The Seer's Apprentice

“A month later, the manor burned to the ground while we were visiting relatives.” He picked up his glass of water and took a sip, his eyes downcast.

“And that’s when you began to suspect you were a seer?” Allaran asked.

“Yes, M’Lord.”

“Mr. Theron,” Allaran said, setting his tea back down, “you do realize that there is only one way to test your abilities, don’t you?”

His fair skin paling to a pallid white, Mr. Theron nodded and swallowed hard. “Yes, Lord Allaran.”

“Then I see no point in making further conversation,” Allaran said, rising from his chair and leaving the young man to scramble to his feet and follow after him, with Demmois bringing up the rear. Allaran led them up a twisting flight of stairs to a small, secluded room with thick walls and no windows, a shiny brass pulley hanging ominously from the main ceiling beam.

“Before we begin,” Allaran said, taking off his long, velvet jacket and handing it to Demmois, “you need to be aware of what is in store for you, Mr. Theron.” He slipped out of his silk vest and busied himself with the tiny pearl buttons on his long-sleeved shirt, watching the way Mr. Theron glanced about the room, eyeing the rope dangling from the pulley, the end tied to a pair of old, iron manacles.

“Forgive my ignorance, M’Lord,” Mr. Theron asked after a moment, “but isn’t this something you choose to do? Why are restraints needed?”

“It’s one thing to choose to put your hand into a flame, Mr. Theron,” Allaran said, shrugging out of his shirt. “It’s another to hold it there while your flesh burns.” He handed the shirt to Demmois, who carried them away to a cupboard where they would be safe from blood spatter. “Your body reacts to pain by trying to escape it. When that fails, it released chemicals in your brain. In most people, these chemicals serve to mask the pain, as another form of escape. For seers, the chemicals send us into a trance where we are receptive to visions.”

Demmois returned and Allaran stepped over beneath the pulley, turning his back to the room as he allowed his butler to secure the manacles around his wrists. Behind him, he heard Mr. Theron gasp, no doubt at the layers of thin, silvered lash scars on his back, fresh cuts and bruises on top of them.

“What would you have me see, Mr. Theron?” Allaran asked as Demmois cranked on the rope, raising his hands above his head. “Give me a place, a time, a person–so that you may have an accurate demonstration.”

“Oh, uh…My mother,” Mr. Theron said. “Can you tell me what she’s doing?”

“Right now?”

“If it pleases you, M’Lord, yes.”

“Very well. Demmois, you may begin.”

“Yes, M’Lord,” said his butler, a reluctance in his tone. Allaran knew he hard doing this, but he was far too dedicated a servant to refuse. Allaran heard the thin leather lash whistle through the air, his shoulders tensing in anticipation of the stinging blow, but it didn’t stop the breath catching in his throat. He flinched as a second, then a third strike came, and a strangled cry escaped from between his teeth as the fourth and fifth came in quick succession. After that, he stopped counting, his mind focusing on Mr. Theron’s mother, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, the pain like a fire dancing over his skin.

A hush settled over Allaran, a calm stillness that filled him, carrying him like a feather on the breast of a bird. He was soaring over the countryside, passing one village after the next, then over a great city and past a wide lake, to a large house nestled back among a grove of aspen trees, the day’s washing out upon a line. Allaran drifted inside the house, into the kitchen, where a woman of middling years was preparing a roast, her fair hair tied back under a blue scarf, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up past her elbows.