The Congruent Apprentice (The Congruent Mage Series Book 1)

by Dave Schroeder

  Eynon covered his mouth so the pair couldn’t see him smile at their bickering.

  “Do you understand, lad?” asked Damon. “You have many shapes available for shields and they all have their strengths and weaknesses.”

  “I can see that,” said Eynon. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Use your flying disk to float up and out from the castle wall,” said Damon. “Experiment with different shield shapes until you’re comfortable with several of them, and remember, speed is even more important than shape.”

  “Speed?” asked Eynon.

  “You’ll see,” said Damon. “Getting your shield in place quickly can be the difference between life and death.”

  Eynon nodded, but he wasn’t sure he understood what Damon was trying to tell him. Maybe he’d learn how to generate shields faster with practice. He stood on his flying disk, rose a dozen feet in the air, and moved out away from the battlements. Chee was excited to be flying again and chittered like a field of locusts in his ear.

  “Farther out,” said Damon.

  Eynon complied.

  “Farther.”

  He was a hundred yards from the castle when Damon instructed him to stop and hover.

  “Create a spherical shield,” said the older man.

  Eynon did, taking a fraction more than a second.

  “Drop it, and do it again—faster this time.”

  “Yes sir,” said Eynon.

  He managed to get his shield up in a heartbeat this time.

  “Drop it,” said Damon.

  Eynon did, then barely had time to register Nûd raising his crossbow and firing. His spherical shield snapped up in an eye blink and the quarrel bounced off it and fluttered down to the stones below.

  “What was that for?” asked Eynon.

  Nûd loaded another bolt and released it, aiming for Rocky at the tree line to the west, not Eynon. Only a quick bit of flying interposed Eynon’s shield bubble between the bolt and the wyvern.

  “Hey,” said Eynon. “Stop!”

  Damon didn’t respond verbally. Instead he shot a fireball from the tip of his staff, followed by yet another quarrel from Nûd. The fireball splashed across Eynon’s sphere, blinding him temporarily. When the flames cleared, Damon and Nûd were only a dozen feet away, floating on Damon’s flying disk. Nûd kept shooting and Damon shifted to crackling discharges of lightning that played around Eynon’s sphere, confusing him.

  They’re trying to kill me! thought Eynon.

  He readied a fireball of his own and flicked his spherical shield down just long enough to launch it at Damon. The fireball incinerated Nûd’s most recent crossbow bolt before striking the circular dished shield that instantaneously popped into place to protect his two attackers.

  “Enough!” shouted Eynon.

  His body twitched as some of the lightning Damon shot back penetrated his thickening shield sphere. Eynon’s shield wavered.

  Damon released a brief blast of ice-cold air and soon Eynon found himself shivering as well as twitching. Chee had ice in his fur, matching Eynon’s hair.

  “I surrender!” he cried, raising his hands over his head. Chee mirrored Eynon and raised his forepaws.

  Damon and Nûd stopped their assault and floated close to Eynon and his familiar. A gentle heat spell thawed Eynon’s hair and Chee’s fur.

  “I don’t know if I’m happy or sad to see that you’re not a prodigy at everything,” said Damon.

  Eynon shook his head.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked.

  “Your enemies won’t take pity on you,” said Nûd. “You have to be ready for anything.”

  “I should have learned that lesson when the ground shook yesterday,” said Eynon.

  “You should have indeed,” said Damon. “Pull yourself together and we’ll do this again. Try to fight back this time.”

  “Now I know why you teach offensive magic before defensive magic,” said Eynon as he rubbed Chee’s fur to warm the raconette.

  An enigmatic smile crossed Damon’s face. Eynon was afraid it meant the older man would enjoy teaching him how to defend himself in a literal trial by fire. Nûd looked embarrassed and shrugged his shoulders, which Eynon interpreted to mean the tall servant was just doing what Damon told him to do.

  “Does the Master know about the way you teach defensive magic?” asked Eynon.

  Nûd laughed and Damon couldn’t keep the corners of his mouth from turning up.

  “He’s the one who insists on training apprentices this way,” said Nûd. “The Master says it selects for survivors early in the process.”

  “Do you at least heal the students who can’t get their shields up fast enough?

  “When there’s anything left to heal,” said Damon. The old man had returned to his enigmatic smile, so Eynon couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious. He hoped for the former.

  Eynon squared his shoulders and brushed drops of water from his hair—the remains of melted ice from Damon’s blast of frigid air.

  “I’m ready to try again if you are,” he said.

  Chee burrowed into the depths of Eynon’s jacket, which was fine by him. The little beast would be marginally safer there, Eynon hoped. He moved his flying disk fifty feet away, closer to the trees where Rocky was still digesting, if the continued noisy grinding sounds were any indication.

  Eynon opened his arms as if to say take your best shot.

  Nûd pointed his crossbow at Eynon and pulled the trigger. The bolt leapt toward Eynon as fast as a striking batsnake, but Eynon was faster. His mind and magestone worked together to construct a lens-shaped shield, with a thick concave side close to Eynon and a thinner convex side facing Nûd and Damon. The crossbow bolt didn’t bounce off—it was trapped by the outer shield.

  Damon’s energy attacks came next. It was lightning first this time, then a larger fireball than before, followed by a series of finger-thin beams of tight light that would have bisected Eynon’s torso if his new lens-shaped combination shield had let the beams all the way through. More attacks followed. Damon was playing rough.

  Eynon remembered what he’d learned from the gryffon attacking the wisent about attacking from an unexpected direction. He’d planned ahead and had a trick up his sleeve—more than one, actually.

  The outer part of his lens-shaped shield allowed energy in to hit the sturdy wall of the inner shield. The more wizardry Damon directed at Eynon, the more energy filled the space between the inner and outer shields. Scattered crossbow bolts were held in the outer arc of the lens, which was starting to bow outward from the pressure of the powerful forces captured behind it.

  Nûd was reloading and Damon was preparing a bolt of lightning when Eynon dropped the outer part of his lens-shaped shield, releasing the combined energies of over a dozen of Damon’s spells simultaneously. The powerful blast struck Damon’s shield like a giant’s fist and forced the shield and both men three paces back to the far edge of their flying disk.

  Damon started to teeter but Nûd pulled the older man back before he could fall. Lightning crackled around them from the older man’s prematurely triggered spell.

  Shaking himself like a dog coming out of a river, Damon grinned at Eynon and readied a large fireball.

  “Go ahead, old man,” shouted Eynon, goading Damon on. “If this is a game, I want to win. If it’s not, I want to live.”

  Nûd turned and saw Eynon’s second surprise, but didn’t warn Damon. Before the older man could release his spell, Rocky flew up behind him and knocked him off his flying disk with the tip of one of his wings. The prepared fireball spell went off, sending a huge, flaming missile high in the air. It exploded above them like a lit candle landing in a box of fireworks.

  Damon’s staff went spinning down in one direction wh
ile Damon himself fell more like a rock than a leaf in another.

  Eynon gently caught Damon in a hemisphere of solidified sound before he hit the ground. He lifted Damon up to the castle’s closest battlement and flew to join the older wizard, towing Nûd along behind him. He expected Damon to yell at him when he stepped onto the walkway atop the castle wall, and he wasn’t wrong—though he was surprised by what the older man said.

  “That was amazing!” Damon exclaimed.

  The older man put his arms around Eynon and hugged him harder than his mother had before he’d left for his wander year.

  “How did you come up with that two-ply lens shield, lad?”

  Damon was laughing so hard he put his fists to his stomach. It took Eynon a moment to realize Damon was laughing at himself, not Eynon.

  “You fooled me completely,” said the older man between more rumbling laughs. “How did you get the wyvern to do what you wanted?”

  Nûd turned his back on Eynon and Damon. His shoulders were shaking, so Eynon expected he was laughing, too.

  “Let me answer your last question first,” said Eynon. “Once the two-ply shield began to fill with energy, making it harder for you to see me, I sent a tasty ball of solidified sound to Rocky and flew it around behind you. Rocky chased it, and you know the rest.”

  Damon slowly gained a measure of self-control after taking several deep breaths.

  “And the two-ply lens shield?”

  Eynon didn’t want to tell Damon how he’d created squirt bottles from solidified sound to discourage basilisks, so he figured out an alternative explanation.

  “I thought about my goatskin,” he said. “It fills with water, then I can release it all at once.”

  The older man looked dubious but didn’t press Eynon for more.

  Nûd took advantage of the break in the conversation to ask a question of his own.

  “Why did you have your wyvern knock Damon from his flying disk instead of grabbing him in his mouth?”

  “I didn’t trust Rocky not to eat Damon under the circumstances,” said Eynon.

  Nûd and Eynon laughed loud enough for Chee to pop his head out of the neck of Eynon’s jacket and chitter along with them.

  “Hah hah,” said Damon with a pause between each word. His smile said he wasn’t too upset, but he did keep looking up from time to time to scan the sky for circling wyverns.

  “What’s my next lesson, sir?” asked Eynon. “We still have a few hours before I have to make lunch and then the entire afternoon is available. I want to learn how to store spells in my artifact.”

  “That won’t take long,” said Damon. “It’s a simple matter to attach preconfigured spells. You just…”

  The older man stopped in mid-sentence. Eynon leaned forward, eager to hear the rest.

  “No,” said Damon, shaking his head as if correcting himself. “Best not.”

  “He’s afraid if he teaches you triggers now, you’ll want to learn one more thing, then another, and another after that,” said Nûd.

  Eynon grinned and proved Nûd’s point with a litany of things to learn.

  “Like gate spells and communications spells and healing spells and the names of all the wizards in the Conclave and…”

  Damon raised his hand and Eynon stopped talking.

  “Congratulations, lad. You’ve done so well you can have the rest of the day off. Find a book to read in the library and relax, if you’d like, except for making lunch and dinner, of course.”

  “Of course,” repeated Nûd in a way guaranteed to annoy Damon.

  “The library? That would be wonderful!” said Eynon. “Can we eat lunch early so I’ll have more time to read.”

  “Certainly,” said Damon. “Now that I think about it, I’d like an early lunch myself. I have projects of my own to attend to. I’ve been putting them off to instruct a certain precocious new apprentice wizard.”

  “I’m sorry to take you away from your work,” said Eynon.

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Damon. “Teaching is my work. The Master put me in charge of apprentice training for a reason—teaching teaches the teacher and all that. Still, I’d appreciate a free afternoon. I need to get back to writing my next book.”

  “You write books?” asked Eynon. “What kind?”

  “Oh, this and that,” said Damon.

  “He writes for his own amusement,” said Nûd. “And he’s easily amused.”

  Damon made a disapproving noise in his throat that sounded exactly like the one Eynon’s great-uncle made whenever someone expressed an opinion contrary to his own.

  Nûd ignored the wordless criticism.

  “I could use a free afternoon myself,” he said. “The Master has lots of work for me and I have to retrieve someone’s dropped staff.”

  “Thank you,” said Eynon. “Thank you, both.”

  Damon and Nûd gave small bows and walked toward the stairs in the nearest guard tower. Nûd carried his full-sized crossbow, the few remaining quarrels, and Damon’s flying disk.

  Eynon’s spirits were soaring, so he stood on his flying disk and directed it to swoop around the castle courtyard in exuberant curves before landing by the inner door to the kitchen.

  Half a day in the library! he thought. Where do I start?

  Chapter 27

  “Books are dangerous things—you can fall into them.”

  — Ealdamon’s Epigrams

  “Thanks for cleaning up!” said Eynon.

  He’d rushed through his lunch and was at the kitchen door, ready to head for the library.

  “Go,” said Nûd. “I’ll take care of things here and check on the dinner rolls.”

  “You’re the best,” said Eynon.

  Chee was on Eynon’s shoulder, nibbling a double-handful of dried cherries.

  “No food in the library,” Damon admonished.

  The raconette pushed all the remaining cherries into his cheek pouches and gave the older man an overstuffed smile.

  “Bye,” said Eynon.

  His footsteps echoed on the stairs.

  * * * * *

  It took him a moment to catch his breath after climbing the stairs and running down the corridor, which was odd. Something about Melyncárreg was affecting his endurance. Then he was at the library.

  Eynon stood in the doorway, regarding the books on the shelves. He didn’t know how they were organized—if they were—and had no idea where to start. There were so many books—hundreds and hundreds of them.

  He wanted a recent history of Dâron, if he could find one. Failing that, he’d be glad to read a copy of The Venerable History of Dâron from the First Ships, so he could discuss it with Merry when he made his way back to her again.

  Chee decided to jump over to a reading table to take a nap and chew on dried cherries, while Eynon determined his best course was to review the bookcases from left to right.

  To his surprise, Eynon couldn’t even read the titles of the books on the left-hand shelves. They were written in strange characters Eynon didn’t recognize, until he spotted triangles and circles with slashes through them. Delta, theta and phi were old friends from his geometry lessons. Those books must be written in Athican.

  He deduced that the shelves on the left must be for works in other languages and shifted to the next set of bookcases to the right.

  The Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral books with pictures of wizards’ artifacts were on these shelves, so Eynon assumed all the other nearby books would be about wizardry. He’d return to them if he had time, but now he was looking for history books. There were holes in his understanding of the ancient and recent history of Dâron he wanted to fill as soon as possible.

  There it is, thought Eynon when he shifted to the next set of shelves. The Venerable History ha
d a dark blue cover and a gold crown on its spine. Eynon was drawn to it like iron to a lodestone. He opened the cover and read the title page to confirm that the book truly was what he expected.

  Eynon memorized the spot on the shelf occupied by The Venerable History and put it on one of the reading tables. There must be other history books in the same section, he reasoned. After opening five more volumes, he found what he wanted.

  The Annals of Dârioth XXIV, Volume II, read its title. Dârioth XXIV was the old king. He’d assumed the throne at eighteen after his father fell in battle with Tamloch and had reigned for seventy years. Dârio, as the young king was called, was the old king’s great-grandson. Not much older than Eynon, he’d only worn the crown for a year and a month.

  I’ll bet he hates to hear people say, “That’s not how the old king would have done it,” thought Eynon.

  He opened the leather-bound copy of the Annals and began to skim its pages. Chee stirred and moved from one end of the reading table to sit in the middle of Eynon’s book like a cat, confident he was the center of Eynon’s universe. Eynon rubbed the raconette’s head and shifted him to the top of The Venerable History. He hoped the little beast would be satisfied to rest on an unopened book and returned to the Annals. From what Eynon could tell, it started recounting events from forty years ago.

  Battles with the western Clan Lands. Battles with the northern Clan Lands. Bifurland dragonship raids up the river to Brendinas. Border clashes with the Eagle People. Skirmishes with Tamloch. More skirmishes with Tamloch. New golden statue of Princess Seren to replace one taken by raiders.

  Ah! Found it! thought Eynon. Dâron and Tamloch combine to defeat the Eagle People twenty-five years ago.

  In the forty-fifth year of the reign of King Dârioth XXIV, may his sword arm be strong and his wisdom ever increase, the Master Mage was summoned from the far west to freeze the waters of the Abbenoth River so the combined armies of Dâron and Tamloch could cross and lay siege to the Eagle People’s capital at Nova Eboracum.