by T. A. Miles
“If you’re going to be maintaining this level of awareness, I’ll have to knock first before entering from now on,” Merran said, crossing the room.
Korsten looked at him again, expressionless in spite of the sarcastic tone his voice had taken. “I don’t see why you should begin accommodating me now, not beyond providing the annoyingly straightforward answers you’ve always been too happy to give.”
The black-clad mage stopped in the archway to the right of the center one. “I don’t know if happy is the correct word.”
Korsten contradicted him with a flat gaze, then said, “I met your Mage-Superior last night.”
“Ashwin,” Merran supplied. “He is one of twelve at the post of Mage-Superior.”
“Is he? Well, I met him last night, as I said. He explained some things to me, but not nearly enough.”
“Were you listening?” Merran asked dryly. “Attention level can sometimes dictate how much, or how little, one is willing to explain.”
Korsten did not dignify that with a response. He continued with his questions. “I won’t say that I like this or that I want to stay here, but I am here. And I feel a change in myself. What now?”
Merran didn’t smile, but he looked like he wanted to. “Now you begin your training, Mage Korsten.”
“Ashwin will be your life-mentor,” Merran explained as he and Korsten walked the passages of the Seminary together.
There were others about during the day. Men and women, young and old—though none appeared to be aging—dressed in ways that seemed unique to themselves and in colors limited to white, gray, blue, brown, green, red, and black. There seemed an abundance of gray and very few instances of red, either in wardrobe or hair color.
“That is to say,” Merran continued. “That so long as both of you live, he shall be your primary instructor, emotional counselor, and judge, when it comes time to determine whether or not you be nominated for adept status and, as it goes, adept responsibilities. Since Ashwin does not have a talent for Healing, emotional or physical, I have been appointed as your physician.”
Korsten glanced at him, saying nothing. He didn’t have to.
“It was not solely guilt or pity that kept me at your bedside for three months,” Merran said. “Despite what you might think.”
Korsten decided to leave that topic where it lay and asked, “Do all mages work with three colors?”
“No,” Merran answered. “Ashwin was not given any talents by the gods. His predecessor bestowed emotional Empathy upon him and the other talents born into him guided him toward white. It is common for green and white, the spiritual being and the emotional being, to be linked. However, it is not always linked.”
“I find this terribly confusing,” Korsten admitted.
“That’s why I thought it best to bring you here,” Merran said as they arrived at a tall pair of wooden doors. He pushed one side open and gestured for Korsten to pass through ahead of him.
Korsten carried himself into the biggest library he had ever laid eyes on. The room was semicircular in shape, comprised of three open levels, walls of shelves, separated by narrow glass windows and accessed by one of six spiraling iron staircases. Leave me here, Korsten would have said not so very long ago. I’ll be fine on my own, thank you. He only stared now, lacking enthusiasm, though still at a loss to think that all of this writing may have dealt solely with sorcery, a subject he would have previously dismissed as fantasy.
“Some of these are encrypted,” Merran said. “And can only be read with a spell-key, but many of the texts you will find of immediate interest are open. As is this library, I should add. Come here whenever you like.”
“At one time I might have requested to live here,” Korsten told him, stepping further into the room.
“It reflects in your eyes,” Merran replied. He added almost gently, “Even now.”
Korsten glanced back at him, then proceeded to the nearest staircase, which he began to slowly climb. “And what reflects in your eyes? Eyes bluer than the clearest summer sky?”
“In terms of magecraft, blue is the color of the mind, of one’s mental being. My vision was given to me by the gods.”
“Foresight,” Korsten said over his shoulder. Who said anything about magecraft? “I remember.” He stepped off the staircase on the second floor and paused at the first stack of shelves, fingering the leather spines of several books with unfamiliar titles. “So, if I am to understand this correctly … a talent, or a gift, as I’ve heard it called, is represented at each interval of the magic spectrum. Interpreted differently, depending upon the color it is related to.”
“You learn quickly,” Merran commented from the center of the ground floor.
Korsten looked down at the dark-haired mage. “I always have. Is memory a gift, I am forced to wonder?”
“It falls in with Reasoning.”
“Linked to blue,” Korsten guessed. When Merran nodded he returned to the books, strolling to the next case. “Blue isn’t my color, I am led to believe.”
“You would have been intelligent even if not destined to magehood, I would guess. When you appear before the Council of Superiors, the markings Emergence left upon you will have been deciphered and they will be explained. You will know exactly what your gifts are and which are most likely to Resonate or become Ambient.”
“And what are they now?” Korsten asked, slipping a curious-looking encyclopedia from the shelf in front of him. He began slowly flipping through the pages.
“They are at an Emergent state, raw potential awakened. Those which Emergence failed to awaken will remain dormant within you, inspiring but not actually useful in the working of spells.”
The working of spells, Korsten thought to himself. Then he snapped the book he held closed and tucked it back into its proper place. Madness. He sighed, moving idly on. But what else is there? To die? I’ve already failed in that effort. Return to Haddowyn? How can I? The Vadryn are there in no small amount with thanks to the one Merran failed to destroy … who may have been…. Gods, no. I can’t believe it. I won’t. Something happened to Renmyr, but I am not qualified to say as to what. I will learn what I need to know here, Ren … my love … and I will save you from whatever madness has befallen you.
“In answer to your question,” Merran called up from below. “The lilies are red because they keep the souls of the dead. The soul, the essence of life, is in the blood.”
Korsten, lost in his own thoughts, deciphered two words; blood and lilies. “What did you say? Something about….” He looked to find Merran gone from the library. He put his back to the books, leaning against them, taking in the full scope of the room, filled with knowledge. He had only to choose a starting point. A sigh slipped out with his breath. “Blood lilies….”
Countless hours ago, Korsten believed the passages of the Seminary were labyrinthine. Now he felt that he’d truly been introduced to a maze of confounding and unfathomable proportions in the topic of magecraft. There was no logical course through the subject. The only thing to do was to dive directly in and to hope against drowning.
There was no explanation on where mages had come from, only that they were. Just as the sun was and the moon … just as the Vadryn were. The books specifically on the history of the craft went so far as to boil the matter down to a once secret society that served the monarchs of old, but the true nature—or science?—behind sorcery and spell casting was a ghostly notion, a haunting question with no substantial answer. The scheme of working with colors was based on the spectrum of life, the aspects of living from birth to death, rooted in the earth from which life had sprung and to which it would one day return.
The spectrum began with brown; the outer being, the state of being alive in the world. Green came second, indicative of growth, development of the emotional self, like the small child, who knows feelings before words, instinct before contemplation
. Next was blue; the mind, understanding, learning, speaking, retaining knowledge, wanting knowledge. Red followed, signifying the body, changes in the body, changes in the blood … desire, physical love, the sexual and sensual self. White came afterward; enlightenment, awareness of the inner self, the spirit. And lastly, there was black; mortality, the physical self in its barest form, that of a living vessel that would die.
It seemed odd to Korsten that in his state he had not chosen black for himself. But then it was not physical death he was concerned with, he had to remind himself. It was his soul that had been suffering and that continued to suffer. Perhaps, student that he happened to be, he was looking to understand the hurt inside of himself. Or maybe not. Maybe the conceited bastard he also happened to be recognized that none of the other mage colors would do his appearance any justice at all. Too many dark colors all at once made his hair seem improbably brighter and his skin paler. White made it obvious that his skin was not actually pure white, which in turn dampened the vivid tone of his hair just a bit. Fashionably, he’d chosen well. Magically, time would tell. And he certainly had a lot of it, according to a volume labeled Fobb’s Journal on Magehood, Facts of the First Stage.
The blood lilies were in themselves magic and, strangely enough, ingested by the magic users. The bees in the garden where the lilies grew gathered the pollen to make a unique blushed honey that was harvested by the mages and included in several recipes for various foods, beverages, and even medicines at the Seminary. Some herbal remedies even called for the actual petals of the lily. Of course, the flowers contained the essence of deceased mages. By ingesting parts of the flower or the honey made from its pollen, the living mages gained vitality, longevity, and increased magical energy, useful in mastering spells and bringing a gift to Resonance or Ambience. Depending on the mage, glamour could be another side-effect. In some instances, as was evidently the case with Ashwin, it could border on excessive. Korsten wondered if it had anything to do with time. Surely a mage of his status had been with the Seminary for a very long time, taking in the elixir of life, created from the dead.
“Doesn’t that make us the same as them?” Korsten asked when he felt a presence enter the library. He looked up at the very mage he’d been thinking about as the exceptionally fair man approached the staircase he was sitting on. “Siphoning the vitality … the blood, isn’t it? … of another? What would separate us from demons? A voluntary victim? I’m sure that some have consented to the Vadryn for one reason or another. The fact that the victim is dead? I believe the term for that is necrophagous.”
The merest of smiles came to Ashwin’s lips. Korsten wondered helplessly how beautiful he might have been in his mortal days. Perhaps he had been homely. “Magic is not an everlasting resource,” the Mage-Superior said. “It must be recycled, so to speak. Few are chosen to partake of this process and those few are chosen carefully, by those who willingly return what was granted to them. There is no murder, no unwilling seduction, no imprisonment or abuse of mind, body, or spirit. What’s more, granting magic to a new individual also causes the birth of new magic, which will replenish the well from which all life draws, whether it is aware or not.”
Ashwin lifted one slender hand that had been tucked into the overlong sleeves of his robes, gesturing to the butterfly Korsten had forgotten, perched now upon the stair railing beside him. “Your first actual taste of the Essence was carried to you by….”
“Analee,” Korsten supplied without really knowing why.
“Analee,” Ashwin echoed, a renewed smile upon his lips. And then he continued. “However, the Essence was already inside you and not just as a basic fuel for living, but filled with potential. Generative potential that can be used by you and, one day long from now we hope, by others.”
“Other mages,” Korsten presumed.
Ashwin nodded. “Primarily, yes.” The Mage-Superior began to wander the half-circle room and Korsten just noticed a bright jade dragonfly shadowing his every movement. “Analee and my Nera….” He held his hand out to the dragonfly, which darted toward his fingers and briefly alighted on his knuckles, almost as if kissing them. “…are called soul-keepers as well as bond mates. They will live only once, for a single mage. They are born by the will of the deceased mage when it is time for their successor to be awakened to their duty. They will die carrying their bond mate’s soul back here, to the garden.”
“Awakened,” Korsten mused. “Emergence?”
“Not necessarily,” Ashwin replied. “In your case, yes. However, with someone like Merran, for example, his Eolyn was nothing more than a guide at first, leading him to us and to his start as an Apprentice of magecraft. He awakened to his duty, but coming to Emergence was a hard-fought battle for him.”
“Not everyone reaches that state?”
Ashwin drew to a halt, folding his hands behind his back, gazing out one of the narrow library windows while giving his answer. “No. Not everyone. In some, talents remain dormant for the duration of their mortal lives. They can still learn to work magic, but their spells can never be as strong as they could have been and it is a taxing process to learn each one. As well, not all Emergent gifts ascend to Resonance or Ambience. It all depends really.”
“On what?” Korsten wondered aloud.
Ashwin looked back at him, smiling. “On the individual, the strength of their gifts, their willingness, and their stamina.”
“I see,” Korsten said, lying perhaps a bit.
“You have a very strong gift, Korsten,” the Mage-Superior informed, turning back around to face him squarely. “You have several gifts, but one in particular which myself and the others of the Superiors believe will rapidly reach Ambient state with the merest effort on your part.”
Korsten couldn’t say that he wasn’t curious about that, but he pretended not to be anyway. “And to what is the purpose of all this? If you could have stopped the Vadryn you would have already, I think. And I also recall a certain incident concerning this town, this establishment, to be specific, and the Crimson Plague. As I heard it, everyone here was quite dead as of several years ago.”
Ashwin’s pleasant charm dissipated and a restrained anguish took its place. He looked like he wanted to unleash a frustration over something evidently beyond his control, a thing that was perhaps his blame. He maintained control, however, and managed to say, “The Vadryn are not simply ravening beasts. They are clever and cunning, and relentless. We are not simply hoping to exterminate plague-carrying vermin with our efforts that have literally spanned millennia. It is a war we are involved in, Korsten. Deeply involved. What happened here over a half century ago was a battle lost. The casualties were terrible and included Edrinor’s king, along with all who were related to him by blood. That loss on that one night is directly to blame for the chaos Edrinor now faces as a nation and a people.”
I am directly to blame, Ashwin wanted to add. Korsten knew that because they were still spell-touching, as Merran explained it. Not as strongly as before, he didn’t think, but the effects had not completely worn off. It was more than evident that this topic was a source of much pain for the Mage-Superior.
A part of Korsten wanted to go to him and offer the same comfort he had been offered the night before. It was a part much smaller than that which anchored Korsten to his seat upon the library staircase.
“Many of us survived that night,” Ashwin continued. “We let the world outside the Seminary believe that we didn’t. The Vadryn are easily satisfied with any and all victories. The army that had gathered against us dispersed. The Masters behind the unification found other matters to focus their attentions on. We are still in the process of rebuilding and that is why you are here. With your awakening and arrival we have increased our numbers by one. In the last seventy years we have gained fourteen.”
“How many did you lose?” Korsten wasn’t sure he’d wanted to ask it, but the words simply slipped out.
; Ashwin waited before giving his answer. “Eighty-seven,” he whispered with a slight tremble in his otherwise silken voice. “That doesn’t include the citizens of Vassenleigh … who were slaughtered indiscriminately by the Vadryn hordes when they came through our Barriers. They had no warning. And we were their only defense.”
The silence that followed was long and heavy.
Eventually, Korsten said, “I apologize, if I have upset you.”
“The truth can be upsetting,” Ashwin replied calmly. “But it must be faced.”
Korsten stared into the lovely elder’s green eyes for a moment, then looked at the book he’d been balancing in his lap and slowly closed it. “What … happened in Haddowyn?”
“I can refer you to Merran’s official report,” Ashwin said. “Or I can tell you what was reported to me.”
“Tell me,” Korsten whispered, feeling a slight warmth behind his eyes. “I don’t trust myself to read it. I’ll find a reason to put it off … and to keep believing in….”
“Subservience is a byproduct of the Vadryn’s will, not love,” Ashwin informed him. “What you feel is genuine and your pain is that much worse for it. Had you not cared for him, you would have still felt a sense of longing with release, but also a sense of relief for being freed from circumstances you did not desire. The longing would have faded with time and you would have looked back on the experience as nothing more than a nightmare.
“But you still love him. Perhaps that makes it more necessary for you to know precisely what happened, now that you have recovered from the initial trauma of not only your separation from him, but of Emergence as well.”
Ashwin drew a pause, as if giving Korsten the opportunity to delay, to avoid the truth for another hour and to continue suffering with unanswered suspicions and fears that he could not ignore. Korsten remained silent, but must have emanated his need.