The Child Prince (The Artifactor) (4 page)

“I’m the 49
^th
Prince of Windamere,” he answered wearily, as if this didn’t even need an explanation. “My name has history in it. Do you really want me to explain it?”

No, not really. She’d probably forget the explanation in five minutes anyway. “Well, I’m not calling you that. And I’m not calling you Prince or Highness or some such either. While you’re here, you’re simply my apprentice. I don’t want people being suspicious of you and asking questions.” Although people were bound to ask questions. Sevana had refused to take apprentices for years after all. Taking a boy in suddenly that no one knew would make the rumors fly.

“So what are you going to call me?” he asked cautiously. “Bellomi?”

“Too long,” she dismissed, starting forward again. “Bel will do.”

“Bel?” he protested. “That’s what you call a pet!”

“Pet, apprentice, what’s the difference?” With a dismissive shrug, she went on to the more important topics and ignored his spluttering. “A few warnings for you. This mountain is not a mountain. His name is Big.”

Sidetracked from the name issue, Bel gave his surroundings a baffled look. “Not a mountain?”

Sevana hated to explain things, but he had to know how this all worked, otherwise he’d bumble into the wrong places later and cause havoc. “He used to be just a mountain, but when I was about three I started playing in the caves up here with Kip. I decided one day that it would be more fun if the mountain could play with us and he did.”

Bel’s eyes were so round that they were in danger of falling out of his head. “You made a
mountain a sentient being?”

“Can you keep up with the conversation?” she asked dryly, taking a left turn. “Anyway, his name is Big. Big will respond to most requests that you ask, as long as it’s something he’s capable of doing. He’s made a room up for you. But there are times when the doors won’t open. Don’t try to force them if that happens. Big will re-route the tunnels on occasion and it’s dangerous to be outside of a room when he’s doing that.”

“Why would he re-route the tunnels?”

Patience,
she reminded herself. She had to be patient and explain things. With a deep breath, she answered. “If there are intruders or someone that I don’t want to see, he changes the tunnels around so that they just get lost in here and can’t find me.”

“Oh.” There was a merciful moment of silence as Bel mulled this over. “That’s quite clever, actually.”

Sevana shot him an approving look. “Big is smart,” she agreed. “But he makes mistakes. Sometimes, if he knows that you want to talk to me, he’ll arrange the tunnels so that you can go directly to me. But if I’m in my workroom,
do not go inside.
Don’t knock loudly either.”

“Err…I take it that’s dangerous?”

She favored him with a withering look.

“…Right, I won’t knock loudly,” he agreed rapidly. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Starting tomorrow, you’re going to be in training.” Sevana paused at a crossroads and looked around her. Now where had Big put the new bedroom? There was space on either end of this hallway for one.

“Training?” he repeated blankly. “Training for
what
?”

“On how to be a king,” Sevana answered absently. “Big, where’s his room?”

The tunnel shifted slightly to where the right branch sloped at a downward angle. Ah, this side, huh? She turned, hand still firmly gripping the kid’s arm, and followed the silent cues that Big gave her.

Bel had to lengthen his stride to a near run to keep up with her. “You mean political training?” he panted out.

The prince had
no
stamina, not that this was surprising. Being locked up in a room for ten years didn’t do much for the body after all. “That and fighting ability, governing skills, economics, trade skills, and anything else I think you need.”

Big opened the door for them, letting the wooden portal swing inwards. Sevana stepped just inside and released the prince’s arm. She looked around and nodded in approval. Big had moved a bed, dresser, and a trunk in here from one of the storage areas. He’d even put in more effort than usual in making the floor smooth and the walls more angular.

While the prince stepped inside, looking around curiously, she continued her explanation. “Big will show you where anything is as long as you ask him. The floor will have a slightly downward slope that will show you which direction to go. He’ll make a training space for you inside.”

“As you will.” Pointing a finger upwards, he asked, “How do these lights work? It looks like a written incantation….”

“It is.” She spared a glance upwards, for the first time in three years actually paying attention to them. She’d been stuck for ideas when she first moved into Big on how to have proper lighting. The water didn’t prove a challenge, as Big could create his own stone pipes and route water wherever he wanted to. But light was a different story. She’d finally designed a special incantation, infused into the metal of a fallen star, and attached it to the ceiling of each room. It didn’t look like much, as it was a simple metal ring the size of a grown man’s head, with one set of runes engraved into it. But it proved to be ten times brighter than a normal lamp. “When you enter a room, the spell will activate and light the room. If you want the light off when you’re inside, tell Big, and he’ll cover the incantation for you.”

Bel stared upwards for a moment, squinting against the stark white of the light. “No way to turn it off again?”

“Certainly. Leave the room.”

“Ah.”

Actually, if she could get around that minor irritation of not being able to turn the light off on command, she could market this and probably make a small fortune. Ah well. A problem for a different day. “One more thing. Don’t go outside the mountain unless I’m with you.”

His face became closed off and expressionless. “So I’m a prisoner here, too?”

“No,” she denied calmly, crossing her arms over her chest and meeting his eyes squarely. “You can leave. But if you get into trouble outside, I’m not coming after you, and I’m not bailing you out.”

He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. After a moment, he nodded. “Fair enough. I should exercise some caution when outside, I suppose.”

Hearing those words sounded so odd, coming from an eight-year-old child’s mouth. But Sevana needed to remember that he
wasn’t
eight and in fact had a few years on her. He just didn’t have any of the knowledge and experience that a twenty-one year old should have. “Yes, you should. Don’t get yourself killed before I can break that curse.”

For some reason he smiled at that, his eyes alight with amusement. “Indeed. So when do you want to start on that?”

“Now.” She waved him back outside and this time he followed her on his own.

A low grumbling noise came from around them. Bel automatically froze, a paranoid look on his face as he stared at the ceiling. Sevana, used to Big’s speech, just patted the wall. “It’s fine, Big. The room’s just what he needs.”

Bel pointed a finger at the roof. “That rumbling noise was Big talking?”

“He talks in groans and whispers on the wind,” she responded, leading the way through the dim tunnels to her workroom. “You get used to it.”

“Ah. Alright.”

Unconcerned, she focused back on what she wanted to know. “I need more details. Do you remember being hit with that curse?”

“Yes?” he responded while rubbing at the back of his head, sending his already mussed hair into an even messier tangle. “I was walking in the back garden when this icy feeling ran across my skin, like someone had thrown me into ice water. When I looked around, I didn’t see anyone, but then I noticed that everything seemed taller. I looked down at my hands,” he raised them to eye level, as if re-living that moment, “and I could see them steadily shrink. My bodyguard snatched me up and ran to the Magical Wizard of the Council, Pierpoint.”

“I know him,” Sevana responded thoughtfully. She had studied under him, briefly, but only for a week. It had been quickly apparent that her magic wasn’t suited to spells, but crafting. Pierpoint had more magical power than the average magician, and he certainly knew how to use it, but there were too many variations of spells and curses for any one person to keep inside their head. Even he would have trouble identifying and stopping
every
curse. “What did he do then?”

“He put me under a stasis spell. He didn’t know what else to do, as he said that he’d need weeks to figure out what I had been cursed with.” Bel’s shoulders slumped and his eyes fell to the floor. “Only he never could figure it out. He lost his position at the court because of it, too.”

Yes, and wasn’t that a spectacularly stupid decision on someone’s part. You don’t fire the most gifted magician in the five kingdoms just because he can’t immediately identify an obscure curse. Sevana might consult with him later, depending on where her own investigation led, but at the moment she just filed the information away. “You said that the bodyguard snatched you up and ran with you. Did you move before he grabbed you?”

Bel opened his mouth to respond, paused, and his brows furrowed as he thought about it. “No. I hadn’t moved.”

“Did the curse affect him, too?”

“No, it was just me.”

That told her a great deal. The curse wasn’t calculated to ambush anyone in that area. The bodyguard would have been affected too if that had been the case. So this was a long-range spell that was cast from some distance. It also had to have been tailored to
just
curse the prince otherwise anyone that touched him immediately after the casting would still have been affected. “It really was an assassination attempt.”

Bel froze in his tracks, snagging her elbow to pull her to a stop as well. His eyes were disturbed and oddly vulnerable as he looked up at her. “There’s no doubt in your mind of that? They really
were
trying to kill me?”

Softening the truth wouldn’t serve any good purpose. He couldn’t afford to let his guard drop. He’d be dead if she sugar coated the truth now. Sevana answered him bluntly. “An anti-aging spell is a very odd choice, I’ll grant you that, but I bet it’s the only spell that could get past all of the magical protection you’re under. In its own way, it’s just as effective. Unless the spell is released, the target of the spell will keep de-aging until they literally cease to exist. But the spell was obviously meant
just
for you, otherwise your bodyguard would have been cursed as well as soon as he touched you. Someone out there was trying to kill you. I imagine that the only reason why they didn’t try again is because having you forever trapped as a child was just as effective in taking you out of power as killing you.”

Bel’s eyes closed and he half-flinched at her words. “A part of me always suspected, but…”

“Be careful of the questions you ask me,” Sevana warned him quietly. “I’ll tell you the truth whether or not you are ready for the answer.”

His head lowered so that his shaggy hair covered his eyes. “I’ll remember that,” he whispered.

Sevana heaved a mental sigh as she looked at that bowed head. Really. What was he: a child, or an adult in a child’s body? She couldn’t tell from here. He could be so incredibly sharp with her one moment and then naïve the next.
I really am going to have to drag him outside and expose him to the world. Otherwise he’s not going to survive for long.
Putting a hand on his shoulder, she pushed him back into motion. “Your would-be assassin made a mistake,” she commented almost casually. “They didn’t finish the job. You’re going to make them regret that.”

Bel’s footsteps became firmer, more confident and his head rose. His mouth stretched into a fierce, determined line and both hands were clenched into tight fists. “Yes,” he growled. “They
will
regret it.”

Sevana gave him an approving smile. So, there was some fire in the little prince after all. Good, good. Putting confidence in people took too much effort and she hadn’t wanted to do that.

She led the way into her workroom. Her miraculously clean workroom. Kip had remained true to his word and not one inch of the room had been neglected. This was fortunate for him—it meant he could live.

The table and floor still had scorch marks on it, though. Nothing Kip could have done about that. Although it rather looked like a baby dragon had been let loose in here, what with the deep gouges in the workbench, the black marks all over the floors and walls, and the half-consumed table. Bel looked around for a long moment and his face clearly said that he now understood her warnings earlier and had
no
intention of setting foot in this room when she was in it.

She just hoped the impression stuck for more than week. Children weren’t known to have the best retention spans.

She made him pause in the doorway so that she could deactivate the stasis crystal. With the stasis off, the fire from before flared up, but there was nothing in here left to burn, really. She picked up a nearby wand and flashed a quick wet mist through the room that quickly smothered any lingering traces of flame.

Satisfied, she motioned Bel inside. From a protective case, she fetched a diagnostic wand, several pieces of parchment and an ever-writing quill. “Climb up on the bench,” she directed as she laid things out on the table. “And try to stand still.”

He climbed up and stood rock still, or at least tried to. Activating both quill and wand, she started slowly running the wand from the tip of his head down to his toes. The quill, linked to the wand, recorded every piece of information without her direction. She scanned the front, sides, and back before stopping and looking at the results.

They were less than helpful.

Sevana scanned through all three sheets quickly, but frowned when nothing leaped out at her and went back to the first page to read it more carefully.

“Your spell didn’t tell you anything.” Bel didn’t sound surprised, just resigned.

She wasn’t surprised, either. This test hadn’t been meant to solve the riddle, just give her a baseline of information. “That’s actually helpful, in a way.” She flashed him a cocky smile. “
This
diagnostic wand, you see, is of a much higher level than the average one that can be bought. So if this wand doesn’t recognize the curse you’re under, then it’s a rare one. Those are easier to track down than the more common-bred varieties.”