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  "No, no, that's not it," Agnarr protested, swiftly. "It's just that I don't have the knowledge to use all those things yet. I'm only an apprentice. And not exactly the Meistari Bjarnadr's favorite, either."

  "Oh, you're not any good, is that it? And you think I might have something in my wagon to help you?" The stranger rubbed his narrow chin, his eyes making two shining points in the dark. "Perhaps there is. Follow me and we'll see if we can come to terms."

  The inside of the wagon reminded Agnarr of Bjarnadr's forbidden storeroom, which he had only, stolen fascinated glimpses into a few times: Shelves lined the sides of the wagon, laden with alluring little boxes, all carefully sealed with blobs of colored wax and strings, dark, tightly stoppered bottles, jars labeled in runic, embroidered bags and pouches, bundles of herbs, dried lizards, snakes, bats, and cages with live creatures peering through the bars with bright, suspicious eyes. The only ordinary thing here was a great orange and white cat bulging over the sides of a basket, sleeping curled half inside out, with one white paw clamped over his face.

  The smells alone made Agnarr's head feel like a cork bobbing lightly on the water. He inhaled rapturously, feeling, recognition and wonder burning within him, knowing he was truly in the world. where he belonged.

  "It should be something small and unobtrusive," the stranger mused aloud, his gaze running over his inventory. "I'm thinking that what you need is a familiar." He raised one unsavory, withered finger to underscore the word.

  "Of course! That's it exactly! It would know all the spells, and it would help me do them; and the Meistari would never know the difference! A rat would be ideal. I could keep him in my pocket." Agnarr peered into a cage, where a large black rat bared his teeth at him and took a savage nip at his fingers.

  "No, old Rotta's not for you. You're too inexperienced. A familiar can take you over if you're not careful, and you'll be the servant. Let's see now, how about this little cricket? I think you could control him."

  Agnarr's expectations of a familiar were not fulfilled by the cricket, or the mouse, or the finch, or the lizard the stranger showed him, although he did hesitate over the lizard. "Haven't you got something bigger?" he asked. "All these things are too cute."

  "You can't control something bigger," the stranger said. "You've very much a novice at magic, and you might end up with a master far worse than old Bjarnadr."

  Agnarr was gazing at the cat as he spoke, and one large green eye popped open suddenly, focusing on him with increasing interest. The cat unrolled himself, stood up suddenly on his toes and yawned ferociously, baring his yellowed fangs in a tortured grimace. Then he sat down heavily and squinted sleepily at Agnarr. Fanning out his whiskers, he started a rumbling purr, kneading his big white paws enticingly. Agnarr reached out and scratched the cat's wide skull, ridged with the scars of many fights, and the purring doubled in volume. "Oh, no! Don't you even think about old Skuggi," the stranger said before Agnarr could speak. "He's too much for you. Too much for almost anyone. He only tolerates me because I feed him well and let him do exactly what he pleases."

  "Skuggi? He doesn't fit his name. He's no shadow," Agnarr said. "He's the size of two cats in one skin."

  "Don't insult him. He hears and understands every word you say and he holds a grudge forever. Now forget about him. He can get very rude and nasty, can't you, Skuggi?"

  Skuggi smiled and rubbed his jowls on Agnarr's arm, still purring like mountain thunder. When Agnarr turned away reluctantly, Skuggi leaped down from his basket with a solid thud and followed him, rubbing himself on Agnarr's ankles at every step. When Agnarr sat down, Skuggi jumped into his lap and settled down possessively, digging in his claws gently whenever Agnarr stirred. His lazy green eyes fairly beamed with benevolence.

  "1 think he likes me," Agnarr said. "Why can't I have him? He won't do anything to me. I'm sure of it!"

  "I refuse to be responsible for what might happen. I'd lose the good faith of all the wizards I sell to. I simply can't allow you to take him." He reached out to lift Skuggi off Agnarr's knees, but Skuggi flattened his ears and uttered a deadly growl, followed by a hiss that sputtered with menace. His weight seemed to increase, augmented by his sheer determination not to be picked up.

  Agnarr smoothed down Skuggi's fur, which was half bristling, and Skuggi resumed his tuneful purring, keeping a wary eye turned upon the stranger. "I'm going to take him. How much do you want for him?"

  The stranger sighed dismally and pressed his fingers to his temples. "I can't accept money for Skuggi without grave retributions befalling me. Does that give you an idea of his value? Take him if you dare, but one day perhaps I'll demand a favor of you-if you happen to live that long. All I ask for payment right now is a small surety. Nothing but a lock of your hair to seal our transaction."

  That was easily and swiftly done, and Agnarr could hardly contain his impatience to get back to Bjarnadrshol to show off his prize. In the morning, and done with his assigned chores on time for breakfast for a change, he strolled into the sooty great hall which served as dining room, lecture hall, and sleeping quarters for the apprentices. Skuggi paced at his heels, waving his tail and sniffing the food smells approvingly. The other apprentices left off their empty-headed chattering and stared as Agnarr took his place at the table. Skuggi sat down expectantly on the table next to him. No one said a word when Agnarr appropriated Hrifa's sausages and oatmeal for Skuggi.

  "Ho, Agnarr," Hrifa greeted him warily. As the apprentice next upward from Agnarr in status, Hrifa always viewed Agnarr as his most threatening rival. "What are you doing with that cat?"

  "Having breakfast, you dolt," Agnarr answered.

  "That's unusual in itself, and therefore suspect," Hrifa said. "Is this another of your hideously bungled attempts at working some spell, or just another absurd practical joke?"

  Agnarr heaved an impatient sigh. "It's none of your business, but I suppose it makes no difference if I tell a bunch of lowly worms like this lot. He's a familiar."

  Byes rounded in astonishment and knives halted in midair, skewered with sausages and drippings. Hrifa scowled enviously and demanded, "Where'd you get him? I don't think that's fair. The Meistari will never put up with it. Apprentices aren't allowed familiars. How'd you ever pay for one? They're frightfully dear, I've heard. You practically have to ransom your soul to some wizard or demon to get one. but I can't figure out who would want your soul, Agnarr."

  "You seem to forget," Agnarr replied in a bored tone. "I was born in clan Galdur of chosen parentage."

  "Galdur isn't a real clan," Hrifa snorted. "It's only a sept. It's nothing so special as you'd like to believe. There's just as many cow-herders and wool-dyers in Galdur as any other subclan."

  "Perhaps, but there are definitely more wizards," Agnarr shot back. "And far better wizards, one of which I hope and expect to become one day."

  Hrifa glowered at him. "Give me back my breakfast. That's no familiar. Knowing you, it's just another joke."

  "Take it back if you dare," Agnarr invited.

  Hrifa reached out his hand, but Skuggi planted one clawed paw on the edge of the plate to defend his breakfast, and growled softly, watching Hrifa from the corner of his eye. Hrifa jerked his hand back, and the younger apprentices laughed jeeringly.

  In a generous humor, Agnarr gave part of his own breakfast to Hrifa—a rather small part, though. When the food was done away with, Bjarnadr swept into the hall, already spewing forth instructions, reprimands, and encouragements couched in threatening terms, as well as administering his knuckles to a few boyish skulls in passing.

  "What is that?" He suddenly halted, stock-still, as his gaze fell upon Agnarr and Skuggi.

  "A cat, Meistari," Agnarr replied respectfully.

  Bjarnadr clasped his hands behind his back. "A cat, you say? Thank you for that information, Agnarr."

  The apprentices sniggered. Skuggi was occupied with washing his immaculate white paws and did not deign to even glance at Bjarnadr.

  "He's a
familiar," Agnarr said as casually as he could.

  "Indeed! And where did you get him?"

  "At Finn's inn. From a traveling magic merchant."

  "I see. And with what did you pay the merchant? I hadn't noticed you were so wealthy."

  The apprentices began exchanging knowing glances and nudging each other. Agnarr ignored them, replying, "We agreed that I should pay him later, if I would give him a small surety now. All he wanted was a lock of my hair."

  Bjarnadr inhaled a deep breath, raising his eyes to the ceiling. He spoke gently, with admirable restraint. "Did it not occur to you that by giving a part of your person to this stranger that he will gain a certain degree of power over you, depending upon his skill? Perhaps he will someday sell that hair lock to one of your many enemies, when you are an adept wizard, enemies who will then be able to do you great harm."

  "He seemed an honest fellow," Agnarr answered.

  "And a trusting one, to have given a lowly apprentice such a valuable familiar," Bjarnadr went on. "Did he tell you the cat's name? Was it Boots or Mittens or Stripe?"

  "I can't tell you his name," Agnarr said. "That's for me alone to know."

  "A familiar tells you his true name—not something a traveling trash merchant tells you. Agnarr, this charlatan has sold you nothing but an ordinary cat in exchange for what could be your entire future as a wizard. You've been completely duped and made a fool of by that fellow, as well as this ridiculous, overfed, lascivious, hairy beast." He ended with a shattering sneeze and dabbed at his reddening eyes, while the other apprentices whooped with mirth. Hrifa grinned with wicked satisfaction, rubbing his knuckles, no doubt plotting where he would waylay Agnarr for his revenge.

  Agnarr stole a sidewise glance at Skuggi, who was still washing himself.

  "He hears and understands you perfectly," he said. "You'd better not insult him."

  Bjarnadr sneezed again. "He's nothing but a furbearing nuisance, and fat and stupid."

  Skuggi began washing his hind foot, seemingly oblivious, and the apprentices added their own epithets. All to no effect. Skuggi ignored them all with supreme contempt. For a moment Agnarr felt a small doubt nibbling at his confidence.

  "There, you see, he didn't understand a bit of it," Bjarnadr declared triumphantly. "You've been cheated. Now I strongly suggest you get rid of him. Besides, he makes me sneeze." Two more rapid-fire sneezes followed.

  "Supposing he were a familiar, how would one go about learning his name?" Agnarr pursued stubbornly.

  "The names of all things are contained somewhere within them," Bjarnadr answered, quaking with suppressed sneezes. "You can discover his true name if you're diligent and observant. And if indeed he's got one. Now let's proceed with our experiments." He sneezed and stalked away, wiping his nose and glaring back at Skuggi.

  "Today we're summoning a minor fire elemental, and hopefully containing him while we stand safely within our rune rings. I hope you've all studied the procedures adequately." One final sneeze almost blew his hood off.

  Agnarr eyed Skuggi suspiciously. It seemed to him that Skuggi uttered a little mutter for each sneeze, and he certainly smiled as if Bjarnadr's sneezing amused him. He rubbed his chin on Agnarr's hand and purred. With breakfast and bathing taken care of, he curled up on Agnarr's cloak amongst his magical apparatus on the table and went to sleep, exhausted by his heavy responsibilities.

  The day went from bad to worse immediately. Agnarr scratched his rune ring on the floor around himself, reciting the proper words, but the elemental got to him anyway, buffeting him around and setting his clothes on fire. Bjarnadr banished the elemental, the other students laughed, and Skuggi watched from the safety of the rafters. In the uproar, Agnarr heard an unfamiliar voice croak some words, and suddenly the fire elemental returned. A huge, roaring ball of flame caught everyone defenseless, including Bjarnadr. The apprentices fled in terror while the master stood and hurled fire bolts and shouted spells. By the time the fire elemental was banished, the entire hall was blackened. Lessons were canceled for the day to clean up the mess, and Bjarnadr was in a frightful humor. He stalked around looking for Agnarr, snorting smoke.

  "Is this your idea of a joke?" he roared. "A fire elemental is nothing to play games with! Someone might have been fired! Agnarr, I know you're responsible for this!"

  Wisely, Agnarr took Skuggi and hid in the top of an abandoned tower. The old fortress was large enough to afford him several secret hiding places, where he went to escape the wrath of Bjarnadr or the idiocy of the other apprentices.

  With a groan he threw himself down on the improvised bed of moldy hay. At once Skuggi made a mattress of Agnarr's stomach, turning around a few times before settling down to purring and flexing his claws.

  "Why won't you speak to me?" Agnarr rubbed Skuggi's ears to awaken him. "If you had helped me, I wouldn't have conjured that elemental. It was some of my finest work, though. A pity I wasn't expecting it. Come on, Skuggi—or whatever your true name is—I need some help or I'll get sacked for good."

  Skuggi bestowed one reassuring lick to Agnarr's hand and rose up to tromp out a more comfortable resting place on Agnarr's stomach. Curling himself up tightly, he went to sleep and refused to respond to Agnarr's questioning with anything but a sleepy grumble. A bar of warm sunlight soon made Agnarr too lazy to worry about any of his problems and he, too, went to sleep, with Skuggi coiled up in the middle of him like a large stone.

  When he awakened around midday, hungry, Skuggi was stretched out full length beside him in the sun, sleeping with his orange-spotted white belly turned upward. It was a fascinating pattern of dots and bars. Agnarr ran his hand down Skuggi's belly, and Skuggi stretched luxuriously, making his belly-spots look even more like runic writing m fur. Suddenly remembering what the Meistari had said about names being found on the creature in question, Agnarr tried to stretch Skuggi out again to get another good look at the pattern, but Skuggi took umbrage at such liberties and writhed and kicked indignantly with both hind legs. His dignity much ruffled, he commenced grooming himself from head to toe with obvious exasperation, as if he had been disfigured almost beyond recognition.

  Agnarr watched and smiled, congratulating himself. His Galdur heritage assured him that his instincts were good, and his instincts told him that Skuggi's true name was written on his stomach. He was also certain he had recognized the middle two letters of the name.

  The days that followed were not easy. Bjarnadr got over his temper as soon as the hall was cleaned up, but not for long. At mealtime, when Agnarr attempted a simple come-hither spell to slide the bread within his reach, the loaf flew into the air and landed with a splash in someone else's soup and the knife whirled in a deadly gleaming disk, straight toward Bjarnadr at the head of the table. He plucked it out of the air with a well-directed fire bolt, but he was not amused. Agnarr was sentenced to kitchen duty for a week. In addition to his regular lessons, kitchen duty added two hours onto each end of his day, besides doing away with the afternoon digestive period directly after the midday meal. Skuggi faithfully accompanied him in his disgrace, and thrashed any ordinary cats he saw and helped himself to the leftover scraps. By the end of the week he was so fat that the letters on his stomach were farther apart than ever.

  Disaster seemed to stalk Agnarr. Simple spells that he had once mastered exploded in his face, and spells that he never dreamed of seemed to leap off his fingertips, and they always backfired in the most hideous way possible. Bjarnadr retained his temper with great and visible difficulty, even though it cost him two cloaks and a complete new gown and hood and sleeves. He hovered over Agnarr, watching him, which was borrowing trouble. The sneezing recurred at Bjarnadr's most important moments, when he was explaining a complicated concept, or scolding an apprentice, or working a spell, thus completely destroying the effect. Agnarr's errant magical powers attacked Bjarnadr when he was occupied with something else and caught completely off guard. Even Agnarr was frightened by the menace of his own sorcery, but try as he might
to get it right, the words always came out wrong. He thought about the hair lock he had traded away, wondering who possessed it now.

  The final straw was the day Agnarr's shape-shifting spell momentarily converted Bjarnadr to a skinny black goat. Luckily the spell did not stick, but it made the apprentices hilarious and Bjarnadr furious.

  "It's that blasted cat!" he roared. "Nothing has gone right since you brought him here! If I see that beast one more time, Agnarr, there won't be enough of either of you to send to the rag and bone man!"

  "But he's helping me," Agnarr protested. "I've just got to polish my skills a bit—"

  "I'll polish your head with my staff!" Bjarnadr waved it, trailing clouds of ominous black smoke, and Agnarr grabbed Skuggi and fled to his tower retreat, with Skuggi yowling and kicking at such undignified treatment.

  "Skuggi, I don't know what's going to happen to us if you don't tell me your name." Agnarr glared at Skuggi, who was stretching out in the sunshine for a nap. "But right now your name is Trouble and mine is Mud." He leaned on the window ledge to peer down at the mossy roof of the great hall below. If he were sent home to his clansmen in disgrace, it would be worse than having his articles of apprenticeship sold to some common tradesman. Gloomily he pictured himself apprenticed to a woodcutter, a shipbuilder, a slaughterer, or a blacksmith.

  "Cheer up, it's not that bad," said a voice behind him, and he whirled around in outrage to see who had tracked him to his favorite secret place. All he saw was Skuggi, half-asleep and looking at him with one eye open. He plunged to the doorway and looked out, expecting another trick from some of the younger apprentices. The narrow winding stair was dark and empty.

  "Skuggi?" he said, and Skuggi began to purr, rolling over to get a bit more comfortable. "I've guessed your secret name! It is Trouble, isn't it? Trufla, in the old tongue. I ought to have guessed it, from the way you've messed up my magic spells and playing tricks on Bjarnadr. All I can say is thanks a lot for ruining my life. Some familiar you turned out to be!"