First Apprentice

Chapter 30 Part 1

Hounds bayed in the distance. My lungs burned as I ran, veering around trees and rocks. Brambles tore into my legs and stones bruised my bare feet, making the run its own form of torture.

Hate welled in my heart. Hate for the Dracon. Hate for Melantha who from the feel of things never bothered training a day in her life. Hate that she once again dragged me inside her mind. Hate that three days after Mei barged into my life like a whirling dervish, took over my study, and began ruling over us all with an iron fist she took me to a deserted mountaintop and told me a few hard truths.

With three tawny tails twitching behind her, Mei slipped into a fighting stance and squared her body against mine as if waiting for an attack. "Fact, lethal aura poisoning kills within twelve hours," she said. "Fact, aura poisoning only gets worse when its left untreated."

At Mei's words, an eerie calm stole over me. A dozen voices whispered "magus bane and hemlock" while another chimed in "arsenic, not hemlock". The seals for Kathleen's Revenge — the sole suppression seal I knew, the seal Endellion named after her mother and branded on Uncle Manfred's neck like a hangman's noose — swam before my eyes.

Kathleen's Revenge didn't make magic inaccessible. It trapped it inside the core where it slowly turned into a raging inferno and consumed its master. Mind, body, and soul.

I would hunt them. I would strip their magic from their bodies with my poisons and brand them with the vilest suppression seal in recorded history. They could either serve the gates as guardians or feed them. Their choice.

I may hate myself afterward, but I wouldn't regret it. At that moment, I recognized Endellion's fire for what it was: kindness.

Melantha's arms pumped as we scrambled up a hill. Sweat-soaked blonde hair fell into our eyes. We tucked it behind our ear and pressed on.

The trail split in two. One side forded a creek. Thick brush covered the opposite bank, the sort I wouldn't want to tackle without fire or a sword. The other went up a steep hillside. Open, little cover. Those hounds would sprint up that hill with their handlers in tow and trap us within minutes.

It's not about tricking their nose, Uncle Manfred said once. Hounds and their handlers work as a team. Separating a team is the best way to defeat it.

Brush wouldn't slow the hounds. It would slow their masters, who apparently weren't willing to set the forest on fire. If they were, they'd have done it an hour ago. Delay them long enough to tear the hounds' throats out then set a trap for the handlers.

Doable.

Melantha's feet turned towards the hillside while my mind screamed to ford the creek. The high ground wouldn't help in this situation, but a frisson of fear swept through us every time we glanced at the water.

Not my fear. Uncle Manfred taught me how to swim when I was still a toddler. I couldn't remember not knowing how. I didn't fear water, never had. No, this fear was a reminder that I no more controlled this body than I did the setting of the sun. I was merely along for the ride.

Our foot caught on a root. I pitched forward and landed on my knees before a cliff.

Silence fell.

I turned and glanced back over my shoulder. A sweat-drenched blonde woman stumbled to her feet and ran through the cliff like it was a mirage.

Melantha or just how I imagined her?

White fog rose out of the ground and eddied around me, clinging to my hair and skin like glue but dry. Dry fog, a contradiction only found in dreams and illusions. A doorway grew out of the fog.

A simple rock-hewn affair, it reminded me of the ruins Uncle Manfred showed me once on Marstallis. The cliffs stacked like stairs reaching to the heavens with thousands of holes where doorways, balconies, and windows once stood.

I recalled how he knelt beside the smallest cliff, picked off the moss, and brushed aside the dirt, revealing ripples in the stone itself like waves frozen in time. He pressed my hand against them, then slung me on his back and teleported to the next stair. After nicking our hands and pressing them against a seal, he hiked to the nearest dwelling and ducked inside.

I remembered bones. Four children about my size and an adult Uncle Manfred said was their mother. Maybe she was. Maybe she was the nearest adult when the Dracon came. Without saying another word, he took me outside, shifted into his gryphon, and flew us to a nearby beach.

Later that night when the skeletons haunted my dreams, he stroked my hair and spoke about the first war, fighting Endellion and Donovan and how the Marstow were fools for rebuilding their aeries—roasting ovens for the Dracon—after the war and relying on wards instead of watchtowers.

I was days away from repeating the Marstow's mistake. Thirty-three people–thirty candidates, Mei, Helen, and me–and twenty-nine gates with a month before the gate bounties expired. I couldn't place another.

The first bounty was logical. Terry handed a new apprentice handed twenty-nine gates and poisoned candidates. Hiring a few guardians to maintain them temporarily was understandable. A second would indicate my healed candidates were unable to handle the lower gates. It practically invited an attack. I didn't dare place another because as Grandfather drummed into my head, appearances are as important as strength.

I needed time to grow into my magic and transform. Appearing strong bought me time. I hoped.

Watchmen required able bodies we didn't have. Even if they were perfectly healthy, I needed them on my gates, not staring at a trailhead.

I laid a hand against the cool rock and traced the chisel marks with my fingertips. Foreign magic twined around my fingers. Familiar, yet not, like someone I should know or wanted to. Safe. Without a backward glance, I stepped over the threshold.