Excerpt

Prologue

Marlys had sunk into a deep, sweet dream of home when hands jerked her out of bed. She struggled to get her footing as the abductors, one on each side, hustled her out the door of the training house. Getting her breath, she shouted, "Help! Elspeth!" but there was no response from within. Outside, as she scrambled to keep up with her captors, she realized that these were Elspeth's other apprentice sorcerers, Janna and Kelsie, who she had only met that morning. Both were only one year older than Marlys, who was sixteen.

"What are you doing? Where are you taking me?"

No answer.

By the light of the full moon, Marlys could see they were headed toward the edge of the clearing, toward the woods. Dry branches had been piled next to a wooden post. When they got there, Janna shoved Marlys's back against the post as Kelsie pulled her arms back and tied them with leather thongs.

"Why are you doing this? I haven't done anything!"

Janna and Kelsie only giggled. They stepped away from the post. Janna kindled a flame and set the branches on fire.

Marlys gasped and flinched, straining at her bonds. "What do you want?"

"We want to see you burn, of course," Kelsie said blandly.

"Help! Help! Elspeth!" Surely the sorcerer could hear? How soundly did she sleep?

"Help, help," mocked Janna, and Kelsie laughed.

"Please! I'll do anything! Just let me go!"

"We don't want anything from you," Kelsie sneered.

Already smoke made Marlys cough. The flames grew each moment; they would reach her legs soon.

With an effort, she held her breath and thought. She knew some household spells...one had to serve. Blow it out? But all she could call up was a puff of air, which seemed to fan the flame instead of extinguishing it. Water? But all she could form was dew, which was not enough to douse the fire. Oh, her feet! Oh, her legs! Cut? Cut! The spell nicked the thongs enough for her to twist her hands and break free of them. She bent, pulled the nightgown around her legs, toppled away from the flames, and rolled on the ground. Sitting up, she saw her clothes had not burned, but her feet, her legs! She spelled a small sphere of light and examined them. Red and blistered only, no black spots, but bad enough. She began to weep from the pain.

"Cry, baby, cry!" mocked Janna.

"Oh, leave the baby to cry," Kelsie said. They walked back to the house.

Painfully, limping on her blistered feet, she made her way to the back door. Elspeth stood inside in the washroom, a lighted lamp on a shelf beside her. "What was all that caterwauling about?"

Marlys hobbled out of the washroom to the main room and pointed to Janna and Kelsie, across the wide space in their own beds. "They tried to kill me!"

"Stop whining at once, or I'll send you home!"

Marlys stood agape.

"Do you want to be a sorcerer?" Elspeth demanded.

Marlys found her voice. "Yes, that's why I came here, but...."

"And you took the oath of an apprentice, saying you would obey me until the high sorcerer determined you were ready to go out in the world as a full sorcerer, no matter what happened."

"Yes, but...."

"Then if you're ever going to do anything but those pitiful household spells, you'll learn not to complain about anything that goes on in my household. Or I'll release you from your oath and send you home. Do you understand?"

She sighed. "Yes, Sorcerer Elspeth."

"Very well, then." Elspeth took the lamp and walked past her.

Marlys limped to her bed and found her sack, which held all the possessions she had. Those included unguents that would help with the burns. A "pitiful household spell" would speed the healing. She settled back into bed, silently weeping into her pillow. She expected her apprenticeship to be hard—everyone told her that being an apprentice, especially to a sorcerer, was hard—but she did not expect it to be brutal. Was this a test, to see if she was resolved? Why had Elspeth, not to mention Janna and Kelsie, who she barely knew, been so cold? In any case, she was not going home. She would show them.

In the days that followed, Marlys found that violence seemed to be the way of the sorcerer. With regularity, Janna and Kelsie attacked Marlys in every way imaginable. They dug a hole, threw her in it, and shoveled dirt on top of her. They threw a sack over her, tied it, and tossed her into a river. Each time, Marlys had to call on all her resources to get free, and only barely survived. If this was teaching, Marlys felt it was bad teaching—why not, rather, show her how to escape such situations first, and after that put her to the test?

With no allies, and Elspeth showing no concern for her suffering, Marlys often thought of going back home. But Marlys knew in her heart that she would never be satisfied with just doing household spells. She wanted to be able to do what she had seen sorcerers do—heal mortal wounds, repel monsters, banish wildfires. But Elspeth never taught her any of that. The only way Marlys learned anything at all was watching and listening on the quiet days when Elspeth spoke to Janna and Kelsie. It seemed she was allowed to do that, because no one protested or prevented her when she did.

Although Marlys tried to follow the lessons Elspeth gave to Janna and Kelsie, nothing happened until one day, while walking near a swamp she had not visited before, she slipped into a clutching bog—so called because the mud closed around the victim, sucking the victim to the bottom. After a moment of panic, Marlys calmed herself. She would not sink all at once. She had time. For now, only her legs had been encased. Reaching for her knife, she jerked it out of the sheath and stabbed the hard ground, trying to pull herself out. But the knife broke. She reached for a nearby young tree, narrow enough so she could grasp it, but she could only brush it with her fingertips. She tried her household magic: reach, bend, stretch. Yes, stretch.

When she cast the spell in her mind, her left leg straightened. She felt a horrible pain as if she had stepped on a long nail. Her leg, from her heel to her knee, stiffened and she threw back her head and gasped in agony. At the same time, her body jerked forward slightly out of the bog.

Slowly, the bog attempted to pull her in again. This time, Marlys concentrated on mentally pushing the sensation of the needle out. With each effort, the needle seemed to move, and her body correspondingly moved out of the mud. But it was too slow, and the bog continued to claim her. Finally, annoyed and desperate, she surged back at the bog with all her might. She popped out, landing hard on her stomach, clear of the mud.

The internal backlash was excruciating. She rolled on the ground, hugging herself. It seemed as if a thousand needles had jabbed through her heels, her palms, her head. She found she could not even cry out, could not breathe. Breathe! There, her lungs filled with air. The pain subsided. She lay there on her back, spent.

After some time, she crawled, then got to her feet, and found she was uninjured. Exhausted, she staggered back to the house.

After that, mostly in bed, at night, while the others slept, Marlys tried to recapture the magic she knew had penetrated her at the bog. She found that she could pull it in and push it out, through her hands, through her feet. The sensation, sharp at first, never felt so agonizing as the first time, and grew less and less painful with practice until it did not hurt at all.

Out of sight of the others, she put the magic into practice. She created wind where there was none. Rabbits came to her against their will. Once, out in the forest, she met a bear. She stopped it in its tracks. Four days later, out hunting, she found the bear still in place. This time, at a safe distance, she released the spell and the bear sauntered away. Finally, one night, when rain beat against the roof, she slipped out the back door to stand in the yard, and not a drop touched her. She raised her arms and her face to the sky in triumph.

One day, she saw Elspeth walk past with Janna and Kelsie.

"Why do you always set us at these mundane tasks?" Kelsie complained. "Make the horses go back to the barn, turn the stream to water the garden...I'd rather cause a wildfire to start and put it out again."

"You have to perfect the small tasks before you can attempt the great ones," Elspeth explained.

"How about the spell where you conjure the image of another sorcerer to talk to her at a distance?" Kelsie suggested.

"That is one of the more powerful spells," Elspeth said. "It is beyond your present ability."

"You might as well ask for the spell for the doorway to the island worlds," Janna told Kelsie.

Elspeth nodded. "That is one of the greatest spells. If you could do that, you would be a sorcerer, not an apprentice."

"I could try it," Kelsie said.

"And if you did?" Elspeth answered. "Unless you were as skilled as I, you would be sucked into that other world, and not come back."

Kelsie said nothing, but caught Janna's eye and smiled, then nodded in Marlys's direction. Marlys guessed that meant that as soon as they were trained, they would certainly try that spell on her.

If Janna and Kelsie planned to open the doorway and push her in, Marlys knew she had to learn to summon it first. One night, when the full moon shone in the back yard, Marlys slipped out. She stood near the barn and faced the spot where the clearing met the woods. Although she had not been given a specific spell to summon the doorway, she had succeeded in previous spells by picturing the result in her mind and drawing the magic in and out of her body. She took a breath, summoned all her strength, stared resolutely in the direction of the woods, and moved her hands as if pushing open a gate.

The maelstrom nearly knocked her down. She had to use magic just to stay in place. Everything near the doorway, however, fell inside, from the fox crossing the yard to the young trees at the edge of the clearing—uprooted and sucked in. Looking ahead of her, she could see what appeared to be a silvery arch, and through it, she spied a moonlit meadow. The gale rushed from behind her into the arch, trying to blow her inside. With a gesture, she closed the door.

All was still. Marlys sunk to the ground and sat there, spent.

The back door opened. Janna and Kelsie rushed out.

"What was that?" Janna shouted.

Elspeth stepped outside. She surveyed the holes in the dirt where the young trees had been, the broken fence around the garden, the grass littered with leaves stripped from the trees.

Kelsie pointed to Marlys. "You idiot! Practicing magic without Elspeth directing you? You could have killed us!"

Elspeth turned to Janna and Kelsie. "Inside!"

With one last withering glance toward Marlys, Janna and Kelsie followed Elspeth to the house.

In the morning, at the breakfast table, Elspeth said simply, "We're going to see High Sorcerer Thorne today."

As Marlys cleaned up, Kelsie leaned toward her and hissed, "You're in trouble now."

Marlys did not much care.

After breakfast, they dressed in their finest and rode to the fortress of the high sorcerer. Elspeth sped them on their way.

When they arrived at the fortress, Marlys saw many other coaches ahead of them. Sorcerers alighted and walked inside. Elspeth, Janna, Kelsie, and Marlys followed.

They walked through a long corridor with a marble floor and arched ceiling. At last, they reached what seemed to be an audience chamber. A long narrow rug led to a throne where the High Sorcerer sat. The other sorcerers stood to either side. They seemed to Marlys to be waiting expectantly.

Elspeth stopped and waved Janna and Kelsie to the walls where the other apprentices lingered. Marlys and Elspeth stood alone before the High Sorcerer.

She stared right at Marlys. "I heard you accomplished something rather remarkable for an apprentice with so little experience."

Marlys said nothing.

"Answer her!" Elspeth whispered in Marlys's ear.

"I may have," she said, looking not at Thorne but the marble floor.

"Do you think to reach the rank of sorcerer so quickly?"

"I wouldn't presume," Marlys said.

Thorne stood. "Come," she said to Marlys.

Marlys followed, aware that Elspeth and the other sorcerers and apprentices strolled behind her. They walked through an arch into a huge enclosed courtyard.

"Let's see how you do with this," Thorne said. With a gesture, she opened the iron gate—which was at least 20 feet tall—to the outside. In stomped a behemoth. It had four legs, each the thickness of tree trunks, and a sinewy neck holding a head with long, cruel teeth. Marlys extended her arm. The creature stopped, bellowed with frustration, and slowly turned and stomped away. Marlys made sure that the behemoth would continue to walk in that direction at least 2 miles. She closed the iron gate behind it from where she stood.

"Very impressive," Thorne said. "Come here, child."

Marlys put her arm down and walked forward. Thorne extended her hand. Warily, Marlys took it. With her other hand, Thorne thrust a knife into Marlys's side.

Marlys doubled over with pain and astonishment. Blood spilled from the wound. After the first moment of panic, she calmed herself and again caused the magic to flow through her and around the knife. Carefully, she drew it out, and the wound closed. She passed the bloody blade to Thorne, who gave it to a sorcerer next to her.

The high sorcerer smiled. "So you are a sorcerer after all."

"Marlys?" shouted Janna and Kelsie, aghast.

"Silence!" Thorne glared at them. She turned back to Marlys. "Welcome to the ranks of your equals."

Marlys then let Thorne hug her, though she did not yield. When the older woman let her go, she said, "Now, swear to me that you will never harm another sorcerer, or your life will be forfeit."

"I swear I will never harm another sorcerer, or my life will be forfeit." Marlys said, and she felt a tingle, realizing that magic had been used to enforce the oath.

"There. The spell is set," Thorne said. "Come, stand beside me at the throne as I formally present you."

Marlys followed her and took a place at Thorne's right hand as the older woman sat. She motioned for the assembly to gather around her. When they were quiet, Thorne said, "Join me in welcoming Sorcerer Marlys."

"Welcome!" "Well done!" the others shouted.

Marlys looked at all of their smiling faces, spread out her hands, and stopped time around them. All froze in their places. Marlys walked through the assembly and outside to the coach, locking all doors and gates behind her. She drove away in the coach she had arrived in, speeded by magic, with a light heart and eager spirit. All of those pitiful sorcerers and apprentices would stay in Thorne's castle until the day she released them, the day that she returned with all of her own apprentices and sorcerers, trained in her way—without malice or cruelty. Which method would convince them then? She would cheerfully wait for that day to come.