The Black Mage: Candidate

by Rachel E. Carter

  “These are no ordinary bandits,” the envoys had warned. And they were right. Within a couple of hours the thieves’ tracks had all but disappeared.

  “Forty horses don’t just vanish into thin air.” Lief studied the dirt. “My guess is they had someone with magic casting alongside them. It’s the only explanation.”

  I nudged my mare forward. “Do you think it’s the rebels?”

  The lead mage shook his head vigorously. “The rebels don’t bother this far north.”

  “Why not?” Ray was just as curious as me.

  “All the Crown’s Army reports state attacks south of the capital.” Lief didn’t seem concerned. “There hasn’t been so much as a whiff near the border.”

  I frowned. It was true the Red Desert had the salt flats in the south, one of the nation’s most profitable exports, but what about the armory in Ferren and the horse breeders in the townships up north? We traded with those too, did we not?

  Ian noted my expression and drew closer. “The rebels don’t bother us up here. There’s no point. Caltoth does the job for them.”

  “Do you think King Horrace is the one financing their efforts?”

  His eyes stayed focused on the woods around us. “Perhaps.”

  Next to me Paige scoffed. “If it were that easy all we’d need to do is round up one and beat the fool ‘til he sings. End the war with Caltoth and those sorry rebels in one easy strike of the fist.”

  Ian’s eyes flashed under the bright rays of the afternoon sun. “That’s a bit—”

  “What? Cruel? Well they shouldn’t have turned traitors. My brother died serving in Port Cyri because of a rebel attack!”

  Lief cleared his throat and took over for Ian. “No one is defending those rebels, Paige. But I can tell you that this isn’t them. They stick south. We get thefts up north all the time because of the border raids. When their livelihood is destroyed, they turn to crime. It’s not right, but it happens.”

  “With magic? An impoverished family wouldn’t have mages with them.” Bless Paige’s skeptical heart, she wasn’t ready to back down just yet. I hid a grin. I had to admire her resolve: she did not let anyone’s explanation stand in the way of facts. Even when that person was scowling directly into her face.

  Ray snickered beside me as Lief let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, Paige, ‘with magic.’ There are plenty of people who apply to the Academy who aren’t granted an apprenticeship but would still have enough magic to cast a simple enchantment like this. Hiding tracks and broken foliage isn’t exactly an expertise.”

  My knight had the decency to duck her head. “Oh.”

  “Oh indeed.” Lief gave her what I was sure was a tired smile. “It’s against the law to practice magic unless you are a mage—or a part of the apprenticeship, but the desperate ones don’t exactly play by the rules. I’m sure most follow the Code of Conduct where you grew up?”

  “They did.” Paige’s cheeks were tinged pink. “They were tried with a higher sentence otherwise.”

  The young man laughed. “If only that worked around here.”

  I watched as my guard and the lead mage carried on into what could only be described as a friendly discourse. Ian, Ray, and I followed behind in an amused silence.

  “Is she blushing?”

  Ian stared. “I thought your guard hated everyone.”

  “Apparently there are exceptions.”

  “Exceptions with shining blond locks and long, long lashes,” Ray chortled.

  Ian grinned at me. “Apparently Paige and Ray are harboring amorous feelings for Lief. What about you, Ry? Are you pining after our lead mage as well?”

  “Certainly. What with those long, long lashes.” I winked at Ray. “How could I not?”

  Ian opened his mouth to say something in reply, but it was lost on me as I caught wind of two knights’ conversation behind us:

  “…Future princess can’t even take her mage duties seriously, too busy flirting with the others.”

  My good humor was lost in a second.

  “I heard she only got offered the position because Nyx suspected her relationship with Prince Darren would be beneficial to the keep.”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “After the attack in Ferren? Everyone knew. He was in and out of the infirmary every day she was recovering… Can you imagine what she must have done to convince him to leave Lady Priscilla? She certainly wasn’t practicing Combat, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I heard about that. I was in Tijan. So you truly think she’s here because…?”

  “Why else? From what I’ve seen she’s nothing special.”

  I didn’t even realize how tightly I was gripping the reins until the conversation died off and the second knight cleared her throat.

  “Mage Ryiah, is something wrong?”

  The false worry was like burnt sugar to the taste. My grip on the reins was so tight my knuckles were white. I could barely feel my fingers. I was sorely tempted to turn around in the saddle and tell the knight exactly what I thought of her “concern.”

  “What’s wrong?” How about you daring to pretend you know anything about me! Nyx offered me the position because of my performance saving soldiers from a Caltothian attack! Why did she offer you yours? Because of your talent for tasteless gossip?

  A slender arm slid into my field of vision and pried my hands from the reins, releasing the tension so that my mare was able to start forward once again.

  “Ryiah.” Ruth was leaning close to my face. I hadn’t exchanged so much as a word with the Alchemy mage since I’d arrived—mostly because I had been too distracted to remember. “Come on, let’s catch up to the rest of your group.”

  “Did you hear?” My voice cracked as she led me away from the knights, back to the center of our formation where the rest of the Combat mages and Paige rode.

  The girl nodded once and I flushed.

  For the past couple of days I had noticed conversations ending rather abruptly when I approached, but I had never thought twice about it until now. Was the entire squad talking about me?

  Was that what this was?

  “They don’t know you, Ryiah.” Ruth’s discerning gaze was sympathetic. “All they can do is speculate.”

  “Do you think I was offered this post because of his feelings for me?” I didn’t need to say whom. Ruth had watched Darren’s and my relationship play out from a distance the entire apprenticeship.

  “No.” The girl hesitated. “But there are people who will always believe that no matter what you tell them.”

  “Are there…” I swallowed back my anger. “Are there a lot of them?”

  Ruth didn’t say anything.

  Great. I felt anger fighting its way back to the surface. My entire squad thought I had received my rank and position because of my betrothal to the prince. My comrades gave me compliments to my face and speculated on my skill the second my back was turned.

  Five years of proving myself. Gone. In an instant.

  No wonder Darren had been so cold that first day at the Academy when Ella and I had questioned his place as a student. Doubtless, he had experienced what I was feeling now thousands of times. As a prince he probably got tired of proving himself again and again. Darren’s angry retort that morning had been a culmination of years of false flattery and cruel speculation.

  “You will thank me one day for not filling your head with false compliments.” Darren had been doing me a favor after all. If only I had realized it then instead of years after the fact. What I had thought was mocking irony was in truth the advice of an angry young prince who had been tirelessly lied to and talked about whenever he left a room. His entire life.

  “Thanks,” I told Ruth aloud, “for stopping me before I said something I’d regret.” Although in truth I wasn’t so sure. Those two knights deserved a piece or two of my mind.

  Ruth patted my shoulder awkwardly, unaware of my internal conflict. “It’ll get better, Ry, you’ll see.” She never was one f
or warm, friendly gestures. “And if it doesn’t, well, you are only with us for a year before you have to return to the capital, isn’t that right?”

  That was a bleak prospect. I gave her a weak smile, and Ruth returned to her group of Alchemy mages as I followed behind Ian and Ray, lost in my own self-pity and fury.

  ****

  “Ryiah. Ian. You two are going to go south with Jeffrey’s band. Ray and I will head north with Sir Gavin’s.”

  I tried not to let my disappointment show when we reached a fork in the road and Gavin had Lief split us up into two separate parties. Though the bandits’ tracks had been missing for the first two days everyone suspected they had taken the stream north after the general resurgence of prints leading to the south.

  As Lief put, “No one spends that much effort trying to hide their presence to suddenly stop trying.” The thieves had clearly run out of magic and taken the stream to hide their route—leaving an abundance of evidence south to lead their pursuers astray. Still, Sir Gavin had to send some of us to investigate both options, and it was no surprise I got assigned to the group least likely to encounter the enemy.

  The conversation between the two knights came echoing back: “From what I’ve seen she’s nothing special.” As I parted ways with Ray and Lief I had to keep from lobbing my apple’s core at the lead mage’s back. Do you think I’m nothing special too? I wanted to scream, I am more than capable of handling a couple bandits on my own!

  But of course I couldn’t say any of that. Because any fit of temper would confirm the skeptics’ assumption that I was only here because of my relationship to the prince. Because a true war mage would never complain over their duty, no matter how menial or insignificant it might seem.

  “You are unusually quiet.” Paige sidled next to me on her mare after two hours of silence. “Is something bothering you, my lady?”

  I clenched my teeth. Self-pity would not get me anywhere. “Nothing is bothering me.” I studied the forest in front of us and the moss-covered granite scattered throughout—it would have been beautiful if I hadn’t been so distraught. “Do you really think the bandits would be this obvious?” I was referring to the droppings peeking out between dense patches of grass and ivy.

  The knight bit her lip, understanding my real reason for asking. “No, my lady.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Next to me Ian didn’t say a word. I wondered if he was upset to be assigned with the fifty of us clearly headed in the wrong direction. The weaklings. It had to be an insult for Ray to be given the premium assignment even though Ian was a year older and more experienced. Chancing a quick glimpse I saw the boy’s face was a mask.

  Since when was that boy unreadable?

  We wove in and out of the thick-trunked pines dotted in fuzzy growth, following the obvious indentations of crushed foliage for nearly three hours before the prints finally turned around and backtracked the path they had taken through a nearby hedge.

  “Well, isn’t this a surprise,” a soldier grumbled.

  I dismounted and Paige followed by habit. The sun had turned a hazy amber peaking out beneath the trees, illuminating our stop with shades of crimson and violet. It wouldn’t be much longer before it was time to set up camp. Some of the knights nearby were debating whether to turn around now to try and catch up to Sir Gavin’s group to the north, or rest for the night. Knowing how sinister the terrain could turn without the sun’s rays to guide us, I was in favor of the latter.

  “Mages, would you mind collecting the firewood?”

  Now that we were down to fifty, the soldiers needed help with the tasks a hundred usually accomplished without the mages’ and knights’ aid. I didn’t mind. It gave me something to do, and I needed a distraction. I grabbed one of the soldier’s empty sacks and Ian and Paige followed suit, the three of us scouting the west side of the trail while Alchemy and Restoration took the east.

  “Everything is wet,” Paige complained after ten minutes of fruitless searching. “It’s so shaded here the dew stays on everything. Nothing is dry, look…” She snagged a branch in passing and attempted to split it—revealing a fresh-looking center that did not want to break. “I hope the others are having better luck.”

  “There’s some light over there.” Ian pointed to some brush in the distance that looked more aged than the rest of the forest. “Come on.”

  The two of us trudged after him, pushing past an assault of dense bramble to reach it. By the time we emerged on the other side I had small red lines all across my arms.

  They itched like crazy.

  Lovely, just lovely. I scratched my bare skin and made a face at nothing in particular. Service in Ferren’s Keep Regiment was nothing like what I imagined. After an action-packed apprenticeship I had expected danger; so far this forest plant was the closest enemy I had encountered.

  I kicked out at the nearest shrub with a vengeance and then swore as my foot collided against a large rock beneath.

  “Ryiah?”

  I looked up to catch Ian watching me with a cautious expression. A couple feet away Paige was pointedly ignoring us both, breaking off branches one at a time.

  I made my face blank as I held the sack open for my guard. “It’s nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” Ian stopped what he was doing. “You’ve been acting as though something has been bothering you all day.”

  Why deny it? He already knew something was wrong. “The others were talking about me.”

  Silence.

  I picked up a piece of wood from the ground and yelped as my finger caught on its splintered bark. I yanked my hand away and plucked the infinitely small shard from my skin, watching as a small bead of red settled onto the surface. “Everyone thinks Nyx only offered me the position here because of my new status,” I added.

  Ian didn’t look surprised. “I heard.”

  Thanks for sticking up for me. “Why didn’t you correct them?” I swallowed and forced myself to ask the question I’d been secretly wondering since I arrived. “Are we… are you mad at me?”

  “Ryiah.” Ian folded his arms across his chest. “This has nothing to do with our past. Me saying something wouldn’t change the facts. You are a lowborn who received second-rank status on the same night the prince told his father he was to marry you instead.” The boy took the now-brimming sack from my hands and set his own empty one in its place. “What is everyone supposed to think?”

  “Darren didn’t ask Byron to do that.” I felt frustration working its way to the surface and swallowed hard, forcing the anger back. “I earned my rank, Ian, you know that!”

  “Yes,” the boy said with a sigh, “and how convenient it was that Master Byron decided to have a change of heart the year of your ascension.”

  “It’s not my fault Marius finally talked some sense into the old man!” I felt as if I had taken a punch to the gut. This was Ian. Ian. My former friend, or so I had thought. Maybe he was still mad. Maybe he hadn’t forgiven me after all.

  “Why am I being punished for impressing the Black Mage? Why am I being put down for catching Nyx’s eye after I saved her regiment? Why does my new status have to mean anything here? I have proven myself time and time again!”

  “You can’t just pick and choose when to play the victim, Ry.” Ian stopped ducking his head to look at me, really look at me. “Yes, people are going to speculate. That’s what they do. But forgive me for saying you received plenty of privileges from your friendship with the prince, too. Or did you already forget how Darren got you a spot on that mission in Port Langli? Or how about the time you woke up our entire camp to yell at him—and were it anyone else Byron would have sent you packing in a minute?” He exhaled slowly. “And do you think the Black Mage would have been quite so eager to point out Byron’s obvious bias unless Darren had drawn attention to it?”

  “Ian, I…” My cheeks were in flames. I had received privileges. And here Ian was reminding me how silly I looked complaining over the prospect of one disadvanta
ge when he would have killed to have any one of those. The boy whose heart I had trampled for another. “I’m sorry, I… I didn’t realize—”

  The young man held up his hand quickly to show me it wasn’t what I thought. “I know you deserve your rank, Ry, but...” He swallowed loudly. “But the others are going to need a bit more convincing. And in the meantime don’t bite their heads off for talking. Because their beliefs aren’t entirely unfounded.”

  I wiped a strand of sticky hair back from my forehead. “Well, now I feel just terrible.”

  “As you should.”

  I opened my mouth and shut it as I caught his smile.

  “I’m kidding, Ryiah.”

  I gave an embarrassed shrug. “I guess I’ve forgotten your humor. This has to be the longest conversation the two of us have had in years.”

  The boy chuckled. “It is a bit awkward, isn’t it?”

  “It was awkward for me.” Paige's voice cut through my delayed response. I gave the knight a half-hearted glare. She was never very subtle.

  “So…” Ian said.

  “So.”

  “You and Darren.”

  “Oh…” I paused. “That.”

  The boy cleared his throat uncomfortably. “The non-heir turned out to be full of good intentions in the end. I can’t say I saw that coming.”

  I shifted my feet guiltily. “I did… and then I didn’t. He’s…” I didn’t know how to say it without making the conversation worse. “He’s complicated.”

  “You could say that.”

  I cringed and hastened to explain. “But he wants to do the right thing. He doesn’t always do it the right way, but he has good intentions.” I cringed at the use of the same phrase as Ian. It made Darren sound so… complicated. Complicated? I had already used that word too. I was floundering here.

  “I think you will be good for him.”

  My gaze shot up to meet Ian’s. “T-thank you?”

  “I’m not just saying that to be nice.” The mage’s eyes bore into mine. “You didn’t grow up at the palace and spend your days wasting away in a convent. You will be able to advocate for others, affect policy…”