Chapter 6

Siska felt the chill of night air and the scent of smoke filled her nostrils. Around her fires raged all over the city. She was hiding in a deep doorway, trying to quiet a babe in her arms who fussed and threatened to cry.

She fought the feeling of helplessness, but still had no control over her own actions, though she was certain they were hers. Her thoughts raced, desire to escape was very obvious, but above that, before escape, the baby. The baby must be safe.

Across the street was a low wall, the tops of trees showing over it and a long red-tiled roof looming higher still. Voices called in the night streets and shapes moved in the distance. It was only a matter of time, her panicked mind told her.

She ran to a door in that wall, hammering on it and calling out to those within, should there be anyone in the garden. A old man opened the door, looking fearfully about at the burning and the distant running shapes.

"Take her. For the love of the One, save her," she told the old man, thrusting the babe into his arms. In confusion, the old man, wearing a gray shift, took the infant and held her tiny body to his.

Siska felt her feet moving again and the harsh, smoke tainted breath catching in her throat. A yell sounded, closer now. She yanked the door shut and ran.

The sounds of booted feet closed on her, and soon were just behind her as she felt a hand clutch the back of her dress, ripping it from her shoulders. The next grip fell on her arm, stopping her flight dead. A fist smashed into her face as other hands groped at her, rending the remaining silk from her body. Hot breath fell on her neck in a sickening wave as she felt someone press against her. "Not so high now, milady, are you?" said a rough, rum-scented voice.

Siska sat up, shivering with her shift plastered to her body by sweat. Her sheets were damp, as well, like she had sweated for a long while.

It was not the first time to have this alarming dream, and she feared it was far from the last. Such dreams had haunted her from childhood, even though she had never seen the estate from the outside until her auction day. She always awoke once the men grabbed her. Ever since she was old enough to know of sex, she knew what would happen next, should she not wake fast enough.

She registered a slight pain on one side of her head and turned to find little Siska, still clutching a few strands of hair which had been pulled from her scalp. The miniature of herself smiled sheepishly and wound the hairs around her arm, like thin rope.

"I suppose I should thank you," said Siska, giving her homunculus a weak smile and rubbing her head where the strands had been yanked out. "That was a horrible dream."

The little Siska nodded, her sheepish smile now replaced with a sober look of worry. The moon was nearing the horizon outside her window and a shiver from the cool ran through her body. It did not seem to bother the little copy, though. Siska rose, closed the window and, without thinking, ignited the fire, already laid in the fireplace. She blinked at what she had done so casually.

The apprentice's primer peeked from amid her tousled blankets when she looked for it. Siska had barely remembered to mark her place when she began to nod the night previous. One of her silver ribbons stood in as a bookmark. Little Siska tugged at the book with both hands, pulling it free of the coverlets.

"You're trying too hard," said Siska, picking up the book and edging closer to the fire to bask in the warmth it gave off before warming the room. Cracking open the book to worn vellum pages, Siska noticed that the book was handwritten, not etch-printed, like most books. While a simple text, and only minimally illuminated, it was almost a work of art in itself. She ran her finger down the margin of one page, where someone had penned notes to themselves in a disciplined and minute hand, no doubt Salira's.

The book seemed to have more pages than reasonable for such a slim tome, as well. This startled Siska when she had first perused it. Well over three hundreds of pages, and the tome was less than an inch thick. A good quarter of that thickness was the covers, stiff leather covered over by finer leather, probably doeskin, and died blue. When she looked more closely at the book, though, it glowed faintly with mana, and she decided it was enchanted, somehow. She wished very much to learn more of enchantments, but both the book and Phillip agreed that studies of such magics were to come later, rather than sooner.

Little Siska had managed to clamber down off the bed and was standing between Siska's feet, warming her tiny hands toward the fire. She blinked up when Siska pulled her eyes from the book and looked down at her. "Did I awaken you in my sleep?"

The homunculus shook, then pointed at, her head.

"You felt it, then?" asked Siska.

Little Siska nodded emphatically, still rubbing her little hands and extending them toward the warming flames.

"I doubt that there will be time to get back to sleep before Mentor Phillip wishes me to rise for early exercises," said Siska, closing the book and setting it upon her little writing desk. She caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror and paused. She was lit only by the red glow of the fire from the hearth which made her glow crimson. Somehow that reflection showed a young woman who was menacing, violet eyes turning red in that light with malevolent intent.

She shook her head and looked again, seeing only her normal self. A young woman, stark naked, with long, to her eyes, gangly limbs and a thick head of golden blond hair. She smiled at the reflection and walked to the wardrobe, pulling one of her robes from it and slipping the silken folds over her head. She thought the silk a rather extravagant garment for an apprentice, really, and wondered about that, deciding to ask Phillip when it was convenient.

Siska had taken to leaving her door open a very slight crack so that little Siska could enter and leave the room when she liked. The homunculous was easily strong enough to open it or close it when she wished, but could not work the latch.

Moonlight illuminated the house gently with patches of pale light amid dark shadows, enough for her to move about. She heard faint sounds of snoring from the direction of Phillip's room but moved down the stairs to the study, her primer beneath her elbow. As an afterthought, she reached out a casual tendril of magical energies and snuffed the fire in her bedroom's hearth.

As she closed the study door, the three lanterns that lit the room flicked into life at her bidding and she smiled. This being a wizard was not so bad, she decided.

Despite what she had said at the home of Salira, Phillip did have an impressive collectionof tomes and books. Most were leather clad and massive things, bluky texts with gold leaf worked into embossed spines. She slid the primer onto one of the two writing desks in the room with brightly polished tops.

She moved down the shelves casually, allowing her slim fingertips to wander over the rough leather hides of the books, caressing them, feeling for something, though she was not sure what.

When her hand came to rest on a book bound in a dark brown leather, with only some decorative swirls on the spine, rather than a title or the ridges created in binding, she wrinkled her brow. What was this book, and why was she seeking for it?

Siska slid that book from the shelf and hefted the heavy thing to the table. It was almost as thick as her hand was wide at the fingers and easily four hands wide.

Little Siska shoved the lamp on that desk closer to the book as Siska sat down and opened the heavy cover. It was penned in a deep burgundy ink on pale sheepskin parchment. The formulas were odd, shaped wrongly to her eye, but they flowed into her as other spell formula had.

Only four pages in, she felt her mind recoil from what it had absorbed and she found herself wanting to vomit. She fled to the kitchen and gave up last night's supper to a mop bucket. The first beams of sunlight were coming through the windows of the kitchen. This tome must only be viewed in times forsaken of the sun. A voice called in her mind, laughing at her. She cringed from the voice, it had a harsh, guttural sound that caused her skin to tighten on her neck and back.

She stood from the bucket and rinsed her mouth out with water from a large pitcher on the table. Her knees were weak, but she managed to subdue them to her will and move back to the study to close the book, careful not to look upon the subtly twisted forms on the page and slide it back into its place on the shelves.

Sounds floated down from upstairs, of Phillip stirring and she hastily sat down at the desk, opening her primer and perusing pages she had read and fully absorbed the night before.

"Good morrow, Siska," said Phillip, smiling at her. He held one of the glass spheres in his hand, bouncing it in his palm. "We'll be trying to put mana into the sphere again this morning." His voice was pleased and a bit amused. "Excited by your going shopping this morning?"

"Yes, mentor," said Siska, grinning at him over her book. The primer was easy stuff, she decided, even if it was, in truth, useful material. She reached out with a pointed finger and seized the sphere while it was airborn between bounces and pulled it toward her. It floated, a bit unsteadily, but not threatening to fall, to her hand, where she closed her fingers about its glassy smooth surface.

Phillip nodded, though he said nothing. His eyes spoke volumes of approval of her actually performing apprentice type casting. After the frightening spells she had already learned, holding mageflame, he was eager for her to know more basic magics.

Little Siska giggled, moving into Siska's palm beside the sphere and pushing on it, trying to roll the ball out of her larger version's grip.

"Now, Siska, if you break that, I shall have to find your shineys to buy Phillip a new one," said the larger Siska, chiding the small copy.

The homunculous stopped immediately and gave Siska an withering, accusing look.

Phillip chuckled and left the study. Even working from a beginning primer, thought Phillip, it should be weeks before she could use apportation. The pleased expression fled him as quickly as it had come. She would finish with that primer in, perhaps, a week, two at the outside. A book meant to last a newling student a year, if not more.

He pulled several pieces of fruit from the preservation box and began skinning them while he wondered what he needed to do to slow her progress. Her control was not nearly enough, surely, at this point, to master the powerful magics she had already absorbed.

It would have to be.

Siska emerged from the study a moment later, the primer under her arm and little Siska in her hand. The homunculous served for Phillip as a reminder that he had no normal apprentice on his hands. For the fifth time he wondered if the house of the order would not be a better place to teach her.

Also, for the fifth time, he discarded that notion. He did not wish to discover what the mentors of the home would do to slow her down. Surely they would seek to, for the same reasons he wished to slow her progress.

She rolled the silvered glass sphere back and forth across the table with little Siska as she ate the diced pieces of orange, apple, and banana. Occasionally, she would change the course of the little ball with a motion of her finger, causing the miniature of herself to have to scurry to change direction to intercept it. Little Siska seemed to think this was great fun and clapped happily when she managed to crab and roll the two inch sphere back to Siska.

"So Salira's primer is useful?" asked Phillip.

Siska nodded happily at that. "Oh, it's very good," she said, stopping the ball just before little Siska caught it, causing her homunculous to try to backpedal to get to it.

"Well, be sure to thank her again for it," replied the wizard. "Salira will be pleased that you've learned from it."

Again, Siska nodded, though Phillip saw her mind was truly elsewhere. He decided to let her be. Likely, she was nervous about her impending date at the market.

Soon enough, she had finished her plate of fruit and was washing it out in the basin on the counter and smiled when he added his. She was the apprentice, after all, and it did not do to utterly forget that. She then collected the silvered sphere from little Siska and trooped outside. It was still cool, but warming under the bright morning sun.

Phillip watched her from the doorway as she sat the sphere on the little pedestal and walked to the center of the stone platform.

Why is touching this sphere with the energy so tough? wondered Siska as she strained to feed mana into the sphere. She suspected that it might be enchanted to resist being given mana, even if that was its purpose, after all.

The tendrils she forced toward it, by sheer will, it seemed, snapped back as soon as she stopped pressing on them with her thoughts. She touched it more often than not now, and even felt the energy flow into the sphere on the longer contacts. It glowed faintly after only a half an hour this time, and the glimmer of inner light increased with each prolonged touch of mana tendrils.

Phillip had gone from the door, to his study no doubt. Siska wondered if wizards ever stopped studying. She certainly felt the draw of learning new things, but she was a novice, after all, and all of it was new to her.

Another hour passed and she was sweating with the effort of pushing mana into the sphere. It no longer simply flowed into the silvery orb upon contact, but required her to press it into the glass. It pushed back, like squeezing a fully filled wineskin with the stopper in.

"I don't think it will hold any more," said Siska, speaking to the little Siska, sitting at the base of the little stand on which the orb rested. The tiny version of herself shrugged.

Siska rested a long moment, sitting in the center of the granite circle and glaring at the stone. She reached out again to the sphere as she sat, not to feed mana into it. Surprisingly, it was not hard to touch then, and her seeking tendril slid over the smooth silvery surface easily. Why would it not accept more mana? she wondered, probing at the polished glass. She squinted, as if to focus her eyes and felt her tendril sharpen, become a finer finger of energy, tiny, almost invisible.

She probed at it further, feeling something there, an imperfection, like a crack, but incredibly small. She had learned a mending spell from the primer, something that would rejoin broken things. This crack was not a break, precisely, but close enough, she thought. Channeling an appropriately small amount of energy, she fixed it and felt the imperfection gone. There was another, though, and she fixed it, then she found a third, a fourth, then more.

Siska's mind accelerated as she worked. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of tiny flaws in the glass and silver lattice that made up the sphere. The tendril of magic was not enough and she extended another, then a third, finally a fourth. Each slid over the surface, detecting then repairing the minute imperfections that she found in the structure of the glass orb.

Sweat rolled down her cheeks as she finished and she found her hair matted to her head with it. "Well, perhaps now it will take mana properly," she said. She was a bit tired, but no more so than when she had sat down.

She stood, wiping errant strands of hair that were clinging to her cheeks and forehead and reached out with one of the feeding tendrils of mana.

It resisted as before as she reached toward the sphere, but when the tendril touched the surface, the mana flowed into it easily, sucked into it. She felt the mana flow forth from her and through her from the air nearby. Frost formed on her robes and she shivered as the temperature dropped in an instant. She could see, see, the tendril between her and the sphere. It was not a thing of pure mana, but glimmered to her normal sight, little, infinitely small particles, it seemed, flickering as they moved from her outstretched hands to the sphere.

"Siska?" asked Phillip, and she felt damp coolness on her forehead. Her head was on something soft, but throbbed. She opened her eyes to find she was lying on the long padded bench of the common room.

"How did I get here?" she asked, hearing a muzziness in her voice.

"I carried you," he said. "I found you on the circle unconscious, after little Siska came to me all in a tizzy, tugging on my robe's hem." Little Siska sat on the arm of the bench, arms folded over her chest and glowering at her, tapping her tiny foot on the pillow upon which Siska's head rested.

She felt drained, like she'd not eaten in two days and her muscles felt sore from her head to her feet. "What happened?"

"You fed too much energy into the sphere," said Phillip. His eyes were wide. "It should not have been possible, those won't let you put but a small bit of mana into them."

"Fixed it," she said quietly. "I fixed the ball, made it whole, it didn't want to take more, so I made it where it could."

Phillip lifted the sphere out of his pocket. "Fixed it?" he asked, eyeing the brightly glowing ball of glass. "How?"

Her voice was still soft, but was gaining in clarity. Some of the cotton stuffing her mouth was being removed. "It was all broken up, inside, down deep, but I smoothed it out, and fixed the breaks."

"Siska, you fed this thing more energy than it can hold," he said, looking at the orb. "A talas sphere can only hold so much power."

"Because it was broken," she said. "It's not broken anymore."

He pressed a wine cup into her hands and told her to sip slowly. What was in the cup, when she tasted it, was not wine, but was sweet, and she sipped it readily.

Phillip had risen, though, and was holding out the sphere. He gestured over it and then peered at it hard, furrowing his brow. "Fixed it?" he asked.

Siska nodded when he turned his eyes to her and took another sip of the sweet drink. The soreness in her limbs was receding and the throbbing in her head along with it.

"How, exactly, did you 'fix' it?" he asked.

Siska sat up, slowly, as the throbbing tried to return as she did so. "I looked at it with the power," she said. "Up close, and found there were little imperfections inside it, really, really little imperfections. I just fixed those with the mending spell from the primer."

Phillip's eyes hardened a moment, then he walked from the common room to his study, returning a moment later with a small glass cylinder, the length of his hand and as thick as his thumb. He held it up to his eye and touched the glass sphere to the other end and gasped.

"You've aligned the crystals," he said. "You've fused them, all of them."

Siska blinked at him. "I what?" she asked.

Phillip held the sphere out to arm's length and dropped it.

Siska reignited the throbbing in her head when she tried to dive for the sphere, but she was far to slow to cross the room and reach it. It hit the flagstones of the common room's floor.

And bounced with a almost metallic clang.

He caught it at the apogee of its upward motion and looked at it. "It's all of a piece now," he said. "It's tougher than steel, or I miss my guess."

Siska blinked again. "It's just a glass sphere, no?" she asked.

"Not anymore it isn't," said Phillip, looking at it through the glass tube. "It's something else now, something you made it into. The silver is latticed into it precisely now, as well, very precisely." He lowered the eyeglass and looked at her. "Precisely enough to hold a lot of mana."

"It felt like a lot," said Siska, rubbing her head.

"I should imagine that it did," said Phillip, smiling at her and urging her to sip from the cup. "You were drained when I found you, and covered in hoarfrost. I even felt a little chill still in the air around you."

"The frost," mused Siska. "Where'd that come from?" She remembered the frost forming on her robes.

"When you pull enough mana in, from about yourself, it takes part of its energy from many sources, most of them unseen. One source is the heat around you, a small part, really, but enough is removed to drop the temperature noticeably when a large amount of mana is taken."

"I'm sorry if I did something wrong," said Siska.

"Not at all, though I don't like you channeling power from around you without my guidance, next time," replied Phillip, dismissing her apology.

"I couldn't help it," she said. "It just came through me."

"You could have stopped it, had you known what to expect, I think," said Phillip.

Siska shrugged and took another sip, the last in the cup. "I will try, then," she said.

He took the cup and her arm together and lifted her to her feet, guiding her toward the stairs. "Are you still up for your - shopping?" he asked.

Siska did feel better, and mention of the impending meeting in the market square drove what remaining pain from her, thought he fatigue was still partially in evidence.

"Yes," she said.

"Good, you do that, and take your time, we will not be having any exercises this evening, after all," said Phillip.

She watched as he went into the study and opened a wooden box. Inside were a dozen silvery glass spheres, one or two glowing with mana. Beside the one he added now, they were dark.

"Do you think you can repeat your 'repair' on the sphere on another?" asked Phillip when he saw she was still at the base of the stairs looking toward the study.

"Yes," said Siska, confidently, "but don't ask me to fill it all up like that one, please."

Phillip laughed. "I'd be surprised if you could so soon," he said. "But then again, you're full of surprises, aren't you?" His expression had gone contemplative, but he shook his head and closed the box. "After your - meeting, get one of the dark ones and 'repair' it, if you would, please."

"Of course, mentor," she said, and plodded up the stairs, her homunculous scrambling after her.

She wished to bathe before this meeting, as Phillip was calling it, with Mannis. The very thought made her blush. This would be her first meeting with a boy whom she had not grown up with. Also the one closest to her own age she had, as well. Mistress Tomasina had owned many slaves, but none were near her in age and male. The only two near to her were both other girls.

She had kissed a man before, even before Phillip, but he had been much older, and the kiss had made Siska uncomfortable. He had been a male guest of Mistress Tomasina's, a nobleman from another nation, named Rodar. A good-looking man, and he obviously thought himself quite the charmer.

She supposed that he had been somewhat charming, and his attention to her had been flattering, to the point that she had allowed the kiss, even welcomed it as it happened. However, it had gone on too long for her comfort and when he moved her hand onto the obvious bulge in his tights, she had fled the room.

He had asked for another room servant after that, one of the other two girls, and she had been punished. Punished, despite that he had never said what displeased him of her performance. Pamela had been sent in her place, and had cried that night in the girls' shared room, though she would not speak of what happened.

Snapping back to where she was, Siska crossed the hall to the bathing room. She wondered how the large barrels of water there were kept full, but suspected that Phillip used magic to keep them topped off. She would have to ask about that.

Filling the brass tub with water, she sat back and glowered at it. A cold bath did not much appeal to her and she channeled the heat of fire into the water. The liquid soaked up the heat like a sponge, and she felt her already depleted reserve of energy dwindle rapidly, then leave her altogether.

With a sigh, she stripped and climbed into the tub. The water was lukewarm, at least, and she had managed to take most of the chill from it. She bathed quickly, though, and washed her hair with the perfumed soap that sat on a little shelf nearby. A smile crossed her face to think that Phillip had provided it for her, as he would never deign to use such himself.

Reweaving her plaits with the four strands of colored cloth, she crossed the hall. Only when she closed her door behind her did she realize that she had done so nude. Phillip, of course, had seen her naked already, several times, but somehow, this made her blush.

There were several slips of different materials in the wardrobe and she selected the shortest of the silken ones. This silk, unlike the robes, was only one layer thick, and sheer atop that. It slid cooly over her skin and she felt it an incredibly naughty sensation.

Giggling, she pulled on the knee-length dress and pulled the lacing in the bodice tight. A grin came to her face as she watched it shape and form her breasts into a notable cleavage before her. "Well, I never knew," she said as she looked at the displayed mounds of flesh. "Quite impressive."

The dress was of fine linen, and somewhat sheer in its own right. It did not cling to her like the silken undergarment did, but it definitely did not hide much of her figure, either.

"This should get Mannis' attention fully," she said. "Maybe he'll forget I'm an apprentice."

Oddly, as soon as she had murmured those words, she did not want him to forget that she was a wizard in training. She wanted Mannis to accept her as a wizard's apprentice.

Soon, she was, as she deemed, presentable. The green of the dress shimmered beneath the matching shimmer of her silver sash and the low, soft boots of green leather she pulled onto her feet matched nearly enough. The asymmetrical hemline only made her legs look longer than they already did, but she decided that was all to the good. Despite her own opinion of them looking gangly, men seemed to like the look of them well enough.

She strode down the stairs and was making for the front door only to come across Phillip, pulling on a riding cloak and standing in the entry of the common room.

"You're going?" she asked.

Phillip nodded. "Yes, I need to visit the home, I may be late, don't wait up," he said.

"Very well," said Siska, not terribly pleased by this, but accepting it. He would have his own agenda, she was sure.

"Oh, I almost forgot," said Phillip, digging into his worn leather belt pouch. He pulled out a long silver chain with a delicately carved dragon pendant hanging on it. The dragon's eyes were tiny sapphires. "You should always wear some mark of the order."

She pulled the chain, which had no clasp, over her head and tugged her hair through it. "I don't mind at all," she said at his embarrassed expression. "I'm proud of who and what I am."

"You should be," said Phillip, beaming with his own measure of pride in her. "You will be great one day and I'll have bragging rights simply for having begun your education."

"You shouldn't speak like that, Phillip, it shall give me a swollen opinion of myself," she said, trying her best to use the accent Mistress Tomasina had used when she was being regal.

Phillip chuckled and opened the door for her. "After you, milady apprentice," he said.

She lifted her nose into the air and stepped out of the house.

Phillip had ridden off as she turned onto the bustling street. People moved near to her now, nearer than she remembered. Apparently, the blue robes had kept them at a distance. She liked this better, though, even if it meant being jostled a bit.

One man even took the liberty of cupping his hand over her rump at one point, which earned him an icy glare from her. He just smiled back until the sunlight caught the pendant on her neck and his eyes widened. He vanished with satisfactory speed amid the other pedestrians.

At least ask my name before groping me, thought Siska with a snort and flip of her hair as she resumed her walk to the market square.

Looking up at the clock tower, Siska checked the time. She was still thirty minutes early for her meeting with Keeley, much less the date with Mannis.

She moved into the marketplace, casually browsing the stalls. Tressen was a major hub of trade and most anything could be found in her markets, if sporadically. She found a vendor selling doll clothes, intended for the little wooden dolls that many girls collected for playing with in doll houses. Unlike porcelain dolls, these were proportioned more or less properly and could be dressed.

She bought several dresses and even a suit of miniature shirt and pants, along with two pairs of shoes. Those should hold little Siska for a while. As an afterthought, she also bought a bed, chair, and little box of dwarf-made metal dishes. Those dishes had been dear, almost a full silver mark, but little Siska was done eating like a barbarian, so far as Siska was concerned.

Siska stuffed her purchases into her shopping basket as she finished haggling with the merchants who sold the doll toys.