The Blood King’s Apprentice

by David Alastair Hayden

  “I’m not Kaiaru.”

  The Blood King sighed and shook his head. He picked up Chonda Lu’s grimoire. “Ah, now this is the work of a master.” He frowned as he flipped through the pages. “This cannot be all of them.”

  “Master kept many spells in memory or upon scrolls secreted away in his vaults,” Lu Bei said. “Everything but this one grimoire was destroyed before he died.”

  “Now Chonda Lu is a perfect teaching point,” the Blood King said. “Do you know what made him one of the greatest Kaiaru wizards, perhaps the second greatest ever?”

  Turesobei shook his head.

  “It was not that he was the most powerful or the most skilled. It was that he was exceedingly clever and calculating. You would show up to a duel against him with your most powerful spell ready, and he would counter you, having already guessed what you would do. Then he would hit you with three lesser spells simultaneously. And while you tried to counter those, he would stab you with a sword or send one of his minions against you. Chonda Lu understood more than any other that how a spell is used is often more important than the spell itself.”

  “That is all very true,” Lu Bei cooed with devotion.

  The Blood King’s eyes morphed to yellow and he stared at Lu Bei. “He did excel beyond all others at one thing. Mokelmot could make machines by the hundreds and give them a semblance of life, but only Chonda Lu could preserve beloved pets and servants. Only he could create the woman of his dreams, place the soul of a man within a machine, give sentience to a falcon or, quite obviously, make a book that turns into a creature.”

  Turesobei wasn’t interested in wasting time admiring Chonda Lu. “So if I lack powerful spells, I am to make up for it through clever use of the ones I have and the allies at my disposal? Got it.”

  The Blood King raised an eyebrow. “You do not think much of Chonda Lu?”

  “Not really.”

  The Blood King smiled. “That is ironic.”

  “Your plan sounds risky. What if I can’t defeat the guardians? What if I die fighting them?”

  “Of course, there is a great risk that you will fail. I would be a fool to think otherwise. But it is a risk I must take. I am immensely fortunate to have this opportunity and I will make the best of it. Besides, you absorbed the Storm Dragon’s Heart, defeated the Deadly Twelve, escaped the yomon and convinced the Keepers to let you have Fangthorn. Therefore, I feel confident in your ability to succeed.”

  “Sure, that all sounds impressive, but much of it was luck.”

  “Do not discount repeated episodes of luck,” the Blood King said. “You have skilled friends and Motekeru. And I am going to greatly improve your skills before you fight anything. Most importantly, I am going to teach you how to master your dragon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “You’re going to teach me how to become the dragon without losing myself?”

  “That I cannot do,” the Blood King said. “For reasons you cannot yet understand, you will never be able to safely and reliably turn into the dragon as Hannya does. However, you will be able to use the power in a far more useful way.

  “Now, I have seen your spell book and I know what you are capable of in a desperate fight. What I would like to test is your stamina and focus. It is one thing to hit someone with a few blasts. Sustaining magical effort can be far more difficult. Kneel in the center of the room and cast the spell of the flickering flame.”

  Turesobei knelt as instructed and launched the incredibly simple spell. A small globe of fire appeared in front of him. He often used the larger, more powerful spell of the fire globe.

  “I want you to hold that spell for as long as you can.”

  Turesobei almost laughed. This was one of the first spells he’d ever learned. It required only a minuscule amount of fire kenja. He activated his kenja-sight and confirmed his suspicions. All the kenja types were abundant in the Nexus.

  “I could maintain this until I was exhausted simply from kneeling here.”

  The Blood King smiled. “Is that so?” He chanted a summoning spell and a crackling column of fire the size of Motekeru appeared on the stairs.

  An incredible amount of fire kenja rushed toward this miniature bonfire, and Turesobei’s flickering globe became twice as hard to maintain. Still, it was nothing he couldn’t manage for hours on end. The Blood King chanted again, and three more fires roared to life: one in the back of the Workshop and one on each side of the room. All the fire kenja rushed along the edges and left a vacuum in the room’s center.

  Turesobei struggled to maintain his simple fire globe. After about ten minutes he was forced to maintain the spell primarily through his internal kenja. With the fires blazing, the room became sweltering.

  With sweat dripping from his brow, his shoulders sagged and his head swam. The fire globe snuffed out. The Blood King dismissed the columns of fire. Turesobei gasped for breath. It was as if he’d just sprinted several miles.

  “You did better than I had expected.” The Blood King knelt before one of the work tables and wrote something on a sheet of paper. “Why did you not use any of your storm kenja as a substitute to keep it going?”

  “I don’t like to use the storm energy unless it is necessary. I don’t want to become dependent on it.”

  “That is wise.”

  The Blood King held out a sheet of paper. Shaking, Turesobei walked over and took it. It was a list of spells.

  “I am sure all the spells in your grimoire are useful to human wizards, but I do not need you to master nonsense such as the spell of binding crop blight. And I do not have time to teach you demon summoning, useful though that might be. Your efforts will be better devoted to attack spells, your dragon form and gate operations.”

  Turesobei scanned the list. “I have mastered about a third of these, but I had only just begun practice with most of the others. Grandfather Kahenan takes a slow and steady approach. We do lots of work on fundamentals.”

  “That groundwork is about to pay off. In two weeks you will direct cast each of the spells listed, back to back. In the meantime, you are to inscribe your spells as practice. You are going to need an arsenal of prepared spells anyway.”

  The Blood King gestured toward the second table, which held strips of bamboo, brushes and jars of Zhura ink. That was a relief. He could finally have prepared spells again.

  The Blood King gave him a second sheet of paper. Turesobei scanned over it. The spells on this short list came from Chonda Lu’s grimoire. “I can only do the ones requiring storm energy. These others—”

  “Are some of Chonda Lu’s favorites, so you might be able to cast them with practice.”

  “But the energy requirements are beyond me….”

  “I would not be so sure. While a kavaru does open up channels of power within the body of a Kaiaru, allowing greater access to kenja flows and immortality, that is not the biggest difference between the capabilities of a human wizard and a Kaiaru.”

  “What is?” Turesobei asked.

  “Knowledge and practice,” Lu Bei said. “A Kaiaru has practiced the art for many centuries.”

  “I don’t have that much time,” Turesobei said.

  “No, but you have a special connection to your kavaru and only a small list to learn,” the Blood King said. “I believe you have a chance with them.”

  He barely knew what he was doing with the storm spells. “I’ll try my best.”

  “Now, you should work. I have my own preparations to see to.”

  The Blood King walked back up the steps and out through the hidden door.

  Turesobei knelt at the work table and picked up a strip of bamboo. It was already cut to the correct size. Normally, he would’ve sought a blessing from several of the Shogakami. The Chonda weren’t religious, but they did honor the Great Deities and, to a lesser extent, the Shogakami. But now that he knew the Shogakami had been Kaiaru, he had no interest in honoring them anymore.

  “You know,” he said to Lu Bei, “the Bl
ood King doesn’t seem like a bad teacher. I might learn a lot. That’s something at least, huh?”

  Lu Bei sat on the table’s edge and dangled his feet. “I’m sure all of him taught many students over the years.”

  “Did Chonda Lu have many pupils?”

  “Master would trade knowledge. You know, teach a visiting wizard this or that in exchange for an item or a bit of lore. But that was it.”

  “So our clan spells weren’t handed down to us from Chonda Lu?”

  “Master did not allow kavaru to be used by humans within his clan. He considered it sacrilege. You see, Master could recognize every kavaru and name its owner. Unlike other Kaiaru, Master remembered having met all his siblings at some point in the distant past.”

  “That had to be depressing.”

  “By the end it weighed on him heavily. So many deaths and betrayals, battles won and loves lost, year after year. To see stone after stone go dark just to hang from a wizard’s neck….” Lu Bei sighed. “You should get to work.”

  Chonda Lu hadn’t seemed that upset about killing Alkuri. But maybe he was masking his sadness. Or maybe he didn’t feel sad about it until years later. Or possibly Lu Bei was lying again to cover some fact about Chonda Lu that he didn’t want Turesobei to know. Whatever. It wasn’t important now.

  Turesobei was still exhausted from the Blood King’s test so he chose a simple spell. He dipped the brush into the Zhura ink, which had flakes of dark iron in it. The ink could hold magical energies within the lines he drew on the bamboo for a few months. They used bamboo because it was readily available and held kenja better than paper. Each strip was about as long as his hand and the width of two fingers.

  He drew the characters for the spell of levitation, which was always useful. Then he cast the spell into the runes. With the spell strip, he would be able to cast the spell again twice as fast and with half as much energy.

  Lu Bei dug through the items on the shelves. “Master, I found a pouch designed for holding spell strips.”

  “Is there another one?”

  “Yes, master. Why?”

  “I’m more convinced than ever that I should prepare and maintain as many spells as possible. But I can’t afford to lose them again, so I’m going to have two pouches with identical sets of essential spells, and I’m going to keep them in separate places.”

  “Sounds brilliant, master.”

  Hours passed as Turesobei prepared his arsenal of basic essential spells like the spell of the strength of three men and the spell of prodigious leaping. Tomorrow he would start on the ones that gave him more trouble. After that, he would begin practicing the spells on the list that were new to him. He had studied all the spells in his book, but Grandfather Kahenan had a specific order for when Turesobei was allowed to start learning to cast them.

  Hours passed….

  “Master, are you going to skip dinner as well?”

  “What?”

  “You skipped lunch and tea.”

  “I did?”

  “Of course you did, master.” Lu Bei gestured at the spread of twelve spell strips lying on the table. “It takes you most of an hour to make one.”

  “Oh, obviously.” He leaned back and smiled. “It felt good to script spells again. Just to lose myself in the work. When you’re doing a spell—”

  “The problems of the world fade away, except for the one right in front of you, the one with the obvious and straightforward answer. That’s what Master used to say.”

  Turesobei nodded and smiled. “I guess I could use some rest to recharge my internal kenja. And I do want to know how things went for Enashoma and Awasa.”

  He put the spells into one of the pouches and tied it to his belt. He gathered his spell books, went up the steps and reentered the throne room. The Blood King was standing there as if he had expected him.

  “If I want to come back?” Turesobei asked.

  “You may enter the Workshop any time you like.” His eyes flared scarlet. “But unless I speak to you first, do not speak to me. Understand?”

  “Yes, master.”

  The Blood King handed him a scroll. “Each time you set out to return to the Workshop, recite the words on this scroll while envisioning the runes at the top. Invest your kenja as if you were casting the spell of locating that which is hidden.”

  Turesobei unfurled the scroll. He’d never seen characters in this style before. “What language is this?”

  “Ixtachi. The fetch should know how to pronounce it.”

  Lu Bei nodded. “I do, but this makes no sense. It’s gibberish.”

  The Blood King’s eyes shifted to violet. “I am not going to explain it to you. And I do not expect you to understand it. Just do as ordered.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Turesobei downed his second bowl of steaming tea and pondered the Blood King’s shifting moods. He had nine active personalities crammed into him; one from each kavaru plus the one with the gray eyes that he assumed was the host. No wonder he had gone mad. Had Hannya known this? Surely she must have, even if she hadn’t mentioned it before. Nine kavaru. Nine realms. Only nine Kaiaru, not counting Hannya, had survived the fight against the Blood King, one for each realm to become the nine Shogakami. All of that seemed oddly convenient.

  The others filed into the Dining Hall. Iniru sat beside him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. With a surprisingly serene expression, Awasa settled in a few seats away from everyone else. Enashoma plopped down with a heavy sigh.

  “Was mudra practice difficult?” Turesobei asked.

  “Boring,” Enashoma said. “All we did was meditate. All day long. Did you have lunch?”

  “Nope.”

  “We didn’t either.”

  “We did,” Zaiporo said.

  “He ate everything you would’ve eaten had you been here, and more,” Iniru said. “I don’t know how his stomach can hold that much.”

  Zaiporo shrugged. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had good food. And I’d like to regain all the weight I lost. And with all that training you’re putting me through, I’m going to need to eat a lot to put on weight.”

  “I found the meditation calming,” Awasa said. “But it was…difficult. How was your wizardry lesson, Turesobei?”

  “It was…strange. He’s actually a good teacher, though. And I now have a list of spells to work on.” He lifted the pouch of spell strips. “I spent most of my time working on these.”

  Everyone sighed with relief upon seeing the pouch of spell strips. Turesobei laughed.

  “Thank the gods,” Zaiporo said. “I’ve really missed you having those.”

  “We all did,” Iniru said.

  “Did you learn more about what you’re supposed to do?” Enashoma asked.

  He told them everything.

  “So even Kurine will go if she’s well enough,” Enashoma said, “but I have to stay here.”

  “At least you won’t have to fight deadly guardians, Lady Shoma,” Lu Bei said.

  “Oh that’s nice, sure. But have you considered what happens if you all die fighting those guardians? I get stuck here forever with the Blood King and Hannya.”

  “Ugh,” Zaiporo said. “That’s worse than death.”

  “I don’t plan on us dying,” Turesobei said. “And the Blood King thinks we can do it.”

  “Did he say we would all survive?” Awasa asked. “Because he only needs you to make it through to the end. Maybe the reason even Kurine must go if she’s healthy enough is that he knows some of us will probably die along the way.”

  Everyone stared at her until Iniru said, “She has a good point.”

  Turesobei groaned. “I will get us all through this…somehow. And I’m going to try to persuade him into leaving Kurine here. That way if something happens to all of us, you won’t be here alone, Shoma. He really shouldn’t force Kurine into fighting after all she’s been through, anyway.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hunched over his spell book, drinking bo
wl after bowl of strong fermented tea, Turesobei studied in his room until late. Lu Bei diligently refilled his tea bowl but otherwise remained in book form. He was practicing scripting a spell with plain ink on normal paper when Iniru walked in.

  “Oh, you’re still working,” she said. “Sorry. I thought you’d be finished by now.”

  “I’ve just got so much to do,” he said without looking up.

  “I’ll go. You’re in the middle of something.”

  “It’s not a live spell, just practice.” He noticed she was panting heavily. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Oh, you mean my breathing? I’m fine. I’ve been running sprints.”

  “After midnight?”

  “You’re not the only one who has to practice. I have to stay in shape. You never know what time of day it’ll be when you have to run for your life.”

  “I…I guess so.”

  “Will it bother you if I stay?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I can sleep while you work. I just…I just don’t want to be alone.” He knew she hated admitting that. Iniru didn’t like to seem weak around anyone, not even him.

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” He finished scripting the spell with a satisfied flourish. “We can share a cup of tea before—”

  He looked up at her. His jaw dropped.

  Iniru was wearing only her tight shorts and a pale cotton nightshirt that didn’t cover her midriff. She wore the same thing every night, but she always arrived when the lights were out and left before he woke. This time, the lights were on, he was fully awake and she was soaked with sweat. The paper-thin shirt clung to her slender frame and more than highlighted her small breasts. It hid almost nothing.

  His heart raced. He really should look away. But he couldn’t bring himself to. He swallowed and fidgeted.