A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1) (19 page)

“For me,” he said with a gentle smile, “it is finally a place of ending.”

He wore a simple white robe. Despite the silver of his straight, shoulder-length hair, he bore no wrinkles on his skin, no gnarling of his fingers, no weariness about his posture. His voice resounded bright and strong; his beige eyes glistened clear and sharp as he regarded Niel with what could only be considered a grandfatherly kindness.

“My name is Lleryth,” he said. “And I have waited a very long time to meet you.”

The moment threatened to overwhelm Niel. “How could—”

Elbowing Niel aside, the woman interrupted with a harsh string of words.

Lleryth nodded. “Yes, of course.”

He held out his hands and glided toward Niel.

Niel raised an arm, backed away. “Wait, what—?”

“With your permission, a small matter of practicality.”

Frightened, Niel remained where he stood.

Lleryth lowered his hands. “Right here and now, child, you are farther from harm than ever shall you be again.”

The quiet words poured over Niel like a salve. The soft, strangely familiar aura of magic surrounding Lleryth brought comfort and ease, and any idea of resistance drifted away.

Lleryth placed his fingertips over Niel’s eyes; his hands felt feverishly hot. His fingers slid to Niel’s ears, pausing briefly before continuing down to Niel’s mouth.

Lleryth then folded his hands at his waist. “That should do.”

“Then if you don’t mind, Keeper,” the woman said with gruff impatience, “perhaps we could get on with the matter at hand.”

Niel whipped around to face her, and then stared again at Lleryth.

Lleryth smiled with polite amusement. “It will expedite things, as we have a great deal to discuss.”

The woman moved toward Niel. “After which, you and I have a great deal to discuss.”

Lleryth frowned. “That will be enough, Riahnn. We’ve plenty else to do without making matters even more complicated.”

He reached out to his right, and from the nothingness a door swung open—the same one through which they had entered, even though that door should have been far behind them.

With an angry sidelong glance at Niel, Riahnn dipped one knee to the invisible floor, then rose and marched out to where the other guards waited.

The door didn’t so much close as simply cease to be.

Lleryth gestured toward a pair of spindly, high-backed chairs Niel couldn’t remember not having been there the entire time. When Lleryth sat, so did he. The elderly Galiiantha produced a slender, curved pipe—already lit—from either a pocket or from thin air. With it he puffed a thin halo of smoke that ringed their heads and smelled of lavender and cloves.

“Now,” he said, “something tells me you’d appreciate an explanation.”

22

In a famous dissertation on the inherent perils of magical study, the philosopher Rosrice analogized that once begun, avalanches rarely followed the direction of one’s choosing. As a student, Ennalen had been amused by that comparison. Now, as she lay fetal on the floor, she had a decidedly fuller appreciation for the ancient scholar’s counsel.

She’d spent another fruitless evening toiling to repeat the events of the arboretum in even the smallest way. Her disgust at failure after failure gouged at her; even her frenzied enthusiasm from no longer needing direct contact with the cantle to call upon its influence had run tepid. Exhausted and dejected, she had paused in the workshop entryway to collect herself before leaving, and leaned against the wall.

The instant her bare hand touched the cool stone it seared to the surface like meat to a hot, dry griddle, with an agony so glorious she could not draw breath to scream.

In the short moment Ennalen had been in contact with the wall, the suffering of dozens, the suffering of
hundreds
, tore through her. The raw panic in their eyes as they scratched and chewed through one another to escape torment, the horrid cacophony of their cries when they realized their doom, wrenched Ennalen into a heap and left her gasping and flailing like a fish out of its bowl.

The event had been so vivid, so palpable, Ennalen became certain she would also die amongst those anguished masses. But just as in the arboretum, in the next moment the assault ended and left her where she’d fallen—curled, shuddering, cradling the hand that had been charred to a blackened claw.

When she finally convinced herself she might actually have a chance of doing so, Ennalen struggled to her feet, clutching her hand to her stomach. No sooner than she stood, three short taps sounded at the door.

She forced herself steady. “What is it?”

“Forgive the intrusion, Mistress,” came Rass’s familiar, vacant voice, “but you asked to be reminded of your appointment this morning.”

Morning. When she had gone to leave the workshop, it had been just past midnight. She had lain in the entryway for hours.

Ennalen moved toward the door, but a sickening blossom of pain stopped her after a single step. She closed her eyes and mustered the sum of her reserves just to keep a whimper from her voice.

“Have you news on the matter I asked you to take care of?” she asked.

Rass hesitated only a heartbeat. “There’s been no development on that front as of yet.”

Ennalen gritted her teeth. She first had thought it fortuitous that Rass could search for the freshmen Willam and Geral while laying groundwork for her Apostate inquiries. Days later, though, he still could find no evidence of where the two had gone. She cared nothing for the boys’ well-being. Indeed, their being dead would be no small convenience, provided their bodies hadn’t reappeared atop someone’s dinner table.

Conjecture said that if a mere sliver of gemstone had permanently muted a pair of magicians, as the story from the Black Plains expedition went, then her cantle might very well have let her rob a pair of apprentices of their very existence.

But one way or another, she had to know for sure.

“Keep at it,” she said. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Ennalen shuffled to the wardrobe on the far side of the room. With her good hand she pried the front doors apart and let them swing open, revealing the mounted looking glass and the series of drawers within. She stared into the mirror, relieved to find no marks on her face or neck that might have invited inquiry. Granted, the pallor of her skin gave ghoulish contrast to the purplish swelling around her eyes, and no doubt itself would have caused notice, but there were ways around that.

Ennalen steeled herself, then peered down to examine her perfectly ravaged—

—perfectly
fine
hand.

She scoffed and stared in astonishment. No hint of injury. In fact, the pain had vanished the instant she’d looked.

She turned her hand over several times and marveled, then quickly dug a pair of elbow-length, black velvet gloves from a drawer at the top of the wardrobe. She slipped them on, padded quietly back to the entryway, and placed her palm gently against the stone wall.

Nothing.

Ladies in the aristocracy wore similar gloves. Anyone bothering to notice hers would likely think the ferocious Magistrate Ennalen as susceptible to the lures of fashion and have a laugh at her expense.

As she removed her hand from the wall a final, fleeting wisp of the awfulness she beheld wafted across her senses. Only, something more lurked amidst the miasma of horror—something she hadn’t noticed earlier; something even more significant and more tangible. Vague and foreboding, but it had familiarity. A shape, maybe. A presence, perhaps.

Ennalen bore down, tightening her focus, but the harder she concentrated the more elusive the sensation became until finally it danced beyond her reach completely.

She exhaled, surprised she had been holding her breath in the first place.

Anger rose. She went to yank her gloves off again so she could—

Three more taps at the door.

“My apologies, Mistress,” Rass said, “but you asked—”

“Yes!”
Ennalen snapped.

She clenched her fists as tightly as she could and let her frustration tremble its way out through her arms. When she finally stopped quaking she took another long, deep breath to center herself, then cast a simple but imperceptible glamour to freshen her appearance.

First, she would spend no small amount of time impressing upon Rass her severe dissatisfaction with his lack of progress in finding the two boys. Then she would send an acolyte to inform the backwoods mage Biddleby that their meeting would be postponed several days at least; it was the last of her official duties before taking leave to oversee Thaucian’s inane pet venture, so she would likely pass him along to whomever the doltish Tamias chose to handle her caseload. Once those banalities were tended, she would return to her workshop to pursue the presence now enticing her from the farthest boundaries of her awareness.

Ennalen pulled open the heavy workshop door. As she did, a subtle corollary occurred to her, one she wondered whether wise old Rosrice had considered: Avalanches may not go in the direction one chooses, but once side-stepped, they generally left a conspicuous path to follow.

If she presumed correctly about the direction in which
she
was headed, she hoped beyond hope the journey would be exceedingly short.

***

Suffering. Bedlam. Everything, red.

Drowning in gore, choking in the deep madness of a terrified sea of flesh, she watched the crowd rip one another into shreds of meat in their frantic search for a way out—but she knew there would be no escape. Not for any of them. She fought to turn around against the tide of bodies, to face the danger bearing down on them—and then she saw him, looming over the wailing masses, blotting out the fiery sky. Black sludge burbled from his nose and mouth as his lips moved in a vile mockery of speech. His arms stretched to a horrific length as he reached over the crowd and scooped her up like a rodent in an owl’s talon. Her, and in his distant opposite hand, one other too far away to see.

She rushed with sickening speed toward his widening maw. And Ennalen—

—screamed.

She shoved up from the floor like a panicked animal, heart racing, still searching for a way to escape... until reason seeped back sufficiently for Ennalen to remember she was locked safely in her workshop.

She tottered once as she stood, then picked up from the floor the glove she had removed and slipped it back onto her hand. She gave a shudder, then pushed her sweat-damp hair from her face.

The vision remained unchanged despite her numerous attempts to delve more deeply, which confirmed there remained nothing further to glean. Because she’d been better able to prepare herself, this most recent effort had not been as terrifying as previous attempts—but it most assuredly had been bad enough.

At the same time, though, it also had been more than worth it. The avalanche had indeed left a wide swath to follow, and she knew exactly where it would lead:

Back to where she had started.

23

The city of Chael had long existed since well before the need to give it a name. It had been the pride of the Galiiantha for ages, built not long after the Great Tree dropped the seeds from which the First Tribe had sprung. As the Galiiantha flourished they built many more cities throughout the Forest, but Chael remained their center of commerce, politics, study, and worship.

After countless generations of isolated contentedness within the sheltering trees, a single day brought the Galiiantha’s idyllic existence to a terrible end. Lleryth had not yet been born that day, when a man from the outside—the first any Galiiantha had actually seen—appeared in Chael and demanded in their own language an audience with their most learned elders. The city’s ablest hunters met the intruder instead.

Incensed by their show of resistance, the intruder unleashed a brutal attack of savage magic, slaying each of the hunters. He then flew into a fit of destruction, murdering any he deemed useless as he went about searching for those he claimed to need.

Once he gathered the learned elders, the man insisted they teach him a secret magic he believed they possessed. The most highly regarded of the scholars stepped forward and defiantly proclaimed none there would help him, that he should go back from whence he came and may his gods damn him for his wretched deeds.

In response, the stranger reached out and—without touching him—crushed the old man to death in a horrid, bloody display. One after another, the same demand was put to those who remained. Each refused, and each met with a similar, torturous demise.

When the mangled body of the final scholar had been cast aside, the intruder let loose upon the battered city the full measure of his rage, leveling Chael with his foul magic. No person, no animal, nothing within the reach of his power remained unscarred. And as Sediahm—or
hated one,
what the Galiiantha now called him—left Aithiq, he bellowed to those scattered few left hiding in the Forest that one day he would return, and when that day came their sorrow would know no end.

By the time Lleryth was born Chael had been rebuilt, but because the magically scorched ground never recovered from Sediahm’s onslaught it had been necessary to move the city. Chael’s original site became among the most revered of places.

The room in which Niel sat listening to Lleryth was the same room where the elderly Galiiantha had been educated as a child. The room was also the same room where Sediahm made his promised return—only, the person who stood before young Lleryth and his instructor then looked no where near as old as he should have given the years that had passed.

In that room, Sediahm prophesied that in the years to come another outsider would arrive in Chael, a boy, who would ultimately herald the end of the Galiiantha way of life. Sediahm said the outsider would bring war unlike any ever known, a conflict to spread across the world itself.

That was when Lleryth’s terrified teacher threw himself to his knees and begged Sediahm to let his student go, pledging he would submit to whatever demands were made of him if only no harm befell Lleryth.

Annoyance contorted Sediahm’s face as he informed the groveling instructor it had been Lleryth to whom he’d spoken. With a wave of the Sediahm’s hand the instructor’s features bent and twisted, and his skin darkened and hardened to the semblance of polished wood.

“He placed in my mentor’s hand the gemstone you see there,” Lleryth said, concluding his story, “and told me that until the outsider he mentioned claimed it, I would not be permitted to leave this room. He also left dire warnings that while I might benefit from remaining in the stone’s presence, I was never to touch it lest my people suffer the most horrible of fates.”

Lleryth gave his pipe a thoughtful puff. “For a dozen lifetimes I’ve waited and watched, and now that you’ve arrived that wait is finally over.”

“I don’t understand,” Niel said. “How could you possibly be waiting for
me?
”

Lleryth considered him for a moment, then leaned forward.

“I know you have many questions. Before I respond, I must warn you my answers will be upsetting. The world as you know it is about to change, Niel, and for that I apologize. Had we more time I would surely give you a chance to gain a proper grasp on things to spare you an experience like my own. But then, I suppose, if we had more time we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.”

Niel shook his head. “I’m afraid I still—”

“—don’t understand,” Lleryth finished. “Yes, I know.” He settled back into his chair. “You are familiar, I trust, with the stories surrounding the figure known as the Apostate?”

“Yes. Why?”

“For a long time there have been people quietly combing the Lands, interested in finding the Apostate.”

Niel gave a disbelieving smirk. “That’s a nursery rhyme.”

Lleryth raised a finger. “The effort I’m describing is not put forth for the sake of mere fable. In fact, they now believe they know who it is.”

Niel’s stomach knotted. “Who?”

Lleryth took the pipe from his mouth. “You, child.”

Forever ago, the thing Niel had wanted most in all the world next to attending the College had been simply to see the ocean. Biddleby agreeing to the journey had been the single most exciting moment of his life. Now Niel sat, lost somewhere in the middle of Aithiq, trapped in a room with a Galiiantha who was clearly mad beyond help. He wished he could run back home, back to Biddleby, to all the comfortable mundaneness he had been so eager to leave behind.

Niel pushed his fingers through his hair.

“No,” he said as he stood, waving his hand as though to fend off Lleryth’s words. “I’m not the person you’ve been waiting for.”

Lleryth puffed his pipe.

“And,” Niel continued, “if you knew anything about me, you’d realize how ridiculous the notion is. You’d probably laugh.”

Lleryth blew out another plume of fragrant smoke. “What I know about you is that since you were young, you’ve had a perception that the ways of the world were not quite as they were being presented. I know that your life, Niel, has been spent in compromise, and that your desire to make magic has allowed you to endure what you knew even then to be harsh and unnecessary prerequisites.”

Unlike Arwin back on the
Alodis,
Lleryth plainly knew he was not engaging in clever deduction. He spoke with gentle but unassailable confidence. As Niel listened—bewildered, angry, fearful—he toyed with the dirty rope bracelet on his wrist.

“But,” Lleryth continued, “you have never given yourself permission to rely on intuition. For you, magic is natural, almost effortless. Yet you insist on the toil and the struggle because without it you are somehow illegitimate, somehow not truly a magician.”

“But,” Niel said. “Canon is—”

“Canon is a shackle fitted to those who might seek truth elsewhere, fastened by those who hide that truth to perpetuate their own self-appointed superiority.”

“With respect, sir, what would you know of it, or anything of the College for that matter?”

Lleryth offered a small, sly smile. “Suffice it to say that the ways of… subtle observation are not unknown to us.”

Subtle observation? The meaning took a few moments to come into focus.

“Spies?” Niel asked. “There are Galiiantha
spies
in Lyrria?”

“In Lyrria, among your aristocracy, and even within the hallowed walls of the College of Magic and Conjuring Arts. You may have even met one or two.”

Niel dropped into his chair, flabbergasted. “Inside the College? In plain sight? Well, obviously not in plain sight. But... even a freshman would be able to see the difference in how a Galiiantha might shine, wouldn’t they? How do they keep from being discovered?”

“Not to worry. So protected are they, not even death itself would expose them. However, what keeps them safe is not the magic of arduous memorization and clumsy ritual to which you’re accustomed. Our magic is the result of a deep, unwavering attunement to the world. A magic I know you already suspect, yet refuse to acknowledge.” Lleryth leveled his gaze. “A magic I could teach you how to attain.”

Niel bristled. “I have a teacher.”

Lleryth’s expression fell somber. “Yes. I know.”

“What does that mean, you know?”

“It means long before you were born we knew those wanting to find the Apostate could never be permitted to do so. It means that for our own sake, we’ve made continuous attempts to retain some element of control regarding Sediahm’s plans.”

“Continuous attempts? What attempts?”

Lleryth took a long, slow pull at his pipe, and just as unhurriedly exhaled.

“Very soon after Sediahm returned and spoke his prophecy, elders from all the cities gathered here in this very room to confer about what might be done to reduce whatever impact its fruition might have on the Galiiantha. Because the stone Sediahm left behind was so obviously magical in nature, it was agreed the person Sediahm foretold would have an aptitude for magic-making. And since we sincerely doubted whatever abilities this person possessed would be rooted in so-called Canon, a talent more resembling our way of magic-making seemed the reasonable trait for which to look.”

“You’ve been
looking
for this person? Looking for how long?”

Lleryth smiled. “A very long time. During which we watched, we listened. We read your books. We memorized your songs. We spoke, danced, ate and even played. And when we finally felt we’d learned enough, we organized a secret school to train our most gifted how to dwell amongst those in the College without fear of discovery. We trained them how to manipulate Canonic magic without corrupting their inherent talents. And most importantly, we trained them what to do when they finally did come across someone they sensed might have the potential to play Sediahm’s pivotal role—what we eventually understood was most likely the Apostate.”

A frightening comprehension coalesced in Niel’s mind.

“And what was it they did?” he asked, dreading the answer.

Lleryth gave a sympathetic sigh. “They observed them. And then as was customary, they purchased them, kept them, fed them, taught them, all the while subtly fostering within them an appreciation for our ways of magic. When that person was ready, they were sent off to the College to see how readily they took to Canonic teachings—which they always did.”

The shrieking, misshapen image from Niel’s recent dreams surfaced, that of Biddleby—long, lithe, almost feminine; just like everyone he had encountered thus far within the Forest.

Niel turned away as far as he could, as if unable to look any more at something grotesque. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bent at the waist, wondering if he really might scream. He didn’t, though; mostly out of fear that once he began, he might never stop.

“You’re telling me Biddleby is Galiiantha?” he managed.

“Yes,” Lleryth said.

The absurdity of the concept swept away the images from Niel’s nightmares like dry leaves. Instead of screaming as he feared, he let loose a cackle. “That’s even more ridiculous than the idea of me being the Apostate.”

“I see.” Lleryth pointed a slim finger. “Throw that at me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There. Pick that up and throw it at me.”

Niel moved his elbow from the arm of the chair—it had always had arms, hadn’t it?—to see a dagger lying flat upon it. “I’m not going to throw that at you. In fact, I don’t even really know how.”

“You underestimate yourself. Besides, I insist.”

Niel shook his head. “No.”

“And if I told you that doing so might make all this go away?”

Niel sighed, then reached across his middle and gingerly hefted the dagger by the cold blade. It looked as long as his foot and, unlike Peck’s knives, had a satisfying weight.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Lleryth said.

Drawing on his growing anger and dismay, Niel stood, reared his arm back, and launched the dagger with all his might.

The distance between Lleryth and himself was no more than a few paces, yet the spinning dagger took far longer to reach the Galiiantha than it rightfully should have. Given the oddities of the darkened room, the strangeness of the dagger’s flight didn’t impress Niel as all that unusual.

What happened next, however, made his blood stand still: As the knife approached, Lleryth performed a quick motion with his hand, and the hurtling weapon plunged immediately into the floor at Lleryth’s feet.

“You recognize that gesture, do you?” Lleryth asked.

Niel nodded, barely. Lleryth had made the very same motion Biddleby used to stop the runaway cart some fifteen years before.

“Using our own magic where others might see was a risky bit of business,” Lleryth said. “Your teacher remarked that despite his best efforts at speed and stealth, his gesture caught your eye, even at such a young age.”

Niel said nothing.

“Can you think of a reason, other than what I’ve told you, for Biddleby to have kept you from the College for so long? Can you explain why after years of strictness he would grant you permission to sail across the sea, to Aithiq of all places, instead of sending you straight to the College?”