Magience: second edition

by Cari Silverwood

  Ouch! Maybe we’re not quite the same. I haven’t done that.

  She glanced up at Uster and, for the first time, instead of an Imperator, saw a father.

  “I’ll leave you two together ’til nightfall. Sasskia...” His voice caught, his face twitched. “You can explain, I... I cannot.” He reached out and took her hand in his for a moment then he gently released it and his mask fell back into place.

  “You have today and tomorrow to heal my daughter. You are safe until the first moon rises at half past the seven. Be at the door, if you still need to.” He left them.

  Safe? The moon? Oh. Her eyes widened. Like dominoes toppling each other in succession she suddenly knew what she was dealing with here. That this was Sasskia, yes, she had known who she was, but not what she was. The enormity of it, the impossibility...and the danger.

  “Oh...” She put fingertips to her temples, pushing up at her skin as if that could remove the ache that had descended on her brow. All the while Sasskia watched her silently with a sad, despairing smile. “...my...gods.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was low and husky. “How like my father. He fears to reveal himself. He can explain the master strategy of a war but cannot tell you that I am the bludvoik mage...in case he...” She pressed her lips together. “Would you like some lemon tea, Ellinca?”

  “What?”

  Sasskia smoothly lifted a jug from a tray beside her. Moisture beaded the glass, ice chinked.

  Despite the strange circumstances, Ellinca’s mouth watered. She nodded. “Thank you. Shouldn’t I be...” It didn’t seem right that a princess should serve her.

  “Stay,” she said and poured two glasses, offering first the glass then a plateful of dainty sandwiches and fruit slices. Her hand shook ever so slightly and her fingernails were bitten to the flesh. “I have grown used to fending for myself recently. Eat, drink – you look hungry. By tonight it will be inedible. Father will bring me more tomorrow.”

  Having a mouth full of food was a good excuse not to talk. Though Ellinca tried not to wolf it down she couldn’t help comparing herself to Sasskia, who nibbled slowly on one sandwich triangle and one piece of green melon. Her wrist was narrow. There was little fat or muscle on her, as if she had been consuming very little for quite some time.

  When at last she lost her hunger, Ellinca dusted crumbs from her tights and from her vest. Some stubbornly clung to the many tiny ribbons that decorated the front of it.

  “I should say...” Sasskia began hesitantly, “I should say... No. I’ve forgotten what I was thinking. Tell me, Ellinca, do you know why we are allowed only two days...for this?” She tilted her head casually to the side.

  Ellinca shook her head. Stay calm, she is only a bludvoik mage at night, or so it seems. “No. Not really.” It was a good question though, why only two days? Did it have something to do with the disturbances in Carstelan? She wasn’t supposed to talk about other things, the Imperator had said.

  “You remind me of one of the animals my grandfather used to get the beaters to stir up for his royal hunts. Trapped.” Sasskia traced the lip of her glass with her finger, making it ring. “The Grakks cursed me. That’s the cause of this. Father hates them for it. You know, I don’t expect this to end well. I don’t expect you to succeed. We’ve tried cures. Many, many cures. Though none until now have been...people.” Her tongue tip flicked out. Her hands trembled.

  “You must say if you wish to be released and I will make sure father does so. You will have to go somewhere...away. Rumors, you know. If it got out that I am...ill, people would die.

  “Do you see why, Ellinca? The taint of it would spread in people’s minds. My brothers, my father, every aunt, uncle, cousin, tens of people...not just me. Dead. Executed for being related to a mage. Can’t have a royal mage. No. Our line would be obliterated. All because of me. I would have ended my life by now, but Father would not let me. Courage, I told myself. Courage. But I knew how much grief I would cause him.” Over and over she ran her finger round the glass.

  “Silly. So silly – all because I’m a bit ill. I’ll be over it soon.” She laughed.

  Those liquid eyes fixed on Ellinca, as if seeing her for the first time, the pupils expanding to large black discs.

  “Why are you here?” Sasskia asked brightly.

  Oh, no. Ellinca looked at her glass, wondering at its contents, but no, she felt normal. If not drugs then, madness. Her heart thudded. “Um. Your father thinks I can heal you.”

  Knowing that her healing drew on her own life force, the Imperator had pushed her into this. She wouldn’t die for this girl, not matter how much sympathy she felt for her. She wouldn’t die for Dost, either, and his cause was far more worthwhile. Getting out of here alive was her aim, and somehow she’d rescue Dost too. She owed him that at least.

  “Oh. Good!”

  “I wish I could help you.” That was the truth. “But I see no illness that I can cure.”

  “Exactly what I told father. Let’s go see my pets!” She jumped up.

  “Pets?” Ellinca swallowed. What a choice. Chase after Sasskia or stay by herself in this too-empty, too-quiet zoo. What pets could she have? Couldn’t be bludvoiks. Could it? No, but whatever they were Sasskia knew more about them than she did, crazy or not.

  “Wait!” Maybe they were grasshoppers or imaginary or something. “Wait!” She hurried after her.

  Five or six minutes of walking brought them to the crest of a hillock green with lush moss-like grass.

  “Whew!” Sasskia threw herself down, legs out before her and arranged her skirt neatly.

  Cautiously Ellinca also sat. The grass was soft and cool. Wings industriously buzzing, a ladybird flew up, toward a clearing that spread out below them until it met the base of one of the massive six- or seven-yard-high stone walls. To the right a strong-flowing tributary from the geyser sank with a dull roar into the ground, the water clear and welcoming. The banks were crowded with clumps of purple flowers.

  There were fresh beds of soil in the clearing, as though in preparation for new plants.

  Past that wall was another part of the zoo. It would have been nice to be here when things had been right. She imagined herself relaxing on this gorgeous grass.

  “There they are,” said Sasskia in a subdued voice. “My pets.” She pointed at the fresh earth. “Palades, my orangutan is there. Next to her is Terem then there’s Aristophane. He’s a horned lizard from Xangua Island.”

  The world died for a moment. These were graves.

  “We poisoned them,” she said it in a monotone, as if it meant nothing to her. “The ones father couldn’t find an excuse to send away, before I could change them. The first bludvoik was my hamster, Hannibal. A bludvoik hamster, can you imagine that? But, after a while, I began to lose control, and so we had to poison the rest of them.”

  “I’m sorry.” Such a useless thing to say.

  “I know where they are.”

  Puzzled, Ellinca glanced at the graves.

  “When they eat, I know it. When I’m close they know me, they obey me. They’re my creations after all.” The last was spoken bitterly.

  She turned to Ellinca, fresh tears trickling down her cheeks. “I made them all go into the water. Each morning after I make them. He thought that would destroy them and that no one could trace them back to us, but he’s wrong. They’re still out there, aren’t they? The water has to come out somewhere.”

  She deserved an answer. “There’s a bludvoik plague near Carstelan.”

  “Ah.” Sasskia paused before going on. “I used to know where Dost was too, but he’s gone now. I turned my brother into a bludvoik.” The tears spilled and she almost sobbed. “Can you end this for me? Please? I know I’m going mad. If you can do anything for me at all...”

  She didn’t know Dost was here? Ellinca curled tight her fingers and lied. “I have only healed minor wounds, nothing more.”

  “Oh. I see. Thollemew Smythe believes this to be a disturbance of the brain. Some def
ormity deep inside.” She put her head in her hands. “I’ll tell father you tried. Go.”

  Slowly Ellinca stood. Her legs refused to move. How could she face Dost if she didn’t do anything at all? It surprised her how guilty that made her feel. It wouldn’t hurt to touch her, would it? She walked to Sasskia and leaned over her.

  “Let me see what I can find out.” Gently, she sifted her fingers through the dark shiny hair.

  At the first touch of scalp she closed her eyes and became lost in that other world. Perfection. Normality. Youth. Where was the wrongness? Too superficial, she realized, so she wriggled her fingers, as if she sent them deeper and deeper, until they immersed in the languid ooze of flesh and pumping blood.

  Like a fruit with a rotten core she could taste the madness long before she could find its cause. Heartbeats of time measured her thoughts. Lub-dub, lub-dub. The madness was a by-product only, of a mind tortured for too long by stress and tragedy.

  She kept searching. It must be here, there must be something. What did it really mean to be a mage?

  And there it was...twisted and so wrong it tangled her own senses into confusion for a moment...and she tasted the searing cold of winter, smelled the softness of a worm-ridden corpse, felt...felt a foulness that made her want to flee.

  Small, not as all-encompassing as the bludvoik disease in Dost, yet in time it stretched so far back, reverberating into the past.

  Time. Ah. That was it – what Pascolli had tried to tell her. She healed through time – by going back to the past before the wound or disease had ever existed. So clear now. Obvious. It explained why sometimes she had made things worse.

  With that knowledge to help her weigh the price, and with a little guesswork, she considered Sasskia’s problem. It had been developing, growing inside her, for so long it was breath-taking to consider the cost of healing. There was no doubt that it was too much. A life for a life.

  She drew in a long breath and opened her eyes and stumbled back. Pins and needles invaded her legs and arms. Was that foulness also in her own head?

  “Well?” Sasskia didn’t turn to face her. Her voice sounded different, stronger. Her arms moved rhythmically as she patted something on her lap.

  Ellinca’s throat closed. A darkness shrouded everything, as if her body had yet to adjust to seeing the real world again. “What?”

  “Can you heal me?”

  “I’m sorry but I cannot do it.”

  “I thought as much. Now go, before the night takes further hold. The moons are soon to rise.”

  Relief that she had accepted her verdict so easily, then disbelief at the words she had heard. “What?”

  “Night has come. You have wasted hours to tell me what I already knew. Go before my affliction makes me turn you into the next bludvoik.” She reached ‘round to grasp Ellinca’s hand. “Go.” Sasskia didn’t release her.

  Thoughts hunted desperately after each other in Ellinca’s head.

  Night has fallen? Then the darkness was night. Above her the dome scintillated with a sky bursting with the light of hundreds of stars, a sheen of silver crept up one side of it, a moon struggling to rise. Below Sasskia didn’t look any different, yet she oozed threat. No claws, no fangs, no blood leaked from her eyes. In her lap...in her lap was a coiled diamond python, the pattern on its back a mosaic of green and turquoise interlocking diamonds. A python? Where had it come from?

  Sasskia smiled as she spoke and her voice became quieter, as though she wished to be unheard. “They come to me when it is their time. Father leaves them. But this one will not satisfy me for I feel, I desire, I need larger prey.”

  There was something different about her. Up close Ellinca could see the moonlight in her veins. Silver and liquid, and the skin of Sasskia’s hands where they held hers – that skin was suddenly cold as molten snow.

  “Go,” shrieked the girl. “Go!”

  Ellinca staggered and almost fell as she was thrust back. Her eyes focused. She turned and ran, half-fell again, used her hands against the ground to regain balance, and ran – as fast and hard as she had ever run before. Words echoed after her.

  “You are a mage. If I change you, who knows what you will become? Go. Before I catch you, little girl!”

  The thud of her feet and her heart and the gasp of her breathing deafened her. Were there footsteps behind her? Ellinca strained desperately to hear.

  She could stop and listen, but no, fear drove her on. She didn’t stop running until she reached the door, and came to a halt by slamming into it. Black mist washed her vision. She gulped air then yelled and smashed her fist against the metal, over and over.

  When the guard opened it she fell in and scrambled madly along the floor on her knees until at last she heard the door close.

  “To the next door,” the guard said tersely.

  Before he could help her up she sprang to her feet. It wasn’t until the second door was shut and the bars placed across it that her heart slowed.

  “You’re safe.” His gaze flicked toward the door. He knew what was in there. She sniffed as if it had been nothing, smiled weakly then sagged. Lucky the wall was there to lean on.

  A few minutes later a different guard escorted her along yet another of the long corridors. He ushered her into a room where Thollemew Smythe sat behind a desk, writing industriously with quill and ink. The guard saluted and left. What made these soldiers stay at their post? If she were one of them she would have deserted in an instant.

  “You’re wondering why any of us stay with him.” Smythe looked up from the papers, slid the quill into the inkpot. “Aren’t you?”

  She slumped into a soft armchair then glared at him.

  “It’s the pay, of course, and the fascinating people we get to meet.” He smiled.

  Though she chuckled dryly to show her contempt for his joke, that familiar tightness settled at the back of her throat. With the back of her hand, she dabbed the wetness from her eyes. “Very funny.”

  He still smiled, though his lips were a stiff line and his hands rested on the paper before him, as if he waited for something.

  Ellinca didn’t despise him quite so much as she had earlier. He had reasons. Whatever they were, he loved the Imperator, believed in him. She cursed her own even-handedness. This man was her enemy.

  “You think he is cruel, but he is a good ruler. I know his mind as well as any and he only does what he thinks is right for our country. He helped me when my newborn son was ill. Without such help I am sure he would have died.”

  “A good ruler. Yet you have brought me here for this suicidal idea.”

  “Suicide. I see.” He closed his eyes. “You deny that it is worthwhile? To save Sasskia? You have seen her monstrous side. That is not her.” He opened his eyes and she could see sorrow and distress in them. “I will do anything to convince you. If this ability of yours, of which I must say, I have heard of no other like it...if it can save her then, please, do so. She is so young, and everything to him.”

  “I am young, and everything to me!”

  “Ah.”

  How dare he accuse me of wanting to live? Ellinca seethed. “If he is so wonderful explain away his murder of the Grakk people! Explain what I saw today!”

  He grimaced. “When Sasskia first created a bludvoik...it was after a delegation of the Grakkurds had journeyed here to plea for peace. He believes they somehow infected her, caused her to become a mage. I cannot convince him otherwise, and I have tried, and tried.” He swept his hand back over his hair.

  She put her head down, and stared at the carpet. “The war was already happening.”

  “Yes. It seems to be somewhat of a tradition. For the last fifty years or so, off and on. But never have we been able to defeat them.”

  “Perhaps we didn’t want to.”

  “Perhaps. This time was different. The resources that Uster has poured into this war are remarkable.”

  “At the gate to Carstelan, I saw such an awful thing. The hate he has poured into th
is war is remarkable.”

  “Even the great have their flaws.”

  Even the great have their flaws. What an easy way to dismiss genocide.

  Quietly she spoke. “I will die if I attempt this thing.”

  “Perhaps not.” He shifted in his seat then rested his palms together, tapping the fingers. “It can’t be certain.”

  “It is...” She thought back to the moment when she found the source of Sasskia’s illness. “I would die.” There was a disturbing intensity to the way he stared at her. She had as much as admitted that she knew what she had to do, and to him that would mean it could be done. She swallowed.

  “Would you send your own son to do this?”

  Thollemew stilled his fingers and sat straighter. “What a question. What...a...question. Ask me that if the situation ever arises. When he is a full-grown man...I would expect him to do his duty for the Imperator.”

  She flushed. “A dodgy answer. Easy to say. Would you die? Would you die for him?”

  He picked up two metal balls from his desktop. The room was quiet for a time save for the clicking of the balls against each other. “Yes, I would.”

  The gods save me from this crazy man. She wished she could just disappear, sink into the chair and never be seen again. How many others, Immolators or not, had sacrificed themselves?

  “Let me show you something.” He rose and went over to a slim table positioned against the wall. On it was an intricately crafted steel instrument. Two binocular eyepieces protruded from the top. One of the balls fitted into a cradle at the base of the instrument. “These are the bitbrains from two of our spy eyes that circulate in the forest to the south of here.” Thollemew beckoned her to him. “Look in here.”

  Hesitantly she did so. While she struggled to decipher what she saw he spoke with some pride of the manufacture of the spy eyes.

  “They don’t last long. Frope gave our researchers the idea. You know of his lizard? Pieces of Frope’s brain, preserved with magience, were found after the attack on him. His lizard uses one of those brain particles to think. These use the same principle to preserve images, difficult to achieve but an extremely useful procedure.”