His Cure For Magic (Book 2)

by M. R. Forbes

  That surprised her. "You knew?"

  "I had a feeling. That is why I tried to kiss you. Mediators are forbidden from relationships, so it never would have gone anywhere, but I needed to know."

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "For what?"

  "I knew you liked me. I wore the dress the other night to tease you. I've never been wanted before. Nobody wants a Cursed."

  He didn't say anything. He looked past her, to the trees and the river before them. He was still staring straight ahead when he spoke.

  "I still want you."

  Eryn felt her heart begin to pound, but she didn't respond.

  ###

  They found the owl a short time later. A quick glance into the tree wouldn't have been enough to attract attention to it, but Eryn stopped Strider beneath the branches and stared up at it until she was certain it was made of carved and painted wood.

  "There should be a small cave here somewhere."

  It might have been easier to find if the entire area hadn't been a mixture of stone, trees, and grass. The rock jutted out from the earth without rhyme or reason, some of it launching as high as fifty feet into the air. Spindly trees grew atop the stone, the roots hanging along the sides and digging into the moss that grew there, or dipping down and creating curtains on the way to the soil below. In others, it was barren and lifeless, the earth little more than sand and the stone a pale yellow, as though it were sick.

  Eryn had never seen anything like it.

  "What should we do, just feel along the sides of the rock?"

  "Saretta didn't say how to find it."

  She had explained everything to Wilem as they had ridden, starting from her discovery of Aren's secret cellar all the way up to when they had found Ames in the woods. When they had been at Waverly's, he had seemed so out of place and lacking in self-confidence, stumbling over his words and turning red with every turn of her wrist, or flash of a smile. Since then, he had shown a strength, determination, and decisiveness that she would never have expected. He had given up everything he had ever known because of her word, her conviction.

  It wasn't just me. He holds his power through lies. Such power is destined to fail. He still turns red when I smile at him, though.

  She liked that.

  She slid off the horse, finding her legs more easily now. She bent and straightened them a few times, and flexed the rest of her muscles as well. It might not have been a permanent cure, but she felt better than she had since the night she had met Silas.

  She closed her eyes and fought back against the threatening emotions. There was no time for that now. The best way she could honor him would be to finish what they had started.

  "So many roots," Wilem said, dismounting behind her. "Lychnus," he said. A light formed in the palm of his hand.

  "The words," Eryn said. "They help control the power of the Curse. Did your Academy tell you how?"

  The light moved from his hand, floating to a stone wall and ducking behind a curtain of roots. It gained in brightness until they could see through to the sheer rock face behind it.

  "You don't need them, if that is what you are asking. They say it helps our mind to focus on the task we wish to complete, like training a muscle to fight with a sword. The more familiar the motion, or the action, the easier it becomes. Creating light is the first thing we're taught, so the mastery comes from its manipulation." The light vanished. "If I wanted to tire myself, I could focus the light so tightly that it would become hot, and burn a hole right through that stone."

  "Really?"

  "I was considered quite gifted at the Academy," he replied. He looked down, and his face turned red. "My assignment was to replace Kelkin as General Clau's personal mediator. I considered it an honor at the time."

  "What about Kelkin? What was going to happen to him?"

  "Once a Mediator has reached fifty years they are replaced in the field. Kelkin was going to become a teacher at the Academy."

  "Replaced? Why?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you know how many Mediators are in the Empire?"

  "Not enough," he replied. "The number of Cursed has been growing, but I don't think the number of Mediators has." He put his hand on his chin. "The Academy has twenty-four students at any one time. Never more, never less."

  "That doesn't make sense. If there are more Cursed, and they are being brought in from the villages around the Empire... what happens to them?"

  Wilem looked up at her, his face paling. "Before we get into the Academy, we have to pass a test. They have a way to draw out the Curse. It is a large purple stone that they keep in an ircidium box. A Carrier leads you into the room and removes the stone from the box. It pulls on you, your 'magic' as you call it. You have no control over it. When you pass out, the Carrier covers the box again. Many Cursed do not survive."

  The thought made her cold. "Surely more than twenty-four must pass the test?"

  He looked like she had punched him again. "I... I never... actually thought about it. I was grateful just to wake up. I don't know what happens to them."

  "Killed, if I had to guess." Eryn said.

  She scanned the outcroppings of stone again. Saretta had said they would never find it at night, but they couldn't seem to find it during the day either. She looked back to the tree with the owl in it. "Maybe it's on the other side of the river?"

  "You're on the right side," Davin said, stepping out from behind a large stone. He was holding a crossbow, and had it leveled at Wilem. His hair was tousled, his eyes bloodshot, his clothes caked in mud and grass. "What are you doing with this?"

  "Davin, wait," Eryn said. "He's a friend."

  He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. "A Mediator? Do you think you can trust him? I couldn't even trust my best. Lance and Ames were like my younger brothers." He shook his head. "Where is Silas?"

  He must have seen it on her face. He pursed his lips and lowered the crossbow.

  "There's been enough killing for one night, eh? I'm sorry, Eryn. I hated him for a long time, but he was a fine man in the end."

  "A fine man who died so that we could carry on," she replied. "Is Saretta here?"

  He smiled at that. "She is. You have my eternal thanks for rescuing her."

  "I don't want your thanks. I want the journal, and a guide to the Dark."

  "The Dark?" Wilem asked. "The Dark is a myth."

  "No, it isn't, Mediator. Come, Eryn. I have your other things, too."

  "The Dark isn't real," Wilem said again as they followed behind Davin.

  He brought them through a maze of stone and wood, to a twenty foot mound of rock made almost invisible by the density of the roots hanging from the trees at its peak. He swept some of the roots aside, revealing a small, dark hole, just big enough for them to crawl through on their hands and knees.

  "It is real, and it's where I'm going. If you don't wish to follow, you can turn around now."

  "I'm staying," he said without hesitation.

  "You can leave your horse out here," Davin said. "I trust a stallion of his quality will stay quiet."

  "One minute," Wilem replied. He undid the straps to one of the pockets of a saddlebag and withdrew the lacquered box.

  "What is that?" Davin asked.

  "It's a long story," Eryn replied. "I'll tell you inside."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Eryn

  18 Avrille, 2904

  We're leaving tomorrow. Abandoning this place. Will we ever return? Will we survive to have the option? The future has become so unclear.

  I regret the day we reached the ebocite. I regret our pride and our confidence that we were the masters of this world, and that our simple human hands could maintain control of such power. We never fully understood the reactions. We never spent enough time studying the effects of the resonances.

  I will go with Rossum and the others to the source. It is a risk to use the subroutes, but it is the only way to make it in time.

  Everything that we h
ave left is waiting there. An army almost two hundred thousand strong. It is a grand feat to hide them, and it comes at a grand cost, but this is our last stand. This is our darkest hour. Two days from now either the tides of war will have shifted, or the downfall of man will have been decided.

  This never should have happened. We came here as men of science, seeking to ease the burden of life, and use our gifts to heal the fractures of the world. Instead we've broken them wide open.

  If you've found this journal, if you've read its pages...

  I don't know to celebrate you, or to weep for you.

  Know that I have prayed for you, but He is no longer listening.

  - Jeremiah

  ###

  Eryn took a deep breath and closed the journal. She looked at its worn back, and then at the paper she had written the translation on. The words left her shaking and cold.

  "What does it say?" Wilem asked.

  She picked up the paper and handed it to him. He read it quickly, his face losing its color while he did.

  The inside of Davin's cave was livable but hardly luxurious. A simple table assembled with branches and the cut trunk of a tree, a pair of chairs made of the same, a bit of straw and old cloth for bedding in the corner, and a chamber in the rear rigged with the tiniest of flus, allowing a small fire to burn inside without notice and without suffocating them. It had never been intended to be occupied by more than one or two people, so the space was cramped and forced all of them into a level of closeness that would have been uncomfortable under most circumstances. As it was, it had taken some time to calm Saretta enough to Wilem's presence that she would even allow him in.

  Wilem had accepted her upset without anger or judgement. He had offered to stay outside if need be, to sleep under the stars with Strider. He surprised Eryn again with his kindness and understanding.

  Davin had refused. If their intent was to go to the Dark, they would need to be able to work together and trust one another. He had seen General Rast become the Hero of Elling. If he could see the other side, certainly a young Mediator could as well.

  He had spoken to Saretta, and when Wilem entered she greeted him with nervous warmth. He apologized for her imprisonment in the mines, and promised her he would do what he could to end the suffering of all of the Empire. Being cured of Kelkin's poison had done more than return the strength of his magic.

  The librarian looked different after a night of freedom - her stained and torn rags replaced with a green blouse and dark pants, her hair washed and falling straight over her narrow face. "May I?" she asked, crowding close to Wilem to read over his shoulder.

  He gave her the page. "I don't understand it," he said. "Resonances? Subroutes? Ebocite? War?"

  "Davin, where is Aren's journal?" Eryn asked. She didn't understand everything either, but she knew where to find some clues.

  Davin grabbed a canvas sack from its place next to the bedding and untied the top. He located the book and handed it to her.

  They were standing around the small table where Eryn had laid out the journal. Light filtered down on them from an oil lamp, a tiny star rocking in a glass enclosure that hung from the ceiling. "Thank you." She put it on the table next to the other and opened it up, flipping through to the middle. "Aren spent some time studying and observing the stones. The ones he had in his cellar were poor quality, but he was able to experiment with them."

  She held out her hand, showing them the blue stone on the ircidium band.

  "According to his journal, using magic on the different types of materials causes them to shake at a speed that can't be seen with your eyes, but that he was able to watch with the device he made." Her finger trailed along the page, through a series of short notes. "Here. He said he found a lot of references to different stones and crystals. The word he wrote: 'resonance'."

  "You're saying that the journal is referring to a stone?" Saretta said. "This other word, 'ebocite', it must be one."

  "It must be," Eryn said, "though I have not seen or heard of it before." She moved back a few pages. "The red crystal was called 'sphalecite'. The green is 'verdite'. They amplify the power of the magic, but only in very specific ways. Sphalecite can help create fire, for example."

  "The ebocite must have done something that they weren't expecting. Or maybe it got out of control somehow?"

  "It sounds like there was more than one stone involved," Wilem said, "but we can't feed our power to more than one at a time."

  "What if two Mediators use them at the same time?" Davin asked.

  "Each works in its own way, they don't interact. If we are being attacked, we can defend ourselves with the ircidium," Wilem said.

  "I don't think it's wise to try to make too many conclusions from one entry," Saretta said. "We don't even know if the Cursed existed when this was written, or if they were using the stones the same way they are used today. Somehow, whatever they did caused a war that the owner of the journal, Jeremiah, was not sure could be won. He called it the 'downfall of man'. Whatever they were fighting against, that means they weren't human."

  "Or he didn't consider them human," Davin said. "I feel that way about him. Conclusions, my love."

  "Yes, of course. We know only that there was a war, a massive battle." She scanned the translation again. "Who is Jeremiah? Who is Rossum? What and where is the source? The final page has more questions than answers. Maybe the rest of the book will shed more light."

  Eryn closed both journals. Saretta's words continued to echo in her mind. What she and Silas had fought in the Rushes was definitely not human. What Malik had become... would he still be considered human? "Silas believed the answers were in the Dark. He was certain they would give us a lead on where to find him."

  "I know," Saretta said, "and I'll take you to the Dark, I promise, but we need to wait a few days. His soldiers will come through here, and we can't afford to be caught out in the open."

  "What about Strider?" Wilem asked.

  "Your horse? You'll have to send him on his way. We'll head to the Dark on foot. It's the only way to be sure to avoid being seen."

  Wilem didn't look happy, but he nodded. "I'll go get the rest of our things and send him off. Either he'll return to Edgewater or the soldiers will find him, but either way I hope they'll think I'm dead."

  "I'll come with you," Eryn said. "Half of what he's carrying is mine."

  Eryn followed Wilem out of the hideout, crawling back through the small tunnel on her hands and knees and out past the curtain of roots, which Wilem held aside for her. Strider was waiting where they had left him, grazing on the grass.

  Wilem held out his hand and helped Eryn to her feet. She leaned forward as she came up, brushing her lips against his cheek.

  "I don't know if I said thank you. For saving me, and for being here."

  His face turned red, but he didn't look away. "You're welcome." He gave her a sheepish smile. "Thank you for that."

  It was her turn to be embarrassed. She made her way over to Strider, putting a hand to his neck and stroking it. Anything to keep him from seeing her blush.

  He joined her a moment later, and together they undid the straps and buckles that held their equipment.

  "You should leave the wand," Eryn said. "It will look less suspicious."

  "Good idea." He returned it to its place. "I'll miss it. I've always had an affinity for manipulating plants. One time at the Academy, I created a vine that was large and heavy enough that it allowed a few of us to climb over the walls and get out into Edgewater for the night. The others wanted to go to a brothel, but..."

  "Go on, but what?"

  "You know we aren't permitted to be with anyone, because it may spread the Curse. That wasn't why I didn't though, I mean... I just..."

  Eryn laughed.

  "What's funny?"

  "You."

  "I'm not trying to be funny."

  "I don't mean it that way. Before I came to Varrow all I'd seen of the Empire, of the soldiers and the Mediators, they
were all so rigid, so cold, so evil... like monsters, and the monsters outnumber the people. I met a soldier in Varrow, he saved me from a beating by another soldier. He was kind, and he believed in Amman. I didn't believe there were any soldiers like that. Then I met you. I know you were playing a part, and I understand why, but the person that you were at Waverly's is still here." She paused and looked at him until their eyes met. "Only better."

  He smiled at her. "Better?"

  "Why didn't you go to the brothel with your friends?"

  He didn't hesitate this time. "This will probably sound stupid, but I always had it in my head that I would marry first. Being a Mediator didn't mean going against that. It meant going without."

  They kept their eyes locked, until Eryn finally turned her head back to Strider. "I think we have everything." She patted the horse's head again. "When we kill him, I'll come back and free you, too."

  Wilem took the stallion's reins and guided him back through the twists of stone. Once they were near the river he put his hand on the horses rump and sent a small charge of power through it. The horse whinnied and took off at a run, vanishing from sight within moments.

  "If you'll excuse me, Wilem," Eryn said, "I'd like to take a bath. If you can keep yourself facing that way, I wouldn't mind your company."

  Wilem turned around, putting his back to her while she stripped off her clothes and jumped into the water.

  I don't really care if he looks, but I'm sure he won't.

  He didn't.

  ###

  06 Maro, 2901

  Genesia. I still cannot believe that I'm here. All of these years of study, all of these years of hard work and dedication, and my dream has come true. They call this place the 'Jewel of the Empire', and I can see why. The tower is already under construction, an amazing work of craftsmanship unlike any the world has ever seen before. And surrounding it... a beautiful forest, so green and full of life, nestled in a valley with a crystal clear lake nearby. I can't wait to get away to see it once I'm settled.