To Claim the Elvin Princess: Apprentice (35 page)

4

Amein had scarcely slept, tossing constantly while lying down, and interspersing this with nervous pacing. She had finally gone to sleep an hour before dawn, and was roused by the noises of the servants.

She emerged a mess, having tossed her hair back, not even touching it with a brush. Tossing on her battle attire, she had gone to get a drink, having decided to at least consider a new and more dire course of action. Seeing her, her family understood how near despair she was, it plainly etched on her face.

“Has there been no word?” her mother asked, quietly. Amein merely shook her head, too tired to even reply.

“You must be patient, and give the scouts time to...”

“Rasten likely has no time and you know it!” Amein shrieked, before turning away, and bursting into tears. Haiveri slipped her arms around Amein, and pulled her tight.

“You know I understand your pain, so hear me well; you can not abandon duty or sacrifice the well being of our people for your own ends! This will perhaps be the greatest test you will ever face...to rise above your own pain, and to choose to be wise and strong. I would spare you this if I could, but that is beyond me. Only you can meet this challenge. Make us proud, dear daughter; you know we will love you no matter how it ends!”

Amein wiped at her face, and turned. “You words are reasonable and proper, yet they seem empty to my heart! I have never imagined I could feel so helpless and inadequate as I do now, and would rather lie down and die than endure such evil! If I can not save Rasten, then I would only desire to inflict destruction on those responsible, turning love into vengeance and retribution! Can you blame me?”

“And this from the one who proclaimed that her greatest goal was to find peace? Amein! Listen to your own words! The Eridians are prone to vengeance! Would you reduce us to their level?” Amein shrugged at this.

“Perhaps we have been overlong in our patience, too cowardly to do what should long ago have been accomplished! I am going to the Chamber of Ericaisin, to consider what I might do!” Amein bitterly declared, before turning and stomping off. Havieri stood motionless, aghast at this last proclamation. When Amein was out of sight, she motioned for Narimein to hurry close.

“Yes Princess Aunt?” the young one asked, eager to be helpful.

“Run as fast as you can, and summon Elder Midarini! When he asks why, tell him
Princess Amein, Ericasin!
He will understand.” she sighed.

Amein had accompanied her father to the Chamber of Eicasin only once, when she became officially of age. She had been taught the procedure for opening the doors, which were massive and beyond any sorcery to breech. He had explained how to unlock them, and described the opening of the next set of doors, much like the first. He had described what was on the other side, and what fearsome devices might be found within, all weapons and sorceries deemed too terrible to ever be unleashed against a foe, save under the most dire necessity. With his untimely passing, only two existed who could unlock this place; Amein and Elder Midarini.

It took Amein only one try to open each door, her memory, like that of all Elvin, nearly perfect. The chamber lay deep under the Citidal, carved from stone uncounted years before, to hold treasures, but had been turned into its current place as a tomb for forbidden Elvin technology as their skill and ingenuity grew.

When the second pair of doors opened, Elvin lights began to glow, slowly becoming brighter. Amein stepped into a vast cavern, the ceiling shielded by blackness far above her head. She beheld many stone platforms and pillars, each with some device upon it, and a crystal case of pure Elanite molded to enclose it. Touching a small one, she noted a device that looked made to grasp easily in her hand. She quickly discovered that the Elanite was immobile, as her father had told her it would be. She had to face the Watcher, and convince it of her honesty and need, before any item might be removed. Sighing, she wandered through the cases, finally approaching a raised platform, upon which stood a pillar of polished black Elanite. She stepped up, and knelt before the crystal, head bowed, waiting.

“Who has come to this place?” she heard, the voice sounding much like she remembered her father’s as being. It seemed powerful and calm, but like her father’s had been, it promised to tolerate no foolishness.

“Sa-Tarin Lo Ameinidine, daughter of Sa-Taran Lo Sayarinueramin, warrior princess and leader of our Clan,” she replied simply.

“And what justifies your being here, Princess, in this place where everything so entombed has vast potential for evil? What urgency would you have to justify the use of any device here?” the voice demanded. Amein cringed, to hear such a stark telling.

“Our people have endured centuries of death and destruction at the hands of the Eridians. All our might has failed to vanquish them, and thus end their depredations. I seek a better way to defeat them, and thus spare all of us this continual suffering!” she declared, hoping this sounded reasonable.

“But whose suffering would you end, theirs or yours? Can you honestly tell me that you can’t destroy them with the weapons you possess, or do you lack the fortitude to hack them down, one by one? Have you attempted this?” the voice demanded.

It took Amein several long moments to respond.

“No! I wanted some...easier way...” she sighed.

“Easier for whom...you? These weapons kept herein would offer no comfort to your enemy, all being terrible and cruel! Is that your standard? You care not for what you afflict on others, only wishing to spare yourself? Does that sound wise or decent? Are you saying the Elvin have lost their lofty place as decent and civilized beings?” the voice demanded, sounding disappointed and greatly disapproving. This touched Amein deeply.

“NO! Stop! I’m sorry!” she managed to sob, leaping up, and turning to run for the doors. She was shocked to run into the arms of the Elder, who gazed at her, a smile upon his old face.

“I see you had a chance to gather your thoughts more properly? Come!” he declared. They went out, and the outer doors shut precisely, without a sound. They walked slowly along, passing up staircases carved of stone.

“Elder? How is it that the Watcher can know to ask such wicked questions? Is it...alive?”

“Not as you’d imagine...it is a creation of the Elvish sorcerers and those with a crafty, inventive bent. It is itself a forbidden thing, created and artificial. It was simply decided to use it there, to force people to be more honest as to their motives. It seems to work well, doesn’t it?” he teased. Amein looked miserable, but nodded.

“I am ashamed to confess it, but I let my emotions take possession of my mind. No matter how much I think other wise, Rasten is no different than any other of our people. I find I’m willing to do things in his behalf that I would know better than to do for someone I don’t know. That’s a terrible trait in a leader, isn’t it?” she sighed.

“It won’t get you accorded great status, that is certainly true! But you will learn and grow from this lapse! The problem with your wishing to take an easier path is that it seduces you into overlooking what you really should do!”

“It might help if I had some idea of what I should be doing!” she complained peevishly.

“Tell me, what is your problem...what has you so troubled?”

“The Eridians have captured or killed Rasten and still hold others...especially the Elvin females! I would wish to get them back!”

“And attacking them is likely to fail?”

“Were we to soundly beat them, they would likely kill the captives, just from spite!”

“True. Why don’t you trade some of their captive people back to them, in exchange for the ones we want?”

“We don’t have a bunch to trade! Besides, they...”

“Perhaps you should be doing something about
that
?” Midarini interrupted. “You don’t need to find Rasten or the others, to capture Eridians, do you? He’d be safer if you attacked another band of them, and then made known your price to swap them back!”

“But how are we to capture them?! Most times, they either fight to the death, or flee, especially when outnumbered!”

“Perhaps you should have studied more sorcery? Master Emareili can make a compound that when released becomes a vapor. One breath of it will render anyone, human or Elvin, unconscious for a time. You could easily take a large group of Eridians, should you use it. Just be aware of the winds, less you fall under its spell yourself!” Midarini declared.

When they reached the upper reaches of the Citidal, the Elder went on his way. Amein summoned some of her officers and sent word to Master Emareili to prepare the compound she needed. She issued crisp instructions, then headed to her quarters, to get more properly prepared. On the way, she encountered her mother.

“You seem more in possession of your senses?”

“Yes, mother, I was well confronted by my foolishness! I’ll not make that mistake again! The Watcher is simply impossible to lie too!” she complained, before grinning. “I just regret being so much more foolish than father. I’m sure he never gave in to that temptation!” she sighed.

“You make foolish assumptions! He too let despair drive him to seek such forbidden help. The ancients were quite wise to make it as they did, to force any to confront their own weakness, rather than making the doing of evil easy! We are none of us perfect, nor are we immune to all temptations! The next time you face a similar problem, you will be more apt to hold your own inquisition on your motives, and thus rise to a better understanding! You have just joined a long line of Elvin, who were spared doing something evil, by the wisdom of our collective people. You found the questions uncomfortable?”

“Embarrassingly so! Had my bottom been paddled, it would have been no worse! I have no idea how such sorcery works, but have no wish to be subjected to it again!”

“Then keep your emotions under control, and use your mind. Thinking with your heart seldom works well!” Haiveri suggested.

“I’ve not done very well with that recently, have I?” she admitted, thinking of Rasten.

“No better than you’ve resisted your urges...” her mother slyly teased, before giving Amein a hug.

The

Wizard’s Daughter:

Magic My Butt!

A Novel By

Jack Bessie

Beware less you cast a spell on
yourself
!

Elisa  Deibelman wanted so much to be just an ordinary
girl.
Unfortunately, she was the daughter of a
wizard.

It was hard enough being accepted in school as a teen, but boys were somewhat reluctant to date her, since things
happened
to guys that did!

It didn’t help that her twelve year old sister, Missy, was a prodigy at wizardry either, able to do sneaky things that plagued all her siblings and even her parents.

Elisa was angry and near the end of her rope, when something wicked occurred that forced Missy, and a sorcerer girl named Tara to try and save her from an evil sorcer named Master Tarienious!

Maybe she needed to reconsider the whole
wizard as career thing
…and fast?!

1

Elisa Deibleman wasn’t a normal girl. Oh, certainly, she looked like a normal girl. She had all the normal girl parts, being human and fifteen. Both of her deep brown eyes were properly set and very pretty, with long lashes that laughed at any need for mascara.

Her teeth were straight and white, nose modest and cute. She wasn’t green of complexion, but instead was graced by almost perfect skin, had normal ears, perky breasts, a rear that would have made any teen boy sigh upon seeing her wiggling down the school hallways. Her hair, soft, thick, bouncy and luscious, cascading down her back in flowing curls, made other teen girls sigh in jealous frustration.

Looking quite normal, in fact, looking nearly like a goddess, she had no trace of snotty self-importance or arrogance. Everyone thought her wonderfully nice.

But, for all this, she concealed one secret, one attribute that made her not be normal; she was the daughter of a wizard. Actually, it was worse than that. Elisa was an offspring of an entire linage of wizards. Her parents, grand parents, great grand parents etc, were all card carrying wizards. Well, except that they didn’t actually carry cards!

Still, there it was. Elisa had certain…tendencies. And
abilities
. Even though she was contrary, and was resisting the development of her intrinsic nature, she still could exude magic and spells with no effort. She had been quite exasperated when at ten, she sneezed a bit too uncontrollably, and turned the family cat into a wombat. Talk about embarrassing! Naturally, she hadn’t learned the proper spell to turn it back, and was forced to carry the greatly annoyed critter to her father for a remedy. It was hard to deny her nature after that!

Still, she did resist her path, her nature. Having seen what trouble her older siblings had fitting in, she had less than no desire to subject herself to such problems. Naturally, since her family was like most wizardly ones, this proved a challenge, owing to their perverse sense of humor, which was compounded by their abilities.

Face it, you’d likely not wish to date someone if a big frog appeared on your head whenever you held hands, or tried to kiss them, would you?

Elisa was again reminded of why she wanted nothing to do with wizardry on a Thursday afternoon, between classes, when she came upon a boy she liked. Seizing the opportunity to say hi, hoping to get asked to the dance after the basketball game Friday night, she stepped close exuding her best smile.

“Well, hello! So, are you going to the game Friday?” she nonchalantly wondered, trying to calm her jitters. The boy, Alex, grinned, nervous and intimidated by having such a cute and yummy girl actually talking to him, He managed to nod.

“You…uh…you’re going?” he managed to inquire.

Elisa nodded too, trying to decide what to say, if Alex didn’t make the move to suggest going to the dance with her. He had barely opened his mouth, to ask just that, when Elisa noticed a large spider suddenly appear on Alex’s hair. An exceptionally large and odd spider.

Not thinking, she reached up, and slapped it away, startling the poor boy. The spider landed on the floor, and ran off, causing a chorus of screams, as several girls noted it. Alex was nearly one of those to scream. Before they could recover, the bell rang to signal classes started again in two minutes.

“I’ve got to run…maybe we can talk…later?” he asked, sounding unsure if that was wise, and he turned to run off. Elisa’s eye roll declared her exasperation.

That’s wasn’t an ordinary spider!”
she fumed on her way to her Spanish class.
Someone’s’ hung a charm, curse or spell on me!
She considered the possible suspects, mainly being her older brother Rupert, older sister Caitlyn, or worse, her father. That wizards tended to have a fondness for practical jokes, and usually possessed a sneaky and perverse sense of humor, did little to sooth her upset. That family members were the first target of choice, came as no surprise either. Normally this served as training and a way to improve each member’s skill. That Elisa had refused to participate in the training so far, left her at a vulnerable disadvantage. 

At home, she avoided the rest of her relatives, doing her homework, and reading a bit, after tidying her room. When her younger sister Missy, at twelve the junior member of the household, arrived to summon her to dinner, the young girl wasted no time in spotting Elisa’s upset.

“Got pranked, didn’t you? How mad are you?” she wondered. Elisa was looking down, sitting, arms crossed, radiating her disturbance. Being so oblivious, she failed to note her sister’s wicked grin, and small gestures. Instead, she suddenly had a large frog sitting in her lap.

“Missy!” she shrieked. She prepared to leap up, but before she could, Missy made a swift warding gesture, and the frog became a large snake. Elisa was terrified of snakes, a fact well known to her younger sister. She shrieked even more profoundly, looking like she might wet herself. Missy snatched the snake’s tail, and with a quick flip, turned it into a firm walking stick. Missy giggled unabashedly, before sighing.

“You’re so easy! Come on…if you don’t need to change your undies, let’s go eat!” she suggested, stepping close, and giving Elisa a strong hug. For all her willingness to be wicked and to aggravate her older sister, she loved her profoundly.

“You need your butt paddled!” Elisa grumbled softly, to no one in particular.

“You’d need to be a wizard to do that, sister dear!” she declared surely, releasing Elisa, and sticking her tongue out, before turning, and running from the room.

Brat!
Elisa thought, none too kindly. She was tromping down the stairs, when a new thought hit her.

I wonder if everyone thought I was that much of a brat, when I was her age?
she considered this, with a pang of guilt, but came to no conclusion. Arriving at her place, she pulled out a chair, and plopped down. Her manner of sitting suggested to everyone else just how annoyed she was.

“Accursed day at school?” her father asked, curious.

Elisa sat, staring at her plate, refusing to respond. This concerned her mother, Grace.

“Elisa? You need to speak up. We can’t help you, if you don’t!” she prodded. Elisa shrugged, but said nothing. Missy, noting this, surveyed the table, before speaking up, while working to butter a roll.

“She got pranked, but wasn’t forthcoming about the details!” she said, precise and thoughtful. She received a brief death stare from Elisa, before she softened, and threatened to cry.

“I hope whoever did that is just so proud of himself!” she yelled. Everyone looked back and forth at each other, puzzled, before turning their focus back to Elisa.

“Honey, what happened?” Her mother asked, having gotten up, to come and hug her daughter from behind.

Elisa managed to recount her experience with Alex. When she wiped her eyes, and looked around, she noted that everyone had an utterly blank look on their face.

“So…who did it?!” she angrily demanded. “You’ve had your fun! Rue?” she sharply hissed, calling Rupert by has family nickname. At seventeen, he was the most likely suspect. Getting only a quick shake of the head, she turned to her older sister, Caitlyn, a college junior. “You?!” Again she got a nonverbal denial.

“Don’t even go there!” Missy declared, before even being asked. “You know I’d have done something much more wicked than just a spider!” she insisted. At twelve, Missy was well advanced on wizardly pursuits, having displayed an exceptional ability at crafting spells. Everyone had suffered from her experimenting, until she ventured to include her mother in her list of potential subjects. Not being able to sit to eat dinner one evening, on her scorched bottom, had discouraged her worst tinkering, at least any tendency to involve her mother as a test subject.

A glance at her father Arthur, yielded a similar, swift denial. “Not me!”

“You know better than to even ask!” her mother proclaimed, when Elisa looked up and behind quizzically.

She sat, looking exasperated. “Either someone’s lying…or…or…”

“Or your butts about to be in big trouble?” her father opined thoughtfully. “You do know that we aren’t the only wizards in town?” he suggested calmly. Elisa, who had overlooked this fact, in her rush to judgment, actually blushed from her embarrassment.

“Oh. Yes I did. Sorry! It’s just…I don’t normally need to consider the others…do I?!” she replied, getting more pointed as she progressed. The others all looked properly guilty.

“I suppose not,” her father agreed, grinning, “but it is a possibility. Some of those others are even more sneaky and wicked than we are!” he admitted, laughing.

“Oh, that’s so comforting,” Elisa sighed sarcastically.

“Oh, don’t be so bitchy!” Caitlyn suggested, considering turning Elisa’a glass into a toad, just for fun. She resisted the urge, not eager to find out if she was really too old to paddle; her mother disliked having magic intrude at the table! “It’s not like we all haven’t had lots of tricks played on us! Your poor love interest could have suffered a lot worse event…right?”

“He’s not a love interest!” Elisa shrieked suddenly. “Or a boyfriend! He’s just a guy…a guy…”

“You’ve got the hots for?” her brother teased. Judging from his sister’s expression, all that was saving him being turned into a rock was Elisa’s lack of a spell for doing so. Her face was a nice shade of red, which indicated that Rue had been on target.

“You sure get worked up over a boy you don’t care about!” Missy suggested, without looking up from her roll, her assassins arrow aimed perfectly. She was a superbly precocious young girl, who often had a gift for skewering her siblings aptly, much to their annoyance. Had looks been able to kill, Missy would have gone straight to the funeral home.

“Children! Stop being so mean and snarky!” Grace insisted. “Elisa has a right to feel…different about things! She’ll either find her own desire to be a wizard in due time, or she won’t.”

“And regret it!” Rue whispered to Caitlyn.

“I just want to be a normal teen…a girl! Why’s that have to be so hard?!” Elisa shrieked.

“Because you’re not a normal teen?” Rue suggested, trying to be helpful.

“Uhmmmm…there’s another aspect to Elisa’s lack of wizardly development, we should discuss,” her father suddenly suggested, looking concerned. He glanced at Grace, who sighed, and nodded. The others sat, mystified.

“What?! Elisa sniveled angrily.

“Being born a wizard makes you subject to certain…
powers,”
he began. “Normally, as the young wizard grows and learns, their ability gives them…protection, from any sort of…problems. Elisa is a good bit behind, and I suspect, is becoming vulnerable. Your nature attracts things,” he said ominously.

“Great! That’s all I need! Wait…you aren’t just trying to…con me into studying the arts…are you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Hardly. I imagine you’ll end up begging for instruction, especially once you meet your first emboneum!” Arthur advised her. Elisa frowned.

“What’s an emboneum?” she asked, astounded.

“Something big and ugly, that will make you wet your pants!” Missy assured her, giggling. She suddenly sobered, and looked sadly at her sister. “If it doesn’t eat you before you can!” she succinctly snipped.