A Scholar Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  Magic Missing

  Book Four

  By

  Guy Antibes

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Map of the Continent of Polistia

  Excerpt from A Snoop Without Magic – Final Book in the Series

  Magic Missing Character List

  Copyright Page

  Author’s Note

  A Bit About Guy

  Books by Guy Antibes

  Copyright ©2019 Guy Antibes. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.

  ~

  This is a work of fiction. There are no real locations used in the book; the people, settings, and specific places are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, locations, or places are purely coincidental.

  Published by CasiePress LLC in Salt Lake City, UT, January 2019.

  www.casiepress.com

  Cover Design: www.ebooklaunch.com

  Book Design: Kenneth Cassell

  ~

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ~

  Another episode for Sam. One more to go in the series. In A Scholar Without Magic, Sam relies less on his mentors, although some are still around, and more on himself as he enrolls at the University of Tolloy. His adventures take him to more places on the continent of Polistia. I put a big surprise in the book. You will find it easily as you follow Sam’s exploits. The ending is pretty well-packed with adventure, as well. Like all my books, I enjoyed writing it.

  Another round of applause to Bev, Ken, Judy, and the cover guys at EbookLaunch for helping me get another book published.

  — Guy Antibes

  The Continent of Polistia

  Chapter One

  ~

  A fter taking a deep breath, Sam Smith followed Desmon Sandal and Professor Plantian Plunk into the restaurant. The signboard out front was made in the shape of a steer, so he hoped he would be chomping down on some fresh beef. Their destination was on the eastern side of Tolloy, but the capital city of Vaarek was huge. Sam had just landed far, far away from his original home in Toraltia.

  “Eat well. We will have to get you unloaded, and then in the morning, you should apply to the admissions office at the university. It is not a pleasant process. Lots and lots of questions, you see, especially for a foreigner,” the professor said.

  Sam looked out the window at the wagon tied up across the street. Emmy lay on the cargo, keeping guard and basking in the warmth of the sun. He could barely believe he had finally arrived at his destination. Spending some time in Tolloy felt like the right thing to do, despite all the obvious warnings about Viktar Kreb’s visions of world domination.

  “How did my Banna look?” Plantian asked.

  “Well enough,” Sam said, “The voyage was a bit too interesting. She wasn’t at her best in Pundia, but then neither of us were, right Desmon?” Sam mentioned his companion’s name to get him in the conversation.

  “No one is at their peak after a week of rationing.”

  Professor Plunk leaned forward. “Rationing, you say?”

  Sam nodded. “Pirates. We fought them off, thanks to Banna, but a flaming missile from the pirate ship hit our food stores, destroying most of what we needed to make it to Tolloy. Unfortunately, Pundia was the closest port, but we made it through. We can tell you about it when we reach your house.”

  The professor smiled. “There will be time enough to hear of your exploits. I’m just glad she is alive,” he sighed, “unlike my daughter, Ionie, who didn’t make it out of Toraltia.”

  Sam nodded. “I met her once or twice.”

  “Oh. You will have to tell me of her. Banna is rebellious in her own way, but Ionie! She was not a nice lady, even if she was my youngest daughter.”

  Not nice wasn’t even close to how Sam felt about her. He wondered how much influence Ionie had had on her sister Banna. Neither of them seemed anywhere as nice a person as Plantian Plunk seemed, but Sam had just met him. Banna’s father might have any number of darker sides.

  A server presented menus printed on thick pollen cardboard cards. Sam didn’t want to touch them. It wasn’t the time to tell the professor about himself. “I’ll have anything that isn’t too spicy,” Sam said, remembering Banna liked spicy food.

  “A nice beefsteak will do just fine for a growing boy. It’s my treat,” the professor said.

  “Then I will have one, too,” Desmon said, grinning.

  The professor looked up at the server. “Beefsteaks all around. Make mine half-size.” He winked at the man and patted his stomach. “I can’t put beef away like I used to.”

  Sam pulled out a notebook. “I have to deliver the crates to this address,” he said, showing it to the professor.

  Plantian raised his eyebrows. “Who sent these?” he asked.

  “A woman named Antina Mulch. She is originally from Vaarek. Do you recognize the address?” Sam said.

  “I certainly do. That is where you will be staying tonight.” Plantian hit the document with the delivery address with the tip of his forefinger. I’ve known Antina since before she married Otto Mulch, a ship’s captain. He was Vaarekian, but had settled in Baskin before he whisked Antina out of Tolloy.”

  “Then you didn’t send your little book to Banna, the one with your letter inside?”

  Plantian sat back to think for a bit. “Oh, that. I asked Antina to use her best efforts in getting it to my daughter. She never really knew Banna, and I haven’t communicated with Antina in months. I didn’t really expect the little essay to reach my daughter. Why, did you get a chance to read it?”

  Sam nodded. “I read it in Baskin, but I was the one to give it to Banna on board the ship.”

  “She read you the letter?” Plantian asked.

  “No. I found it before I met Banna in Baskin.”

  Plantian pursed his lips. “You couldn’t have read the letter. It was hidden.”

  Sam looked at Desmon who returned his gaze with a smirk.

  The professor looked at them both. “I am missing something here, aren’t I?”

  “Go ahead, Sam,” the Wollian said.

  “I have a disability, Professor Plunk,” Sam said, “I can’t see pollen. I need to use these,” he pointed to the gold-washed lenses of his spectacles, “to see pollen, and I can’t make pollen at all. In fact, I have an aversion to pollen. My very touch will destroy it. Your words weren’t hidden to me.”

  Plantian laughed. “No wonder my daughter put you in my care.” He gave Sam an intense look. “If you are willing, of course.” His gaze went to the wagon outside. “And perhaps Antina Mulch did the same. That makes you highly recommended, Sam Smith,” he said genially. “I’ll have you know, I have no pre
judices against a person who can’t wield pollen, but I never imagined such a person existed.”

  “He exists, all right,” Desmon said. “Sam has used his lack of powers to become a very accomplished snoop.”

  “He has? I thought that would be a disability,” Plantian said.

  “Not so far,” Sam said. ‘When everyone relies on pollen, it becomes an advantage for a snoop who can see right through it.”

  During dinner, Professor Plunk didn’t mention what Antina Mulch had sent in the crates, and Sam didn’t bring up his reservations about staying in the house of a stranger. The professor was amiable and seemed more than happy to have both Desmon and Sam stay with him in his house. Sam couldn’t detect any lying on the part of Plantian Plunk, so Sam decided to stay with the professor, at least until he got a good feeling for what was going on in Tolloy and at the university.

  “I failed to mention something about staying in my home,” the professor said, “If you are accepted to the University of Tolloy, first-year students are required to live on campus. It comes at a cost, so I hope you have funds.”

  Desmon laughed. “Our friend Sam is anything but destitute, Professor, and neither am I. We can pay our way.”

  Plantian blinked his eyes, “Oh, I didn’t mean… If you wish to contribute to general household expenses, I certainly wouldn’t mind, but no rent, certainly no rent is required or even requested.”

  The man looked thoroughly embarrassed, but Sam put his hand on the professor’s shoulder. “I understand, and I will accept your hospitality on any terms.”

  ~

  “Next!” the registrar said.

  Sam looked at the growing line behind him. He had waited for two hours for his chance to apply to the University of Tolloy. Armed with letters of recommendations from the law enforcement personnel along his way and an academic recommendation from Professor Plunk, he stepped up to the counter and began answering the registrar’s questions.

  After twenty minutes of grilling, and realizing that he could have filled out the form the registrar had done in much less time, the woman left the counter while Sam tapped his toe on the stone flooring, listening to the continual complaints of those waiting for him to get through.

  “Sam Smith from Cherryton, Toraltia?” one of three armed guards said, holding a file of his paperwork.

  “I’m Sam Smith.”

  The guard grunted. “Come with us.”

  “What am I being taken away for?”

  “It is part of the admissions process for foreigners,” the guard said.

  Sam shrugged. The men looked like they were bored doing their job. He could sympathize, having lived among constables for months in Baskin, the capital city of Toraltia.

  He didn’t expect them to take him off university grounds, but they escorted him into a carriage. Sam didn’t know his way around Tolloy, and soon he had no idea where the carriage was headed. None of them said a thing to him while they traveled, but groused about their jobs as if Sam wasn’t traveling with them.

  The conveyance disgorged him at some kind of dreary government building. One of the guards accompanied him while the other two left to return to the university.

  “Why are you the lucky one who stays?” Sam asked.

  The guard snorted. “Seniority never hurts, does it?” He opened the door for Sam. “Inside.”

  Sam just about didn’t move when he read the lettering painted onto the glass door leading into the structure: Vaarekian National Intelligence Agency.

  “Am I being abducted?” Sam asked his escort.

  The man shook his head. “Not for the moment, young man. It all depends on how you answer our questions.”

  He led Sam to a counter. “University foreigner for questioning.”

  The guard slapped Sam’s papers on the counter and left, walking to his left through a set of double doors. Probably to the commissary, Sam thought.

  The person at the counter snapped his fingers, and a young man in a simpler version of the uniform hustled to the desk. “Captain Gortak,” he said to the boy, but the man’s eyes never left Sam’s. “You can sit over there,”

  Sam did as he was told. He didn’t understand why they didn’t just talk to him at the university rather than dragging him all the way to this building. He wished he had brought Banna’s pocket watch with him since there wasn’t a clock on the wall in the lobby of the Intelligence headquarters. Finally, an officer of some kind walked through the double doors to the right with two guards. These men had a more feral look about them than the guards at the university.

  “Smith, I am Captain Gortak. Please stand.”

  Sam did as he was told, and the two guards placed iron manacles on his wrists. “I haven’t done anything!” Sam said.

  “Precisely why we are interrogating you before you can do anything,” Gortak said. “Room 4.” He jerked his head toward the double doors.

  Sam looked back at Gortak, walking to the counter and taking his folder of papers. Gortak glanced up from perusing the documents. Sam didn’t like the look on his face. He wanted to struggle, but he didn’t have any weapons, and the manacles were real metal. Resistance would be futile.

  He sat down in Room 4, an interrogation chamber just like the ones at Baskin Constabulary. The guards left him alone in the windowless room lit by a single guttering candle. The Vaarekian Intelligence Agency’s budget was no better than the Royal Baskin Constabulary’s, and the furniture was just as hard, scarred, and old.

  Gortak strutted into the room and slapped the folder on the table. He took a chair and swiveled it around, sitting on it backward.

  “You are a spy?” he said.

  “No,” Sam said. “Who would I spy for, and who would I spy on?”

  “Toraltia and Vaarek, of course.”

  “I’m an exile,” Sam said. “My papers attest to it.”

  Gortak lifted the edge of the folder with a finger and dropped it. “Papers say anything the writer wishes them to say, Master Smith. I don’t believe in papers, but…” he pulled out a small tin from his uniform coat and laid it gently on the table, “I do believe in this.”

  He opened the can and showed it to Sam. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Green pollen,” Sam said.

  Gortak grimaced. “Do you know what this does?”

  “I do,” Sam said. He would tell the investigator the truth unless the answers put his friends in peril. “It temporarily enslaves the person to whom it is applied.”

  The captain’s eyebrows rose. He obviously hadn’t expected the correct answer. “Where did you learn this?”

  “In Wollia. Your agents used this when they stole weapons from the Wollian government,” Sam said.

  “They did?” Gortak said, his arrogance wiped clean for a moment.

  Sam told him an edited version of the story. In Sam’s new version, Mandrim arrows killed Harlik Bonkle from a distance.

  He looked at the tin can, still open on the table. “If you used that stuff on me, I would give you the same answer.”

  “I’ll do just that,” Gortak said. He put on a thin glove and applied the pollen on the back of Sam’s hand. It crinkled into powder, but Sam put his hands on his lap.

  “Tell me the truth about how you learned about green pollen in Wollia,” Captain Gortak said.

  Sam repeated the same story. He brushed the desiccated pollen to the floor while he talked. Green pollen didn’t absorb into his pollen-averse skin, and he didn’t want to explain why that was to Captain Gortak.

  He had related an edited version of his adventures often enough that he had no problem answering the captain’s continual questions. The captain leaned over and removed Sam’s manacles before standing up.

  “You are who you seem, Sam Smith. You can return to your home. I will take your application out of this folder and return it to the university. They will make a determination on your application, and then it will be up to you to pass the entrance exams.”

  Sam kept his face as
placid as he could and stood when the Captain motioned him out of the door.

  “Go left to the lobby, and then out of the building.”

  ~

  There were no landmarks for Sam to use. He had no idea how to get back to the university and Plunk’s house. He had to ask directions a few times, but the directions led him to a long, straight avenue. The university’s clock tower was barely visible at the end. It had been six hours since he last had eaten, but he kept the clock tower in view while his stomach complained.

  It seemed like hours before he reached the tower, but then he realized that Plunk’s house was on the other side of the university. He would have to walk around. His stomach growled at him, and then he spotted something interesting, a Zogazin restaurant.

  He couldn’t wait any longer and stepped inside the empty place. It wasn’t dinner time, and Sam had an urgent need for food. He didn’t see anyone, but he called out. “Are you still serving?”

  An ample woman walked out from the back. “If I weren’t, my door would be locked. Are you sure you want a Zogazin meal?”

  Sam smiled. “I had one a few weeks ago in Bliksa.”

  “Ah, a world traveler.”

  “I’m from Toraltia via the ports of Carolank, Port Hassin in Wollia, Pundia, and Bliksa before I arrived here,” Sam said, “so, yes, I am.”

  “My, my. What do you fancy?” she said in an accent Sam hadn’t picked up from the Zogazin woman in Bliksa.

  “I haven’t eaten in hours, so you choose. Whatever you can serve quickly.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Stew, always stew, and sometimes soup, but definitely stew. Lamb stew with potatoes, carrots, and a few other secret ingredients I won’t divulge. It is a little raw for my regulars, but you won’t notice.”

  “Raw?”

  “I simmer this particular stew into submission. It hasn’t quite given up yet,” she said, grinning.

  Sam didn’t have long to wait before the woman brought out a large bowl, a large spoon, and a stack of the little flatbread disks he remembered from Bliksa, with a pot of butter and a glass of water. She placed the meal in front of Sam.