by C. G. Garcia
He still seethed with the indignation of it. He had been propped up against a tree in his favorite spot along the Lake of Tears, reading a newly discovered spellbook that King Diryan had given him and much like today, greatly enjoying what little free time he had been given away from his ever-demanding duties.
Not even a flash of lightning or a crack of thunder had sought fit to warn him of the incoming storm before the Thrones above decided to let loose a rather nasty downpour that had his robes drenched within beats. He still had not lived down all the jokes that had resulted from his arriving at the palace resembling a drowned snowbird.
If only I was a weather-mage, then I wouldn’t have to worry about something as trivial as a little rain, Aidric thought slyly, urging Shadow, his midnight-black steed, to slacken his pace as he trotted along the well-worn path that snaked its way through the thick trees to the banks of the lake.
It was a beautiful day, perfect for relaxing under his tree with the warm, morning suns soothing his tired limbs. All around him, nature also seemed to notice the beauty of the day. The air resonated with the sweet, harmonious voices of the birds, singing their endless melodies until all of them interwove into an enchanting chorus that radiated the happiness of the world. Even the trees seemed to wave their limbs in a cheerful dance in the cool breeze.
Aidius, what I would give to have a maiden accompanying me to my spot right now, he thought wistfully. The Thrones know that I have been without a lover for far too long.
Aidric sighed irritably at that lonely thought, wondering, as always, why he insisted on torturing himself with that particular thought over and over again, especially on a day so beautiful that it demanded only cheerful thoughts. He seldom had time for a personal life after his mage duties to Lamia, his beloved kingdom. The irregular hours he kept and all his abrupt departures during emergencies often turned people away from him in frustration.
When Aidric first announced to the kingdom that he had achieved the title of a mage after years of study under Othos, then the Mage-general of Lamia and also King Diryan’s personal court mage, women by the dozens flocked around him, competing amongst themselves for his favor. He had enjoyed their attention immensely.
The mystery of his mage powers made him extremely fascinating to them, and he had them immediately enthralled when he began to perform little feats for them with his magic. The fact that he had a handsome face didn’t hurt either. He’d had no trouble finding a lover during those first few moons as the new mage at court. His popularity also raised several notches when it became known publically a few moons later that he was King Diryan’s choice to succeed Mage-general Othos upon his death.
Nevertheless, Aidric could never keep a lover longer than a few moons. The ladies he courted would realize how much of his time his duties to the kingdom required. Some even went several moons between the times they would see him. It seemed as if he was always being summoned off in the middle of the night to the aid of a neighboring kingdom that was under attack, and the battles sometimes continued on for several moons.
Frustrated and unhappy, they always eventually gave up on him and moved on to other lovers, leaving him alone with his guilt over the fact that his duties would always have to come first over his own life and the life of those he cared about.
Then there had been Alina, a maiden as charming as she was beautiful. She never minded his long tours of duty, making sure that they made the most of the time they did have together. She had seemed a gift sent straight from Seni during those difficult times. Aidric had never been as happy as he was during the time Alina and he had shared. Then the world had come crashing down on him. But no—he would not think of those times, would not torment himself. He refused to think of them.
As if brooding ever helped anyone, he thought wryly. Selwyn would hang me from my toenails if he knew I was chasing my own tail again after that magnificent lecture he gave me over how I’ll find the right maiden someday. Right maiden, indeed. What utter nonsense! Look what my last “right maiden” did to me! Sel already has Raya, so what does he know of loneliness?
Aidric instantly felt guilty. He gave himself a mental kick in the backside for that last whine as he continued down the grassy path with only the trees as his companions.
“I should be relaxing after all,” he announced to the trees as if he expected them to reply. Shadow whickered as if in agreement.
However, fate had other plans for him. Almost in the same instant, his mage senses awoke screaming. His mind instinctually began to probe the area before he could even gasp in surprise. What it encountered—Aidius—it was power that hit his mind-probe with all the subtlety of a landslide!
As he hastily wrenched his mind away, Shadow reared violently, causing Aidric’s teeth to clamp together painfully. He wrestled with the steed for a few endless moments before he was finally able to settle Shadow down enough to take action.
He banished the spellbook he had been leafing through into his magical storage plane for safekeeping and quickly strengthened the defensive magical shields about his body before turning cautiously towards the south where the origin of the power source was like a beacon of raging fire to his mage senses.
Aidric could neither see anyone, nor sense anything else hidden amongst the trees that the power could have originated from, yet, he knew something was out there. He could even feel a faint glimmer of human emotion, but it was too distant, too vague to decipher. Praise Seni that it was not a Summoning at least! The magical energies were not quite right.
Though a great deal of unease began to wash through him, Aidric also felt a familiar rush of excitement at the thought of investigating the alien power source. What manner of creature contained such power as to have the ability to both cross the Lamian border, and to also have successfully kept those powers hidden from the suspicious eyes and senses of the mages assigned to the border station?
Cursing as he realized the implications, Aidric dismounted and hurriedly tethered Shadow to the nearest tree. Then with his heart pounding, he carefully directed another Probe of Inquiry from his mind into the forest to see if he could touch the mind of whoever or whatever was recklessly sending out such radiant vibes of power for any soul with mage powers to perceive.
Several hundred handspans into the forest, his mind-probe suddenly touched the mind of his target, the raw power slamming into his mental shields. He instantly drew his mind back as if burned, but that brief touch had been enough from him to sample the “flavor” of the mind, that the one he sought was a woman.
There had been no sense of startlement, no indication at all that she had even sensed that her mind had just been touched. That was a good sign. If she was not blocking her thoughts from intrusion, then he would be able to easily steal the thoughts directly from her mind with her being none the wiser.
I wonder if she even realizes how stupid it is to leave her mind so completely unguarded. Or— His thoughts darkened. Could this mindlessness be a trap?
Aidric cautiously touched her mind again, this time bracing for the onslaught of power, and slowly searched for anomalies along the surface as her power raged against his mental shields. Then without warning, something clicked in her head, a light thump against his mental “hand,” and a blast of power in the form of a piercing scream crashed into his mind shields, instantly shattering not only them, but his bodily shields as well.
The sheer blast of her power knocked Aidric flat, his back hitting the ground so violently that it drove the air from his lungs. As he lay stunned and gasping, her screams began to fill his head at an intolerable volume.
Aidric half-choked, half-cried out himself, reflexively throwing his hands over his ears in a foolish attempt to block out the sound of her terrible screams that dripped with fear and agony. He knew that the screams were purely mental. He only had to reset the shields to his mind to silence them.
But he couldn’t. The concentration he needed to rebuild the shields was utterly impossible as her shrill screams r
ipped excruciatingly through his mind. Aidric writhed on the ground and moaned, feeling as if his head was going to explode any moment. Then between one beat to the next, the screams within his head swelled to a new, impossible height, and his screams were now a match for the ones in his head.
Panic threatened to overwhelm him. His mind was being ripped to shreds!
Then, just as suddenly as the screams began, they cut off as if someone had abruptly encased his mind within a spell of silence. The silence was as profound and as unnerving as an unexpected clap of thunder on a cloudless day.
Aidric slowly brought his hands away from his ears, his heart pounding to the point of pain and gasping for air. He had completely expected them to be sticky with blood, but they were clean. For a moment, he could only lay where he had fallen in stunned silence. What in Seni’s name had happened?
Only after sensing that the immediate danger had passed did he slowly climb to his feet and begin to brush off the soil and dead leaves that clung to his robes. The mundane exercise helped to calm his nerves a bit and to slow his racing heart back to an almost normal pace.
He then immediately rebuilt his mind and bodily shields, still visibly shaken on how the unknown woman’s single blast of power had instantly shattered his strongest shields on contact.
No one had ever done that.
By Aidius, what in the six hells was that all about? Aidric thought wildly, his eyes still widened with shock. That power—
His head whirled towards the direction he had sensed her. He had to find her. If she proved to be an ally, a mage such as she would be an enormous asset to King Diryan’s magical defense. It might even be the very thing they needed to tip the scales enough to end their current silent war with Mihr.
Unless that whole episode was actually a deliberate attack, a test of her abilities, and she has already transported herself out of Lamia—
That disturbing thought sent Aidric crashing through the forest like a deer with the hunt at its heels, weaving skillfully between the trees whose lower limbs maddeningly seemed to grab at his clothes with their prickly branches in an attempt to prevent him from going any farther.
A few beats later, he skidded to a halt as he entered a small clearing of thick grass about the diameter of ten strides that he had never seen before. It vibrated strongly with residual magic similar to that of Lamia’s Mage-field but on a much smaller scale.
Before he could even puzzle over the strangeness of the place, Aidric’s eyes fell on the body of a woman. She lay sprawled face down on the forest floor, her body still and twisted in a painfully unnatural position, appearing to be dead at first glance. Sunlight streamed all around her, enveloping her body in a faint glow that was both disturbing and beautiful to behold. He cautiously invoked his Inner-sight and saw a small cloud of residual Mage-field particles hovering about a finger-span above her body, causing a mystical illusion around her of tiny, shimmering crystals.
Aidric edged over to her cautiously, an incantation ready on his lips for defense should she suddenly awaken and strike out at him, but she didn’t so much as twitch a finger. Once he reached her side, he got his first good look at the woman—and cried out in shock, if not a little fear.
Aidius!
Her hair was gold! What he had first assumed was a patch of sunlight surrounding her head, was in fact a long mane of golden hair. No mortal of any of the many races of Seni’s World possessed hair of that hue. Yet, here lay a maiden before his very eyes that indisputably had hair of gold. The only thing that even suggested that hair that color was possible was an old Lamian legend of a prophecy that many believed—and feared—would one day come to pass.
This cannot be possible—what in the name of Seni could this possibly mean? Has the legendary Golden Mage actually come?
Aidric suddenly felt dizzy as he continued to stare down at the woman as if she was Aidius, himself. She wore very peculiar clothing, a top and bottom piece that appeared to be undergarments of some sort but made of materials he could not name. One cautious touch of the thick, deep blue material that indecently hugged her thighs confirmed their strangeness.
Although alone, he couldn’t help feeling embarrassed at having observed the nakedness of her legs. No lady of Lamia ever dared to show as much flesh as was now visible on the lady before him—well, at least no lady of decent society.
He knelt down beside her and gently rolled her body over onto her back so he could view her face. Only then did he see her youth. She couldn’t have lived more than twenty summers. He frowned as he noted a trickle of blood flowing from both her nose and ears—a telltale sign of magical trauma to the brain. It was a condition common to mages, especially the apprentice-mages. He, himself, had fallen victim to the condition on more occasions than he could count. Rest and a potion or two would easily remedy the damage.
Nevertheless, even in her disarrayed state, she was intoxicatingly beautiful—just as the prophecy claimed, he suddenly remembered, but that was hardly proof, no matter that she was more beautiful than any maiden he had ever laid eyes upon. Aidric wistfully wondered what color her eyes were, resisting the urge to pull her eyelids up for a peek. He imagined them to be a shade that he had never seen on another, just like her golden locks.
Perhaps rose—
A flash of light on her wrist suddenly caught his attention, jarring him out of his ridiculous musings. He gave his head a sharp shake. He must still be in shock.
Aidric cautiously bent over to examine the source of the flash. The light proved to only be a reflection off the glass-like surface of a strange piece of what he thought was a bracelet that she wore loosely on her wrist.
He gingerly lifted her wrist closer to his face so he could get a better look and immediately dropped her arm in alarm when something inside the glass centerpiece moved. He backed away suspiciously from the object and sent a Probe of Inquiry down at the object to try to discern if the source of the movement had anything to do with magic. What his probe encountered left him puzzled.
It isn’t magical, Aidric thought in confusion. There is energy about it, but it isn’t Mage-field or life-force energy. What, then, could possibly be the source? Could this object have come from the Thrones themselves?
Once again, he lifted up her wrist and inspected the strange object. Inside the circular glass against a backdrop of swirling, green waves, a small, pointed bar extending out from the center moved rhythmically around in a circle. Around the outer edges of the circle lay a series of peculiar, evenly-spaced symbols engraved into the background. Two similar bars also emerged from the center of the circle, one shorter than the other, but they did not seem to move.
Baffled, Aidric delicately tugged on the bracelet-like object until he was able to slip it over her hand, and once free, he immediately banished it into his magical storage plane to examine later. At the moment, the young woman was his primary concern.
Her face was locked in a grimace of pain that distorted her beauty, which was far more concerning than the sight of her blood. Normally, magical trauma caused weakness and bleeding but nothing more painful than a prolonged wine headache. Only a severe case would cause unconsciousness.
It isn’t magical trauma alone that ails her, then. Could she have foolishly seared her own mind away?
He laid a tentative hand across her dampened forehead, closed his eyes in concentration, and sent out a mind-probe to read her.
Pain!
Aidric recoiled and nearly lost the probe when his mind touched the pain. He drew a sharp breath in and cursed. It was the same—the same pain he had felt when her screams had filled his mind. Even though her screams had ceased, her mind was still experiencing that terrible agony. Had she not fallen unconscious, she would have been writhing in agony and probably half mad.
She was unconsciously reading the minds of every soul within the borders of Lamia. The volume those millions of voices created within her mind had never been meant for mortal ears to hear. Magical trauma and shock would be the le
ast of her problems if she didn’t receive the care of a healer, and soon, not if she ever hoped to awaken from her unnatural sleep.
Through his probe, Aidric could also see the raw, untamed magic of that miniature Mage-field that now surrounded them flowing wildly through every particle of her body, causing every nerve ending to be alive with pain. He withdrew his mind-probe with a shudder, unable to imagine the pain she was enduring, but one thing was perfectly clear. She was untrained.
Though Aidric was a powerful mage, luckily for her, he was also a powerful healer. The young woman needed treatment immediately from both types of practitioners, or else the magical energies would consume her.
Gently caressing her troubled face, he eased her pain by placing his own magical shields around her mind, blocking the stream of voices from entering it and also blocking her ability to use her mage powers. He could sense the wild energy pushing against the shields, but he was confident that they would hold until he found the time to strengthen them.
Her face immediately relaxed from her grimace once he had relieved the cause of the chaos within her. She sighed weakly in her unnatural sleep, shifting her head restlessly to the side before she fell silent once again. With the grimace gone, she looked even more beautiful to his eyes than before.
Satisfied that she was no longer in excruciating pain, Aidric shrugged off his cloak and draped it around her body. Then he gathered her into his arms and rose swiftly from the ground. She felt as if she weighed nothing in his arms. She didn’t even stir.
Turning towards the direction where he had left Shadow tethered, Aidric pondered over whether or not he should use the portal spell to transport them to his quarters at the palace at once or to ride. The portal spell required a tremendous amount of channeled power and concentration that usually left him feeling battered and weary for several sand-marks unless accompanied by another mage who added their own channels and strength to the spell.