Apprentice Read Online Free PDF

from the building. This accomplished, he began casting a spell.
    As the wizard chanted, Benen began to see a mist rise from the ground near the cottage and eventually from its roof and surfaces as well. This mist had an eerie green light dancing within it, making the whole a sickly green. Soon, all Benen could see was the mist and the light; the cottage had been swallowed up entirely. The moment the building was no longer visible, the wizard reached the end of his incantation and made a dismissing gesture with his right hand, moving it in a broad arc from his far left toward the right in one swift movement. The mist obeyed the motion and dissipated, revealing the empty meadow once more: the cottage was gone. Benen was dying to ask how it was done and where the building had gone, but knew he couldn’t.
    Will I, one day, be able to do all these things? he wondered.
    The walk to their final destination did not take the whole of the day. Saying they were close to his tower, the wizard kept them walking through lunch. They arrived a few hours after noon. Of course, Benen could not tell they had arrived. The wizard stopped walking and straightened, a smile playing on his lips.
    “Your new home, boy,” he said, motioning to the empty grasslands before the two of them. Benen looked around for a residence of some sort. “Can you not see it?”
    “No, master, I’m sorry,” Benen looked for an entrance hidden in the grass, thinking perhaps the place was below ground.
    The wizard reached out one of his hands and touched Benen lightly on the shoulder. With his other hand he pointed upward. Benen looked up and, where before there had been only empty air there was a translucent structure hovering thirty metres above the ground. The wizard removed his hand and the flying tower vanished from Benen’s sight.
    “You have the gift all right,” the wizard said. “I heard your gasp of surprise when you saw my home. Only one with the gift can pierce the veil I placed over it.” Benen’s face contorted as he held back his questions. The wizard, seeing this, smiled indulgently, “What do you want to ask? One question only, mind.”
    “Why do I only see it when you touch me?” Benen asked. “It’s like the constellations back at the village. I only see these things when you’re touching me.”
    “You have no power of your own, boy. You have the gift but no fuel for it. When I touch you, I push some of mine into you, a very small amount, but it is enough to grant you the sight.” The wizard motioned toward the place that would be directly under the flying building. Once in position under it, he said, “Shrovnark!”
    A second later, Benen felt a thump through the ground nearby, like a giant’s footfall. The wizard walked toward the origin of the noise and soon disappeared from Benen’s sight.
    Carefully, the boy walked to where the wizard had last been and ran into something hard and unyielding. The moment he made contact with it, the entire structure became visible, along with the wizard himself.
    From the bottom of the tower, a spiral staircase of marble reached the ground. Benen had walked into the side of its railing. The wizard stood on the first step.
    “We are within the veil now. You can see my home once you have crossed into its protective envelope; you and I are hidden too, while within.” Benen was too impressed to speak, not that he would, given the repercussions.
    “Come,” the wizard commanded as he began to ascend the steps to the tower proper.
    Ascending thirty meters using a spiral staircase was not for the weak of heart.
    For the seven year old Benen. the climb was exhausting. Surprisingly, the wizard did not even sweat or breathe hard from the exertion.
    For an old man, he’s remarkably fit. He probably cheats with magic, Benen thought.
    “I do. You will find that few play by the rules unless they are fools, boy,” the wizard replied to his thoughts.
    Benen stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the