in the chair opposite the old wizard. He had a strong premonition of bad news coming.
“Conflict among wizards is highly ritualized, of necessity,” Nick began. “Otherwise we would destroy each other, no? In fact, we almost did. Fighting is used to allocate power, in particular, control of magical artifacts. The Wizard Houses gain power through a win. Originally, there were actual battles between armies raised and led by wizards. But it has evolved into a series of tournaments. They use warriors as surrogates. They call it the Game.
Only, for warriors, it’s no game at all. It’s a fight to the death.
“These days warriors are hard to come by. They are the rarest of the Weir, and getting rarer, because they are killed off so quickly. Fewer tournaments are held these days due to lack of players. And when one side locates a warrior, the other side does its best to kill him off.”
Jack shook his head in disbelief as Snowbeard continued. “There is actually a black market in warriors and other nonwizard Weir. They call it the Trade. Warriors fetch the highest prices. There are traders who work full time reading genealogies, following up leads, hunting warriors down, and kidnapping them to sell for profit. They try to find young warriors like yourself who are just beginning to manifest, who don’t yet realize who they are.”
“They buy and sell people?” Jack was appalled. “They can’t do that!” he said. “It’s illegal.”
Snowbeard smiled ruefully “I wish that were true. But anyone with enough power can do whatever they want. And wizards are a powerful and arrogant lot. From a wizard perspective, the other guilds are a servant class with specific talents. Those who believe that look on them as property, and therefore a tradable commodity.”
“About how many warriors are left?”
Nick looked him in the eyes. “Well, at the moment, there’s you, that I know of,” he said gently. “There may be others that I don’t know about.”
Jack opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He was suddenly aware of sweat trickling down between his shoulder blades, despite a pleasant breeze through the window.
Now things were coming clear to him. Why his aunt was convinced wizards would eventually come after him. Why Leander Hastings would come all the way to Trinity to train him. Why Nick Snowbeard was living over his garage. Why Dr. Longbranch would ... A shudder passed through him.
“Aunt Linda said Dr. Longbranch implanted the warrior stone in me because she wanted to see what would happen.” Jack leaned forward, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. “She was trying to create a warrior, wasn’t she?”
“I suspect she was,” Nick said quietly.
“So I’m some kind of freak. The Frankenstein of the wizard world. Why didn’t Aunt Linda tell me?” Jack demanded.
The old wizard stroked his beard. “Linda feels . . . responsible for you. She is the one who got Dr. Long-branch involved in the first place. She did it to save your life. But your situation has been very difficult for her.”
“Difficult for her?” Jack was on his feet again. “Difficult for her? Is that why you’re all hanging around, you and Mercedes, and Iris and . . . and all the rest? Because I’m so damn valuable? Are you all hoping to cash in?”
Nick sat, his gaze steady and kind, until Jack finally dropped back into his seat, flushed and embarrassed. “Although we are not warriors, we are all people who disapprove of this system. Rather like conductors on the Underground Railroad. We’re here because you’re in danger.
“That’s why we started the training. It was the best plan we could come up with. Believe me, it’s a tremendous advantage that you can do some wizardry. It can’t hurt to have a few surprises up your sleeve. If you are to survive, you must have weapons at your disposal beyond those that Hastings will provide.”
Jack covered his face with his hands. When he closed his eyes, he saw an image of himself in shackles, being auctioned off at a slave market. An image of himself as a gladiator before a bloodthirsty crowd. “What do you know about Leander Hastings?” he asked abruptly.
If Snowbeard was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. “Hastings is what we call a Master, meaning he has expertise in a number of the magical arts. They are the best teachers, because they can develop students in a number of areas. Of course, most Masters have their specialties. Hastings specializes in warfare. But he is first and foremost a wizard. An unusual combination of talents perfectly suited to your situation,” he added.
“How do we know we can trust him?”
“Leander Hastings is the best. He has an international reputation, though he has made a lot of enemies along the way.” The old man cleared his throat. “I don’t think it was easy for her to make that choice. You see, your Aunt Linda and Leander Hastings were . . . ah . . . involved, years ago.”
Jack was stunned. He tried to picture the two of them together, his tiny, shimmering aunt with the tall, dark, and dangerous Leander Hastings.
“They’re not still . . .” Jack didn’t complete the sentence, but didn’t have to.
“No.” The old man replied quickly. “They haven’t seen each other in years.”
“Oh.” Jack’s anger was dissipating, and he was left with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. “I asked Mr. Hastings why he was doing this, and he said something about not being able to say no. I’m not sure he wants to be here.”
“Hastings wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to be,” Nick said bluntly. “Jack, don’t try to understand the whole of it. It’s too hard to deal with. Narrow your focus. Your job is to learn to use all the tools at your disposal. For instance—” Once again, the wizard pushed himself stiffly to his feet and shuffled into the next room. He returned a few minutes later with a package wrapped in soft leather. He handed it to Jack.
Jack unwrapped it. It was a mirror, framed in silver, decorated with dragons and wizards. It was familiar. Blaise Highbourne had given it to him as a baby present. It had been stowed away in the trunk under his bed for years.
Jack turned it over in his hands. “Where did you get this?”
“This may help you, now that you’ve been off the Weirsbane for a while. Blaise is a soothsayer. This is a mirror that shows the truth: in the past, the present, and sometimes the future. And sometimes the future.”
“There’s enough scary stuff in the present,” Jack said. “I don’t want to know about the future.” He didn’t look at the mirror.
“Take a look,” Nick suggested. “Just keep in mind that the meaning of the image is not always clear. That’s the curse of prophecy.”
Cautiously, Jack drew the mirror toward him, tilting it s
o he could look into the glass.
The image cleared, revealing two figures standing on a high bluff overlooking a river. Jack rubbed his eyes in astonishment, then turned his gaze back to the mirror.
He saw a young woman in a long dress, her red-gold hair flying free, and a tall, spare man facing her, his back to Jack. They were arguing furiously. The woman turned and tried to leap from the cliff, but the man pulled her back and forced her to the ground, pinning her. Jack wanted to look away, but was riveted.
The image changed, focused over the man’s shoulder on the woman’s face, her frightened blue eyes, her flaming hair spread across the rock. “No,” Jack whispered, but still he could not look away.
The man in the mirror leaned forward and gripped the woman’s shoulders. “Listen to me now. You’re going to tell me where you’ve hidden the boy, and we’re going to go and get him. And then I’m going to take you away from here.” The voice was eerily familiar, but all Jack could see was the back of the man’s head. Suddenly, the woman had a knife in her hands, as if plucked from the air. Turning the blade, she stabbed herself with it. The man gathered her into his arms, cradling her, rocking back and forth.
“Aaaaaaah!” Jack flung the mirror against the wall. It did not break, but slid down behind the bookcase.
“What did you see?”
“I saw some guy attack my mother, demanding to know where I was. Then she killed herself.”
“Are you sure it was your mother?”
“Don’t you think I’d know?” Jack shuddered. He retrieved the mirror from behind the bookcase and set it facedown on the table. “It’s not even safe to look in the mirror anymore.”
“How was she dressed?”
Jack considered. “Like . . . well, in some kind of period costume.”