Tales of the Apprentice 01 Ch. 01

Tales of the Apprentice - Book 1

Chapter 1

The land of Avendia is a beautiful country of green, rolling hills, well tilled soil and lush forests. It knows neither king nor lord, but once, long ago, it was a realm of powerful sorcery, or so the legends say. But the great wizards are long gone, if they ever existed at all. These days farmers work their fields by the sweat of their brows, craftsmen toil in their workshops to make their goods, and tradesmen ply their wares to nobles and commoners alike. Some say that magic still lingers in the land of Avendia, but there are not many who believe that.

The roads in and around Avendia are usually in good repair, and it was on one of these roads that a young man traveled one morning, as spring was dotting the trees with shades of fresh green and with the whites and pinks of countless delicate, fragrant blossoms. He was on foot, not being able to afford a horse, and he carried only a bedroll and a small knapsack with some provisions. Having been on the road for many days, he was relieved to finally put eyes on his destination. Relieved, but also more than somewhat apprehensive. One does not, after all, approach a sorceress lightly.

In all fairness, the cottage for which he was headed didn't really look like anything special. It was modest in size, with a thatched roof and ivy-covered walls. A few chickens were pecking around beside a neatly tended vegetable garden at the back. Yet this was the abode of a sorceress. Or at least so he had been told. Perhaps he had been told wrong.

The woman who looked up from the vegetable patch that she had been weeding certainly didn't look like a great sorceress. While she was by no means a crone, her best years were definitely behind her. Her hair was still thick and glossy but it was touched with gray, and although her skin was still reasonably fair, it did show the weathered lines of one who has been out in the sun tending the field for years on end. The look in her eyes was a similar mixture of contradictions: both friendly and wary at the same time.

"Can I help you?" she said.

"I hope so," he replied. "I am looking for a sorceress. I was told to speak with you."

She rose from her carrot patch, a grim look in her eyes.

"I see," she said curtly. "Another one of those."

"Oh?"

"What is it that you want, boy? Do you want me to make you rich? Do you want your enemies destroyed? Or is it perhaps some girl you desperately need to fall in love with you?"

"Ehm... No..."

"Good," she said, smiling bleakly. "Because I can't help you with any of that. Go home, boy. I don't know what you want, and I don't care. Whatever it is, you won't find it here."

She put down the spade she had been using and wiped her hands on her apron.

"Who sent you here, anyway?"

"Well, I, ehm... I've been asking around..."

"For what?"

"Well, I..."

"Speak up, will you? I don't have all day."

With some effort he got hold of himself. Here he was, having traveled the entire distance, and now he was stammering like a schoolboy who hasn't done his homework!

"I want to learn about sorcery," he finally blurted out.

She looked at him for a few long moments, then sighed.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Galen, ma'am."

"Alright. Whatever you do, Galen, don't call me that. It makes me feel my age. Call me Serana. Most people do. Those who don't refer to me as "that old hag" or "the witch", that is."

She pointed at the bench in front of the cottage.

"Come. Sit down."

"Thank you," Galen said, a little intimidated by her brusque manner. "I'm sorry to bother you, ma-... Mrs. Serana."

Her stern frown faded. She wasn't exactly smiling, but at least some of the grimness in her expression disappeared before his open, honest-faced look.

"At least you have good manners. Drop the Mrs. and we just might get along," she said, sitting down on the bench next to him. "So. You want to be a great and powerful sorcerer?"

He shook his head. "No. Not really. Well, maybe, but..."

"Forget it, boy. There are no great and powerful sorcerers anymore, and there never will be again. Sorcery is a thing of the dim and distant past."

"That's what the legends say," Galen admitted.

"The legends are true," she said with a note of authority in her voice. "Well, not all of them, of course, but enough of them. Yes, sorcery did exist, long ago. Wizards lived in great castles floating between the clouds. The skies were full of dragons borne on great leathery wings, and mighty battles were fought by armies conjured up out of thin air. And more than that. Much more. The world was young then, Galen, so young... And so beautiful. It sparkled with colors of green and gold and blue, so much brighter in those days then they are now. The grasses on the rolling hills were cool and soft, and the trees grew so high that their tops disappeared into the clouds. The sun blazed with the glory of the gods themselves, and the heavens were clear and crisp and full of life."

She sighed, looking a little forlorn.

"You should have seen it, boy," she continued, her voice very soft. "You should have been there."

For a long moment the look on her face was one of indescribable loss, and her eyes gazed into the distance at something that only she could see.

"But that age is gone,""she continued. "And many more ages have passed since. The world is mundane now, Galen. Do you see that spade over there by the kitchen door? That's what I use to feed myself. There is nothing to be had for free, neither from me nor from anyone else. Believe me."

"I'm not looking for anything free, ma-.. Serana. I want to learn. About sorcery, I mean, How it works... Or worked. And why."

"Why indeed," she said, raising her eyebrows at him. "I just said there is no sorcery anymore. Or weren't you listening?"

"I was. I am, I mean. It's just that... I want to know how things work. All things. Why is sunlight warm but moonlight is cold? Why does grain only grow in summer? And why did sorcery work long ago but not anymore? I want to know these things. I've always wanted to know. I want to learn. I want to understand."

She gave him a long, thoughtful look.

"Hm. At least you seem to have got the right mind for it, boy, I'll give you that."

Her face had turned pensive and she was no longer frowning, but neither was she smiling. Galen felt slightly uncomfortable under her gaze. It also irritated him that she kept calling him "boy". He was older than that! Surely he deserved something more respectful. But he had learned long ago that there were times when it was best to keep quiet, and this definitely seemed to be one of them.

"Sorcery is nothing but a way to do things other than with your hands and your back," she continued after a while. "That's all it is, really. Or all it was, to be more precise. And it takes just as much to do something that way as it would if you did it by hand."

She sighed.

"The problem is, nobody realized that at the time. In the old days nobody had to use much physical strength to get anything done, you see."

He slowly shook his head.

"No... Not really."

"Alright. Let me try to explain," she said. "A living man can work, a dead man can't. There are of course many reasons for that, but what it all boils down to in the end is that in order to get any work done, anything at all, you need life. Or rather, you need the force of life. Every time I spade up that kitchen garden, the strength to do the work has to come from my own body. Afterward I feel tired and I need rest. I need to sit down, I need to relax, I need to sleep. Simply put, I need to become less alive for a time, so my body can replenish the life force that I have expended. I also need to eat, because by eating I absorb some of the life force of the plants or the animals that my food is derived from."

Galen nodded.

"That makes sense."

"Good. Well, then, it's the same with sorcery. Everything you do requires a certain expenditure of life force. But in the old days nobody was aware of that, because there was so much life force around that nobody realized they were using it. It never seemed to run out. Life force could simply be drawn from the earth in those days."

"From the earth?"

"Yes." She shifted on the bench, sitting up straighter, and her eyes suddenly held his. "Understand this, boy, even if you understand nothing else: the world is alive. It is a living thing. The soil, the winds, the waters, all of it."

Seeing the lack of comprehension on his face, she gestured impatiently at the greenery that surrounded them: the brushes, the grasses, the trees.

"Look around you, boy! Do you think anything like that can grow on dead rock?"

Galen shook his head.

"Not usually, no."

"You're darn right it doesn't! If you see something growing on rock, that just means it's not dead rock. It means there's enough living matter in it to support growth. All the world is like that. But it used to be more, so much more. In the old days the world was so full of life force that it could easily power the most potent sorcery you can think of. But it didn't last."

She sighed, looking off in the distance. Galen said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

"Sorcery became more and more common," she went on eventually. "It got bigger, and more spectacular, and more wasteful, because nobody knew the cost. Nobody even suspected that there was a price to any of it. Nobody realized that sorcery was draining the world of its life force. It drew power from the earth. And everyone did it. They used too much, too fast, until inevitably the earth became depleted and it simply couldn't recover anymore."

She fell quiet again.

"What happened?" Galen asked after a while.

"Sorcery began to fail, and the world began to die, that's what happened. Fortunately the sorcerers died before the world could, or you wouldn't even be here now. The floating castles fell, the spells that kept the sorcerers young lost their power until their flesh crumbled and turned to dust, and the dragons no longer rose to the skies when their bones began to turn to stone. This part of the world doesn't look so bad, right now. Other parts are far worse off. If you travel east or west and you keep going long enough, you will find enormous stretches of nothing but blazing hot sand, and both north and south from here there are endless stretches of frozen wasteland. Very few things can live there anymore. Some lands, like this one, were lucky enough to have something left after it was all over. But the world today is barely a shadow of the glorious, joyously living thing it used to be."

"With all due respect, ma-... Serana... How do you know this?"

She shrugged, a grim look on her face.

"Because I remember it, boy, that's how. I've seen it. I was there."

"You... You were there? You were a sorcerer?"

"Yes, I was there. But I was never a sorcerer. I was a mage. I still am, of course. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."

"What do you mean?"

She smiled sadly. "How old do you think I am, Galen?"

Galen smiled. Even he knew better than to answer a question like that.

"A gentleman never asks."

"Then I won't tell, either," she said. "But the Fall occurred more than sixty centuries ago. Let's leave it at that. I still look good for my age, don't I?"

"You do look good," he said.

At least that got a smile out of her.

"You're such a nice boy. It's a shame that I have nothing for you."

"Oh? You have been teaching me the things I want to know since the moment we met," he pointed out.

"I've been telling you stories, boy, nothing more. Go home."

This time it was his turn to give her a long look.

"I'd really rather not," he said finally. "I want to know these things. As much of it as I can. I was hoping you could teach me. If you can't, or you won't, I'll have to accept that and I'll just have to look somewhere else. But I won't go home, and I won't stop searching."

She shook her head.

"No. I'm too old, Galen. I'm too old and too tired and, quite frankly, I'm done with all of this. All I want is to live out my life here, in peace and quiet, tending my garden until I return to the earth from which all living things have come."

"But..."

"No."

The tone of her voice left no room for argument. Galen sighed. True, his hopes had never been very high, but still...

A small, yellow bird sitting in the tree next to them chirped, once. Serana never knew what it was about that chirp that made her look up, but she did. The bird hopped from one branch to another, then onward, until it had reached the tip of the branch closest to them. There it chirped again, more insistently this time. And it was looking at her.

Serana stared at it.

No... Surely not...

But she held out her hand, and the bird flapped its little wings and landed on her outstretched finger. There it sat for a moment, and then it chirped again. It turned its head, left and right, as if too look at her, then at Galen. It chirped once more, then hopped up and flew away.

That last chirp had sounded very... commanding, somehow.

Serana stared at her finger where the bird had sat. Suddenly it was as if she sagged under a great weight.

"Great Mother, please, no... Why now? Why me?" she sighed, looking up at the heavens above them.

Galen gave her an inquisitive look.

"Never mind," she said softly, but she wasn't speaking to him. "I know."

"Who are you talking to?" Galen asked.

She turned her head as if she'd suddenly remembered he was there.

"To the Great Mother, from whom all life springs," she said. "You don't know even that, do you?"

"I came here to learn," Galen said reasonably.

"Yes. So you did. And that, unfortunately, leaves me with a problem."

"What sort of problem?"

"I'm too old to deal with an apprentice, Galen. I don't want to. I don't need any of this. But it looks like I'm going to have to."

"I really don't want to impose..." Galen began.

"You already have. So let this be your first lesson, then: for everything in life there is a price to pay. Life is all about balance, and everything you receive must be balanced against what you give. I have a certain ability, a certain... power, if you will. But with that comes a duty, and responsibility. If I send you away and you end up going down the wrong path, then all the evil and suffering and death resulting from that mistake will be on my conscience. Well, maybe not all of it, but more than enough to matter. So I don't have a choice. Not really."

"I'm not sure I understand..."

"I have a feeling I'm going to hear you say that a lot more over the next few centuries," she said. "I told you I'm a mage, not a sorcerer. But you don't even know the difference, do you?"

Wordlessly, Galen shook his head.

"Alright. I have told you about sorcery. Magic is different. A sorcerer draws power from the earth, or used to. A mage doesn't. Instead, a mage draws the necessary life force from her own body and soul. There are two ways to do that, and the difference between the two is both very simple and very profound. It's the difference between light and dark magic, or white and black magic, as some call it. It is the difference between good and evil."

She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

"In practicing white magic, the mage releases life force from her own being. In black magic she steals it from someone else. The most powerful form of black magic is death magic. Simply put, a death mage derives power from death. From killing."

"Blood magic, you mean?" Galen asked with a shiver.

"No. Not quite. Blood magic involves the ritual spilling of blood. It can be the mage's own blood, or someone else's. Most of the time it makes little difference, as long as the blood is drawn from a living creature. Even animal blood will do sometimes. Usually you don't need large amounts of it, and nobody has to die. So blood magic is somewhere in the middle. Call it gray magic, if you will. By itself it does not accomplish much, but it can amplify other forms of magic because blood represents a certain amount of life force. Spilling too much blood leaves a person weak, and spilling even more of it will mean death, because in those cases too much life force is removed from the body. But it's the spilling of blood that does it, not death."

Galen nodded slowly.

"Death magic, on the other hand, doesn't just require blood," Serana continued. "It requires a life. Simply put, a death mage kills a living creature, and then uses the life force liberated by that killing as a source of power, much like a highway robber waylays a traveler for the money in his purse. Sometimes the death of an animal will do, but for the more potent spells you need more, so you have to kill a human being. And once you've done that a few times, it gets easier every time you do it. Soon it becomes far too easy. The more you kill, the more power you wield, but you will have less of a soul left every time you do it. Like everything else, killing, too, comes at a price, and that price is your soul."

"Death magic... Isn't that what they call necromancy?" Galen asked.

"It is often called that, yes, but that's not quite correct. Technically speaking, necromancy is a form of witchcraft, not magic. Necromancy involves speaking with the dead, perhaps even raising them from the grave. It's rather closely related to demonology. Too close for comfort, in fact. On the other hand, the word 'necromancy' literally means 'death magic', so the confusion is easy to understand. Those who practice it, though, are very keenly aware of the difference. And they have to be, of course. The last thing you'll want to do is to murder a man and then to raise him from death later so he can return the favor. But I digress."

She gave him a long and stern look.

"Death magic may look like the easier path, Galen, if you can stomach it, but it is a very dark path and it will destroy you even more quickly than it destroys those around you. The more you kill, the more certain your own fate will be in the end. It turns a man into a monster, or maybe it only exposes the monster that's been living inside him all along. Don't go there. Believe me, it's not worth it."

Galen shivered in spite of the warm morning.

"I wasn't really planning to," he said.

"Good. Keep it that way."

"I'll make a special point of it. You said that magic comes in two forms. So what's the other one?"

She smiled and nodded.

"Good. At least you're paying attention. Yes, there is a second way. And that's sex magic."

"Sex... magic?"

"Yes. Killing is one way to release life force. Sex is the other."

"I don't..."

"Understand, yes, I know. But it makes sense, if you stop to think about it. Which you really should. You know how a long bout of really good lovemaking can leave you just as tired as a whole day of work can do, right?"

"Well, I, ehm..."

He blushed furiously.

"Oh. Galen, are you a virgin?"

He shook his head vigorously.

"No! No. I, ehm... I have done it, once or twice..."

She smiled.

"Once or twice. So what is it? Once? Or twice? And don't tell me you can't remember."

He blushed even more. "Well... Twice. But..."

"But the first time hardly counted, and even the second time it wasn't as good as you had hoped, and you were clumsy and you didn't really know what you were doing, and it was over almost before it started. Am I right?"

He nodded, his face bright red.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "The first few times are almost always like that. It will get better, trust me. But you do jerk off regularly, right? Don't bother answering that. All young men do, especially young men who are still single. So. When you masturbate just before you go to bed, you will sleep a lot better, you must have noticed that."