The Sorceress's Apprentice

by Joshua Jackson

  “You control nothing,” I told him. “You do not even control yourself.”

  “I control enough to destroy you! FEUER!” Aidan screamed.

  I dove under the water as the fireball struck, superheating the water like a geyser. Holding myself down on the bottom, I stripped my top off, leaving me in just my undergarments. Another blast of heat hit the water and I knew I had to get out of there before Aidan decided to try lightning.

  Pushing off the rocky bottom, I nearly launched myself completely out of the water. The move surprised Aidan enough he froze mid-spell. At the apex of my jump, I throw my soaking wool overgarments at him. Reflexively he fired off a fireball, which caught the dress and steamed as the wet wool smothered the flames. The heavy garment smacked into his face, eliciting a grunt of irritation.

  Using my satchel as a bucket, I scooped up water. Springing from the creek, I charged Aidan while he peeled off the damp dress. Before he could react, I dumped the water on him, soaking the sorcerer through.

  “Schaf!” Aidan cursed.

  I didn’t wait for him to react. Turning, I leapt across the stream and bolted across the clearing to where the forest continued.

  “Running again, Athala?” Aidan snarled as he tried to shake off the water. “FEUER!”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw the fireball fizzle out, the water extinguishing his magic. Another curse exploded from his lips and I smiled. This time, I wasn’t running from him; this time, I had a plan.

  Racing to the woods on the far side, I paused for a moment, studying the trees for the right spot to lay my trap. Looking back, I saw Aidan making his way through the clearing. He was literally steaming at this point as he forced feuer-spells out to dry him. How much life-force had he consumed? With a shudder, I knew he had to have taken at least one child’s life, possibly two to use this many feuer-spells without hitting anyone. How much more could he do?

  As I hacked apart branches and throwing the kindling on quickly growing pile, a wave of doubt washed over me. What if Aidan used anyone of the other myriad spells he had at his command? But no, Aidan would keep it simple. When it came to destruction, other than the tod-spell, fire and lightning were the best and that was precisely what I needed.

  By now I had a nice pyre built but I still worked furiously to strip the bark. I prayed the resin would bleed out, soaking the wood. There wasn’t time for the sap to really come out but every little bit helped. Looking up, Aidan was now less than twenty meters from me. Glancing down at my pile, I suppressed a sigh. I wish I had time to build more but it would have to do.

  “Face me so I can burn you to ash and rid the Eisenberge of you!” he yelled when he saw me scramble back. In the sunlight, his burns looked even worse, several open sores. Even beyond the burns and lacerations, he looked worn and aged. The amount of magic he’d expended was taking its toll. With a sickening shudder, I wondered how many times I had been like that.

  “Look at yourself,” I called back to the sorcerer, grabbing a long hanging branch and pulling it back as far as I could. “The magic is killing you! Can you not see how it is sucking the life from you?”

  “I am going to enjoy sucking your life away,” he retorted, stalking towards me. A couple more meters…

  “Come and get it,” I goaded.

  Aidan took the fateful steps placing him in range. While certainly big enough, I wasn’t sure the branch would snap with enough force but I let go anyway. Like a bowstring, the pine branch whipped back into place, catching the sorcerer in the midsection, hurling him a meter and a half, right on to my pyre.

  “You little dragon spawn!” he cursed venomously, staggering to his feet, holding his side and covered in pine shavings and needles. Raising his right hand, he shouted, “Feuer!”

  For a terrifying moment, I watched the ball of magical fire race towards me, willing myself not to flinch or duck. Instead, I raised small branch in front of me like a sword. If I missed or if the branch wasn’t strong enough and I caught, well it would be a painful end.

  The ball hit and time seemed to stop as I felt it try and push past to me. Searing heat bloomed in my face and for a heart-stopping second, I thought the branch hadn’t been enough. But the heat cleared and I opened my eyes to see the branch burning in my hand. I didn’t wait for Aidan to react. I threw the brand back at him, aiming for his feet, striking the base of the pyre.

  WHOOSH!

  The dry twigs and needles coupled with the freshly cut branches and shavings oozing pine sap went up like feuer-spell, engulfing the sorcerer in a white-hot inferno. Aidan screamed at the flames hungrily tore into his already badly burned flesh. He tried to drop and roll but that only made the fire worse as he found himself rolling in resin saturated shavings and needles. He turned to run, but where was there to go? His only hope was the river on the far side of the clearing, a good hundred and fifty meters away.

  Through the flames, I saw him turn back to me, face radiating pure hate. For a moment, I thought he would try one last spell. But, no. He had no life force left to work magic and Natas had abandoned him. He was doomed.

  “DRA—” he screamed.

  BOOM!

  I felt myself fly backwards, slamming into the tree behind me and driving the wind from me. Stars danced in front of my eyes and my ears rang for the explosion. When my vision finally cleared, Aidan was gone. All that was left was a smoldering crater where he had last stood. It was over.

  Relief flooded me and with it came exhaustion, stealing the strength from my legs as I slumped to the ground. Finally, after years of scheming and fighting and threatening each other, I had defeated the last of Katrina’s apprentices. In a twist of irony, I, the cast out apprentice who had turned her back on magic was the last of the Sorceress’s apprentices. I had won.

  Thunder clapped overhead and I looked up to see storm clouds gathering for a rare summer thunderstorm. I smiled at that. Aidan’s relief came a few minutes too late. Too exhausted and sore to move, or care, I lay there as the first raindrops fell and gently slipped into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 39-Athala

  The funerals were held the day after the battle. While technically a victory, the fight had taken a brutal toll on Miner’s Home: of the three hundred or so that went out, only about fifty returned. They were free of Aidan, but who was left to be free?

  Zimri, when he was conscious, had suggested the funeral pyres as a way of honoring the dead, as well as circumventing the issue of not having the manpower to bury almost seven hundred bodies, including the enemy soldiers. He then insisted we celebrate the victory with a feast. It seemed callous even to me, but Titan and Liesl had readily agreed.

  “They need to know that it was worth it, that those deaths meant something,” Zimri had said then. “We honor them by celebrating the freedom they’ve sacrificed for.”

  So that led us here, standing in the Field of Heroes, as the training field had been named, preparing to light the hundreds of pyres Titan and his surviving army had built. The bodies had been lovingly laid out and in the dim light, they looked peaceful. It helped we couldn’t see the wounds.

  Zimri, who was still frighteningly frail from his own vicious injury, leaned on me like a crutch as we made our way towards the middle of the pyres. We stopped by one of the center pyres and Zimri took a torch from someone nearby. I didn’t recognize the face, guessing it must’ve been one of the enemy soldiers slain. Zimri’s insistence on honoring them too was odd, but as he put it, they were victims like everyone else. All the other pyres had someone around them, torches raised.

  “Friends,” Zimri called in a surprisingly strong voice, “we’re not here simply to mourn loved ones we’ve lost. They are more than that, so much more. These are heroes in the truest sense of the word. Heroes who loved you and gave everything so you might live a life of freedom and joy. Tonight, we honor these heroes, not by sending them down to Adamah but raising them up to Shama’im’s courts. Tomorrow, we honor these heroes by how we live. They need no stat
ues nor stones to mark their graves for we are their monument. All hail the fallen heroes!” Zimri plunged his torch into the pyre.

  “Hail the fallen heroes!” returned the crowd as if rehearsed and lit their pyres.

  The pine caught like my black powder and soon the whole field was illumined like midday. Most of us made our way to the edge of the field, careful not to get lit up ourselves in the furnace. As we did, we passed men, women, and children. Every face glistened with tears; everyone had lost someone.

  A tug on my sleeve stopped me and I looked to see a thin redheaded girl about ten or eleven with tear-streaked blue eyes. My heart did a flip.

  “Helga?” I exclaimed in disbelief.

  “Uh…” Zimri started to interject.

  “No, no, of course not,” I shook my head, trying to clear the apparition. The girl was still there but I could see now it wasn’t Helga. Helga, I had to remind myself, was gone.

  “I am Tabea,” she said, sniffling and wiping her eyes.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked, trying to be comforting.

  “They are…” Her voice faltered and her eyes flitted to the pyres.

  “Oh.”

  I felt sick. “Who do you have to watch over you?” I asked.

  Shrug.

  I felt sicker.

  “Can you take me?” Tabea asked softly. “I have no one.”

  I glanced at Zimri. He looked sicker than I felt but then again, that could be the blood loss. He kind of looked like that all the time. But he shook his head.

  “We are not staying here,” I told her, my gut twisting. This was Helga all over again.

  “We can’t take you where we are going,” Zimri added, voice tired. “In truth, we probably won’t come back.”

  “What about me?” she asked, voice quaking.

  I didn’t know. Looking back at Zimri, I could tell he didn’t know either.

  “We will find you someone, I promise,” he said, attempting a reassuring smile.

  Tabea nodded and grabbed my hand tight. I guess she didn’t quite understand that I wasn’t going to be her guardian.

  “How many?” I asked Zimri.

  “How many?”

  “Orphans,” I clarified.

  Zimri’s face tightened. “I don’t know,” he said. “Twenty or thirty maybe?”

  My head dropped. “Twenty or thirty,” I breathed. Twenty or thirty other children just like Tabea. Like Helga.

  We reached the rim of the field and watched the fires burn. Titan’s shadow suddenly loomed over me and I saw Adler and Liesl stand next to us.

  “I am sorry,” I whispered to Liesl.

  “For what?” Liesl’s cheeks were soaked with tears but there was a strange light in their eyes.

  “For getting your husband killed,” I said, surprised. “If Zimri and I had not insisted on fighting, Rolf would still be alive.”

  “No, he would not.” Titan’s voice was cold and hard. “If we had not fought, we all would have died.”

  “And if we had not come?” I challenged bitterly.

  “We would have lived as slaves,” Titan said. “Better to die as a hero, giving his family freedom than to live as a slave.”

  “We do not blame you,” Liesl said softly. “We thank you. You are our savior, our Lady.”

  “Your Lady? Your savior?” I exclaimed in horror. “I am no one’s savior, no one’s Lady. How many wives have I widowed? How many husbands? How many children have I orphaned? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? I do not even know because I never cared to know! I am a monster, no better than Aidan. You do not want me as your Lady.”

  The others stared uncomfortably at me as my words hit home. “I did not know that monster,” Liesl quietly said. “All I know is the person who has put herself in the path of the dragon to save her friend, the person who gave up her awesome power to save her friend, and the person who took on a sorcerer alone to save people she did not even know. That is a person I will follow to the ends of the earth!”

  “How can you not understand what I am?” I asked. “I have committed atrocities for which I can never atone. How can you forget that? I can never forget what I am. You want to follow a woman whose hands are soaked in blood?”

  “I agree with mom,” Titan said as if I’d said nothing. “All I know is someone who risked everything to save us.”

  My mouth hung open, dumbfounded. Did they not hear me? “But—”

  “Athala, let’s take a walk,” Zimri suddenly spoke, pulling on my shoulder.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” he said, voice resolute as steel. “There’s something you need to see.”

  He led me fuming from the villagers who watched the pyres burn towards Miner’s Home. At first, I thought he was taking me back to Titan and Liesl’s house but we veered away towards a small clearing that I hadn’t really noticed before.

  “What?” I demanded sulkily.

  “Look,” he prompted, leaning against a tree.

  Shrugging, I investigated the clearing. It was clearly artificial, in a neat rectangular shape. Small trees were growing up throughout, indicating that it hadn’t been kept clear. In the middle were the remnants of a collapsed building a little smaller than Titan and Liesl’s home. The stone foundations were still visible and a couple courses of the back wall, along with a few burned out timbers but most of it had been reclaimed by nature. Judging by the new trees, I surmised it had been destroyed between ten and fifteen years previous.

  It must’ve been one incredible fire, I thought as I investigate the ruins more closely. There was still several centimeters of ash on the cracked floor. Shattered wall and foundations stones were strewn about, broken by the fire. For a moment, I thought a dragon had torched the place but dragons, our directionally-challenged friend the previous week notwithstanding, do not live south of the Branden Fluss. The only other thing that could produce this kind of heat was…

  I spun to face Zimri who calmly stood behind me. “Why did you bring me here?” I demanded. “What were you hoping to accomplish?”

  “You needed to see this, to embrace your past to move on,” he said. “It’s something Olympia told me but I didn’t really understand until now.”

  “So much for your disdain of the gods,” I snorted.

  “Manipulative as she might be, she does have a point,” he replied. “You need to accept the truth of where you come from.”

  “What truth?” I snarled, anger blooming in my chest. “Is a burned-out house supposed to make me believe that my parents did not abandon me to that witch? We have all destroyed countless homes through the years. What makes you think this one is mine?”

  I don’t know why I was so resistant to the possibility that what Katrina had told me was a lie, that my parents really had loved me. Of all the numerous lies she’d told me over the years, this was one of the least pleasant. Maybe it was because I needed to justify the years of hatred I had to my mother and father; maybe I needed something of my past to be true so I could know who I was; maybe, somehow, believing that gave me a semblance of control over my life that had spun so badly out of control. Whatever the reason, I refused to accept it.

  “This,” Zimri cut into my thoughts, gesturing to three stone markers a little way from the ruins. Reluctantly, I went over to them and read.

  Almeric.

  Isolde.

  Athala.

  The last resistance I had crumbled. Part of me wanted to believe this whole thing was faked but the weathering on the grave stones was too real. The trees gave a perfect timeline, one that fit, as did the destruction of the house. I couldn’t deny it any longer and the last lie of Katrina melted away.

  Slumped to the ground, I felt as if a lead weight had settled on my chest. “They loved me,” I whispered as the reality set in. “They loved me and they died for me.”

  Zimri wisely said nothing, simply watching me with his deep, sympathetic eyes.

  “They loved me,” I said louder as despair slowly turned i
nto anger. “They loved me and she took me from them.”

  Standing up, I strode into the middle of what had been my home. It was nothing but a shattered ruin, a memorial to a life that would never happen. A life Katrina stole from me.

  “She took me from them!” I screamed into the night, my rage glowing white-hot. “She stole my family from me!” I shouted, slamming my fist into the nearest beam, shattering it to black dust. “I could have had a family, like Helga or Titan! I could have had brothers and sisters! I could have been love and she stole all of that from me!” I annihilated another timber, ignoring the flash of pain in my knuckles.

  I thought of my so-called childhood, stoking my rage even hotter.

  “She tortured me!”

  I slammed my hand through another timber.

  “She forced us to fight each other!”

  Punch.

  “She beat any sense of love and compassion out of me!”

  Punch.

  “She beat the humanity out of me!”

  I pounded a beam that wasn’t completely rotted through.

  “She turned me into a slave!”

  I hit it again, trying to unleash every ounce of fury and hate into one object.

  “She sold my soul to him!”

  It wouldn’t give but I kept pounding it.

  “She made me a monster!”

  My knuckles were bleeding but I didn’t care. All that mattered was my anger.

  “She made me a murder!”

  “ATHALA!” Zimri suddenly caught my hand. “Stop before you shatter every bone in your hand!”

  I pulled and struggled, imagining that stubborn beam was Katrina but Zimri held firm.

  “Do not dare tell me it is okay!” I yelled as I struggled. “I have murdered thousands because of her. That will never be okay!”

  “I won’t, I won’t,” he promised, holding my tight and pulling me around to face him.

  The look he gave me broke my heart. It was full of kindness, compassion, and…love? Whatever it was, I didn’t feel I deserved it.

  “How can you look at me?” I asked as the emotion started to leech out. “After what she made me, after all that I have done? How can you stand to be around me?”