by A Van Wyck
“There has not been one in my lifetime but I am aware of the phenomenon.”
“Do you know what happens just before the first wave makes landfall?”
The accounts he’d read obediently shuffled to the forefront of his mind, “The water level at the shore recedes drastically, sometimes uncovering coral reefs and sunken ships as water is drawn out to sea, fodder for the fledgling tidal wave.”
The arcanist nodded, gaze inviting him to take the analogy further.
“The apex of the wave – the landfall,” he mused. “You tried to surf its crest, didn’t you?”
The old arcanist smiled amicably, nodding. A gnarled hand pushed up the sleeve of the colorless robe. The skin of the thin forearm was mottled an angry pink with old scars.
“Years ago,” the man agreed, letting the sleeve fall again, “through an aspect of magic I thought I had mastered.” The arcanist shook his head in remembrance. “It is said the bite of one’s own hound is felt most keenly. Now,” the old man waved a hand to encompass their whole situation, “those old teeth caress my hide again.”
“You do not seem to me the kind of man to make the same mistake twice.”
The arcanist regarded him for a long moment. “I too had thought I’d learned my lesson,” the man admitted. “I spent years sulking and years more putting my hard won knowledge to better use.”
“And how has this knowledge betrayed you?”
“This is not the Empire, Keeper,” came the explanation. “Magic is shunned here. Those with the talent either fear to learn or flee to learn elsewhere. I make do with a single, middling, apprentice. I have no slew of assistants to run around recharging crystals. I did the best I could with what I had available to me.”
An image of Cyrus’s cupboard, filled with spontaneously charged glow globes flashed in his mind’s eye.
“You tied the palace wards to be charged by the surges in the ether?” He did not need the arcanist’s confirming nod. It was quite a brilliant idea. But it would have one significant drawback… “The lull,” he said, “the moment the waters flee the shore. Your wards would be weakest, drained, before the next wave hit.”
The arcanist nodded. “And it appears the assassin knew exactly when that would be. Knew exactly when my defenses would be at their weakest. The next wave made landfall less than a turn after the assassin escaped.”
By all accounts it would not have made much difference. Judging by the arcanist’s own evaluation, there was little hope the wards would have been able to detect the assassin, even at full charge. He left the unkind thought unspoken.
“In any event,” the arcanist declared, “that is not what I called you here to talk about.”
An expectant hand was extended and he stepped forward to help the old man up.
“Ahh,” the ancient groaned upright. “It’s no fun being old, Justin,” the wizened man declared, as if they were long-time friends. He found his arm being patted companionably. The arcanist turned them toward the path. “Never try it.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” he promised as he fell in beside the shuffling man, aware that he himself could only be called young in comparison to the ancient who clutched at his elbow. He let the high arcanist dictate their pace as they continued along the flower studded path.
“No one ever plans to,” the mage wheezed his distinctive laugh. “But you know what they say. The good die young. And the bad… well,” the old man wiggled bushy eyebrows at him, a conspiratorial smile playing wrinkled havoc, “we linger.”
They walked in comfortable silence for a while. He was surprised to realize, despite everything, he felt a true affinity for the old mage.
“What are you thinking?” the archmage enquired after a moment.
“I was thinking,” he answered honestly, “that I would like to have met you as a young man.”
“Hmm,” the arcanist mused, gravelly voice making a growl of the sound. “That you would not. I was an ass back then,” the old man explained, taking in his doubting expression. “Truly. So sure of my own power I stepped on all I considered my inferiors – which was everyone, basically.” The old man’s eyes unfocused, looking across a great span of years.
“My mother knew from the very start, of course. ‘Peril’ she named me with her dying breath. Sounds like a smart woman. Sometimes I wish I could have known her...”
Regret had a unique scent. Walking among the flowers, the arcanist’s long life wafted a complex bouquet of soft and sharp tones across his extra sense.
“You aren’t that man anymore,” he said eventually, all the certainty of a master empath behind his conviction.
The arcanist cast a jaded eye on him. “Time…” the old man said, speaking half to himself, “and loss, are great teachers. There isn’t a man born they can’t humble.”
At the arcanist’s words, he reflected for a moment on the man he’d been thirty years ago and knew the statement for truth.
“That is partly the reason I called you here,” the mage frowned, not looking at him.
“I was surprised to get your note,” he confessed, wondering how the subject of time and loss translated to him and not liking the direction the conversation was taking.
“I’m glad you came,” the old man wheezed. “I need to speak to you about your boy, Marco.”
He hid his sudden discomfort, unwilling to guess what the old man wanted to say but unable to halt the flood of horrible images his imagination instantly conjured. He lived in constant readiness to deal with a Marco wracked by madness and violence. It was a future never far from his thoughts.
“All right,” he said neutrally, quashing the host of fears lapping at his mind.
The old arcanist took another half-dozen shuffling steps, clinging lightly to his elbow, before speaking again.
“You’ve known him long?” the arcanist asked.
“Most of his life,” he answered evasively.
“Most?”
The old man didn’t miss much. He considered how much was safe to tell. He didn’t feel any deception or malice from the arcanist. Still… some secrets were best left buried.
“He came to the Temple as a foundling when he was about four or five. I adopted him.” Which was true enough, though not exactly accurate.
“And he was ill,” the old man stated, not quite asking.
“Yes,” he answered anyway, opting not to elaborate. Insanity was a kind of illness, after all, so the arcanist’s guess was near enough.
The old man nodded to himself.
“And you helped him.”
“We tried,” he admitted, liking the direction of the conversation less and less. “Why do you ask?” he countered, hoping to deflect further questions. His nerves jangled as he and the arcanist wandered arm in arm.
The old man continued in silence for a while, head bowed in thought.
“I found something strange during my examination,” he said at length.
If that was all this was about, then the news could have been worse. The arcanist seemed too well informed in any event. If this was merely a matter of satisfying his curiosity, then he could feed the man enough truths to put this line of inquiry to rest.
“You did not report any such thing to your king…” he sidetracked.
“It was not pertinent to our purpose,” the arcanist explained.
He considered that, wondering to what extent the king and the arcanist’s purposes were misaligned.
“What did you find?”
It would be best to know the extent of the mage’s knowledge beforehand. He watched the arcanist closely as the old man sucked at whiskered lips, considering his next words. Despite his best efforts, he could not entirely quell the anxiety he felt.
“Great magicks,” the man declared at last, “were once worked on the boy.” The old man did not look to him for confirmation. “Easily archmage class. I would have liked to meet the spellcaster responsible. Healing magicks are not my area,” the arcanist admitted, “but true mast
ers of the arts are too rare for us to ignore each other.”
It did not offend him that the arcanist didn’t consider he might have been the spellcaster in question. Technically, the existence of the spell and the fact that it had been performed at all were still a closely held secret.
“You would like him, I think,” he said, distracting himself by picturing Cyrus and Peril in a room together.
The arcanist wheezed his dry laugh. “Unlikely,” the old man breathed. “As a rule, high level practitioners don’t get on well. Professional rivalry, you see.”
He was silent for another half-dozen steps.
“Still,” the man sighed, advanced years evident in his speech, “it would have helped to understand more of the nature of the spell. Then, perhaps, something could be done.”
Justin froze, halting their progress. “What do you mean?” He could feel the cold creeping into the corners of his chest.
The arcanist turned to him, spotted hands falling to the reed cane. “As I said. Time.” The wrinkles shifted slightly and, though the arcanist was still smiling, he could feel the regret, present and immediate this time, peek through the façade.
“The spell,” the old man began, “has held as long as it can. Quite impressive, I must say. But it, too, is finally succumbing to time.”
He found he couldn’t speak. The arcanist filled the silence.
“The spell is unraveling. It has degraded in strange ways, whether due to time or design I cannot tell. As I said, healing magicks are not my specialty. I cannot even be sure it still fulfills the function it was formed for.”
The old man met his eyes earnestly.
“I can see from your face that you know its purpose.”
He nodded unnecessarily.
“I will not enquire further,” the arcanist promised. “All I can tell is that it is some grand preventative measure... and that parts of it are finally being rejected by the host body. It fails.”
No.
Cyrus had confirmed that the spell had been damaged. Damaged but still functional. It had already lasted far beyond what the two of them had ever intended. If what Peril said was accurate…
His mind railed at the reality.
The boy was so normal! No, not normal. Exceptional. Looking at him, it was so easy to forget he had a pustule of madness festering inside him. If it burst its dam it would lay the boy’s secret bare for everyone, including the boy himself, to see. Would his young mind be able to fend off the sickness now where it hadn’t before? He’d done his best to bolster those mental defenses, under the guise of meditative- and streaming exercises. From what he had seen, the masha’na training had fortified the foundations he’d lain. But would it be enough?
He’s so young!
The arcanist took in his stricken expression, patting him kindly on the shoulder. “I thought you should know.”
The arcanist moved away. He realised they’d circled the garden and were back at the entrance to the palace corridors.
“Wait!” he pleaded desperately.
The old man paused but didn’t look at him. He sensed the kindness in that.
“Is there anything you can do?”
The graying head shook from side to side. “As I said – not my specialty,” the old man replied sadly. “I doubt even the original caster could mend it at this point.” The old man continued on his way, leaving him with his agonizing thoughts.
“How long,” he called after the arcanist’s retreating back, his voice hoarse. The old man answered over his shoulder.
“A month or two. Maybe less.”
And then the stooped man disappeared into the gloom of the corridor. For a while yet, his cane could be heard, echoing off the tiles. Justin was left standing in the garden, deathly cold despite the bright sun. For the first time in a very long time, he could not find the words for a prayer.
CHAPTER 10 – A DAY OFF
Dennik fidgeted nervously, shifting his new sword – unfamiliar despite the last few months of wear – so it hung more comfortably. It still pulled at his hip, heavier than the one he’d been issued as a regular. Nervous sweat beaded his forehead. He was grateful for his helm’s under-padding, which soaked up the worst of it before it could run down his face and embarrass him. He reached up to make sure runnels weren’t tracking his forehead–
–and snapped his hands back to rigid attention with a start, remembering he wasn’t alone.
His eyes darted worriedly to the right.
How was it possible to forget this man shared a room with you? His eyes skittered quickly away again and he swallowed hard. Enderam Lelouch, the elder princess Villet’s personal bodyguard, wore an expression chiseled from stone. Only a handful of names in the entire kingdom still held the antiquated title of swordmaster. Those names were known to all: Bandell; Mercon, Verrilk, Lelouch… He realized he was staring again and dropped his gaze. Not that the man took any notice.
Since fetching him here, the bodyguard hadn’t deigned to so much as look at him. He was suddenly at a loss to remember whether he’d ever heard the swordsman speak.
He’d been on his way back from the mess hall, tired after finishing his shift, when the silent swordsman had stepped into his path. He’d almost had a heart attack when he’d seen who confronted him. The bodyguard had gathered him up with a sharp jerk of the chin.
He’d followed, quietly hyperventilating, and wracking his brain for anything he might have done to earn the swordsman’s ire. He needn’t have bothered. The bodyguard only ever did anything at the behest of his mistress, the elder princess.
Villet Ibernis Avrintir Stentorian.
He fought down his nerves again. He would be hard pressed to say which of the pair he feared most. He thought he might have a better chance at a clean, painless death at the hands of the swordsman. He shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously. He’d never actually been inside one of the royal apartments before and he tried not to be obvious as he looked around. Princess Villet had a reputation for being… brusque. He couldn’t bring himself even to think a more critical word. Not in her very apartments. The decor reflected her austere personality. The tables were uncluttered, all the implements for writing meticulously arranged. The walls were bare of color, sporting simple drapes the same shade as the furniture. Surfaces you would have expected to hold priceless vases or expensive decorations or even a bunch of flowers stood vacant. It looked like a librarian’s chamber, not a princess’ rooms. The spartan space was adding to his anxiety.
He was newly raised from the ranks of the palace guard. City-born, son of a potter, he was a nobody. His appointment to the royal guard had been a definite upswing in his career. And now this.
Fortune’s fetlocks, I can already feel the axeman’s blade combing my neck hairs!
He feared he knew why he was here: the recent attempt on the younger princess’s life. He’d had the bad luck of being there, manning his post in the passage, when it had all happened. And he was the newest appointment to the royal guard: green and uneducated in the twists and tides of palace politics. He felt very sure he was about to become forcibly immersed in those politics. People like him should stay out of those waters. There were sharks there. And he feared he was about to be tossed in a very small cove with a very big one.
His interview with the invigilator had been one of the worst experiences of his life. He’d come away from it with a newfound reverence for silence and obedience. And having his head remain atop his neck.
What would he do if the princess ordered him to relate that which he’d sworn not to reveal? True, the invigilator had a reputation to rival that of the elder royal but the man wasn’t nobility. An office held by dint of pragmatic, horrible efficacy–
–against a royal command?
Was it worth his neck? How had he gotten himself into this mess? Unwanted, the memory paraded in front of his mind’s eye.
They’d all been briefed on the Heli delegation that had taken up residence in the palace, of course.
But it had been his first time seeing the foreign lad. Supposedly they were all friends now but hundreds of years of war weren’t forgotten in a day. He’d been watching the youth closely. So he’d noticed when the boy stiffened suddenly, brow crinkling and confused eyes peppering the ceiling. He’d quickly scanned the ceiling himself, looking for the fluffy mass of one of the down-spiders that sometimes got inside on rainy days. Willingness to lay down their lives aside, it was also the occasionally task of the Royal Guard to evict spiders and assorted creepy crawlies from the royal apartments. Failing to spot a spider, he’d glanced down in time to see the youth’s jaw drop.
The boy had shot him a glance and what he’d read in that expression had set his heart pounding. And that’s when the chaos had started.
He’d already been moving forward when the youth had loosed a sudden scream. He didn’t speak Imperial himself but he knew a denial when he heard one. The boy had shot out from under his grasping fingers and bolted up the passage. He’d given chase instinctively but the lad had been very fast and he’d been hampered by his unaccustomed pike and newly issued half-plate.
His remembered horror, as the lad had darted for one of the antique urns, paled in comparison to what came after. The royal family were hard task masters. It took a lot to earn a place for your burial urn in the halls of power. To his knowledge, no one had ever been pressed into service beyond death. Save, now, for this particular food-taster from the Poison Succession. The cremated remains had fared no better than the final (now penultimate) resting place. Both had gone sailing, lobbed at the ceiling. There’d been a loud crack and he’d held his breath as he passed through the expanding cloud of food-taster. He’d voiced a warning the moment he was clear.
In retrospect, he was both awed and irked at the ease with which the lad had outmaneuvered a whole hallway full of Royal Guard – his peers. But someone had finally gotten ahold of a handful of robes. He’d recognized Joll, who he secretly believed could win a head-butting contest with a bull, stagger away with glazed eyes. The next moment, the foreign lad had shot toward the ceiling as if from a siege engine.