by Beth Alvarez
Rune gave Sera a sidewise glance. “Sounds like Stal was right in sending you here.” He turned toward the door as if to go.
Sera couldn’t deny that now. If the Masters heading the council of the Grand College had been killed, it was likely for the same reason as Arrick. They’d opposed Envesi’s goals, refused her leadership.
There was no doubt Umdal was next on the list.
Her knees gave out and Sera sank to the floor, with a hand held to her mouth as if to trap the tears that desperately wished to escape. She was a warrior. A soldier in the Royal City’s army until the day she married Stal, and a powerful representative of magic before that. Not some weepy housemaid given to emotional fits. But that only made the tears worse. They burned in her eyes and threatened to spill hot rivers over her eyelashes. Seeking comfort, or perhaps driven by the need to comfort someone else in troubled times, Sera wrapped her arms around herself and hugged her unborn child.
Reassurance came when Rune knelt beside her, gathered her into his arms and stroked her countless white braids with one rough-scaled hand. “Don’t give up on him yet,” he murmured against her ear. “If I couldn’t kill him, I doubt she can.”
Sera buried her face in his shoulder and allowed herself two lonely tears before she focused on her breath.
Their friendship was hard earned, forged through trial and violence in the years they’d served together. War was a horror, but if she was to face it, there were few others she’d want by her side.
12
A War Begins
Her power was like a pulse. Stal flinched every time it throbbed in his senses. The world around him seemed to seethe in anticipation. He’d felt that sort of chaos before, though never on that level. If that was the sort of power Rune had when Sera had met him, Stal was grateful he’d never experienced it firsthand.
He placed his hands, palms flat, on the surface of his desk. As Archmage, he easily could have left his work at Umdal’s formal headquarters, but he’d always studied best in his own home. Now he regretted the office he kept on the first floor. Had he been in the Archmage’s quarters in the chapter house, he would have been surrounded by mages and perhaps he’d stand a chance.
The warm light of his home cast eerie shadows across Envesi’s face as she appeared in the doorway. Her frigid eyes glowed bright enough to rival the lamps. It was her eyes that unsettled him most.
“I have grown impatient,” Envesi said, though her voice was placid.
Stal straightened and met her stare. “You promised me time.”
The woman waved a white-scaled hand in dismissal. “I promised nothing. What time I gave you was a boon. My generosity, too, has worn thin.” She lingered at the entrance as if ready to leave in an instant. “Where are they?”
“The Collective has not yet replied to me,” Stal said. “I don’t know where they are.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I understand your desire for speed, but I cannot make them move faster. Right now, I cannot even guarantee my messengers have reached anyone.” He spread his hands in a placating gesture.
A flicker in her gaze gave him a chill. “Where have you sent your messengers?”
“I mean this respectfully, but I don’t think you understand how the Collective works.” A large map was mounted on the far wall. Stal motioned toward it. “There is a gold pin in our location. Ours is the only permanent chapter house on the southern continent.”
Envesi stalked toward the map. “You do not include markers for temporary stations?”
“That’s precisely what I mean. We don’t have temporary stations. Our mages are vagrants. They might stay a few days in one location, but they are always on the move. That is the only way we can see to the needs of the trade kingdoms, and we’ve fought hard to regain the right to move between them.” It wasn’t that long ago that magic had been forbidden. Stal had been moved nearly to tears on the day the mage-truce was formed.
She did not seem to care. “Which directions did they go?”
“I could not tell you that, either,” he said. “I was not present when they departed. They choose their own destinations.”
“Archmage,” Envesi said as she studied the map.
His brows drew together. “Pardon me?”
“My title.” She turned toward him, her expression cold as snow. “I am Archmage.”
“As am I,” Stal replied. “That makes us equals.”
A shockwave hit his chest and threw him back against the wall. The air left his lungs in a rush. He wheezed when he inhaled again.
Air pushed against him and forced him to the wall like a hand against his throat. The woman in white crept closer. “I have no equal.”
“And soon, you will have no allies, if you don’t listen to reason!” He clawed at the invisible forces that held him and grimaced. Even though her grip on him was measured and controlled, the sense of her power that came with it was crushing. He dared not try to peel back the flows, though he was certain he could. If she exerted such force to simply hold him in place, what might she do if he tried to escape?
Her eyes narrowed as she considered his words. The stream of magic that held him to the wall abated, then faded to a tiny trickle that dribbled off to nothing. Stal rubbed his throat and swallowed against the tight discomfort that remained. How long did he need to hold her off? He sensed the ebb and flow of Gates opening and closing, but the mages in the chapter house came and went as they pleased. How was he to know if Sera had already escaped?
“This is my home,” Stal said, his words measured and patient. “I have no information here. If you wish to know more about where the Collective’s mages have gone, the only place we might learn is in the chapter house.” He dreaded the idea of letting Envesi in before he had a chance to warn his mages, but he assumed she would invade the chapter house regardless. If he escorted her in, perhaps they could avoid bloodshed.
“Take me,” Envesi ordered without an ounce of hesitation.
Stal straightened his robes and made soothing motions with both hands. Sera had always praised his even temper in dealing with their children. He wished his patience extended to unreasonable mages, too. As it was, annoyance at Envesi’s hostility and demanding nature simmered high, cooled only by the cold fear for his wife’s safety that ran through his heart and mind.
“I regret that I have no news to give you yet,” he said as he led her from the house. The Kaith estate was beautiful and the iron-nut trees in the courtyard were especially pleasant this time of year, with their fragrant flowers in full bloom. He breathed deep as he stepped outside and hoped she would unconsciously mimic him. The blossoms were said to have a calming effect. He wanted her calm. “But news always travels slowly across the trade kingdoms. Hastiness runs counter to our culture, besides. The last time mages rushed to make decisions, it began a war that lasted decades.”
Envesi did not reply.
The chapter house was not far from home. Stal eyed the lights in the building’s windows with a hint of regret. How many could he warn? How many would flee? By now, Sera had surely escaped. Had she warned the mages in the chapter house? Or had she left them in hopes they would aid him, if there was a fight?
A mage met them at the door. “Archmage,” she began, her face pinched with worry. “Is everything all right?”
Before Stal could speak, Envesi’s power wrapped around him like chains, lashed his arms to his sides and drove him to his knees. A startled cry escaped before he could stop it.
“Your other chapter houses. Your outposts. Where are they?” Envesi stopped beside Stal and put a hand down as if to hold him in place. Magic weighed down on him as surely as if she’d planted a foot on his back.
The mage in the doorway lifted a hand to her mouth.
Stal gritted his teeth and lifted his head. Words proved difficult to form with Envesi’s power squeezing his chest. “The rabbits?”
“Gone,” the mage replied, her face grave. So the children had already escaped. Pe
rhaps this mage had been on her way to Stal’s home.
Envesi raised a brow, but she had no way of knowing the pet name he and his wife used for their children.
“The farmers?” he asked.
Picking up on the code, the mage nodded. “Where they’ve taken their supply, I don’t know.”
“The chapter houses,” Envesi snapped.
The mage in the doorway raised her hands. “Peace, Master. We are not your enemies. We do not have chapter houses, but there are stations frequently used. When one is expected to be visited by part of the Collective, they request provisions be sent.” The information was accurate, but the way she smoothly used it to mask the secret behind Stal’s question made his shoulders slump in relief.
Envesi’s eyes flashed. “Show me the outposts.”
“They will be empty,” Stal said.
She turned a frosty glare on him, angry colors of light whirling in her eyes. “Then it matters not if I see them.”
Though her face twisted with worry, the mage at the door bowed her head. “Come inside, please.”
Stal began to protest, but found his jaw clamped so firmly shut, he couldn’t part his lips to speak. Indignation flared within him, but when he craned his neck to glare up at Envesi, she merely raised a brow and left him prone on the walkway.
He exhaled hard as she disappeared into the chapter house. Calm as the mage leading Envesi had seemed, Stal did not doubt everyone in the chapter house would panic before long.
When he inhaled again, he pressed his fingers into the dust and relaxed. Power shifted beneath him as the ground answered his call. The earth sang to him, a deep, thrumming melody only others who shared his affinity could hear. He savored its voice and let it hum through his veins. Trickles of pure power fed into him from each point of contact. His knees, the palms of his hand, and each fingertip fueled him. He could twist the flows from anywhere, but he needed them now to bolster himself.
Envesi’s affinity had been life. Stal could still sense it within her. Detecting another’s source of power was something he was especially good at, and one of the reasons he’d been chosen as Archmage. But life—healing, as they so often preferred to call it in the north—was a dangerous affinity to face in a madwoman. She could unravel him from existence with a thought. She could do that to every mage in the chapter house, though, and he was Archmage. To protect them was his duty.
Stal pushed. A single, hard pulse of power shattered the flows of air that held him down and freed him from the woman’s grasp. He thrust himself to his feet and gasped for breath. His jaw creaked as he flexed it, and his anger only grew.
Mages fighting mages had been a theme through his youth, a deep shame for all mages in the trade kingdoms. He’d spent his entire life fighting to restore the people’s trust in mages and he would be swallowed by the earth itself before he let some outsider destroy everything he’d worked for.
The air crackled with power. Someone was opening a Gate—or more than one Gate, Stal thought. The power swelled, over and over.
He burst into the chapter house. Mages cowered in the classrooms he passed, their wide, fright-filled eyes on him as he stormed to the Gating parlor at the far end of the hall.
Envesi stood before the wide, crackling Gate. The woman who had greeted them at the door knelt beside her, the Archmage’s clawed hand atop her head. To either side of the Gate, a handful of frightened mages cowered against the walls, though Stal sensed the power that tied them together. One of the Collective’s many outposts waited on the other side of the portal, its windows dark and its grounds abandoned.
“Another,” Envesi snarled. Her claws dug into the Master mage’s scalp and blood stained the poor woman’s snowy hair.
The Gate closed and reopened to display another empty outpost. How many had they already seen? How closely had she studied them?
“Enough,” Stal barked. His mages turned to him, startled. All save the woman on the floor, that was. A twinge of shame surfaced amidst Stal’s anger. She was a newer Master in the Collective; he did not yet know her name. “I told you the outposts were empty, the Collective on the move. Is my word not good enough?”
Envesi cast a darkening scowl over her shoulder. Wordlessly, she released the mage and plunged through the Gate.
Stal swore and followed her through. The Gate’s power sizzled against his skin and made every hair stand on end as he passed into the windy plains.
Against the dark of night, Envesi resembled a ghost. Her white robes billowed as she spread her hands and seized power.
“The Collective cannot be forced to answer you,” he shouted above the howling wind.
Heat burst in his senses. Envesi’s arms raised higher, and with the motion, fat flames surged up around the outpost.
Stal’s mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”
Her eyes seared the dark as she turned back toward him, two pinpoints of blazing cold light. The familiar electric tingle of a Gate crawled over him and the air beside her split.
Cursing once more, Stal ran. He dove for the skirts of her robes and tumbled through the portal alongside her.
Envesi moved as if he didn’t exist and strode forward with her arms spread. Another outpost rose before them, and again, flames rose within it.
Stal beckoned the earth under his feet. It rumbled in answer. Fissures zigzagged across the ground from the tips of his toes to the outpost ahead, and sand and dust spewed forth to suffocate the fire, but her magic was too great. Tiny, glittering specks of glass fell in showers around the burning outpost as Envesi urged her flames to grow hotter.
Deep within the earth, something else tickled Stal’s augmented senses.
Water.
“Please,” he whispered as he urged the ground to part. It answered.
The air split as Envesi opened another Gate.
The urge to smother the flames tore at him, warring with the need to follow. He denied it and felt his heart twist for the village beyond the outpost as he spun to follow her through a Gate again.
This time, he landed ready. Stone surged forth the moment the Gate dropped closed. It exploded from the dirt to clap shut around the rogue mage.
A single second later, cracks lanced across the slabs and the stone shattered to fall around her feet. She was untouched, unharmed, and—evidently, as she spared him not even a glance as she raised her arms—unhindered.
The presence of magic lit up on the edge of Stal’s awareness.
There were mages in the outpost.
“Stop!” Stal roared. He raised a palm toward Envesi and the earth rose to answer and envelop her again.
A flicker of angry color flashed in her eyes just before the earth closed around her and blocked her out of sight.
The ground underfoot began to tremble.
A wave rolled through the soil and the ground beneath Stal’s feet gave way. He fell with a shout and pitched himself forward. His chest hit the dirt and the impact chased the breath out of him. Earth heaved up beneath his feet as he seized magic and pulled. The flows resisted. She still held them. Stal closed his eyes and sawed at her control.
Powerful as Envesi was, earth was not her specialty, and the stone answered him. A startled howl burst from within the pillar of earth that trapped her as her hold over the element snapped.
The hole beneath him sealed and Stal thrust himself to his feet. The earthen pillar squeezed closer, fit itself to Envesi’s form. She favored gestures; if he could trap her, perhaps it would be harder for her to work her magic.
Mages appeared at the door of the outpost.
“Flee!” Stal roared. They disappeared just as quickly, and he prayed they followed his command.
A new tremble started in the earth. The pillar shook loose and fell apart in chunks. Envesi gave her head a twitch as she was freed, and her snowy hair shed dust and soil as if it were water. “You are becoming a nuisance.”
“Then kill me,” he challenged. “Pull me apart like you did Arrick Ortath!�
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A harsh laugh welled up in her throat. With a flick of her hand, she dismissed the last of the pillar that restrained her, and Stal winced as his hold of those flows whipped back. Too skilled to be struck, he subdued the power before it hit him, but the last of the pillar crumbled at her feet.
“Such arrogance,” Envesi said. “You believe yourself his equal, but you don’t even command a chapter house that sits just beyond your front door. You call yourself Archmage, and yet you cannot speak on behalf of feeble vagrants who dare claim the title of mage.”
She reached for her flames. Before she could seize them, Stal wrested the flows away from her reach and scattered them on the wind. Envesi gave a soft grunt of displeasure.
“What do you gain?” she asked. “What does it benefit you to martyr yourself over antiquated practices of feeble magic?”
“Our practices exist because we must realize no one has control of our Gifts but us,” Stal replied. “Even if we join you, even if we were to become free mages like you, only we can wield the power we are given. Brant has blessed us, this is why we call it a Gift. All mages deserve to choose how their power should be used. If they do not wish to use their strength to further your goals, that should be their decision, too.”
“A charmingly utopian ideal,” Envesi said, her tone patronizing. The air around her hissed with building energy. The scent of heat, like the air before a lightning strike, filled Stal’s nostrils. He resisted the urge to hit the ground and instead spun to face the empty space before her at the precise moment the air split and she opened a Gate.
Each time one opened, they seemed hotter, more chaotic, less stable. The white-hot, crackling edges of the portal rippled as if they fought her control. Could he hope to push her until she was too tired to keep hold of her magic?
She stepped toward the Gate just as flames burst within the outpost and panicked voices rose into the night.
Stal lit after her. If she left him behind, he could do nothing.
The Gate closed on his heel and a searing shot of pain spiked up his leg. He collapsed with a curse and tumbled against the ground.