Excerpt
“I was with
Xavier,” Thomas replied. With head bowed, he stared at his stew, sensing he
would not be allowed to eat.
“Who?” His
mother’s voice. Her angry, high-pitched voice.
Thomas looked up
at his father to see a pipe halfway to a gaping mouth. “Xavier, you know, he
lives in the tower. He wants to teach me to read and write. He wants me to be
his apprentice.”
His mother sat
down and stared at him.
“He’s got lots
of books, scores of them. He showed me a book with lots of animals in it.”
His da sat back
in his chair, silent. His mum folded her hands in her lap, also silent.
“Think of it,”
Thomas continued excitedly. “Think of the things I could do if I could read. I
could go and work for the prince in Targon, I could see the whole kingdom.”
“Go to bed,
Thomas,” Da said.
The boy gazed down at his untouched food. It smelled good and looked even better, but his father had spoken. Thomas got up and climbed the ladder to his loft. Deep into the night, even after his parents stopped their whispered arguing, he lay in bed thinking of the map Xavier had shown him of the kingdom. He would find a way. He would be…what word had Xavier used? Necromancer. He would be a necromancer and he would see the whole kingdom.
* * * *
In the morning,
Thomas awoke to the smell of porridge. Having had no dinner the night before,
he hurried down the ladder. There he found his da already eating. His mum
ladled his share into a bowl and then got some for herself.
“We’ve decided
you may learn to read and write. None of that dark stuff, though. You hear? No
digging up of graves,” his da said. “We want more for your life, Thomas. Now
then, what does this friend of yours want in return? We can’t afford to pay
anything. I suppose he mentioned a price.”
Thomas looked at
his mum as she sat down. She folded her hands in her lap and remained quiet.
“He said it
would cost nothing. He just wants someone to teach. Xavier said he’s getting
old and just wants someone to pass on some of ’is…” Thomas paused trying to remember
the word. “…knowledge.”
Da wiped his
mouth with his sleeve. “Then we’ll give it a try. Only til ’arvest, though.
You’ll be needed in the fields then. Anything after that and we’ll see.”
A month and a
half, Thomas thought excitedly. I have a month and a half!
“No good will
come of this,” his mum remarked. “Mark my words, that man never did any good
for anyone.”
Thomas finished his breakfast in a gulp and got up to run from the house. He stopped just outside the door to pick up his favorite stick and heard his da say, “I want better for him, Sonya. This life is no life for my son. He’s smarter than this.”
* * * *
A month passed
and Thomas studied. He studied geography; the world turned out to be a lot
bigger than he imagined. He learned arithmetic, how to count to a thousand.
Then moved on to reading and writing, eight to nine hours a day he went through
the books and scrolls. On the second and third floors of the tower stood
skeletons of various animals, there he learned science, anatomy, and biology.
The fourth
floor, however, Xavier said he needed to learn a good deal more before being
ready for that.
“The villagers
are shunning me,” he said to Xavier one day after learning the word. “They
whisper about me whenever I pass. Even my friends. Yesterday I waved to them
and started walking, to tell them what I was learning, and they turned their
backs and ran away.”
Xavier looked up
from the book he held. “People, for the most part, are very small-minded. They
shun what they do not understand or things that are different.”
“Was that the
way it was with you when you first started studying to be a necromancer?”
“People always
thought me to be a little different. Look, Thomas, you will see more, you will
do more, than they can imagine in their empty heads. You will learn to create
life from death.”
Thomas thought
about these words for some time. He wanted to do more than just plant and
harvest. He wanted to travel this world, especially the sea to the west, to see
more than just this tiny village too small for a name. He decided he liked
being different. He was already learning more than they ever would. Did not that
make him better?
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