The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2)

by Melissa McShane

  “All right,” he said, but he sounded dubious. He’s been patient since then, even letting the Viravonians take him to his own room rather than stay with me—I’m sorry, but even though I’m excited about meeting someone else like me, I draw the line at letting strange men share my bedchamber.

  Anyway, we slept under some trees that had already begun to shed their leaves, so with the dampness it wasn’t a very comfortable sleep. I probably shouldn’t bitch about the mattress I slept on last night, since it was far better than a pile of wet leaves on the hard ground.

  In the morning, before we went anywhere, we shared some of the food and I told Jeddan my praenoma—return courtesy for courtesy and all that—and all about the convergence. Everything, not just the event and what came of it—all about th’an and kathanas and Castaviran magic, and what I knew about pouvrin, and that I was trying to find my husband and that’s why I was going north, or would be going north eventually.

  Jeddan listened in silence, only interrupting me with questions once or twice, until I explained about my pouvrin, and then he got the kind of look you get when you find out your grandmother’s paste brooch is a twenty-carat diamond.

  “Show me,” was all he said, and I demonstrated everything except the see-in-dark pouvra, which has no discernable effect and would only make me blind in the daytime, anyway. Then he sat there staring at me, or past me, or something, until I said, “Are you all right?”

  “I thought I was doing well with two,” he said, but in a joking way.

  “It took me ten years to master all those,” I said. “But who knows what we might accomplish if we work together? It has to be easier than reading those old books.”

  “I didn’t read any old books,” he said, and now it was my turn to look stunned. “Seeing inside things…it’s a variation on being able to slip between them. I didn’t know it was impossible to learn a pouvra that way. I didn’t even know they were called pouvrin.”

  “If you hadn’t already told me you were coming along, I might have kidnapped you,” I said, and he laughed, probably because there’s no pouvra in the world that would let me overpower someone his size.

  Anyway. That took a few hours, and then we circled around the village and headed off south down the road toward the Viravonian town. We decided it would be best for us to approach it in the opposite direction to the one facing Jeddan’s village, in case they were also expecting foreign invaders. It took us about an hour and a half, between walking the couple of miles to the town and then staying out of sight while we made our way around to the southern side. Then we walked up the road and through its gates.

  We got a friendlier reception than I had at the Balaenic village, even if I did have Jeddan in tow; people hailed us and wanted to know if we’d had any trouble on the way from Kinis, which I gathered is the next Viravonian village south of Erael (once again I’m spelling their words my way, and I—damn it, I was about to write “I plan to get Terrael to teach me to read Castaviran as soon as possible.” That reminded me I have no idea where he is, where any of them are, and learning to read is so far down the list of things I have to do it might as well not even be on there. And now I’m trying not to cry. It’s been a long day, and I’ve learned too many discouraging things, and I’m being stupid) anyway, Erael is the name of this village, and not one of them imagined I wasn’t Castaviran.

  Of course I didn’t correct them, just said “I have news for the person in charge” and hoped they wouldn’t think it was too strange that I didn’t say “the mayor” or whatever it is their local government is. And they didn’t, because they led Jeddan and me to a large house and ushered us inside.

  It’s obvious at even a casual glance this is not a Balaenic village; everything’s made of planed wood painted white, though most of the buildings look like they could use another coat, and the roofs are a funny pinkish-grey slate I’ve never seen before. I doubt they came from very far away, because that would be too expensive for the people who live here. I wonder if the quarry they came from survived the convergence. I wonder if the desert around the Darssan is plains now. I wonder if the Darssan is even still there. More things I don’t have time to investigate.

  We waited for a few minutes, and then this old man with a short gray beard and long white hair came into the room. “Travelers,” he said, “my name is Wilfron Kasselen, and I am the elder of this village. Please, sit down. Do you have news from the south? Are there more strange appearances? And what of the pagan invader’s troops?”

  That was a lot for me to take in all at once, so I decided not to answer any of it. “Elder Kasselen,” I said, hoping that was the correct form of address, “my name is Thalessi Scales, and despite how I look, I’m not Viravonian. I’m one of the…you know the village that appeared north of here? I am one of their people. I mean, of their country, not that I come from that village. If that makes sense.”

  That stunned him, and he looked like he was about to shout, so I overrode him and said, “Ask me how it is I speak your language.”

  He closed his mouth. Then he said, “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I’ll try to explain,” I said, and even though my explanation to Kasselen was longer than the one I’d given the council in Jeddan’s village, it was much easier because he at least knew about the shadow world, even if he didn’t know the details of the convergence. I didn’t tell him about the pouvrin, since that would have taken forever to explain, or how the final kathana worked, but it was still a very long story. The longer I spoke, the more intense his expression grew, until I reached the end of my story and said, “Could I have some water, please?”

  He got up without saying anything and went to the door, where he called to someone, and then returned to his seat bearing a tray with a pitcher of water and three glasses. “So their world has joined ours?” he said, after a long silence in which we all drank some water and stared at each other. I wondered what Jeddan thought—he must have been bored, listening to me babble in a language he couldn’t understand. He really is very patient.

  “It’s more accurate to say both worlds have returned to their original state,” I said. “We’re both invaders, in a sense.”

  Kasselen didn’t like that, but he didn’t challenge me. “Then what are we to do?” he said.

  That was the second time someone had tried to put the burden of decisions on me. “You’ll have to work that out for yourselves,” I said. “I’m not the leader of this village. But you will have to find a way to come to terms with the Balaenic villages around here. And that might be difficult, because they’re afraid of magic.”

  “A great challenge,” he said. “But what of the pagan invader’s troops? What has happened to them?”

  “The God-Empress’s soldiers?” I said.

  “We do not call her that,” Kasselen said, looking grim. “She usurps the place of God and wants to see us subjugated to her rule.”

  “I know,” I said, “but what I don’t know is how she was going about it down here. I’d heard only that she had most of an army in Viravon, trying to maintain control.”

  “Yes,” Kasselen said. “So what has happened to them in the convergence?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing, I imagine,” I said. “Though they might have lost contact with Colosse during the coup.” He gave me a startled look, and I realized I hadn’t said anything about Aselfos’s uprising against the God-Empress, so I told that story. He looked happier when I was finished.

  “They receive their orders from Colosse,” he said, “and with luck they will be in confusion, and we will have an opportunity to strike at them.” He stood up, so Jeddan and I did too. “We will give you a place to sleep, and food,” he said, “before you start your journey north.

  I realized I was hungry enough it must have been dinnertime, so we joined Kasselen for a meal, and it wasn’t until it was over that I remembered the most important reason I’d had for coming here, and asked if they had a way to contact the mages in Colosse. The
y

  I’ve just realized it’s almost three o’clock in the morning, and my eyes are burning, so I’ll have to sum this up even though my conversation with Lineta was really interesting. Interesting, and depressing, and a little frightening—anyway. The conversation went all over the place, so I’ve rearranged the details so it makes more sense. I kept dragging it off course by asking questions, but in the end, this is what I learned:

  Something strange happened in Erael in the days since the convergence. It has five mages—two who live here, and three who were on their way to something relating to the Viravonian resistance Lineta didn’t want me to pry into, so I didn’t. And the day after the convergence, suddenly only Lineta was still capable of working magic.

  Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, she has the same green-gray eyes I do, and Jeddan has. Cederic once told me those eyes indicate a predisposition to do magic, but it can’t be a coincidence that those four other mages, who don’t have those eyes, all lost their magic at the same time.

  I remember somebody, probably Terrael, said the worlds coming back together would restore the original requirements for magic; suppose the green-gray eyes are one of those requirements? Or that they indicate the innate ability to work magic Cederic’s research implied was part of the original world? It sounds silly, but based on

  Oh no. Terrael’s eyes are blue. So are Sovrin’s. Oh, please let me be wrong about this. If Terrael…I can’t even imagine it. I’m not going to think about it anymore. It’s a stupid idea and it has to be wrong.

  The important thing is that the loss of their mages has thrown this village into more turmoil than the convergence did, and they’ve (she’s) been trying to contact Colosse ever since that horrible discovery, to no effect. Lineta says the Firtha thanest, whatever that is, is not only not responding, but acting as if it isn’t there anymore, and she doesn’t have any friends in the capital she might be able to contact.

  I must have looked awful when she gave me the news, because she said a lot of comforting things I tried to be grateful for, because she was trying to help. But I can’t stop remembering how the palace was coming down on our heads, there at the end, and Aselfos’s troops were fighting the God-Empress’s soldiers all around us, and the God-Empress is who knows where—it’s impossible she’s dead, she’s too evil to die without taking a hundred innocent people with her. I can’t stop imagining everyone I love is dead, or thinks I’m dead, I’m not sure which is worse, but either way I just want to curl up somewhere and cry.

  I hate feeling that way. I hate feeling helpless and weak, because I’m not weak. I’ve had a lifetime of fighting every challenge the world has thrown at me. They aren’t dead. I will find them. Cederic’s the Kilios, damn it, and there’s no way the Kilios is just going to disappear. So even if he’s not in Colosse when I get there, someone will know where he went, and I’ll chase after him as long as I have to.

  There. I feel better now. I think I can sleep a few hours, and face breakfast, and then I can start planning a route to Colosse. And Jeddan and I can work on teaching each other pouvrin.

  Chapter Three

  20 Coloine, very late

  It’s taken me nearly an hour to convince myself to write the events of the day. So much has happened that I’d rather forget, because I feel so guilty about it all. It was so easy to tell myself the Viravonians have a right to defend themselves in the ways they’ve learned over the years are most effective. But there’s nothing I can do except move forward. And maybe I shouldn’t have started this entry this way, maybe I should have just written it out and let my words unroll the way events did today. It’s one of those days where I feel every one of my choices was a bad one.

  I only slept a few hours last night because I was up so late writing, but they were restful hours despite the thin mattress, and Kasselen fed us a good breakfast. (I don’t think I wrote that Jeddan and I stayed in his house. He was an excellent host.) Even so, I felt lazy, so we took our time packing our things—Jeddan has a backpack with essentials, including shaving tackle, and he makes a ritual out of shaving I’m sure will become annoying when I’m in a hurry, but today it didn’t bother me—and then visited a few stores in the village.

  I found someone to buy one of Audryn’s hair clips, only one because it occurred to me Castaviran money would do us no good in a Balaenic town, so I saved the other to sell later. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough for an emergency. Erael is a pretty town, as pretty as Jeddan’s village, and it makes me angry that they’re probably going to destroy each other because they don’t have the good sense to make common cause.

  We were about to head out of town when we heard horses coming toward the village from the south. That is, Jeddan heard the horses, and pulled me to one side of the road to put us behind a stack of boxes displaying the last vegetables from someone’s kitchen garden. I resisted, and he said, “We haven’t seen any horses around here, just mules and oxen. And that sounds like quite a few horses. I don’t like it.”

  I was impressed with Jeddan’s paranoia, so I stood with him behind the boxes and watched. By this time a lot of people had heard the approaching riders, and it was clear they weren’t happy about it. Mothers dragged their children off the street, storekeepers shut their doors, and soon the street was empty except for about twenty or twenty-five people lounging casually in doorways or on hitching rails. Their seemingly relaxed stances did a poor job of concealing tension. Some of them were standing near posts or hammers or pitchforks, things that could become weapons under the right circumstances. A few had rifles concealed against their legs or at their feet. All of them looked like people who expected a brawl to start soon.

  It took only a minute or so for the riders to come into view, and by then we could also hear the ominous sound of a lot of marching feet, thudding echoes in perfect rhythm that to me screamed “soldiers.” Sure enough, six men (or women, I couldn’t tell at that distance) rode at the head of a double column of thirty or so soldiers. They were fully armed and armored, down to the chicken helmets, but their long-sleeved linen tunics were green instead of black and they wore short green surcoats bearing the falcon emblem over their steel mesh shirts.

  The man in the lead had black stripes sewn to the cuffs of his shirt, three or four of them, and for some reason he was carrying his helmet in the crook of his arm instead of on his head. The other riders’ tunics and surcoats were white, and each carried a very familiar wooden board in his hands. (His and hers. Two of the mages were women, I eventually discovered.)

  They rode right down the middle of the street, ignoring the villagers, who turned to watch them go but otherwise didn’t move. The leader raised his hand in a gesture that meant “stop,” and they did, right at a point where they were surrounded by villagers. I have no doubt he did that on purpose, and I can see why he thought he had the upper hand. Poor bastard.

  He said, in a loud voice that carried the length of the street, “In the name of the most benevolent God-Empress Renatha Torenz, greetings. God requires that all Castaviran subjects contribute to the support of her army, which protects her subjects against enemy incursions. You will provide five hundred measures of wheat, four hundred measures of oats, two hundred bales of hay, and twenty casks of beer, all to be collected in three days’ time.”

  “We need that food to survive the winter,” a man called out. He stood a little ways behind the leader (captain?), arms folded, leaning against a post as if he were entirely relaxed. His long black beard quivered in the brisk, chilly wind that had risen as the soldiers approached, as if in warning, or in omen.

  “Your duty to God will bring blessings. She will not permit her servants to starve,” the leader said, not turning around.

  “We went hungry last winter ‘cause of her demands,” the man said. “We won’t do that again.”

  “If you refuse to give willingly, it will be taken by force,” said the leader. He gestured, and the soldiers began spreading out, drawing swords and choosing ta
rgets.

  “Your choice,” the black-bearded man said, and to my surprise lightning forked out of the clear sky and struck the ground at six equally spaced points surrounding the soldiers, hitting some of them and making them fall. The bolts that didn’t strike targets radiated tendrils of electricity, making the other soldiers fall back.

  I looked up to see where the lightning had come from and saw Lineta, leaning out of an upper window with her board and scribbling rapidly. She screamed as fire circled her, and dropped back inside the room. Then everything was chaos. Villagers leaped to the attack with their makeshift weapons, or took swords from dead soldiers. As the lightning faded, battle was joined.

  I had just enough time to realize the battle mages had entered the fight—villagers began collapsing, gray-faced, or screaming through flames—when Jeddan shouted and ran past me, throwing himself at one of the battle mages’ horses, and then through it. The terrified animal reared up, dumping the battle mage on the ground and knocking his board from his hands.

  It shook me out of my stupor. I feel bad that I didn’t think to attack first, but the truth is I’m used to fighting from the shadows, protecting myself from discovery so I could live to fight another day, and attacking simply didn’t occur to me. Then I lashed out with the fire-summoning pouvra, which I’ve gotten very good with; it engulfed another battle mage, who also fell off her horse, screaming and beating at herself. I didn’t take time to admire my handiwork, just bolted from my hiding place and ran straight at the leader, wrapped my arms around his leg, which was all I could reach of him, and worked the concealment pouvra on both of us.