The Making of a Mage King: White Star

by Anna L. Walls

  Ferris reached him first and stopped Cordan from touching him. “Sean, are you all right?” he asked, watching him closely.

  “Never better,” said Sean, his words were slurred and quivering with mirth. “Did you know that green tastes like parsley? Or that red smells like a rose; I like roses.” He became suddenly serious. “I gave a rose to Jenny once; I wanted to give it to Armelle, but she was so far away.” He struggled to focus on Ferris, and saw Cordan. “Mattie is a good woman,” he said, and a tear slid down his cheek; maybe it was the rain. “I would have married her.” Then he started to giggle again. “She has such long legs.”

  Ferris was franticly racking his brain for the right thing to say. “Lightning, Sean. What do you do with lightning? How do you protect a house from lightning?” He could think of nothing else. He had no idea if it would work.

  “Lightning?” Sean repeated, easily swayed by the change of subject. “I made it storm once, remember? I made it go away too.” He looked at the camp below him; it was barely visible through the downpour. “I protected the camp from lightning.” He swayed trying to think of something that he seemed to have forgotten. Then he brightened and giggled again. “I forgot to ground it. You protect a house by grounding it. You take a piece of metal and poke it into the ground…” He drove his sword into the boulder at his knee and the resultant discharge pulverized the boulder and rock shelf beneath it for nearly a quarter mile around them, lifting and then dropping the whole section anywhere from a few inches to a couple feet.

  When Ferris and Cordan picked themselves off the ground again, they were appalled to see Sean sprawled near his blackened sword that was still sticking out of the ground. They were relieved to see that his eyes were still open, but he was utterly stunned. He moved feebly as they carried him down to the camp where Mattie met them. With the near panic in the camp, she had been unaware of Sean’s problem until she saw them carrying him down the hill.

  “What happened?” she asked, as soon as she reached them.

  “I watched it,” said Cordan. “I saw it all, but I still don’t know what happened.”

  “The lightning strike,” said Ferris. “He took in the lightning then let it go into the rock.”

  “He did what?” asked Mattie. She looked at her husband and he just shrugged and nodded, puzzled.

  They carried him into his tent, where they stripped him of his sodden clothes that had grown stiff with the cold, then they wrapped him warmly in several blankets. He muttered and tossed while Mattie forced her medicinal teas down him. She had found nothing wrong with him when she tried to heal him, and the effort had only left him shaking. Eventually, near dawn he fell asleep and was quiet.

  Sean woke to the sound of rain drumming on the tent. He didn’t remember coming down from the hill. He remembered worrying that the lightning would start a brush fire, but the sound of the rain drowned that worry. He rolled to get up and found his body strangely uncooperative; he also saw Mattie sitting at his table watching him. “Time to break camp. I forgot to scout our destination; I need my map.”

  “You’re not going anywhere today,” said Mattie, as she came over to him and pushed him back down without much effort.

  “Mattie, I know it’s cold out there, but we can’t just huddle in our tents because it’s raining. I don’t have the time.”

  “We’re not staying because of freezing rain. We’re staying because you nearly killed yourself last night, or at least I think you did.”

  Sean pushed himself up again. “I’m fine. We need to move on.”

  “Fine,” said Mattie, defiance dripping from the word. “If you can dress yourself and walk out of this tent under your own power, we’ll go, but if I have to pick you up just once, anywhere between here and the fire, we stay here at least until tomorrow.” She tossed his pants and shirt onto the bed and stood there watching him with her arms crossed.

  He looked at her. I’ve crossed one of her lines again, but I can’t be easy on myself just because I screwed up again. He managed to get his shirt on with only little difficulty, but the task came close to convincing him that she might be right. “Turn around while I put my pants on.”

  She scoffed. “I’ve seen it,” she said, but she turned her back anyway.

  Sean, however, found the simple task of putting his pants on quite beyond him. As soon as he stood to pull them up, he wilted to the floor in a dead faint.

  He woke again to find himself back in bed. As soon as he identified Mattie’s concerned face he said, “We stay.” He was going to ask what had happened, but he fell asleep before he could get the words out.

  He did make it out of the tent under his own steam late that afternoon, to find Ferris talking to Laon by a fire that surely took magic to keep burning. “So, the living lightning rod walks among us mortals again,” said Ferris. “I almost forgot what it was like to travel with you. Did you order this?”

  “Care to explain what happened?” asked Sean as he pulled his cloak closer against the cold rain. “I don’t remember much.” He didn’t remember any of it, but he didn’t want to admit that to anyone.

  Ferris explained it all to him, along with his understanding of what had occurred. Sean had never been high before. In his opinion, abusing drugs was such a stupid thing, and that opinion had not changed, especially if the aftereffects were anything like what he was going through now. Even though he was moving on his own, he felt fogged and detached, almost as if a delayed reaction of about a second was happening with everything he said and did.

  As soon as he learned that he had driven Soran’s sword into rock and used it as a ground, he ran back up the hill to find it. When he reached the spot, he noticed glaring differences in the landscape. The sword, which he now clearly remembered driving into a boulder, was imbedded in coarse sandy ground.

  Dreading what he would find, Sean grasped the sword and pulled it up out of the sand. The leather wrapping of the hilt disintegrated under his grasp. The blade came out of the sand in one piece, but it was blackened, warped and heavily coated with melted sand. “No,” said Sean, as he sank to his knees holding the ruined blade.

  “I’m sorry, Seanad,” said Ferris, meaning it. The loss of such an artifact was like losing a piece of history.

  “Can you fix it?” asked Laon.

  “Maybe, but I’m not a blacksmith. I don’t know how; it’s not just bent up,” said Sean, feeling far more emotion than he ever would have expected in connection to an object. “Making a straight, clean strip of metal is different than making a sword, and I’m thinking this needs much more than just straightening.”

  “Maybe the magic knows what you do not,” suggested Laon.

  “I have to know something.” Sean searched his memories. Had any of his ancestors been blacksmiths? There were too few of those memories where he needed them to know the answer to that question. Soran had watched the sword being made, but watching wasn’t the same as learning how. He turned to Ferris. “Did my father know anything about blacksmithing? Or his father? Any of them that you know of?”

  They were in camp by now and Ferris shook his head. “No, Seanad, none of them that I know of.”

  “I can’t do anything about it now, and Mattie would skin me alive if I spent any more magic just now. I’ll just have to wait until I find a good blacksmith willing to work with me.” He turned to his tent feeling dejected and more than a little tired. “We gate at first light,” he said over his shoulder.

  The fierce downpour ended shortly before midnight, leaving behind an icy wind that tugged at the tents with persistent fingers, sending tiny shards of ice flying everywhere. Laon let the fire die out before the coals could be blown away where they might cause unwanted problems, despite the ice coating everything.

  Sean made himself sit still until he could distinguish a thin line of light at his tent flap before he allowed himself to light a candle and dress. When he stepped outside, his grim mood was covered by packing, saddling, and then leaving.

 
The rain had turned the pulverized rock into a gritty mire that refused to freeze because of their traffic, and it was a relief to get beyond it. The wind tore at their cloaks as well as their horses, and Sean could see the sense of Seth’s insistence in taking the time to work on them with regard to flapping things in their packs. No matter how well packed they were, this wind found even the smallest thing to flip around. With their hoods flapping and stinging in their faces, it was almost a relief to step into the rain again on the other side of the gate.

  Earth Magic Gone Mad

  They had traveled less than a mile before Sean brought them to a halt just short of the tree line. Under the pounding rain that threatened to freeze everything it touched, he had missed the wrongness of the place. Signaling the rest to stay where they were, he rode ahead down into the trees, and the wrongness nearly turned his stomach by the time he had covered half a mile. He went back to the column at full speed, sliding to a halt beside Mattie and waving Jenny over to join them.

  “You two are not going any closer. Mattie, hand your bag over to Lyra. We’ll take care of your other things. I’m sending the two of you back to the palace where you’ll be safe.”

  Mattie gave her husband a look of puzzled fear and did as he asked mutely, but Jenny protested. “Why?”

  “There is something wrong here. It’s earth magic. I’m not sure what’s been done, but it’s dangerous and I don’t want to risk you.”

  “But what about…” Jenny continued indicating the others.

  Sean followed her gesture, considering. “Maybe you should take the kids with you.”

  Larry risked the temper of Sean’s horse and pushed him aside a few feet. “What’s wrong? That old lady warned you that you needed to keep us with you, both of us. Can’t you protect Jenny? What are you trying to protect them from?”

  “I didn’t stay long enough to figure it out, Larry. It made my skin crawl, like I had a million fire ants under my skin. The girls are pregnant and I feel a threat there, especially there, but I don’t know what the threat is; it’s lesser for the kids, but a threat to them, too. We’re all in danger from it. I hope I can figure it out soon.”

  Larry looked puzzled, but horrified.

  Jenny saw the look on Larry’s face and pushed over as well, forcing Sean to prevent his horse from snatching at her horse’s flank. “Tell me, or I’ll take a page out of Mattie’s book and box your ears.”

  “Mattie never hit me,” said Sean, avoiding the issue on purpose as he argued with his horse over their close proximity.

  “No, but she had Laon do it; don’t push it.” She leaned in, and if she had been standing on the ground instead of sitting on a horse, she would have had her fists on her hips.

  “I’m afraid for your pregnancy, Jenny,” Sean said bluntly. He didn’t bother to tell her that Laon had promised never to hit him again.

  “Why?”

  “Come on, Jenny, I don’t have time to dither,” pleaded Sean.

  “Dither? Where on earth did you find that word? Are you telling me the big, strong, magic man isn’t strong enough to protect little old me?” she said. Her words were heavy with sarcasm, but she meant them just the same.

  Sean opened his mouth to argue with her some more, but Paddn rode up to join them. “Larry, talk to her; it’s your decision. Paddn, if you and the others stay with me, it could be life-threatening. Choose, but choose quickly.” He toed his horse around, away from the gathering and moved back by Cordan, who was saying his farewells to his wife. To spare himself the distraction of arguing with his horse, Sean dismounted to go over to them. “Are you ready?”

  Mattie pulled herself away from Cordan and Sean noticed her eyes were reddening. “Is Jenny coming?” she asked.

  “I hope so. I have reason not to force her, though.” Her head came up. “I don’t have that reason with regard to you,” he said before she could voice her protest. It was obvious that Cordan wasn’t willing to risk his wife, or their growing family. He looked relieved that Sean was going to send Mattie back no matter what she said.

  Paddn led eleven of the child mages up to them. “They say they all feel it, my lord. They are afraid to continue.” Paddn himself looked uncomfortable, but he said, “I’d rather stay.”

  Sean noticed that all of them had at least some green magic. That was probably why neither Ferris, nor Laon, had noticed anything. It was green magic, earth magic, and only someone who used it would readily feel its workings. He nodded and they all dismounted and pulled their saddlebags from behind their saddles.

  While they prepared to be sent to the palace, Sean turned to look back over the valley, which was only just becoming visible under the lifting rain. He couldn’t see much through the thick trees that reached farther still below him, and yet the wrongness made him itch. He turned to see what Larry and Jenny had decided. Jenny was stiff and Larry looked worried; she wasn’t going. He strode to her horse.

  “I’m staying, Sean, and you can’t make me go,” Jenny said defiantly. “Your success is more important.” Larry sagged in defeat.

  “Fine, Jenny, you can stay, but you won’t get off your horse. You’re not to eat or drink anything that comes from here. I don’t care if it’s the prettiest flower you’ve ever seen, you’re not to touch anything here, not anything.”

  She tried to protest the absurdity of that order, but Sean didn’t give her the chance.

  “Larry, you’re to see to it.” He turned to Cordan. “Cordan, I want you to assign two men to Jenny exclusively, Larry will give them their orders.”

  Cordan nodded, kissed his wife again, and went to carry out his orders.

  Sean took his place and looked over the small group. “I’m sorry, Mattie, but you’re just too valuable. I won’t risk you. Take care of Armelle for me and give her my love.” They were gone before she could offer another argument for staying.

  Sean handed the now-riderless horses to men who led them back to Seth. Like others, they would carry their gear; there was no other place for it. Once their new marching order was established, Sean moved them forward again, going much slower than they had been, as he struggled to understand what had been done here, and why.

  They made their way down out of the hills, past still-quiet homesteads nested among the trees, and as they did so, the wind tried to follow. The narrow road they traveled wasn’t put there for the scenic view; it was there because it was the best route over the low end of the mountains. It was an odd contrast to the road on the other side of the mountain ridge. Back in Lorraine, the road had been well traveled, but here, closer to the mountains, it was little more than a trail wide enough for two horses abreast, let alone a wagon. They had seen no one on the road for an entire day before passing the last goat farm, but still the road was maintained well enough. Here, though the recent rain had washed away any tracks, there was enough dead grass to say that the road was seldom traveled.

  Their current surroundings were heavily forested, and yet there was no evidence of any logging. The trees broke most of the brunt of the wind, but it was still biting and it caused the ice-laden trees to sway and creak alarmingly. Sean was forced to divide his attention between them and the mysterious magic; he didn’t want to be taken by surprise by some tree, whose branches were heavy with ice, was uprooted by the wind and fell in their midst.

  His feeling through the earth magic made Sean think of Mountain-Wave. Theirs had been earth magic, though different; he could do that kind of magic now too, but that didn’t make this was any easier to understand. “Mountain-Wave, can you hear me? Can you even understand me this way? Could you answer me if you could?”

  A wave of gentle humor and warm greetings washed over him, along with the touch of sun-kissed grasses, mountain dew, and rain-washed breezes. There were no words, though there never really had been with them.

  Sean sighed under the earthy touch and asked his question, hoping that Mountain-Wave would be able to understand it and hoping he would be able to answer it. “Something i
s wrong here. Can you tell me what it is?”

  At first Mountain-Wave was puzzled, and then his seemed to understand, but his answer left Sean just as confused as before. All he did was repeat his name, changing it from the picture of vast mountain ranges heaving over eons, and scrunching them down into this valley, making it feel like a thimbleful by comparison, forcing the expanse of time to fold over on itself in order to fit. Satisfied that he had given him the best answer that he could, Mountain-Wave left him to puzzle out the meaning.

  Sean looked closer at his surroundings, trying to fit it all into the ‘valley-wave/time-fold’ the Yeti had tried to convey to him; it made no sense.

  They got their first clue of what was wrong late that afternoon when they came across a small cerfin near the edge of the road. It was not grazing; it only looked at them dully when they came into sight. It moved off slowly as they approached, but before it reached the trees, it dropped to its knees then rolled over on its side.

  Taking its behavior as highly unusual for the normally lively creatures, Sean dismounted and walked over to it. Only Laon was willing to step down and accompany him, with Lyra following reluctantly. The creature was afraid, but it made no attempt to jump up and run away.

  Lyra touched the faded speckles on its flank, then turned away abruptly, throwing up in the bushes a few steps away. Sean watched her with alarm, then turned back to the cerfin. It watched him passively, its eyes already glazing over as it resigned itself to death. He touched the faded spots like Lyra had done, and felt this somehow ‘belonged’ to the explanation Mountain-Wave had given, but he didn’t quite understand how. The fawn was breach, it was still, and the mother was dead. There was nothing he could have done, but why had this happened, and why had Lyra gotten sick? “Lyra, are you all right? What happened?”