Dual Apprentices: High Society
"We've got to what?" asked Wenn, his face incredulous.
Crissa looked at him, focusing her huge blue eyes on his flailing hands as he spoke. "Master Marrat wishes us to receive what he calls 'classical' education," she repeated. "In addition to our normal studies."
"At the Academy?" Wenn peered out the window of their shared room, eyeing the tall spire that marked the main building of the Academy of Norboro. "But that place is full of nobles' brats and rich merchants' spoiled kids."
"Speaking of spoiled," said Crissa, giving Wenn a sidelong look. "Perhaps we should concern ourselves more with the difficulty of the instruction there than with the social worries. Hmm?"
After her somewhat chastising words, she rose from her desk and put her arms around Wenn's shoulders. "Don't worry, sweetie, I'll protect you from the bullies," said Crissa, kissing his earlobe. Her hands moved down his chest and to his lap, where she found him already growing stiff. "My mighty Wenn," she cooed, squeezing his swelling prick through his pants.
Wenn smiled and leaned back to kiss her neck and to nuzzle into her straw-colored hair. "You know, they say lushes drink before noon. What do they call a woman who wants love before noon?"
"A catch," said Crissa, flashing him a brilliant, dangerous smile before moving back and toward the door into the stairwell.
The young apprentice's smile evaporated as he watched Crissa open the door, and a small measure of alarm came into his expression. "You're leaving?" he asked.
"You implied some fault to my desiring affection in the early day," said Crissa. "I'll not pester you with unreasonable demands." With that, she flipped her long tresses over her shoulder and disappeared through the doorway.
Wenn sat silently for a long moment, and mourned the pleasure his so-called wit had just cost him. He then closed the hefty tome he had been perusing and stacked his parchment notes into an orderly pile, looking at Crissa's disheveled desktop as he did so.
No discipline
, he thought,
but then again, she's studying a different form of magic than I
.
That sentiment was more than true. Crissa, indeed, was studying a very different form of magic from the wizardry Wenn studied. She was an innate power. That is, her power was inborn, not learned. What she had to learn was to control and hone that power. Wenn, however, studied the world of spell casting. His learning was akin to mathematics, and had many formulae in common with that esoteric art of number juggling. However, instead of manipulating the concepts inherent in numbers, he was manipulating reality. Spells had to be learned, and the formulae memorized and the rotes perfected. Crissa simply had to think properly, focus her mind and things happened.
They weren't flashy things, like a fireball, they were subtle, quiet things, like turning a man's mind to thoughts of lust, or hate, or fear. She could even, now, sense the surface thoughts on another's mind, and of late, had been able to sense other things, like the air about her, and even Wenn's magical aether being drawn in for a spell.
Marrat was rather fumbling in the dark instructing Crissa, as he was a wizard, as Wenn would become. He only took Crissa on as an apprentice because he feared for her safety, and for the safety of those near to her, if her powers remained undisciplined. At least, here at Marrat's home, and nearby, he could counter most of the effects of her occasional outbursts of power and random emotional shrapnel. In the meantime, he did as much research into her abilities as he could, both through observing her, and through study of books, which came from farflung libraries about the Western Realms and beyond.
Wenn closed the door behind him and descended from the turret room that he shared with Crissa. They had been lovers since they first made the two-day journey from Morrovale to Norboro. Marrat had planned that, they later discovered. He was not particularly keen on having two apprentices at one time, but with her powers manifesting in the form of unbridled lusts and desire, he desired to have a young buck about to soak up the stray arrows.
Not that Wenn minded the extra dose of attention directed at him whenever Crissa accidentally set herself into rut on the occasion. Being eighteen, almost nineteen, he had little issue with it at all.
Soon after their arrival, Crissa had breached the subject of monogamy, and they decided, rather she decided that it would not be practical to try to hold one another to such a thing. He loved her, and she him, but they could not promise, especially with random fluxes of passion floating about the house all the time, that they would never cross that line, so she erased the line.
Crissa was making breakfast as he entered the kitchen, and Marrat was sitting at the table, looking like a petulant child who was being kept from his favorite dessert.
At Wenn's curious look, Crissa said, "He was going to eat pie for breakfast!" She cast accusing eyes at Master Marrat, their mentor.
Marrat looked at her with a squint. "I'm sixty-two years old, if I want pie for breakfast, by the One, I'll have pie for breakfast!"
Crissa spun about, her hair fanning into a golden halo, she stopped, with her small hands in fists upon her nicely curved hips. "You'll eat a proper breakfast, and you'll like it," she said, with an air of certainty. Then her face broke into a huge smile and she ducked in toward the elderly magician, hugging his neck and back. "I only wish to take care of you, you sweet man." She then kissed the top of his balding head and straightened his blue sash, the mark of his profession.
The old wizard tried to wriggle free of her grip, but was not very convincing that he did not like the attention she was giving him. Though his lips remained in a semi-scowl, his eyes were sparkling and had the straight lower lid of a hidden smile.
Wenn helped her prepare breakfast, mostly by fetching utensils from various disparate cabinets and drawers about the rather odd kitchen that Marrat insisted on keeping his way.
"The headmaster will be expecting you two tomorrow morning," announced Marrat, digging into his oatmeal, eggs, and sliced ham with gusto, belying totally his lack of desire for breakfast.
"Must we?" asked Wenn, picking at his food with the unpleasant, at least in his mind, future looming over him.
Master Marrat leaned back from shoveling food into his mouth. "Son, this is an exceptional opportunity for some formal education at the Academy. It is not every year that they have two students drop out mid-term and leave vacancies that the Headmaster wishes to fill pro bono."
"Besides, Wenn, you were the one who was all excited at living in the 'cultural center of the duchy'," said Crissa.
Wenn stared at his oatmeal for a moment. "That was before I met the people at that center."
The first week in Norboro, Wenn had come across several students from the Academy at the pub nearest Marrat's home. As he sat and drank his ale, they came over and began to give him grief. Soon it escalated to full-blown bullying, and then one had thrown a punch at Wenn, when he refused to back down from an insult he returned to the lad, with interest.
Wenn had thoroughly beaten the lad who started it, without even resorting to magic, but his two friends extracted vengeance in short order, leaving Wenn with bruises to both his body and ego. Crissa's vengeance had been swift and utter. The two lads had been caught the next morning, performing acts upon one another in the middle of the town square that immediately got them expelled from the Academy, hence the two vacancies amid term.
