Magebane (7 page)

His instructors had laughed at him. But Tagaza had continued to research and ask questions, and though no one else would believe him, he had come to the inescapable conclusion that the Kingdom of Evrenfels was running out of magic. And from further research, he had come to the equally inescapable conclusion that the cause was the Barriers. Magic did replenish itself, slowly, over time; no one knew how, exactly, but the effect had been measured. But it did
not
replenish itself as quickly as the Barriers were drawing it out of the lode.

Tagaza had graphed it. In no more than fifty years, probably less, the level of magic in the Kingdom would reach the point where all of it would be going to the Barriers. The Mageborn would find themselves without the use of magic for the first time in history. And when that happened . . .

Tagaza drew back his hand from the Barrier.
When that happens
, he thought, looking out into the snowstorm outside,
nothing will stand between us and the anger of the Commoners we have mistreated and exploited for so long.

He shuddered and turned his back on the Barrier. Which was why the Barriers had to come down. With only the Mageborn's normal use of magic, the lode would be inexhaustible, or nearly. They could live without the Barriers . . .

. . . but only if they came to some better accommodation with the Commoners. Tagaza had argued over and over with Falk that the MageLords had to reform the way they governed, had to give the Commoners more rights . . . had, in fact, to adopt many of the policies the Common Cause—at least, the legal, public version of it—espoused.

If Mageborn and Commoners could live peaceably together, then the Lesser Barrier wouldn't be needed. As for the Great Barrier . . . well, if the histories were true, nothing waited outside the Barrier except wilderness and savages. Ordinary force of arms could secure the borders well enough.

And if the outside world
had
found this land in the time since the Old Kingdom fell, it was a world ruled by Commoners.
All the more reason to reach an accommodation with the Commoners within the Kingdom, before facing those without
, Tagaza thought.

He heard a rattling from the bridge, and looked up to see an open wagon, a coffin in the back, rolling across the cobblestones with two men on the seat. He walked slowly back toward the corpse in the water.

Knowing the Barriers had to fall, he'd researched that little problem, too, and had figured out how to do it . . . but had also realized it was both fiendishly difficult and posed ethical problems, to say the least. It required the simultaneous murder of the King and the Heir.

At that point Tagaza might well have given up, if a certain tall, intense young man, a fellow student, had not come to his quarters one blustery winter night to ask him a few very pointed questions about his research into the construction of the Barriers.

The young man had been Falk, and though he hadn't said much that night, over time he had revealed that he belonged to the forbidden sect known as the Unbound, and that the Unbound shared Tagaza's desire to bring down the Barriers. Tagaza had been intrigued by Falk and the insights he offered into the Unbound. Tagaza thought their professed belief in some great “SkyMage” who guided and protected the MageLords as silly as the ancient legend of the Magebane, the “anti-mage” who supposedly had turned the MageLords' magic against them during the Rebellion that destroyed the Old Kingdom, but the fact that they had held on to that belief, and their belief that the Barriers had been a cowardly mistake, for eight hundred years, fascinated him.

The Unbound taught that the Mageborn were a chosen people, gifted with magic by the SkyMage so that they could have dominion over the entire world. Their roots lay in the religious beliefs of the Old Kingdom, but the impetus for their coming together into an actual organization had been the First Twelve's decision to hide the new Kingdom of Evrenfels behind the Great Barrier, and the King and Council behind the Lesser. The Unbound saw that not only as cowardly, but also as a direct affront to the will of the SkyMage.

Over the centuries Kings, Queens, and MageLords had persecuted the Unbound to a greater or lesser degree, but the cult had never faded away entirely, new recruits joining regularly, usually from the ranks of the young.
Not too surprising
, Tagaza thought.
The Unbound message boils down to “you're special, you're better than everyone else, and unlike them, you know The Truth.” It might have been crafted specifically to appeal to young men.
He snorted.
Maybe it was.

Then, a little less than a century ago, the Unbound's fortunes had taken an enormous turn for the better when, for the first time in their long secret history, a MageLord had joined their ranks: Lord Falk's grandfather, Lord Excar.

Tagaza knew the story well enough to know that Excar's conversion had had nothing to do with a sudden eruption of piety. It had been humiliation and fury that had driven him to the Unbound.
And that message of being special and destined to rule would have
really
appealed to him
, Tagaza thought.

That was because Excar had been the Heir Apparent, son of King Severad. Like Karl, he had grown up in the Palace. The dynasty had been unbroken for two and a half centuries at that point, so no one had doubted that, in time, the Keys would come to him. The First Mage didn't even test him when he turned eighteen, the youngest age at which the Keys' magic could be detected in their future recipient: there was no Confirmation Ceremony in those days.

The reason there was one
now
was because, when King Severad had died . . . the Keys had gone elsewhere. Five days after his death, five days of confusion and wondering in the Palace, a twenty-year-old Mageborn girl named Castilla had ridden up to the Gate of the Lesser Barrier, driven by an unbreakable compulsion to make the long journey from her father's horse ranch near Berriton. The First Mage had examined her and declared that she now held the Keys, and she had immediately been crowned Queen Castilla: the first ruler of Evrenfels to arise from the ranks of the ordinary Mageborn rather than from one of the families of the Twelve.

The statue of her on the horse she had arrived on now stood at the foot of the ceremonial gardens in front of the Palace, and her grandson, King Kravon, now sat on the throne (figuratively speaking, Tagaza thought, since he so rarely made an appearance in the Great Hall for court functions).

Excar, now Lord Excar, had not been there to see her arrival. He had fled the Palace for good, returning to the family manor far to the west, near the Great Barrier. Young, bitter, still a MageLord, still wealthy, still powerful, but not King, he had known the Keys would never return to his family.

Tagaza suspected Excar's real reason for joining the Unbound, offering his manor as a meeting place, providing money and resources, was to strike back at Castilla. In any event, he had quickly become the leader of the Unbound, as was his son after him, and his son after him: Lord Falk.

The Unbound had long faced a serious difficulty: to fulfill the SkyMage's will, as they saw it, they had to bring down the Barriers. But as far as anyone knew, there
was
no way to bring down the Barriers.

Until Tagaza came along.

Early on in their discussions Tagaza had told Falk his belief that magic was fading, and would disappear entirely unless the Barriers fell. Falk had scoffed at that. He believed magic came from the SkyMage and could no more fade and fail than the sun, and that the lode of magic beneath the Palace was simply a conduit for the SkyMage's power. He also vehemently disagreed with Tagaza's argument that the MageLords and Mageborn had to find a way to share more power with the Commoners, treat them more as equals. The Unbound saw the Commoners first as an underclass, there to serve the Mageborn, and second as a potential threat. After all, it had been Commoners who had risen up in rebellion against the MageLords in the Old Kingdom, with the help of traitorous mages, of course, since it was unthinkable they could have defeated the Mageborn on their own.

“Treat them well as long as they keep their place,” Falk said. “Punish them without mercy if they don't.”

Their differences were great, but their goal was the same. Both wanted the Barriers brought down.

And when Tagaza finally, one night over a bottle of wine . . . or possibly two, he couldn't remember . . . told Falk how it could be done, Falk had grown very silent, excused himself early, and disappeared for several weeks.

When he'd reappeared, he'd asked Tagaza to work for him upon graduation. Tagaza had agreed, of course—it would have been foolish to turn down such a request from the heir of a MageLord even if he didn't share Falk's goals—and a few years later, when Falk's father had died and Falk had ascended to the Twelve, Tagaza had (officially, though not in practice) left Falk's service to join the Magecorps, advancing rapidly. When the King named Falk Minister of Public Safety, some years later, he had also named Tagaza First Mage, in which position he had remained now for twenty-five years.

Twenty years ago they had finally been able to begin the process of bringing down the Barriers. Until the Heir turned eighteen, and the presence of the Keys' magic could be confirmed, they'd been unable to act. Having finally made that confirmation, they were within weeks of carrying out their long-laid plans . . .

. . . and now, this.

Tagaza looked uneasily again at the corpse in the water. Could Falk's darkest suspicions be true? Could someone
know
, and was that someone working against them?

Mother Northwind may be able to find out
, he thought, and shuddered. The old renegade Healer frightened him more than a little. He knew she had only to touch him to read his mind like an open book, and so he never let her touch him. But to think she might also be able to read the mind of a corpse . . . that was frightening on a whole new level.
A man's secrets should be safe when he's in the grave
, he thought.

Although he had to admit that he fervently wished her luck in obtaining information from
this
corpse.

The wagon sent to retrieve the body had almost arrived.
About time
, Tagaza thought.
My wine should still be waiting in the garden. I might not even be called on for the Prince's afternoon tutoring session. An assassination attempt is a pretty good excuse for skipping class.

He smiled a little as he thought about how Karl had stood up to Lord Falk . . . and how much it must have galled Falk to show the respect due to a Prince to the youngster.

Karl would make a far better King than Kravon, Tagaza thought. Perhaps a very fine King indeed.
Too bad he's not really the Prince, or the Heir, at all.

He sighed, and went to meet the approaching wagon.

KARL WAS GLAD TO SEE THE DOOR of his quarters, and even more glad to usher Teran into them and firmly shut the other guards out. With the door closed and locked behind him, and suddenly feeling much older and more tired than any eighteen-year-old had any right to feel, he reached down and pulled off his boots, then went over to the fireplace, enjoying the feel of the thick white carpet on his bare feet.

Someone had obviously managed to warn his servants he was coming, because a fire blazed in the hearth. It wasn't really needed for warmth, since the MageFurnace provided all the hot air anyone could want, piped into every room in the Palace through floor vents, but there was something about a fire that made you feel warmer in a way mere heat could not.

Except he took one look into the hearth and turned away abruptly as a chance arrangement of embers reminded him of the blackened, staring face of his attacker.

Teran stood at attention just inside the door. “Take off your helmet,” Karl told him. “I'm going to have a glass of asproga . . . do you want any?”

“Not on duty, Your Highness,” Teran said shortly. “Thank you.”

Karl, on his way to the sideboard next to the window, shot him a sideways glance. “Since when? Was that some other guard I saw swigging ale down by the lake?”

Teran's face turned red beneath the helmet. “I would appreciate Your Highness not mentioning that to anyone,” he said.

Karl, at the sideboard, paused in the act of pulling the top out of a crystal decanter filled with a bright yellow liquid. “Oh,” he said in sudden understanding. “Falk. I saw him talking to you.” He felt a sudden flush of anger. “If he blamed you . . .”

“He did not, Your Highness,” Teran said. “But I do blame myself. I was on duty, and did not perform as my training dictates. I find myself embarrassed.”

Karl made a rude noise, poured his liqueur, and picked up the little crystal glass. “There was nothing you could have done. Except possibly die if you'd been between me and that crossbow bolt.”