Still, it was his.
His gaze fell on the Book of Spells and fixed there. That, too, was his. Alone of all Roggit’s possessions, that was the one he had never been allowed to touch. The old wizard’s sorry handful of semiprecious stones was hidden somewhere in the cottage, hidden even from his own apprentice, but Tobas had been permitted to handle them freely on the occasions when, for one reason or another, they had been brought out. Only the Book had been forbidden.
He stepped over to the reading stand and studied it.
It was a large volume, and thick, bound in hinged tin plates of a dull, dark blue-gray; a single large black rune that Tobas could not identify decorated the front. He knew most of the pages were blank, but Roggit had boasted that it held more than thirty different spells, and Tobas had glimpsed several. This book, he was sure, would be the key to his future.
He hesitated, the force of the old man’s prohibition still lingering, but then reached out for the dented metal cover. He was well within his rights, he assured himself, and acting in a perfectly reasonable manner in reading the Book of Spells he had inherited, so that he might teach himself more magic and make a living. It was his now.
He stroked the book gently, as if expecting to feel its magic, but it felt no different from the side of the water bucket. He smiled at his own folly in thinking he might be able to feel the Book’s magic, if it even had any of its own. At last, more excited than he cared to admit even to himself, he grasped the worn edge and pried at the heavy tin-coated cover.
Without warning, the black rune on the front exploded loudly and violently in his face, throwing hissing gobbets of orange flame in all directions; none struck him, though one seared away a stray hair as it passed.
Astonished, Tobas simply stepped back at first, staring at the smoldering, blackened face of the Book of Spells. Roggit had, it seemed, put a protective spell of some sort on it to frighten away thieves. Then the scent of smoke reached him, and he realized that the fireballs had not been pure illusion.
Puzzled and dismayed, he looked about; scattered sparks were dying on the hard-packed floor, and one had singed the table top, but seemed to be expiring without doing much damage.
Where, then, was the smell of smoke coming from?
He sniffed again, then looked up at a faint crackling-sound, and saw that one of the fiery projectiles had set the roof afire, right up near the ridgepole. The dry thatch was already burning vigorously.
On the verge of panic, he spun his head about, looking for some way of extinguishing the blaze before it spread. He had not bothered to fetch water; that meant that he had none on hand to douse the fire, and, by the time he could make a trip to the well, or even the swamp, half the roof might be gone. He snatched up Roggit’s old spare tunic from a nearby shelf, but could not reach high enough to beat at the fire with it. The large blanket, which might have reached, had been on the old man’s pyre.
He clambered atop the table, the tunic wrapped about his forearm; as he reached upward, one of the legs snapped beneath his weight, dumping him roughly back to the floor. He rolled aside, unhurt, then got to his knees, looking for something else he could stand on.
There was nothing. The chairs, he saw instantly, would not be tall enough to help.
He had to do something; the cottage was almost all he had. He was a wizard, more or less, yet he felt utterly helpless as he watched the flames, a few feet out of reach, licking at the age-blackened ridgepole.
The sight of the spreading fire spurred him to frantic desperation, and a thought occurred to him. He was a wizard; he knew a spell, just a single spell, and it was a fire spell. Didn’t the proverbs say to fight fire with fire?
Quickly, he snatched the dagger from his belt, fumbled in his pouch for brimstone, and flung his spell at the burning thatch.
The resulting explosion dwarfed the first; half the roof vanished in flaming shreds, and the force of the blast knocked Tobas to the floor hard enough to daze him.
When he recovered his wits the whole cottage was ablaze, dripping bits of burning debris on all sides. Panicking, he forgot all concern for his inheritance and for anything except saving his skin; he ran out the door, calling wildly for help.
CHAPTER 2
He watched disconsolately as the cottage burned. The entire structure was going up in smoke, its complete contents with it, and he could do nothing but sit and watch.
This, he thought sorrowfully, beyond any possible doubt, beyond any chance of recovery or hope of salvage, marked the end of his apprenticeship, any sort of apprenticeship. As if his master’s death had not been bad enough, taking away the last person in all the World who cared a whit for him, now, just a few hours after the funeral, he had accidentally destroyed everything the old man had left him. His home and all his worldly possessions, save the clothes he wore and the few precious items on his belt, were vanishing before his eyes, being reduced to smoke and ash.
Roggit’s Book of Spells was certainly gone, and just as certainly no other wizard would take him on as an apprentice. He was seventeen, what sort of a wizard would take on a lad of seventeen under any conditions, let alone one who had as yet learned so little of the arcane arts? He had learned the basic secret of wizardry, true — that secret was the nature of the athame, the ritual dagger that each wizard prepared and that held a part of its master’s soul. Beyond that, though, he knew only his single spell. What could a wizard do with a single spell?
He had little chance of finding any other employment in Telven or the surrounding area; even an advantageous marriage was more than he could hope for, since he had no favors to call in, no close relatives who would help in arranging a betrothal, and no prospects for a love match. He was quite sure that nobody who knew anything of his past would want anything to do with him, especially after this latest disaster, for fear his bad luck might be contagious.
He sighed. He hadn’t always been unlucky, or at least he hadn’t thought so, but now, as he mentally reviewed his life, he wasn’t so sure. Certainly it had been a bad sign when his mother died bearing him; that was hardly an auspicious start for any child.
Other than that, however, he had done well enough until he was fifteen. He had been happy with his father’s cousin Indamara and her husband, the two of whom had raised him in his parents’ absence, and he had gotten on well with their children, his second cousins. He had had no more than the usual number of childhood mishaps — falls from trees every so often, almost drowning in a farmer’s pond once, nothing out of the ordinary. He had missed the plague that killed a few of the neighbors when he was eight and had come through a bout of pox unscarred. Life had been good to him throughout those years; he had played in the fields with the other children, taken long walks with his father whenever the ship was in port, and generally lived the normal, happy life of the son of a successful pirate.
Privateer, he corrected himself; his father had been a privateer, defending the Free Lands of the Coasts from the tyranny of the Ethsharites. That was what all the neighbors said.
He had never quite understood how robbing merchant vessels kept the overlords of the Hegemony of Ethshar from reconquering the Free Lands and ruling harshly over them, as they had ruled long ago, but everybody said that it worked, so he had long ago stopped questioning it.