The Fire Mages

by Pauline M. Ross

  He stopped dead. “Blue? Blue! What blue lights?” He almost trembled with excitement.

  I shrugged. “You know – around people’s heads.”

  “Heads? Which people’s heads? Do I have a blue light right now?”

  “Oh no, it comes and goes. Actually, I’ve never seen it on you. Are you saying you don’t see that? You see this golden glow thing, but not the blue lights? I thought everyone could see that.”

  He laughed in pure delight, and then threw his arms round me and hugged me. I stood rigid under his embrace, not knowing what to make of it all. What to make of him.

  “You are amazing, you know,” he said, leaning towards me so that his nose almost touched mine. “You really don’t understand, do you? Come on, there’s an arbour just round the corner. Let’s sit down and you can tell me all about your blue lights and I can tell you about my golden ones.”

  He raced along, fizzing with excitement. He knew his way around better than I did. I’d never been in this part of the gardens before, and I was surprised to find that the wilderness of trees and great dark shrubs we’d been walking beneath now thinned out and we were gazing at a wide open stretch of neatly trimmed grass, sloping down towards one corner of the mages’ house. Some distance away, a group of children were playing, some with wooden swords, some with balls or cloth dolls, watched over by a gossiping cluster of nurses.

  Drei stopped dead, and when I looked at him, all the eagerness had washed out of him. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but it wasn’t a happy one.

  “What is it?”

  “Hmm?” He turned to me as if he’d almost forgotten my presence, his hands tucked under his arms. “Did you play like that, when you were a child? Did you have friends?”

  “Of course. My brothers and sisters, mostly, but I knew all the other children in the village. We all played together.”

  “They never saw anything odd in you? Anything different about you?”

  That was a strange question, and an interesting one. It’s true that I’d been one of them, but somehow not the same. I was the quiet one, lost in my own thoughts much of the time. I’d had ambitions, I wasn’t content to live and die without ever stepping beyond the boundaries of the village. But I wasn’t odd in any other way. At least I didn’t think so. Or maybe whatever oddness I had was not a problem in the village.

  Drei was so pensive that I guessed it wasn’t like that for him. His own father had described him as a strange boy, and he unsettled me as well. There was something not quite normal about him.

  “Have you any idea what it was like,” he said quietly, as we sat down in a small brick built shelter, “being the child no one wanted? I was the desperation child, the one who was there in case the worst happened. They thought Bella would die, they thought Cerandina might die too, or at least would never have another child, so my father took a drusse and, praise the Moon Gods, I came along. But Bella survived and Cerandina recovered and decided she would have another child after all – well, that didn’t happen, but they tried. It became a stupid competition between them, did you know that? She said it was his fault there were no more children, and he said it was hers and set out to prove it.”

  “Which he did,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” Drei said, looking sideways at me. “There are rumours about the children he’s had by his various gathering drusse. But either way, no one wanted me. My mother was sent away to appease the Lady Cerandina, and I was brought up by a succession of nurses. There was one of them – I can't remember her name, there were so many – she told me stories every night. Not the nice kind, the fairy stories with happy endings, but horrible tales about ogres and demons and half-dead creatures that eat small children. Not surprisingly, I had nightmares and – things started happening. Objects moved, or broke, or caught fire. Once a stable hand was stabbed in the middle of the night and she swore she saw the knife moving by itself, no hand holding it. Everyone suspected me, because I’d been angry with her the sun before – she hadn't taken proper care of my horse and I'd shouted at her – but I never left my bed, and there were witnesses to prove it.”

  I said nothing, shocked and horrified in equal measure. No wonder he had such a reputation!

  “Eventually the nightmares stopped. But when I was about ten or eleven, I’d been hauled up in front of Lady Cerandina for some alleged misdemeanour or other – which I hadn’t done, incidentally – and she ranted on for an age. I couldn’t defend myself. That would be answering back, and lords aren’t allowed to answer back, apparently. She called me ‘the whore’s little runt’ and other charming expressions.”

  “How horrible!” I said, appalled. “She was supposed to be such a sweet, gentle lady.” Although there were other opinions, I recalled.

  Drei gave me a wry smile. “Not so sweet to me, ever. Not terribly sweet to Bella or to her own husband, either. But then she left me alone with Bella which was a mistake, because Bella started in on me too. Even the same words. Well, I could just feel the anger boiling up in me. It’s very hard, at that age, to take such insults without being able to respond. Bella said something bad about my mother and – I don’t even know how it happened, but there was a flash of light and the curtains caught fire. Bella was terrified, so some good came out of it, I suppose. Everyone just assumed there was a candle or something, and nobody blamed me. But a few moons later it happened again, in my own room this time. The hearthrug. I’d been sent there after some supposed insult to Bella, and I was brooding. They were suspicious about that one. And then there was the matter of the stables.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” I said.

  “I suppose everyone in Ardamurkan has. A whole wing of the stables burnt to the ground, and a great scramble to get the horses out. That was the stable hand again, not looking after my horse properly. A lot of the servants are like that – they're not openly rude to me, but they have subtle ways to make it clear I’m not in favour.”

  “But you’re the Kellon’s son! You’re Bai-Kellonor. If anything happens to the Lady Bellastria, or the nobles decide against her, you'll be the next Kellon.”

  “And if ever it comes about, a lot of scores will be settled, you may be sure. I have a very good memory for who has been kind to me and who hasn’t. But it’s unlikely. One of the reasons for finding a husband for Bella is so that the nobles will be more likely to accept her. A strong leader... that’s what they want. I’m not sure there’s much future for me here.”

  We were both silent for a while. Across the green, the children were being gathered together to go inside, perhaps for the noon board. I’d lost track of time. I was absorbed in his story, this strange, lonely man who claimed a connection with me. But it raised more questions than it answered.

  “So it was you – starting the fires? How? Even mages can't create fire.”

  “Look.”

  He held out his hand, the same slim brown hand he’d asked me to compare with my own. Cupping it, he held it out in front of him and within a heartbeat flames appeared, a ball of gentle fire lapping around his palm.

  I goggled at him, my mouth flapping open in shock. “Can you do that whenever you want?”

  “Yes. It took me a long time and a lot of practice to control it. Even now I have to work to keep myself calm so that it doesn’t just – pop up.”

  The flames flickered out, and then reappeared, then vanished again.

  “I expect you could do it too, if you tried,” he said conversationally, as if he were talking about some mundane task like making pastry or playing the pipes.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’ve never done anything like this? Unintentionally?”

  “No, never. I can’t. At least, I’m fairly sure I can’t. And – if it’s magic, it’s illegal, isn’t it? The penalty for unauthorised use is—”

  “Death, potentially. I know.” He shrugged, unconcerned. “It’s not as if I choose to do it. It just happens. And these blue lights you see – that’s not so
mething you choose, either. Tell me about them.”

  “There’s not much to tell. They come and go, flaring up then disappearing almost at once. Sometimes it’s just the faintest blue haze, sometimes it’s darker, a really vivid blue.”

  “But what does it mean?” His voice was calm, but he was very persistent.

  “It’s just emotion of some kind. I’ve never worked out a pattern. Some people are more prone to it, with others it never happens.”

  “Is it an hour, a situation, always in sunlight, anything like that?”

  Good questions. I thought about it. “Not that I’ve noticed. It’s when people are talking, but it can be any time or place.”

  “Fascinating! And did you ever tell anyone about it?”

  I’d mentioned it, of course. I’d asked my mother what it meant, once, when I was quite small and she’d just cuffed me lightly on the ear and told me to get out from underfoot. I’d guessed that it was one of those subjects adults didn’t like to talk about, perhaps something not quite polite. Once I’d mentioned it to Alita, the sister I was closest to, and she’d looked at me sideways and told me to get my head out of Mother’s books and join the real world. I didn’t know what she meant, but if even she wouldn’t talk about it, then it must be very bad, so I never raised the subject again. I was good at keeping quiet.

  “So no one else sees it?” I asked Drei.

  “I can’t be sure, but I certainly don’t, and I’ve never seen any reference to it anywhere. This is so interesting!” His dark eyes were alight with enthusiasm. “We must experiment – walk about town or sit in taprooms, and you can tell me when you see it, and we’ll try to work out what it means.”

  It was a lot to take in, all at once. My head was spinning, thinking about this aura, and now perhaps my blue lights, which I’d always supposed were so mundane, were significant in some way. It was bewildering.

  “I don’t understand,” I said stupidly. “I mean – what makes me this way? What am I? What are we?”

  He looked amused by my confusion. “I can’t be certain, but I think we are both natural mages. Wild mages, some people call them. We have magic inside us. That is part of why I want to go to Kingswell, to find out more about it. There is very little information here, only that such people appear from time to time, without any obvious reason, that they have an aura – the golden glow – and certain abilities. Clearly the abilities are more variable than I’d thought. There used to be a lot of such people, and they were properly trained and so forth, but it’s very rare now. I’ve only ever seen five such people, in my whole life, and three of those were fleeting, just chance encounters who came and went, almost before I was aware of them. But you – I’ve followed you ever since we met at your village years ago, do you remember?” I nodded. “I hoped you would become a law scribe, so you would have access to more information through their library, but obviously that is not going to happen now. You never had anything odd happen before?”

  “Before?”

  “Before you spelled your sister, I mean.”

  “But I didn't! That—” I stopped. Was it possible? I thought about some of the odd things that had happened – the healing spellpage which shouldn’t have worked, yet it did; the mistakes I knew I’d made which corrected themselves at once; the dancing letters which only I could see.

  “Have you ever watched a spellpage being scribed?” I said, leaning towards him excitedly.

  “A few times, yes.”

  “And do the letters shimmer?”

  “Of course – oh!” His expression was full of astonishment. “You mean, not everyone sees that?”

  And then, suddenly, the terrible realisation. My hands flew to my face.

  “Oh no! No! It can't be!” My voice was the tiniest whisper.

  “Tell me,” he said gently.

  “I think I killed the Asha-Kellon.”

  “What? You scribed a death spellpage? Well good, she deserved it.”

  “I was just practising, but I put her name on it. Oh...”

  He put an arm round me and I wept on his shoulder, while he said, “Ssshh, hush, it’s all right,” helplessly. I thought of all the little things over the years, going right back to watching the scribe when I was eight. I had always been drawn to the magic – spellpages, the mirror room, the marble pillar at the renewal. And now I knew what had gone wrong with that – instead of the energy being drawn through Cal into his stone vessel and spilling over into me, I had drawn it into me, thus leaving less for him. I had been so energised afterwards. My aura was brighter, Drei had said. And I had spelled my sister with a fake spellpage. I wondered what else I could do.

  “You’re right,” I said, lifting my head abruptly. “I need to find out more about this, about what I am – what we are. May I come to Kingswell with you?”

  He grinned boyishly. “Of course.”

  “But how? What as?”

  “As my research assistant, if you like. But you are not a scholar, so if you want to get into the Imperial Library with me, you will need noble rank. That means you would have to be my drusse. But we wouldn't have to sleep together or anything,” he added hastily.

  I laughed at that. Another man unaffected by my womanly charms, such as they were.

  “Drusse it is, then,” I said.

  “Excellent. We leave with the Drashon’s party in two suns.” He grinned at me. “This is going to be so much fun!”

  12: Kingswell

  This time I scribed my own drusse contract. I shouldn’t say so, but it was rather an elegant affair, more succinct than is usual in such cases. We settled for seven moons, with no children and an astonishingly high allowance for me.

  Drei had no idea where to go, so I took him to Mani’s Scribing House, and various juniors raced around to find someone of suitably high rank to deal with it. Mani could have witnessed and sealed it himself, of course, but with Drei being the Kellon’s son and Bai-Kellonor, they wanted to accord the process due reverence. Eventually, in front of a crowd of scribes agog with excitement, the business was completed and we went to the Contracts’ Hall to have it registered. Because of his rank, this was not a mere matter of handing over the contract and paying the appropriate silvers. There were more forms to be signed and sealed and sent off with all haste to the Hall and then to Kingswell.

  Cal was upset, but he bade me farewell graciously. He had a date set already for his next renewal, only a couple of moons away.

  “I shall have to find a new drusse,” he said glumly.

  “You still have Raylan,” I said, rather unkindly. “He'd be happy to oblige.”

  He winced, but said nothing else. When I had gathered my few possessions together, and the Hall servants had loaded them into a wagon and were waiting to depart, he hugged me tight for a long time.

  “I’ll still be here when you get back,” he said. Then, plaintively, “If you get back, I mean. I wish you well, Kyra. I always have, despite – Well, never mind that. You know you will always have a friend in me. Friend or – whatever you want.”

  As I rode off in the wagon, he stood on outside the door unmoving, his face a picture of misery, until I lost sight of him.

  ~~~~~

  For two suns, I lived at the Hall in the vast suite that was Drei’s home, with my own bedroom. We ate evening board with the Kellon and Deyria, Bellastria, and a whole array of relations and advisors and visiting dignitaries.

  The Kellon greeted me formally, but made no comment on the new arrangement. A drusse was not a matter of much interest. Sooner or later, I supposed, Drei would be married to some high ranking noble woman to forge or enhance a political bond but a drusse was a personal affair, a whim. However solid the contract, it could be overturned instantly if it became inconvenient, and mine was very short term. It might raise an eyebrow or two, but no one at the Hall would even bother to remember my name. I would be ‘Drei’s drusse’ and nothing more. That suited me very well.

  The Drashon’s party returning to Kingswell wa
s the same huge array of people I’d seen arrive not so long before. Then I had been waiting in trepidation to hear my fate. Now I was just a tiny part of the company. Drei had organised a carriage for me, and we had our own honour guard and wagon full of luggage and servants. I’d had no time to acquire more clothes, but Drei had written ahead and an expensive tailor would be expecting us when we arrived at Kingswell.

  “You will need proper clothes for the court assemblies,” he said, after he’d frowned over my limited wardrobe.

  “Do I have to wear skirts?”

  My face must have shown my reluctance, for he laughed. “No need, if you dislike the idea. The azai is very elegant and entirely appropriate for formal occasions, and simple tunic and trousers for ordinary wear. Do you ride? You will need leather gear for that. I’ll get you a horse when we get there. Don’t look so worried, I’ll pay for all this. You are the Kellon’s representative, too, so you need to look the part.”