Apprentice - Jo Anderton (Fantasy)

[marianne]

Unpublished manuscript
Copyright 2008 Joanne Anderton
www.joanneanderton.com

WARNING: SEXUAL CONTENT



DO NOT DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR



APPRENTICE
Book One of the EarthChild Revolution
By Joanne Anderton

Part One
The MageCouncil


1.
A moment of panic, just a moment, and the connection slipped. There was nothing I could do. No amount of fighting would keep me in the trance, no level of concentration could hold us all together. I knew this, knew it too well, but did those things anyway. Just in case.

I fell, and I brought the others down with me.

Golden leaves rustled before my eyes. The smell of moist, worked dirt teased my nose. I blinked these residue visions away.

Slowly, my equilibrium returned. I shook the image of a small, familiar farmhouse from my head and looked up to meet Szithseh's angry eyes.

"Azahra, what's wrong with you?" Her wings twitched in irritation. A ceramic bowl on a shelf behind her fell to her feathers, shattering on the cold floor.

I flinched at the noise. It echoed from rock walls and grew to fill the mountain.

"Szithseh! Be careful." Silmar glanced to the open doorway, the red spines on his back rising. "We could be heard." His green scales shimmered in the firelight.

Szithseh bristled. Her opening wings and straightening back sure signs the harpy was about to put her voice to full use.

"She's just angry." Bronald touched Szithseh's bare knee with a gnarled hand, and she settled. "You can't blame her." His earthen eyes met mine. "Can you?"

I sighed, and rolled my aching shoulders. I hadn't realised how tense they were.

"I'm sorry," I said. Again. I had spent most of the night apologising.

"It is all right, Azahra." Drylath's webbed hand reached across the circle for mine. After a moment's hesitation, I gave it to him. His turquoise scales were dry. Tiny spikes had risen along the backs of his fingers, and one caught like a pin-prick in my skin.

I frowned at him. "You're too dry."

Many lids blinked, covering his black eyes with an aqueous film. He smiled, revealing small serrated teeth. "Sitting in front of the fire will do that. I will get some water in a minute."

"You should have said something earlier." I tried to stand, but the fish-man held my hand.

"And you're trying to change the subject." Silmar extended his long neck and rested his head on my knee. Crimson eyes looked up at me, and I was reminded of a dog begging for attention. "Drylath will be fine. What about you?" The dragon's scales rasped against my leg as he spoke. Not enough to hurt, just to tickle.

"I'm fine. It's just..." They knew. Why did they need to make me say it? "I'm sorry. I'm having trouble tonight."

"We all have bad nights." Drylath tightened his hand, and I ignored the spikes.

"But I'm the only one who loses control."

I felt so small, even though I was the largest of our strange group.

"It doesn't matter." Silmar added a claw-tipped paw beside his muzzle. "We'll keep helping you. No matter how many times it takes."

Szithseh snorted, but Bronald shushed her.

I bent over to kiss Silmar's warm head. When he and Drylath teamed up they were unstoppable. So I pushed my doubts aside.

"Well, if you really want. I suppose I could try again."

"Great," Szithseh muttered. But I knew to ignore her. I glanced up and met each face in turn. Drylath's knowing smile. Silmar's over-the-top innocence. Bronald as he crossed his arms and nodded. Szithseh's grin, hidden behind a toss of her head.

In that moment, I really was one of them.

But footsteps filled the doorway before we could begin.

[marianne]

Two

Styra returned on a clear but blustery day. I awaited her arrival, alone as always, on a landing that jutted out from Argan's mountain.

The sides of my master's mountain were steep and smooth, far more so than the snow-tipped alpines I could see to the north. The landing broke that regularity close to the summit and formed a long, flat platform that led to a large entrance.

I stood at the edge and stared down past scant clouds. A furious, icy wind stung me through a woollen tunic, but still I didn't move. At times it threatened to push me over, and I leaned against it to stop myself from falling. I had waited for Styra like this more times than I could count. Always at the edge, fighting the wind for my footing.

It was my favourite place in the mountain. There, I had a choice. To stop fighting the wind and tumble to my death. Or to push against it, and return to my master.

It all started with a choice.

The image was vivid, although days had passed since we had worked our rudimentary WitchCraft to spy on families far away. A farmhouse in the night-time; a stream giggling somewhere behind me; the smell of open earth. Hundreds of hooves shuffling in the dirt, the sheep penned in for the night.

I recognised that place, its sounds and smells, too well.

The farmhouse door wouldn't be locked, but I could no longer enter my family home, even when hidden in a WitchCraft-summoned phantom form. Their guilt crippled me, sent me hobbling away. The loss of a six year old daughter who should have been sleeping safe in her small cotton-sheeted bed would never leave them. I knew they had searched for me, that they had grieved for me and thought themselves responsible for my death. How could I have been taken only rooms away from where they slept? So silently. So finally. And where did my body now lie?

WitchCraft showed me all of these things from the beginning. I knew what I had done to those left behind.

It had been my choice. I had left them, had not been taken, and followed Argan's call. The mother whose face I could not remember, the father whose laugher was gone, I knew them by the guilt they would always bear, because of my selfishness.

I shook the memory from my head and stood in daylight again, the world a haze below.

In the days since Argan discovered our WitchCraft, he had continued to gnaw on the incident like dog with an old bone. So, when Styra was due to return and he sent me up to wait for her, I was grateful. It meant a few hours away from his biting words and sharp gaze.

But I couldn't escape the memories.

I glanced into the sky several times before noticing a spot flying steadily toward the mountain.

Although not ungraceful, Styra always had difficulty landing. Her wide wings were strong enough to launch her great body into flight, but controlling her descent appeared to be a different matter. We learned early on not to comment on her clumsy 'fallings,' as Argan was known to call them, so I said nothing as she crashed onto the rock and scraped to a stop.

Gasping for breath, she tipped a dark eye on me and cocked her head.

"I'm getting better, wouldn't you say?" she said, speaking directly into my mind. Her hooked beak made it impossible for her to speak in a human tongue, and not even Argan could comprehend her complicated native language.

None of us were sure if Argan knew Styra was using WitchCraft to do this. And Grygon had told us many times that it didn't matter. Any concession from the Mage, however small, however unintended, was a triumph for us.

I didn't even pretend to answer her. "Hello, Styra."

Styra sat beside me. As always, the flawless black of her wings and the thick ruffling of her golden coat in the wind entranced me. Her large body was warm, and I stood close in an attempt to soak up some of the heat. She leant down and stroked my head with the flat of her beak.

"How are you, little chick?" Styra's mental voice was soft.

"We are not well. He is angry."

"When ever is he not?" she laughed. "Age does that to some of us."

I frowned, irritated that she had dismissed me so easily. "You don't understand."

"Shh." Styra's voice was rich and soothing, and despite myself I leaned into her fur. Her body throbbed as she began to purr.

I wanted to protest, needed to explain, but the simple comfort of her close, humming warmth was overwhelming. She was someone I could cling to, with soft fur that would absorb my tears and leave no telltale stains. I had cried out the last vestiges of my childhood into that fur, and it held my tears in silence. Styra allowed me my weakness.

"Little chick," she whispered, and I mumbled an incoherent response. "I haven't had a decent preen in days!"

With a laugh, I pulled myself from her warmth. I dug my fingers into the fur around her shoulders and scratched. She purred even louder as I kneaded and pulled small twigs and seeds from her feathers.

"You are good at this."