First Apprentice

Chapter 29 Part 1

Bone deep exhaustion weighed me down like a lead blanket, pressing my skin against the scratchy wool blanket that separated my back from the unforgiving stone floor.

Funny how the floor matched my mood.

Chains rattled in my mind and flames roiled in my veins. I clenched my fists until claws pricked my palms and shoved my rage aside before I caught my bedding on fire.

Contrary to Endellion's belief, fire does not solve all problems. Torching Headquarters would not heal my sealers. It would not make Amit a decent being or undo the past. While my blood boiled in my veins with the desire to teleport down to the valley and give Amit, the healers, tradesmen, and the faceless bastard who sent my people up here to die a personal demonstration of how a master sealer acquires their third stripe, I didn't. It might make me feel better, but it would cause more problems than it solved.

Damn logic. Damn Joel for talking me into this, Grandfather for boxing me into a corner, Uncle Manfred for allowing it, and Endellion for not being there.

Endellion knew. She'd never admit it, but I knew she knew about Grandfather's plans. If she hadn't, Grandfather's manor would be a cooling obsidian lake right now. It wasn't.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. The waterfall crashed against the stones, drowning out my sealers soft breaths but not Stefan's snores. That one snored louder than Uncle Manfred.

Memories welled behind my eyes: black flames on white shrouds, Amit's smug amusement, and Kevin's white-knuckled rage. That order sent Kevin, his brother, and dying sister up the mountain to die and Amit laughed. Sitting in that office, I wished Kevin had basic instruction in our clan magics and how to listen to his instincts. A five-second aes demonstration would have solved the Amit issue.

Or not. By all accounts, his apprentice Priya was worse. If anything happened to Amit, Priya would hold his seat until the Seven presented a replacement to the Well just like Mitra currently held Grandfather's.

I stared up at the ceiling, watching pinpricks of light dance across it like shooting stars. I rolled over and peered into the memory crystal that rotated slowly above its seal-engraved dish, which was the only item I'd kept from my bedroom. The glowing quartz pulsed in time with my heartbeat, providing the sole source of light within the subplane. In four days, it would turn black. On day five, it would shatter.

Uncle Manfred used a diamond. Once attuned, a single diamond could last a lifetime. They also held more information, but diamonds of that size and quality were rare and better used as healer's foci. Quartz was cheap, easily replaced, and worked straight out of the ground.

Magic brushed against mine, a dozen different signatures at once all poking and pinching, testing. It should set my teeth on edge. Instead, I took each poke as silent confirmation that my candidates still lived. My magic hadn't killed them et.

Yet. The word echoed in my mind. I pushed the blanket back and rolled to my feet. My claws clicked against the floor as I threaded my way through my sleeping sealers towards the testing chamber, which currently doubled as our infirmary.

Ice flooded my veins as I slipped inside the chamber. I stopped at the entrance, blinking away spots while I let my magic seep into my surroundings. Until last night, I could count on one hand the number of people I'd allowed inside my subplane and still have fingers left over. It never occurred to me that I could sense Endellion long before I saw her or that I used that sense to mentally prepare myself because I knew she was there.

Subplanes did not have that buffer. Daes seemingly appeared out of thin air within arms reach. Stopping immediately inside the entrance was the only buffer we could currently provide. I hoped it would be enough, but deep down I suspected more than one fight would arise when someone inadvertently invaded another's personal space, likely mine.

Dozens of thumb-sized glows floated near the ceiling like candles, bathing the testing chamber in dim light. Chalked runes covered the walls, seals for heat and a strange combination of runes that looked like someone tried to cancel out the magic nullification wards. Five occupied cots, two per side with one in the center, were squeezed into the space I reserved for a folding table and stool. The etching press I used to copy seals before I tested them and my chalkboard were missing.

Did they levitate them out and stash them inside one of the storage seals inside my study or did they use one of the coin-sized seals I gave Philip for supplies?

It didn't matter. Without a magic-free room, I couldn't work on my transformation seal anyway.

I pushed the thought aside for later and scanned the room, noting how only five sealers merited a raised cot. The rest were laid out on folded blankets much like we had in the study. A folding canvas bathtub occupied one corner of the room along with a few trunks stenciled with the healer corps's sword and chalice, a chamber pot, and a small cask that looked like the one I used for cruju supplies.

Magic slammed against mine, gritty like dust rising off of carriage wheels and steadfast. It reminded me more of Xian's than Diane's fortunately. Diane's magic did not encourage trust. If anything, hers felt like I was two seconds away from a knife between my shoulder blades, definitely not someone I wanted at my back.

A slender woman clad in an unbleached linen ritual robe ducked as she appeared in the far corner—an instinctive reaction. It took me six months before I trained myself to not duck every time I entered my study. For a split second, the darkness closed in on you and it seemed like there was a low hanging doorway when there was actually air.

Jagged Huxian 'M's littered her deep purple aura like hundreds of stylized crags writ in beaver brown, cornflower blue, and grass green. I breathed a sigh of relief and silently thanked the Mothers that Helen found a guardian healer powerful enough to heal most of my candidates without needing a ritual chamber. The chamber would speed things along though.

The question remained whether her healing skills matched her power, but I suspected they did. Only master healers used diamond foci and senteris plates, both items Philip acquired for the ritual chamber at her request.

She nodded to me then pointed to a trunk stacked with papers. A folded blanket lay on the floor as a makeshift cushion and four shin-high ward stones demarcated a line between my candidates and the tiny space she'd designated as an office, storage, bathing facilities, and who knew what else. It wasn't large enough for bed space, not if she wanted to be able to access her patients from both sides.

My temples throbbed as the amulet forced a link open.

"A uni-directional silencing ward," an alto voice whispered. "Perfectly safe, I assure you."

I narrowed my eyes at the ward then glanced at the guardian. Her fingers dipped under the neck of her tunic and tugged out an amulet identical to the one hanging around my neck. I froze.

Since the Border Guard's founding, the Seven and their apprentices contributed over three-hundred guardians. Each one retained their amulet. Grandfather said the first chief Rainer allowed it as a mark of gratitude. Uncle Manfred said Rainer wouldn't have known gratitude if it bit his balls off. Endellion waltzed away, humming a seal under her breath. Judging by her reaction, gratitude had little to do with Rainer's reasons.

In that time, only one left the gates and Krishna still returned to the Central Keystone every night. Why would one of them take a job that guaranteed they wouldn't see their gate for two years minimum?