"Never really won one either," added the battle mage. "But then, I suspect they're not interested in conquest, just protecting what they have."
I nodded. Of all of them, they seemed the most likely to be receptive of me, while at the same time, being a man, would make starting off difficult. I might have to send the girls in first. I blinked a few times. I might have to ask the girls if they might consider going in first.
My hand moved towards the last remaining area of the map.
"It's sort of a kingdom," said the basics mage, "but instead of a king, it's run by an elected committee. They use both sexes of mage, and pay them as well as their soldiers for risking their lives to defend their land."
The battle I’d ended when first getting here, had been between us and them. Not a good basis for trying to talk to them, but if they were a true democracy, hopefully their leaders would be talkers rather than fighters. On the other hand, I’d sent their troops home using magic, and they'd think I’d killed a mage doing it.
I sighed again.
"We need to stop all the fighting, once and for all. Where do you think we should start?"
They all looked at me as if it was obvious, and I was the dimwitted student not getting it. I raised an eyebrow at the battle mage.
"With the battle currently in progress!"
Twenty Eight
I stood just inside the tree line, watching.
I’d positioned myself at the midpoint of the killing field, although the battle had been going for long enough, there was no clear cut middle anymore. It was a melee of epic proportions.
Stopping it had been my plan, but having arrived here, I’d been so taken with the scope of it, I couldn’t help but stop and watch. I had a vague awareness people were dying while I did nothing, but, epic!
The main battle was with swords, maces, some sort of lance, and variations of blades. On one side, the fighters were all men, chests bare, most of whom had a small shield in their other hand. On the other, the fighters were a mixture of men and women. They wore heavy clothing in a leather look, and didn't carry shields.
The thing which caught my attention right away was the lack of shields didn’t mean they weren’t shielded. Weapons bounced off something you couldn’t see a lot of the time, and more than one killing stroke failed to connect when it should have.
The ground was slick with blood, and strewn with bodies and body parts. The faces of those nearest to me, were showing fatigue, but there was no sign the struggle was going to end anytime soon.
Half way up the slope on each side, were lines of people I took to be mages. On one side they were all men, on the other all women. Half of the men were firing fireballs into the main fight, the other half throwing them at the line of women mages.
What the women were doing took me longer to figure out. About a third of them were shielding the rest from the fireballs being lobbed at them. I assumed another third were dealing with the fireballs being thrown at their troops, as very few of them actually hit anyone. And I finally saw the remainder were erecting short term shields for individual troops to keep killing strokes from hitting them.
My jaw fell open slightly as I took in the scope of the defensive magic being used by the women. The sheer skill involved in shifting shields around so many fighters so quickly, was staggering.
On both sides behind the mage lines, were the troop generals, and mage generals. They stood in front of large tents, with banners flapping in the breeze above them.
On the women's side, a single female figure stood apart from the rest.
Just to see what the reaction would be, I set fire to both the tents. On the male side, no-one noticed it until it was ablaze and too far gone to save, and the mage who reacted, removed it completely, and tapped another next to him, who replaced it with a new one. On the women's side, one of the mage generals turned, flicked a finger in the direction of the tent, and the fire went out. Another flick, and it was if there hadn't been a fire at all.
"He's here," I heard in my mind, the voice being female.
"Who's here?" asked another voice, also in my head.
"The reaper."
"We don’t have time for your fairy stories."
"He's here. I told you he was coming."
"Where is he then?"
"Observing from the far end."
"Prove it."
"How would you wish he did so?"
"If he's as powerful as you say, he should do something we know we can't do."
"But he doesn’t know what we can do."
"You do."
There was a pause, during which I felt the stare of the lone woman directed at me.
"Show us your power, oh reaper."
I thought for a moment, and put a force wall between the male mages and the battle. Immediately their fireballs stopped abruptly as they hit something no-one could see. A few of them I bounced back into the tent, which was soon blazing again.
"Withdraw!" commanded the second voice, and I had a sense of it being heard by every soldier in their army.
However, ordering it, and doing it were two completely different things. There was no stable line, and it wasn’t just a matter of walking away. A turned back would get you cut down. Backing was dangerous as well, with the bodies and blood all over the place.
I decided I needed to make my presence known. Shifting into my black cowl, and with my withered left hand showing, I calmly left the trees, and walked into the middle of the melee. The wall around me was mainly for bouncing solid things away from me, and I let it trail behind me as I walked.
The first soldier I came to was bare chested, and as he tried to strike me, I moved him up the hill. The woman he had been fighting with was moved to a similar place on her side.
The magic took form around me, and I paced forward, people blinking out all around me, as they moved. Behind me, soldiers on both sides bounced off the wall being made down the center of the field.
Fainter than it had been, I kept hearing the word 'withdraw' in my mind, and with my sight I began to see soldiers turn their backs on my wall, and move away from the battle site as fast as they safely could. The male side soldiers kept battering on my wall, until I changed it to knock them over backwards each time they hit it.
Half an hour later, I reached the other end of the field, and turned to look at my handiwork.
Most of the female side army had retreated to the top of the hill, and were disappearing over it. The other army were still on the field, and still trying to batter a way through my wall. Realizing I still had the other wall in front of the mages, I dropped it, letting their firewalls strike my main wall, which I now changed to simply absorb anything hitting it. Soldiers stopped falling over, but nothing could get through it.
On the other side of the wall, I walked back to the middle of the field.
"Go home!" I commanded, in a voice which all could hear.
"Stand!" yelled another voice, from in front of the tent.
An instant later, the mage was standing on the other side of the wall from me, looking surprised, and this became horror, when I dropped him into the ground up to his neck.
The remaining mages threw everything they had at me, none of which did anything except make the area around their colleague very hot indeed for a few moments. As I wasn’t ready to kill anyone yet, I put another small wall around the poor man, so his own people wouldn’t end up barbequing him.
When they didn’t stop throwing things at me, I sighed, and force punched the lot of them. Soldiers looked astonished as all but two of their mages went down, and didn't get up. Their assault on my wall stopped, and they looked around as if not knowing what to do.
The man up to his neck was looking at me.
"All you have to do is tell everyone to go home, and you all can."
"What are you?"
"I am what you make me. I can be your death, or I can be your friend. You choose."
I raised him out of the ground, and he looked back towar
ds his command tent, eyes going wide as he saw the bodies of his mages on the ground. He turned back to me.
"We can't be friends when you have killed so many of mine."
"By the time you walk back there, they will be on their feet again."
"You raise the dead?"
"They're not dead."
He looked at me as if he couldn’t understand what I was saying.
"Go home. I will come to see you soon, and we can talk."
"The reaper doesn’t talk."
"Then I'll come as someone else. In any case, this battle is over. Time to attend to your wounded."
He looked about to say something, but he nodded instead, turned, and signaled the soldiers to retreat. He slowly walked away.
I stood there, waiting for the field to clear. Both sides left their dead behind. When all were gone, I buried everyone in a mass grave on each side of the field, and put a grave marker on top of each.
"A very nice demonstration of power," said the voice in my head.
I looked up, and the single woman was still standing where I’d first seen her.
She waved at me to come to her.
Twenty Nine
"Follow me," she said, when I finally walked up to her. "And you can get rid of the stupid cloak and skeletal hand. I don’t scare that easily."
She turned and started walking away, so she didn’t see me change back to my normal look. I shrugged, and followed her. Soon we were on a path leading up into the hills, away from the villages. I sent my sight ahead, found a small hut in a clearing, and jumped myself there.
The hut was barely more than a sleeping room. A cooking fire was outside, with the basics for doing so. It wasn’t alight, but set ready to be lit. If anything, she lived more primitively than any of my people did.
The only thing of real interest was a large tree stump in the middle of the clearing. The stump itself wasn’t of interest, but what was on it was.
I'd never seen a bowl or dish like it. The stump was more than wide enough to sit on fully, and the dish covered the entire top of the stump. It wasn’t very deep, about a fist depth from knuckles to wrist. It was filled with water.
As I stood there looking in, I could see Tasha talking to my mother.
Footsteps caused me to look around, and she stepped into the clearing. There was nothing notable about her, other than her age, being younger than me by several years. Just a girl, like any other girl I’d ever met.
"I see you found my skrying platter."
"Is that what it is?"
She frowned, but still moved to stand on the other side of it from me.
"You act like you don’t need one."
"I don’t."
"How do you see the future then?"
Now it was my turn to frown.
"I don’t."
"Ah. I had wondered."
"Wondered what?"
"Why you turned up towards the end of the battle, and not the beginning."
"How did you know I was there?"
"At the battle, or back from wherever you went?"
"Both."
She motioned me to a smaller stump, presumably so we could sit. Instead, I created lounge chairs around the fire, and motioned her to sit. The frown returned, followed by a smile. She sat, stretched herself out testing the comfort, and waved me to sit as well, which I did.
"You're probably wondering who I am? Or what I am?"
"Not really. I'm more interesting in why I could hear you in my head."
"You heard what I wanted you to hear."
"But how?"
She laughed.
"Good. There are still things you don’t know."
"Of course there are. Why did you expect otherwise?"
"As far as I can ascertain, there has never been a more powerful mage than you before. Do you know how this has come about?"
"Nope. Not a clue."
"Ah. I guess it explains why you've been brought to me now."
"Why would that be?"
"I'm an Oracle."
"And that is?"
She looked surprised.
"You haven’t heard of us?"
"Heard the name for the first time a short while ago, but we were side tracked before I found out what it was. Any reason I should have heard of you before?"
"I keep forgetting. You were never trained. Most mages are taken to an Oracle a year after choosing. You look older, but it's still only a day later for you. Seeing an Oracle is an important part of training a mage."
"Why?"
She froze, and then shook her head rapidly. I cut her off as her mouth opened.
"Don’t tell me because it's always been done that way."
Her mouth closed. I could see the confusion on her face.
"Oracles have many roles," she started.
"What are you?"
"What?"
"What is an Oracle?"
She thought hard, and it occurred to me she'd never been asked this before.
"In your terms, an Oracle is a mage with a different skill set. One which only a few have, and all of them women."
"Skills like talking to people in their minds?"
"Not really. Anyone can do that." She paused. "Well, not everyone, but it’s a magic skill like any other. Those with the aptitude learn it at some point. The battle mages sooner than most. Well, ours anyway. We try not to let other kingdom mages know we can do it. Gives us a command ability in battle they don’t have. All the kingdoms have some Oracles. I can't say what they can do, as I've never met any of them."
"What else can you do?"
"I see the future. I see what each mage needs to focus their power. I see the training path they need to walk to bring their power into focus. We Oracles often advise the masters on training regimens. And we're here to answer questions others cannot."
"Why am I here?"
"Wrong question."
"What's the right question?"
"You know it."
I sighed. I did.
"Did I destroy the civilization I lived in for two years, after jumping away from here?"
"No."
"Why did it vanish?"
"It never existed."
"That’s not true. I remember my time there vividly."
"It existed for you. Then it didn’t."
"I know that. Why?"
"Let's ask the water."
She rose, and moved to the stump. I stirred myself, and reluctantly followed. The water showed our reflections, looking in, and went cloudy, showing nothing.
A table appeared, with a young man at its head, dressed in red. Around the table, people were saying the same word. There was no sound, but the word was 'yes'.
The image cleared, and for just a few seconds, a woman was looking out at us. She was smiling, but I felt fear without knowing why.
The water vanished, leaving the platter dry.
The Oracle shuddered, and stepped back rapidly, looking distressed. I moved her chair behind her, and she fell into it. I moved both back where the chair had been, and sat down in my own. And waited.
"I don’t understand," she said at last.
"What was there to understand? A group of people all said yes."
"There was a lot more there. While you saw an image, I received information."
"Who from?"
"The woman."
"Who was she?"
"I don’t know. But she had a power far beyond what even you have."
"What did she tell you?"
"We were seeing the far future. Further into the future than you went before. The man in red is like you. He did something which changed the past. He destroyed your civilization."
"Why?"
"It just happened. It wasn’t planned, but I get the feeling things changed incredibly all across the galaxy, as a result of what he did."
"How do you know about the galaxy?"
"I've seen flashes. The day you were gone, I hardly left the skrying platter. It showed me places where you
were. I watched you grow into a man, flash by flash. I asked questions, received answers, asked more questions. And then I saw what you'd do if I didn’t get our troops to withdraw today."
"What would I have done?"
"Killed everyone."
"I doubt that. I sent the armies of the last battle home."
"The Mage-King's mages were going to make you lose your temper. You still don’t have full control of it. It took a lot of talking for me to make the Matriarch take me seriously on this. I had to show her."
"I'm glad she believed you."
"She didn’t. I don’t live out here for no reason."
"Did the general believe you?"
"No. But there are other Oracles. They were consulted. They didn’t see what I saw, but they saw death walk the field, and it was enough."
"Good. So who was this man like me?"
"I don’t know. But you will meet him one day."
"Why?"
"He knows nothing of magic, but wields the same power you do. He will need a teacher."
"How do you know he wields it?"
She rose reluctantly, and led me back to the platter. With a wave, it was full of water again. A sun shone brightly. As the image shot rapidly away from it, the sun getting smaller as the seconds went past, it exploded. The platter showed the sun grow from a dot to cover the entire image, and the water vanished again.
"He blew up a sun?"
"Yes."
I was impressed. I instinctively knew I could do it, but to know someone else had, was surprising.
"You shouldn’t have shown me that. I could do it without thinking, and this world would end here and now."
"You have more control than you think you do."
"I'm glad you think so."
"And you're not angry."
She had a point.
"The woman had a gift for you."
"What?"
She waved water into the platter again, and it showed what looked like a staff. The sort of thing magicians in bad entertainment vids carried.
The water vanished again, and leaning up against the stump, was the staff. I looked at it in surprise, knowing it wasn’t her who'd created it. And she said I had more control than I thought I did. Sure. I didn't want a staff, and yet I created it just by seeing it.
Tomorrow's Spacemage Page 9