Magician: Apprentice recap

On the Far Coast of the Kingdom of the Isles, an orphan kitchen boy named Pug is chosen as apprentice to Kulgan, the Duke of Crydee's magician, while his friend Tomas is taken into the garrison. Pug proves unable to work magic by any method Kulgan knows, but he saves the Duke's daughter from trolls and is raised to squire. A wrecked ship brings the first evidence of strangers from another world, and Duke Borric carries the warning east to Krondor and to the unstable King in Rillanon. On the way his party is ambushed and driven into the abandoned dwarven mines, where Tomas is separated from the rest, meets a dying dragon and a sorcerer, and is given an ancient suit of white and gold armour that begins to change him. The invaders, the Tsurani, come through their rift in force and the Riftwar begins. The fighting grinds on for years, Tomas grows into something no longer entirely human, and Pug is captured outside Crydee and carried through the rift as a slave.

Pug is an orphan boy raised in the kitchens of Castle Crydee, on the Far Coast of the Kingdom of the Isles, where Duke Borric conDoin rules as Warden of the West. Caught out by a storm while gathering shellfish on the shore, he shelters through the worst of it and gets back to the keep in time for Choosing Day, the morning on which the castle's craftmasters take the year's boys as apprentices. His friend Tomas, the cook's son, is claimed by the swordmaster for the garrison. Pug is passed over by every master in turn and is left standing alone until Kulgan, the Duke's magician, takes him at the last moment. Magic is a suspect trade in the Kingdom and a magician's apprentice has no obvious future, but the choice lifts Pug out of the kitchen: he moves into the magician's tower, gains a place among the castle's people rather than its servants, and finds himself within sight of the Duke's household, including the Duke's daughter Carline.

Pug's lessons go badly. Kulgan's exercises simply will not work for him, and neither master nor apprentice can say why, though Kulgan and Father Tully both suspect the failure is not for want of ability. Life at the keep otherwise suits him: he inherits the company of Kulgan's firedrake Fantus, the friendship of Meecham, and lessons from Tully alongside the Duke's children. Out beyond the walls Pug comes on Princess Carline set upon by trolls and drives them off, and the Duke rewards him with the rank of squire and a small holding, which does not please the court's other squires, Roland in particular. Not long afterwards a vessel of unfamiliar make is wrecked on the coast. Its crew is gone, but a dying man is recovered whose dress, weapons and speech match nothing known on the Far Coast, and the objects found with him defeat Kulgan's understanding entirely. The Duke begins to treat the possibility of an unknown enemy seriously.

Kulgan and Tully reach an alarming conclusion: the strangers are not from anywhere in this world, but come through some kind of gateway from another. The elves of Elvandar are brought into council and confirm that something is moving in the forests. Part of Pug's difficulty is finally explained as well, since his talent appears not to answer to the methods Kulgan was taught and may belong to a different discipline altogether, one no human magician of the Kingdom practises. Duke Borric decides the warning has to be carried east in person, first to the Prince of Krondor and then, if necessary, to the King, and he sets out with Arutha, Kulgan, Pug, Tomas, Meecham, Gardan and Martin Longbow. Crossing toward the Grey Towers the party is ambushed in force by the dark elves of the northern forests, driven off the road, and forced to take shelter in the abandoned dwarven mines of Mac Mordain Cadal beneath the mountains.

The party is scattered in the dark of the mines. Tomas, separated and hunted, falls in with Dolgan, chieftain of the dwarves of the Grey Towers. Deeper still they come upon Rhuagh, an ancient dragon at the end of his life, attended by a sorcerer who seems to have been expecting them. Before the dragon dies, gifts are made, and Tomas receives a suit of white and gold armour older than any human kingdom. He puts it on. He and Dolgan work their way out through the mountains, while the Duke's party, believing Tomas lost, reaches the coast and takes ship, passing Sorcerer's Isle, a place sailors avoid, on the way to Krondor. Tomas begins to dream another man's memories, and finds himself growing stronger, quicker and stranger than he was.

At Krondor, Prince Erland hears the Duke out but can spare no army: the court is dominated by eastern rivals, chief among them Guy du Bas-Tyra, and the western warning is not believed. Borric and Pug travel on to the island capital of Rillanon to petition King Rodric himself, who proves unstable and difficult, veering between grand building schemes and suspicion, but who is finally persuaded to raise the Armies of the East. The warning comes too late to prevent what it predicted. The invaders, who call themselves Tsurani, come through their rift in strength, take the valley and the forests around the Grey Towers, and dig in. What follows is not a raid but a war of position for ground the enemy means to keep, and it settles into a grinding campaign through the forests of Crydee and Yabon.

The war becomes years of stalemate in the forests. Duke Borric takes the field in the east with Lyam, leaving Arutha to hold Crydee with Swordmaster Fannon, while Martin's trackers and the elves harry the invaders' flanks. Tomas, all but unrecognisable in the ancient armour, fights alongside the elves of Elvandar; Queen Aglaranna and her advisers watch his growing power with open unease, because his strength and his ruthlessness are no longer those of a boy from Crydee, and some of them argue that he should be killed. Pug continues to fail at ordinary magic while showing occasional flashes of something else entirely. When the Tsurani finally press Crydee itself, Pug is caught up in the fighting outside the walls, reaches for what power he can, and is overwhelmed and taken alive. Rather than killing him, the Tsurani carry him back through the rift to their own world as a prisoner. At home he is counted among the dead.

The book closes in the middle of the Riftwar rather than at its resolution. The Tsurani hold the valley and the forests near the Grey Towers, and the Kingdom's western armies can contain them but not drive them out. Duke Borric has taken the field in the east with Lyam, leaving Arutha and Swordmaster Fannon to hold Crydee. Tomas, wearing the white and gold armour given to him beneath the mountains, fights alongside the elves of Elvandar and grows steadily less like the boy who left Crydee; the memories and appetites of its long-dead owner rise in him, and the elves fear what he is becoming as much as they value what he can do. Queen Aglaranna is caught between the two judgements. Pug, who has never managed ordinary magic, is caught up in fighting outside Crydee, uses what power he can reach, is overwhelmed and taken alive. Instead of being killed he is carried back through the rift to the invaders' own world as a prisoner, and Crydee counts him among the dead. Nothing is settled: the war has years left to run, the invaders' world is still unknown, and the sorcerer met beneath the mountains has explained nothing. The story continues directly in Magician: Master.