The Making of a Mage King: Prince in Hiding

by Anna L. Walls

  He had never given a thought to what he would say when he finally faced his uncle. “Uncle Ludwyn, how nice to see you,” he said. He felt half-drunk. He could feel his face stretch into a lopsided grin. “How’ve you been?” I shouldn’t have said that, but I can’t think of anything more diplomatic. He wasn’t really in the mood to be diplomatic anyway.

  “What did you call me?” said Ludwyn incredulously.

  “You’re not to hep on social amenities, are you?” said Sean. What am I saying? Has my mouth become completely unhinged?

  Ludwyn lunged to his feet and ham-hands behind Sean gave his arms a tremendous jerk back and up. He screamed. He had to – it felt like his arms had been ripped off.

  Ludwyn yelled something waving his hand and ham-hands abruptly turned Sean loose. He dropped to his knees and was well on the way toward the floor when he passed out.

  Sean woke again to the view of another ceiling. This time there was no chair; this time he lay flat on his back on a bed. The pain in his shoulders and arms had subsided to a confusing roar. Taking a moment to assess the damage, it still felt like both arms had been ripped off, but he could feel both of his hands. As soon as he lifted a hand to make sure, someone lifted his head and poured some more watered wine down his throat. Surprise and pain made him choke, but the woman continued to pour, and he was forced to swallow or drown.

  The drug must have been weaker this time, it didn’t knock him out, but it did kill much of the pain.

  When she was satisfied with how much he had consumed and had set the pitcher aside, Sean realized who the woman was. “Cisco?” He reached for her. She caught his wrist and it felt like it exploded under her hand. I thought she was supposed to be a healer; she wouldn’t do such a thing.

  The drug made time nonexistent, and Sean floated in a half-dream state, struggling with a maze in his head, drawing a line from start to finish without crossing any lines in the maze. For Sean, it was somewhere between a nightmare and a very obnoxious dream. The damn thing wouldn’t lay flat; it kept folding up on him. Instead of being in some book of puzzles, it was a big sheet of paper folded up like a road map. He constantly had to stop, put his pencil down and unfold the road map-sized maze again before he could sort his way past any more dead ends.

  Ludwyn came in at some point, distracting him from his puzzle. “My little pet here tells me you’re Deain’s son. Is it true?” said Ludwyn.

  Sean opened his eyes, and though he had a hard time focusing, he had no problem recognizing who stood over him. Long white hair framed a pale face and his black eyes looked like holes drilled in granite. It was, of course, his dear uncle Ludwyn. “S-what…s-she…told…me…too.” He had a heck of a time getting his tongue wrapped around words. He had to talk very carefully. “You…s-still…ged-a…woody… over…other’s-s…pain?”

  Ludwyn didn’t understand Sean’s slang, but he responded to the question just the same. He snatched Sean up off the bed and dumped him in a chair. He didn’t do it with his own hands, of course, nor was he the slightest bit interested in being careful with him.

  Sean screamed. When he could make his lungs provide air again, he said, “Yup…th-thought so.” Maybe if I got drunk more often, I might learn to keep my mouth shut. Drunk people do learn what not to say eventually, don’t they?

  Ludwyn backhanded him across the face, which of course felt real peachy, but he was drugged up enough, and stupid enough, to start laughing. Why hasn’t he killed me yet? But even that thought didn’t stop him from laughing. Though it did deteriorate into sobs after Ludwyn stormed out and slammed the door behind him.

  A quiet voice spoke from the corner of the room. “You’ve changed since last I saw you.”

  Sean spit out a mouthful of blood and tried to focus on where the voice came from. Cisco sat on the floor in the corner across the room from him.

  “Can you do magic?” she asked. “If you’re here, you must know some magic by now. Surely Elias and Ferris taught you something.”

  “Yeah…picked up a little.” Sean let his head drop. He let the drug claim him again. His arms were on fire – a pounding flame that wouldn’t let up.

  The maze pushed its way past Sean’s pain once again. Methodically, he pushed the paper down flat and picked up his pencil and began to sort out the maze a little further. He was about half way through.

  The next time Cisco pulled his head back to pour more watered wine down his throat, he choked his way through it then said, “I gotta go pee. Take me…take me to the bathroom…please.” A rough laughter sounded from somewhere in front of him and he opened his eyes to focus on his dear uncle. “Well…I do gotta go…pee. She keeps pouring that…nasty shit down my throat, ‘s gotta come out…sometime.” He was a little more alert at the moment and his arms were delightfully numb.

  “I can’t wait to start ‘educating’ you,” said Ludwyn. “You’re going to be especially fun.”

  God, that man’s got a freaky smile. “Seen some of your education. I was taught…that guests should come…bearing gifts. Did you like my gifts? You didn’t have to kill them, did you?” said Sean, his words sounded slurred to his ears, but they were clear enough.

  Ludwyn was confused for only a moment, but when he made the connection, he batted Sean’s head against the side of his chair, splitting the skin across his cheekbone and causing him to spit blood again. “Are you claiming to have sent those?” He hit him again.

  Sean spit out a mouthful of blood. “Will you…stop…hitting me?” he compelled. The room shook and twisted alarmingly with the force of the magic, and the drugs had opened the way for other magics to leak beyond his control.

  Ludwyn took a step back, surprise clearly etching his face. Then he surged forward and Sean felt fire curl under his skin. Desperately, he pushed him away. When Ludwyn pressed the attack again, he shielded him. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t consider any implications. He just needed the pain to stop. Sobbing, he reached for some healing, then he fainted.

  He woke again to find Cisco over him. She was pushing at his belly. “I remember, I remember, you put the stones inside you. I remember.” The knife was in him before he could grasp her intentions.

  Sean heard a crash and a hand snatched her away and threw her back. Manuel was there. He grabbed both Sean’s hands, which set off lightning stabs of pain. “Heal yourself. Use my strength. Heal yourself.”

  Elias tipped his head back. “Jesus, Seanad, heal yourself while you still can.”

  “Man, what happened to this place?” said Larry.

  “Aunt Marinda, help me,” whispered Sean. The healing happened. Hands held him down in the chair. Then it was all gone once again.

  Dealing with someone who is delirious is difficult enough, but dealing with a mage who is delirious is nearly impossible. Sean’s fever shot up and he would light three or four braziers in the room or set the curtains on fire in an effort to feel warm. His fever plunged and ice formed on the walls. Outside, it rained buckets and hailed. Sheet lightning lit up the night. Thorny vines grew up the entire south side of the palace. It was a relief when the fever broke after only one turning of the sun.

  When he woke, Sean had a horrid headache and every muscle in his body was shaking. Cisco was there with a cold rag for his head. As soon as he identified her, he said, “Get away from me.” His throat was raw and dry.

  Elias heard him. “Seanad, be still.”

  “Get her away from me,” said Sean, and he began to cough.

  Elias waved his hand and she backed away. He propped Sean up with extra pillows behind his shoulders then helped him control a cup of water.

  His throat temporarily lubricated, Sean asked in a hoarse whisper, “How did you get here?”

  Elias sat down on the edge of the bed. “You brought us.”

  “Me? How?” I don’t remember even trying.

  “I’m not exactly sure how you did it, but Larry could feel you. He said it was like you were in his head and you were showing him where to go.
With your help, we made it past all the guards and through half a dozen second floor windows, which got us around patrols. You even led us to small hidden doors and places where we could climb the walls. That was some maze you guided us through; the hard part was the waiting.”

  “What waiting?”

  “There were times when we had to hide. One time was for hours.” He searched Sean’s face as if he could search his memory. “You led us all over the city. I doubt if a tour could have been more thorough.”

  “I did?” There’s no way. I barely know the city well enough to find my way from one gate to the next. Then he remembered the map-sized maze that wouldn’t stay unfolded. That’s about the only thing he remembered about it, that it refused to stay flat. Could that be it? Larry was always doing puzzles, and mazes were his favorite. “So, how many came in?”

  “Just the four of us,” he replied.

  “How did you make it past the palace guards?”

  “It wasn’t easy, but they always seemed to be going the other way at just the right time, and there aren’t any up here.”

  “Where’s Ludwyn?”

  “He’s just down the hall. I was wondering when you would ask about him. What did you do to him?”

  Sean tried to remember. “I had to… I… I shielded him…I think. I did. I had to stop him from burning my skin. I shielded him like I did Clay that day.”

  “That explains things. He’s locked in his rooms, but he hasn’t spoken, or even acknowledged anyone since we found him.”

  He is an evil man, and he deserves what he got. I’m glad I managed to cut him off from the magic. What he does with it is an abomination. Sean’s mind jumped beyond Ludwyn and his condition. “That means the city still thinks Ludwyn is in control.” Sean pushed the blankets back and pulled his feet over the edge.

  “Seanad, you shouldn’t be getting up yet.”

  “Just give me a hand. We have to declare ourselves then I have to be ready to face the music. We have to act first; if we wait until after we are discovered here, we will have lost all momentum and advantage.”

  Declaration

  Reluctantly, Elias helped Sean dress in clothes found in the room’s large closet. Most of it felt like silk, only thicker, and it was all fancier than anything Sean had ever imagined wearing, but he had to wear something – what he had was ruined beyond hope, and he couldn’t afford to look like he just crawled out of hell.

  Elias then helped him navigate through the apartment. In the hall, Sean saw that Manuel stood outside another door, and Larry and Ferris were at the far end of the hall. It was comforting to see the White Star on their chests. “Take me to the roof,” he said.

  As soon as Larry and Ferris saw them, they joined them; Manuel stayed where he was. “What are you doing?” asked Ferris.

  “Take me to the roof,” said Sean again.

  “The roof?” Ferris started to protest, but clamped his teeth on his comment and headed down the hall, drawing his sword.

  “Ferris, just point me in the right direction; I’ll handle anyone we meet,” said Sean.

  Ferris paused for only a moment before continuing to lead the way with his sword in his hand, while Larry made his shoulder available for Sean to lean on.

  “Dad tells me that I led you in,” Sean said to Larry.

  “Yeah, it was like following this giant pencil line around the city; how did you do that?”

  “Don’t ask me. I hate mazes.”

  They met no one. The place was unnaturally quiet, especially since they expected to hear the tramp of an approaching patrol at any moment.

  Sean was gripping Larry’s shoulder before he made it to the top of the first flight of stairs. Where is an elevator when you need one? He was leaning heavily on both of them long before they reached the roof. What was I thinking?

  Stepping out into the morning sunlight nearly made him turn out the sour contents of his stomach. The light stabbed into the back of his eyes and sent his headache into overdrive. He buried his face in Elias’s shoulder for several minutes before he recovered enough to open his eyes and look around.

  They were standing on the highest spot in the city. Everything was so much clearer in the daylight. Sean could see every wall and every guard post. From here, a general could command the defenses of the entire city like a chess master. The walls on this half of the city were all interlinked; troops could move from one end of the city to the other, as well as from close in to farther out or back without coming down off the walls.

  The other half of the city across the river wasn’t quite so well fortified; there were two distinct sections of walls and neither of them connected with the outer wall, and the eastern section depended solely on its outer perimeter wall for protection. If breached, that section of the city would crumble quickly, and the only bridge out of that section had no discernable defenses. It was a weakness he would need to address – eventually.

  After scrutinizing the full perimeter, he picked out their tent in the midst of the gathering on the south side of the city. It wasn’t the biggest tent out there, but he could tell it was theirs, and there, roughly half way between the city and the tent, positioned as if pointing directly at it, was the tree he’d created. It wasn’t so ugly from this distance. “Where did you get that tent?” he asked. “We didn’t have a tent when we started out.”

  “When we first got here, we camped way back there.” Elias pointed to the right a bit where Sean could see a loose herd of horses grazing on the outskirts of the gathering near a small creek; there were more than his horses out there. “When you showed up all draped across your saddle, the people took you to the family that owned that tent. When we arrived, they sent a boy out to us. We all had the White Star on our shoulders; the connection was easy to make. The family is prominent in their circle and you were sicker than I’ve ever seen you. I couldn’t just cart you away to our camp. That family, not to mention the entire crowd, wouldn’t have allowed it. They turned the tent over to us and moved in with someone else. I’ve seen them from time to time, but they’re not all that close.”

  With four extra girls added to their party, their campsite looked to be swarming with women. Then again, it was the women who were moving at the moment and they were definitely more colorful. Four of his men were out with the horses and four were with Sean. If he looked hard enough, he could pick out the last seven, mainly because they were wearing their tabard over their armor. They were about the only people out there who wore that much black, if you didn’t count the black scarves many of them draped over their heads; some of those scarves hung down to their owner’s knees making them look all too much like Sean’s ghosts.

  Sean brought himself back to the task at hand. Flying high over his head behind him was Ludwyn’s flag. He had indeed done what Ferris had predicted he might do. He had changed the flag. Without the stones to back him, he had removed the flower from his flag, leaving only a flat black field with a wide red border. The man has no imagination. He could have at least used the ‘skull and crossbones’ or something.

  Sean wiped away the red border and added the White Star, then he turned back to the city to see if anyone would notice. Apparently, everyone was so used to keeping their heads down that they didn’t notice the change.

  Starting at the closest gate, Sean changed the flag hanging there, then every other flag displayed along that wall. Turning around, he did the same thing on the north side of the river. When that didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he removed the gates from their hinges and set them aside. If nothing else, that would certainly get their attention. It did.

  By the time he had opened a dozen gates within the two halves of the city, guards were pointing and some residents were stepping out into the street to look. By the time the gates in the outer wall were displaced, the city was in turmoil. He couldn’t tell if they were happy or horrified, but the place looked like an anthill that had just been poked.

  This, like nothing else, caught the attention of tho
se encamped outside the walls, and there was another anthill in motion. The greatest difference Sean could see from his lofty vantage point was that the black scarves had disappeared. The wave of cheers that finally reached them at their lofty vantage point sounded like ocean breakers, and the wave came from all around the city.

  “What are you going to do now?” asked Ferris.

  “Take me down to the throne room,” said Sean, trying to hide the fact that his knees felt like rubber. “There will be some who will come for an explanation and some who will come to confirm this. There will be some who will petition for positions of power across the land and there will be thousands who will want to voice their grievances. I will need to be seen by all of them and I will need to hear all that they have to say; they need to see that this is not just some twisted trick of Ludwyn’s.”

  “Seanad, you need to go back to bed,” said Elias. “You’re not strong enough for all of that yet.”

  “Dad, ever since I came here, someone has told me that I’m not strong enough for some reason or another. I have to be strong enough.” He gripped his father’s mail shirt at his chest. “Help me to be strong enough,” he said as he swayed.

  Ferris and Elias were close to the same height and they pulled Sean’s arms over their shoulders, then virtually carried him down the stairs to the throne room.

  After he was safely ensconced in the big chair where he had last seen Ludwyn seated, he said, “Bring Ludwyn down here too.”

  “What?” exclaimed Ferris.

  “Bring him,” said Elias to Ferris, then he said to Sean, “Perhaps you should change that too.” He pointed to the wall behind him.

  Sean pulled himself to his feet in order to see what Elias had pointed at. Huge, behind the chair, was what he had always taken for a black wall, but then he identified the plain black banner with its red border. He put the White Star there in large vivid colors. “Is that better?” he asked.