by Karen Miller
Dorana’s revered and feared Council of Mages.
Barl felt her jaw tighten. She knew the Council’s leader was one Lord Varen, but had no idea who the rest of them were. Didn’t care. What did it matter which First Family claimed them? All that mattered was that by their arrogant decree she must forever believe herself to be inferior, just because she was unranked. Was supposed to accept her secondary status, uncomplaining, and forget stillborn dreams of attending the College.
She turned as Remmie’s hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder. In his eyes she saw a sorrow that drifted perilously close to pity. But she didn’t want his pity. She wanted him angry, sharing her outrage, her burning desire to right what was wrong in Dorana.
How can he be my brother, my other half, and be so complacent?
She saw him hear the unspoken question, but before she could speak he shook his head. “Not now. The children. Barton.”
And he was right, about that, anyway. Not about anything else. About everything else he couldn’t be more mistaken. She shrugged his hand away and turned back to the dais.
The Council’s members had climbed to its top and now stood neatly arranged, the three men and two women staring over the crowd. A pace back and to one side stood the last three mages, all women, each one dressed in silks, decorated with jewels, trembling with ill-concealed excitement and pride. But there were four new incants approved, so where was the fourth mage to be honoured? Surely he or she wouldn’t risk insulting the Council by not attending?
Lord Varen, a man well past his seventieth year if the lines in his face spoke the truth, stepped to the edge of the dais and raised his hands.
“Winsun greetings to all. The Council of Mages welcomes you on this auspicious occasion.”
An enhancement incant carried his melodious voice to every mage in the plaza.
“With us this day stand three talented mages,” Varen continued, “who by virtue of their diligence and creative vision have created new incants for our lexicon of knowledge, and in doing so further burnish the lustre of Dorana’s magical heritage. Mage Lakewell… Mage Tranter… Mage Folet—” One by one, the women stepped forward as their names were called. “Dorana thanks you for your service to our arcane lore.”
As applause rippled through the audience gathered in the plaza, enthusiastic from the gathered school children, more polite and restrained from everyone else, each of the three acknowledged mages pressed a hand to her heart and lowered her head in humble appreciation… or an excellent imitation of it.
Watching them closely, Barl felt a pang of envy so sharp she had to swallow. That Mage Folet was so young, a mere handful of years older than she and Remmie. Yet there the woman stood, elevated to the status of an Incant Mage, her name to be recorded for all time in the Council register.
For one terrible moment, she thought she might weep.
“Alas,” said Lord Varen, his expression darkening, “magic is not without its dangers. Today we mourn the loss of Mage Brahn Sorvold. Two days ago, emboldened by his recent success, he attempted an even more daring incant… and paid for his ambition with his life.”
Shocked gasps from the crowd. Remmie and Barton murmured to their students, patting heads, whispering reassurances. Barl frowned, disapproving. They might be children, but they were mages first. There was no such thing as being too young for the truth. But if she opened her mouth on that score Remmie would be furious.
Again, Lord Varen raised his hands. The agitated crowd hushed.
“But this is not the time or place for grief,” he said, his green gaze steady. “We are gathered here to celebrate new magic. Mage Lakewell?”
The oldest of the three honoured mages took another step forward. Lord Varen nodded at her, then joined his fellow councillors. Excitement thrummed through the waiting crowd.
Mage Lakewell’s lips moved as she silently recited a short incant. Next she sketched a sigil on the air, where it glowed molten gold. In her outstretched left hand appeared a small flowerpot, but instead of a ripe bloom it contained a single stalk of renna, rotting with grain blight.
Those mages close enough to clearly see the pot and its contents sighed. Grain blight was a curse gifted them by the careless farmers of Feen, who three summers before had failed to purge their own crops of the disease before its spores blew over the border into Dorana. Used in ale-making and baking a sour, nourishing bread, renna grain was highly prized. Being a fickle crop it grew grudgingly elsewhere, which meant importing the grain was difficult and ruinously expensive. All of Dorana was pinched by the shortage.
Barl felt her fingers curl, nails biting her palm. So, had Mage Lakewell defeated renna blight? For if that was her achievement…
Another sigil burned the air, this time the bright crimson of fresh blood. Another sigil, dark green, then one of sky blue, and finally a fifth of storm-cloud purple. The plaza’s air crackled, prickling bare skin and stirring unbound hair. Mage Lakewell recited a second silent incant, her lips moving too quickly for the syllables to be discerned. Her right hand hovered above the blighted stalk of grain, outstretched fingers slightly hooked. In her face, a fierce concentration.
With a shudder that shook the plaza’s cobblestones and splashed the water in its fountain, the incant ignited. Remmie and Barton’s transfixed pupils squealed. Even the fancy-pants First Family children cried out, and more than a few of the adult mages behind them. Barl caught her breath as the magic’s power surged through her, searing nerve and bone and muscle.
Now the potted stalk of grain was obscured by a thick greenish haze. There was sweat on Mage Lakewell’s face and she breathed deep and hard. The incant was costing her.
“A’bar’at!” she said, the command bursting from her in a grunting of pain.
A flash of light. A roar of discharged power. The greenish haze vanished to reveal a healthy stalk of renna.
Cries of joy. Rapturous applause. With a careless wave of her hand Mage Lakewell returned the pot to wherever it belonged and waited for the acclaim to subside. Her lips were curved in the merest hint of a smile.
Remmie turned, his face alight with admiration. “Remarkable. Don’t you think so, Barl?”
“It was well done,” she admitted, because it was, and she couldn’t with honesty say otherwise.
Mage Lakewell stepped back, and into her place stepped Mage Tranter. Her great achievement was an incant to render harmless any poison brewed, on purpose or by accident, from the fruit of the yababi bush. Since yababi was the favoured poison of certain warlike Ranoushi clans, and a crucial ingredient of extensively popular yababi paste, which had been known to turn rancid and kill by mistake, thanks to Mage Tranter Dorana stood to make a good deal of coin.
Remmie and Barton and a few of their pupils were distressed by Tranter’s use of live rabbits to demonstrate both poison and cure but really, what did they expect? Volunteers from the audience? Rabbit served up in a stew or used to demonstrate magework, there was no difference, surely. Dead was dead.
Mage Folet’s newly patented incant was far less bloody. She’d devised a method of showing where an object had been in the previous nine hours.
“Nine hours?” Barl muttered to Remmie, under cover of the resulting applause. “Make it a full day and perhaps there’d be some use to it.”
“Doubtless that will be her next achievement,” Remmie replied. “In the meantime, petty pilferers far and wide will think twice before taking what doesn’t belong to them. There’ll be a market for that incant well beyond our borders.”
Which meant more riches for Dorana, with every sale tariffed by the General Council.
A nod from Lord Varen had Mage Folet rejoining her companions. Then, at another nod, the youngest councillor stepped forward. Brahn Sorvold might have succumbed to his own arrogant ambition, but it seemed his final achievement would still be honoured.
Tall and pleasingly lithe, his golden hair pleated away from a hawkishly handsome face, the councillor lifted one graceful, beringed
hand. Seeing him properly, Barl blinked.
Oh, my.
With careless authority the councillor summoned to himself the items required for dead Mage Sorvold’s incant. Looking past his striking appearance, she saw that just like every First Family mage she’d ever encountered there was a haughty arrogance to the man.
But despite the knot of old, cold anger tangled in her chest, she couldn’t help admiring the way his long fingers danced their way through a complicated sequence of sigils. The way his molasses voice caressed the incant’s syllables. The gleam of unbridled pleasure in his piercing blue eyes as he caused first unrefined gold, then silver, to melt into crude, formless liquids. The councillor smiled to see their destruction, smiled wider still as his audience gasped and groaned. Barl bit her lip, staring.
There’s so much power in him. Can’t anyone else feel it? Is the whole world made of straw, that no-one else feels it?
His seamed face impassive, Lord Varen was watching with no more anxiety than if he waited for a kettle to boil. Surely he must feel the beautiful mage’s power. But if he did, he gave no outward hint.
Remmie could feel it. There was tension in the back of his neck, in the way his hands were thrust deep in his pockets. The corners of his mouth were tucked deep, betraying his unease. Barl frowned.
Don’t be a fool, Remmie. Power should be embraced, not feared.
The powerful mage on the dais held the glass vial of liquid gold in his left hand, the vial of silver in his right. Steadily he emptied them into the shallow glass bowl he’d summoned and set before him on a conjured stand. Hot metal kissed hot metal, hissing, breathing out pungent steam. Finished, he tossed the vials into nothingness then spread his arms wide and drew fresh sigils to left and right, so swiftly she couldn’t keep track of their shapes. The air sizzled and smoked, bright jewel colours blinding.
Not a sound in the plaza. Even the children were struck dumb.
With a joy that was almost like laughter, the councillor sang out the syllables of dead Sorvold’s incant. They ignited the shimmering air and set the melted gold and silver in the glass bowl to wild swirling. Round and round they whirled, melding and muddling into one gleaming silver-gold mass.
The councillor clapped his hands sharply. Whispered a single word under his breath. His fingers traced two final sigils. Barl felt the pull of them, felt the punch through her ribcage and the burn in her blood. Her heart leapt as she was trapped in the power of the incant, the power of raw power, the glory of great work. She nearly cried her heartache aloud.
Me. Me. That should be me.
Now the councillor was muttering more swift syllables. The newly melded precious metals rose in a slender column, as lithe and elegant as the mage who created it. Like a weaver with his spindle he coaxed the blended gold and silver higher, then higher still, his planed and angled face alight with pleasure. The column caught the sunlight and blazed fire. Around the plaza, mages broke into fresh applause. Children squealed.
Barl closed her eyes, fighting tears.
Me. Me. That should be me.
When she could bear to lift her eyelids, she saw the glorious silver-gold column suspended in the air, caught fast in a web of magic. It looked like a frozen flame, a captured sunspark.
It looked like magic brought to life.
The councillor raised his right hand, fingers clenched to a fist… and Barl knew, she knew, what he was going to do.
An unmaking? With no safeguards? You can’t be so rash!
“Ri’ga!” commanded the councillor. “Ba’vek!”
She gasped as the unmaking incant punched through her. Beside her Remmie flinched, feeling it just as keenly, but he ignored his own pain to care for Batava’s frightened children. So did Barton. Every mage in the plaza was distressed to some degree. Unmaking incants of that strength were restricted, their use almost never approved. Too much could go wrong with them. And this one was brutal. Why would the Council countenance its use when—
And then Barl turned back to the magic-melded gold and silver column… and saw exactly why.
“Remmie,” she whispered, reaching for him. “Look.”
Distracted by upset children, he started to scold her for bothering him. But Barton Haye choked and pointed, forestalling him. And then the plaza was full of pointing, gasping mages.
“That’s not possible,” said Remmie. “Is it?”
The powerful unmaking incant had failed.
“It was once,” she breathed. “But not any more.”
Somehow, incredibly, Brahn Sorvold had created a fusing incant that could not be destroyed.
With a careless snap of his fingers, the councillor vanished the unharmed gold and silver column, then returned to his fellow councillors. Lord Varen stepped forward, hands raised, and waited for the excitement in the plaza to subside.
“The Council of Mages thanks you for attending this Winsun demonstration. And, in memory of Mage Sorvold, opens the Hall of Knowledge to public enjoyment for the next three hours.”
“Did you hear that?” Barton demanded of Batava’s pupils. “What an honour. The Hall is hardly ever open to the public.”
As the children set up a clamour, Barl frowned at Remmie. “So we’re to feel grateful? When magic is a birthright belonging to all Doranen, and the Hall of Knowledge is—”
“Please, Barl,” her brother sighed. “Don’t spoil this for the children.”
She felt her eyes sting. I knew this was a mistake. I knew I shouldn’t have come. “Fine. I’ll not say another word.”
And she didn’t. Not while she loitered behind her brother and Barton and their goggling pupils as they shuffled their way through the Hall of Knowledge, into its lofty workrooms and hushed libraries, up its majestically spiralling staircases and along its wide corridors lined with glorious stained-glass windows. Not while they crowded onto its broad balconies and squealed to see sun-kissed Elvado spread far and wide below them. Instead she feasted her hungry gaze on every locked door and barred passageway. Stared after the Hall’s resident mages, who threaded their purposeful way through the crowding gawkers and whose shuttered gazes hinted at magics held aloof from those deemed unworthy of their grace. Closed her eyes and breathed in the Hall’s power, felt it chime through her, making promises it could not keep.
Heartsick, she folded her arms so tight her ribs threatened to break.
I deserve to be here. This wondrous city should be my home.
Not wanting to waste a rare opportunity, after the Hall was again closed to public scrutiny Remmie and Barton let their pupils explore the plaza’s surrounding streets, keeping them in Elvado as late as they dared. By the time they finally returned to Batava’s schoolhouse and saw the weary children into the keeping of their parents, the late afternoon was fast surrendering to dusk.
“Is something wrong?” said Remmie. “You’ve not said a word for hours.”
Walking beside him back to their cottage, Barl shrugged. “You’re the one who told me to be quiet.”
“True. But I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to toss that coin for Mama and Pa.”
“I’m not,” she said. “It’s a private matter. As if I’d want Barton Haye gawking.”
Remmie sighed. “I knew you were cross.”
“I’m not cross! I’m thinking.”
“Barl.” Remmie’s fingers caught her elbow, tugging her to a halt. “I know that look, too. What are you plotting?”
She winced at the scarcely muffled despair in his voice. “Nothing you need worry about.”
Even in the dim, dusking light, though no anger showed in his narrow face or gentle eyes she could tell he was angered by her reply.
“I mean it, Remmie,” she insisted. “What I choose to do doesn’t change anything for you.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true and you know it. How can I be happy when you aren’t? Barl, you promised, and now—”
&
nbsp; “I promised I’d not drag you with me, and I won’t!” she said, struggling not to shout. “The truth is I never have done. Following me has always been your idea. Admit it.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he muttered. “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about how you won’t—you never—” He shook his head, torn between frustration and bafflement. “Why can’t you stay satisfied for more than five minutes? I thought you liked making clocks.”
“I like it well enough,” she said, shrugging again. “But I want more than clocks.”
“And you’ll have more, won’t you? With Lady Grie as your patron, you’ll have—”
Remmie wasn’t a nubbin, he was just being contrary. “With Lady Grie as my patron I’ll do what Lady Grie wants. It won’t be about what I want.” Defiant, she stared at her brother. “And I want Elvado.”
“Oh, Barl.” Turning away, Remmie took hold of his long, ribbon-threaded braid and tugged. “I thought you’d abandoned that idea.”
“I did,” she said, glowering. “But now I’ve come to my senses.”
He rounded on her. “No, you’ve lost your senses. The College of Mages is out of your reach.”
She stamped her foot, as though they were both five again. “Says who? Remmie, three hundred years ago only First Family members were allowed to be mages. Would that have changed if someone like me had given up her dream as hopeless?”
“I’m not saying it’s fair,” said Remmie. “There’s no just reason for you to be kept from studying in Elvado.”
“No, and no hard-and-fast written rule, either. Under the College’s code, Remmie, which I’ve studied back to front and sideways, I have every right to be admitted as a student there.”
“I know,” he said, his voice tight with frustration. “But Dorana is governed by unwritten rules too. Like it or not, Barl, First Families make the important decisions and that means no unranked mage will ever be recognised as worthy of a College place.”