Path of Stone

Path of Stone

Original Cover

## Blurb

**TRIAL BY FIRE**

After fifteen-year-old Alastair Stone is caught performing magic at his prestigious boarding school, he can hardly believe his good fortune: not only isn't he punished, but his father arranges a trial apprenticeship—three years early—with one of the most powerful mages in all of Britain. He'll have a month to prove himself, or he'll be packed back off to school.

But when Alastair arrives at his new master's vast, remote country house, he soon finds that his teacher's draconian style and exacting standards aren't the only challenges he'll have to face to pass his trial. The house holds deadly secrets, and not all of his master's staff are on his side. There's also the matter of the village girl he can't stop thinking about...

All this is bad enough—but when events spiral out of control, unleashing a murderous enemy to stalk the dark halls of the manor, Alastair is left as the only line of defense against a potential bloodbath. Can a barely-trained, fifteen-year-old mage on his own use his wits and courage to save not only his life, but his master's?

## Plot

*The first and last chapters if Path of Stone take place within the Stoniverse timeline after The Other Side. However, the majority of the novel occurs years earlier, when Stone is a 15-year-old boy. A troubled Verity has asked Stone to relate the story of how he became a mage apprentice.*

Alastair Stone, at fifteen, is in his eighth year at Barrow boarding school. Aware he will be apprenticed to a mage at 18, Stone can’t wait, and has begun experimenting with his magic. His casting circle, implements and a magical instruction book are found in an unused part of Barrow’s attic, where Stone had been perfecting a tracking spell. Carrowby, the Headmaster, jumps to the conclusion that Stone is performing unholy rites (he is a mundane), and calls Stone’s father, Orion, to the school to help determine a suitable punishment. Impressed that Alastair was able to execute the tracking spell on his own, Orion removes Alastair from Barrow and secures him a probationary apprenticeship to, arguably, the finest mage alive, William Desmond.

### Pause here a moment WARNING, Possible Spoilers Ahead

Desmond is an extraordinarily hard taskmaster, and sets Stone a month-long trial of instruction to determine whether Alastair is up to an apprenticeship. Alastair works hard and does well, to the point of having to be ordered to take some time off to rest and refresh his mind. He does so by visiting the neighboring village of Wexley, where he meets Madeleine Hill, who works in a fish and chips shop. They hit it off and spend some time together.

Later, when Alastair inadvertently breaks Desmond’s rule about attempting to innovate spells, Desmond relates the take of his last apprentice, Gareth Selby. Gareth had been working on a summoning in order to impress Desmond, but he’d made an error in the spell, lost control of the vicious entity he’d summoned, and was gruesomely killed by it in front of Desmond, who was helpless to stop it. Reassured that this cautionary tale will ensure that Stone will make no further attempts to step outside Desmond’s rigid structure, he allows him to continue his probationary period.

Shortly after, Alastair is walking though a park at night after having dropped Madeleine off from a date, when he hears cries for help from a remote wooded area. There he finds three drunken young men attempting to rape a naïve young village girl whom they’d plied with liquor. Not sure whether he can find help quickly enough to stop them, Alastair resorts to magic, blasting them away from the girl with a shield. The police arrive a few minutes later, having heard the noise. The older boys insist that Alastair did something to them with some glowing thing, but because they are very drunk, they’re not believed, and Alastair is regarded as a hero.

Desmond, however, is livid that Stone used magic in the confrontation and summarily ends his probation and orders him to pack for home. Alastair blows his top, saying he could not work with a man whose rules would come before anything else, including preventing the rape of an innocent girl.

While packing that night to leave, Alastair sets off to Desmond’s workroom to retrieve a book his father gifted him. Instead, he finds a shadowy magical trail that leads to a badly injured Roderick Selby, a weak mage and employee of Desmond’s. He’d attempted a summoning and was deceived by the entity he called that it was his dead brother, Gareth—Desmond had never told Roderick that he’d witnessed Gareth’s brutal death, Roderick having been quite young at the time. In any case, entity is greedy for power and intends to kill everyone, especially Desmond when he returns home.

Stone gets Selby to the warded workroom and sets off to find the rest of the staff and get them to safety. He is attacked and wounded by the creature, his shield barely saving him. He appropriates and enchanted blade and small shield whose purpose he doesn’t know, but figures he needs more than his own magic shield. With a great deal of trouble, Stone manages to get the staff together and down to the workroom, except for Samuels, who has been killed, and Kerrick, who has gone to the basement to the fuse box to see why the lights are out.

He finds Kerrick in the basement, disoriented and terrified in the pitch dark. The creature attacks again, and the two are able to fight it off. Stone's blade and shiled are drained of power and rendered useless, though. The creature flees to find Desmond. Stone and Kerrick devise a plan to trap the creature so it can’t lie in wait for an unsuspecting Desmond.

Alastair baits the creature and manages to pin it in place with a shield, but he is wounded, bleeding, and reaching the end of his strength when Desmond arrives and destroys it.

In light of Alastair having saved nearly all the staff, as well as some advice and threats to quit from Kerrick if he does otherwise, Desmond raises Stone to full apprentice.