Apprentice (5 page)

When all was ready, Benen was told to place a cut of the chicken on one of the metal plates along with some of the vegetables.

“What about the oatmeal?” he asked the light.

“That. Is. Your. Sup. Per. Ben. En.” it said in its stilted manner. Benen wanted to cry, or at least to strangle the light.

Doing his best to control himself, he served the master his plate and poured his wine when directed. Finally, he was dismissed and he was able to return to the kitchen and eat his oatmeal. It was bland and tasteless, but by then he was so hungry he was just happy to be eating. He eyed the chicken, not far from where he sat eating and wondered if he could sneak some of it for himself. The blue light still hovered nearby and he decided not to risk it.

Once he had finished, the light prompted him to put the remaining chicken and cooked vegetables in a cold room adjacent to the kitchen.

This room must be cooled by magic
, Benen thought; it was unnaturally cold.

After supper, which was finished long after sunset, Benen was told by the light that he was free until sunrise but was not permitted to leave the apprentice’s floor. He was shown this floor and saw how limited his evening options were.

The apprentice’s floor was in one of the upper tower levels and was a rather small floor. It had two bedrooms — did the wizard once have two apprentices at the same time? — and a study. A small closet turned out to be a loo. The study had a table and three uncomfortable chairs, its walls lined with bookcases. Unfortunately, the bookcases were rather sparsely populated. There was a cupboard with candles and matches he could use to light his evenings at least. The light also showed him that some of the few books present on the bookcase were blank, for his use in taking notes; there was also an inkwell and quill.

Too tired to do anything else that night, Benen went to bed and slept the sleep of the overworked. When morning came, he did not want to wake, but the light insisted. It shocked him with what looked like a miniature bolt of lightning when he refused to get up for the third time. It hurt and burnt where the bolt had hit him, but worse, it had made him jerk and twitch. This sudden jerking had made him bite his tongue. He wanted to curl up and stay there in his bed, but he knew he would just get jolted again if he did. He got up and faced his second day as the wizard’s scullion.

His days followed the pattern of the first day for his first year with the wizard, without much variance. The food changed; the wizard’s did, anyway. Other than that, the cleaning persisted. There was always a new place to clean and when those ran out, Overseer — Benen began calling it that, for that was what it was — got him to clean anew the first places he had worked on. All told, a cycle of cleaning took Benen two and a half weeks. Near the end of the cycle was one of the wizard’s laboratories and on the floor of that room there was a blackened stain.

No matter how hard he scrubbed at the stain, it would not come out. It seemed the spot was ingrained into the stone of the floor. Benen told Overseer this and went to move on to clean the rest of the room, but Overseer insisted he clean the spot. Benen tried again, scrubbing as hard as he could, but it did not affect the spot at all. Overseer did not accept that this was a stain. It jolted Benen with its lightning three separate times to motivate him to greater effort. He did all he could, but could not get the spot cleaned. The third time he was struck by the lightning, he lost consciousness. He woke the next morning in his bed, feeling wretched. Overseer was telling him to get up. He did not wait to be shocked, he got up promptly.

The Overseer did not bring him back to that laboratory the next day but they did return to it on the next cycle and the same experience was repeated. This happened every cleaning cycle and Benen learnt to dread the coming of that day each time.

He had tried to speak to the wizard about it while serving him a meal, but the wizard did not speak to him and the spell he was under forbade him to address the wizard without being first called upon.

Benen was miserable for these months and he grew to despise Overseer and, by association, the wizard.

Things changed, if only marginally, on the anniversary of his first year at the tower. Overseer brought him to the wizard’s study near the top of the highest tower.

CHAPTER 3: NEOPHYTE

The wizard was sitting behind a large slab of marble used as a workspace when he arrived. The apprentice delivered, Overseer withdrew, Benen knew not where it went.

He stood where Overseer had left him, unsure if he should approach closer or speak. He decided to wait for the wizard to direct him. The wizard, for his part, looked back at Benen and made no move to speak or give him any direction. The boy was determined to wait as long as needed and worked hard to seem impassive as he stayed still and silent.

Eventually, the wizard smiled, seemingly pleased at Benen’s performance.

“Step closer, boy,” he told him.

Without hesitation, Benen stepped forward, approaching his side of the marble slab. From this new vantage, he could see there were three items laid out on the slab, positioned within his easy reach, now that he was closer to it.

“You have endured one year of scullion duty well, boy,” the wizard said. “You have earned the beginning of your tuition. Your time here will not get easier, but it will get more rewarding as the years of your apprenticeship continue. Expect things to be harder, in fact. I aim to either break you or make of you a wizard I will be worthy to claim was once my apprentice. Do you understand?”

Benen nodded and said, “Yes, Master.” He did not say anything more, knowing better than to speak excessively.

“Good. Then, let us begin,” the wizard said, all business now. “You will see before you three instruments. Choose one of them to be your own.”

Benen looked at the items on the slab. The first, he saw, was a metal spike of some sort, it had one end flattened, like a nail, the other was very sharp. The whole had the look of fine steel. The second item looked like a wood-carver’s chisel. Benen had seen tools very similar to it in his home village, used by the men for carving details into wood. The final item looked like a simple knife. Not trusting anything, Benen made motions to pick up one of the items, looking at the wizard while miming the action. The wizard nodded and the boy picked up each item to examine it more closely. This scrutiny revealed nothing he had not noted with sight alone. He wasn’t sure what criteria he should apply in picking one of these tools. He wanted to ask the wizard if there was any more information he should be given before making his choice, but could not ask questions without permission.

“You can ask questions related to this choice at this time, if you wish,” the wizard granted, evidently still reading his mind.

“What criteria am I choosing by, Master? What am I to use these tools for?” he asked.

“I will not answer those particular questions. I will say that the order of the tools is not incidental. They are laid out from hardest to use to easiest. Furthermore, they are laid out from least costly to most costly,” the wizard said this while motioning from the metal spike to the knife each time.

“But Master, they are all tools to work different mediums. The spike would likely be used on stone, the chisel on wood, and the knife on meat.”

“Exactly,” the wizard responded laconically.

“If I make the choice and do not like the outcome, is there any recourse to change my mind?”

“Because you asked, I will grant you the right to change your mind about the tool you choose one year from now,” the wizard said with a smile. This was better than Benen had really expected, but not what he had hoped for.

“Can I think on this choice overnight, Master?” he asked, trying to buy himself more time.

“No. I don’t believe that more thought will yield you better results given how little information has been given to you. Choose before I lose patience with this process or I will choose your instrument for you.” Benen did not like the sound of that.

He looked over the items again. He knew this choice had great significance, but the information he had with which to make it was so scant. Perhaps, this was exactly what the wizard wanted. He was asking Benen to make a decision based on very limited information and judging him on his reasoning. It seemed to Benen that the best choice would be the chisel, being the middle ground of the three options, no matter if he ranked them by difficulty or cost. He made his choice.

“Master, I choose the chisel,” he told the wizard with confidence. The wizard smiled.

“The middle of the road then?” the wizard correctly assessed his thoughts. “You are hedging your bets, my boy. That was well chosen. Unfortunately, that isn’t the tool I’d rather you use. Instead you will use the knife.”

Benen wanted to object that this was not fair, that the knife was not his choice, but he knew that he had been taught another lesson by the wizard: there are no choices for an apprentice. He reached for the knife and grasped it when the wizard nodded his accord. He held it, weighing it and checking its balance. It was a good eating knife, if a bit too long for the purpose. It had a sharp point and a keen edge.

“Now that you have your instrument, we can begin your first lesson,” the wizard said. Benen corrected him mentally:

My second, if not third of the day so far.
If the wizard heard his thought, he did not care to comment or react to it, he simply continued the lesson, coming around the stone table to stand beside Benen. He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Look up, boy,” he told him, “and see the constellations.” Benen did as he was bid and, as expected, saw the points of light above him, seemingly through the ceiling of the room. “Do you see this collection of stars?” the wizard pointed out the constellation Benen knew as
The Furrow
in polite company, and as
The Maiden’s Fold
among the men. He nodded.

“That constellation you will learn to call
The Parallels
,” the wizard said. “Now, carve the star pattern into your flesh.”

Benen was not sure if the wizard was serious.

“Do it, boy. The stars and their patterns must become a part of your very being. Carve them into your flesh and make them yours.”

Benen couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that he feared the pain, although he did fear it. It wasn’t that he feared the scars the cuts would make; those he could live with. It was the callousness of the wizard. It was the confirmation of something he had long thought over the past year: the wizard doesn’t care about him or about teaching him. To the wizard, he was just a toy to torment and use. He was something the wizard could feel powerful over.

The past year of Benen’s apprenticeship had not been easy. He had been lonely from the start, missing his family and friends. He had been disappointed that all he was doing was cleaning the wizard’s house and cooking his dinners, getting no further along in any magical studies for so long. The only thing keeping Benen from breaking down altogether had been his expectation of an eventual magical education. This last thing was just the most recent of many things breaking the boy down, wearing away at what remained of his will to continue through these difficulties. He saw the wizard for what he really was: a cruel and evil man. So cruel that even his lessons were meant to hurt Benen.

He never intends to teach me, not really,
he thought.
Was he forced to take on an apprentice? He obviously doesn’t want one. He doesn’t want me . . .

Benen dropped the knife. He couldn’t do any of this anymore. He so desperately wanted to go home, but that wasn’t an option; they had given him up for dead. All he had was the wizard and the wizard didn’t want him. The wizard just wanted someone to be cruel to, someone to break.

“You win,” he said, having not been first spoken to by the wizard, he heard his own words over and over at increasing volume. It was maddeningly loud and, despite this, Benen kept repeating the words, making it worse and worse. He lost his balance and fell, not caring what happened to him. He heard himself screaming, but it was like someone else was doing it. He knew tears were running down his face, but he also knew he wasn’t sad. He didn’t feel emotion just then, just a desire for numbness. Soon, he got what he wanted: oblivion.

He woke in his bed, what seemed to be the next day, alive and unharmed other than a very bad headache. But inside, in his mind, he was still not well. He did not want to do anything and did not care what the consequence were. He thought of death as a relief from this past year’s nightmare.

It was Overseer that had woken him, and it had no regard for his wishes. It strobed angrily above him. He turned over and tried to go back to sleep, ignoring it. The light shocked him, but he refused to get up. It kept shocking him until he lost consciousness.

He came back to himself, he knew not how long later, and found he was alone in his room. He was thirsty and needed to use the loo. He decided to commit himself enough to living to fulfil both of those needs, but he resisted the need to eat. For that, he would have to go to the kitchens and he did not want to encounter Overseer, or worse: the wizard.

Having taken care of his needs as much as he intended, Benen returned to his bed and lay down again. He pulled the covers over his head and cried, feeling worthless and sorry for his lot. He expected the blue light would be back to shock him to unconsciousness soon. If this happened with enough repetition, Benen believed it would kill him, which was what he wanted.