Mage's Path 1 Read online

  A smile formed on Jack’s face as he recalled everything that had happened. What a night! He had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. Not only had he challenged the dungeon and won, he had also managed to attract the attention of a mage far quicker than he had hoped, and even gain an apprenticeship.

  He closed his eyes and snuggled deeper into the blankets.

  Thump.

  The heavy noise had come from the direction of the chest. What was that? Jack was suddenly wide awake. He half sat up, looking for the source of the sound.

  It was the lizard.

  In the dimness of the firelight, he saw the big lizard trot across the floor toward him. Without hesitation, the lizard hopped up onto the bed beside Jack and lay down by his feet. Hesitantly, Jack reached down to scratch the lizard’s jawline, and was rewarded with a grumble of pleasure, followed by a snore.

  Well, that was unexpected, Jack thought, but I guess he’s welcome to share the bed.

  Lying back again, Jack smiled as he dropped off into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  A frantic knocking on his door woke Jack suddenly, and he sat up quickly, throwing the blankets away and looking around. He felt dazed. His sudden movement disturbed the lizard, who jumped off the bed and walked over to the hearth. It lay on the rug and curled up there again.

  Jack blinked a few times. There were still coals in the hearth. He couldn’t have slept all that long, then, but he felt surprisingly well rested. He coughed.

  The knocking was repeated, followed by a shout in the goblin-butler’s high-pitched voice. “Master Jack, Master Jack, please do wake up!”

  Something’s wrong! Jack thought sleepily, then jumped out of bed and padded barefoot over to the door. He opened it a crack and looked out.

  The corridor outside was bright with sunlight from a row of windows that had appeared along one side. Jack was certain that they had not been there the night before, but Lachlan had said that the tower’s rooms were known to change dramatically and at will.

  Ivan the goblin was almost jumping up and down in his anxiety. “Oh, thank goodness you’re awake, master!” he cried. “Master Lachlan calls for you! He’s downstairs, you must hurry!”

  “But what’s the big rush, Ivan?” Jack asked.

  “The tower is under attack!” Ivan almost yelled. “Master Lachlan saw the intruder approaching and is prepared for the defense, but they…”

  All of a sudden, a great clanging of bells filled the corridor.

  “Ah, the bells! The bells!” Ivan wailed. “The intruder must have penetrated the perimeter! Go, Jack, hurry!”

  Jack didn’t even have time to put on his boots, much less his armor. He reached around the door and grabbed his spear from where it leaned on the wall. He glanced at the lizard, but he remained determinedly asleep on the rug in front of the hearth.

  I’ll just leave the lazy creature there for now, I guess, he thought, before gripping his spear and running out the door.

  “I must see to the alarms!” Ivan called over his shoulder and dashed off up the corridor. Jack looked after him and saw him disappear through a low door at the far end of the corridor.

  Jack was alone. He had expected that Ivan would lead him down the stairs and show him where to go. Jack would just have to find his way down himself. Three floors down to the main hallway, I guess, and then see what the situation is from there.

  With his spear in hand, he turned to the stairs and headed downward, taking the steps two at a time. As he passed the first floor landing, the bells abruptly ceased. He burst out into the main hall and looked around wildly. Lachlan had specifically warned him not to go randomly exploring in the tower, and Jack was wary of getting lost within the tower’s magical hallways.

  But this was an emergency, and his master might need his help. I’ll start with the outer door, he decided. That’s going to be the least risky. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll have to take my chances inside.

  He dashed to the door that led out of the tower and put his shoulder to it. It creaked outward, opening onto a bright, sunny morning. Jack stumbled out, blinking in the bright sunlight. He looked around, expecting the ruined, creepy valley. The scene was nothing like that.

  Instead, he found himself in a well-tended garden area. The grass was neatly clipped, the path was well tended. Recently raked gravel and neat flowerbeds stretched away on either side of the path.

  There was a tall, perfectly clipped hedge on either side of him. It was tall enough to block his view, and so Jack walked warily down the path to the end of the hedge. He looked around, and saw that he was in a large, well-kept area of grounds that seemed to be divided up into individual areas by these tall hedges.

  He heard a noise, off to his left. Voices, he thought. One was certainly Lachlan’s, while the other sounded strange, high-pitched and angry. Keeping close to the hedge, and with his spear at the ready, Jack moved stealthily in the direction of the sounds.

  As he got closer, he heard a strange noise. Underneath the voices, there was a crackling like the crackle of a fire.

  The second voice is a woman, he thought as he came to a corner of a hedge-lined path. This was undoubtedly where the voices were coming from. He peered around the corner but couldn’t see anything except the edge of a flowerbed and something that seemed to be a fountain or a statue.

  Here goes, then, he thought grimly, and leaped out round the corner with his spear at the ready.

  The sight that met his eyes made him drop his battle stance and stare in amazement.

  He was looking into a circular garden bounded with hedges and with flowerbeds running around the edges. Near where he stood, there was a white stone fountain with rainbow-colored liquid pouring down from a spout shaped like a crouching lion. The liquid seemed to behave like regular water, but it was made of stripes of all the colors of the rainbow, and the colors flowed around each other as they ran across the stone and splashed into the bowl.

  But in the middle of the garden, standing on the white stones that made up most of the floor, was Lachlan—and he had a captive. He had a staff in one hand. It was made of black gleaming wood, mostly straight but for the twisted knot at the business end.

  From the deep scowl on his face, Lachlan seemed a moment away from dealing deadly justice to the intruder.

  Chapter 5

  Lachlan had his staff extended outward, and he was using magic. It was like nothing Jack had ever seen before.

  A long net, like a fishing net, was extended from the tip of the staff. But it was not made of ropes, but of a dark red substance that glowed as if it was lit from inside. It gleamed and sparkled in the sun, and little puffs of red smoke drifted out where the tip of the staff met the net.

  It was obviously magical, because it floated as if it were underwater, whereas a normal net would have fallen to the ground. The net created a spherical prison, just tall enough for a person to stand up in, and it was up in the air so the bottom of the net was a few feet off the ground.

  Trapped in the net was a woman.

  “So,” Lachlan said in a fierce voice as Jack rounded the corner. “You thought you could use your devious magic to break into my tower, did you? You fool! You’ve messed with the wrong mage today, young upstart! You’re in my power now!”

  He laughed, and Jack was struck by the idea that Lachlan was a better person to have as a friend than an enemy.

  “No, no, you idiot, you’ve got it all wrong!” the woman in the net protested loudly.

  Jack turned his attention to her. Neither she nor Lachlan seemed to have noticed him yet.

  The woman was floating in the net, suspended there as if gravity had stopped affecting her. Her golden hair floated around her head, and her green eyes blazed angrily at Lachlan. She was wearing leather armor and chainmail as Jack had been in the dungeon yesterday, but her gear was of better quality than his had been. She had a dark green cloak with a hood, and this, too, was floating about behind her as she kicked her feet uselessly at
the net.

  Her green eyes blazed furiously from her freckled face as she glared at Lachlan.

  “I’m here in response to an invitation,” she said. “No, not an invitation exactly—a summons. I was asked to come here, and given the password to bypass the glamor. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know who sent the summons, but there’s someone here who promised to teach me magic if I would only come here and make myself known!”

  Lachlan suddenly frowned and snapped his fingers, as if trying to recall something.

  “What’s your name, girl?” he asked.

  “Melinda. Melinda Mauve!”

  Jack felt his own eyes widen in surprise.

  Melinda, he thought. That was exactly the name that was on the mysterious door that appeared on the top floor near my room last night. Surely the tower can’t have known she was about to arrive?

  “Melinda,” Lachlan muttered. “Now what does that remind me of…?”

  Still holding his staff up and keeping the furious woman floating in the net, Lachlan began to pat at his robe with his left hand. He reached into a pocket and drew out a notebook. Then, awkwardly with one hand, he began to leaf through the pages.

  “Melinda,” he muttered, “Melinda Mauve… What does that remind me of?”

  “Lachlan,” Jack said, stepping forward.

  Lachlan and Melinda both turned in surprise, noticing him for the first time. Melinda had given up struggling and stood upright, her arms folded across her chest, staring haughtily down her nose at Lachlan. Now she turned her head and looked with surprise at Jack.

  Jack felt suddenly embarrassed under that piercing green gaze. He became uncomfortably aware that his hair and clothes were a mess since he’d just leaped out of bed. He was barefoot, clutching his massive spear in one hand, but without any other warrior’s gear.

  It didn’t matter that he knew he’d bravely leaped from bed and rushed to his master’s aid—all he seemed to be able to feel was the young woman’s critical gaze. Horrified, he felt a blush begin to creep up his neck. Forcing that back, he straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and reached for dignity.

  “The door, last night, Lachlan,” he said, doing his best to ignore the young woman. “The nameplate on the new door?”

  “Ah, Jack,” Lachlan said. “I’m glad you’ve come down. As you can see, we have a visitor. Yes, I remember the door, but there was something else about that which I can’t remember…”

  As he spoke, he suddenly almost dropped his notebook. He cursed, then turned to Jack and held out the black staff. “Hold this for a minute, will you?”

  “I… uh…” Jack stammered, but before he knew what had happened, Lachlan had thrust the staff into Jack’s hand and turned away, flipping through the pages of his notebook.

  “Argh!” Jack said as the weight of the staff threatened to drop the woman to the ground. It was a very strange feeling. He could sense Lachlan’s magic streaming in a steady flow from the mage to the black staff in Jack’s hands. The net on the end, with the trapped Melinda inside, did not add to the overall weight exactly, but it made the staff clumsy and heavy in a different way.

  Jack felt his own mana pool respond to the presence of this powerful magic vector in his hands, and magic began to flow unbidden through Jack’s internal pathways toward the staff.

  Firmly, Jack pushed that mana back into the pool. He did not know what would happen if his mana mixed with Lachlan’s in the vector. That might be interesting, but now was not the time for experimentation.

  He placed his feet firmly apart on the ground and tried to imitate the posture that Lachlan had held, while his master muttered over the little notebook. Normally, he would have been able to manage it, but with the magic attached, it was too heavy and unwieldy to hold up with one hand.

  Jack reached up and gripped the staff with the other hand too, keeping it at an angle so the net stayed off the ground.

  The effort of keeping his own mana in check was beginning to take a toll on him, and he felt sweat begin to bead on his forehead.

  Jack looked up to find the woman’s eyes on him. Her mouth twitched, and she seemed to be trying to hold back a smile.

  Jack met her eyes fully for the first time and suddenly felt a surge of amusement at the situation. He smiled too, and she lost control of her expression and grinned.

  They both glanced at Lachlan. He was frantically flipping through his notepad, muttering to himself. “Order for sixteen toad’s hearts… receipt for dragon essence… book on the Five Legends of Roland… shopping list for the market at Oakwood Town…”

  Jack met the woman’s gaze again. She looked at Lachlan, then rolled her eyes theatrically at Jack. Jack mouthed the word “sorry” to her and shook his head. She smiled and shrugged.

  He was getting to grips with holding onto the magical staff now, and controlling his own mana, but he still hoped Lachlan would find whatever he was looking for quickly. Suddenly, Lachlan tore a sheet from the notebook and held it up triumphantly.

  “Got it!” he shouted, approaching the net. “You’re Melinda Mauve of Shallow Den Tower? Daughter of Lord Helm of Wardlake?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I’m here to see the mage who lives at the tower! I had a letter about six months ago from a mage here, who said he’d heard of my… abilities and would be willing to take me on as an apprentice!”

  “Of course you did, of course you did!” Lachlan said genially. “Jack, release our friend here, she’s expected.”

  “Release her?” Jack asked. “I… I don’t know how!”

  Lachlan blinked at him. “Oh, sorry, of course you don’t. It’s my spell after all!” he laughed and reached out a hand toward the staff.

  Without warning, the net opened and slid into the staff in a puff of red smoke. There was a hissing sound like whips cutting through the air as the net disappeared. Jack stumbled backward as the weight of the staff changed abruptly, and at the same time, Melinda fell to the ground without warning.

  Both she and Jack found themselves sitting on the ground rather suddenly, but she leaped up, dusting herself off. Her anger was back, and her green eyes blazed at Lachlan again.

  “You…” she spluttered, pointing a finger in the mage’s face. “You ruffian! Who are you to mishandle me like this? I’ve come here to answer an invitation. Your invitation, since I guess you must be the mage of this place. And this is how you welcome me? As an attacker? A hostile person to be trapped and threatened?”

  Lachlan held up his note as if it were evidence in his defense. “It was so long ago, Melinda, and I’d forgotten all about it until I read this note I made at the time. I had given up on seeing you, and reached out to another apprentice, young Jack here.” He gestured at Jack. “I didn’t think you were coming, and I’d put it entirely out of my mind. When you used the password, well, I obviously thought that someone had breached the tower’s defenses by stealth. You can’t blame me for defending my territory.”

  That sounded reasonable to Jack, but Melinda seemed unconvinced. She let out a loud, disdainful “Hmph,” turned on her heel, and began to stalk away out of the courtyard.

  “Melinda Mauve,” Lachlan said quietly.

  Jack almost jumped at the change in his voice. He had gone from jovial and placating to stern and serious in the blink of an eye. Jack looked at him and saw that his posture had changed dramatically. He seemed taller, and Jack saw a flicker of shadow around his head and little flashes of blue lighting for a moment on his horns. Magic seemed to be exuding from his very body, and his yellow cat’s eyes glowed dangerously.

  Melinda froze where she stood, but did not turn. “What?” she asked coldly.

  “How long have you been on the road?” Lachlan asked.

  Reluctantly, Melinda turned to face him. “Three months,” she said. “Two to get from Wardlake to Oakwood Town, then another month to find my way to this tower.”

  “And why have you come?”

  “I told you—
because I was invited…”

  “No,” Lachlan said. “That’s not why. You didn’t have to come in response to the invitation. Why did you come?”

  “Because…” Melinda said slowly.

  She glanced at Jack, then back at Lachlan.

  The fight seemed to go out of her. Her shoulders slumped, and she hung her head.

  “Because I have this… ability,” she said. “This magic that no one has ever seen before. That no one is willing to accept. Because nobody else will train me, and when I got your offer, I thought… Oh, damn it, I thought maybe there was someone, somewhere, who would accept me as I am, without trying to force my magic into some shape that fit their pre-arranged conclusion! That’s why I came, all right?”

  She glared at Lachlan again, and he met her eyes steadily.

  “Now, you have a choice,” he said. “I like your spirit, girl, and I like your anger. I can take a bit of cheek from a pupil, that’s fine. I don’t demand respect just because I’m your teacher. But what I do demand is commitment. You have a choice now. Winter is on the way. You can turn around and try your chances on the road back to Wardlake and your father’s lands, but if you do, I swear that this training will always be closed to you. You will never have this chance to learn with me again. Or, you can stay here, with me and Jack, and learn why your magic is as unique a gift as has ever been seen in this age of the world.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Choose,” Lachlan said, sternly.

  “Very well,” the girl said. She squared her shoulders again, and Jack’s heart lifted as he watched her gather her strength again. She smiled at Lachlan. “That’s fair. I choose to stay, and learn what you have to teach.”

  Jack breathed a sigh of relief as the tension released. Lachlan bounded forward, his hand outstretched. The severe aspect was gone, and he seemed to slip easily into the role of jovial, fun-loving tutor again. He shook her hand enthusiastically.