Role Model Part One: Shadowspawn, Lone, and Botched Spells in Sanctuary
Book: Thieves’ World: Turning Points edited by Lynn Abbey (Tor Books, 2002)
Story: “Role Model: A Tale of Apprentices” by Andrew Offutt
This story might be the most fun entry in the whole anthology. Andrew Offutt brings back Shadowspawn, the legendary thief from the original Thieves’ World series. But he’s not the young, cocky cat burglar anymore. He’s old. He walks with a cane. His right arm doesn’t work after a stroke. And he’s watching a kid try to be him.
An Apprentice Who Can’t Get It Right
The story opens with Kusharlonikas, a master mage who is over a hundred years old. He disguises his ancient body with an illusion of a forty-year-old man. His apprentice is a small, homely guy named Komodoflorensal. That name is as ridiculous as it sounds.
The kid sweats through a spell for over a minute. His master watches, unimpressed. When the apprentice finally shouts his word of power, “Iffets!”, the spell mostly fails. Kusharlonikas shows him up by casually turning a wooden stick into a snake with a single gesture.
Here’s the thing. Every time Komodoflorensal botches a spell, the magic doesn’t just fizzle. It goes somewhere. Random terrible things happen all over Sanctuary. A man opens his pantry and a honey badger attacks him. A woman’s expensive perfume smells like death. A man’s orchid bites off his finger. A woman’s hair falls out while she combs it.
All because one kid can’t cast spells properly.
Two Old Friends at the Tavern
The scene shifts to The Bottomless Well, a decent tavern run by a family from Mrsevada. At a table in the back sit two old men. One wears all black with hair too dark for his age and walks with a cane. The other has white hair, a blue robe, and a belly that could fill a tent.
The black-clad one is Chance. The white-haired one is Strick, the Spellmaster. But Chance is actually Hanse, the legendary Shadowspawn. Greatest thief Sanctuary ever produced. He changed his name years ago, and most people who knew the old one are dead.
Even as they sit talking, a patron’s wine bursts into flames at his table. More magical fallout from the incompetent apprentice. Strick figures it out right away: some wizard is training an apprentice and doing a terrible job.
The Kid in All Black
Then a young man walks in. He wears all black. Tunic, leggings, boots, cloak. The only color on him is a blood-red sash. He carries at least three knives and a sword. He wears soft-soled boots that make no sound.
He swaggers. He poses. He surveys the room through half-closed eyes like he owns the place.
“Who is that swaggering pup?” Chance asks.
Strick plays innocent. “The one called Shadowspawn? Hanse, I believe his name was?”
The kid’s name is Lone. He was one of the orphans the Dyareelans kept under the palace as kill-slaves. When the cult was destroyed, a childless couple claimed him. They called him “Flea-shit” in the pits. His stepparents are dead now. He chose his own name. He supported his stepmother by stealing, and she never asked where the money came from.
He trained himself to use his left hand as well as his right, just to be like Shadowspawn. He dresses like him. Moves like him. He’s obsessed.
Muggers and a Weighted Cane
After they leave the tavern, Chance and Strick run into two muggers. One calls them “old farts” and demands their purses.
Strick calmly says, “I am the Spellmaster. You boys don’t want to do this.”
They don’t listen. Bad move.
While the muggers focus on Strick, Chance proves his limp is fake. His cane is weighted with something heavy in the last eight inches. He smashes one mugger in the head, drives the cane into the other’s stomach, and cracks him across the skull too. Both go down. Out cold.
“Old fart indeed!” Chance says.
What they don’t know is Lone is watching from a rooftop directly above. He sees the fake limp. The weighted cane. The useless right arm. “It has to be him,” Lone whispers. “He is Shadowspawn!”
Death as Punishment
The story cuts back to the apprentice mage. He’s riding home when a giant bird attacks him. Emerald, turquoise, pale yellow. Wings the size of sails. It swoops twice, and when he lets his guard down, it plunges at him with talons as long as his hands. It tears him apart and drops him from the sky.
Then he wakes up. Unharmed. In his master’s home. Before he can feel relieved, an armored soldier charges and kills him with a battle-ax.
Then he wakes up again. His master stands over him.
“So, fool. Practice, and think, and next time try harder!”
This is how Kusharlonikas punishes failure. Magic that makes you experience your own violent death. Over and over. It explains why Komodoflorensal is such a nervous wreck.
A Cat Explodes in the Marketplace
Chance and Strick are at the outdoor market when Komodoflorensal botches another spell. A small gray cat on a vendor’s counter goes berserk. Every hair stands up. It leaps into the air, climbs a tent, spins on top of it, and starts growing. It doubles in size. Then it launches itself like a flying squirrel, soars over an entire booth, crashes through a canvas roof, and explodes into pieces.
Not metaphorically. The cat literally explodes.
Strick climbs into the ruined tent, touches every piece of dead cat, and does divination. He identifies the source: an apprentice mage with no talent, working for a master named Kusharlonikas.
The vendor who owned the cat asks if Strick can bring it back. He can’t. His magic only works for good. But he buys her vegetables and peppers from the couple whose tent was destroyed.
And Chance, standing beside him, remembers a cat he once loved. He says nothing.
What I Think So Far
Offutt is running two apprentice stories in parallel. Lone, the young thief trying to become the next Shadowspawn. Komodoflorensal, the young mage apprenticed to a cruel old wizard. Both worship their masters. Both are causing chaos.
But the tone couldn’t be more different. Lone is cocky and desperate to prove himself. Komodoflorensal is terrified and his failures hurt innocent people across the city.
The Offutt writing style is dense. Wordy in a way that feels very old-school fantasy. But the character work is solid and the humor is real. The exploding cat is genuinely funny and horrifying at the same time.
And we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet. There’s a heist coming.