A Sorcerer Imprisoned

by Guy Antibes

  She gazed at him with eyes filled with pain. “How can a fifteen-year-old boy who can’t even sit down do anything?”

  Ricky sang and filled the cell with a brilliant light. “Can Antino Pacci or the Duke of Applia do that?”

  The warden gasped. “Was that real?”

  Ricky shook his head. “An illusion, but light is light. I learned more than a few when I performed last summer.” It seemed like years ago to Ricky. “It’s not that I don’t have any tools. I’ll perform them all standing up. Illusions won’t destroy soldiers, but they will stop them in their tracks.”

  The warden shook with sobs. “I don’t know if I’ll be alive to see them.”

  Her words struck Ricky. Pacci had finally broken her down. She rose up and embraced him. He felt her collapse into him, and he nearly stepped back and let her fall. A grown woman shouldn’t be hugging him, but Ricky felt something harden within him. He needed to protect the warden more than ever. Ricky would have to use what little leverage he had.

  “I’ll insist that you join the army. I’ll refuse to perform sorcery unless you are alive.”

  “But they will kill us during the fight.”

  Ricky already knew that, but a shred of hope found it’s way to him. “As long as we breathe, we have a chance. Remember that.”

  She took a shuddering breath and nodded, pulling away from him. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  The warden had, but Ricky would never acknowledge that he nearly rejected her.

  “Forget about us,” she said. “Forget about Kela and me. Remember what they did to Hendrico, the library guard. You, better than any of us can escape. Once you are outside the walls of the Home, you run. We may all be doomed to die, anyway.”

  The warden still thought of the older inmates as children. Ricky didn’t. They had had to grow up to fend for themselves on the wicked and dangerous streets in Parantian cities. He didn’t perceive Gil as a child, nor the inmates who killed the farmer’s family. They were young men, but in their naiveté, they were caught up in being soldiers.

  Master Mattia and Master Hisso had indoctrinated them well, taking advantage of their desire to leave their old lives behind. He wondered if the Home had become less hostile since Warden Sarini took over. The place was so much different from what he had heard or would have been if Pacci hadn’t taken over. He took a deep breath and looked at the warden.

  “I’m still going to clean myself up. I’ll knock on the door later to see if you want to play.”

  He left without saying another word and locked things up behind him. Warden Sarini’s new cell was much closer to the washroom by the library. The blood on the towels alarmed Ricky. He ripped one lengthwise and fashioned a bandage to wrap around himself to keep the gashes clean.

  Ricky had to take the bloody towels with him to his room and hide them. He read more in the battle sorcery book and found one spell that was similar to his fire spell, but it produced a thinner spear of flame that accumulated at the end and exploded at some point. That would be useful in fighting more experienced soldiers. He thought the rest of the spells weren’t going to work in the confines of Applia’s streets where inmates fought Royal soldiers and the Duke’s militia.

  He had read enough. Now he had to practice.

  ~~~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ~

  G UARDS POUNDED ON HIS DOOR.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Ricky said.

  “Nearly as dark outside as it is inside,” the guard said, giving Ricky an evil grin. “Here is your daily meal.”

  Ricky nodded. Either Antino changed the kind of drug he used, or they had stopped trying. With only days left, perhaps he had kept them from disrupting the inmates long enough. He took the food and listened to the guards chat for a bit. They still sat outside his door.

  He didn’t detect any drugs, and when he woke up later, he listened to the changing of the guard, realizing he had a clear head. He waited a bit more before he sang out a fainting spell. Ricky heard the body of a guard fall to the floor.

  He quickly ran out into the corridor and struggled to put the heavy man back in his chair. The only two guards in the corridor watched his room. Ricky ran to the pantry and found that nothing had changed. He slid the shelf aside and helped himself to better food than the guards ever gave them.

  “Warden,” Ricky said, knocking lightly. He turned the key, wondering if another guard would greet him, but found Nania rising from her bed.

  “No drugs,” she said.

  “Your face looks a lot better,” Ricky said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “That isn’t something a woman likes to hear.” Her depression from the day before seemed to have improved as much as her appearance. “I still think you need to plan on getting away while the inmates fight.”

  “Maybe,” Ricky said. He didn’t want to be nagged about deserting everyone. “Are you up to helping me with some spells?”

  “I will be after I have some of that food in your sack.”

  Ricky looked around at the stacks of old furniture in her cell. “There seem to be good hiding places in here. Make sure you hide it well.”

  “As long as I’m not drugged, I’ll be able to do that.”

  They ate some of the food in silence. Ricky stood up. “I won’t keep you long. We’ll probably have an hour before the guards wake up.”

  Warden Sarini nodded while she put up her hair, and then Ricky opened the practice room. It appeared undisturbed.

  “We will attempt two or three spells. The third spell is dangerous, but I don’t want to try it out for the first time on the battlefield.”

  The warden put fists to her hips. “So what do I do, other than gawk?”

  Ricky pressed his lips together before he spoke. “I want you to beat me.”

  “I think Antino Pacci has done a better job of that than I ever could.”

  Ricky smiled. She seemed to be back to herself. “I want to see if my protection spell protects.”

  “Protection spell, as in a shield?”

  Ricky nodded. “I guess we can start with that. You can use one of our improvised staffs.”

  They had left them close to one wall. Nania picked it up and ran through a few quick exercises. “Any benefit I received from our practices had are already gone.” She sighed. “I won’t even do a decent job of running away.”

  “Let’s not worry about that now.” Ricky quickly found the pitch he sought and sang the note loudly enough to make the invisible glow he had felt before become substantial to him. “Hit me.”

  She tapped him with the staff, but her blow didn’t reach Ricky. “Am I imagining this?” She struck harder a few more times, never reaching Ricky. “That does work.”

  He frowned. “Every time you strike the shield I can feel a bit of power leave me. At least for now, I don’t think protection, as I am currently using it, is practical. Let me try something.” He extended his hand to the warden, and she gave him the staff.

  “Are you going to reward my inability to strike you with a beating?” She smiled at him.

  “Something else,” Ricky said as he filled himself with the protection resonance. This time he willed the invisible glow to encircle Warden Sarini.

  She looked at her arms and then examined her hands. “I can feel something around me,” she said.

  Ricky tapped her, but just like when she hit him, his shield stopped the staff. He gave her one blow. He could feel his power drain more than it protected him and collapsed the spell.

  “Can you do that for the whole army?”

  Ricky shook his head. “The shield requires a bit of my power to repel each strike. It will only work for a moment or two in battle. The battle sorcerers were much stronger than I, or they used a different technique that didn’t deplete their reserves. At least I know that the spell works.” He shrugged. “It’s not very useful, but I can see it might be impressive in performance sorcery.”

  “You have more tricks?”
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br />   Ricky smiled. “I do. This one doesn’t require anything on your part, and it also can be used in performance sorcery. I’ve seen it practiced myself.”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He snapped his eyes wide open and intoned the flying spell. He didn’t turn it into a shout, but the song was low. The resonance filled him with a new measure of power. The spell came to him easily.

  “Let’s see if this works,” he said, trying to keep every sip of magic inside. He willed flight into the spell.

  Ricky’s head exploded with pain as he looked down at Warden Sarnini looking up at him on the ceiling of the practice room, her mouth wide open.

  “I need to control this one,” Ricky said rubbing the bump on his head, still bobbing above the warden.

  He concentrated and floated down and then across the room. “This isn’t too difficult. The spell provides some movement to the side, not just up and down.” Ricky laughed as he twisted his body horizontally in the middle of the room. He floated up and then down again, barely touching the floor.

  “Move a little. I’m going to see how fast I can go.”

  “Don’t hit your head again. Too many of those and you won’t need Pacci’s drugs,” Nania said.

  Ricky just grinned, feeling euphoric, but evidently, the spell didn’t give him the ability to swoop like a bird. He floated across the room faster than he could walk, but after trying to speed up his movements, Ricky couldn’t move faster than he could run.

  “It looks like I won’t be giving birds much competition,” he said to the warden. “That is as fast as I can go.”

  “Can you protect yourself while you fly?” she said.

  “We might as well try.”

  The protection spell came as easily as it had before. Ricky sang to fly, and he gently bobbed just below the ceiling this time.

  “Hit me with the staff.”

  She poked up at Ricky, and the protection spell held when she hit him four times in succession, and he began to drop a little. Ricky lowered to the floor.

  “The protection spell is too much of a drain to protect me for long,” Ricky said. His euphoria from flying was dampened by the protection spell’s effects. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to experiment with that when I’ve grown a bit or done more experimentation.”

  “You said you had three spells?”

  Ricky smiled. “I do. Get behind me in the corner. What I am about to show you is no illusion.”

  She walked into a corner. “You said this is dangerous?”

  “It might be. I won’t put much will into it the first time I try.” Ricky rubbed the lump on his head from ramming into the ceiling. “We should see a flame that explodes when I stop.”

  He took a deep breath. He knew this was a dangerous spell. He always remembered the serving girl at the academy’s dining hall with the chopped-up hair. “I’d do this on my own, but I don’t know if we will be able to practice again.”

  Ricky had doubts that he could make the spell work. Perhaps none of these spells were practical.

  Warden Sarini interrupted Ricky’s thoughts. “I’m waiting,” she said.

  He shook his head and concentrated on the effect of the tongue of flame, visualizing stopping the flow. The tongue would feed the ball at the end until it exploded. He intended to will a thin finger-width of fire. He took another breath and tried again to cast off the nervousness and doubt that he felt. Ricky had to remind himself that flying was fun, but this spell was a weapon.

  He picked up one of the wooden sticks they had used in place of swords and willed a pencil-sized flame out three paces. The lick of fire fed a glowing orb. Ricky stopped the flow. Just as he visualized, the end of the flame continued to travel until it reached the ball. The flame exploded almost silently, throwing Ricky against Warden Sarini into the corner.

  Bits of flame flashed and went out all over the room, looking like sparkles. Ricky brushed his shirt. “I thought right after the flash that we’d be burned up,” he said breathlessly. “The fire turns into a force of energy.”

  He looked at a few pinholes on his shirt where the fire had scorched him, but the tiny shards of flame didn’t ignite his clothes.

  “We could have been killed,” Nania said, still holding onto Ricky. “I thought we were dead.”

  “No, not at all.” Ricky pried her hands from his and turned around.

  Warden Sarini wiped a few smudges from Ricky’s face. “What if you make a thicker thread of fire?”

  “I think there would be a big boom,” Ricky said. He began to laugh, just a bit uncontrollably. “We could have been smashed against the wall. The fire might have ignited something. I’m not going to practice that in this room again. Too dangerous.”

  The warden nodded. “It is a weapon you can use as intimidation or for real. I’ve never seen such a thing from Royal battle sorcerers, and I’ve attended a few demonstrations with Princess Pira. If you want to surprise anyone, you have the means. Perhaps you can just fly out of the Home.”

  “I could, but where would I go? I can run faster than I can fly. You saw that.”

  “Just leave and save yourself. You can go back to Doubli Academy. When the Duke of Applia rebels, no one will blame you for running away.”

  “I can’t,” Ricky said. “It’s not in me to desert you.”

  “It’s not desertion.”

  Why couldn’t she understand the way he felt? Ricky sighed. “Maybe I’ll leave a word of warning and return.”

  “Do that and don’t come back.”

  Ricky could see that Warden Sarini looked out for him, but he had already told her that he would protect her. Running away wouldn’t solve the situation that Ricky would leave to her or Kela or Siria Lonsi.

  “It is time to get back to our cells,” Ricky said.

  Just before he turned the key, Warden Sarini pushed the door open. “You’re too special to die with the rest of us.”

  “Everyone is too special to die,” Ricky said. “Unfortunately, special people die all the time.” He thought of the parents he couldn’t remember and returned to his cell.

  ~~~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ~

  G UARDS WOKE HIM YET AGAIN. “Time for breakfast,” one of them said.

  “You don’t serve me breakfast.” Ricky furrowed his brow. Were they going to give him more drugs?

  “Out. Warden Pacci thinks you two are still in cahoots somehow. He is putting you back into your regular room. You’ll have to eat with the rest of the prisoners.”

  Ricky had already hidden the sorcery books, so he didn’t take anything other than one of the disheveled cloaks. He stopped by the warden’s cell. “Are you taking me to Warden Pacci to beat me? Is that it?”

  “No.” The guard looked exasperated. “You have to perform in seven days. The warden wants you fit enough for that.”

  Ricky hoped they hadn’t already moved Warden Sarini. A guard pushed him forward, and they really did move him back to his old room. Clean clothes lay on his bed.

  Master Pisan poked his head inside, while Ricky changed into a clean shirt. Ricky kicked the one with burnt pinholes under the dresser. “You are on your best behavior, which I know isn’t very good. The warden gave me instructions to take you to him for any punishment.” The supervisor glanced at the towel showing at the top of his trousers. “The healer will be by to sew anything up, and then you are to report back down to the training room in the basement. Mattia has been crying ever since you left.” He sneered as he left Ricky to himself.

  Ricky forgot about his wounds, and after he changed, he hustled to the washroom on his floor to clean the cuts again. The blood had crusted well enough, Ricky felt as he made another bandage and tossed the others in the refuse can, not the bin for used towels.

  The healer stood at Ricky’s door when he returned. “It’s been awhile, Valian,” the healer said.

  Ricky nodded. “Are you part of all this?” he asked when the healer shut the door.

 
“All what? Am I Pacci’s person?” the healer shook his head. “I’m here to heal people.”

  Ricky could fill in the rest of the sentence. “Then please heal my sore butt, Master Healer,” Ricky said as he dropped his pants revealing the bandage that he used as underwear.

  “You cleaned this just now?”

  Ricky nodded. “I learned when I was younger not to let cuts fester.”

  The healer removed Ricky’s improvised bandage and had him lay face down on the bed. He grunted. “Not as bad as I feared. You are still in a lot of pain?”

  Ricky nodded.

  “You’ll need a few stitches,” he said, as he pulled thread, needle, and salve from his bag. “This will help dull some of the pain.”

  The healer cleaned the wounds with what smelled like alcohol. Ricky winced and gritted his teeth harder. The salve helped, but he could feel every stitch and counted eighteen.

  “I have some powder for the pain. Just take it at night.”

  “What drug did Warden Pacci use on the warden and me?”

  The healer’s eyebrows rose. “Drug? Did he drug you? I assume you mean Nania Sarini?”

  “He drugged us both, but we were in different cells in the main building’s basement.”

  The healer put a bit more salve on the wounds. “You can use your underwear. I’ll get you a few more pair. What did the drug do?”

  “It made me feel drunk, but when it wore off, my head hurt badly.”

  “There are a few herbs that do that. Pacci probably used a tincture of moriawort. That is common enough and does what you described. It has a distinctive taste.”

  “It has that.”

  The healer shuffled around his bag and pulled out another packet of powder. “If you get it again, take this. It will minimize the effects.”

  “Thank you,” Ricky said.

  “It isn’t much, but some children have no reason to be put in the Juvenile Home, and I think you are among them. That’s all I’ll say. Other than changing your underwear each day, your wounds should get better. I’ll leave a little of the salve, too.”