Archon's Hope: Book III of 'The Magician's Brother' Series

by HDA Roberts

  "What?" I asked.

  "It's over there, right now, trying to pretend it's a wren for some reason," Hopkins said, gesturing at a tree.

  I cast Mage Sight and looked over. There was a tiny grey bird with dark grey eyes. It was a condensed block of Air Magic, and it was one I recognised.

  "Moria?" I said.

  She chirped out a welcoming note and suddenly she was flying around my head, singing a happy little song before landing on my shoulder and rubbing her tiny head against my chin.

  "Hello," I said, reaching up a finger to stroke her back. She felt like silk, the feathers always in a tiny motion; they were made of air, after all.

  "This is the one you freed from the wolf?" Hopkins said, looking at the tiny creature, "I was expecting something... huger."

  Moria let out an annoyed chirp, which made Hopkins recoil.

  "Sorry," she said quickly, which made me smile.

  Moria chirruped again and flapped off back to her tree, where she started chatting to the other birds. At least I think that's what she was doing.

  "Has she been here long?" I asked.

  "What, you really didn't know?"

  "Well, it's not like I was looking for an elemental, and she's hard to spot," I complained.

  "I saw her just fine," she said with a sly smile.

  I glared.

  "Okay, so you aren't binding elementals. That doesn't change the fact that one of them seems to be whispering at you."

  "Maybe it'll go away?" I suggested.

  "Doubt it," Hopkins said, "I don't know too much about Shadow Elementals, but I don't think they're flighty, and they don't tend to 'speak' to Magicians unless they're... well, yours for want of a better term."

  "Does every Shadowborn have one?" I asked.

  "None do, as far as I knew. They don't play favourites, ever. They certainly don't communicate. Not even with the First Shadow," she said, "You must have done something to attract their attention, and I can't imagine that's a good sign."

  "I have been progressing through that Codex, maybe that's why?" I said.

  "Maybe. Have you tried entering the Realm, yet?"

  "You know about that? And no, that's a few chapters away yet, and translating is slow work."

  "Of course I know about the Shadow Realm, I'm an Archon, and be careful with it. It's entirely shadows, you could make a mess."

  "I'm a ways off that yet," I replied.

  "Hm," she said.

  "Hm?" I asked.

  "Yes, hm. So as to indicate thinking on your most recent insanity."

  "I fail to see how this is my fault," I protested.

  "Don't you always?" she said with a smile, patting my shoulder, "Control and patience are your biggest strengths, Mathew. Power is always useful, but it's your mind that makes you special. Use it, and keep calm. Don't engage the boy. It's a small stroke of a miracle that you used Light Magic instead of your shadows just now. That's how you'll get contamination."

  "Can't I just blast him?"

  "No," Hopkins said with a glare.

  "Just a little, he'll barely notice," I offered.

  "No blasting the eldest sons of the great magical dynasties!" she said.

  "You teachers are all the same, you ruin everyone's fun."

  "I will move Cassandra in with you if you keep this up. She'll put you on the straight and narrow."

  "Why do you always have to take a sledgehammer to an eggshell? A simple 'be good or else' would have covered it," I complained.

  "It's more fun this way," she said, laughing as she walked away.

  "Bleeding Archons," I muttered.

  "What was that?" Hopkins said over her shoulder.

  "Nothing! Love you and everything you do!" I said loudly.

  "That's better."

  Cathy was outside her boarding house (Curie House, if that's important to you). She had her back to me as I came around the corner and she was yelling at Bill, who was in turn looking distinctly unhappy. Cathy was shorter than me, coming up to about my nose height, her features were delicate, both cute and lovely at the same time. She had a pretty nose, full lips and warm brown eyes. She wore thick, black-rimmed glasses and her golden-blonde hair was usually tied in a bun at the back of her head.

  "I told you I was fine, but did you listen?" she asked acidly.

  "Sorry," Bill said, "I was only trying to help."

  "And now my laptop's dead," she replied with a glare.

  "What did he do?" I asked.

  "Oh, I'm mad at you, too, I'm just getting started," she said, rounding on me.

  Even when she's angry, she still makes my heart beat a bit faster.

  "What did I do?" I asked.

  "You picked a fight with another Shadowborn. As a result, Hopkins had to tell you off, and thus I got left with Colonel Butterfingers who dropped, dropped mind you, my customised, one of a kind Alienware gaming laptop!"

  "Best of luck, Bill," I said. I connected my Will to my imagination and projected an image of empty space around me. Effectively, it's invisibility on the cheap, but it works.

  "You bastard, come back here!" Bill said.

  I dropped my illusion with a grimace.

  "Oh, and Bill picked the fight," I said.

  "Really?" Bill asked with a wounded look.

  "You're already in trouble, you couldn't take this one for me?"

  "Nope."

  Cathy came over and hugged me. I wrapped my arms around her.

  "Missed you," I said.

  "We talked three times a day," she said with a smile, looking up at me.

  "Can't grope someone from down a telephone," I said, grinning broadly.

  Cathy went bright red and squeaked before swatting my arm and pulling back so she could glare.

  "Perv," she said, trying desperately to conceal her smile, and failing.

  Bill and I carried the rest of her things inside and up to her room, with her yelling at us to be careful at almost every step, despite the fact that I was doing the whole thing with my Will, and there was no way I could drop anything. In the end, I floated her up too, and she squealed all the way up to her room, where I put her down, at which point she stomped on my foot and Bill laughed his arse off while I hopped up and down.

  We spent the rest of the day messing about, walking around Windward while Bill relayed the latest gossip; his network was very efficient. Apparently Mister Koenig, Windward's Magical Supervisor, had been let go, and good riddance to the bigoted bastard. He also informed me about the meeting, the one all the school's increased population of Magicians would have to attend after lunch tomorrow. I really didn't want to go, but Hopkins would yell.

  And when she yells, mountains fall over, so I'd go.

  Monday was also chilly, even worse than Sunday. I dressed warmly and grumbled all the way to the dining hall, where I sat down next to Cathy and across from Bill.

  We exchanged good mornings, and I set to my scrambled eggs with a lack of gusto.

  "Still don't like the cold?" Cathy asked with a smirk.

  "Or the heat, in my defence," I replied.

  "Such a weakling," she said, smiling as she shovelled cereal down her throat.

  "I'd retort, but it's too early and you're a sore loser."

  "Who's a sore loser?" Belle asked, dropping onto the bench next to Bill.

  "Nobody," I said as Cathy gave me her second best glare.

  Belle had been my brother's girlfriend for over a year. She was pretty, strong and ridiculously athletic. She wore the standard Windward uniform like the rest of us, blue blazer, shirt, house tie, black shoes and a skirt in place of the charcoal trousers boys wore. They broke up last term, it was one of the precipitating factors in Des' little... mental oopsie. She was a Wizard-level magician, with a specialty in ice, skilled and getting better now that she'd shifted her focus from duelling to a more scholastic approach to magic.

  "So, you heard about the new guys?" Belle asked.

  "Not much," Bill said, "Matty already picked a figh
t with the Hellstrom kids."

  "You didn't hurt him, did you? He's cute," Belle said.

  "Belle," I said, looking up, "he's a Black Magician, stay far, far away."

  "Ooh, forbidden romance, fun!" she said, sticking out her tongue.

  "I'm serious, Belle, he's very, very bad news," I replied.

  "You're just making it hotter. Girls like a bad boy," she said.

  "Belle, he's going to turn into a Shaadre. They eat other magicians, and not in the fun way," I countered.

  "It's nice that you know about the fun way," she said with a wink.

  "I don't think I'm getting through..."

  "The heart wants what the heart wants, Matty," she said dreamily, which made Bill snort.

  I scratched my head and tried not to scream.

  "New topic, have you seen the Ox? He doesn't look good," Bill said.

  I couldn't come up with anything useful to add to the Hellstrom stuff, and it wasn't like I couldn't just come out and tell them that I might well end up doing him a mischief if we had any contact with him, that was the sort of thing people would have to testify about...

  We all finished up and put our trays on the rack before heading towards the square. We stopped at the notice board so we could see if there was anything to do with us.

  "Oh God, they're doing the Snow Ball again," Bill said with an eye-roll.

  "They do it every year; it's fun," Belle said, turning an evil look on Bill, "Well, if you can get a date."

  "Ouch," Bill said with a wince.

  Cathy was writing some dates for the Chess tournaments in her diary. Tethys' words bounced around inside my head. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath, my heart started hammering in my chest.

  "Hey, Cath," I said as casually as I could, moving in a bit closer to her.

  "Yeah?" she said, still scratching away.

  "What are you doing that night?" I asked.

  "What night?" she replied distractedly.

  Belle and Bill had gone very still, looking like deer caught in headlights, or onlookers watching an oncoming accident.

  "The Snow Ball," I clarified nervously.

  "It's a Saturday, probably beating you at something game related, why?"

  "You want to come to the dance instead?" I asked.

  She dropped her diary and her pencil, and darted down to pick them up. She went bright red again.

  "The dance?" she asked in a high, soft, shaky voice.

  "Yes."

  "With you?"

  "That's the idea."

  "With the dancing and the swaying and the groping?" she asked.

  "I only promise dancing and swaying, but we'll see how the evening progresses," I said with what I hoped was a disarming smile.

  She smiled at me.

  "Yes, I'd... I'd love to," she said, her blush spreading.

  "Great," I said, smiling properly now.

  "I... I have to go to the bathroom, I'll see you later," she said, darting away.

  Bill thumped my shoulder, "You son of a bitch, you actually did it!" he said once she was out of sight.

  "I need to sit down," I said, calling my shadows to form a supporting frame that caught me.

  "That's still so cool," Belle said, "and I still can't believe you actually did it!"

  "Hey!" I complained.

  "Come on, Matty, you were playing that so slowly, she'd be eligible for retirement before you'd ask her out," Bill said.

  "And again, I say 'Hey'!" I replied.

  "Alright, you need a game-plan," Belle said, "there's no way you close the deal without help."

  "This is starting to hurt my feelings a little bit," I said with a glare.

  "Please, by my count five girls here have been throwing themselves at you since you were outed as a magician, and I doubt you even noticed," Belle commented.

  "I'm going to class," I said, getting up, "before this conversation inspires me to suicide."

  "Bill and I are on it, we'll get you there!" Belle said.

  "I am a grown man, more or less, I can manage just fine!" I said, darting through a side door before they could counter. Maybe I shouldn't have done that in front of witnesses...

  Cathy was all squeaky during the first couple of Chemistry lessons and jumped every time I talked to her, it was quite adorable, actually. But then it came time for the meeting for Magical students, something I'd been dreading. We met in the gym, the one where the duelling team practiced. There was a metal circle built into the floor, packed with wards designed to protect the audience from splash damage. Hopkins and I had a little sparring match a little while back and nearly caused it to explode.

  I arrived last. Windward's original mages, three Acolytes and Belle (it goes Acolyte, Adept, Wizard, Sorcerer, Archon in an ascending, exponential power and skill scale, if that matters to you) were sitting at the end closest to the door, where I joined them. There were seven new Mages, and that's aside from the Hellstrom siblings. Four of them were Shadowborn, two Acolytes and two Adepts; two were about sixteen, one maybe fifteen, and one boy couldn't have been anything but a first year. He looked haunted, poor kid; he was one of the adepts, pale and drawn, his eyes downcast. Two were girls, just as pale, looking unhappy, the last boy was the eldest, and he looked ill. Of the rest, there was a Wizard, a male with a fire affinity, and another two adepts, girls, air and earth.

  I got some nasty stares from the Hellstroms, and some curious ones from the others. Lots of fear from the Shadowborn. I could feel their own Shadows, like they were minnows swimming around my shark, no wonder they looked worried.

  "Alright, we all have things to do, let's keep this simple," Hopkins said, coming in through the door I'd just used with a woman I didn't recognise, but she wore a Spelleater amulet, an artefact capable of draining the magic out of just about any spell within about three feet of it.

  She looked confident, strong and lean, mid-thirties with handsome features and a scar across her face from nose to left ear. Her hair was dirty blonde and cut short.

  Everyone perked up and paid attention, even me for once.

  "This is Mrs Prewett, she's the new Magical Supervisor," Hopkins said.

  Murderer. That whisper again. I cast Mage Sight and looked around for the source, which was almost certainly pointless, seeing as how the Elemental (if that's what it was) was speaking through my link to the shadows. I looked back over at Prewett, and I recoiled.

  Mage sight lets you see a great many things. Just in its standard mode, it lets you see auras, magical powers, active spells, some other soul-related things. As a side benefit, the blood of the innocent shows up in the souls of murderers. I don't mean killing in self defence, I mean murder. There was more than a little blood in her aura, but it was hard to see, flickering in and out of sight. I didn't know what that meant, but I assumed that Hopkins would have known about it, and wasn't too worried. As much as I hate to admit it, anything I can do, Hopkins can probably do better, so if I'd seen it, she certainly had.

  "Magic is dangerous, and thus so can you be. In this school, you will be held to the highest standards of behaviour. If you fail to live up to those standards, you will be expelled. If you hurt somebody while breaching those standards, you will be arrested," Prewett said.

  We all looked suitably sober.

  "But, having said that, you're all here to learn, grow and enjoy this place. We are tolerant, and we give the benefit of the doubt. If you want to blow off steam, there's a duelling team, but that's as far as it goes. Nobody is to air their grievances outside of this ring. If you want to use it, you come talk to me. Any questions?" Hopkins continued.

  "I have one," Maria Hellstrom said, glaring at me, "How soon can I fight this piece of scum?"

  Chapter 4

  Hopkins looked at Maria, her eyes wide, "Well, you have to issue the challenge."

  "I challenge!" Maria said, rounding on me.

  "And he has to accept," Hopkins said.

  "Which I don't," I said.

  "What?" Mari
a said.

  "I don't duel," I said.

  "Coward!" she hissed, like that was important.

  "Sounds about right," I said with a theatrical yawn.

  Belle sniggered.

  "Something funny?" Maria said, rounding on Belle, now.

  "Mathew as coward, it's a novel concept," she clarified.

  "Now, now, I've been laying the groundwork on that for years, it's not my fault that you didn't believe me," I said in a put-upon tone.

  Belle snorted again.

  "Nobody is compelled to fight a duel, Miss Hellstrom," Hopkins said, "it is a loss of face, but it is every person's right to refuse."

  I shrugged.

  "Really?" Prewett said, her face a sneer as she looked at me, "This is Graves?"

  "Inciting magical violence, interesting teaching technique," I said to her.

  "It's just a duel, Graves," Prewett said, "There's safety gear."

  "Nope," I said.

  "Should have known you were all reputation, no substance," she said, her eyes cold and almost reptilian.

  "Why try to provoke me?" I asked the new teacher, "You can't possibly be this bored already."

  "Need to know what I'm up against here," she said.

  "Oh, well, you just had to ask," I said reasonably.

  I called my Will and shoved a ridiculous amount of energy into the link, enough to overpower the Spelleater enchantment on her amulet and pull it over her head and across the room into my hand. Without a 'host' the amulet shuts down, and I made sure that I wasn't putting any more energy into it.

  The room went very still.

  That might not have been the best idea. Those amulets were designed to keep Magicians in check and protect the Pureborn. Revealing that I had enough power to get past them wasn't likely to reassure people as to my peaceful intentions, even if it did seem to cow the Hellstroms a little bit (which was the idea).

  I did it that way because I've discovered that it can be tricky to judge your own power level relative to someone else's, and I felt like my latest enemies could use a practical demonstration. Heck, even I have trouble comparing myself to other Mages. The government-mandated tests I took put my overall power at the high end of the Sorcerer range, but as far as I could tell, I was only about twenty percent less powerful than Hopkins, who, as an Archon, should have been as much as ten times more powerful than me, so I was obviously doing something wrong.