There was a knock at the door. Before he could answer, the door opened and Serek strode into the room.
“Sure, come on in,” Calen muttered.
“Ready?” Serek asked. “It’s time to go down.” He stopped then and took a long look at Calen. “The robes suit you,” he said after a moment. “The mark does, too.”
“Really?” Calen asked. “I mean, I like it. A lot. But it’s so strange to see it there. I look so . . . different.” He glanced once more at the mirror, fighting the urge to touch his face for the thousandth time.
“The first true mark is the strangest,” Serek said. “Each one brings its own . . . feelings, I suppose. But the first one has the biggest impact. It was like that for me, anyway. I believe it is the same way for most mages.”
Calen struggled not to stare at his master. Serek never spoke about feelings. Calen hadn’t thought Serek even had feelings.
They left Calen’s room and started down toward the ceremony chamber. Serek had told Calen what to expect. No banquet, unfortunately. Apparently it wasn’t the kind of ceremony that came with special food. It was just the talking kind. Calen would stand up in front of all the assembled mages, and the council masters, the ones the other mages had elected to be in charge for the current cycle, would say some things to him, and he was supposed to answer yes to all their questions. Serek said it wouldn’t take very long. It was just a formality, so he could be presented before the assembly with his first true mark, and then later on they would all just have dinner together in the dining hall as usual. Calen was slightly nervous about having to stand up in front of everyone, but it wasn’t like he’d have to do anything difficult. He was pretty certain he could handle saying yes a bunch of times, even in front of an audience.
“Hey,” said Calen, suddenly remembering. “What did those other mages want to talk to you about so badly?”
“Hmm?” Serek slowed his pace slightly, letting Calen come up next to him. Then the words seemed to register, and his face darkened. “Oh. Just some Magistratum nonsense. One of the reasons I’ve never wanted to be on the council is all the ridiculous posturing and politics.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Calen said.
“Sometimes not all of the mages will see eye to eye on something,” Serek explained. “That’s to be expected — we are a large enough organization, and part of our function is to discuss and debate matters of interest and come to some kind of consensus. But sometimes, certain of our number decide to run around outside of the council chamber, spreading rumors, stirring up trouble, and trying to get other mages to vote in a particular way. It’s not the way the council was meant to work, and I have no patience for it.”
Well, that was no surprise. Serek didn’t have patience for anything. “So they were trying to convince you to vote their way? About what?”
Serek looked down at Calen silently for a moment. “Nothing you need to worry about,” he said finally.
“But —”
“Calen.”
“Okay, okay. Never mind,” Calen said, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s none of my concern, and you’ll tell me if and when there’s a good reason for me to know, right?”
Serek half smiled at him. “Exactly.”
They walked down two flights of stairs and turned toward the room where the ceremony would be taking place. A few other mages were entering the double doors ahead of them. Now Calen was starting to feel a little more nervous. This is nothing, he told himself firmly. At least no one’s going to stick you with a needle!
They reached the doors, and Serek pushed them open. The room inside was large and shaped like a half-moon, with rows of seats arranged in a partial circle around a raised platform in the center. Right now about three-fourths of the seats were filled, and Calen glanced around at all the unfamiliar faces as he followed Serek down the center aisle. Most were full mages, although there were younger, less marked faces here and there: apprentices and initiates visiting with their masters. There had to be at least two hundred people. Maybe more like three hundred.
And this wasn’t even all of them. Serek had explained that some mages stayed at the Magistratum for long stretches of time, either between assignments to particular households or because they had chosen to stay and work on shared projects or help with the central administration. Others visited for short periods to get their new markings, to do research, to register apprentices, or to bring an issue before the council.
There were probably another hundred or so mages scattered across the continent, assigned to kings, minor lords, town officials, and even sometimes private estates. They acted as counselors, healers, and teachers and assisted their patrons with magic in whatever ways were needed, as long as they didn’t violate the laws of the Magistratum. Others traveled around looking for new apprentices or responding to new requests for mage assignments. The Magistratum carefully monitored everything, though. No mages were ever permitted to run off to wherever they pleased. Too much had gone wrong before mages were organized and regulated by the council.
The chamber slowly quieted as Serek and Calen made their way down the aisle. By the time they reached the front, the room was silent. Serek led Calen around to the side and up a narrow set of steps. The two council masters sat waiting in large, ornate chairs in the middle of the stage. Serek bowed to each of them and said in a clear voice, “Council Master Renaldiere, Council Master Galida, I present my apprentice, Calen of Trelian.”
Calen smiled. He liked that “of Trelian” bit. He’d never heard anyone call him that before.
Then Serek turned, walked back down the aisle, and took a seat that had been left open for him in the front row. Calen was left facing the council masters alone. The one on the left — Council Master Renaldiere — was a very old man, his hair white and kind of fluffy at the very the top of his head. On another man, that hair might have been funny, but the mage was so solid and imposing a figure that it was hard to imagine being amused by anything in his presence. Council Master Galida was a middle-aged woman, dark haired and attractive, with large green eyes and dark skin. Both of their faces were heavily marked, the lines and symbols on Galida’s face lighter in color to stand out against her complexion. The two mages regarded Calen solemnly for a moment, and he fought the urge to fidget. Then Council Master Galida instructed him to turn around and face the assembly.
Calen’s knees threatened to buckle, and he had to concentrate everything he had on his legs to keep them straight. He was looking out at a sea of faces, all staring right at him. Somehow it seemed like even more people from this vantage point than it had while he’d been walking down the aisle.
“Calen of Trelian,” came Council Master Renaldiere’s voice from behind him, “apprentice to Mage Serek and bearer of your first true mark. Do you claim full responsibility for your actions and their consequences, accepting the prices paid for all choices along the path that brought you to this place?”
“Yes,” Calen said as loudly and firmly as he could. He was relieved to hear that his voice sounded steady, not at all shaky, as he had feared it would be.
“Do you acknowledge the greater responsibility that accompanies all progress from this point forward along the mage’s path?” Council Master Galida asked next. “Do you accept the prices and choices that are yet to come?”
“Yes. And yes.”
“Do you willingly recommit yourself to the service of your master, your kingdom, and the mages’ order above all?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Apprentice Calen. May the blessings of the Bright Lady light your path and the wisdom of the Harvester guide your steps upon it.”
The entire assembly murmured, “Blessings and wisdom” in response, and then it was over. Serek caught Calen’s eye and nodded. Calen turned and bowed to the head mages and then started for the stairs leading back down from the stage. That hadn’t been so bad, really. He didn’t know why getting up in front of people had to make him so nervous. Sure, everyo
ne had been looking at him, but it wasn’t like they were going to do anything to him.
Calen raised his foot to descend onto the top step when suddenly an enormous BOOM crashed through the assembly chamber. He stumbled and just barely managed to fall backward onto the stage instead of headfirst down the stairs. Somehow the sound had turned into strange, swirling smoke. No — not smoke. It was magic energy he was seeing, enough to fill the air around him and out into where the audience was, too. The energy was made up of lots of different colors, too many for Calen to sort out and identify.
As his ears began to recover from that first assault of sound, he could hear people shouting. Serek was suddenly at his side, asking something. Calen couldn’t make it out, but he began shouting, “I’m all right, I’m all right!” in case that’s what Serek wanted to know. He let Serek help him up from the stage floor and lead him down the stairs and into a corner. All around them, mages were on their feet, pushing, running, calling out to one another.
“Stay here!” Serek shouted into Calen’s face, leaning in close enough that Calen could understand him.
“But —”
“Just do as I say for once!” Serek snarled, pushing Calen painfully against the wall. Then he turned and took off into the chaos that filled the room. Calen lost sight of him immediately. And then caught sight of something else. Shapes were starting to form all around the chamber. Shapes that seemed to have roughly formed arms and legs. And were they holding some kind of knives? Or maybe they were claws. And . . . Calen squinted, trying to make sense of the swirls of color and madness around him. And . . . and teeth? Were those teeth?
What were these things?
The shouts around him became confused and frightened as the shapes began attacking. People were screaming and running, climbing over the seats; some were rushing the stage. Calen saw mages fall under the blows of the magic-formed shapes, saw their arms raised in ineffective attempts to ward off the violent swipes of the intruders’ limbs, saw their flesh part in red ribbons sliced by claws or knives or teeth or something, but he didn’t see anyone fighting back. Why weren’t they fighting back?
Because they can’t see anything, he realized. The shapes were made of magic — swirling energy-creatures of black and red and violet with threads of green and other colors running like veins through the hazy forms of their bodies.
Calen looked desperately around for Serek; he had to tell him what was happening. A few mages seemed to have managed to cast protection spells, but most appeared too busy trying to escape the invisible assault to cast anything. Should he try to help? Somehow he knew Serek had meant for him to stay put and not do anything, but surely he wasn’t supposed to just stand by when he was the only one who could see what was going on.
He shook himself free of his tangled thoughts. Stop dithering and do something, he told himself. The entire chamber was filled with writhing, fighting creatures; it was pure luck that none of them had found his little corner so far. He couldn’t count on that luck lasting for long.
With a practiced ease, he cleared his head, preparing to focus on casting . . . something. Serek, curse him, still hadn’t taught Calen anything useful about magical weapons. But Calen could figure something out. He knew he could. Something damaging but focused — he didn’t want to hurt one of the mages by mistake.
Red energy was the most destructive; he’d seen Sen Eva use it as a weapon, and he’d seen Serek use it to try to wipe out an infection in a wounded soldier. There was a spell Calen had used to kill root-beetles on some plants in the Mage’s Garden once. Maybe if he started with that but tried to make it bigger, more powerful . . .
He concentrated, drawing the red magic into something he could see between his palms. Then he thought about trying to shape it, like a beam, something he could send at the creature nearest him. When it felt like the right shape, the right intensity, he pushed it from him with all the force he could muster.
It shot from his hands just as he’d envisioned and struck the creature in the back of the head. The creature shuddered and turned around. When it saw Calen with his arms still held out before him, it let out an ominous-sounding growl, its blurry, magic-formed face seeming to snarl. It did not, Calen noted with a sick, sinking feeling, appear to be damaged in any way. Just enraged. Then it launched itself at him.
Calen tried to back away, but he was still in the corner. He did the only other thing he could think of: he flung up a shield like the one he’d used to fend off Sen Eva that time on the tower. The creature threw itself against the magic barrier, and now Calen could see quite clearly: yes, those were indeed teeth. Teeth and claws. Big ones. Only inches away from his face, held off by his hastily constructed shield.
He looked wildly around, trying to see if anyone might be near enough to help him. He saw Serek and Council Master Renaldiere pushing their way through a group of mages to reach the front edge of the stage. The council master shouted something, and Serek nodded. Then they both raised their hands and began to channel a mix of green, gold, and white energy. At another shout from Renaldiere, both men released the magic, sending a burst of mixed colors up and out into the chamber. Calen was still trying to figure out what the spell was supposed to do when the energy formed a thin, sheetlike form and then descended to land lightly atop everyone and everything in the room. A subtly glowing sheen of magic seemed to coat everyone, mages and creatures alike. And suddenly the creatures became solid, their blurred limbs and features shifting into horrible, fully physical reality.
Calen nearly screamed. They were far worse this way. The creature attacking him now had dark, bristly fur, huge, claw-tipped arms, and a terrifying, wolflike snout dripping with saliva as it tried again and again to bite him through the shield. Why, why would Serek and the others do this? They had just made the things more real, more terrible.
He got it about a second later: the spell made the creatures visible. To everyone. Now that the mages could see what they were fighting, they were far better able to defend themselves. The tide turned fairly quickly after that. All around the room, mages began casting defensive spells and magical attacks, and in short order the creatures began falling and fading, killed or destroyed or undone. Someone — a mage Calen didn’t know — finally noticed Calen’s difficulty and sent something red and powerful at the attacking beast. It slid to the ground, clearly dead, but Calen still waited a few more seconds to release his shield.
Mages who had been knocked down began to get back up, some with the help of other mages’ hands or healing spells. A few did not get up at all. Calen couldn’t tell if they were unconscious or . . . worse. He saw one young apprentice, a boy of maybe six years old, crying unashamedly. Other mages were turning toward the stage in search of the council masters.
“What were those things?” someone shouted toward Renaldiere and Galida — probably not for the first time, but the noise level had finally gone down enough that individual voices could be heard. A chorus of angry shouts followed, seconding the question: “How could we have been attacked here —?”
“How did they break through our defenses?”
“And who could have —?”
“And why —?”
Council Master Galida turned from the older woman she was speaking with and held up her hand against the rising tide of voices. “Peace,” she called out to the assembly. Calen was chilled to hear that strong voice shaking a little. “We must act quickly to see if there is anything we can learn.”
Calen saw other mages nodding at this, and then Galida and Renaldiere began calling up white energy, their hands held wide before them to focus the power. Other mages joined in, and before long nearly every mage in the room — every full mage who was able and wasn’t busy with healing or helping someone else — was standing still, facing the stage, and creating his or her own sphere of white, glowing energy. Calen itched to cast with them, but he knew better than to try. He didn’t know exactly what they were doing, and joining in blind could disrupt the spell. Or wor
se, change the effect to something other than what was intended. He knew firsthand that when different spells clashed, the effects could be dangerous and unpredictable.
White magic usually meant communication, or exploration. Or information. Would what they were casting now help them discover where the creature spell had come from?
Renaldiere said something Calen didn’t understand, and all the mages raised their arms as one. At a final word from the council master, the white energy suddenly burst forth from every pair of outspread hands, shooting out and into and through the walls and ceiling. Almost at once, small bursts of energy began coming back through the walls. The council masters both cocked their heads as though listening. After a few minutes, the frequency of the return bursts dropped off, and then they stopped altogether. Galida shook her head in frustration. Renaldiere gestured at the assembly, and everyone released the spell.
“Thank you,” Galida said to the group. Her face was drawn, but her voice was steadier now. “You may go; we will reconvene this evening to discuss what has happened.” She picked out two mages near the stage. “Nyar, Espion, please see to the wounded. Draft whomever you need to assist you. Council members, please stay behind.”
People began to disperse, some limping on the arms of friends, some helping Nyar and Espion see to those who hadn’t risen on their own. Another group of mages began to dispose of the dead creatures that hadn’t already been magically unmade. Everyone looked very worried. Serek spoke for a few minutes more with some of the other mages on the stage, then came back down to where Calen was waiting. He gave Calen a grim look.
“I see that you are practically bursting with questions,” he said. “Wait until we get back to my rooms, and I will do my best to answer them. Do not ask me anything until we get there. Understood?”
“Yes,” Calen said. He was practically bursting with questions, but he thought he could hold them inside for a few more minutes. He followed Serek back out through the double doors and up the stairs. Along the way, they passed small groups of mages clustered together, speaking in hushed voices. Several of them glanced up as they walked by, and it seemed to Calen that they kept their eyes on him a little longer than he was quite comfortable with. He was glad when they reached Serek’s rooms, which were just down the hall from Calen’s.
The Princess of Trelian Page 4