The Apprentice, Chapter 13

Unlucky 13?

So little left in this tale. Chapter 16 will be the last one, so the countdown starts here. Do you think it will end well for young Maryk? In today’s chapter he makes a big change and some big decisions. His ambition is re-ignited and plans begin to form in his mind. It’s not all about him, after all, right? The whole world might benefit from his talents. It is his duty to help!

Chapter 13: Fortress

Much of the story of the Fae was unknown to me before the Fae-Mother chanced upon me (I say “chanced upon” but of course there was no chance about it. She knew where I was, why I was there and, possibly even what was going to happen to me there.) She told me all of it. Some of it, I believe, is coloured a little in her favour. The Ens seem unfeeling and destructive in her story except that they wanted freedom, which most humans crave for themselves (I do not think this is a concept which she understands.) Meanwhile, she feels as if her whole world was destroyed by her disloyal creations.

”Where are all the Ens now,” I asked one day after a long discussion about how best to help my people progress.
“They are not here now,” she said, “I assume they failed.”
I had, once again, taken up the habit of sleeping during my years in the wilds. The reason? Well, boredom, mostly. I had lost any and all ambition and desire for knowledge. My efforts to discover new knowledge at the start proved relatively fruitless, so I soon gave up. Other than the contents of the Emperor’s spell book, there was nothing to read. I spent a great deal of time in meditation and contemplation but generally became dissatisfied with my own thoughts after only an hour or two of this. So, I ate my fruit and made sure my home was relatively clean but outside these activities I didn’t get up to much. One night, I thought I would try a little nap and to my surprise, I discovered that the knack never leaves you. I did not sleep for long, no more than a few minutes, but it felt good and I decided to continue with it. Occasionally I have wondered whether this left my mind even more open to the Fae Mother. Lying there at night, mind undefended and dreaming who knows what. But then, of course, I did not know that she was still interested in me and that she would come back to me.

She did come back to me, of course. I awoke atop my pile of skins and furs one morning to find her sitting at my table in the cabin. This was a sight that was difficult to get straight in my head as the Fae-Mother was really too tall and my chairs too small for her to have been able to do this. She seemed to bring her own illumination into my messy hovel. My house was never dirty, my spells saw to that, but when you introduced the ancient nobility of the Fae-Mother to it, it became no better than a hole in the ground, a badger’s sett. “Bugger me!” I said under my breath. “Is that what you wish of me?” Asked the Fae-Mother. I shook my head into wakefulness and tried to remember my manners. “I was just startled, Fae-Mother. Your presence here in my humble home is unexpected.” I flung my blanket back and rolled out of bed. “Is there some way I can be of service?” The book lay closed on the table; she reached out a finger to it and held it a finger’s width away. “Of the humans I have met, you are not the most disagreeable,” this sounded promising already, “but you are very, very young to wield the power that you do. What will you do with it to help your people?” I did not like this turn of the conversation so much. “Mother, I have been cursed, as I told you before. The people could not benefit from my presence.” Her dark emerald eyes stared through me to the wall behind. I actually turned to see if she was looking at something there but quickly looked back. “I did not suggest that your presence among them would be necessary. Why did you bring this, with you?” she gestured, with a flick of her long index finger, at the libram, “The magic in this thing is so great and you use it in such petty, selfish ways.” I looked at my feet and shuffled them, I peered around my little cabin and saw the conjured clothing and blankets and furniture filling it; none of them were special or grand, my food was the most basic I could imagine, water-fruit, berries, some roots that I had found. I was not using the book’s magic to enrich my life so greatly and I told her so. “My life is incredibly simple, look at how I live, this is not luxury, Fae-Mother, this is subsistence.” She stood to her full height, she seemed to grow as she stood, in fact. Her head barely below the ceiling beams, she walked around my house, picked up some silver cutlery, let it fall again, swiped her fingers across a tapestry I had conjured depicting the Great Battle at Hollinhead, rested her hands on the back of a chair and said, “It is your choice to stay here out of the way, doing no harm, using your great gifts without imagination or direction. It is your choice to ignore the plight of the rest of your people and the possibilities, the potential you have to make their lives better and easier. How are they to progress when their brightest hides away in a hovel in a dying forest, subsisting on fruit and fen-crabs? You have luxury you do not deserve. You have the luxury to decide. Your decisions afford you the luxury of apathy. If your curses hurt or kill one or two or ten or one hundred, what of it? You could be helping and saving those most in need of it. Your mortal race has such a short time on the face of the earth, they should not have to toil and suffer, should they? Don’t they all deserve the choice of doing what they want? You did.”

I was sitting on the edge of my tiny bed, in my baggy, stained bed-gown, old man’s face raising my young man’s eyes to look far above into the celestial orbs of the Fae-Mother. I was enraptured and enchanted. She had me before she had even started speaking. Her magic was so strong that she did not even need to speak to bind me in her spell but her questions and her statements bound me even tighter. I nodded to her, momentarily dumb-struck, and then swallowed. “Yes. Yes. I see it now. I have been selfish. You are correct, Mother. I must help them! Those poor people! How should I do it? Be the muse to my imagination, Fae-Mother. I need help.” She looked down, looming over me, her shadow leaving me in almost total darkness. I watched her hand unfold from her long flowing sleeve and her finger emerge from the darkness and then she touched me in the middle of my forehead and I fell back on my bed and blacked out.

When I awoke I felt different. I felt a disdain for the man I had been. I felt disgust at the meagre existence I had allowed myself to slip into. Most of all, I felt ill at the waste of my time and my mind that I had perpetrated over the preceding three years. I had had the power of the Emperor of the Fomori the entire time and I built nothing more than a still-crumbling shack and some uninspired furniture. With the magic at my disposal I could build a kingdom, or a better society. I could become the world’s greatest explorer or scholar or sage. I had done nothing but hide in filth and exist in squalor. It was fear. I believe that’s what the Fae-Mother’s touch revealed to me. It was only my fear that kept me low. It was not the kind of bloody terror you might feel when confronted by a rabid wolf when you’re in nothing but pyjamas or the senseless fear certain folk feel at the very thought of speaking in public. The fear that kept me in this dreadful place was the type that exists in all one’s actions every day, the sort that has an effect on every decision one makes and every thought one allows to be consciously considered, it is the kind one never knows is there: fear of oneself.

I was no longer afraid. Realisation of the fear’s existence robbed it of the power it held over me. I remembered then the confidence and even arrogance with which I approached life as a younger lad. I was powerful and potent and I knew it. Primula and Cobbles’ deaths had instilled the fear in me but the Fae-Mother had shown me that my power was not to be contained, it was too important for that, even if it should cost a life or two along the way. My power and my genius were enough to vindicate my actions. I could make everything better for everyone, first in Pitch Springs and then the Valley and after that? Wherever I chose.

How was I to make everything better? How can one person, even one as brilliant as I, achieve such a lofty goal? I did not know then but I hoped the Fae-Mother would agree to be my inspiration as I had asked. I was sure of myself, but I knew what the Fae-Mother was capable of (or at least I thought I knew.) she led her whole people, there could be no greater advisor (please bear in mind that I had not heard the Fae-Mother’s full story at this point.) I had to seek her out again. But first I destroyed my pathetic cabin. I stood outside the mould-ridden excuse for a habitat, The Book of Royal Magic floating beside me open to the spell, earthquake. I never performed a spell so well before. I was absolutely unerring in my words, inflection, timing, movements. The finest dancer in the court of the King of the land could not have found fault with that performance and it opened a crack as wide as Saint Frackas’ Square and swallowed my home and all my possessions except for the clothes on my back and the book by my side. I heard much later that the earthquake was felt all the way in Bakhlvad and destroyed certain of the poorer built houses in Pitch Springs. A wing of the Town Hall was severely damaged and bones were uncovered in the ruins. Perhaps yet more evidence from the time of Mayor Moltotzi. The Creakwood too was forever changed by the quake. The crevasse separated it into two woods. One side had the stream, the other didn’t. The stream side flourished more than it had in decades, the other died but fed the land. The forest that was left was no longer called the Creakwood, it was called The Emerald Wood. As I see it now, that was my greatest achievement.

At that time, however, my ambitions knew no bounds. Looking back, I know it was the effect of the Fae-Mother’s powers on me but back then I thought I could change the world for the better. I thought my power gave me the right and the responsibility to do what I knew was best without interference. I still think there were elements of my plan that made sense and the reasons for what I did were pure but this wasn’t enough to avoid disaster.

I went in search of the Fae-Mother then. I walked the Crabfen where I had first encountered her to no avail. I journeyed to the quarry at the edge of civilised lands but did not find her. I travelled to Lake Brightwater and she was not there. In the end, I returned to the Creakwood, where I thought I would set about building my new home, this time a home fit for a person with my power. I looked to the book when I got there and found a spell near the front which was called simply, Fortress. That sounded like the thing I was looking for but it was an extremely long performance, it was to be started at dawn and there were major steps to include at midday, dusk and midnight and the performance could not be stopped at any time. It seemed physically impossible. I would need plenty of nourishment and rest before I started this spell but I had already destroyed my place of rest, the cabin was crushed in the Creakwood Crevasse. I needed somewhere to go and I knew just the place.

I returned to My World, the farm. The fields had dried up and there were no animals on the land. Even the old chestnut tree was dead. The house was an abandoned ruin. This was distasteful to me; it felt as though I were taking a step back, not progressing as the Fae-Mother had told me I should be. Still, my physical needs could not be denied. The Old Sharpetzi Place had seen better days but it provided me shelter from the cold and the rain and the wind while I stored up strength for the day of performance to come. I had brought some water fruit to stave off hunger and build strength and I produced a magical flame in the grate of the fireplace. A fire had not been lit in it in years and at first smoke billowed back into the parlour, blackening the floor about it but after I sent a levitating brush up the chimney it worked as it should and I was kept warm, sitting on an old sheepskin by the fire.

I had sat there by the fire with my sister beside me, watching my father smoke as he regaled us with tales of Dead Counts, Evil Mayors, Dragon Children, Magic Bears and all sorts of other wonderful subjects. Now, the house and farm were dead, my sister was dead and I assumed my father was too. In many ways it was fitting that I should come back here, I thought. I was the last member of my family and this was our family’s place (no matter the name on the deed.) My plan had been to perform my spell in the Creakwood and build my fortress there but this place seemed more fitting the more I thought about it. I went to the back window and looked up at the top field, now a dusty waste and knew that was the spot for my new home. Was I expecting to need the protection of hill and fortress? At that point, no, although I did foresee opposition from some to whatever I had in store, which I also had not yet worked out. I would be glad of it in the end, though.

I slept that night in front of the fire and dreamt of wonders, flying horses and metal men and fairy musicians. I woke before dawn to start the performance. I walked to the top of the hill and began at the appointed time, just as the sun peeked over the trees in the east. Movement would be constant for the entire day but many of the moves were only slight, I had to do no more than walk around the perimeter for much of the performance, nodding my head and chanting. The chanting was the most draining aspect of this gruelling performance as it had to be continued without pause for the entire day. I had developed a method of circular breathing to cope with that but it was not possible to stop for a break or a drink of water. I began to think that perhaps the Fomorin mages would perform a spell like this in concert, perhaps taking turns to chant and walk to allow them time to rest. This was not possible in my case, of course. Throughout the day I had a number of visitors. A scrawny ginger cat came to sit and bathe and watch my curious work until it grew bored with my repetitions and wandered off. A kestrel circled around my head as I circled the site of my new home. Finally, the Fae-Mother appeared, standing by the old gate of the field as if she had been there all along, supervising. She said nothing, just watched me. She was there when midday came and I stopped my circling and chanting and sang a passage in old Fomori, dancing into the centre of the circle I had described, ending it when I had prostrated myself in the dust, limbs splayed in the four prime directions of the compass. I then took up the chant again and walked back and forth along those directional lines my arms and legs had indicated. This continued until dusk when I repeated the actions of midday. Once I had done this there was a noticeable golden shimmer in the air around the circle. The sparkling seemed to trace the lines of walls and arches and ramparts. I was already exhausted by this time but I drew encouragement from the results I was beginning to see. I went on chanting and walking until midnight although my throat was raw and my feet were blistered. The shimmer became more and more pronounced after the sun had gone down. Now I could make out, not only walls and arches, but also towers and minarets and outbuildings in the courtyard. On and on I walked until the moon was high in the sky and I knew the end of the performance was approaching. I actually wept when the realisation hit me and with tears streaming down my cheeks I croaked the final few syllables of Fortress as I performed the last dance in the centre of the circle, which was no longer just a circle but a courtyard with high sandstone walls around which were dotted the outbuildings, smithy, stables, tannery and in the centre right by my side was a deep covered well. I span and saw the whole thing, the four strong tall towers with banners waving from them in the night air, the great solid wooden doors with black iron trim which led into the keep’s interior, the huge gate and portcullis, the only way in or out of the fortress, the ramparts, the arrow slits, the murder hole over the gate, the flagstones of the courtyard…

I awoke in a four-poster bed draped in the most luxurious bedclothes I had ever seen. I looked around the bright, high-ceilinged bedroom at sumptuous wall-hangings, gilded candelabras and paintings in oval frames of ancient Fomorin lords and ladies all flanked by shackled smiling slaves. “You have slept long enough, I think,” It was the Fae-Mother, of course. She stood at my bedside and touched her fingertips to my forehead as I sat up. “Yes, Fae-Mother. I agree. I have been asleep for three years.” She nodded and withdrew her hand. Then she walked around the spacious room much as she had done before in my old home, touching velvet and gold and solid stone this time. “I approve of this place,” she said. “This is the home of a man of great power. It reeks of power and it was a great physical effort for you to create it. You are going in the right direction. This is progress. But it is only progress for you. What would you do for the rest of your people? How will you better your world?” I threw back the covers and found a set of new clothes laid out for me. They were very much like the clothing the Fae-Mother wore herself. I picked them up and looked at her. “A gift,” she explained “for a new beginning.” Clothing like it I had never felt on my skin before, it was light as leaves and warm as fur, it seemed to change colour depending on the surface I stood upon or the wall at my back. “Most gracious of you, Mother. many thanks.” I bowed low and she inclined her head a little in acceptance. “What would I do for the rest of my people? I want to see them have the time to pursue knowledge and art and music and happiness. I do not want to see them reduced to broken old people anymore just because they had to work so hard all their lives to keep body and soul together. Work, labour, toil, these are the curses of the everyday man and woman. I saw it every day in Pitch Springs and on this very farm as a little boy. You work and work and work and then you die. There is more to life than that. I want others to see that as I do. So that is what I would do; I would remove the need for people to work; to give them freedom.” “Indeed. Admirable. Have you considered the method you would use to achieve this? It seems like an impossible task.”
She was looking through me again. She knew the answers before I delivered them but she knew that it would help me to realise the rectitude of my plans if I could have the agreement of someone like her, a master planner. “I have thought about it, yes. The work still has to be done. Folk need food, and shelter and clothing and ironmongery and defences. It takes work to maintain all of these things that we need, there is no way around that. So, we need someone or something else to do the work,” I looked her straight in the eye, “like the Ens, your own creations.” Again she simply nodded. I thought the voicing of this idea might have elicited a shocked response but of course it didn’t. She has, no doubt, heard it all in the millennia she has existed. “The Ens. Yes. They were my best idea and my worst. You can learn from my mistake. I could teach you how to breed and grow creatures like the Ens but you would have died before the first of them grew into anything useful and they would just betray you. No, not Ens, then. You must come up with a human solution. You must discover Maryk’s solution.” She walked over to where I stood by the window and she took my hand. I felt a thrill of excitement at her touch, a feeling I never experienced with a human girl. I looked up into her eyes. “Let your curses work for you.” “my curses? I do not…” I turned to look out the window and saw the Creakwood in the distance and the sun hanging low in the sky above it. When I turned back, the Fae-Mother was gone.