“What?” The old man growled. He stepped forward heavily.
The fear rose in me again, but I
swallowed it and plunged forward. “I was
sent to help Wizard Eb with his new arranging project.” I paused and blushed in
embarrassment, “But I’ve never seen him and I have no idea where to find him. Do you know where he is?”
The old man clenched his jaw, “I do
not need help. I can handle the efforts
to rearrange the library with the staff that is currently available.” He started to grind his teeth. “I do not need some amateur’s lackey fouling
up my efforts.”
I scowled at him, “Wizard Iustyn is
not an amateur!” My fury caused me to ball my fists unconsciously before
extending a finger and poking him in the chest. “And I am not a lackey.” I spat the last word out and
puffed out my chest.
Wizard Eb’s eyebrows raised just
enough that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been starting right at him. He poked me back, jabbing his finger hard
into my chest. “Fine! You want to prove
you’re not a lackey? Impress me.” He grabbed a stack of papers from just inside
the door and thrust them at me. “Reorder
these shelves!” He promptly turned around and slammed the door in my face.
“Jackass” I muttered to myself,
clutching the papers to my chest.
“I heard that!” The old man roared
from the other side of his door. “I swear to all the gods, if you are out there
when I open the door, I will end you!” The latch for the door clicked open.
“Gah! You have hearing like an elf!”
I scuttled away, slipping around the corner.
I looked around, letting my heart calm down. Off to my right, I saw a well-lit stair well
leading up to the main floor. “How in
Aldanel’s name did I miss that?” I glanced down at the sheets of paper in my
hand and saw a list of shelves that needed to be reordered and new books that
needed to be restocked. “Finally! I can
get toooo…” I trailed off as I flipped through the pages and saw the size of
the job. “No. no. no.” I shook my head in disbelief, “The job is too big.” I
sat down on one of the steps in defeat. “I
won’t finish this for years. Maybe if I
go talk to Iustyn…” I swallowed and played the discussion out in my head. There was no way that was going to end well,
if I was lucky I would end up with another punishment on top of the one I had.
I sighed in frustration and stood
up, bracing my shaky legs as I stumbled off to get something to eat. I went back to my room in order to get my
meal chits. As an apprentice, I was entitled to two meals a day, a small stipend,
3 trips to the baths a week and a sleeping cubicle in the dormitory. It would also cover my tuition if I was at
the school, but I wasn’t a student so I was saving the school, and my teacher,
money. If I had done something
particularly noteworthy, Iustyn give me a small amount of money but I rarely impressed
him that much.
I wandered across the yard, pausing
to watch several of the students practicing throwing spells at a straw dummy.
One of the older students summoned a blast of flame and incinerated it. It was easy to see the toll it took on the
man as he staggered about drunkenly. The
rest of the students merely shrugged and sent one of the Initiates to go get
another dummy. I wandered over and
checked on the man, making sure to check that he was still breathing. Accidents like this were quite common and all
that was needed was a little rest and some food, but he’d be helpless until he
recovered so I dragged him over to a shaded area of the courtyard and propped
him up against the wall.
After double checking to make sure
that the other student was ok, I hurried to the dormitory. I wanted to change my clothes before starting
work on the shelves. I knew that it was
going to take me a while and I was probably going to end up forgetting to get
back here over the next couple of days.
I paced mindlessly through the halls, feeling the odd pulse of magic
from several of the closed doors to sleeping cubicles. It was forbidden to practice magic here in
the dormitory, but the residents wouldn’t rat each other out because this was
considered one of the few places that lower level students could practice
without being prey to the more experienced ones. I made the last turn to get to my door and
put my hand on the door. With a brief
effort of will, I “pushed” on the lock with my magic while my other hand got my
key out and slid it into the mechanical lock.
I had invented a small locking spell that was fairly simple one
installed, but would take a while to undo even for a more skilled magic
user. The magical lock opened and the
keyed lock clicked open, but the door refused to budge. I tried again, this time I locked the
door. After staring in confusion at my door,
I began to check to make sure everything was working properly when I sensed a
deeper, more powerful spell on the door.
It was done by a very, very powerful magic used and was holding the door
shut. I stood dumbly in front of the
door before realizing that I should check my room’s mailbox, which hung
slightly to the right of the door and was stenciled with the number of my
cubicle. I fished around in the box
before grabbing a small sheet of paper.
I had to read it several times
before my mind started to process what was going on. The note said this:
Endros-
You have not been fulfilling your
duties as an Apprentice. Therefore, you
are hereby barred from your room until such time as you have proven to me that
you are worthy of the position.
-Wizard
Iustyn.
Beneath my master’s name was his
mark, an utterly impossible thing to forge.
The entire note was written in the long looping script that I had seen
so many times. I quietly folded the note
and numbly marched back across the courtyard and headed back into the
library. I then marched right to the
nearest of the library shelves that I had to begin working on and stared at the
spines of the books. I could feel them
mocking me, taunting me with their knowledge and the knowledge that I would not
end up a wizard. I slowly started to pull the books off the shelves and began
to try and find an order to them.
I continued mechanically for
several hours before wandering around the library aimlessly, rediscovering the
sleeping cells and curling up on one of the empty beds. I slept soundly.
No comments:
Post a Comment