Spells of the Curtain: Court Mage

by Tim Niederriter

  He climbed down the air hole first, then helped Sampheli in her descent. The two of them headed for the back of the stomach. They passed the nervous boy from earlier going the opposite direction with his bag shouldered, and made their way to their luggage. Edmath rummaged through the packs for a minute or two. He set aside Sampheli’s personal shrine, a box which contained her holy instruments and artifacts before he found her sleeping mat. He unrolled it and laid it on the floor near the wall.

  Sampheli put a hand on his shoulder and lowered herself onto the mat.

  “Thank you, son.”

  “For you, it is nothing, mother.”

  “I hope you treat the Saale Emperor with even greater respect.”

  “I will try.” Edmath turned and started back down the stomach, feeling a churn in his gut from only this short stay in the shifting compartment. He looked over his shoulder. “Rest well.”

  As he drew closer to the air hole, a cry came from above. He could not make out whether it was joy or pain, but he quickened his pace anyway. Leaping up the air hole and scrambling the remaining distance to the top, he looked toward the tail. Zuria and Brosk stood together at the far end of the deck with the controller backing towards them, backing away from the ill-looking boy. Standing in the center of the deck, the boy turned to glare at Edmath.

  “Saales, Saales, Saales,” he said. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  It was then that Edmath realized the boy’s bag was empty now. He heard a whistle from above and threw himself flat. A sphere of roiling pitch black and irritated red flesh flew down from above and skimmed over Edmath, low enough to strike him if he had not ducked. He looked up at it and remembered the terrible illustration in his book of artifacts. There was no mistaking it, a protean sphere, an abomination of a magical form.

  “Zuria, Brosk,” he shouted. “Do you two know what that is?”

  “I think so, brother.” Zuria took a step toward the boy, pulling a double ring striker from her pocket. The striker was made of the bones of a gull.

  “You have no idea,” the boy said, advancing on her. “Let me show you.” He thrust a finger at her as the protean sphere took a position above his head. A tentacle of red and black flesh shot from the sphere, heading straight toward Zuria.

  Brosk swung a chain of metal rings lined with bone strikers out of his sleeve. The chain intercepted the tendril and sent it flying backward in a flash of light from a string of new tears in the physical world’s fabric. Brosk hunched in front of Zuria. She struck with her rings and opened a large tear of her own. Edmath watched as the magical vessel ruptured, and sent energy flooding directly toward him on a strong current.

  Reaching into his tunic, he pulled forth a single small ring of bone. With the energy almost upon him, he had to think fast for a spell. Visualizing a green fist, he concentrated on the ring and hurled it at the boy, letting go just as the magic touched him.

  The ring exploded into shards of chicken bone and a green fist the same size and shape as Edmath’s own connected with the boy’s cheek. He fell sprawling. The protean sphere sent a strand to catch him, keeping his head from striking the bone of the deck.

  “Saales.” The boy said the word like a curse. “You can’t all be–You are filthy!”

  The controller stopped him, putting a sandal lightly on his chest.

  “You are beaten. Give these young people some credit.”

  Edmath climbed to his feet and walked over to the boy, whose hand traced the spot where the green fist had hit him. Brosk and Zuria came closer, pocketing their strikers. This wasn’t the first time any of them had been in a fight.

  “This sphere is not fully in your control, I see.” Edmath peered down at the shifting red and black mass as it slipped away from the boy on the floor and floated off the side of the creature. “I suppose that means you owe allegiance to a higher power. Roshi, perhaps?”

  “No,” the boy said. “I just hate, just hate–”

  The controller pressed down the boy’s chest, and the boy yelped.

  “We’ll need to look after him until we get to shore,” the controller said. “It should be another hour or two at this rate.”

  “Alright,” Brosk said. “I can guard him. Where should we go?”

  Edmath looked down at the boy’s narrow face, trying to determine what his tribe was. He didn’t look like any of the nobility, for certain, but Edmath couldn’t tell what he did look like.

  “Of course, you aren’t a native to this region. If you were a true Zelian, you would not dishonor us with your hatred. What is your name?”

  The boy opened his mouth as if to speak, but blood came out of his mouth rather than words. His eyes closed and his shoulder slumped. Edmath didn’t need the help of the magic flowing around him to know the boy was dead. He cursed inside his head. The thought of death so close made him more than anxious. His blow must have damaged some part of the protean sphere connected to the boy.

  A haze of dizziness fell upon Edmath’s mind. No mistaking it, the magic railed against him taking a life, however unintentional the result had been. He put a hand to his head as the back of his mind started to throb with pain.

  “Damn, I didn’t think you hit him that hard,” the controller said.

  “I didn’t.” Edmath grimaced against the pain in his head. “I couldn’t do this to him alone.”

  The controller frowned. “Are you alright?”

  “To kill with a spell is a fundamental counter to all Saale magic. I would never strike to kill intentionally.”

  Edmath shook his head in pain as the controller glanced at the protean sphere quickly falling behind their levoth. A sphere like that was the only way an untrained human could wield magic on the level needed to destroy someone’s internal organs. This thing had done it without touching the boy, but only because it had been triggered somehow. Just like the spheres of humanity at the heart of each nation, the protean spheres had no willpower of their own.

  “Well, he isn’t going to be resisting.” The controller wiped his dark brows. “But I don’t like seeing kids die.”

  Zuria hid her eyes and Edmath looked away, but Brosk just shook his head slowly, not saying a word, but not hiding from the body in front of him.

  “Why?” Zuria said. “Why did he do it? He just said he couldn’t wait, but we didn’t even know his name.”

  “We may never know.” Edmath recovered a little from the initial wave of sickness and walked over to Zuria as Brosk and the controller picked up the dead boy’s body and moved him to the rear of the levoth’s deck. “Unless he was traveling with papers this could easily remain a mystery.”

  “I recognized the sphere.” Zuria turned to Edmath, wide-eyed. “To have something like that he’d have to be someone with power, money.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Edmath closed his eyes and wished for the trip to pass and take the roiling of his stomach along with it. “But you practiced the striking well, sister. If you hadn’t been so timely we might not have survived. A sphere like that could have destroyed everyone on this levoth if used effectively.”

  “I knew. I just didn’t want to think that.”

  Brosk came back from the rear of the ship. His footfalls were heavy on the deck bones.

  Turning toward him, Edmath asked, “Did you find anything, Brosk?”

  “No identification. No, the boy even paid in raw gold. He’s traceless.” Brosk put a hand to his heart and took a deep breath. “We could do an augury once we get to the Temple in Diar. For that, we’ll need the body, though.”

  Between his gestures and his tone, Edmath sensed Brosk’s sorrow. The controller might have said he didn’t like death as well, but Edmath knew how hard things such as this struck Brosk, who had lost a sibling to Roshi assassins when still a child.

  “I was thinking along those lines. With no identification, I think the controller will let us take him if it’s for that.” Edmath glanced at Zuria. “It’s the lea
st we could do. I have a feeling he wouldn’t have done this if we weren’t here.”

  “You’re probably right,” Zuria said.

  Brosk looked down the deck to the body.

  “I’ll ask.”

  Edmath put an arm around Zuria and led her to the air hole at the levoth’s head. The Naren peninsula rose out of the ocean ahead of them, massive rolling hills and cliff faces just barely visible on the horizon. The wind picked up, tugging at Zuria’s braids and clothes and making Brosk’s hair whip about as well. Loud waves broke upon the rising tail of the levoth as it emerged from the water, short and ending in a powerful fluke.

  Zuria broke away from Edmath and climbed down the air hole. He strode past the air hole and stood at the controller’s position on the deck’s end. With a jab of a hand into his pocket, he pulled out the stone. Black and smooth, it felt somehow wet in his hands. Perhaps it was crying for the dead boy. No, a stone cannot cry, Edmath thought.

  They arrived at the docks of Diar as the wind rose to a gale. Edmath leaped off the Levoth’s bony ridge and landed on the pier even as the controller called it to a stop. Together they had decided to remove the body before the other passengers saw it, so as to avoid frightening anyone unduly.

  The only other humans Edmath had seen die had been ancient monks covered by the wintry sheets of their beds. A young man coughing blood on a Levoth’s back was very different. Brosk shifted into his whale even larger and more muscular tosh and donned a heavy cloak Zuria had brought up from below. His hulking grayish shoulders bore his solemn load with ease.

  As a prince, it would do him no good to be seen with the body, and they had decided that Edmath, Zuria, and Sampheli should go find somewhere to stay rather than go with him. He marched away from the dock, the body wrapped in the gray cloak of the Levoth’s controller.

  “It will be better this way, of course,” Edmath told Zuria from the pier. “Brosk doesn’t look much like his human self in his tosh, and he can perform the augury with the temple’s resources.”

  “I’m not worried about that.” Zuria climbed onto the deck with Sampheli behind her. “I fear that this city will not agree with me any better than this death.”

  “It will, sister, it will.” Edmath looked up at the slate roofs and white-stone walls that covered the hillsides around the docks. “This is the greatest city in the world. Why just on the other side of that hill is the palace of the High Emperor and the city within a city. Of course, you’re in your rights to doubt.”

  “And you are within yours to be confident,” Sampheli said. “Zuria, you and your brother should both be wary. I grew up in this city, and I doubt the people here will have changed too much. While they are mostly honest, those who are not are truly dangerous. Temper confidence with caution.”

  “I shall, mother.”

  Edmath helped her up from the Levoth’s back. Brosk carried the dead boy off the dock onto the stones of the street. His whale tosh’s smooth head turned and he pulled the cloak over his head with a huge gray arm. Brosk nodded at Edmath and started away down the street. Edmath watched him go and hoped his friend would get the answers they all wanted.

  It took them a few hours to find the royally owned hostel of the Serpent Tribe in the southern portion of Diar. Sampheli was born of serpent royalty and her people were under obligations to look after her and her family. Her husband, a man neither Zuria nor Edmath had ever met, had been killed in a battle with rebels on the island of Tokalgo. The serpent tribe took care of their widows, whether they were priestesses or not. They came to a sprawling building of white wood, and a huge front porch. Sampheli greeted the heavily built woman guard sitting on that pouch with a raised hand and a bowed head.

  “Why not tosh if you are a royal?” the guard said, leaning forward in her white wicker chair. “I must know for certain.”

  “Yes, yes.” Sampheli’s eyes drew closer together and her wrinkled skin became smooth scales. Edmath could not see the rest of the change as it took place under her cloak, but it was clearly enough for the guard. She gave a satisfied nod.

  “Welcome. What status have you in this house, if I may ask?”

  “I am Sampheli Mierzon, a priestess of no great standing, but your kin and a widow.”

  “Very well, my lady. There are still several rooms free upstairs for your family.”

  “I am honored.”

  Sampheli led the way up the steps of the building and past the pillars made to look like the bones of coiled serpents. The doors yawned open and Edmath followed her and Zuria into the building. The staircase at the back of the wood-paneled entrance hall led them up to the second floor. The first three rooms at the top of the stairs were left with doors ajar. Candles burning sweet incense stood on the table within each one as a traditional way of welcoming guests.

  Sampheli and Zuria took the first two rooms and Edmath took the third. He sat down on the bed by the window and looked out into the garden of serpents in the walled enclosure behind the hostel building. Trees and bushes remained trimmed low so the creatures that lived there would not be able to escape on a whim. One of the largest snakes Edmath had ever seen emerged from the pool at the far end of the garden, deep green in color with blue markings all down its sides.

  “I see you also have an attraction to our namesake,” a girl’s voice said from behind him.

  Edmath turned and saw a young woman, around his own age, standing before him in the doorway of his room. Her hair was black but her skin was nowhere near as dark as Sampheli’s or Zuria’s, more like Chelka’s than the pallor common to the Coral Tribe. She curled her lip.

  “Forgive me.” Edmath bowed. “I am not of the Serpent Tribe. Rather I am here with my mother who is. Of course, that does not mean I’m not curious about serpents in general.”

  “Ah.” The girl smiled more broadly. “I suppose that explains your coloration.”

  “My name is Edmath Donroi. May I ask you yours?”

  “Tusami Gesa, royal Saale.”

  “You are a Saale too? Interesting.”

  Tusami’s eyes narrowed, her smile slipping.

  “Yes. I have just arrived to serve an emperor.”

  “Our stories are much the same. I take it you have written ahead. Which emperor do you wish to serve?”

  Edmath felt the question was innocent, but Tusami must not have. Her smile vanished completely.

  “I must be on my way, Saale Donroi,” she said. “There is much of this city to see, and I may not have much time to see it.”

  “Forgive me for my rudeness.” Edmath started after her out into the hall.

  She stopped on the stairs and looked back at him, eyes as slits.

  “You are forgiven, Saale Donroi.” Dropping down another step, she turned away from him.

  He shook his head in frustration. Edmath glanced into the room immediately next door to his. Zuria’s head peaked around the corner of the doorway. She motioned for him to come in.

  “I suppose you are alright, then?” she said.

  The boy’s death tugged at his stomach, making him sick even without the pain of lethal magic. Edmath closed the door behind him and wrinkled his brow. “Alright about what? I wasn’t aware of a problem unless you mean that crazy boy.”

  Zuria folded her hands.

  “No, I mean Chelka.”

  Edmath blinked and let out a small sigh. The issue always came up eventually. With a shake of her head, Zuria turned away from him. He followed her further into the room.

  “I didn’t break things off with her if that’s what you mean. She and I–”

  Zuria raised her hands. “Not another word. Mother mustn’t know about this. She will worry too much.”

  “I know, sister. I know what I must do, and that is never to tell until I can be sure.”

  “And what of Chelka? You must be certain she feels the same way.”

  Edmath thought of how her lips felt against his, of her hands on him. “I am ce
rtain. As certain as I could be.”

  “I will pray fate does not go against you, Brother.”

  “Thank you, Sister.”

  Edmath turned and walked out the door. Zuria followed him, closing the door behind her. Sampheli met them in the hall. Edmath fought with a smile at the sight of her. She wore a blue dress a bit too long for her small stature and carried a folded violet parasol.

  “You two must change before we present ourselves to the emperor,” she said. “I doubt they would let you far enough past the gates to even see the Enchieli Guardians wearing what you have on now.”

  “Enchieli,” Edmath said. “So we are going directly to the High Emperor?”

  “Of course,” Sampheli said. “I spent time with Vosraan Loi when I was a girl. He was older than me, but I know how well he remembers his friends.”

  Edmath grinned, astonished, not for the first time, at the connections of his aged mother.

  “Of course, of course. I will change.”

  He walked to his room and opened the door, letting himself in. Closing it behind him, he shrugged off the traveling cloak and reached for his bundled wardrobe. While he had nothing too ostentatious, he could think of many things far more high class than the old tunic and breeches he wore now. Slipping off his sandals, he dressed in a red tunic and black breeches. The colors of his school would do him honor with any luck. He put his sandals back on.

  Stepping back out into the hallway, he found Zuria wearing a deep green dress with a curling white hat. She raised her eyebrows at him.

  “A little dark looking, isn’t it, brother?”

  “I prefer dark and honorable, actually,” Edmath said with a smile. “You may differ.”

  “And I do. How about that?”

  “That’s enough, you two.” Sampheli came up the steps, swinging her parasol over her shoulder. “I have called a carriage. It is waiting downstairs.”