Sean glanced around the apartment while she spoke to Laon. The place was poor, but there were things here that didn’t belong, not to a poor family. There was an ornate, inlaid jewelry box tucked on a shelf with a handful of worn books. Leaning in a corner was a saber and the sheath looked to have some silver on it. In a shabby chair in the far corner was a doll dressed in what might have once been fine silk. Sean’s assessment of the apartment led his gaze back around to Laon, who looked like he’d been chiseled from stone.
Sean looked back at the woman as Laon said, “You must be daft. What makes you think either of us might stand a chance against the guild?”
“Argus told me that you…one of you…had to be a mage since you kept moving around. He told me that you must have felt the search, then changed location. He figured it was the only explanation.”
Laon looked at Sean, who shrugged and shook his head. “What happens to a visiting mage if he uses magic?” asked Sean.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I suppose they are arrested. I’ve never heard for certain, though.”
“Are you ready to find out?” If they looked for mages, Sean was sending out quite a beacon just by being there, and between the two of them, he was sure they wouldn’t escape notice for long. “Do you have a picture of your missing family?”
The woman looked at Sean as if he had completely lost his sanity; so did Laon. “Not even you can stand up against the entire guild,” hissed Laon.
“Oh, I don’t know. People who have held absolute power for a long time tend to underestimate the danger from the unknown, and I’m no mean mage.”
The woman was looking at Sean with her mouth slack and her eyes brimming with scarcely dared hope. Her face was so pale he thought she might faint any minute. “You better take a few deep breaths, ma’am,” said Sean, and watched her begin to breathe rapidly. “Ma’am, if you don’t pull yourself together, you’re going to faint. You can’t fight mages with a sword; they never return the favor. I think I can get your family, but I need to know more about them and we need to act quickly. Do you have any pictures?”
“I don’t know what I expected,” she said with a shaky voice, and a tear threatened to fall from one of her too-shiny eyes. She went into another room and returned a few moments later with a painting. “This is the only picture I have. It was painted seven years ago, shortly after my husband and I were married.”
Sean studied the picture. It was obvious that it had been a happy moment for the whole family, though the poses were stiff; maybe it was just the painter. “What happened to the other woman?”
“Mother died two years ago from pneumonia.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He scrutinized each figure. They’d be older now, more careworn, more cautious. Were they alive? Were they together? Were they even close to each other? They weren’t all together, but they were all alive. He reached for them.
They, two of them, weren’t happy about being snatched, and since Laon was the one standing, he received the brunt of their attack. Before they could reduce him to a quivering mass of nerves, Sean shielded them and saw them grope for support in their suddenly two-dimensional world. He knew what they felt; he just had a problem believing it affected them so much. He wasn’t above taking advantage of it, though.
Sean barely managed to shield them when he had to scramble to protect them all from another direction. He had indeed sent up a beacon, and now, the rest of the guild came down on him like a flyswatter.
He wrapped his awareness around them all, including the horses outside, and moved them all away from the city. He had no idea how far they went; he just wanted distance. It’s risky teleporting so far so blindly, but it worked…this time.
Flaunting the Guild
When they arrived, Sean stood to check if their departure had been detected and followed. The three prisoners had pulled themselves into their separate balls for their different reasons, part of which was the rain that they weren’t dressed for. Laon was dressed for the rain, but he was shaking too, though he was still standing, and had his sword in his hand. His horse reared and let the distant hills know he wasn’t used to this, while Prince merely snorted and came over to shove at Sean with his nose. The woman, the little man, and the little girl quickly found one another and stood huddled together until the woman finally realized who the three new men had to be.
“Marcq, Berck, Papa,” she gasped and started toward them, but Laon intercepted her with only a little stumble.
“Wait. They may still be dangerous.” He gripped her harder than necessary; he was using her for more than a little support.
When Sean was fairly certain that the guild wasn’t looking for them here, he turned to Laon. “Are you all right?”
He shook his head hesitantly. “I…I can’t…” He was still shaking and confused. “I can’t feel anything.” He looked up at Sean, utter confusion showing in his eyes, if nowhere else. “I can…but I can’t.”
Then Sean saw it: a dark shadow over his fierce red glow. He had been shielded, and only his years as a demon had enabled him to continue to function. Sean broke the shield; it wasn’t his. Though not as strong as he had expected, the magic that had created the shield was strong, too strong to simply remove.
Sean kept Laon on his feet with a hand hooked under his arm and felt him stiffen, then he heard movement behind him. Laon stepped away from Sean, and Sean turned to face the three men. One of them, the one who looked most abused, had made it to his feet. He was filthy, battered and half-starved, but Sean had no problem recognizing who he must be, the husband, the one with no magic, no glow.
He turned his face up to the rain, then rubbed it with his filthy hands. Standing in that position was making him sway, but the rain was washing some of the muck off and that was likely his intention.
Sean stepped up to him and did a healing. The bruises and infected sores on his skin cleared away. He couldn’t help him much in the department of malnutrition, but he could give him a bucket of warm water and a dipper, then he handed him into the care of his wife with a canteen.
He then turned to the other two; the boy looked to be about fourteen and was by far the strongest. His magic was like Ferris’s, mostly black mixed with some of almost everything else except white magic. Few people could make use of both black and white magic. He had been the source of Laon’s shield. The father had some green: earth magic, and some dark blue: water magic. He was the weaker, and likely the more sensible, so Sean turned to him first.
He pulled him to his feet. He could feel the compulsion in him and fought it with one of his own. “You are no longer under their control.” Sean gave him the power he needed to win free. It almost dropped him to his knees after what had gone before, and he was thankful for Laon’s presence. He had never gone up against a concerted group of mages; it was almost as if they operated with one mind, and yet he could feel the separate veins.
Under Sean’s shield and without the support of the guild, the old man crumpled. Sean was teetering on his feet himself and didn’t have the strength to hang onto him as well.
The old man huddled on the ground looking like he was in shock, then looked up at his benefactor. “Remove your shield, boy. You’ve freed me from the guild and I’m not a fool.”
Rapidly recovering, Sean pulled him to his feet again and they stood swaying together for a moment. Sean could tell that he wasn’t connected to the guild anymore, he could see it in his eyes, but…“No, not yet. I put up enough of a beacon as it is. The presence of more mages will only attract attention, and I’m not really up to it.”
The man nodded then looked over at his son. “What about him?”
“I’m getting there, just give me a few minutes.”
He patted Sean tiredly on the shoulder. “One man against the entire guild…I’m impressed.” Then he went over to sit beside his daughter and become acquainted with his granddaughter. Laon had pulled the oilcloth off his horse and was putting on his armor. When he had most of i
t buckled on, he gave the cloth to the family so that they could have a little shelter from the wet.
The boy and his father wore plain gray robes that hung almost to their ankles and neither of them had shoes, but they had been fed well and therefore were weathering the cold rain much better than the rest of the family. Sean wasn’t too worried about the boy, but he followed Laon’s example and spread his cloth around the boy’s shoulders just the same.
As he put his armor on, Sean noticed Laon. Steam was rising from the huddled family; he was drying their clothes for them. Sean would have done the same for the boy but his hands were still shaking.
When Laon was finished with the rest of the family, he dried the boy, then went to Sean and dried him too. The real reason he went to him was to whisper hastily in his ear, “Do you know who that man is? He says his name is Nord, though he hasn’t used the name for years. His daughter must have told him some of what she thought she knew about us. He asked me to take him away from the city. He says he can’t go back there; he’ll just be taken again. He figures it’ll happen as soon as he enters the gate. He says his older brother is the one behind the guild. He told me he started it to hold off your uncle, and it worked, only it got out of hand. He said his memories are a bit warped, but he doesn’t remember seeing his brother there.”
How interesting. Sean looked at Nord. He stared at his son mostly, sparing some attention for his daughter and granddaughter and an occasional glance toward Sean or Laon. His expression, when he looked at his son, was unreadable. Sean picked up the picture again; the boy was somewhere around seven when it was painted, and sometime shortly after that they had run afoul of the guild. What had he done to attract their attention?
Sean remembered himself at about that age. He’d been starting to act bold and a bit thoughtless. His actions had resulted in him seeing a man die; he was far more careful after that, but he didn’t know of magic back then. What would he have done if he had? Then he remembered a detail he had forgotten: there had been fresh snow on the ground. His tracks would have been plainly visible to anyone who looked. One set of tracks coming and one set leaving at a run; only no one had followed his tracks, no one had mentioned them…no one had seen them. He had used magic that day. He had teleported directly home after only a few paces. He remembered now; he had bypassed any and every person he surely would have encountered, to appear at the door of his apartment.
Sean looked at the boy again. Had he done something like that out of fear, or had he been flexing adolescent muscles and done something stupid?
“Tell me something, Laon. Just answer the question, even though it may sound odd. When does magic first show up?”
Laon opened his mouth and then closed it, thinking. “Um…usually around um…well, between six and eight I think. Sometimes the kid just doesn’t have it, but if they do, they can start to develop it then. Girls too, I think. If they never use their magic, it tends to stay weak. They can regain their strength if they try, though. Boys usually get a boost of strength near puberty; they want to show off. I know I did, especially to my girlfriend. My dad kept reminding me to control myself, but I didn’t listen much…not until I almost burned the house down.” Laon shifted uneasily.
“I take it your girlfriend wasn’t too impressed.”
“Not really, I think the fire scared her. I’m not sure if she ever caught on that it was me, but Dad wouldn’t let me see her again until we had rebuilt the fireplace. By then her father was trying to match her with someone else.”
Sean winced and thought of Berrac, Armelle’s ex-boyfriend. Only about fifteen or sixteen at the time, he’d had the love of his life snatched away from him. He must not have had any magic; else he’d have used it that morning. He nodded his thanks and went to kneel by the boy.
“Be careful,” said Nord, “he was very young when we were taken.”
Sean looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
Nord only shrugged and shook his head. His daughter huddled closer into his arm and whispered something in his ear, a look of anxiety on her face.
Sean turned back to the boy. How can you be careful with black magic? He made every word he uttered a compulsion, but he tried to hold back on the power; he wanted to lift a petal, not raze a mountain. “What is your name?” Sean enunciated every word slowly and carefully, speaking only loud enough so that he could be heard.
The boy’s eyes flashed up at him. They were stark blue, surrounded by dark lashes that stood out handsomely against his pale skin.
Sean watched the struggle begin behind them. He thought he understood what might be happening in there. Too young to have developed much of a sense of self, he had been drowned in the guild. Like a leach, they had sucked on his magic without nurturing the vessel that housed it, at least no more than keeping it healthy enough to keep the magic flowing.
“What is your sister’s name?” asked Sean; it looked like the boy was being torn apart in there. Sean wracked his brains for things a boy like this might treasure.
“Tell me about your mother. What was her favorite color?”
A tear welled up in the boy’s eye, though not enough to fall out before he blinked it back.
Sean remembered the jewelry box on the shelf. “What was in your mother’s jewelry box?”
“Blue,” whispered the boy then started to pant a little. There was confusion and a little panic in his remarkable eyes now as they cast around looking for shelter.
Sean let his questions rattle around in the boy’s head for a moment more until his panic subsided.
“Eleanor, m-my m-mother’s n-name is Eleanor.” His voice shook and his shoulders hunched into the oilcloth not entirely because of the cold.
Sean was surprised; he hadn’t asked him that question.
The boy looked up at Sean, he could see the desperation in his eyes, then he watched the door slam shut. He tried his own compulsion; Sean could see it in his throat, but it only came out as a growl. “Get away from me.”
Sean started over again. It was nearly dark before he could say his name and answer the rest of Sean’s questions freely, and it was not long after that before he began to ask questions of his own. Apparently, the last half of his life was little more than a paranoid nightmare.
Breaking the Guild
Sean took them back to his camp where they all got a most welcome hot supper, then he housed them in his own tent. There was room enough, and it was short notice. He also wanted to talk to Marcq, the husband, and Guet, the father.
Marcq faded quickly, he hadn’t had a meal with meat in it for years, and he didn’t know much about the guild or the building that housed it. He had only seen the cell where he and about a dozen others existed.
Sean turned him over to his wife before he would have to use magic to move him. Sean himself was still shaky from the magic he had used. Though the confrontation had been very short, it had been his first real battle using nothing but magic and his wits, and though the event scarcely qualified as a fight, his opponent had been very powerful.
Guet, however, was a wealth of information. Having been older and not as strong as most taken by the guild, he hadn’t received the same attention as the others and thus, had retained more of a ‘self’. From him, Sean learned some of the more insidious practices of the guild. That, and his brief experience helped him know what to expect.
The guild reminded Sean of the Borg in Star Trek. All the real thinking was done by one mind and the individuality of its members was rooted out as much as possible. They had more success with the young ones, but Berck was proof that they could recover.
Sean left both Guet and Berck shielded, and though they seemed to struggle under it, they didn’t protest. It was as if they’d both had enough of magic, but they didn’t say as much, not yet anyway. Maybe they’ll want it back by the time I leave here…I’ll have to remember to ask.
It finally stopped raining sometime before dawn, and also sometime before dawn, Sean let Guet go to sleep. Sean
wasn’t going to be so lucky; he had a problem. He went out into the camp, filling his lungs with the freshly scrubbed air. No way will I be able to take any of my men into the city, not until after the guild has been broken. We have no defense against magic of that magnitude, and if I am forced to protect them, I won’t be able to attack.
He had felt their strength back at the apartment. He had only just managed to get all of them out of there before the guild zeroed in on them. Then he realized something: I have wielded power that left others gasping at the magnitude, and I have no problem directing it, finding a target when I want to. The guild, however, had been slow. Several seconds elapsed after the kidnapping before they found Laon and me, then their first strike missed. It couldn’t all be surprise and distance, could it?
Guet told him there had to be more than fifty mages in the guild. Sean suspected the number was far greater, probably closer to at least a hundred, if not more. He risked pinging for them, hoping they wouldn’t return the favor. It had been hard enough for him to learn and he seriously doubted any of them had thought of it.
What came back was more or less what he expected. The ping doesn’t do any counting, but if one mage was one marker dot on a sheet of paper, then the guild was a healthy chunk of that piece of paper blacked out. Definitely more than a hundred, and all pretty much in one place.
He needed to get into the guild house. Once inside, his magic would be masked by their own, and they would need to rely on their eyes to tell them he was a stranger. But how was he going to get into the building without his magic being felt? Then he had an idea. It was a slim chance, but it might work.
The Making of a Mage King: White Star Page 10