Star Mage

by R. K. Thorne

  It’s all right, she said silently, smiling. You don’t need to find the words. I understand.

  He squeezed her shoulder one time, and then managed, “I’m sure you’ll win next time,” for appearance’s sake. And then they headed out, arm in arm. She let her thoughts linger, intertwined with his, hoping it’d make her feel better. Just outside her door, he stopped.

  The four guards that were regularly posted there straightened ever so slightly as Aven turned toward them. “The arms master’s tea was drugged this morning. Take her attendants and anyone else inside the suite to the dungeon for questioning.”

  “Yes, sire,” said the nearest one. They turned as a unit and stormed in.

  Miara’s eyes widened as she hurried to follow Aven. He’d already turned to head down toward the library. All of them?

  If Siliana or my mother is going to dip into their thoughts, might as well talk to them all. Better safe than sorry.

  She knew he was right but couldn’t keep herself from frowning. Etral was just a girl.

  They’ll be all right.

  Their route took them past Samul’s rooms, and Aven ducked inside to quietly explain the situation to Siliana. Miara took the moment to stop at Samul’s side. It was hard to see him hurting and not feel she should do something. Anything. She laid a hand on his forehead and once again hoped the wounds would respond. Again, nothing happened.

  Gradually she had the sense that someone was eying her. She looked around. A man with a hefty tome in his hands stood across from her. Watching her.

  She stared him down.

  He stared right back. A dozen heartbeats passed, and finally he glanced down at his book.

  “Ready,” Aven called just as Elise was returning and Siliana was heading out of the room. Miara cast one more long look at the man before following Aven out toward the library.

  Who was that man?

  That? Nyor, the healer.

  He was staring at me.

  Odd. Although you are very lovely today, he doesn’t seem like the type to gawk.

  Men don’t gawk at me.

  I do.

  Just you. She found herself smiling as they reached the library, but her stomach sank as she remembered their purpose.

  The star map.

  A guard opened the door for the two of them. Wunik, Jaena, and Tharomar were crowded around a high library table. Otherwise, the cavernous room was empty, and it echoed as the door shut loudly behind her.

  Wunik and Ro were muttering quietly to each other across the table from them, and Jaena eased slightly closer to Tharomar to make room for them around the table. Jaena smiled warmly at her, her dark eyes sliding over the dress. I know, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Miara said silently to Jaena alone. I could feed a family for a year with this absurd finery.

  Jaena only grinned wider. You look lovely. I wouldn’t mind a dress or two like that someday. Oh, I know it’s an adjustment, but is it such a terrible hardship? A worthy price to pay to get help freeing our people, is it not?

  If Jaena hadn’t been smiling so warmly, Miara would have blushed. Instead, she spoke up, not eager to dwell on that particular topic. “So, is this all of us? Sorry to keep everyone waiting.”

  “It’s no problem,” said Tharomar, smiling.

  Wunik was quickly scribbling some very twisted marks onto a nearby sheet of vellum. “It was a wonderful chance to interrogate him on Serabain, so it’s quite all right with me.”

  “Shall I get started?” Tharomar’s eyes flicked to Aven, who nodded. “Well, it’s all done. I’ve made a complete copy here in modern Serabain, which is still a fairly esoteric language, but at least it’s only one language and doesn’t require any starlight to be read. However, you may prefer it were harder to decode when I tell you more about it.”

  Miara swallowed and shifted closer to Aven. She didn’t like the sound of that.

  Ro took the sheet of vellum in front of him. It was a bit longer than Miara’s forearm, and he rotated it to face Aven, Jaena, and Miara. Wunik had apparently already gotten his fill; his eyes were dark and his brow creased heavily, which didn’t ease the sinking feeling in her stomach in the slightest.

  “I can confirm a lot of what you’ve guessed. The map is a combination astronomical map, calendar, and instructional tool. The stars mapped here are no different than any other map we’d keep these days, but it’s the labels that are different. They have some modern names, and some seem to be older. Either that or they’re another language entirely, one I can’t translate, but I believe they’re older names. Beside each name are listed what I can only guess are types of energies. Some aren’t even all that surprising.” He pointed at a large star drawn in green ink on his version. “The Muses as a whole are labeled artistry. But some of them have seemingly unrelated labels. Anefin here, the prosperity star, is labeled with the word for revelation or insight.”

  “I translated that as ‘intellect.’ Interesting,” muttered Wunik, scribbling more notes.

  “Maybe it’s talking about insights that lead to prosperity?” said Jaena.

  Tharomar shrugged. “Only way to find out is to test it, I suppose.”

  “About that,” said Aven. “You said it’s also an instructional tool. Could you find any other information on how to actually use these?”

  He nodded. “Some, but it’s slight. Included with some of them are some glyphs from a small set of pictograms used even before Serabain. Here with Casel we have a salve bowl in someone’s palm, the ancient sign of—”

  “Healing?” Aven guessed.

  “Exactly,” Tharomar said, continuing on briskly. “Anefin’s, for better or worse, is a lightning bolt, which I believe is literal. Erepha shows the symbol of wind, and it’s labeled calm.”

  “What are these?” Aven pointed at a line that shot across the map in a lighter gray. Miara hadn’t noticed it right away. “These aren’t on the original.”

  “Actually, they are. But they only appear after over an hour under the stars, and even then, they’re very faint. They appear to connect the stars in pairs, and that’s, well, that’s…” Tharomar pressed his lips together, considering what to say next. Up until that point the knowledge had come burbling out of him, as if he’d thought little of it except his excitement to share.

  But Miara remembered the bit of the map Wunik had been able to translate. One word: slavery.

  Aven held his breath, waiting to hear this last piece. So much of this Aven had put together on his own, but some he hadn’t been sure about.

  Tharomar continued more slowly now, like he was sharing bad news. Aven doubted anything Tharomar found in this map could be worse than the news he’d been receiving over the last week. “These lines, they seem to indicate pairs of related energies. And while I’ve been pointing out some of the more positive labels, they aren’t all so cheery. For example, Erepha here is linked to Sagus.” He ran his finger along the thin, faint line from the blue star to a red one. “Sagus carries another wind symbol and is labeled something like anger. But that’s not a prefect translation. It’s not just simple anger, it’s a word they used sometimes for animals, sometimes for people, like wild or rabid, implying a loss of control.”

  “And Casel?” Aven said, urging him on.

  Tharomar met his eyes for a long, appraising look. Aven waited, staring him down. Did the smith wonder what Aven planned to use this knowledge for? Truth be told, he didn’t have a plan. More a gut instinct. All the more reason he needed to know every weapon they had inside and out.

  When Tharomar spoke again, he kept his voice quiet and lower than ever. “It’s connected to Masari. And its label reads slavery.”

  “Slavery?” Jaena exclaimed, only remembering to keep her voice down near the end of the word. She clapped her fingers over her mouth. “What the—”

  “I think this was the magic they used to create the brand, back in the Dark Days,” Aven said.

  “And why do we want to know about it?” Jaena shot back, alarmed.r />
  “We need to understand it if we want to undo it,” he replied just as quickly.

  Jaena stopped, glaring back at the map and then at Aven. In fact, she and Miara were both leveling him the same wary, alarmed expression. When Aven looked back to Tharomar, he tried to ignore the fact that Wunik was eying him too.

  “And the symbol?” Aven asked. He might have tried a few before he figured out the star was Masari, but he could have figured it out. The method to use the star’s energy… that was what he knew the least about. What he’d had to guess at and reason through for Casel had eluded them for this. Although he hadn’t exactly been running around experimenting to find out what might be right.

  Tharomar’s jaw tensed for a moment as his eyes flicked to Jaena and back to Aven. Then, after another long stare, his voice so quiet Aven almost couldn’t hear him he said, “It’s the symbol for fire.”

  Aven almost rolled his eyes. “Of course it is. Of course. By the gods, I should have guessed that.”

  “Why?” Miara asked.

  “Because of the brand. That’s how it works, through fire. And the energy of it.” He shuddered, the feeling of the fiery maggots creeping back in until he shoved the image away.

  “Through burns, in particular,” Jaena pointed out.

  “And you can heal the burn with Casel,” Miara said quietly.

  Tharomar nodded. “Yes. There are two other pairs. Courage and fear here.” He pointed with each forefinger at two stars, again drawn in blue and red. “And over here, joy and something like… despair. Sadness, but much more severe than that. It says literally mind darkness.”

  Now that Tharomar had explained the other pictographs, Aven could read them all. Joy and despair both carried with them the symbol of the wind, and courage and fear were marked with a water drop. Fire, lightning, wind—aside from Casel itself, they all seemed like typical air spells, boosted by heavenly energy. The water drop likely meant rain then.

  “Can you make a fully translated copy?” Aven asked.

  “Should I?” Tharomar replied. “I have no idea how easy it is to learn to use these spells, but right now some fairly esoteric knowledge is still a safeguard. I wasn’t sure if I should even make this one, but I needed something to be able to explain it all to you. It occurred to me to burn it after we’ve looked at it.”

  “That doesn’t sound bad to me,” Miara chimed in.

  “But what if we need it and Tharomar’s order calls him back to Kavanar? Or sends him on some other mission?” Wunik asked.

  Jaena shifted uncomfortably beside Miara, her jaw tightening. Aven pretended he didn’t notice. He wouldn’t be too excited for that to happen if he were in her shoes, either.

  “I suppose we can learn and memorize it among us,” Aven said, trying to move away from the uncomfortable topic. “The fewer who know, the better. But we do need to learn it first.”

  Miara narrowed her eyes. “Why? Why do any of us need to know?”

  “Pushing magic away and ignoring its power is what put us all in this situation,” Aven said. “I’ll be damned if we don’t learn from those mistakes.”

  “But this is different, Aven. This magic is dangerous.”

  “Extremely,” Wunik agreed, nodding.

  “The temptation alone is worth avoiding, as Wunik’s said before,” added Miara.

  Aven frowned. There was no way he was letting them destroy the only record they had of this magic without someone learning it first. “What if something happens and we need to use it?”

  “Like what?” Miara’s eyes were wide with, what was that, horror? “When will we need to enslave anyone? Or put someone in ‘mind darkness’?”

  He just stared at her for a moment, his eyebrows raised, surprised at the edge to her voice. The whole argument over what to do about Opia had surprised him, and the edge hadn’t worn quite off him either.

  “She’s right, Aven,” Wunik said. “I can’t imagine what scenario you’d be in that such spells would be necessary.”

  “There are other spells on here—courage and fear don’t sound useful to anyone?” He glanced around, but all their gazes were guarded. “If we’d shied away from this map in the beginning, neither of you would be free and Tharomar would still be back in Kavanar.”

  Jaena hung her head, and Tharomar glanced at her, his lips pressed in a thin line. Miara’s jaw was clenched and she wasn’t meeting his eyes.

  He decided to try another tack. “Maybe we need to know how to understand this magic to destroy the brand, to unmake it.”

  Jaena frowned. “We have had no luck with conventional means of destroying it.”

  “What?” Miara said.

  “You’ve been trying to destroy it?” Aven said.

  Jaena grimaced. “Uh, sorry. I didn’t mention that?”

  “No, that’s great,” Aven said quickly. “That’s wonderful. Good work. I’m glad you weren’t waiting around for a hand-delivered invitation to do so.”

  “Well, don’t be so cheerful just yet,” Tharomar said. “It completely resisted melting at temperatures way above normal.”

  Jaena nodded. “We even dipped it in acid.”

  “And?” said Miara.

  “And nothing. The acid might as well have been water, all the damage it did.”

  “Still,” said Wunik, “this map is just as dangerous as the brand is, if not more so. The right person could use it to enslave people without the brand.”

  “We cannot let that happen,” said Miara, her voice hard. “We need to destroy it.”

  “Masari isn’t the only star on here,” Aven said quickly.

  “Okay, let’s make another map without Casel and Masari then.” She met his eyes, jaw clenched.

  “But we need to understand it all, not just bits and pieces. We have to know how it could be used against us and how to protect ourselves when necessary,” Aven replied.

  Miara frowned at him, her eyes searching his face. Why? What was she looking for? “You want to be able to use it, don’t you?” Her voice was dark with accusation.

  Aven glowered back. “Understanding it and using it aren’t the same thing.”

  “You don’t just want to understand it.”

  “I don’t know what we’ll need, but I’m not turning away any potential weapons when the situation is this dire,” Aven insisted.

  “To enslave someone is fundamentally against the Way, a serious debt against the Balance,” said Tharomar. “As are likely many if not all of these spells.”

  “No one’s talking about enslaving anyone,” Aven snapped. “Besides, nearly every action we take with magic upsets some part of the Balance.”

  “The same could be argued of all actions, not just magical ones,” Wunik added.

  “Sometimes we incur debts, sometimes we repay them,” said Aven. “If we limit ourselves based on unbalancing the world, we wouldn’t do any magic at all.”

  “Well, yes.” Tharomar smiled darkly. “I believe there are a few who do think that’s what you should be doing.”

  Aven just scowled at that, leaning forward onto the table, and Tharomar’s smile faded.

  Wunik cleared his throat. “Yourself included, our dear smith?”

  Tharomar glanced at Wunik, surprise across his features. “Oh, me? No. Ask me a fortnight ago, I would have said yes. Now… it’s different.”

  “Why the change?” Aven asked, not hiding the irritation in his voice as well as he’d have liked.

  “On the way here, we were able to avoid a lot of killing with magic. I can’t say that I think slaughtering people is a more ethical alternative to using magic to scare the piss out of them and get them out of your way.”

  “There are no evil weapons. They’re all tools. The evil lies in those who wield them, in their intentions and motives.” Aven scowled down at Masari. Some deep part of him was screaming that an answer lay here, the answer he desperately needed, buried deep in that dark, maggoty star’s energy. What answer, and to what question? And was that
the voice of truth or temptation?

  Miara’s voice cut through the thoughts. “I don’t know, Aven. That might be true, but this seems like a fairly evil weapon to me.”

  “I must concur,” Wunik agreed.

  “I understand your reservations, I really do. But I can’t ignore this.” Aven spread his hands helplessly. “I need to know the depths of this magic and its capabilities. We cannot allow Daes to know them better than we do.”

  “He doesn’t.” Miara’s mouth was set in a grim, determined line.

  “You don’t know that,” Aven said gently. “If he knew about this, would he have let ordinary mages know about it?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “We must understand what damage can be done if we’re going to be able to resist it. We’re already at enough of a disadvantage in numbers. If we have more powerful magic than they do, we have to at least consider using it. Not Masari, but the others. I’m not suggesting we enslave anyone.”

  “That’s not my concern. I— This magic should be burned.” Miara shook her head, her voice hard.

  “I don’t think you will use them; I just don’t want you to be accused of it,” Wunik grumbled.

  “Destroying this map does not remove the knowledge from our world. If we could somehow be sure no other maps existed, perhaps then it would be worth it. But as it is, for all we know, Daes has dozens of copies of this exact information. He claimed he was making a new brand. We don’t know what he knows. Destroying it would only blind us to his capabilities.”

  Jaena sighed. “He’s right.”

  Miara’s jaw was clenched. She said nothing. Aven’s stomach twisted into a vicious knot.

  “I suggest we study this map, memorize it,” Tharomar said, “and then I can destroy this new copy. Most wouldn’t be able to read even this. But without it, the old safeguards are very strong.”

  Wunik nodded. “Most won’t know even modern Serabain.”

  “We didn’t have to look that hard to find someone who did, though,” Miara said quietly. She was right, he knew. They’d stumbled across Tharomar, but in the middle of Panar? There were certainly others who knew Serabain, just few others they could trust. Even now, Aven hoped that trust was not misplaced.