The Wandering Apprentice

by Matthew Mitchell

  "It is a sleeping mask. Sometimes sleep is needed even when light is in too much supply. However, for you they should block out all traces of magic until you can focus your mage sight in the mornings." He smiled. "Just do not forget to set your mage sight before removing that. Otherwise you will really wake up suddenly." He suddenly smiled.

  "Ok. Thanks." I had not thought about having to control my mage sight right when I wake up.

  "Speaking of sleep, I am beat. I have had enough excitement for a night." Cracklecord walked over to the fire. When she stepped into the embers they seemed to glow more. I realized that she was using magic on them and I could see the magic swirling in the flames.

  "I suggest all of us go to bed." Stain motioned to us. "Mophor, it might be a good habit to sleep in Ott's tent. That way if you are still with us when we are near other people you are used to doing that." Stain lifted the opening of his tent. "Goodnight. I am sorry Ott. I had not realized how strong your mage sight would be." With that he stepped inside his tent.

  I looked at Pat and Mophor. "Pat sleeps in my tent, you are welcome to join me if we can figure out some kind of arrangement." I started walking towards the tent.

  "I sleep hanging by my tail." Mophor mentioned.

  "I sleep curled up next to him." Pat pointedly said.

  "I believe there is a lantern ring inside the peak of the tent. Perhaps that will work for you." I lifted the opening of the tent and pointed at the dark wood ring that was fastened at the top of the tent. "I do not use it since I only sleep in here." I got ready for bed, laid down, and put on the sleeping mask. I could hear Pat curling up near my feet and the scrabbling that was Mophor climbing up to the ring.

  "I think this will work just fine." Mophor sounded as tired as I felt. "Goodnight Ott. Thanks for meeting me." He seemed to settle after that.

  I took longer. So, not only did I get a new companion I now had extremely sensitive mage sight. What else was I in store for?

  ***

  "Rise and shine!" Stain's voice penetrated the tent walls. A muffled thump sounded from the center of the tent.

  "Ow!" Mophor groaned. "Does he do that every morning?"

  I lifted the sleeping mask and saw him rubbing his head. "What happened?"

  "I am not used to blaring voices waking me up. I fell." He pointed to the ring.

  I smiled. "Well, at least you did not fall on anything."

  "Yeah, like me." Pat murmured.

  I looked at him and my eyes closed automatically.

  "You need to focus Ott. Focus your mage sight." Pat sounded worried. "You have to remember to control it."

  "I am working on it." I focused on reducing my mage sight. I opened my eyes and looked at Pat again. This time only a faint outline of white surrounded him. "Ah, that is better."

  "So, does this mean he has breakfast ready?" Mophor asked.

  "Go check. I am staying right here." Pat curled back up.

  "I will go with you Mophor." I stood up and put myself together. "I am hungry too."

  We strode out of the tent and into the clearing. Stain and Cracklecord were beside the fire eating.

  "Good morning to both of you." Stain said around a piece of bread. "Pat not joining us yet?"

  "No, I think he needs more sleep. He was a little cranky." I motioned to the tent behind me. "So, food?" I smiled at Stain.

  "Yes, both of you grab some food. We have an exciting morning ahead of us." Cracklecord spoke up.

  "Are we moving on or staying here?" I asked as I filled my bowl.

  "Moving, but you have another list of items to locate. However, we are only going to travel till lunch time. We will camp there and stay until you learn one last skill and one more spell. The campsite I have in mind will be a little more secluded. It is also a half-day's travel to Haver's Town Ferry." Stain had finished his food and moved to Tag. "This time your list is not plants but other items." He walked back with a small wood tablet. "These items will be a few of the items you need for this next skill and spell. There are a total of five things. Make sure you take Mophor with you. You both need to get used to each other. Ott, you need to get used to having Mophor help you. Mophor, you need to get used to Ott and helping him. We want people to believe you have known each other a while." He handed me the tablet. "Most of these items you should find with no problem. There is one thing you have to do differently." He looked at me strictly. "Use your mage sight to make sure all of these items are magically null. No magic whatsoever. Otherwise we will not be able to use them. Oh, and get a handful of each." He sat back down and picked up a roll.

  "Well Ott." Mophor spoke around his food. "I guess me and you will be mates today. What's on the list."

  I was looking at the list. It was made up of different types of rocks. "It looks like we are looking for rocks today." I had no clue where to look for rocks. "Well Stain, I am not sure where to find all this but I will try." The list was more than just a list, it had descriptions and drawn images of each rock.

  "I believe that with both you and Mophor working together you can find these rocks." He grinned. "But you cannot use magic to acquire them, as that might charge them. Also remember to get ones between the size of Mophor's fist and yours." He made shooing motions at the two of us. "Alright, get going. Start down the trail and start looking. You will have to leave the trail to find all of these, however I am pretty sure we will beat you to the next camp site. I will leave Pat at the turn so you do not miss it."

  Mophor and I stood up and started down the trail. He still had a roll in his hand.

  "Well, shall we go ahead and go into the forest?" He wondered aloud.

  "No, not yet. Let's wait a bit before that. From my understanding most rocks are either around water or changes in land height. So what about we look for one of those." I started thinking about where we would find these. "It makes more sense to look somewhere like a stream. There are usually more than one type of rock there."

  "Sounds good to me." Mophor loped along the ground. "There is a stream with lots of waterfalls about half an hour walk from here." He pointed off into the woods.

  I thought about it. He knew these woods, I should use his knowledge. "Very well, let us go." We entered the woods and started in the direction Mophor indicated. We walked under trees and climbed over fallen limbs. After a short period of time I could hear the sound of a stream bubbling gently.

  "I hear the stream." Mophor called. He had climbed up into the trees when we entered the forest. "It is just ahead." He swung off in search of it.

  I continued in the direction I was headed. I started getting glimpses of sunlight off of water through the trees.

  "Ott! Over here!" Mophor's voice called from off to my left. I changed my direction to home in on his voice.

  I stepped out of the trees and almost into the stream. Mophor was on the other side of the stream. The far bank was about twenty hands higher and glistened with rocks and crystals.

  "Are any of these the ones you need?" He motioned to the bank.

  I looked at the tablet. "I think there might be one or two kinds that fit the descriptions." I opened my mage sight up a sliver. No magic in the entire bank. "We need some of those light grey, flat rocks and those brown crystals."

  Mophor swung down and hung just above the water. He pulled out the stones I pointed at, rinsed them in the stream, then tossed them to me. I put them in my basket. We gathered a good amount of each.

  "Ok. That looks like enough of those. Now just the other three types." I looked at the tablet.

  "What do they look like?" Mophor asked.

  "Here, read yourself." I held the tablet out to him.

  "Now, what use would being able to read human be to me?" Mophor chuckled. "You'll have to describe them to me."

  I had not realized he could not read. "Well, there's a black rock that will have orange veins in them. There's a blue stone with white swirls. And the last rock is a clear crystal."

  "If we follow the stream we might find some of th
ose, plus it is the direction of the campsite." Mophor pointed out. He climbed back up the tree.

  "Let's go, we will stay near the stream bank. Perhaps we will see some change in rocks." I started along the bank.

  We walked about an hour before we noticed the stream changing.

  "Hey Mophor, is the stream changing color?" I had noticed it was getting darker.

  "It looks that way. What kind of rocks are in the bottom of the stream?" He called from high up in the trees. It sounded like he was eating something.

  "What are you eating?" I felt a little hungry.

  "Ah, it is a nut. Want one?" He swung down with a handful of nuts.

  I broke one open and tried it. It was good, if dry. I got a drink from the stream. "Those are pretty good, thanks."

  "So, now that you are down there, what rocks make up the stream bed?" He asked.

  I looked closely, there were black stones spread along the stream bed. They each had different colors of veins running through them. "I think we might find the black and orange stones here. But it is going to take more work."

  He swung down onto the bank. "Oh man! There are tons of different colors. How are we to know which color of orange to get?" He had a good point. I thought about it.

  "I think if we go for the brightest orange we can we will be ok." I kneeled back down and started pulling out handfuls of stones. "I can fetch them out, you sort out everything but any kind of orange. When we have got a good pile of orange we will pick the best ones."

  We worked about an hour and ended up with around twenty good stones.

  "That is a lot. Do you want to take them all?" Mophor posed an important question.

  "I think I will take about half. That way we have enough but I do not break my back with all the stones." We sorted out the best ten stones and I put them in my basket. The rest of the stones we returned to the stream.

  "Ok, only two more to go." I stretched my back. "Let's follow the stream a little while longer. If we do not find the blue or clear ones, we can stop and figure out something."

  "You are the boss." Mophor took off through the trees. Birds took off with his passage. I grinned. It was much nicer doing this kind of thing with someone.

  We continued on, the stream bubbling alongside us. Every once in a while I would check for rocks. The stream changed pretty regularly but so far no blue and white swirl or clear crystal.

  When it was about mid-morning Mophor stopped ahead of me and waited. I got even with him and asked, "What's wrong?"

  He simply pointed ahead and said, "We will have to go around."

  I looked and realized why he had stopped. Just past the next bend the stream fell over a nice waterfall. It was about a forty hands high fall.

  "Well, that is not too bad. We should be able to get around that one." I had gotten around worse. I walked to the edge of the waterfall and looked down. The pool at the base of the waterfall was fairly large and extremely clear. The bottom of the pool sparkled.

  "I think we just found the clear crystals." I pointed out to Mophor.

  He came to the ledge and looked down. "I think you might be right. But how are we going to reach them?"

  The pool looked fairly deep.

  First to get to it. I looked around and realized that a game path was worn in the cliff. It was pretty narrow, but I thought I could manage. I pointed this out to Mophor.

  "You go first. When you get about half-way down let me know. I will lower myself to you then down to the ground." He seemed a little nervous.

  "What's wrong?" I did not see what the problem was.

  "I do not like cliffs." He said quietly.

  Doesn't like cliffs? "You are not afraid of heights are you?" That did not make any sense.

  "Nope. Just cliffs." He got a little quieter.

  "Why just cliffs?" I really did not understand.

  "In almost every other situation there is something that I can grab hold of, limbs, vines, ledges, whatever. Cliffs, there is nothing to grab hold of. If I fall, that is it." He spit all this out quickly.

  "Ok, that is not a problem. How about you ride my shoulder? That would give you something to hold on to." Sounded like a plan to me.

  "Ride your shoulder? You would let me do that?" He sounded shocked.

  "Yeah, why not?" I had done it with Pat and Cracklecord.

  "Most people would not let me do that, they would not trust me to sit there." He sounded like he spoke from experience.

  "Oh. Well, I do not mind. Climb on up and grab my shoulder." I pointed to my left shoulder. "This shirt has a patch that Pat uses to sit on. It should provide you some grip if you need it."

  He climbed up my body and perched on my shoulder, his tail wrapping around my chest and stomach. "Is that ok?" He sounded nervous.

  "That is fine. If you need to grab something a little more securely, you can grab my hair. I am used to it being pulled by both Pat and Cracklecord." I started down the path. It was so slender I had to go down sideways. When we reached the bottom Mophor shivered.

  "Can I stay here for a while? My tail has gotten tired." He seemed to be tired himself.

  "Sure. You do not weigh that much. Now let us see about those crystals." I walked to the pool's edge. Being closer made me realize that there was no way to reach the crystals at its bottom. It had to be thirty foot deep.

  "Well, what now?" Mophor asked.

  I looked around and thought about it. "Those crystals had to come from somewhere. And then the water pushed them into the bottom of the pond. So they should have come from the waterfall."

  We looked at the waterfall and did not see anything. Finally we looked at the cliff face, where the water had run down sparkles glimmered.

  "Are those crystals in the cliff face?" I asked. We got closer and sure enough there were the crystals. After digging at the cliff we had a nice pile of dirt and crystals. They had almost no color to them at all.

  "Well, pick out the ones you need and let's find those last stones." Mophor was washing his hands in the pool.

  I picked ten decent sized stones and tossed the rest into the pool. Mophor jumped a little, caught off guard. I took the ten I had picked and washed them in the pool and put them in my basket.

  "Well, do we continue down the stream hoping to find the last stone or do we head in a different direction." I pondered this out loud.

  "The stream seems to be the best choice so far. I vote we continue on that way." Mophor crouched beside me.

  "Want to ride a little while longer?" I motioned to my shoulder. He grinned and climbed back up me.

  "Thanks." He breathed in my ear.

  We walked for a while, the stream bubbling and churning beside us. Occasionally we heard animals moving away from us and birds taking flight. About two hours before lunch time the stream dropped down into a large hole. We could hear it spilling over rocks and splashing into small pools.

  "Looks like our guide decided to hide out on us." Mophor pointed to the hole.

  "So, what now?" I wondered.

  "I say we head towards the trail. If we do not find the rock before we get there we can always ask Stain for advice." His reasoning seemed good. We headed off in the direction of the trail. The trees grew thinner and slowly gave way to clearings and fields of flowers.

  "What causes these clearings?" I asked Mophor.

  "I have no clue." He stated. "I hope it is natural."

  We continued on until we finally saw the trail up ahead. We reached the trail and headed down the direction of where the campsite should be. Before long we came to a junction in the road. Most people would have had problems finding it, however a dragonet sitting on the other trail kind of gave it away.

  "It is about time you two got here. I am getting hungry." Pat sounded cranky.

  "Well, at least you have been able to soak up some sun." I replied. "Let's get to that campsite. I do believe it is about lunch time."

  ***

  We walked into the campsite and I stopped. The site had a differ
ent look than the King's Site's. "Pat, this is not a King's Site is it?" I asked.

  "No, it is not. Other than that I have no idea." He landed and walked to the fire Stain was sitting beside.

  The clearing for the campsite was much larger than a King's Site while the layout was much the same, except it seemed to have more than one camping setup.

  "Stain, this is not a King's Site, yet it feels like the same type of layout and thought." I pointed this out to him.

  "Do you remember who I said made our tents?" He asked as he handed out the bowls.

  "You said something about Wanderers." I faintly remembered that. "But that is all you said."

  "Well, the Wanderers are a group of nomadic people. They have no permanent homes and travel year round. They have campsites like this built outside of every large city, usually about half a day away. This allows them to stay outside the city, which they dislike, and yet have the convenience of the markets in the city." He stood up. "The Wanderers are a group of people who travel in family groups. Usually a matriarch is over everything. The family is usually of one clan, but many actual families. They usually have a wide assortment of skills and trades yet they all can perform some form of entertainment. They live on the road so their traveling goods are the best around. However, unless they trust you they only sell you the goods not deemed fit for their own personal use." He walked over to Tag. "You mentioned that the King's Site and the Wanderer Site have similarities. That is because Wanderer's designed the King's Site's for the King. They did it in exchange for being allowed to travel without having to pay taxes. A Wanderer Site is much larger and has some things a King's Site does not. First is the location. All King Site's are on the main trail, while the Wanderer Sites are on small side trails. Not many people know about Wanderer sites and even less know how to find them. The second thing is the size. A King Site is made for one party to spend one night. A Wanderer Site is for at least one family group to spend multiple weeks. Finally the water and firewood are also different. A King Site has an arrangement that is the same for each site. That is one reason they are where they are. However, the Wanderer Site is more concerned with location to the city. The water might come from a stream, river, well, or even cave. This one happens to come from a well. The firewood at a King's Site is cut ahead of time and stored. No firewood is provided at a Wanderer Site. This is because many of the Wanderer's use wagons to travel. These wagons are like rolling homes and come with cooking abilities. If a wanderer needs firewood, he cuts up the dead fall of the woods." Stain had pointed to each thing as he lectured.