The Unconquered Mage

by McShane, Melissa

  “The more fools they,” Cederic said. He stood and put his arms around me. “And we cannot make the point that you are the most powerful mage of your country when we do not know if those we speak to fear magic. I have been a fool myself, in every respect. I should have remembered your countrymen are not like mine.”

  “We’ll find a way,” I said, not really believing it. “Help me out of this dress, please?”

  “I am afraid we have no time for that,” he said with a chuckle.

  I grinned at him. “I know, but I’m not going to sit around in this getup all day, and I think we both have at least enough self-control not to attack each other just because we happen to be in our underwear. Well, I do. You’re usually a slave to your lusts.”

  He laughed and began untying the sash. “I am so glad to have you with me,” he said, “and I cannot imagine anyone better qualified to rule beside me, common or not.”

  “There’s always Joena Lerongis,” I said.

  Cederic wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something awful. “Joena has many sterling qualities, but an Empress-Consort should not be quite so….”

  “Indirect?” I suggested.

  “I was thinking ‘amorally self-centered,’ but ‘indirect’ is accurate,” he said. He shed his own robes and folded them neatly to go back into the trunk. “I owe you a debt of gratitude for preventing me from ascending the throne without a wife. What a nightmare that would be, all those women parading themselves for me to choose.”

  “Then your payment will be to come to bed at a decent hour, so I can show you the other benefits of having a wife,” I said. With that we kissed each other and parted, him to meet with the quartermasters, me to find the mages and tell them what had happened. Though Terrael beat me there, so when I arrived it was in time for them to be indignant on my behalf.

  It took about an hour for us to exhaust the conversational possibilities of the meeting with Domenessar, and then we spent some time (or rather I spent some time) explaining why turning th’an into pouvrin wasn’t useful; we need to focus on identifying any unique characteristics of each. Jaemis suggested—he’s an expert at transmutation kathanas, which is probably why it occurred to him—we see if we can use magic to turn one into the other, and he thinks he can create a kathana that will reveal the process as it’s happening, so we can clearly see what the differences are. So that’s what we’re doing next.

  It’s getting late and Cederic still isn’t here. It’s hard to remember he has all these people bringing problems to him, far more than he ever did in the palace or even in the Darssan, and that he would rather be with me. That makes me feel disappointed rather than angry, but I’m going to stay up a little longer and hope he isn’t so late all we can bear to do is sleep. I think we could both use the closeness of sex tonight.

  Chapter Eight

  7 Jennitar

  I ended up going to find Cederic last night and arrived at the command tent just as Mattiak returned from meeting the generals of the Barrekellian forces. He was in a very bad mood. “They’d follow me now, if I ordered it in my own name,” he told Cederic and me and the rest of the general staff, “but they aren’t ready to give their allegiance to a foreign ruler no matter how I vouch for him. Roebart’s even in favor of supporting Domenessar if he tries to take the throne. Your Majesty, I think you need to speak to them.”

  “Will that make a difference? I will be no less foreign to them in person than I am as a distant figure in your story,” Cederic said.

  “I think you could convince birds to fly north for the winter,” Mattiak said, “and it can’t hurt.”

  “Very well,” Cederic said. “In the morning, then.”

  But in the morning they tried to enter the military encampment and were turned away. I think Cederic was expecting this, because I had to stay behind, and when I argued the point, Cederic drew me to one side and said, quietly, “We cannot afford to risk both of us. If this turns ugly—”

  “You don’t think they’ll try to kill you?” I exclaimed.

  “No,” he said, “but there might be fighting, and as I would prefer not to frighten our people—and they are our people, Sesskia, no matter where they think their allegiance lies—with magic, you would be helpless to defend us both. So, stay here, and we will return soon, though I hope not terribly soon.”

  But, as I said, they were turned away and were back in about thirty minutes. Mattiak was swearing. Cederic looked impassive. “Time enough to worry about those armies in the spring,” he said.

  “It’s not going to be any easier then,” Mattiak said.

  “Much can happen in three months,” Cederic said. “Now we must begin our journey to Teliarne. Dugan, what can you tell us of Brisson Rialen?”

  Lerongis jumped, surprised at being addressed directly. “My cousin is lazy,” he said. “He hates disruptions to his life. We’re going to be the biggest disruption he’s ever seen. Either he’s going to bar the gates against us, or he’s going to give us what we want to make us leave him alone. I think between the two of us, Cederic, we can convince him to do the latter.”

  “I wonder if you have considered, Dugan,” Joena Lerongis said in her diffident, annoying way, “that as your heir he may see an advantage to supporting the former Empress if it means she might award him the throne of Helviran when we are defeated. Perhaps you should consider how you might reward him more satisfactorily, Cederic.”

  “Thank you for that insight, Joena,” Cederic said. “We will discuss specific strategies in the days to come, but I anticipate greater success in Teliarne than we have found here. Now, prepare to depart.”

  The rest of the day was boring. There’s no road that goes directly from Barrekel to Teliarne, of course, so it’s going to take four or five days to get there. I plan to spend most of that time wrangling mages. We do a lot of drawing these days, the Balaenic mages trying to reproduce the shapes of the pouvrin, specifically the mind-moving pouvra because we can all do that, and the Castaviran mages trying to match th’an to those shapes. Once we feel we have two similar sets of shapes, we’re going to create a kathana that reveals the underlying magic—the “residual” magic—and if we’re right, they’re going to look different.

  I don’t want to make a plan for the next step until then, because we have no idea what “different” will mean. I don’t mind admitting in the privacy of these pages I’m sick of the mind-moving pouvra already. I’m still not entirely sure the pouvra is a unique shape—that is, what if it turns out each mage creates her own pouvra, that they’re all roughly similar but not exactly so, and there is no mind-moving pouvra in the same sense that the th’an that power collennas are all identical? But I’m not saying that to them.

  It’s already hard enough to keep manifesting pouvrin for hours at a time. It feels like more of a struggle every time. We have to be careful to take frequent rests, though after hearing what happened to Saemon at the battle, how he collapsed and then couldn’t work magic for hours, everyone’s taking the need for rest seriously.

  8 Jennitar

  Nasty, wet, cold, miserable weather, not bad enough to make camp but enough that we’re all grateful for the warming th’an scrawled all over the inside of this wagon, even if Audryn and Jaemis have to renew them every hour or so because the magic fades over time. It feels as if it’s happening more quickly than before, as if the storm is leeching the power out of the th’an, though really it’s just my bad mood talking.

  9 Jennitar

  The pouvra is its own thing and not something we’re each constructing! It came together around noon, slowly, like we were dragging the knowledge out of some tar pit, but it’s clear now that despite our each perceiving it differently (as a shape we’re encompassing, as a shape we’re on the inside of, or as a shape made of pieces that slide together) we are all seeing the same thing. It was such a relief we cheered and celebrated loudly enough that Cederic came to see what we were doing.

  That ended with him joining us in the wagon f
or the afternoon while we explained our research and he made some contributions, including identifying a rare th’an even Terrael didn’t know that was one of the ones that was missing. It was so good to have him around to talk magic with. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed that. I think he misses being just Sai Aleynten (as if there was anything “just” about that role) instead of the Emperor.

  10 Jennitar

  Kathana almost ready. It’s really very simple, or possibly that’s just Jaemis’s genius at work. He’s stubborn, and he works by trying combinations over and over again until he finds the one that works, but he’s so quick to see when something is a dead end or a failure he’s as fast as someone like Terrael, who sees the thing as a whole and manipulates it in his imagination until it falls into the right shape.

  But it’s going to take some practicing to help our Balaenic mages, me included, to participate in the kathana. The mind-moving pouvra will be integrated with the kathana, taking the place of the th’an we identified. The result of the kathana will either be identical to the result we would expect if we’d used th’an, meaning the two are identical and interchangeable, or (more likely) there will be differences, and the kind of differences there are will tell us (we hope) what conditions still need to be altered to make th’an and pouvrin the same. I hope they’re not interchangeable, because that would mean all our research to date has been wasted going down the wrong path. But everything we’ve learned suggests the opposite.

  I hope it won’t take too long. The constant working of magic combined with the bad weather (light snowfall today) and the rough living conditions are exhausting all of us, and sometimes we’re tired enough it feels like the magic is fighting us. I wish I were sleeping in a real bed.

  We’ll reach Teliarne tomorrow afternoon—Cederic says morning, but I’ve been watching the skies and I’m more pessimistic. I am curious about Brisson Rialen. I didn’t know he was Lerongis’s heir until we left Barrekel, though it seems everyone else knew, and I want to meet this “lazy” man Dugan Lerongis, of all people, is disdainful of. Rialen is a consul of Castavir in addition to being Lerongis’s heir, which to me seems like an awful lot of power to have concentrated in one place. If he really is as indolent as Lerongis suggests, he might be easily swayed to our side. On the other hand, if he’s that indolent, and unsuited to rule, but we have to promise him rank of some kind to get his support, that bodes ill for our future government. On the third hand, it’s early to be having those worries, so I’m going to fall back on my least favorite kind of plan and wait to see what happens tomorrow.

  11 Jennitar

  Teliarne feels cold to me. It was clearly built for a much warmer climate even than southern Balaen, where snow in the winter is rare, and all those open courtyards and thick walls meant to keep out the summer’s heat make winter seem even more dreary. It feels as if spring will never come—which is ridiculous, because we’re not even halfway through Jennitar and the winter hasn’t been that harsh. I’ve traveled rough through much nastier winters than this one. I’ve let the relative comfort I’m living in make me soft.

  We have quarters in the royal palace, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Even though Lerongis sent word ahead, Rialen didn’t do anything to prepare the palace for our arrival. Lerongis was right, his cousin is lazy, and I have to insist to Cederic that we not promise him any kind of official position, because he would be a disaster. Is a disaster for Teliarne already. He enforces the laws only sporadically, he makes no effort to improve the lives of the citizenry, and if not for General Garatssen, Teliarne would have been overrun by Barrekel’s troops.

  I like Garatssen a lot. She’s smart, and fair-minded, and while she isn’t rude or crass she also doesn’t care about making her listeners happy by telling them only what they want to hear. Rialen is afraid of her, and does a poor job of hiding it under friendly conversation and attempts to flatter her.

  Lerongis looks much better by comparison—actually, it was watching him interacting with his subordinates that showed me I’d misjudged him. He’s intimidated by Cederic—not by the Emperor, by Cederic himself—and I think he tries too hard to prove he’s as good a man as Cederic is, and gets all weak and spineless when he fails. Once he stops puffing himself up, he’s a capable administrator. I can see he has the respect of most of the people who serve him, even Garatssen, though she might only respect him as the lesser of two evils.

  When we first arrived, I was so discouraged, because we met with Rialen before we did anything else, and Lerongis demanded a report on what had happened in the conflict with Barrekel. And Rialen shrugged and said, “General Garatssen knows the details. It’s not really my business to interfere with the defense of the city.”

  “The defense of the city is one of your primary duties, Lord Rialen,” Cederic said.

  “You all know I’m not a military man,” Rialen said. “Better for me not to step in where I’ll just confuse matters.”

  “Surely General Garatssen reported to you,” Lerongis said. He kept flicking these sidelong glances at Cederic as if worried the Emperor might hold him accountable for Rialen’s failings, which was a reasonable fear.

  “Of course she did,” Rialen said. “But, as I said, it’s not really my forte. Come, I have a meal prepared, let’s all sit and eat together.” And that was it. I couldn’t believe this buffoon had control of one of Castavir’s biggest cities. Having to work through him to get the Castaviran troops would be impossible.

  That’s what I thought, anyway. The food was very good—Rialen is competent when it comes to his material pleasures—but I spent most of the meal fretting over the political situation and the kathana we’re planning and the impossibility of getting any Balaenic cities to follow us.

  When it was over, I took Cederic’s arm and we left the dining hall with our “retinue,” not including Rialen, following Lerongis through the palace until we came to a smallish (still maybe thirty feet long) chamber containing a long table and chairs, with a nice big fireplace on one side and th’an scribed on the opposite corners to even out the heat distribution. The walls were lined with portraits of past Kings and Queens of Helviran, most of them looking very stern. Lerongis took a seat along the table without waiting for anyone else and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Cederic, I take responsibility,” he said.

  “You did not appoint him consul,” Cederic said, “and if you bear any responsibility for this, it is in not bringing his shortcomings to the attention of the God-Empress as was.” He sat at the head of the table and added, “But I think we all know that would have been pointless, so your only other recourse would have been assassination, and we are not so desperate as to take that route.”

  Lerongis laughed and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “With Renatha Torenz gone, I am free to act more fully in my own name—that is, with your permission, your Majesty.”

  “I depend on you to understand the needs of Helviran, Dugan,” Cederic said. “I take it you have sent for General Garatssen?”

  “She will be here shortly, and then we’ll have a better idea of what went on during their little war,” Lerongis said.

  I could see Mattiak was getting impatient at not being able to follow this conversation. He’s been learning Castaviran, but he isn’t very fluent yet, and can’t follow rapid speech at all. So I translated the gist of the conversation for him, and he said, “Their General is a woman?”

  “I told you the Castavirans let men and women serve in the Army,” I said.

  He grimaced. “I still think it’s a bad idea.”

  “You can tell it to General Garatssen right after you compliment her on her handling of her troops during the conflict,” I said, “because from what I’ve heard, if weather hadn’t been an issue she’d have walked all over your Black and Brown Armies.”

  “You say that as if I’m supposed to be impressed,” Mattiak said, but with a twinkle in his eye that told me he was. I suppose he knows better than
anyone the qualities of the Balaenic divisions, and he’s honest enough that even though he wouldn’t want Garatssen’s troops to defeat his, and he thinks the military is no place for a woman, he can respect her for having the ability.

  Right about then, Garatssen came through the door. I know I described her above, but I didn’t know any of that at first, obviously, just that she’s very young to be in command of the Helvirite Army, older than me only by a few years, and she has a strong, sharp-boned face and short brown hair that looks like it’s cut to fit under a helmet. “Dugan,” she said, saluting him, “welcome home.”

  “Raewyn,” Lerongis said, “this is Cederic Aleynten, Emperor of Castavir and Balaen, and his wife Sesskia, Empress-Consort.”

  Her eyes went very wide for a fraction of a second, then she smiled broadly and saluted Cederic with the Imperial salute I rarely ever see, both hands clasped together at chest height, then bowing her head with a slow, respectful nod. “Your Majesty, it’s a pleasure,” she said, repeating the gesture to me. “The Helvirite Army is yours to command.”

  Lerongis made a tiny noise in the back of his throat. Garatssen said, “Oh, come on, Dugan, as if we don’t all know what you’re here for. I just see no reason to run through all the formalities.”

  “It would be nice if you’d treat me like your King for once,” Lerongis muttered, and to my shock Garatssen slapped him on the shoulder and then pinched his cheek.

  “Dugan is my half-brother, your Majesty,” Garatssen said to my astonished face. “He’s right, I have trouble treating him like the King, but he knows he has my full loyalty. Don’t take this personally, your Majesty, but if Dugan hadn’t thrown his support behind you, I’d have helped him take the Imperial throne myself.”

  “I respect your candor and your loyalty,” Cederic said, “though I hope for both our sakes you have straightened out where those loyalties lie. I would hate for the Helvirite Army to come to blows with my forces again.”

  “I swore to serve the Empire, your Majesty,” Garatssen said. Now she was deadly serious. “You are my Emperor, and my troops are, as I said, yours to command.”