The Black Mage: Apprentice (12 page)

"But I do." His jaw clenched. "See, Ryiah, I
didn't care that Ian was your friend. I knew what I was suggesting.
I knew it would make things difficult for you and I'd be lying if I
said there wasn't more than one motivation in mind. Even after you
did it I was happy. We'd won. I'd got what I wanted."

Darren's eyes locked on mine. "I was fine
right up until you stopped talking to me. All of sudden I
cared
what someone thought of me. Because we are friends.
And making you miserable and angry makes me miserable and angry. I
don't want to be the person to make you mad or cry, Ryiah. I want
to make you laugh. I want you to make
me
laugh, because gods
know you are the only one who can. So, yes, I am sorry, I am sorry
because even if I was right, I was also wrong. And I'd rather lose
a silly battle than your friendship."

"It would take more than that to lose me." It
was the only thing I could think to say. I'd never seen this side
of Darren before. For all the time I'd known him he had kept his
feelings bottled up under a layer of sarcasm and wit. I'd never
heard him speak so openly. I knew I cared for him – probably more
than I would ever admit - but to hear what I meant to him – even if
it wasn't what I wished - still touched me.

His eyes flared in the shadows. "Do you
really mean that?"

I nodded and then bent down to adjust a
bootstrap, more to busy my hands than anything else. When I finally
straightened I saw Darren watching me, a strange expression on his
face.

It made my blood pound loudly in my ears. I
bit down on my lip, hard. My eyes were glued to his and I was hit
with an overwhelming desire to close the distance between us, to
reach out and take his hand in mine…

"You still have feelings for the prince."

"It's Ian that I want."

Was it? Was it really?

"Ryiah." Darren suddenly dropped my gaze,
looking anywhere but my face. "If things were… If they were
different-"

"Help!
Help!
" The silence was broken
by screams coming from the other side of camp. Darren and I
immediately broke into a run.

We caught up to the rest of our faction to
find several Mahj soldiers retreating from the northern trail,
large burn marks up and down their arms. And blood. Lots of blood.
It was pouring down their faces, chests, legs,
everywhere
.

I immediately felt sick.

"The raiders," one of the men wheezed, "they
have
magic!
"

"O-only ten of them," a woman soldier
coughed. "But too much power! And t-too many!"

"Where's Master Byron?" Caine's cold voice
rang out clearly. "We have to help!"

"He's with the Ishir regiment." Darren took a
step forward. "They needed help recovering the southern mines."

"I-it's not the southern ones the raiders are
a-attacking now!" another soldier choked. "We can't hold them off –
not without mages of our own! We can't wait for reinforcements and
they are destroying our mines!"

"Then we will help you." Darren spoke
decisively.

"Thank you." The man collapsed to the
ground.

****

I saddled my horse with trembling hands. I
suddenly didn't feel so sure of myself. All this time I had been so
eager to fight and now I didn't know why. There was nothing
exciting about battle and any injuries I got now would not be so
quickly attended to. Any one of us could die out there.

I tried to calm my frantic nerves as I
checked the reins and tucked my sickle blade into its curved
sheath, hiding a dagger in the padding of my left ankle. Thankfully
I was dressed for battle. I was already wearing pale linen breeches
and a riding shirt that was the norm of the desert peoples. I
tightened the belt at my waist and wished vaguely desert fighters
wore armor. I felt exposed with no chainmail and only a thin wooden
shield to carry. Desert nomads and raiders fought by agility and
wore clothing suited to their environment.

I hope that still applied in winter.

"Ryiah!" My twin came stumbling into the
stables, fear written all over his face. "Tell me it's not true!
Tell me you and the rest of your faction aren't going after the
raiders without Byron or Commander Ama's men to protect you!"

"I have to." I mounted my mare, trying to
look more confident than I felt. "Byron and the rest of them are
held up at the southern mines. We just got report that the northern
ones are being attacked – the ones we supposedly recovered two
nights back, and they've got
mages
, Alex. One of the Mahj
soldiers told us so right before he
died
!"

My brother didn't look happy. He looked
angry. "Ry, you need to wait for the regiment! You don't know how
many mages they have!"

"They'll kill the others!" I burst. "We have
to try and help-"

"But what if they kill
you
?" Alex
cried. His eyes glistened and he was white as a sheet. "Or
Ella?"

I tried to be brave. "They won't." I felt
guilty leaving him so distraught, but Alex was Restoration: he
would have to learn to deal with this fear – especially since his
sister and the girl he loved were Combat.

I
would have to learn to leave him
behind.

****

We had been riding for almost an hour when we
finally spotted something in the distance. At first it had been
hard to see anything in the darkening of night, but eventually the
twinkling desert landscape began to reveal itself.

"There!" Caine pointed to a herd of
slaughtered camel. There were heaped in a pile of bloody carcasses
next to a pair of toppled caravans and just further west were two
large mile-long pits surrounded by chunks of rock and large
sprawling slabs of white. The northern salt mines.

Almost everywhere were deep fissures that
continued to spread, rattling the earth as they ripped across the
flat salt beds, scattering Mahj soldiers as they went.

Just in front of the mines was a blood bath.
Young men and women were sprawled across ditches and sand, caked in
blood and nursing their injuries.

There were still about twenty soldiers
standing, attempting to avoid the quakes. They fought to press a
handful of darkly clad raiders back. Away from the precious mines
and their valuable resource.

They were losing.

The raiders continued to draw closer, only
ten in their midst but undeniably dangerous. I could see bright
flares of magic spilling from their hands as they continued to
target the earth – more focused on destroying the mines than the
men fighting them. Already one of the mines had collapsed.

White mists scattered the sharp desert wind.
It made no sense. Why were the raiders attacking the mines? How
could ten untrained individuals possess so much magic - unless they
really were mages as the locals had claimed?

The raider-mages didn't bear Caltothian or
Jerar mages' robes. They were dressed in loose desert garb, muted
browns and blacks with hoods that fell over their eyes and scarves
that left the rest of their face hidden from view. It must have
been how they'd been able to sneak up on the Mahj regiment
undetected. Blending into the night as the red desert sun left its
sky behind.

One of the raiders spotted us. "Leave us!"
His voice echoed across the expanse. Magic amplified the volume of
his voice. "I give you the same choice we gave these men here.
Return to your camps and we will let your people live!"

"Relinquish our mines and we will let
you
live, you filthy bandit!" Caine hollered back. He had
assumed the role of command as the highest ranked fifth-year in our
group. His stallion fidgeted nervously under the trembling ground,
clearly wanting to go anywhere but where his rider was leading
him.

"This land belongs to the Crown." Darren had
brought his horse forward to join Caine at the head of our
party.

"
You?
" The gruff raider looked
surprised. Then he smiled wide, white teeth flashing. "Well this is
unexpected
." He laughed hoarsely and roared to his
companions: "Friends, the orders have changed: kill them all! Do
not let that young princeling escape!"

A thundering roll broke from above and the
sky lit up. Screams filled the air as the Mahj soldiers nearest
fell to the ground, writhing. Bright yellow shards of lightening
tore across the air, crippling each man and woman they touched.

In an instant the remaining soldiers had
fallen. Twenty quivering bodies thrashed against the sand as flesh
and bone exploded, covering the air with a thick, crimson mist that
reached our line up a quarter of a mile away.

"What have we done?" Ella's voice quavered. I
didn't know how to answer. Fear had taken complete hold of my body.
I clutched the reins, hands trembling and panic coursing through
every inch of my skin. Hysterical sobs were threatening to break,
mourning the last moments of my life. I was a coward.

The raiders had slaughtered twenty soldiers
in a matter of seconds… And now, now they wanted to kill us.

This wasn't a battle – it was a massacre.

And I wasn't the only one who thought it. It
was clear in the dread that filled Caine's expression that he
hadn't prepared for this outcome. Darren had gone white as the
sand. Eve's eyes were wide as saucers and Ian and Lynn looked like
they were ready to faint.

I tried to speak, but fear had lodged itself
too deep in my throat. We couldn't run. The raiders had horses, and
they knew where we camped. They knew we had Darren.

We had to stay and fight.

"S-shield Darren," Caine finally stammered.
"We need to p-protect the Crown!"

"No! We need to…" Darren's protest fell on
deaf ears.

Another deafening boom and the ground below
us caved and shuddered, just as a bolt of lightening shot out from
our right. Instinctively the entire faction cast out. Our magic was
a large purple globe that crackled and moaned.

The raiders' magic rippled against our
magical barrier before finally fizzling and sliding down to the
scorched earth below.

"Pain cast!" Caine gasped. "Now!"

"We can't just hold this casting forever!"
Darren argued. "We will waste all of our magic!"

"We need to target the raiders one-by-one,
like you did to me in the mock battle," Lynn said.

"Leave the second - and third-years here, we
have ten of us. We can take them on ourselves!" That was
Jayson.

"Our best chance is all of us!" Ian
protested. "We have more together than them!"

"But they are as strong as mages," the quiet
voice was Priscilla. Even she was afraid. "We are only
apprentices."

"Whoever wants to run,
run
. I'm
staying."

"No, Darren, they'll kill you!"

"I'm with the prince."

"Me too."

In the end everyone was staying. And we were
all fighting.

The first thing we did was dismount – there
was no advantage on moving ground and our horses would only hinder
us in battle. We quickly laid out a plan of attack, Caine and
Darren plotting the course. The rest of us held onto our casting…
but the barrier was starting to smell like molten rock. There was a
tinkling like glass whenever lightening touched the same spot
twice.

It would not hold much longer.

"
Now
!"

On Darren's command we released the casting
and separated into two parties: those who could pain cast, and
those that couldn't.

The group that couldn't formed a running
barrier, long casting arrows and javelins with as much force as
they could.

The raiders easily deflected their attacks,
choosing in turn to send off their own missile assault of arrow and
axe. Lucky for us, weather castings like lightning were too costly
for the enemy to maintain.

Meanwhile the rest of us stayed behind. Using
whatever blade we had on hand we dug deep into our palms, summoning
as much warm air and sand as we could. There was loose earth
everywhere: plenty of debris for our casting. We thrust our
castings together, allowing the joint power to fuel our magic.

Our dust vortex began to cut across the
fissured plains, fast and deadly in its course. The other
apprentices were ready and ducked to the side, allowing the tower
of sand to pass. The raiders beyond hastily threw up a barrier and
dropped their long castings, unable to see anything beyond the fast
whirlwind of sand that was blinding their sight.

But then they made a mistake: the raiders
cast lightening.

With the heat of the raiders' own magic the
vortex's particles fused together and melted. Sand had conducted
their lightning, and within seconds the whirlwind transformed into
a petrified web of sandglass.

It shattered their barrier.

Searing hot glass streaked out like jagged
claws from the sky, piercing the raiders closest. Cries and screams
followed. Several collapsed. White dust and blood rose up in a
pillowing cloud, a hazy red clotting the air.

The non-pain casters of my faction charged
forward while the rest of us released our magic.

I knelt shakily, retching into the sand.
Others around me were doing the same. We had reached the end of our
limits. If we tried to cast again we would end up unconscious. I
took a deep breath and then froze.

There was a rustle to my left.

Darren stumbled out onto the field,
determined to help the rest of our faction. I watched him, wishing
I could follow suit. How was he still standing?

The prince always did have more magic than
the rest of us
.

Glancing out at the battle ahead I could see
the odds had shifted. Ella and Loren stood out clearly with Caine,
and the three of them were leading an assault on the remaining
raiders. Five apprentices, including Darren, were close behind.
Only three of the raiders still stood - but they were burned so
badly they were having trouble casting.