Storm's Apprentice

The wall was twenty feet high, made of huge quarry-cut stone blocks that had to be as clean and unmarked as the day they were set. The thing looked like it’d been built to hold off an army, but no army could possibly threaten it here, so deep inside the Antorxian heartlands. I wondered if it was a statement, meant to project an impression of strength, impregnability, and inescapability. Either that, or they were deeply insecure people.

The top of the wall was wide and flat enough for someone to walk along, but I didn’t see any soldiers stationed on it. There didn’t seem to be any defenses at all, which worried me. Even my tiny home village of Kirkswill, population two hundred, kept a couple of idiots with spears stationed at its gates. Here, it was eerily quiet.

The passage through the wall was gated by a lattice of black iron. There was no lock, but as we stopped in front of it, the Reeve gave off a pulse of maja.

I couldn’t tell what it meant or what it was doing, but a second later, the gate swung open.

As we passed through, my skin was swept by a feeling like wire brushes. Antroxian sorcery at work.

What would have happened if I hadn’t been welcome? It was easy to imagine that harsh, prickling feeling turning to razor blades against my skin.

Despite the imposing surroundings, I was immensely relieved to be off the wagons.

After days of sitting on bare wooden benches, any excuse to stand and move was welcome, and the knowledge that I wouldn’t be going back to the wagons made it even sweeter. I dared to fantasize about a padded chair, or even a bed. For all I knew, there was a couch waiting for me in a warm and comfortable dormitory.

Looking around at the austere stone buildings and wind-swept mountainside tempered those expectations a little, but I maintained a flame of hope.

As we moved up through the academy terraces we passed a building that smelled of soap and wet stone — a washhouse — and it took all of my self-control not to break off in a run toward it, whether it would have got me a crossbow bolt in the back or not.

The Academy grounds were cut out of the soft earth and hard stone of the mountain, spread out across at least seven levels. Grassy and weed-strewn, they reminded me of the terraces of a mountain farm, though the only farming here was happening in small plots of bare, gravelly earth.

The Reeve led us along a dirt path that wound between outbuildings, barracks, guardposts, and other facilities. One of the soldiers pointed out buildings as we passed; a laboratory, a workshop, an infirmary, a library. He pointed at a rectangular slab of stone with a single door, and told us that was the barracks where we’d be sleeping.

The biggest building in the grounds was a giant square tower sitting on the second highest terrace. It was a brutal, unadorned monolith, made from a strange black stone that didn't match the other buildings and didn’t seem to be made from individual blocks. The closer we got to it, the bigger it seemed, until it looked like it could fit a dozen wagons across its base end to end. My only frame of reference for buildings that big were the massive granaries in the village back home, but this was wider and many times as tall.

The soldiers didn't lead us all the way up to it, stopping a few tiers down at a wide dirt training ground next to a row of storage sheds.

We had a minute to stop and group up together. There were about twenty of us in total. The caravan hadn’t been a good environment to get to know each other, not least because the soldiers were always listening, but I'd caught a few names. Most of them had been taken like me, gathered from the various territories of the Antorxian empire. There were a few who’d come willingly, native Antorxians who were used to the draft and maybe even approved of it, but they hadn’t been given any better treatment than the rest of us.

After a few minutes, a new woman appeared at the edge of the training ground. Another Reeve.

She stood six feet tall, tall enough to look over my head, with a dense braid of black hair that hung over her shoulders like a coiled snake. Her skin was mostly a purely human shade of light brown, but it was patterned with areas of gray, transforming her face into a patchwork of dead, stony flesh.

One of her eyes was brown, but the other had been eclipsed by an area of gray skin on the left side of her face. That eye shone a bright, icy blue.

She was radiating magic less strongly than the Reeve who'd led us through the swamp. Either she was a weaker sorcerer, or she was actively suppressing her signature. What maja did make it out felt heavy and sharp, like a stone spur that pierces the sole of a boot.

She watched as we assembled into something like ranks, looking at us with the blank-faced gaze of a predator.

When the soldiers had finished prodding us into two loose rows in front of her, she started speaking.

“I am Master Cordaze, Consignor of Initiates, and you are blessed to find yourselves at Windshriek Academy.”

Her voice was cold, direct, and had the hint of a regional Antorxian accent. Her gaze roamed over us as she continued.

“This Academy is a machine that turns indolent novices into loyal sorcerers of Antorx. That is why you are here — to be stripped of your weakness, to be educated in the Sovereign’s Path, and to be forged into sorcerers of exacting caliber. It will not be a pleasant experience for many of you. Those of you born in our vassal territories may have suffered under the effects of luxuries. It will take time for you to purge and forget the damage they have wrought. I will offer no comfort for you in that process. I will offer you nothing, except for this promise: In three years’ time, you will either join the ranks of the most powerful mages the continent has ever known, or else you will be no more. If not dead, then you will wish you were dead.”

She put on a pleasant smile as she asked, “Are there any questions?”

I was sure no one would take the opportunity, but after half a minute of silence, a boy halfway down the front row raised his hand.

He was about my age, maybe as old as twenty, with black hair and pale skin, wearing the smeared remains of a collared shirt and well-tailored trousers.

Cordaze didn't even wait to hear his question. Her arms snapped up into a sharp-angled pose and a lightning bolt exploded from the air between her clawed hands. The arc of white energy whipped forward, meeting the boy’s arm just below the elbow with a loud crack and a sputtering hiss.

His forearm exploded off his body, leaving nothing but a smoking stump behind.

A few seconds later there was a pattering sound as charred fingers and cauterized flesh rained to the ground around us.

The boy slumped to his knees, his remaining hand wrapped around his scorched elbow, his mouth open in a silent scream.

“This is the first lesson of the Sovereign’s Path,” Cordaze said coldly. “Nothing is ever given freely. Not knowledge, not answers, and especially not power. If you cannot see the price, then the offer can only be the bait for a trap or a means of manipulation. Only what you take is cleanly yours. These words are the first step on your new Path: It is not to receive, but to take.”

A couple of the prisoners who I'd guessed to be native Antorxians repeated the words quietly to themselves, like a prayer; “It is not to receive, but to take.”

Cordaze seemed satisfied with the looks of horror on the rest of our faces.

The silence that followed seemed to be about what she was expecting.

A tiny goblin voice in the back of my mind told me to raise my hand and ask whether all questions would result in de-clapitation, or if that was just a one-off to make a point. Surely she wouldn't be so repetitive as to blast off another student's hand? Luckily, I managed to intercept the suicidal urge before I could act on it.

“While you are here, there will be little in the way of direct lessons. We have no lectures and no syllabus. You may barter for instruction from the masters or your upperclassmen with whatever currency you possess. Beyond that, you are expected to engage in vigorous self-study. You will be assessed. Each week you will be given a test in the form of a task you must complete. Failing to complete this task twice in a row will have you meet the Failure's Fate. Do not look on your tasks as chores. They are gifts, designed to cut away your weakness, leaving only strength behind. You will not be coddled, but you will be given opportunities. The library is open to you. The laboratory and workshop are open to you. The infirmary is open to you, should you need it.”

Her eyes fell on the kneeling student as she finished.

“Your first test will be delivered soon. You will have one week to prove you are worthy of this chance.”

As she turned away, it became clear that her last words were a dismissal. She took several steps toward the edge of the training ground, then a step that took her far further than it should have, flickering from one place to another. She appeared on the edge of the next terrace up, then she passed out of sight.

The soldiers wore bored expressions as they pushed us into a loose group and started shepherding us back down the terraces. A couple of them stayed behind to drag the injured student away, while the rest of us left together.

The soldiers began leading us back down the mountain, towards the barracks where we’d be staying.

Master Cordaze’s words haunted me as we walked. There was a paradox in them.

She'd told us that nothing was given freely, but then she’d freely told us a bunch of stuff, not least the line from her Sovereign’s Path.

I didn’t believe her line about anything offered freely had to be a trap, Scribe Bevin back in Kirkswill had taught me the scribe's arts because he enjoyed spouting off about the craft, but if the Antorxians believed it, then either their philosophy involved overlooking this obvious contradiction, or even this information was a trap.

Cordaze had given us the first words of her Sovereign's Path — It is not to receive, but to take.

Where was the trap in that? Where was the manipulation?

It would make people suspicious of anyone offering to help them out of kindness, for a start. It would throw a wet blanket over anything done in the spirit of cooperation. With the way she’d explosively punctuation of her point, some of the others were probably already believing it on reflex. The completely unprompted violent punishment was an emotional hammer blow that would simply stop people thinking about it too clearly.

I couldn’t help but wonder if it had all been a carefully choreographed interaction designed to manipulate us; the first step in the violent destruction of whatever we’d believed before we came here.

Either that, or Cordaze was just a sadistic psychopath who loved blasting off people’s limbs. From what I knew about Reeves, either option was just as likely.

Sadism or sophistry, I couldn’t deny that the Antorxian philosophy had won them the world.

The soldiers escorted us down two tiers to the building that would be our home for however long we survived here.

They’d called it a barracks, but in reality it was more like a cell block. There was a large central room lit by an open skylight and furnished with wooden benches and wooden tables. A corridor ran around the central room, connecting to small stone cells where we would have to sleep two to a room.

As we filtered into our cells, we found the promised ‘everything we would need’, which turned out to be a tunic, scarf, and robe all in the same coarse light gray fabric, a pair of leather sandals, and a scrubbing stone that would have to serve for all our personal hygiene requirements.

It was far from all I needed. I needed a journal. I needed a pen. I had a scribe's training and a scribe's tastes, but none of the tools I'd lovingly cared for at home. I needed soap. I needed a hairbrush. I needed a bed that was more than a bag of straw on a wooden frame. Give me a book of poems and a cushion and I can be happy, but I guessed those things were luxuries in the Antorxians’ eyes.

The washhouse further along the grassy terrace was more disappointing than I could have imagined — mold-specked cubicle rooms where cold water could be made to pour down from a lead pipe near the ceiling. I used it to get as clean as I could, then dressed in my new clothes.

I was cold and miserable as I sat down on my bed, my back to the wall of the cell.

My new roommate, a sandy-haired boy with a warrior's build who hadn't washed, didn't seem any more interested in talking than I did.

It was a couple of hours until dusk, and in relative private for the first time, I decided to practice the little that Bevin had taught me about magic.

I stared at my roommate for a minute, checking that he wasn’t watching me and wouldn’t start, then crossed my legs, lay my palms on top of my knees, and closed my eyes.

One by one, I tried to shut out my senses. Sight was easy, with my eyes closed. Hearing was next, simple in the silence of the room. Touch was harder. There were so many different sensations vying for my attention; the rough clothes, the prickling of the straw in the mattress, the tickling of my hair around my ears, but I'd had a lot of practice shutting out physical discomfort, so I was able to do it.

Smell was the hardest, in that room. My nose prickled with salt and sweat — the bodily smells of work and travel coming from my roommate's side of the cell.

After a few minutes of slow breathing, I managed it. Then, the world opened up.

With all of my physical senses shut out, I was left with only my spiritual senses.

I felt the Fold; the vast layer of reality that stretched above the material world, pulsing with its own energy, its innumerable denizens, and its own alien laws.

I felt the Fold as if it were a storm over a distant ocean, seen from the safety of a sheltered place on the shore. Lately, it felt like it was getting closer.

I took a long, slow breath, trying to draw in some of that distant energy.

It trickled into my body with a feeling like needle-points, a prickling up and down my throat, in my veins, and in my chest. I quickly bound the energy, weaving it into my core, adding to my reserves, in a miniscule way.

This was accumulation, and it was the only magic I knew.

Growing up, I'd heard stories of Losirisian wizards, of their enchanted staves and words of power, but their crafts had died along with them, their words forgotten. Now, the Antorxians were the only path to magic left open to me.

I sat there for an hour, slowly accumulating maja, struggling to keep my connection to the Fold open despite my surroundings.

If only I’d known how to do anything with it, I might not have been taken so easily. Even now, I might have had the power to make my way in the world outside the academy — even if it meant being an outlaw. But I was a vessel without an opening. I was like a bucket with a stuck lid.

Eventually, I felt the growing need to sleep and I let my connection fade. The world became mundane again.

I had weeks of built-up weariness to shed. Weeks on the road, and the shocks of the day.

Despite the thin mattress, the strange company, and the fear that one of the other students was going to murder me in the night, I managed to close my eyes and let myself fall unconscious.