Dark apprentice, p.23
Dark Apprentice, page 23
His eyes shot open. A plant pod the size of a dinner plate halted a breath away from his face. He jerked back and slammed his head against the trunk. He tilted to one side, trying to slip around the tree, but something prevented him from moving. His entire body was wrapped in vines.
Beyond the giant pod, Medea’s grinning face tilted into view, mimicking his sideways lean. “Took you long enough to notice it.”
The pod eased forward. He struggled against the vines. Why did she have to aim it at his face? Feet were one thing, but his face? He slashed the vines erratically with telekinesis, scoring flesh in the process. Once freed, he started to stand until new vines wrapped him once more.
“Oh, come on!”
“No. You can do better. Think. What goes on around you?”
What the hell was she getting at? There was no time to speculate, for the pod opened to reveal rows of sharp toothlike protrusions. The stench of rotting meat emanated from its gaping maw. Its stem bunched up, poised and ready to strike.
He lurched to the side, offering his shoulder, which exploded in pain as the teeth found their mark. Something larger stabbed him and the pod pulsed sickeningly. His shoulder tingled and went numb.
“Dodging won’t solve your problem.”
She obviously didn’t want him using telekinesis. His hand strained against the vines, still accustomed to making wand movements, even without the wand. Time to try without. He concentrated on the base of the stem.
“Lancea!”
The Lance spell erupted from his hand only to reverberate loudly an inch from its target. Medea had shielded the damned plant.
“Attack better.”
Attack better? What kind of advice was that? If she couldn’t be helpful, she needed to shut up. He tried Ignite instead of Pummel, aiming for the base of the pod, though the pod itself blocked much of his view. Something sizzled and the air filled with the heavenly scent of cooking meat.
“You just burned a nice chunk of your shoulder.”
Fuck. At least whatever numbing agent the plant used kept him from feeling that.
“I grow weary of this,” said Medea. “Look around you. What can you use?”
“Could you be any less clear? You obviously want me to do something in particular, so why not just tell me what that is?”
“What I want is for you to—” She stopped and swore in Latin. He couldn’t understand the words, but the intonation was clear.
“As I was saying, I want you to feel around—” Her voice was oddly muffled. He shifted to get a better look.
“Are you eating a fucking kebab?”
She froze midsentence, looking to the skewered meat in her hand as if she’d only just realized it was there. “Yes?”
“Why?” He’d last seen her eat weeks ago, sitting in the grass during their noon repast. She’d summoned a scone and dunked it in her tea.
“I needed something I could hold.”
“Was popcorn unavailable?” He laced the comment with sarcasm, but she seemed to take it as a serious question.
“Popcorn isn’t really a meal. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t know, why are you eating a kebab?”
“Because my spell has been pestering me all day.”
“Your spell?”
“It reminds me to eat. The spell gets increasingly irksome the longer I ignore it. I can make it stop, but that would defeat the purpose.” She waved the kebab at him. “Sustenance!”
No wonder she was so slender. Did fasting tie into her immortality somehow? No one just forgot to eat. The body reminded you, as he well knew, and with much insistence.
Her gaze slid past him and she muttered, "Shit."
His back warmed and he twisted toward the new threat. Twenty feet behind him, the brush was engulfed in flames. The heat had to be intense to travel this far, and he soon saw why.
Nestled in the center, plants running right through it, was a human skeleton. It rapidly dissolved into ash, blown away by unnatural wind.
"Who was that?"
"Oh, don't worry about him," Medea said with feigned nonchalance.
Uh huh.
A tingling in his fingers reminded him of the pod, still pumping away at his shoulder. The numbness now extended down his arm and was slowly crawling across his chest.
“So, you want me to use something around me, but you won’t tell me what that is.”
“What I want is for you to solve the problem creatively. What is happening all around you? I know you sensed it.”
“Sensed what? Bugs? Leaves?”
“Some necromancer you’ll make.” She made a large sweeping gesture with the kebab. “Life and death are all around us. Let nature inspire you!”
“I don’t know any necromancy spells—”
“Stop thinking in such restrictive terms! Feel what goes on below you. Are all the roots strong and healthy, or do some wither and decay? What process takes place?” As she spoke, a green stalk elongated in front of him. The end bulged into a second pod. “Best hurry, this one will hit your face.”
He shot her a glare, then focused on the soil below, trying to find what she was talking about. Most of the roots grew strong, but those of one plant withered with fungus. What did she expect him to do, transfer spores to the vines and then wait days for them to take effect? Probably. Who knew how the hell her mind worked? He focused on the spores and willed them to move toward the vines entangling him.
“There’s no need for that,” she said. “Feel the process. Focus on mimicking it. Will the effect onto the vines and use your mana to spread it.”
Nikolai leaned his head against the trunk and closed his eyes, going back into the meditative state. There were the blighted roots, in a moist patch of soil across the clearing. And over here was the healthy root system which fed the plants attacking him. But how the hell to get them together?
He focused on the blighted roots, building a clear picture in his mind, then he targeted the healthy roots and attempted to overlap his perception of the two. The images kept slipping. He couldn’t focus on both sets of roots at the same time, and no matter how hard he willed necrosis onto the healthy plants, it failed to manifest.
His head drooped forward as the world blurred, his lungs working like bellows. The mana exhaustion had come without warning.
“Your will is strong, but your focus needs work. We are done for today.”
“Try . . . again . . .” He gasped for air in between words. Sweat trickled down his brow. “Just need . . . mana.”
“I think not. You were at it for nearly an hour.”
An hour? The vines snaked away from his body. At his shoulder, the pod loosened but did not fall. He fumbled at his pouch. Medea held out a potion of her own, face impassive. After a moment’s hesitation he took it. The potion theory was ludicrous in hindsight. Medea’s magic required no wand, no words—no outward sign of anything. She could be cursing him right now and he’d never know. By those standards, poison seemed downright pedestrian. Warmth flooded his body as the mana potion took effect.
He set to work removing the pod with his one working hand. His shoulder was slick with sweat and blood, and the pod resisted his efforts to remove it. He reached over to the back, wedged his fingers between the pod and his skin, and wrenched. It came off with a sickening sucking.
Numbness had concealed the damage. His shirt was completely dissolved underneath, the skin puffy and blistered. Blood trickled from wounds left by the plant’s teeth. In the center, some sort of plant stalk remained anchored in his flesh. He yanked until it came free with a trail of white fluid. Pain returned with a vengeance.
This time his pouch opened with ease. The healing potion tasted god-awful, but his wounds knitted themselves closed and he lurched to his feet.
“Tomorrow I will assign you a new task,” said Medea. “One designed to strengthen your focus.”
“Does it involve freezing water?”
The sarcasm escaped her and she considered it a moment. “No . . . but it would work for that. My current method is superior, but that’s definitely an exercise I could add.” She beamed at him. “Thank you, boy.”
He bristled. Medea rarely referred to him as anything at all, but “boy” was worse than nothing. Perhaps because she looked his age, it rankled in a way it hadn’t with Petrov.
“Boy?” It was an accusation.
A flurry of emotions crossed her face. Confusion. Realization. Concentration. Finally, the consternation of almost recalling something and repeatedly failing. “Ni—uh . . .”
“Don’t you dare guess and botch it.” She didn’t even know his name. How could she not know his name, after all these months, after all the effort he’d put into making an impression in Haven?
She had the decency to look abashed. “I’m sorry. The world—it’s so full of people and they all die in the end. I don’t bother with names. After a time, they all blur together.”
“You remember Thomas just fine.”
“Yes, well, he was exceptional.”
He crossed his arms. “You’re digging yourself in deeper here.”
“What? He was! You’re—”
“Don’t.”
“—sufficient.”
“Stop.”
“I mean the potential is there.” She gestured to him.
Anger bubbled beneath the surface, but something else too. A chance to correct. To control. And that required calm.
“How is it that you’re a billion years old and haven’t learned a modicum of diplomacy?”
Medea considered this. “I understand the importance most people place on cultural customs. I just don’t see the point.” If someone couldn’t talk straight, they were hardly worth talking to. The boy at least had learned to forgo many of the frivolities of communication when in her presence.
“You think you’re being pragmatic. You’re not. Diplomacy can get you pretty far.”
“No, I don’t think so. When I was young, I traded knowledge for knowledge. And now . . .” She shrugged. “I can overpower anything.”
“Sometimes a diplomatic approach is best.”
She burst out laughing. This coming from the boy who’d killed his previous master to get out of a contract. “You? You of all people are lecturing me about restraint?”
“I’m not talking restraint, I’m talking strategic use of manners to get what you want. Like with the Collective delegation—”
Not this again. She was sick of hearing about it. They’d invaded her home, Jacques’ damned cronies. He couldn’t defeat her on his own, so he’d gained the support of the newly formed Collective, convincing them she was an imminent threat. Half a hundred of them had poured onto her beach. When they lost, Jacques spun stories that she’d murdered a small, peaceful delegation, though from Nikolai’s conversation in the Hanged Man, it appeared the number had grown in retellings.
“That was an assassination attempt! As I recall, you were rather impressed with how I handled them.”
“I was—I am—but that doesn’t change the fact that it had unintended consequences.”
That was true enough. The event sparked a wave of you-killed-my-brother/cousin/mother/uncle/grandfather dueling challenges and assassination attempts that lasted for generations. Like a hydra’s head, every challenger she dealt with seemed to spawn two more. But that probably wasn’t what the boy was referring to. “What do you mean?”
“There was no mention of you at the Academy. No one uses your magical methods, and no one teaches them either. You’ve been blacklisted. So while you may complain about how little I know and how terrible magic is these days, you helped bring that about.”
Ridiculous. Enemies were the best people to learn from! “It’s not my fault if they ignore how magic really works.”
“People don’t care about truth. They only care how you make them feel. You complain only dark wizards seek training with you. Who else would come? You’re the one who lectured me on the ramifications of reputation. No decent person wants to train with a murderer. If you’re polite, if you make people feel good, they let you get away with a lot more. They say to themselves, ‘He can’t be that bad, he’s such a nice fellow.’”
Maybe he was right. Jacques might have been a subpar wizard, but he was immensely popular. Popular enough to get scores of idiots to die for him. He and the boy were cut from the same cloth, now that she thought about it. Past experience told her he was probably being manipulative, but she couldn’t see how. Her brain circled back.
“All this, just to get me to use your name. Fine, discipulus, give it to me again.”
“Nikolai.”
The name passed through her like a sieve. She nodded and began to walk away.
“Say it.” The boy stood with his arms crossed, patient yet unyielding.
“What? Why?”
“You’ve already forgotten it, haven’t you?”
She crossed her own arms. “I know it begins with an N.”
“Say it three times. It’ll help you remember. Nikolai.”
What the hell was this? Names held power—was he working a spell? No, she would have felt magic being performed. Besides, he wasn’t that good yet. He just stood there, with a too-calm expression that told her nothing. Fine. She’d say his name if it would get him to shut up and leave her alone.
“Nikolai, Nikolai, Nikolai,” she mumbled. There. She turned to go.
“Say it clearly.”
She spun to confront him. “I am your master!” By what right did a novice have to lecture their master?
“And I am trying to teach you a valuable skill. This is what I’m good at. Say it again. Clearly.”
His voice was frustratingly patient. The constant sass and irritability were preferable to this. She glared at him, but he didn’t flinch.
“Nikolai.” She tried to make it an insult.
“Thank you. One more thing, if you really want to remember it, try pairing it with something familiar—another person, object, event. It helps with recall.”
“Anything else? Shall I wait for my own apprentice to dismiss me?”
“No, and I apologize if I came across as impertinent. Names are important to me. It’s a sign of respect. I know I have no right to demand your respect, so all I ask is this common courtesy.”
She hated when he slipped into formality like this. Formality was a lie dressed up, courtesy a shackle people applied to themselves.
“One day I hope to distinguish myself enough that you won’t need tricks to recall it.” His tone was deferential, pleading. “I want to be like Thomas, not all the nameless apprentices before or since. If I can’t reach that level, what’s the point?”
Ah, that at least made sense. He did seem rather competitive. So this was less about the name and more about being good enough to be remembered. His desire for recognition had just been a little overzealous. She could sympathize with overzealousness, if not the reason.
“Get good enough, and the name will follow. I have no doubt you can reach that level if you apply yourself. As for your . . . outburst, it is forgivable to come on strong when one seeks to make a point.” She paused a moment, then said, “We both have that problem. It demonstrates a passion—for the subject.”
He bowed his head. No doubt a calculated move, but she’d take what she could get.
“Good work today, Nikolai.”
21
FOCUS
Nikolai stared in consternation at his reflection the next morning. He looked slightly better than he had in London, having made a point to eat and take care of his appearance whenever he felt well enough to do so, yet he was still losing muscle tone.
The healing potion yesterday had done its work but left his skin marred. He counted over a dozen blemishes on his torso and limbs, and then there was his shoulder, which boasted a large circular scar enclosed by two neat rows of small ellipses. He’d have to ask Medea to remove the scars before his day off. The ladies didn’t need to see this mess.
Finding willing partners was easier than ever, now that he had access to Medea’s gateways, but the malaise was a perpetual nuisance. It didn’t strike every time he had sex, but it certainly felt that way. He often stayed regardless. Easy enough to convince women that his sudden lack of interest was due to something ridiculous like losing his one true love. That lie in particular tended to earn him pity fellatio, but it wasn’t the same as nailing them to a wall with his dick or hearing them scream at him to never stop.
Sometimes he was able to release. Just as often he was not. The black cloud robbed him of the ability to care either way. It wasn’t until afterward, when the fog lifted, that his anger at the situation returned. He was better than this! His conquests were supposed to pine for him, not recall him as that pathetic guy who couldn’t get it up.
Nikolai ran his hand over the scars on his shoulder. Ghastly. The sooner Medea fixed them, the better. Then again, it might be fun to see how he could use the scars, at least for a night. He could let his accent slip through and claim he’d won a wrestling match with a bear.
“Is true!” he told the mirror. “I von wrestling match with bear! I can prov to you.” Nikolai practiced half a dozen scenarios and their accompanying facial expressions before pulling on his shirt and fixing his hair.
The bedroom looked considerably better. In addition to the mirror and mattress, he’d procured an armoire, several wall hangings, a rug, a bigger desk, and a real chair. The gateways offered unlimited potential for thievery. For once, he could be as grandiose as he wanted.
At first he feared Medea might barge in and yell at him for redecorating, but she’d yet to knock on his door since that first day. An unspoken understanding existed between them that if he didn’t show up to lessons on time, he was bedridden with the affliction.
The only items he took care to hide were the clock and calendar. Let Medea think she was still messing with his sense of time. Stupid of her to give him access off the island if she wanted to play that game.
