ONE

The crash of broken glass woke Harpyn Freeble from his sleep, his eyes popping open in alarm. Another intruder? So soon?

Rubbing his eyes, he sat up and reached for his robe, hanging on the chair beside his bed. As he pulled it over his head, his mind raced with worries and questions. But a grumbling sound from the main room put his worries to bed.

“Should’ve known,” Geor murmured to himself as Harpyn emerged from his room.

“Should’ve known what, sir?” Harpyn asked, rubbing his eyes and watching Geor shuffle around the shattered glass toward the work table at the center of the room.

Atop the work table sat a variety of glass vials along with some very mysterious looking pouches and a mortar and pestle. All of this was surrounded by enough candles to burn down an entire village, hundreds of little flickering flames casting the room in a wavering sort of light. Looking past the work table, Harpyn could see the window on the far side of the room, and he could tell that it was still the middle of the light. Only the barest hint of moonlight filtered in.

“Ah, nothing,” Geor answered, waving a hand dismissively in Harpyn’s direction. “Why don’t you go downstairs and fetch me some more of that powdered ivory?”

Harpyn frowned, wondering why the Mage Consul was up at this late hour, and what he needed with powdered ivory of all things.

“I’m afraid I can’t, sir. The merchant didn’t have any last time I was in Torg Uyen. He said it might be in this week. Perhaps I can go back to the village and check tomorrow when the sun is up?” he asked hopefully, scratching at the thin hair that flopped loosely over his brow.

“Ach! Tomorrow? No, no. It’s all right. If there’s no powdered ivory, I suppose I can make do with a bit of ground tagua seed. I believe I had some in storage just in case.”

Geor picked up a vial and held it up in the shifting light, examining it closely and smacking his lips. When he was satisfied, he removed the stopper and poured some of the powder into the mortar before turning back to Harpyn.

“Well? What are you waiting for, boy? Grab the tagua seed. We’ve got work to do!”

Alarmed by Geor’s insistence, Harpyn took a few steps toward the trapdoor that led down to the storage cellar at the base of the mage’s tower. Ordinarily, he would not be so afraid of going down into that dark, dusty old room. However, after recent events, he had developed some misgivings about what was to be found along the spiral stairs. Namely, he had discovered a hidden room along the outer wall of the tower, and it seemed that the objects residing in that room had a penchant for violence.

Behind Harpyn, Geor cleared his throat loudly, obviously dissatisfied with his apprentice’s obedience to orders. Swallowing his fear, Harpyn lifted the latch on the trapdoor and lowered himself out of Geor’s sight.

“About time,” Geor groused from up above, but Harpyn was already ignoring his master as he slunk along the wall, inching toward the place where that hidden door had appeared.

As he drew closer and closer to the hidden door, he waited for the sounds of the creatures inside, but they never came. Tentatively, he set one toe on the landing, preparing to leap back if one of the enchanted weapons came flying through the doorway, but again, nothing happened. Breathing a sigh of relief, he skittered past the landing and down the next flight of stairs, practically leaping to the ground below and ducking into the storage room.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Standing there, surrounded by dusty old crates and cobwebs, he leaned against the wall and took a few steadying breaths. All he had to do was find the tagua seeds and bring them back up the same way he’d come down. If the hidden vault was truly sealed again, it would be as easy as pie. But that was a big if… ever since Geor had been attacked in that room, he didn’t seem quite right in the head, and Harpyn wasn’t sure he could trust the old man’s magic. In fact, that was part of the reason he was so skeptical about Geor’s late night spell weaving on this occasion as well. The Mage Consul needed his rest, and more than anything, he needed to tell Harpyn what had really happened so Harpyn could be better prepared for next time, if there was a next time.

Looking about the room, Harpyn soon realized that the tagua seeds were nowhere to be found. If they had been here, Geor must have used them on some other occasion. Or it was possible there hadn’t been any at all. More than once the old man had sent Harpyn on fruitless searches of the store rooms just to get him out of the way.

Harpyn was convinced the Mage Consul hated him, but he could not determine why. All his life he had dreamed of being an apprentice mage, learning all about the old magic, finally having some form of power to wield for himself. Instead, he often found himself sweeping up after Geor’s messes or fetching food at the market, but he had not learned a single bit of magic himself, and this fact was starting to rankle.

“The seeds, boy! I need them!” Geor cried from the top of the tower, his voice bouncing off stone walls of the tower’s interior.

Harpyn jumped, shooting a nasty look back up the stairs although he knew Geor couldn’t see him. Frustrated and tired, Harpyn lifted the top off of the nearest crate and chose a random vial, squinting at the label on the side. Mongoose teeth. He rattled the vial and it made a little tinkling sound. No, this wouldn’t work.

He selected another vial, this one filled with a pale yellow powder. Some kind of root he’d never heard of. With a shrug, he slid the crate’s lid back in place and darted back up the stairs, casting a wary look at the wall as he leapt over the cursed landing and threw himself up through the trap door.

“Found it!” he said, panting as he tried to recover his breath.

Geor merely smacked his lips disapprovingly again and took the vial from his hand. Without stopping to examine the contents, Geor yanked the stopper free and tipped the vial into the mortar, producing a small puff of yellowish smoke. Harpyn froze, afraid that Geor would realize something was wrong, but the old man did not seem perturbed by the little explosion in the least.

As Geor carried on his mixing and mumbling, Harpyn slipped sideways along the edge of the room, reaching for his door handle. So long as the old man was occupied, Harpyn could get a few more hours of sleep. Tomorrow, he was sure he’d have a full day of chores and meaningless busywork to appease his master.

Just as his hand hit the door handle and he breathed a sigh of relief, Geor whirled on him abruptly. “The broom, boy! Don’t just leave this mess here!”

His sigh turned to frustration and his shoulders slumped as he marched across the room and grabbed the broom. Working quickly, he cleaned up the shards of glass and the white powder from the floor, dumping it all into a bin beside the work table.

“Anything else, sir?”

Geor seemed to think on this for a long moment, chewing his lip before shaking his head. “Be gone with you. A boy your age needs your rest if you’re to learn to use that brain.”

He chuckled to himself as he waved Harpyn away, picking up yet another vial and tapping the edge on the mortar to shake out a few bits of something else into his concoction.

Shaking his head, Harpyn retreated back to his room and pulled the door closed behind him. He could still hear the rustling of Geor’s feet along the wooden floorboards, and occasionally there was a clink of glass as the old man knocked something over. As much as he wanted to sleep, Harpyn knew he could never relax knowing that old Geor was out there surrounded by open flames and so many dangerous ingredients. It would be a wonder if the tower was still standing by morning, he thought.