First Apprentice

Chapter 19 Part 1

Author's Note: If you have not read Chapter 18 (set in Joel's sort of office) posted on Thursday, January 4, please read it first. If you received the notification on Thursday, great! I had a heck of a time posting and received no notifications for anything until around 3 am Saturday.

Joel stepped inside my study and froze. I spotted my short stays and chemise soaking in the laundry sink beside the entrance and grimaced. Placing the laundry adjacent to the entrance was my brilliant idea.

Strip off my filthy training clothes, toss them in the laundry sink to soak, then proceed directly to the heated waterfall and a bar of soap. If I had time, I'd fill the copper tub to the brim and soak away the aches.

The setup kept me from tracking blood and dirt into the living and study areas—an absolute necessity given my ongoing seal experiments. Contaminating my workspace guaranteed an explosion, which was always a possibility with experimental seals.

My study began life as a tiny bedroom with a mattress shoved against the wall, a trunk of clothes, and a chamber pot. It was so tight that my feet touched the mattress when I peed. As I refined the seals, the space grew into a rectangular cavern with actual furniture, bathing facilities, and other creature comforts. Most importantly, it was invisible and inaccessible to everyone unless I personally keyed them into the wards. I built it as a private retreat and it showed.

There were no walls. A few paper screens and opaque wards around the bathing area provided a little privacy. If the clans ever came for Grandfather or he needed better care than Xhian and his magical bag of tricks could provide, I could use it to move Grandfather through the gates without exposing him to their magics in theory.

Uncle Manfred wouldn't let Endellion take him through a gate. Endellion wouldn't volunteer herself as a test subject. I wasn't allowed.

None of the furniture matched and most pieces had seen better days. I owned four mugs, three plates, a bent assortment of eating utensils, a few worn chairs, and a stool. Everything else was bookshelves, banged up tables, plants growing in makeshift containers, and experiments in various stages. Blueprints of my transformation seal hung from clothespins. The three flat files I purchased from an estate sale contained finished spare seals and photographs of ongoing experiments. The glass negatives I stored in another subplane, well away from anything dangerous.

A treadle sewing machine was pushed against the wall to the right of the entrance. Beyond that, two wardrobes standing end to end formed a makeshift wall. They combined with one of the screens separated my bed from everything else. I learned early on that if I could see it, I would think about it. Laying in bed while staring at a half-finished project guaranteed I wouldn't sleep.

My study was my pride and joy. At the moment, it was also my greatest embarrassment.

"When you said study, I expected a trunk filled with books and a travel desk stashed in that bracelet of yours, not this. It's surprisingly nice for a cave. You'll have to show me how you built it."

"I thought Marstow hate caves," I said. Well, Uncle Manfred hated caves. After five minutes inside my study, his body shook like autumn leaves caught in a gale and his magic lashed the walls, searching for a way out.

Joel trailed his hand over the walls, magic swirling off his fingertips as he examined every seal from the subplane seals to the wards to the lights. Most weren't anything special, just the same everyday seals the clans and Border Guard employed to make their homes livable. I found them in a book in Grandfather's library, swapped the power arrays out with keyed ambients because I didn't want to bother with maintaining them, and slapped them on the walls and ceiling.