Apprentice Cat: Toby's Tale Book 1 (Master Cat Series)

by Virginia Ripple

  Toby felt his mind float back as Master O’dorn released them. He saw the mage focus his will upon the net and tug. There was a flare of light and an audible pop as the net disappeared. Lorn began scribbling like a man possessed.

  “When you’re ready, you may begin,” said the old mage.

  Toby kneaded the stool and waited for Lorn to stop writing. The young man put his pen down and studied what he had written, making the tom want to yowl. He’d never seen Lorn take so long preparing to do any spell. Finally Lorn nodded.

  The apprentices followed Master O’dorn’s example. After Lorn finished weaving the net, he spent so much time fixing it that Toby’s neck fur bristled. The young man, sweat beading on his forehead, looked up at the old mage. Master O’dorn nodded for him to finish.

  Toby held his breath, tensed to dive for cover, as he felt Lorn tug the shape into place. With a flare of light and a pop the net disappeared. The fire crackled in the hearth. The clock ticked. Nothing else happened. Toby let his breath out in a big sigh. He looked at Lorn, returning the young man’s grin. The orange tom hopped to the floor to follow Master O’dorn into Adele’s sick room. The old mage knocked before entering, the apprentices close behind.

  “Your son and his companion are fine students. They performed the steps for this remedy flawlessly.”

  The mage placed the bowl of remedy in front of the black queen. Adele blinked at them without raising her head from her paws. Her wheeze had grown stronger. Toby padded closer. He bent to lick his mother’s ear as she struggled to raise up to lap at the liquid. The comforting smell of willow wreathed itself around the queen’s head, mingling with the stench of sickness.

  Toby sneezed. He sat back on his haunches, sneezing again and again. The orange tom turned away, gasping for breath between sneezes. A powerful sneeze rocked him onto his side, then they were gone.

  Toby blinked the hazy moisture from his eyes, trying to focus on the astonished faces of his friends. One breath. Two breaths. No more sneezes. What happened? The orange tom looked from his friends to his mother, still poised to lap from the bowl. His eyes widened. He shot across the floor and batted the remedy away from his mother, sending it flying into the wall.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Lorn, quick-stepping away from the splashing liquid.

  “I couldn’t—. It would’ve—,” said Toby, shaking.

  “Killed her,” said Master O’dorn. The old mage bent to stroke the queen’s head. She mewed pitifully and laid her head back on her paws, closing her eyes. Lorn sat down beside him and rested a hand on the young cat’s shoulders.

  “You smelled it, didn’t you?”

  Toby nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. Wrapping his tail around his toes, he continued to shiver.

  “You say you smelled it. What exactly did you smell?” asked Master O’dorn, staring hard at the young cat.

  Toby gulped. He looked up at Lorn. The young man nodded. The orange tom looked down at his mother, lying so still he almost wondered if he’d failed to keep her from drinking any remedy. Her chest rose and fell, a wheezing breath emanating from her dry nose. The young cat looked into the old mage’s piercing eyes. He ordered his thoughts, bringing forward each smell as it had crossed his scent glands.

  “First I smelled the willow in the remedy. It was warm and inviting. Then I smelled the sharp tang of the sickness, but…”

  Toby squinched his eyes closed, trying to pull the scent memory apart to distinguish the exact smells. The room was quiet except for Adele’s loud breathing. What had caused his allergies to appear? He bared his teeth with the effort to remember.

  “Relax. Let it come to you,” Master O’dorn said. The young cat took a deep breath. Exhaling it he forced his mind to relax. He let the scene play back in his head. His eyes flew open with the memory.

  “I smelled a stronger scent of willow, but it wasn’t the same as what was in the remedy. And there was a faint scent of marigolds and wet metal.”

  “Where did you smell that? Was it coming from the remedy?” asked Master O’dorn, turning to look at Lorn.

  “No. It was coming from mother. It was hidden under the sickness.”

  “By the One,” gasped the old mage.

  The tom searched the master mage’s pale face. The man’s hand trembled as he stroked Adele’s black head. Toby looked back at Lorn, wondering if the young man understood what was going on. Lorn shook his head. They both turned back to Master O’dorn, waiting for him to say something.

  “We should go.”

  They rose to follow the master mage from the room.

  “Stay.”

  “You need your rest. We would only disturb you with our chatter.”

  “I… want… to know,” she gasped between wheezing breaths. Toby saw the old fire in her eyes again.

  Master O’dorn waved to someone or something beyond the door, then came back into the room. Two small stools floated in, settling beside the queen’s nest. The humans took their seats as Toby hunched into a ball near his mother. She reached out a paw, touching his shoulder. Startled, the young tom looked at his mother. She blinked in return.

  “I can’t be certain,” began the master mage, “but it seems this sickness isn’t natural. If Toby’s nose is right, then this could be the work of shadow arts masters.”

  “You mean everyone with this sickness was cursed?” asked Lorn.

  “I don’t know. All we can be sure of right now is that what Adele has is not naturally occurring.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s dragon willow I smelled isn’t it?”

  Master O’dorn nodded. Lorn shifted on his stool.

  “So that means what?”

  “Master Meredith told me assassins use a dragon willow poison sometimes to fake an illness. Once the victim receives the normal remedy of willow powder, then he dies faster.”

  “And in excruciating pain,” added the master mage. They all looked at Adele. She glared at the empty doorway. Toby could imagine the scathing thoughts running through her mind.

  “But who would want to kill Toby’s mother?”

  “The person who wants to keep us from discovering the truth behind father’s disappearance,” said Toby. “The other smells, the marigold and wet metal, I’ve smelled those before. During the coach ride to the academy with Gravin Arturo and Chivato. My allergies went crazy when I caught a whiff of those two. They told me that the gravin needed a particular stomach remedy and, since they mix it themselves, I had gotten a double dose of the smell. But that’s not true, is it?”

  “I’m afraid not. A mage and cat can mix and take the same remedy without the smell ever clinging to them. You should know that from watching your mother and I.”

  Toby glanced at his mother. She blinked in response.

  “What you smelled then, and again just now, is blood magic, one of the darkest of the shadow arts.”

  “That’s what they accused Uncle Ribaldy of using.”

  “Indeed it is. And it’s beginning to look as if your uncle was framed.”

  Lorn pressed his lips into a fine line and turned toward Toby. The young man’s thoughts were plain. Over the next several hours, the apprentices explained the mission they had been on, as well as about discovering information on the large shipment of dragon willow to Hielberg County and their conversation with Master Natsumi.

  Toby told them about the explosion and subsequent investigation, studiously avoided looking at his mother. When Lorn took over telling about trying to resurrect the documents, the orange tom glanced at the black queen. She seemed to be studying him as if he were a new herb she’d just discovered.

  “Vipers,” hissed Adele when Lorn had finished.

  “A nest of them,” agreed Master O’dorn, “but how many? We can guess who the
head snake is, but how many smaller heads does this beast have?”

  “That’s why we’ve tried to keep most of the information to ourselves. Lorn and I think Master Ribaldy’s documents hold some key to the gravin’s plans, but we didn’t have time to try to decode them with the information we got at the Temple library.”

  “We were hoping you could help us resurrect my uncle’s documents and Toby’s father’s letter.”

  The apprentices looked with hope at Master O’dorn. The old mage stroked his chin and gazed down at his companion.

  “You may be right about those documents proving Gravin Arturo’s behind your father’s disappearance, maybe even that he set Master Ribaldy up to take the fall, but if they’re as hard to decode as you say they are that’s going to take a lot of time to figure out. I don’t know if we have that kind of time.”

  Lorn looked as if he were about to protest. Toby snagged the young man’s pant leg. When the young man glanced down at him, the orange tom nodded toward his mother.

  “Do it,” said Adele.

  “Master O’dorn’s right, mother. We need to concentrate on finding a cure.”

  “Don’t… argue…. Time… short.”

  A coughing fit racked the black queen’s body. Toby tried to get close enough to lick her ears, but she scooted away. When the coughing subsided, the orange tom nosed his mother’s head. She weakly batted him away.

  “No…. You… catch…. Find… cure,” she whispered between gasping breaths.

  “That’s right, mother,” murmured the tom, “we’ll find a cure first, then worry about the documents.”

  “No….”

  Adele lay sucking in wheezing breaths, her eyes slits, her whiskers clamped tight. Toby’s throat closed. His mother’s mind must be fogged by the sickness. He mewed at her, trying again to get close. She batted his nose away. Her gasps slowly returned to shallow breathing. She gave her companion one of her formidable stares.

  “I think what your mother is trying to say is that there may be information on a cure in the documents. Am I right?”

  The black queen purred brokenly as she settled her head back onto her paws. Within moments she was asleep.

  “And that, my friends, would be a dismissal,” said the master mage with a chuckle.

  Toby watched in fascination as the ash motes rose and danced in the magical wind Master O’dorn was creating. The apprentices lent the master mage their energy, hastening the process, but the old mage was the one in complete control of what was happening.

  The tom was both entranced and chastened, watching what a master could do. In the end he was just glad Master O’dorn had agreed to help them. What had taken them several hours to attempt and fail took the master mage a matter of minutes to accomplish. Toby patted at the papers now lying on the work table. He bent to sniff the one Lorn had rubbed a lemon wedge on. Yes, they were all intact, right down to the smell. He gave Master O’dorn a wide cat grin, which the mage returned.

  “Now, then, let’s see what we can discover.”

  He spread the documents out according to the dates written on them. Toby leaned over, trying to stay out of the way while also trying to read each page. All three were silent as they perused the riddle.

  “May I see your notes?”

  Lorn handed over a thick cylinder of paper. The old mage studied each page, asking for clarification on a few items, then put the notes aside and bent over the pages of Master Ribaldy’s documents. He shifted a few papers, moving Victor’s letter to the beginning and a few other pages further to the end, then stood up straight.

  “Your thoughts are correct. I believe if we can decode Victor’s letter, we should be able to figure out the rest. Thankfully, it should be the easiest of them all.”

  “What makes you think it should be first?” asked Toby.

  “Well, to begin, it was dated the most recent, which means any information it holds would be most important. Add to that the fact that your father disappeared just days after it was written, and it would seem that it contains information worth doing anything to obtain.”

  “That makes sense, but why would it be easier to decode than the others?”

  “If the answer to our riddle lies within these other documents, then we would need a key. If it is urgent we decode the riddle quickly, then the key must be easy to discover because, as the saying goes, the fate of the world is at stake.”

  “Then are we also right about the number three being the key to unlocking father’s letter?”

  “Indeed you are. If we look closely at this poem, we can see that the truly odd words are in the third line of each quatrain.”

  Master O’dorn picked up a pen and turned over one of Lorn’s notes. He scrawled the words lion, medal, NahChee and Fi at the top. They stared at the words.

  “I can’t make sense of it,” said Lorn.

  “Perhaps they’re out of order,” suggested Toby. He concentrated on the words, lifting a copy from the page and shifting them with his will. A moment later he had the re-arranged words settled a little further down the page: medal, lion, Fi, NahChee.

  “And your mother was convinced you couldn’t do such basic spells,” said Master O’dorn.

  “Wait a minute. What if those aren’t separate words at all?” Lorn asked. He grabbed the pen and wrote: medallion finahchee.

  “I see where you’re going. It looks like father was trying to tell us about some kind of medallion, but what’s a finahchee?”

  The apprentices looked at the master mage. He stood, staring at the words, stroking his chin. He leaned over Victor’s letter. The old mage looked back at their guesses. A smile crept over his face as he stood up.

  “It seems, gentlemen, that Victor was as willing to cheat in espionage as he was at games of strategy. There is a piece missing in our word.”

  Both apprentices searched Victor’s letter again.

  “Bonah,” they exclaimed together.

  “So the last word is actually an incantation, isn’t it?” said Toby. Master O’dorn wrote out the spell’s words: fiBOnah nahCHEE.

  “So we find this medallion, wherever it is, and say that spell and the rest falls into place,” said Lorn.

  “Something like that, yes,” answered the master mage.

  “Okay, so where’s the medallion?”

  “I’m afraid it could be anywhere. There’s nothing in the letter indicating where it could be and this is the last communication we have before he disappeared.”

  Toby’s ears flattened as he stared out the window. Master O’dorn was right. The medallion could be anywhere between here and Hielberg County. For all they knew, Victor disappeared before he could send the last piece of the puzzle. The last bit of information they needed. Their last chance.

  The orange tom’s ears perked up. He stared at his father’s letter. Master O’dorn had said his father had cheated. What if he hadn’t cheated, just did the unexpected?

  “I think I know where the medallion is.”

  Both humans looked at him.

  “I think Master Natsumi has it.”

  “You mean the necklace hanging on the wall?”

  “Yeah. Listen, father cheated with the code, right? He split the first part of the incantation into two parts. What if he did something like that with the medallion?”

  “Split it in two?” asked Master O’dorn.

  “No, not exactly. If the only way to decode Master Ribaldy’s documents is to have the medallion and the only way to make the medallion work is to use the incantation, it makes sense to keep the medallion and the spell separate, especially if you think someone is on to you. And Master Natsumi said the medallion was in the last communication they got from father.”

  “But why send the medallion to Master Natsumi if she’s in league wit
h Gravin Arturo?”

  “Maybe father only knew someone was involved. After all, up until he sent this letter, he was working with the loners to stop the dragon willow trafficking.”

  “May I also point out that all your evidence against Master Natsumi is conjecture? A careless word and a stick of burnt incense does not a case make.”

  “Yeah, but the head masters seemed to think she was involved,” said Lorn.

  “That may be, but we cannot fling accusations about without proof.”

  Toby opened his mouth to protest, but the old mage forestalled him with a raised hand.

  “What we need to concentrate on is solving the puzzle before us. I will contact the head masters and have them send the medallion by special messenger. It should be here by morning, if all goes well, and we can see about unraveling this mystery then.”

  Master O’dorn lead the apprentices out of his work room into the adjoining waiting area.

  “In the meantime get some rest. You’ll need your wits about you if we’re going to figure this out before our time runs out.”

  Toby glanced across the waiting room to his mother’s closed door. It wasn’t their time he was worried about.

  Chapter 12

  Lorn’s cot was empty when Toby woke up, so he raced into Master O’dorn’s work room, thinking the humans had started without him. He found the old mage alone, studying the medallion from the loners’ office.

  The red gem in the middle of the golden triangle twinkled in the winter sunlight pouring through the window. A note lay next to the messenger tube on the table. Toby jumped to a stool and leaned over the note to read it. Head Master Jalen cautioned that the medallion was tainted by blood magic, but hoped it would be useful in Master O’dorn’s research in ancient remedies. The orange tom’s brow wrinkled.