The Making of a Mage King: White Star (13 page)

BOOK: The Making of a Mage King: White Star
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Sean winced and thought of Berrac, Armelle’s ex-boyfriend. Only about fifteen or sixteen at the time, he’d had the love of his life snatched away from him. He must not have had any magic; else he’d have used it that morning. He nodded his thanks and went to kneel by the boy.

“Be careful,” said Nord, “he was very young when we were taken.”

Sean looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

Nord only shrugged and shook his head. His daughter huddled closer into his arm and whispered something in his ear, a look of anxiety on her face.

Sean turned back to the boy.
How can you be careful with black magic?
He made every word he uttered a compulsion, but he tried to hold back on the power; he wanted to lift a petal, not raze a mountain. “
What is your name
?” Sean enunciated every word slowly and carefully, speaking only loud enough so that he could be heard.

The boy’s eyes flashed up at him. They were stark blue, surrounded by dark lashes that stood out handsomely against his pale skin.

Sean watched the struggle begin behind them. He thought he understood what might be happening in there. Too young to have developed much of a sense of self, he had been drowned in the guild. Like a leach, they had sucked on his magic without nurturing the vessel that housed it, at least no more than keeping it healthy enough to keep the magic flowing.


What is your sister’s name
?” asked Sean; it looked like the boy was being torn apart in there. Sean wracked his brains for things a boy like this might treasure.


Tell me about your mother
.
What was her favorite color
?”

A tear welled up in the boy’s eye, though not enough to fall out before he blinked it back.

Sean remembered the jewelry box on the shelf. “
What was in your mother’s jewelry box
?”

“Blue,” whispered the boy then started to pant a little. There was confusion and a little panic in his remarkable eyes now as they cast around looking for shelter.

Sean let his questions rattle around in the boy’s head for a moment more until his panic subsided.

“Eleanor, m-my m-mother’s n-name is Eleanor.” His voice shook and his shoulders hunched into the oilcloth not entirely because of the cold.

Sean was surprised; he hadn’t asked him that question.

The boy looked up at Sean, he could see the desperation in his eyes, then he watched the door slam shut. He tried his own compulsion; Sean could see it in his throat, but it only came out as a growl. “Get away from me.”

Sean started over again. It was nearly dark before he could say his name and answer the rest of Sean’s questions freely, and it was not long after that before he began to ask questions of his own. Apparently, the last half of his life was little more than a paranoid nightmare.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Breaking the Guild

 

Sean took them back to his camp where they all got a most welcome hot supper, then he housed them in his own tent. There was room enough, and it was short notice. He also wanted to talk to Marcq, the husband, and Guet, the father.

Marcq faded quickly, he hadn’t had a meal with meat in it for years, and he didn’t know much about the guild or the building that housed it. He had only seen the cell where he and about a dozen others existed.

Sean turned him over to his wife before he would have to use magic to move him. Sean himself was still shaky from the magic he had used. Though the confrontation had been very short, it had been his first real battle using nothing but magic and his wits, and though the event scarcely qualified as a fight, his opponent had been very powerful.

Guet, however, was a wealth of information. Having been older and not as strong as most taken by the guild, he hadn’t received the same attention as the others and thus, had retained more of a ‘self’. From him, Sean learned some of the more insidious practices of the guild. That, and his brief experience helped him know what to expect.

The guild reminded Sean of the Borg in Star Trek. All the real thinking was done by one mind and the individuality of its members was rooted out as much as possible. They had more success with the young ones, but Berck was proof that they could recover.

Sean left both Guet and Berck shielded, and though they seemed to struggle under it, they didn’t protest. It was as if they’d both had enough of magic, but they didn’t say as much, not yet anyway.
Maybe they’ll want it back by the time I leave here

I’ll have to remember to ask
.

It finally stopped raining sometime before dawn, and also sometime before dawn, Sean let Guet go to sleep. Sean wasn’t going to be so lucky; he had a problem. He went out into the camp, filling his lungs with the freshly scrubbed air.
No way will I be able to take any of my men into the city, not until after the guild has been broken. We have no defense against magic of that magnitude, and if I am forced to protect them, I won’t be able to attack.

He had felt their strength back at the apartment. He had only just managed to get all of them out of there before the guild zeroed in on them. Then he realized something:
I have wielded power that left others gasping at the magnitude, and I have no problem directing it, finding a target when I want to. The guild, however, had been slow. Several seconds elapsed after the kidnapping before they found Laon and me, then their first strike missed. It couldn’t all be surprise and distance, could it?

Guet told him there had to be more than fifty mages in the guild. Sean suspected the number was far greater, probably closer to at least a hundred, if not more. He risked pinging for them, hoping they wouldn’t return the favor. It had been hard enough for him to learn and he seriously doubted any of them had thought of it.

What came back was more or less what he expected. The ping doesn’t do any counting, but if one mage was one marker dot on a sheet of paper, then the guild was a healthy chunk of that piece of paper blacked out.
Definitely more than a hundred, and all pretty much in one place.

He needed to get into the guild house. Once inside, his magic would be masked by their own, and they would need to rely on their eyes to tell them he was a stranger. But how was he going to get
into
the building without his magic being felt? Then he had an idea. It was a slim chance, but it might work.

He headed back to the fire where he found Mattie preparing to start breakfast. “Mattie, I need your help.”

She looked up at him in astonishment, glancing him over, expecting to see some hurt; she certainly didn’t expect what he asked.

“Mattie, I need you to shield me.”

“What? I can’t shield you; I’m not strong enough, not even a little bit.”

“I know, but you made me sleep before; you do it different somehow. I want you to try the same thing; the stones might help. You’re the only one here with the right kind of magic.”

She frowned. “I’ll try, but I heard you tell Hélène that she didn’t stand a chance of shielding you and she’s the strongest healer I know.”

“Hélène and I…” Sean didn’t want to go there. “Just try, and I’ll try very hard to let you.”

She looked at him as if gauging him, then she busied around the fire, turning the cooking duty over to one of the men who had shown up early for breakfast. Then she rounded up a chair and had Sean sit. After that, she had him heat a cup of water for tea, which she had him drink. While he was sipping the hot tea, she went to her tent and returned with her pouch. She kept all her healing herbs in that pouch, so Sean assumed that she kept the stones there too.

She took his cup tea from him and sprinkled a pinch of something into it, then she swirled it around before handing it back to him.

“What was that? You’re not going to drug me, are you?”
I can’t afford to be drugged.

“Just drink it,” she said.

The tea was cool enough, so Sean just downed the rest of it. Then she stood directly behind him and pulled him back to rest his head on her breast. He was surprised.
What if Cordan saw? What would Armelle say?

“Relax,” she said. “Close your eyes and relax.” Her words were soft and her fingers were raking through his hair and brushing his face. It was soothing, quieting. Her fluttery touch felt like a heartbeat.

He listened to the heartbeat until he forgot why he was there. There was just the heartbeat and her warm hands and slow moving fingers…then the magic was gone.

Sean opened his eyes with a start. She hadn’t said a thing, and he hadn’t felt a thing. Her fingers were still now, holding him still as well until he could control the impulse to find the missing magic. He leaned forward out of her hands and Jenny handed him another cup of tea, made the more conventional way.

“Thanks,” he said, and found his hands were shaking.

Mattie came around in front of Sean. “Are you all right?”

Sean could see the genuine concern in her eyes. “I’m fine.” He closed his eyes. “Mattie…” He looked at his shaking hand again. “Mattie, have I been weakened? Am I strong enough to do this?”

She steadied his hand back onto the cup. “As far as I can tell, you’re stronger than ever. You’re just a little tired physically. The drug I gave you will wear off in a couple hours, then you won’t feel so shaky.”

Sean stood up and looked around. He spotted Laon watching him and realized that not only was his world washed out and dim, but the man no longer glowed red. He was truly shielded, but Mattie’s shield was like a soap bubble; he would have to be very careful in order to remain in tact.

He went over to Laon.
I need his help; he’s the only other mage of any strength in the camp, not counting my uncle, and I’m not about to use
him
.
“I’m going back into the city. If you can manage to let Mattie shield you, you can come with me.”

The look of ill-concealed horror crossed his face before he could hide it completely. “Shielded?”

“Mattie’s not very strong, so she won’t be able to do it unless you cooperate, and I won’t let you come with me unless you’re shielded. The choice is yours. I’ll take Cordan with me if you can’t do this.”

Laon looked from Mattie to Cordan then took a shaky breath.

“She’s really very good,” said Sean, trying to reassure him.

He went up to Mattie moving stiffly, and she smiled and touched his cheek sympathetically, then gently she guided him to the chair Sean had just vacated. She busied herself with little things allowing Laon calm down, then she did much the same thing she’d done with Sean.

Watching what she did was almost as relaxing as feeling it. Sean found he’d paused in eating his breakfast as he watched Mattie soothe and quiet Laon until the drug took effect; it looked like he was about ready to fall asleep. Then he jumped; he had just realized that Mattie’s shield was in place. She had slipped it in on him just like she had done with Sean.

Just as he was about to panic, Sean knelt in front of him. “Leave it. Pull yourself together and think about us going into town. We have a job to do and I need you.”

Laon was breathing heavily already, but he took a shaky breath and nodded, accepting another cup of tea and gulping its hot contents without tasting it.

By the time they finished their breakfast, they were steady enough to walk a straight line so they headed into town on foot. What had taken Laon about a half hour to cover with the horses took them easily half the morning on foot; Laon hadn’t spared himself or the horses much, though you wouldn’t have noticed just by watching him enter the gate.

Before they reached the gate, Sean picked the broken wire from Laon’s sheath and sword then slung his cloak off his claymore. Sean’s other two swords were still wired.

The guard who searched them at the gate was a different man than Sean had talked to yesterday, but then it might have been a different shift.

“What you bringing such a big sword into town for?” he asked as he wired the hilt.

“I brought it in to be reground.” Since the guard never examined the blade, he didn’t know that it was in no need of regrinding.

He eyed the heavy ball that reached higher than Sean’s head. “I ain’t seen a sword that big before. What do you use it for?”

Sean just smiled at him. “It has its uses.”

He shrugged. “You know the law?”

“About fighting? I remember. Can you direct me toward the mage’s guild house? My uncle is staying there and I’d like to visit him while I’m in town.” Sean didn’t need directions, but he did want to see the man’s reaction.

“You don’t want to go there,” he said.

With mock concern on his face, Sean said, “But my uncle…”

“Take my word for it, boy. You don’t want to go there. Move along…and stay away from the guild. The blacksmith will re-secure your sword when he’s done with it and he’ll give you a paper. Make sure you present that paper to the guard at the gate when you leave; they’ll notice the difference.”

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