The Black Mage: Complete Series

by Rachel E. Carter

  The crown prince just cackled loudly. He wore a smirk as he left the hall.

  For a moment, there was only silence.

  I needed to say something… but I couldn’t even look at him. I still felt his eyes burning the back of my neck.

  “I apologize for my brother.” Darren’s voice was stiff and unnatural. “I’ll see two healers are brought to your chambers.”

  “T-thank you,” I stammered, “but we don’t—”

  “Think nothing of it.” He was already walking away.

  But Ian wouldn’t let the prince go. He stopped his mentee with a meaningful hand on his shoulder. Darren stiffened but didn’t order him away. “I know we’re not friends,” the boy said, “but it means a great deal. What you did. Your brother…”

  “I’m sure he was out of line. He usually is.”

  “Still. Thank you.”

  The prince appeared uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t...” Darren hesitated before addressing the third-year. “I didn’t know the two of you were courting.”

  “Since Mahj.”

  “Congratulations.” The prince didn’t look at me once as he gave Ian one final nod and retreated down the hall.

  There was a snapping inside of my chest. It made no sense.

  Why did he sound hurt?

  Why did it matter so much if he was?

  YEAR TWO OF THE APPRENTICESHIP

  (Ryiah is now a third-year student of the Academy of Magic)

  9

  “Does anyone have a problem with their role?”

  I glanced around the field to see if anyone did, but, as I suspected, not one person—even Jayson or Tyra—minded. Darren had proven himself last year in Ishir. There had been no other nominations for a leader in the day’s mock battle.

  “Good. Now, we have one hour left. That should be enough time for everyone to get to their appropriate station along the bluff. You already have your teams. I expect you to gather as much loose boulder as possible during your off time until one of the others gives the signal fire. When they do, leave your station immediately and come to their aid at once. We will need all the manpower and castings we have to sink the mentee’s barge… I don’t expect us to lose—we have the advantage. We’re mentors this time, but…” The prince’s eyes snagged on mine for just a moment before flitting to the rest of our circle. “But I don’t want us to be taken for fools either.”

  Again, a barbed insult meant just for me. It was enough to grit my teeth.

  “Is it just me or does the prince seem extra irritable this morning?” My brother followed me off the docks with a shy fifth-year Alchemy apprentice named Barrett trailing silently behind. The three of us were partners for today’s mock battle.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Darren and I had barely spoken in months, and every time we had, he’d been unusually curt.

  “I thought you two were friends.”

  “We… I think his brother said something to him.”

  “Blayne?” My brother’s tone was full of unadulterated hatred. Ella had finally disclosed to him why she left court with her parents so many years before. “Why would he involve himself in something that regards you?”

  Because he thinks I’m a threat. But I didn’t say that aloud. “Because a prince shouldn’t associate with lowborns like me.”

  “Darren is not worth your time if he believes that.” My brother didn’t bother to hide his bias. “I know you’re friends, but perhaps it’s time you move on.”

  I was of the same mind, but it hurt. I still hadn’t recovered from the first week we arrived in Port Langli. I’d tried to talk to Darren about that night in the palace and found a cold stranger in his place.

  It was like our first year all over again.

  “What did Blayne say to you? Why are you acting this way?”

  Darren regarded me coolly. “What way?”

  “You’ve barely spoken to me since we arrived. You seem irritated any time I try to approach you. Even now, Darren, you won’t look at me!”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I am simply tired of you wasting my time?”

  I put my hands on my hips. This wasn’t the prince. “Why are you lying, Darren?”

  “So what if I am?” he snapped. “I don’t need to explain myself to a lowborn like you!”

  And that had been the end of the conversation. Darren hadn’t apologized, and I refused to ignore his callous remark. I knew there was more he wasn’t telling me, but until he was ready, I wasn’t going to go out of my way to be insulted.

  I’d be here waiting for my friend—whenever he decided to return, if ever.

  “This is it?” We had reached our assigned lookout, almost two full miles out from the town center.

  “It’s the last tower west.” I pointed to low granite steps that led to a small platform along the port’s natural bluff wall. As the most prominent trading post in Jerar, the Crown had made sure Port Langli was well fortified against pirates. That had been a relatively easy feat; the port was a mile-wide cove surrounded by steep bluffs on either side. It hadn’t taken much to build a couple of watchtowers along its rim, each armed with a heavy three-man catapult in case it was needed. Any ship approaching would be spotted before it could enter the bay.

  Which was exactly what Darren was relying on for today’s mock battle. I couldn’t believe we were already into our second year of the apprenticeship. Alex and I were third-years now.

  “I can barely see the cove!” Barrett paced our lookout with a restless twisting of his hands. The fifth-year was the most anxious apprentice I’d ever met. “Why did the prince post us here? The mentees will never sail this far out. The western bluffs are much too steep to climb, and there’s no beach for them to moor!”

  “We’ll be the last to see action,” Alex agreed.

  I didn’t bother to reply. I had a feeling Darren had stationed us as far away as possible so he wouldn’t have to run into me. Eve, Jayson, and Tyra were all positioned in the towers along the eastern bluff where there were more approachable shores for a warship to breach our harbor. Priscilla and Ray had posts in the port itself along the front of the beach in case the mentees tried to enter directly. Alex, Barrett, and I were stuck on the western bluff: the side hindered by steep cliff walls and a foreboding surf.

  My partners weren’t happy—and they weren’t even a part of Combat. Thanks Darren, I thought sourly. Your message is loud and clear.

  “Well, we’ll make sure to run fast if someone lights their tower’s beacon fire,” was all I could say. It was cold and windy in our station. The mid-August air was unusually chilly and it had made the bluffs a terrible place to be, especially with the icy chainmail brushing against our skin. No amount of over-layers could shield us from that.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” Barrett offered. He didn’t look eager to gather the local rock for our catapult. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to avoid the task. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending the whole day gathering ammunition until the mentees decided to make their move.

  If they were smart, they’d just wait for us to freeze to death or wear ourselves out carrying rock under our fearless leader’s orders.

  “Can’t you just cast the rocks here?” Alex grumbled. “You’re always casting heavy objects in your drills.”

  I wish.

  “If the mentees take the war barge Darren thinks they are using, we’ll need to cast as much magic as possible to sink it.” I needed to conserve my magic, not waste it on something I could do by hand.

  Alex made a face. “I bet the prince is making his partners do all the work.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true, but I was in no mood to defend Darren. I called out to my brother instead. “Help me with this rock, Alex. I’ll be sure to tell Ella if you spend the whole time complaining while I do all the labor.”

  It was a testament to his affection that he didn’t shirk. “She really is wonderful, isn’t she?”

  I rolled my eyes, but secr
etly I was pleased. Since Ella had given him a second chance last winter, Alex had kept to his word. He hadn’t so much as looked at another apprentice, and he had kept his charm for her and her alone. The two were happy. I could see it in his eyes: he loved her.

  It was the way Ian had started to look at me.

  It isn’t the way I look at him.

  THIS IS USELESS. I was pouring sweat, and I had to remove my chainmail just to breathe. We’d been at the rocks for hours, and I was ready to lob them at the prince’s head. What was Darren thinking? The rocks were only good if the mentees attacked our post. If they attacked someone else’s, we were going to have to leave them behind and it would be four hours of wasted effort.

  A slow fog had started to roll into the cove. I could barely make out the houses lining its shore, let alone the waters below us.

  I called to Barrett, “Can you see anything?” He was currently stationed as guard while Alex and I collected the rock. At first I hadn’t thought anything of the damp air, but now I was starting to feel drowsy...

  I was beginning to suspect the Combat mentees had cast their first weather assault laced with some sort of sleeping draft that their Alchemy apprentices brewed up.

  Barrett yawned. “No, there isn’t any… Wait, one of the others just lit their signal!”

  I dropped what I was holding and rushed over to the cliff’s ledge. Just as Barrett had said, there was a blaze of orange and red in one of the eastern lookouts across the way. It was harder to see in the fog, but it was definitely a fire.

  “They must have spotted the mentees’ warship!”

  The three of us took off for the beacon, sprinting down the winding trail as fast as our legs could carry us. We had almost five miles before we would reach the tower.

  What if the others won the battle before we even arrived?

  Two miles into our run, I spotted Ella waving frantically for us to stop. She was one station away from the beach and two more from the fire’s lookout.

  I skidded to a halt.

  “We have to keep going,” Barrett panted. “Come on!”

  “You two go ahead.” Alex was right behind me. “I’m going to see what she needs.”

  “Ryiah!” Ella shouted over the wind. “I need Ryiah!”

  “Go!” I shoved my brother toward Barrett and the trail. I didn’t want to think about what Darren would do if he found out I was defying orders, but there was no need for Alex to play a part.

  I told myself it would only take a minute to find out what was wrong. Then we could continue on our way.

  I caught up to my friend. “Ella, what’s wrong? There was a beacon down by the beach.”

  Her eyes were wide. “I saw it too, but then I saw something else. My partners wouldn’t listen, but it doesn’t matter. I need someone from Combat…” She grabbed my arm and pulled me to her tower’s lookout, pointing to something below in the waters. It was too hard to discern with the fog, just a cluster of shadow.

  “I think the mentees are using a longboat,” she whispered. “It’s fast. It’s small. It could easily approach the shore without anyone’s notice.”

  “But the others lit the signal fire.” I could see a large barge approaching the eastern bluffs now that I was closer to the lookout. The mentors were firing away. “See, Ella, there’s the mentees’ warship. We’ve got to help them.”

  “It could be a trap.”

  “Ella, you can’t even see anything down there.”

  “The mentors will be fine without us.” She folded her arms. “The fog is only on this side of the coast, Ryiah. Shouldn’t we investigate it at least? What if it’s the mentees trying to drug us?”

  She had a point—and she’d assumed the same as I about the casting. The fog was definitely suspicious.

  “Should we warn the others?”

  Ella studied the ledge. “We do this on our own, Ryiah. I don’t want the prince blaming us if we are wrong and we confuse the entire faction.”

  “So how do we get down there?” The fall was steep, and I doubted a climb down the bluffs would go unnoticed if the enemies were truly below.

  “Do you remember Priscilla and Merrick bragging about all the secret caverns along the coast?”

  “How could I forget?” Priscilla and her vile cousin Merrick, who had just joined the apprentice ranks this summer, had done nothing but talk about the blasted city since we arrived.

  Port Langli, or as I liked to call it, Port of the Langli Cousins: each more loathsome than the last.

  It didn’t help that the younger one was now my mentee.

  “I’m almost certain I spotted a cave while I was gathering rock for the catapult,” Ella continued. “It doesn’t look like a drop you can climb down, but it was an opening and the bottom was filled with water. We could jump in, find the exit, and then surprise the mentees from behind while they are attempting to scale the beach.”

  If they were there at all.

  “But what if there is no exit? What if the tide changes?” I didn’t know much about the sea, but one hole in the rock wasn’t enough to guarantee another, and if we became trapped…

  “We can always cast our way free. You haven’t used any of your magic yet, right?”

  “Well, no…” I still wasn’t sure.

  “Then we should be able to cast enough force to break the cave walls. If you and Darren could hold off Caine in that mock battle last year, then you can do this. We probably won’t even have to cast.”

  I made a face. “You are lucky we’re friends.”

  THIS IS NOTHING. You’ve climbed cliffs five times the scale of this drop… I swallowed. That didn’t mean I wasn’t scared. Climbing I could control; falling was luck.

  Ella leaped into the crevice, and then there was a telltale thunk as she splashed into the waters below. “Your turn,” she sputtered. “Come on, it’s fun!”

  I struggled to see her, but everything was dark. Fun was the last thing it looked.

  Please, don’t let this be a mistake. I took the plunge, my tunic flapping along my ribs.

  In seconds, I was underwater and writhing in cold. I clawed my way to the surface, spewing icy water and air as fast as my lungs could cough.

  “It’s s-so c-cold!”

  “Let’s go.” She tugged me along, and I followed, teeth chattering. For someone who didn’t like the cold, Ella was finding this entirely too easy.

  The walls of the cave were stained blue and green as algae spotted its sloped ceiling. It was beautiful in a lonely, cold sort of way. My entire body quivered by the time we had swam ten minutes, our hands trailing the wall for an entrance.

  Finally, after almost ten more minutes of searching in semi-darkness with our arms and legs numb from the cold, we reached the end of the tunnel only to find it covered in the same limestone as the rest of the cavern.

  There was no exit.

  “It must be underwater.” Ella didn’t look happy; her enthusiasm must have finally worn off. The current tide meant we were five yards from the bottom of the cave. “I think I can see some light below. That has to be the way the water is getting in. I’m going to dive down and check.”

  “Be careful,” I warned.

  My friend smiled, shivering, and then she was gone. I waited nervously for her to return, hoping that our efforts wouldn’t leave us trapped in a dark ocean cave.

  Ella remerged five minutes later, wheezing water and air. “The entrance is right below us. You’ll need to be careful, though. Coral lines the rim, and it’s definitely sharp.”

  “Did you see the mentees on the other side? Did you spot their boat?”

  Her face lit up with a grin. “I was right. They’re just west of us. I saw Ian and Merrick on the nearby rocks arguing over the best way to scale the bluffs. It’s too dangerous to climb and they are stuck.”

  “Does Merrick know about the cave?”

  She shrugged. “There’s two second-years keeping guard of their boat right next to the entrance, but they couldn’t
see me. The cavern is hidden in a high outcropping of rock. They’d have to know exactly where to look to find it. Perhaps Merrick forgot.”

  “Do you think it will be easy to pick them off?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure… Do you think Ian—”

  I laughed sharply. “He would never fall for that trick twice.”

  “Well, then we both cast loud distractions in opposite directions to scatter the group. When a couple of them go to investigate, we take on whoever is left. Hopefully the element of surprise will even the odds. We only need the leader.”

  “Who’s the leader?”

  “Merrick.” Ugh. A second-year? He wasn’t even that good at casting. He must have only gotten the role because he grew up here.

  Still, it was as good a plan as any. I dived down after Ella, squinting with salt-burned eyes until I spotted a small shard of light emitting from below. Avoiding the beautiful but deadly reef, I propelled my body through the entrance and into a bright, shallow pool on its other side.

  I surfaced. Ella motioned for me to follow, and then we treaded water lightly until we reached the rocks at the base of the cave.

  The two of us crouched low and walked on the tips of our toes, climbing along slippery rocks until we could get a good look at the others from our ledge.

  The mentees were gathered around a circle, and Merrick was still arguing with Ian in the center of their group.

  “I know it’s somewhere around here. Priscilla and I used to play in it when we were kids!” So he couldn’t remember the cave; that was a relief.

  “We’ve combed this shore for an hour.” Ian didn’t bother to hide his contempt. He hated Merrick too. “We need to stop wasting time and find a new way up. The mentors are going to realize that barge is empty any minute, and then they will be looking for us. We will lose any advantage we had in surprising them if we continue to look for your precious cave!”

  “Fine. Go ahead and be leader—even though I am the one who grew up here!” Merrick tore off his black armband and tossed it at Ian.