The Sorcerer's Quest (4 page)
“Why didn’t you take an apprentice or something?”
“
I did eventually. I took a number of them over my
many years instead of having children. In the end, though, they would leave to
experience their own adventures. Some of them fell in love, some of them broke
down under the weight of what they saw, and some of them just moved on. I also
became an adviser to non-wizards. Unfortunately, too often, people did not
really believe in my magic
.”
“How old are you?”
“
I never bothered to figure that out
.”
I really didn’t think I could hear any more that
night. It never occurred to me that being stuck in wolf form was the least of
the wizard’s problems. “How did you end up cursed? I know you said that you
loved the wrong woman and was blinded to your enemy, but how?”
“
That is a story for another night
.”
I figured as much. “How did you end up on this world?
You didn’t know what world this was until I said I was a sorcerer.”
“
Yes, I was on a different world; one where I was
quite the legend. If anything, I was more feared there than Magnus is here. How
I came to be here, I have no idea. Someone must have stolen the syrus and
brought it here. I am still unsure how you read the inscription
.”
“I don’t know. I just waved my wand and told the box
to open. The inscription became readable, I read it, and the syrus opened. I’m
pretty tired.”
“
Then I will leave you for tonight. In the
morning, you will begin practicing with your new staff.
” He turned and
left.
After shaking the blanket to rid it of the dust, I
sat back down and studied my new staff. Energy tingled under my skin as it
adapted to the power. It was almost as if the staff and my magic were getting
to know each other.
Worried that I was going to accidentally do magic, I
set it back down and settled under the covers. A moment later, I turned… and
squeaked. Then I fell out of bed with a pained grunt. “What are you doing?!” I
asked Kisha, who was lying on the bed. I had never had a bed large enough to share
with a girl, and I definitely didn’t want a young ghost to be the first one I
shared it with.
She smiled shyly. “I just wanted to make sure you are
settled in and have everything you need.” She twirled a lock of blond hair
around her index finger. “I thought your wolf would never leave.”
“Actually, I think I forgot to ask him a question. I
should go find him.” I turned to the door, only for her to suddenly appear in
front of it.
Gods
. “Or not. I’m really tired and I think I should go to
bed.” Her smile fell and I felt bad. Not bad enough to invite her to stay, but
still pretty bad.
“Oh. Okay,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you
tomorrow.” With that, she vanished.
When I was finished, I dressed, grabbed my wand and
staff, and left to explore the mansion. All of the bedrooms were on the second
floor. Right before I reached the staircase, I happened to glance into a room
to my left and stopped. It was a huge library, which I couldn’t resist. I
closed myself in the room and studied the books. Most were ancient grimoires on
magic, yet others were about mythology or grand quests.
It was too warm for me to light the fire, so I pulled
a few books down and sat on the window seat to read.
* * *
“
This is not where I expected to find you, young
sorcerer
,” Merlin said, pulling me back to reality. I glanced out the
window and realized it was far past morning. Merlin sat in the center of the
room, looking almost amused.
“I like books,” I said. “Mother only ever let me read
about curses and potion ingredients.”
“
Who taught you to read
?” he asked.
“My father. He had a lot of older brothers, like me,
so he often took pity on me when my mother wasn’t around.”
“
You are not, by chance, the seventh son of the
seventh son, are you
?”
“Yes, I am. Why?”
He hesitated. “
We should discuss that another
time. For now, let us begin your training. Pick up the staff, and attack me
.”
“Attack…” I looked around at all the flammable paper.
“But the books would get hurt.” Merlin gave me a scowl, turned, and walked out.
I was very glad he didn’t push. Yes, I wanted to be a malevolent sorcerer, but
that was no excuse to destroying books. I followed him out of the room, down
the stairs, and through a back door.
Behind the mansion was a grassy field. It wasn’t
lush, green, and trimmed like I had imagined it would be. No, it was more
befitting the house; the field had waist-high, brown grass and was speckled
with boulders, thorn vines, and abandoned, half-disintegrated battle equipment.
“
Is this to your bibliophile satisfaction
?”
“My what?”
“
Never mind. You apparently have more depths than
I had originally thought
.”
“Oh,” I said, assuming he was insulting me. My
brothers ridiculed me for pretty much everything I did, but most of all for my
desire to read books. Of course, none of them could read, so they didn’t know
what they were missing. I felt a little stab of pity for them.
“
Put your wand away and attack me with magic
.”
I stuck my wand in my pocket and put both of my hands
on the staff in front of me.
Attack
, I thought to the staff. Nothing
happened.
Fire
. Still nothing.
“
Any time now
,” Merlin said.
“I’m trying. I’m thinking it really hard.”
“
Thinking a command is not the same as feeling it.
When you conjure food, you do not
think
food, you
feel
hunger.
When you silenced Vactarus last night, you wanted it. To attack someone, you
have to
feel
it
.”
“But I don’t want to attack you.” He gave me a
thoughtful look. Again, I was astounded by his skill in making expressions with
his wolf face.
“
I see. I suppose I have no other choice. Prepare
yourself to be offended
,” he said. Before I could say anything, he
continued. “
Your blond hair makes you look like my first girlfriend, who was
twelve. Your wand looks like a stick of cherry-flavored chocolate. You smell feminine.
Your magic is whiter than my teeth
.”
“Hey! That’s rude! Don’t talk about my magic that
way.”
“
Your mother is a warlock
.”
“My mother is not a deceiver with no real magic!” It
wasn’t the first time someone had called her a trickster, but it was usually
the last thing they ever said. Warlocks, who had no magic, were often trying to
pass themselves off as sorcerers, so they were despised by all real sorcerers.
“
She is, and you are a wizard
.”
I knew he was only trying to rile me up, and he had
so much as told me it was coming, but I still felt anger boil in my blood. It
was different when my family insulted me; they knew my weaknesses and I knew
theirs. We were stuck with each other whether we liked it or not. Merlin didn’t
know me or my evil mother.
The crystal on the staff started emitting a dim glow,
and the knowledge that I was doing something was all the encouragement my anger
needed. I thought of what I wanted to strike with, but that only made the glow
begin to fade.
It was my mother’s words that came to mind, not
Merlin’s. “
In any battle it is the one who has nothing to lose that wins
,”
she had said many times. As always, her words were entirely unhelpful. The
crystal faded more.
“
Sorcerers need no reason to be angry,
Ayden
,”
Merlin said, abandoning his ploy to incite me. “
All magic comes from inside
us. Even magical objects were born of the power inside a person. It is pure,
manifested desire, for sorcerers and wizards alike. Wizards may desire peace
and balance while sorcerers may desire self-gain and raw power, but the more
powerful person is the one with a stronger desire. The only way you can beat me
is to want a victory more than me. That is why sorcerers find so many reasons
to hate and to hold grudges. I have never actually met a happy sorcerer
.”
“My mother is happy,” I said. Well, at least I
thought so. The fact was, nothing was ever good enough for her, even from my
oldest brother, who was her favorite. She always smiled a lot, though, and
while it was usually a cruel or treacherous grin, I thought it meant that she
was happy.
“
Of course she is not. After birthing six suitably
obedient pawns, her plans were foiled by the son she had been waiting for all
along. I suppose you must be the greatest disappointment to her
.”
I started to argue before I realized what he was
saying. “What does this have to do with my brothers? You said something about
it earlier, too.”
“
We can discuss that later. For now, you are in
the midst of a lesson, and you have yet to strike me
.”
The staff had stopped glowing completely. “I don’t
want to fight you. I appreciate that you’re trying to rile me by insulting me,
but I also know it’s not true.”
He sighed in my head. “
This may be the root of
your problem. No sorcerer is so self-aware and unaware at the same time. It is
true that I did not mean what I said when I insulted you, but a sorcerer does
not care. A sorcerer can turn on anyone for no reason at all
.”
“What stops a sorcerer from walking into traps every
day?”
“
Nothing on other worlds; they rush into traps
quite frequently. Here, however, people value sorcerers as much as wizards for
the same reason people do not normally hate sharks. Thus, it does not happen so
much. Now, stop stalling and attack me
.”
I was stalling, but I wasn’t wasting time. First, I
tried to make myself angry. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything to be
angry about. I didn’t think it would be wise to point this out. Instead, I
focused on the desire to prove that I was not a wizard. I would prove myself by
defeating the greatest wizard of the land and then my family would stop
ridiculing me at every turn.
The crystal started to glow softly again.
This is
it. I can do this. I can use dark magic
. I would have gone on, encouraged
by the energy I could feel thrumming in the staff and my own energy that was
starting to prickle under my skin, but that was when the ground exploded upward
right in front of me.
I shrieked and my magic shot through the staff before
I realized that the ground hadn’t actually exploded. Instead, it was Vactarus
who had popped up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop the magic once it had left
me. Bright red energy struck Vactarus, and his body instantly shrunk and
transformed into a little black bat.
“Oh, so cute!” I cooed before I could stop myself. My
mother only let us have large, outside bats that could defend the house and
warn us when people wandered too close, so the little bat was pretty adorable
in my opinion. Unfortunately, my brothers didn’t know how to take care of a bat
and thus, we never kept one for long.
“Cute?!” Vactarus squeaked, his voice high-pitched.
“Turn me back!” He was only able to flap his little wings a few times before he
plummeted to the ground.
I held the staff out to Merlin. “Maybe you should do
it.”
The wolf smirked. “
Actually, I think not. You
turned a
ghost
into a ghost
bat
. I am rather impressed
.”
I grinned as well. It wasn’t anything as malevolent
as what even my nicest brother did on a daily basis, but it was real sorcery.
“Sorcerers have minions, right? Can I have an army of bat minions?”
Merlin rolled his eyes. “
Not if you coo at them
every time you see them
.”
Vactarus didn’t hear Merlin and obviously didn’t like
being ignored, because he flapped his wings in fury. I resisted making another
adoring sound as he was lifted into the air and landed on his head. “Turn me
back!” he screeched.
I almost aimed the staff at him, but stopped myself
right before doing so. Although breaking curses was not sorcery, it took an
understanding of the magic that caused the curse. I didn’t understand what I
had done, and I definitely wasn’t going to be able to undo it with my new
staff.
“
You were able to remove the silencing curse last
night
,” Merlin reminded me, obviously understanding my hesitation.
“I think removing my own curse should be easy,
because I know my magic.” Or, at least that was what I told myself. The fact
that I could easily break my brothers’ curses never failed to anger my mother.
It was just easier for me to undo dark magic than to do it.
Also, as often as my brothers cursed me, it was a
life-or-death skill. The first one I ever broke was my eldest brother’s,
because he cursed me to stop breathing whenever I fell asleep. Unfortunately,
when I tried to curse him to bleed profusely from every orifice, my magic just
made him smell like wild berries instead.
I laid my staff gently on the ground and pulled out
my wand. My energy responded readily, as if my wand was a welcomed friend I
hadn’t seen in a while. I pointed it at the ghost bat and thought,
return to
normal
. Magic flashed. It was white for once, as if it didn’t have time to
be colorful and sparkly and utterly embarrassing. To my great relief, it didn’t
even do a fluttery dance. It struck Vactarus and he immediately changed back
into a man… well… ghost.
He righted himself and glared at me. Since he was a
spirit instead of a physical person, I wasn’t surprised that his clothes were
perfectly unruffled.
“Sorry. You shouldn’t sneak up on Dracre sorcerers.
We tend to curse first and ask questions later,” I said. Merlin raised an
eyebrow at me. “At least, everyone else in my family does.”
Vactarus’s eyes widened dramatically and I realized
that I had never told him my family name. “You are a Dracre?!” Before I could
answer, understanding filled his eyes. “I see. You resemble Livia quite well.”
“Who?” I didn’t know a Livia, but I did know I didn’t
resemble any of my family members.
“
Ask him
w
hy he interrupted the lesson
,”
Merlin said.
I did, and Vactarus said, “Oh, yes. I just wanted to
inform you that there is a seer tournament this afternoon in a village to the
north, in case you wanted to see it.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed excitedly. I snuck out to see one
every time I heard one was near.
“
We have no time for playing around. Are you not
in a hurry to get to the wizard before your brothers
?” Merlin asked.
“Well, yes, I am, but my brothers are pampered and
won’t move quickly. They will probably stop at every village along the way for
food, shelter, and women. Besides, maybe we can talk to one of the seers who
can help us with either your curse or finding Magnus.”
“
Perhaps, but seers are extremely dangerous and
often devious
.”
“They are? None of the seers that I ever met were
devious. We can go?”
He sighed. “
Very well. I reserve the right to
place all the blame on you when we end up captured and eaten by trolls
.”
I scoffed. “It’s not troll season.”
* * *
We had to leave right then to make it to the
tournament. I could hear the crowd before we could see it, but the village was
not too far from Vactarus’s mansion. When we reached the top of a hill that
overlooked the town, I sighed. “Well, it’s not the biggest tournament, but I
guess that’s because of the season.”
The village itself was a fair size and surrounded by
vast fields of crops. The houses and shops were made of wood, mud, and straw,
but cloth tents were crammed between them and around the village in a lively
display of color.
Merlin gave me a look. “
There are hundreds of
people there to watch other people throw casting stones and stare into crystal
balls
.”
I gaped at him. “What kind of seer tournaments have
you been to? You can get food from all over the world, trade mystical
artifacts, and hear your fortune. Of course, the main event is watching the
seers try to outclass each other. Their magic gets really chaotic after a
while. This is small compared to some of them that I’ve been to.” I was already
heading towards the town before he could argue.
