THE MAGICIAN’S APPRENTICE

Oldest story in the book. I fell in love with my master. Then she died. Then I tried to resurrect her.

Well, maybe not the oldest. But pretty old.

I didn’t like her when we met.

And yes, I know that’s a cliché, too.

I thought she was one of those women who have it in for men. I thought she would make sure I never did anything right. I didn’t think she was particularly beautiful.

She had a crooked front tooth that you might not notice at first, but if she smiled—or yelled at you really loud—then it gaped at you. She didn’t know how to dress. She wore the most godawful gowns. A hundred years old, at least. She had to have been shopping in the thrift store next to the cemetery or something. And they never fit her, either. She bought ones too long, so they dragged in back, or too short so they showed the dirty socks she wore under her less than feminine boots.

Her hair was a non-descript shade of brown long and scraped back into a pony tail, except for the strands that fell lankly around her face. She had freckles on her nose, not so much like a little girl, but like someone who spent too much time in the sun and never bothered with a parasol (which was true; she didn’t.) Her nose was too big, and her chin was too long.

The first thing she said to me was, “I hope you’re not as stupid as you look, standing there with your mouth open like that.”

I closed my mouth immediately, of course.

But that tells you the kind of woman she was. She spoke her mind and never thought twice about it. Not with me, her apprentice, but not with anyone else, either. She told the Duke what he could do with his offer to make her a court magician. And she told the magician next door what he could do with his marriage proposal.

“I’m not interested in using my magic to soothe away the aches on your bunion-encrusted feet, or in making delicious meals so that you can belch in my company and then demand I kiss you.”

He wasn’t happy with her, let me tell you. He retaliated by sending a cloud of rain over to my master’s doorstep constantly.

My master just laughed the first time she saw it, and got out an umbrella, which she shared with me.

Her clients did not tend to come to her, anyway. She was a good enough magician that they sent carriages to her.

Eventually, the rain spout spell wore out, but she never retaliated, and whenever she stepped outside, she always checked to see if it was raining.

I think I may have fallen in love with her then. She looked very fetching under an umbrella. It took years off her face.

And a woman who does not get mad easily, or take revenge, is very tempting indeed. My mother had been the kind of woman who took offense at everything and burned dinners often. She glowered and grumbled all day long.

I suppose I should have gotten enough of it early on, but then there was Lisette, the woman I first kissed. She was a year older than I was, and a shrew. Of course, I only discovered this after I kissed her and she decided that her new purpose in life was to make sure than I did not enjoy a moment of it, with or without her.

She was one of the reasons that I was in the marketplace, the day my master came by. I’d originally planned to go to the university, taking classes one or two at a time, while working on the side at one of the assistant jobs the university offers. Lisette wasn’t happy with that. She wanted me to work for her father, who was a furrier. The thought of spending the rest of my life preparing animal hides was enough to make me reconsider my life plan.

Also, Lisette knew where the university was.

She’d find me there, no matter what I told her. I’d already tried twice to break our “engagement,” as she insisted on calling it, after that first stolen kiss. She wouldn’t listen. And by that I mean, she would start throwing things at me. Large things. Heavy things. Or things with sharp edges.

I figured I needed to find a place to stay where Lisette could not find me. And it wouldn’t hurt if there were someone very powerful and large involved.

So there I stood, in the marketplace, along with twenty-odd others, most of them from ten to twelve years old, as apprentices should be, most of them with lice or some other nasty disease, as apprentices are, whether their master want it not.

I was clean, full grown, and intelligent. I thought I would be one of the first chosen.

It was nearing dark when she came along.

She had a light in her hand, obviously magical, but it was perfectly round and tinted slightly rose-colored. That was what I was gaping at when she made her remark about my intelligence.

“I’ll take you, then,” she said. “If you’re willing.” She put her hands on her hips and waited for me to make up my mind.

I had a choice. I could go home and be with Lisette again, then come tomorrow and hope that I had better luck the second time around. Or I could go with her.

“The others like them young, so they can bully them.” She made a face. “Hardly more than slavery. They never learn to think for themselves, magically speaking. What a waste. Some of them could be fine magicians on their own. But their masters wouldn’t want the competition, now would they?” she asked me.

I did not know what to say.

“Well? Afraid of me? I won’t unman you, if that’s what you think.” She stared me up and down, taking in all my attributes, and very nearly unmanned me then.

It didn’t contribute to warm feelings for her.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll come.”

“I’m grateful for your service,” she said, with a slight bow.

At the time, I thought it was sarcasm, but I know better now. She had sharpness and kindness in equal measure, and she had been coming to the marketplace to find an apprentice for weeks at that point. She had decided she would have to wait until there was one very desperate indeed, who would be willing to work for a woman. That was why she had come so late.

But even so, she had not expected me to agree to it.

She had rather thought that a pretty boy like me would decide he had better things to do. Or at least, that it would take two days in the marketplace, possibly one in snow, before I would agree to go with her.

I followed her, away from the marketplace, to her old, shambling farmhouse near the edge of the town. I thought she made me walk on purpose, to let me know my place. I didn’t figure she walked wherever she went. Or why.

It wasn’t just the money, though that was part of it. You’d think a magician would have plenty of money, but it turns out a woman like her always gets passed by for male magicians who charge more and do less. Some women come to her, sure, but even then, those tend to be the ones who think she’ll be cheap. Or they’re the ones who have nowhere else to turn.

She knew desperate, knew it from the outside, and from the inside, too. Which was why she was always doing spells for the women who came to her, even if they couldn’t pay more than a head of cabbage or a promise of a loaf of fresh bread every day for the rest of their lives. (Only one woman actually lived up to the promise, but the master never followed up on deadbeat claims. She wasn’t the type. Said she had more to do in life than look backwards and be angry.)

The house was set pretty far off the road, and there wasn’t another living soul (at least a human one) for a good half mile. Right around the back of the house, there was an old garden. Sometimes the master found things in it she used for spells. Roots, mostly. There wasn’t anything worth eating. She planted mint once, and it took over, so you stepped off the road and were overwhelmed by that smell.

There was an old well, too. The water from it was often muddy, but it smelled clean, and she used magic on it to make sure it wouldn’t kill us.

The farmhouse itself was two stories high, but the stairs to the top floor were crumbling and I didn’t go up them. She had her own room up there, not the one for spells, where she kept her library, but her bedroom. She told me I could have any room in the house I wanted.

Feeling spiteful on that particular day, as if it would hurt her if I didn’t want to go up those stairs, I chose the room off the kitchen. It had the advantage of being warmer than the others in winter, if either of us used the stoves for spells. She wasn’t much of a cook, and I only knew the most rudimentary recipes. She counted on me for cooked meal for breakfast, but the one time I tried to fry up cakes, she had to come down with her cloak on, in the middle of a difficult and complicated incantation, and put it out with magic spraying from her hands.

If I hadn’t been in love with her already, that might have done it.

Her hair was streaming in her face and she had such an intense look. I remember thinking, if only she would look at me like that—just once. It was all I would ask for, for the rest of my life.

That’s what I told myself then. Of course, it was a lie. Lovers always lie. To themselves as much as to anyone else.

If she had given me that look then, I would have wanted more.

And more again.

As it was, my wants were simple and small.

I did not expect her to love me in return.

The room off the kitchen in summer was horribly hot, tiny and dirty, with only a straw mattress on the floor at one end, just under the window that looked out to the road. I hated it, and I told myself stories, those first few weeks, about how I would be a great magician in years ahead, and when I was, I would come back here and she would beg me to let her be my apprentice, and I would send her in this room and let her see how she liked it here.

I was a prick. Seventeen, yes, if you count that as some excuse. The only thing I can say for myself it was that it was only a few weeks before I stopped thinking like that. I learned how much I had to learn, for one thing. It wasn’t going to be years before I knew more than she did. It was going to be centuries. And since no magician in the history of the world had lived past the age of thirty-odd, what with the feuds between them, it seemed unlikely that I would know even half so much as she did. I did not know how she had learned all she had.

She had stacks and stacks of books, books that would have taken me weeks to read, and she knew them all well enough that all she had to do was walk into the room, look around, reach for a book, and she opened it to precisely the right page for the particular spell for changing a man’s head into a donkey’s. Or a frog’s, depending on what his wife preferred, the one being rather better than the other for kissing. (Have you ever kissed a donkey? Enough said.)

That first day, she told me to take a nap, and then she’d come tell me about my daily chores.

I didn’t do what she said, of course. I went into my room and sulked. Then, when I was finished with that (about ten minutes later), I toured the house. I didn’t go upstairs, because I was terrified of her catching me, and of waking her up. I went down into the basement where she kept her books, and her other supplies. It was dank and cold down there, and there were no candles. She had no need of them. She had magic.

I stumbled around, then fell and landed on something that was furry and—alive.

I was terrified.

“Nice kitty,” I said, and backed away. The sound in the animal’s throat had been vaguely feline. I’d had a cat when I was younger, before it ran away. Or died. I don’t know which and my parents would never tell me the truth so that I believed them.

“I see you are a curious one,” her voice said behind me.

I turned, trembling.

She had a ball of magical light in her hand. With that, I could see more of the outlines of the basement, the number of books there, enough for anyone not magician to be wealthy with them. But a magician couldn’t sell them, except to another magician, and that never happened. Books were either inherited in the business, stolen, won in battle, or burned to the ground.

“I—I—” I got out.

“This is Emmaline,” she said, nodding to the animal I’d fallen over.

I turned and saw it was a lion. A she-lion, but no less ferocious for all that.

I think I may have pissed myself then.

It didn’t make me like her any more.

“Good. We can get to work, then. I like a curious boy. That means you will do more than I’ve asked of you, just to find the answer.”

I nodded dumbly at her. I wouldn’t have contradicted anything she said then for all the warm baths and mutton in the world.

She waved a hand and a book came dancing down from a shelf above my head.

I ducked, afraid it would hit me. But she would never have used a book as a weapon. They were too precious to her. She had had to win every one of her books. She had had a master of her own once, but she never spoke a word of him to me, and I think she must have left him when she was quite a bit younger than I was.

She hadn’t been “appreciated,” she said when I asked her. That was later. When she began to tell me a few of the details of her life.

I wish I had known more. But she would not tell me. She was so busy making sure I knew how strong she was. Making sure she knew it herself.

The book settled on a wooden table in front of me. I stared at it, expecting it to open to the page she thought I should read.

She put out a hand and let the she-lion lick it.

I shuddered.

She looked for a book of her own, got it down, and only then looked back at me. “What is it? Afraid it will bite you?” she asked, nodding to the book.

“I didn’t know where to start,” I said.

She snorted. Not delicately. “Do you know anything about magic?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Then start at the beginning. The book’s called ‘Beginner’s Magic.’ But don’t try any of the spells. Not until I’ve gone over them with you at least once.”

I opened the book to the first page. I knew how to read, because my father had once been wealthy enough to do so, and he prided himself on not leaving his children worse off than he was. But I did not read often enough to find joy in it, unless the story itself was riveting. This was not riveting.

It went through a list of materials necessary for making basic spells. A broom. A scrying bowl. Fresh well water. Fire. Straw. Blood. Salt. A familiar. A table. A good candle for light. A window, to air out a room after the fumes of magic had settled, so as not to asphyxiate yourself. A book for writing down your own observations and experiments with magic. A pen for writing. A servant. Food to keep up your strength.

Honestly, it was so tedious that I expected to find on its list of necessities, a ditch to shit in and ale to celebrate with.

I nodded off. Standing up.

I woke up with a start when she poked me with a stick. Or rather, a wand, it turned out. An old one, with writing on it, mysterious and powerful words I didn’t know of yet.

“Not so curious, after all,” she said. “What a shame.”

Was she going to execute me right then? I babbled my apology and swore to her it would never happen again.

“You can read, can’t you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

I nodded.

She wasn’t convinced. She pointed to a page in the book, the one about the window. “Read this.”

I read it to her.

“Good enough, I suppose. For a servant. You’ll have to get better if you’re to move faster in your learning than a snail. You don’t want to be an apprentice forever, do you? You want to be a magician yourself someday?”

I gaped at her.

“Well, do you? Or would you rather go back to the marketplace and try again? I swear to you, I’ll let you go without ill will.”

I almost believed her. But the truth is, I did not want to go back. She was interesting. And the work she gave me had nothing to do with hauling pig slops. And there was a future in it, or so I thought then. Magicians were respected. Magicians didn’t have too many children to feed. Magicians owned homes of their own.

“What have you learned, then?” she asked.

It was a test and I knew it. I swallowed, then repeated the necessities in the list. I might have forgotten one or two, but I thought I did a fair job.

“And what have you learned?” she asked again.

I stammered through the list again, racking my brain to think of anything else.

But she shook her head.

What was I to do? She was the kind of woman who would never be happy with me.

“It’s a bunch of crap,” I said finally. “Any fool could have written that book.”

“Ah,” she said. Her eyes were alight with laughter. “You mean, a fool like yourself?”

“Yes,” I said, my mood brightening.

“So what does that teach you?”

“That books on magic are crap?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“That some books on magic are crap,” I said, with more confidence.

“And how do you tell the difference?” she asked.

It was an important question, and I did not know the answer to it. “You try it out?” I said, flippantly.

She lifted the wand at me and hit me over the head with it. I know, it was a little wand, but I think she added some kick with magic, because it stung like hell.

“If you want to die, you try out something that you have no knowledge of. Just like you trust a man you meet in a dark street to lead you to his nice room and give you food, just because he likes the look of your face.”

“So, you don’t try it out,” I said.

She hit me again.

“Hey!” I said.

“You’re the one who wanted to learn by pain,” she said. “I didn’t suggest it.”

“Then how are you supposed to know the difference between a book that tells you true magic and one that doesn’t?” I asked.

“You guess,” she said. vThat was it? That was the answer?

“You guess and you better learn to guess damn well,” she said. “It also helps if you know some of the bastards’ names. You can never trust a book of spells written by Julane, for example. The man didn’t right a true sentence in his life. He was completely paranoid. Brilliant, from all accounts, but he killed his apprentices at the end of a year, regularly. To make sure they never told anyone about any spell he did. Not one of them could defend himself, poor things. His books are just a way to make sure that the rest of us burn ourselves up with our envy for him.”

“Oh,” I said. I closed the book and looked at the cover. The magician whose name was on the front was not Julane. It was Harcourt.

“Harcourt, on the other hand, isn’t dangerous at all. You can read and practice anything in his books without fear of pain. Without any hope of learning anything, either, unfortunately. But it’s a good book for fools. I hope you are not a fool?”

“Uh—” I said.

She hit me again with the wand.

“No,” I said quickly.

“Good. Then try this one.” Another book floated down at me. I looked at the front first. There was no name listed there. I opened the first page. No name there, either.

“How do I know—” I started.

“That one is mine,” she said. “You can trust it. I don’t have to worry about apprentices. And I happen to be one of those magicians who looks forward to the future and hopes that the next generation will do better than this one has. It will only happen if we decrease the number of fools who use magic, however. Of course, I might do as well using Julane’s method as mine.”

I opened the book.

“Do the first spell,” she said.

I looked through it. It was a spell for increased strength. It required three hairs from a familiar and it promised greater strength relative to the strength of the familiar.

Ah, I began to see the reason for the she-lion.

I started the spell, but when it came to the part where I actually had to get the hairs, I hesitated.

Then I noticed she was watching me.

Not offering to help me.

It was another test.

“Here, kitty,” I said. That was what she had called it.

The she-lion turned her head at me.

I stepped closer.

She growled.

“Nice kitty,” I said. I was sweating so that I could see it dropping from my hands onto the cold stones of the floor. I reached forward, closed my eyes, touched fur, and yanked—hard and fast.

I had more than three hairs. Thirty, maybe. I sighed relief.

I was alive, too. That was a bonus.

“I’m not sure if I would recommend the eye-closing method. But at least you didn’t hurt her by dithering,” she said.

I finished the spell with the three hairs, and left the rest to the side to be used later.

I stirred until the concoction turned to smoke, then I breathed it in. I felt stronger. I felt strong enough to wrestle a she-lion.

“I hope it doesn’t make you stupid, as well. I do not understand why the two seem to go together for men, but they often do.”

I did not touch her lion.

“Do something useful instead,” she suggested. Read: commanded. “Go outside and cut some wood. There is a woods behind the house. We need logs for the fire. If you are ever to learn to do more complicated spells.”

That was what my strength was for?

I trudged outside the house and looked for the woods. I hadn’t seen them before.

Oh. That was why. They were about four miles from the house.

“You can run,” she said, from behind me. Somehow, she always seemed to surprise me like that, sneaking up on me and speaking in a soft voice that made me jump.

I ran to the woods, then cut down trees with a small axe she had been good enough to hand to me. (Otherwise, I would have forgotten the necessity of anything and had to cut the trees down with my bare hands.)

I came back by dark, with three trees, then chopped them into logs in back of the farmhouse and stacked them neatly.

By then, the strength spell was gone.

I went inside, hoping for food. There had been a smell that made me wonder. It was sour, but perhaps she was only a bad cook.

There was nothing on the stove, however.

The smell was coming from the basement.

I went down and found the whole place was filled with smoke. She was standing over a book, choking, but not retreating. She had her lips pressed firmly together.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Learning that Kristo is not a reliable writer of spells,” she got out.

So, it turned out her first answer to how you learn about magic was true, after all. But she took all the risks herself. She protected me from them. I don’t know if that was because she knew that I was never going to be much of a magician or if it was because she was waiting for me to get better.

Too bad she wasn’t around long enough to see it happen.

On the other hand, maybe she was right, after all.

I found out about her feud with the magician Yuri after I had been her apprentice for three months. She sent me out to the marketplace to buy some supplies. She didn’t have much coin, but what she had, she put in her purse and gave it to me. I threw it over my shoulder and went out.

“Be careful,” she said.

And I thought, what could happen in a marketplace like this one?

Did I mention already I was a fool?

I had nearly finished getting the bunch of sage that she had put second to last on her list when I bumped into someone. Then I looked up and saw the size of the “person.” And the way he looked at me, his eye glittering with anger I had not provoked. There had been no bumping involved.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Words,” he said with a grunt. He lifted a fist and threw it into my face.

I felt my nose break, felt blood spurt, felt myself fall backwards.

I would never get up again, I thought. I would die here and she would find me. She would never know I loved her.

I waited for the huge man to finish me off, not knowing what I had done to offend him. That is the way life is, sometimes. There are not always answers.

His face appeared above me.

I counted breaths, since I knew they would be my last. One, two, three, four.

The man kicked me in the stomach.

I heaved.

And began to pray, silently. I did not know if God heard a magician’s prayer or not. The priest in my childhood had certainly not believed it. But desperation made me faithful.

Then the man disappeared, and I thought for a moment my prayer had been answered. I tried to remember what I had promised. Not to be a magician?

“Young man, I believe you are the apprentice to the magician Francine,” he said.

It was the first time I had heard her name. I had never asked it. Yes, I had thought about it. But I hadn’t thought she would tell me. She was private, and she never drank, so far as I could tell. I figured she would tell me, in her own good time. I hadn’t told her my name, either. I figured I would tell her, when she told me.

“I don’t—” I started.

He held the paper that had drifted out of my hand above my eyes. “This is her handwriting,” he said. “Do you deny it?”

I gasped something out.

He gave me a hand up. He was one of those men who no one is fooled by. He had manners, but that did not mean he was kind. I had seen nobles like him, and I feared them, as well. But never so much as I feared this man.

“My name is Yuri,” he said. “Perhaps she has mentioned me?” He leaned closer to my face and I smelled his breath. It was strong and spicy, a mix of cloves and curry. The kind of breath a magician puts on to disguise the other flavors he has tasted.

Like black magic and blood.

I winced. “No,” I said. “She hasn’t.”

He was angry, and I saw a flash of the emotion cross his face before he covered it. It was enough to make me wish Emmaline at my side.

“Well, then. Perhaps she thought she was protecting you. Please give her a message from me. I invite her to a duel of magic. We will meet tomorrow at midnight, at the fallen tree. She knows where it is.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the farmhouse. And the woods behind it.

“You will tell her?” he asked.

“I will tell her,” I said.

He nodded to the huge man who had attacked me. “But just to be sure,” he said.

The man punched me in the face again, and I fell backwards into blackness this time.

When I woke, I could feel I was missing a tooth. And I had once prided myself on my teeth. They were my best feature. I had thought that I might find a rather more handsome wife than another man, if only for the sake of my teeth. I hoped that a woman might look into my mouth like a man looked into the mouth of a horse.

I was nearly eighteen by then, and should have known better. But I had little experience with women, and Francine the magician wasn’t exactly typical. I couldn’t base other women on her, as much as I was beginning to want to.

I crawled back to the farmhouse. It was long past dark by then, and the sky was clouded over so there was little light from stars or moon.

When I opened the door, she rushed at me. Her mouth was open and I heard the shape of her words more than the meaning of them. She thought I had dawdled. She thought I was drunk. She thought I had used her money for anything but what she asked me to. She threatened me.

But she didn’t kill me.

At last, I got out the sack I’d put her list in. I threw it at her.

And she went silent. She could do that, sometimes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It was not the last time she apologized, but it was the first, and it was sincere. All my anger at her flew away, just as her with me had done. I stared at her, at the light in her hands that illuminated her wild hair. She usually kept it back, because she looked more the stereotypical mad magician with hair like that, and she hated to be stereotypical in any way.

She put a hand out to touch my face. It had stopped bleeding by now, but it was swollen and tender.

I gasped, then stifled it.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t think I’ll be fooled into believing it doesn’t hurt,” she said. Then she used magic on me.

The pain faded instantly, and I could feel as the swelling went down.

She swayed a moment, and that was the only way I knew how much it cost her to heal me. Speaking of stoicism.

I put out a hand to hold her up.

She batted it away.

“What happened?” she asked. Then, before I answered, she said, “Yuri.”

I nodded.

“Another challenge?” she asked.

“Yes. At the fallen tree.”

She let out a breath. “The man has no imagination. That was where he asked me to meet him last time. And the time before that. As if I can’t figure out there’s a reason he wants that particular place.”

“You think he’s got an advantage there?” I asked.

“Of course. Some trap. I’ll walk over a fallen tree branch, and he’ll be there to see me curse at him as I die.”

“So, you’re not going?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re ignoring his challenge?”

“That is what I said.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

She laughed. “Such a man you are. And Yuri thinks for some reason that because I am a powerful magician, he can assume that I am a man, as well. He thinks that eventually I will tire of ignoring him and want to prove myself.”

“Ah,” I said.

She looked at me. “It’s what you would do, isn’t it?” she asked.

I reddened.

“Yuri couldn’t kill me in a fair challenge, by the way. Both of us know that. And because I know that, I see no reason to face him.”

“Would you face him if he were stronger than you?”

“No. That would be foolish. I have no death wish,” she said.

“And if he were just as strong as you are?”

“That would be tedious,” she said. “It would take years for either of us to win.”

So, in the end, there were no conditions under which she would accept a challenge to duel with magic. It was hard for me to understand that.

I was not sure that this was how women were instead of men. It was just her.

I thought of her name. Francine.

I didn’t think it fit her.

I didn’t use it.

“By the way, you won’t do it,” she said. “You won’t go out into the woods and try to find him and fight him on my behalf.”

How could she read my mind like that? I spluttered.

“I will make sure you don’t. I will put a spell on you that will draw you back to the house. You won’t be able to break it.”

But I tried, nonetheless. The farther I went from the farmhouse, the stronger the spell became. And even with a double spell, using up the rest of the hairs from Emmaline that I had gotten the first day, it was no use.

I fell back and slept hard that night.

In the morning, there was a woman at the door. She was dressed in rags and she smelled of cloves and curry. “Please,” she said. “Please.” It was then that I saw that her tongue had been mangled.

I ran for Francine, going slower when I got close to Emmaline. She didn’t like anyone to sneak up on her, and she had a tendency to chase things that were either nervous or sweaty.

“There is a woman here,” I said.

“I’m busy.” She was hunched over one of Julane’s books. She liked that kind of challenge.

“I think you should see her.”

She waved a hand at me. “As if I care what you think. Give her some coin and send her on her way.”

I waited a long moment. “She needs you,” I said.

I don’t think I need have said anything. If I’d gone away and given the woman money, she would have been upstairs before the woman left. But there was something in me that wanted to prove that she would listen to me, that she should listen to me. For all I was her apprentice, and a fool.

“Oh, all right.” She twisted her face, then closed the book and sent it back to the shelf with magic. This, to prevent me from taking it out when she wasn’t looking, and reading it myself, I think.

The woman was Yuri’s wife. His fifth wife, in fact. She was sixteen years old, and had been married to him for over a year. Fifteen hellish months. Her tongue had been mangled the first day, when she dared to ask him a question.

He preferred his women silent.

“I’ll kill him,” whispered Francine.

But she didn’t. She healed the woman with magic, then changed her appearance and scent, so that Yuri could not follow her, and sent her on her way with more coin than I thought we had in the house.

When I was still staring at the door afterwards, she said, “Emergency fund.”

“Is there more?” I asked.

“Are you going to steal it from me?”

I stared her down.

“Yes, there’s more,” she admitted. “But not much.”

“Are you going to challenge him now?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“You could choose a different place. He would come.”

“No matter what place I chose, he would be sure to cheat,” she said. “And I would lose. Do you want me to die?”

I wanted to tell her that I loved her then. I wanted to kiss her chapped lips and run my fingers through her frizzy hair and touch the freckles on her nose.

But she was my master. And she could never see me that way. I had to be almost twenty years younger than she was. And how many times had she called me a fool, and been right about it?

I didn’t deserve her.

And I couldn’t bear the thought of her laughing in my face.

So I said nothing.

I protected myself, rather than her. Or my love for her.

And that night, she went out. She did what she said she would not do. She challenged him. She went to his horrible little fortress fifty miles away, beyond the first mountains. She challenged him to a duel of magic the next day, and then she came back to prepare.

I found her in the basement in the morning and she told me about it flatly, as if she were telling me what food Emmaline liked best.

“Why now?” I asked. It made no sense to me. “Is it because of the woman?”

“In a way,” she said. “But not truly.”

“Why then?”

“Will you believe me if I say it is because I decided that I would enjoy nothing more than to see his face before he died?” she asked me.

I thought about it. I almost believed it. Then I sighed.

“You know me too well,” she said.

“Then why?” I asked.

“Julane,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“No. I don’t think you could. You haven’t studied him as I have.”

“Tell me,” I said. I demanded it, as I had never demanded anything from her before.

Her eyebrows rose. “Aren’t we the bully today?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was not the first time I apologized, but it was the last. When she was alive, that is. When it still mattered and she could hear me.

“He lived too long,” she said. “He learned too much, and grew too powerful. And so he killed more people than he would have, if someone had killed him early on.”

“You’re facing Yuri because you have to save the world?” I asked, astonished. I had never noticed her seeing anything beyond her own view before.

She sighed. “I’m killing Yuri because someone has to do it.”

“But why you?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. Then she said, “Because I wasn’t killed by Julane. Another killed him first. My master.”

There was love in her voice. I was insanely jealous, and I writhed with it.

“He was also my father,” she added. “I hated him for my name, but I loved him for everything else. He was a kind man, not inclined to foolish duels. He died when Yuri died, but he stopped him.”

“How old were you?” I asked her.

“Thirteen,” she said. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Zord,” I said, feeling my heart beat in my throat.

“A ridiculous name,” she said. “Almost as bad as mine. A hero’s name. Your parents must have loved you.”

I wept, because I knew she was right, and because I had hated them since the moment I had stood in the marketplace, waiting for someone to take me as an apprentice.

“Let me come with you,” I said.

“No,” she said.

I didn’t ask her again. And she was too busy preparing to think of putting a spell on me to keep me back.

I stayed well away from her.

But as soon as she stepped out the door, I looked to see the direction she was going. I ran downstairs and made the spell for strength, with Emmaline’s indulgence. Then I grabbed the book by Julane that she had put on the shelf. I had a good memory for visual organization, and I remembered exactly where it had gone.

The book was titled “Resurrection, Immortality, and Deification.”

I tucked the book under my arm, gave Emmaline enough meat to keep from starving for a week or two, and ran after Francine.

She was saving herself for the duel. I could have done the same. It might have made a difference. I might not have needed that book then. I could have stood at her side at the duel and fought with her. She would not have liked it. She would have said it was not fair, two against one. But in the heat of the moment, she could not have stopped me.

No, who am I fooling?

It would have made no difference.

I was in the beginning book of spells. I would only have gotten myself killed. Either she would have done it, or he would. And then he would have killed her, all the same. And there would have been no one left to work the resurrection spell.

I ran behind her, far enough that I didn’t think she would hear me. I didn’t want to have an argument with her about whether I was coming or not. I knew she could stop me if she was determined enough. She wouldn’t even have to kill me to do it. Or hurt me. I was sure she had enough creative spells to freeze me or just send me back to the beginning so that I could never catch up. Or bleed the strength of my spell away from me.

There were several times when I thought I would lose her. It was a quarter moon, but it was a clear night. Cold, and beautiful. The countryside smelled like home to me, and I could hear the sound of happy animals around me.

But she couldn’t possibly have not noticed that I was following her, could she?

She was an advanced magician, going to battle the worst of the worst. She couldn’t have been fooled by a beginner like me?

But if she knew that I was behind her, then she chose not to stop me.

Did she do it because she thought I could help her? Even distract Yuri for a moment?

I don’t think so.

Did she know that I loved her? She seemed oblivious of it most of the time, but there were hints now and again, that she knew and chose not to speak of it, not to embarrass either of us.

But I never knew her well enough to understand the workings of her mind. There could be a thousand reasons that she might have had and I could never guess at them. I loved her, but that did not mean I was like her.

I knew we were coming close to Yuri’s castle when the smell around us changed. There were more hovels, and more animals. The smell of desperation had long ago faded. Now it was only the smell of hopelessness, of sweat, and terror.

She stood at the gate and called out Yuri.

When no one answered her polite words, she grew cruder. I had heard her use some very sharp language, but I had had no idea the extent of the vocabulary she knew. Pig farmers could learn from her, and I thought that she should write a book on it. She could make cursing poetry. She was an artist. Magic did not know what it had in her. It did not value her truly.

At last, Yuri appeared on the other side of the wall. “Ah, so here you are. I did not know if you would come, so I did not wait up all night.”

It was nearing dawn and the faintest of pink showed in the mountains behind us.

“Come out!” called Francine. With more colorful adjectives describing Yuri’s interests in particular sexual maneuvers.

“Come in!” he called back to her.

“In your own castle? You must be mad!” said Francine.

“If you want the challenge, my castle is where it will be. With my new wife to watch it,” said Yuri.

I think he knew that it was just the right thing to get her to do what he wanted. But he went on, goading her.

“She is a frail little thing, only thirteen years old. Her parents did not wish to marry her to me, but alas, they died recently and I had to take guardianship of her.” He smiled.

I had stopped a distance back.

I had no desire to rush forward. I was shaking with cold and fear. I wanted nothing more than to run away and have nothing to do with magic ever again.

I was a coward.

The most I can say for myself is that I did not do what so tempted me. I did not leave her. I could not have lived with myself otherwise.

“You think I am fool enough to come into your own castle and battle you, where your wards are set and you have spells waiting to spring on me?” she asked.

“Battle me here or leave me be,” said Yuri.

“I will send word to the world of your cowardice. I will write volumes on it. Your name will be known throughout the history of magic,” threatened Francine.

“No one will write of me. They are afraid of me.”

“I will write of you,” said Francince.

“And am I to quake because of your words?”

Francine made a motion with her hands.

I froze. Did she mean to call to me? Was I supposed to come to her and stand with her? Go into the castle with her?

I did nothing.

And she did no more. She did not look back.

“Think what a victory with so many obstacles set against you will mean,” said Yuri. “A woman set against a man years older than her, with all in the world on his side. An abuser of her own kind. If she were to defeat him, what would the histories of magic have to say of her?”

I saw her shoulders stiffen.

He had her. I knew it, and she knew it.

But he had had her already. She would not have left without fighting him.

Would she?

I do not know.

“Men write histories of magic,” she said. “Not women.”

“Change that,” challenged Yuri.

“Yes,” she said. Then again, louder, “Yes, I will!”

The gate was lowered and I watched as she stepped across. I did not move until the gate was back up and she had disappeared. Not until I heard the first cry of pain, and knew it was hers.

There was fire. Flashes of lightning from the bright, cloudless sky. Thunderous explosions when two forces of magic struck against each other.

I was at the gate then. I listened and told myself that it was no wonder she had never said she loved me. How could she love a man like me? A boy?

Then the noise ceased.

It was before noon.

I sank to my knees. I did not feel the passage of time. It was sometime after dark when her body was thrown from the gate, not even opened all the way. It dropped into the moat, and I saw it bobbing, turned to food for the fish.

Coward that I was, there was no more threat to me now, and I jumped to action. I leaped into the water, floated above the muck and searched for her body, my arms thrashing as I swam blindly. I struck her body at last, pulled her head against my shoulder and pulled her back across the water, until I could feel the bank at my back.

I pulled her lifeless form out, stretched her out.

Her eyes were still open, as was her mouth. I wanted to hear her laugh.

I turned her over and pressed the water out of her. I had seen it done before, by a local magician near my parents’ home. One who had little magic, and more knowledge of medicine. But he said he earned more money as a magician than a physician.

And he did not save the girl’s life he pushed water out of. He said it rarely worked, but her parents pressed the money on him. They insisted that he try, then spat at him afterwards.

I did what he did, pressed the water out, then turned her over and pressed air in.

It did nothing.

She had been killed by magic, not lack of air.

I pressed a hand lightly to her damp hair. “How I love it,” I said. Now. When it mattered not at all. I kissed her lips. I spread her out, her arms to her sides, and then went for the book.

I did not hate myself yet, because I had not given up hope yet. For some reason, I thought that I would find in the book what she had not. Power without disaster.

I opened it with wet fingers, staining the vellum pages as I went through them. I found the first spell on resurrection. It warned that it worked only on animals. I went to the others. But they required ingredients I did not have. And did not know of. And there were marks written in her hand, disparaging the results listed. She had tried some herself, and had never found resurrection to work. She blamed Julane. She wrote in notes of what she thought might be the true spell, but they were scribbled out. Useless.

The only spell she had not tried was the spell for animals’ resurrection.

It required my blood and hers. And morning sunlight. Water. Grass. And “true feeling for the animal in question.”

I had true feeling.

I took out the small knife I kept in my boot and flicked at my finger. A drop of blood came out.

I turned the knife on her, then mixed our blood together.

The morning sun rose.

It had been a full day since she had died, or nearly so.

I added grass and water.

Nothing happened.

The mixture sat in my hands, inert.

I could not bear it.

I thought of taking her body back to her home. I thought of burying her in the garden of the farmhouse. I thought of taking over her library, and learning enough that I could challenge Yuri myself one day.

Ridiculous.

Then I heard the sound of voices from the castle. And another body dumped in the moat.

Was it possible?

Had she killed him, before she died herself?

Or had she done enough damage that he could not repair it?

I ran to the moat and saw his body floating there. It had been savaged by human hands. Not magic.

She had weakened him enough his people could do the same. Perhaps his new young wife had taken a cut at him herself.

I hoped so.

I left him there for the fish and went back to her.

That was when I saw the smoke rising above the mixture I had left on her chest.

And then her eyes opened.

I whispered her name.

She smiled at me, and I thought I had done it.

Then she giggled. A little girl’s laugh.

Her eyes were vacant.

“Francine,” I begged.

“I like you,” she said. She rubbed a hand on my chin, then down my neck, and my chest. And lower.

I stopped her there.

“Not Francine,” I said.

I do not know who it was. I do not know how Julane twisted the spell to his own use. Or perhaps it was my fault. I used a resurrection spell for an animal, not for a woman. I got a girl, which is better than I deserved.

I took her home. I fed her and kept her from seducing me every moment, as seemed to be her only wish. Francine was gone. Her body was here, but her self was not. The spark that touched me would never be back.

I was left with a woman I could have. And I did not want her.

It was another cliché, and I did not know that it could hurt so much.