The stone wall curled behind her with a thunderous grating sound, sealing Stella into the tunnel with the evil sorcerer. Elrick’s footsteps continued toward his tower, echoing off the stone walls. Stella tried to follow the sound, but the echoes deceived her, and she bumped into a wall when the tunnel turned. The two skeletons behind her took her by the elbows and guided her the rest of the way.
The tunnel opened into a cellar that seemed much larger than the tower’s footprint. It was filled with shelves and shelves of jars, many of which were stuffed with slimy-looking things that Stella couldn’t identify. The space that wasn’t full of shelves was occupied by a large ring of skeletons, all working on something in the center. Stella couldn’t make out what it was through the screen of blackened bones, but the sounds were of things slipping, clacking, and shlooping, and it smelled nasty.
Elrick wrinkled his nose and scowled, then gestured for Stella to follow him up a set of stairs. The room above was even bigger than the cellar. Recognizing the tower’s front door, Stella concluded that the room’s size had to be a magical expansion. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all of smooth obsidian, painted orange by the infinitely curving reflection of the fire that blazed in the center of the floor, lighting up the whole room. A pile of empty cloth bags lay by the front door. A row of blackened skeletons sat along the east side of the wall. Most were idle, but some were plucking birds, and one was skinning a rabbit. A huge pile of fur lay at the end of the row of skeletons. It seemed to breathe. As Stella watched it, eyes blinked open, and the thing stood up on four legs and yapped. It was the size of a cow but looked like a badger. A badger with a head as big around as its body and a glowing pearl embedded in its forehead. When it yapped, it showed four rows of pointed teeth in a mouth two feet wide.
“Quiet down,” Elrick said, and the beast fell silent. The evil sorcerer turned to Stella. “Let me make it abundantly and expressly clear to you that I detest being around people.” Stella nodded, and he turned away and started pacing. “The only reason I don’t just kill you now is the fanatics would just find another person and turn this ‘apprentice’ charade into another of their ridiculous rituals, and then I’d have to endure even more of their blather.”
At least I know he has a reason to keep me alive, Stella thought, nodding again.
“Secondly,” he said, “I already know you’re only here to spy on me.”
Stella froze, her breath turning to ice. He knows I want to spy on him?
“The fanatics want you to tell them everything about my methods and plans. Well, I don’t intend to let you see anything of worth to them.”
That makes more sense. Her intentions to observe him were directly connected to her intent to kill him. He didn’t know she was there to spy. He’d just been speculating. Stella breathed a sigh of relief, then realized she could use his speculation to her advantage. “You’re right,” she said, “They sent me here as a spy, but that’s not why I agreed to come.”
He snorted. “Why else?”
“I want to learn magic. I’ve studied it for years, but I only ever managed a little ice bolt. So when the fanatics offered me the position of apprentice to Elrick the Ineffable, the greatest sorcerer on the face of Dracon, well, you can understand why I jumped on it.”
“Even if the price was spying on your teacher?”
“I never would have told them anything. I decided to tell you their plan as soon as possible, and now I have.” She knelt before him, clasping her hands together. It made her stomach twist in disgust, but it had to be done to sell the part. “Please, sir. It is my dearest wish to be your student.”
“I don’t have patience for teaching. I should just send you to work with the skeletons.”
“But sir, think of the fanatics. If they don’t get any information, they’ll keep pestering you. Like you said, they’ll find other people for their charade. It won’t matter to them whether I’m alive or not. If they realize I can’t get them anything, they’ll assume they need a better spy and throw more people at you. Like you said, another ridiculous ritual to pester you.”
He glared down at her. “You speak as if you have a solution. Spit it out.”
“You write the reports, sir. Tell me exactly what to tell them: petty things, useless things, even false things. If you teach me magic, I will tell them exactly what you instruct me to tell them, word for word. This way, the fanatics are pacified and won’t increase their pestering, and I get to learn magic.”
“I told you, I don’t have patience for teaching. I like this idea about the reports, though.” He rubbed his chin, his glare softening as he began to pace again. “Yes, I do like that. It’s settled. I’ll give you a report to deliver to the fanatics, and they’ll stay off my back about this. But I’m not going to teach you. You can spend your days in the library, out of my way.”
“That’s not the deal I’m offering, sir.”
He snapped his glare back down at her, his black eyes flashing with fire. “You are not in a position to negotiate. You can take this deal, or I will take your life.”
“It’s you who can’t negotiate, sir. Remember, if you kill me, the fanatics will just send another person. Someone with different motivations, different dreams. The chances of getting an offer like mine again are abysmal.”
The sorcerer’s face contorted with fury, and he stretched out his right hand. A fiery arm extended from his palm and reached toward her. Then he stopped. The flaming arm dissipated, and his fury slackened into grumpiness. He went back to pacing. He knows I’m right, Stella thought, Now he just has to find a way to admit it.
It took him a couple minutes of pacing to find it. At long last, he came back to glower down at her once more. “One hour per day,” he said. “No more. Is that acceptable?”
“An hour of magic lessons?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Yes, sir. Perfectly acceptable.”
He huffed and nodded again. “Good. Now get out of my sight.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Go into town. Pick up some…” He waved an impatient hand. “Oh, I’ll have a skeleton bring you a list. Show the shopkeepers your brand, and they’ll send the bills to the cult. Not that that would be necessary half the time.”
“Sir?”
“Go! And don’t come back before sundown.”
Two idle skeletons rose and pushed Stella toward the door, and another came up the stairs, scribbling on a pad of paper. Before she could say anything, she was on the rocky ground outside the tower, a scrap of paper and a brown cloth bag were stuffed in her hands, and the door was slammed shut.
Stella gaped at the door, shoulders slumping. Her surprise gave way to indignation and frustration, and she glared at the list in her hand. This did not bode well for her plans. With the sun only beginning to rise, sundown was nearly fifteen hours away. Fifteen hours before she could study Elrick’s behavior, search his tower for clues about his strengths and weaknesses, or anything else she could use to get revenge against him.
On top of that, the list only had six things on it. Collecting them all would only take a fraction of those fifteen hours. What under Thuban’s eye am I supposed to do with all that extra time?
“Stella!” Vatran’s voice called. He and Tarant were leaving the viewing tower and approaching her. A few orange figures stood atop the viewing tower, and Stella assumed they had been watching for her to exit the sorcerer’s tower. Since she had plenty of time to kill, she waited for them to reach her.
Tarant wore his customary expression of inexplicable delight. “It went well, then? Of course it did. I knew you’d be fine.”
“Yes, yes,” Vatran said. “You’re going into town, then, Stella?”
She nodded. “He wants me to pick up some things.”
Vatran nodded. “I thought he might. I’ve assigned Tarant to escort you while you’re in town. I’m sure he can help you find anything you need. You know all the best places, don’t you, Tarant?”
“Oh, yes, Magister Vatran. I’m sure she’ll like—”
As Tarant went on about his favorite places in town, Vatran leaned in and whispered to Stella, “You remember our deal, Little Star?”
Stella scowled and nodded.
Vatran smiled that deceitful smile of his. “Good. Tarant is instructed to report to me regarding anything you do or say that violates that deal. As long as you stay in line, your mother will stay alive.”
“— Don’t you think, Magister Vatran?” Tarant finished.
“Yes, of course, Tarant. Now go on. Stella has some shopping to do.”
Tarant sighed as he and Stella started down the mountain. “Isn’t he great?”
“Yeah,” Stella said drily, “Almost as great as Elrick.”
Tarant laughed, oblivious to the subtext of her remark. “Ah, you’re so lucky. You must get to hear all the best stories from his own mouth. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“It’s been less than an hour,” Stella said. “The only thing he’s told me is to go shopping.” She glanced at his wistful face, an idea striking her. “I don’t suppose you could tell me any stories about him?”
Tarant’s face lit up even more brightly, and he launched into the history of Vulcan Valley: Elrick arriving centuries before and building his tower, the valley growing lush and beautiful in the absence of the lava flow, and the village’s establishment almost eighty years before the present.
Stella listened for any hints about Elrick’s strengths and weaknesses, hoping Tarant’s talkative nature would yield some tidbit she could use. Most of it was useless. All she learned from the history was that Elrick was centuries older than he looked. If she wanted anything substantial, she’d have to dig a little deeper.
“And the village has thrived since then?” she asked. “It never had any conflict or disaster to threaten its security?”
“That’s right. Elrick has taken good care of us.”
Stella had to suppress a snort before asking, “And no one’s ever tried to disrupt the peace? Let’s say, a deluded meddler trying to assassinate Elrick?”
“Now that you mention it, there have been things like that. Quite a few, actually. But they never caused too big a stir.”
“How’s that? Were they weak attempts?”
“Oh, no.” Tarant laughed. “Several would have been successful against an ordinary man.” He counted on his fingers. “One assassin shot him in the eye, two shot him in the heart, one poisoned him, and one even managed to decapitate him. There were more that I can’t remember, but none of them worked, obviously.” He laughed again.
“Obviously.” Stella frowned. “So he’d just heal himself? Would that be the end of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said it wouldn’t cause much of a stir. Were the assassins dismissed, or were they just too discouraged to stick around?”
“You’re joking, right? They were all caught and executed.”
“With fire?”
Tarant stopped and raised an eyebrow. “You really are joking. Death by Elrick’s fire is immediate and unconditional salvation. You don’t honestly think he’d give that to his assassins, do you?”
“No, you’re right. It was a bad joke. How, then?” Part of Stella wanted to know in case it gave any clues about Elrick. The other part was morbidly curious about what would happen to her if she were caught.
Tarant shrugged and shook his head. “Elrick insisted his would-be assassins were to be executed in a specific way: drawn and quartered, then fed to a pig. I’ve never seen it myself, but they say Elrick would cut them open himself and pull out their hearts, but I think that’s a rumor since they were always alive enough to scream as the horse was pulling them to the pig pen. Then the people would offer the pig to Elrick, and he’d give it a slow death by fire, letting its screams echo through the valley. So no, not much of a stir.”
Stella couldn’t muster a response to that, especially with the calm way he said it. So she reviewed her list. She gaped. “He sent me for vegetables?”
“Vegetables?”
“Yes. Carrots, potatoes, onions, and garlic. Butter and salt, too.”
“To the vegetable market, then.”
Stella nodded, wondering why in the world Elrick would send her with such an innocent-seeming shopping list.
They found Claude operating the root stand in the vegetable market. “What are you doing here?” Stella asked him.
Claude shrugged. “I’ve got to cover room and board somehow, at least until my mother is healed.”
Stella frowned. “I’m sure she’d rather have you with her. She wouldn’t want you risking your life out here on the off chance she gets better.”
Before Claude could respond, Tarant tugged Stella away. “You can’t say things like that, Stella.” She bit her lip, remembering her deal with Vatran. Would Tarant report this? But no, his expression was worried, not threatening.
“What do you mean?”
Tarant looked about, then whispered, “People who say things like that tend to disappear. They don’t come back. They lose their chance at serving Vulcan.” He looked around again, then continued, “There’s a monster that hides in the shadows, listening for things like that. I call it Saturn. It comes out at night and eats the people it suspects of doubt, consigning their souls to an eternity of torture between its teeth.”
Stella frowned. “Did Vatran tell you all that?”
He shook his head. “Most of it I figured out myself, but Vatran confirmed it when I asked him about it.” He met her eyes with genuine concern. “I don’t want it to get you, Stella.”
She nodded slowly. “I’ll be more careful. There’s no need to tell Vatran about this though, right?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you attracted the monster, but you were getting close, so I just thought I’d warn you about it.”
Stella thanked him cordially and went back to Claude to buy the vegetables. She spent the rest of the daylight hours mulling over her various worries: worries for her mother, worries about how deeply brainwashed Tarant was, and worries about what Elrick would do to her if she failed to kill him.