“DI!” he wailed in protest.
“Trade?” I offered innocently.
He emphatically nodded, tossing the afghan to me without a second of hesitation. I caught it with my right hand, tossing him the toy with my left. He nimbly caught it, chittering happily.
Chatta relaxed when all of his attention was diverted to the knot in his hands. “When did you get that?” she asked in gratitude.
“Night before we left.” I grinned at her. “I thought it might come in handy.”
“Thank heavens you were thinking ahead.” Her eyes went to the afghan in my hand. “Now, how to undo the damage…” She tapped her wand thoughtfully against her jaw for a moment, considering. Then she pointed it at the unraveled edge. “Repair.”
In seconds, it re-weaved itself back into the original pattern. I studied it carefully, but it looked fine. “Good as new.”
“Good,” she said in relief.
I carefully put the afghan out of sight, just in case Didi couldn’t resist having both toys.
We all turned toward the doorway when we heard the heavy tread of boots crossing the porch. The door opened, a rather heavyset man entering…only to bow to a stop when he saw us. He was dark, like a Hainian, but with vivid blue eyes. Those eyes lit up in recognition as they passed over the occupants of the room. “Y-you’re…”
“Indeed, Aral,” Raile drawled in amusement. “They came for a quick visit and to use the pool. May I formally introduce Captain De Xiaolang of the Red Hand and his team—Shield Garbracen, Hazard Harewood, Eagle Sevar, and Aletha Saboton. Then we have Witch L-Chattamoinita Delheart, Captain Riicshaden of Chahir—” Aral’s mouth dropped at that, apparently he recognized Shad’s name “—and the one you’ve been looking for all this time: Magus Rhebengarthen. Garth, this is Aral Bender, Elemental Mage and Sallah’s husband.”
Aral looked like a feather could knock him over. His eyes fastened on me, like his wife’s had, with joy and relief and incredulity.
I walked to him, fighting a smile, and offered my hand. “Well met, cousin.”
He laughed as he accepted the handclasp. “I guess we are at that, several times removed! We never expected for you to actually come here. Sallah was making noises about tracking you down when the baby was born, and perhaps visiting your parents.”
“They’d love that,” I assured him. “We never knew that magic ran in the family. They thought I was an anomaly.”
“You are,” Chatta assured me brightly.
I shot her a glare, but it only bounced right off her innocent smile. I’d get her for that comment later…
Aral snorted, releasing my hand. “And where is my wife?”
“She went to fetch Don,” Raile informed him.
“She’ll be back in a moment then,” he acknowledged. He turned to look at Shad, and there was child-like wonder in his face. “Captain Riicshaden, I’m very glad to see that you’re out of that crystal.”
“Thank you,” Shad replied with twinkling eyes. “I’m very glad to be out of the crystal.”
“I’m sure!” Aral responded, mouth curving up in a rueful manner. “But how did you survive so long in there? By the time that we started reviewing history, and putting the pieces together, it had already been a hundred years since you were put in there. We were sure it was too late.”
“The crystal was tied directly to a ley line,” I offered when Shad floundered. “It was sustaining itself.”
Aral nodded. “I see. You pulled him out, then?”
“Yes.”
“Amazing,” he murmured to himself. “There are two walking legends in my living room.”
“And a third on his way,” Terran noted in amusement.
“Eh?” Aral frowned at him, puzzled.
“Terran,” I warned.
“They have to know sometime,” Terran pointed out in an oh-so-reasonable tone. “And you can trust everyone in this room. You know that.”
That wasn’t the problem. I’d kept this secret so long it felt like… like I was committing some major sin to let it be spoken aloud.
“Trust us with what?” Chatta was watching me closely, brow furrowed in a slight frown.
I was saved by Sallah’s voice coming from the doorway. “Aral, you’re home!” She was flushed from her quick walk and nearly bouncing in place from excitement. “Don!” she called impatiently through the door.
“I’m coming, you impatient woman, I’m coming!” a light tenor responded, heavily colored in exasperation. “You’d think that the end of the world was coming the way you’re carrying on…” Finally the speaker appeared. His voice matched his looks; he was tall, thin, with dark auburn hair and gray eyes. He took one look at the occupants of the room and his words dried up.
Raile introduced us all again. Don’s eyes grew slightly bigger with each person, and when they reached me, I thought they were going to fall out of their sockets. “You’re actually here…” he breathed.
“We are indeed,” Xiaolang replied, lips twitching.
“What did you mean, about the third one coming?” Aral asked Terran in confusion. “You can’t mean Don.”
“I meant Garth’s Nreesce, Night,” Terran corrected. “Or, as Night is properly known, Trivoxor.”
Every magician in the room froze.
Aw rats, that did it! I lifted one hand to cover my eyes, fighting to remain still and not bolt for the outside. “Terran,” I growled, “did you have to mention this now?”
Night chose this moment to stick his head through the door, so he could see me. “What’s going on?”
“Terran decided to bust open the keg,” I answered tersely.
“Wait.” Chatta’s eyes were bouncing between me and Night, watching us as if our eyebrows had just turned fluorescent green. “You’re telling me that Night is Trivoxor? As in, the legendary Nreesce that will choose the most powerful Mage as his Rider?”
Night and I shared panicked looks.
“Um, I’m going back to mowing the lawn.” He scurried backward, disappearing at lightning speed.
“Coward!” I yelled after him.
“Garth, what is this about?” Xiaolang’s voice was deceptively mild.
I’d get Night for this later. Abandoning me to all of these questions…maybe I’d get Didi to braid fluorescent pink braids into his tail. I longingly eyed the door, but alas, there were three people blocking me from the entrance. Besides, Shad was faster than I was—so was Xiaolang, come to think of it. I’d never make it to freedom.
“Garth,” Chatta warned in a dark tone, “don’t even think about making a break for it.”
Busted buckets, she knows me too well. I sighed, shoulders slumping. No choice, I’d have to come clean. “Night is the only son of Advent Eve, the mother of the Nreesce Race,” I explained in a near monotone. “And, well…there’s sort of a prophesy attached to him.”
“Keep going,” Shad encouraged, eyes suspicious.
I refused to look at anyone while I recited it, instead focusing my eyes on the floor under my feet. “The Mother shall give birth, and her son will be named Trivoxor. Blood shall be mixed with his coming; strangers shall seek him. A Rider shall be chosen. Great power shall be his, and all shall know his name. When Trivoxor has chosen a Rider, the Balance will be restored. The son will be named Trivoxor and blood will be mixed with his coming."
Shield let out a low whistle. “That’s quite the prophecy, Garth.”
“I don’t remember part of that,” Chatta frowned, obviously going over it again in her head.
“What I recited is the Coven Ordan version.” I smiled humorlessly.
“That’s how Terran knew,” she breathed.
“Precisely,” Terran agreed. “That’s the other reason why we were on the mainland. We wanted to find Advent Eve, if she were still alive, and figure out if she’d had a son or not. And we also wanted to know who that son had chosen.”
“With that prophecy, I can’t blame you,” Shad concurred. He leaned forward sli
ghtly, grinning like a demented elf. “Garth, tell me, how is it that you get into so many things? This goes beyond a gift for trouble; it’s almost a curse.”
“There’s no ‘almost,’ it is a curse.” I was resigned now. After all, the worst part was over. “All right, Terran, they know. Can we drop this subject now?”
Raile cleared his throat, drawing my attention to him. “Boy, you aren’t what we expected. Don’t you think anything of your reputation?”
“I certainly do, sir. It’s annoying.”
Raile blinked. Then he started laughing so hard that he nearly fell off his chair. “You’ll do, Rhebengarthen. You’ll do. Don, let’s get these people to the pool. We have work to do!”
~*~
I have never in my life seen a scrying pool this large. It was housed in a huge building, and easily took up half the room. Even if all of us jumped into it, we’d still have plenty of room to swim around. As expected of a pool that size, the power it drew on was enormous. Three different ley lines fed directly into it that I could detect, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was only those three.
All around the pool were plants and small trees, almost like an indoor garden. It was a beautiful place to be, and obviously someone’s pet project.
Only Xiaolang, Chatta and I went with Don and Raile to this place. The rest of them knew they were out of their depth, and chose to stay with Sallah and swap stories. So it was a small group that knelt near the pool’s edge.
“I do have a map with the location of the boy Mage marked,” Don told us as he settled into a comfortable sitting position. “What else are we looking for?”
“Shad tells us that before the War, there might have been scrying pools all throughout Chahir,” Xiaolang answered. “We believe that those pools might still exist, and are being used to detect magicians as they come into their power.”
Don hissed in an angry breath. “Dark magic, he might be right. I hadn’t considered how the magicians were being discovered.” His eyes drifted to me, the wheels turning in his mind.
“They didn’t find me that way, at first,” I answered the silent query in his face. “It was only when I came back for my family that they discovered me. But they don’t rely on magical accidents to betray the magician. They have something else that helps them find people.”
“That explains it,” he muttered to himself.
“Explains what?” Xiaolang inquired, eyes narrowing slightly.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Don shifted his attention completely to the pool. The clear reflection shifted, colors bleeding in until a picture started to come into focus. I didn’t recognize the area, although it was obviously in Chahir, with flat grassland all around it. The building in the picture was old, crumbling in parts, but apparently still usable. It was made of dark grey stone, looking forbidding and cold. I didn’t recognize the building either— but I knew the mark on the building.
Chatta and I both gasped in recognition. “Chatta, that’s—!”
“The Watchman’s Seal,” she confirmed darkly.
Xiaolang let out a frustrated growl. “You two have lost me again. Watchman’s Seal?”
“Not everyone has what it takes to be a Witch, or a Wizard. Sometimes their gifts are just too focused to take on most of the spellwork necessary to be a full-fledged magician,” Chatta explained quickly. Her eyes never left the image in the Pool as she spoke. “For those people that have magic, but can’t pass the exams, the Trasdee Evondit Orra assigns them particular tasks. This is a practice that’s been done since magicians were formally trained.”
“One of those tasks is to be a Watchman,” I continued the explanation, as Chatta obviously wanted to think instead of talk. “Those who were adept at scrying could become permanently assigned to a specific scrying pool. Their job was to watch the surrounding countryside, and alert the nearest magician of any problems.”
Xiaolang was nodding in understanding. “So that Watchman Seal means that there’s a scrying pool inside the building.”
“Yes.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, trying to turn the problem around in my head and see if there was a solution. “Don, since you haven’t shown us the pool itself, I’m assuming there are wards on the building?”
He gave me an odd look. “Of course. Can’t you see that?”
“I don’t see magic,” I explained absently. “I can only feel it. Chatta, what kind of wards are they?”
“Entry wards, mainly, to keep people out. But there’s a glamour on it as well.” She shot Don an admiring look. “You’re quite good to see the building, considering the strength of that glamour.”
Don flushed slightly. “Um, thanks. But I’m afraid I can’t see inside.”
She waved this away. “It’s enough to know where it is.”
“She’s right,” Xiaolang concurred. “Do you know of any others?”
“A few,” Don admitted. “I haven’t been paying them a lot of attention, honestly. I’ve been mainly focused on people.”
“Shift your focus, Don,” Raile ordered quietly. “I think this is more important at the moment.”
He nodded in grim agreement. “Yes, I think so, too. All right, someone grab a map and let’s get to work.”
It was no surprise to me when Xiaolang drew a map out of his pocket. I think he was born with a map in hand.
For the next several hours, we were all busy searching for those buildings with the Watchman Seal on it. We found several—some of them obviously still in use, others lying in ruin. We marked them all down. I wasn’t surprised to see that each Province had at least one, perhaps two or three, depending on the size.
Xiaolang marked the last one down on the map before raising his arms over his head and stretching. “Hmmm…owww!” He rubbed at his shoulders with a pained grimace. “How long have we been at this?”
“Too long,” Chatta groaned, shifting to her feet like a crotchety old woman. “Don, is that all of them?”
“I think so, but we might have missed one or two.” He spread his hands helplessly. “It’s a big country, and we did the search pretty fast.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t take the time to slow down and do a proper search,” Xiaolang sighed. “The best we can do is try to contact you again in a few weeks, and see if you’ve found any more.”
Don nodded in understanding. “That’s probably the best plan. You’re staying tonight, aren’t you?”
“That’s the plan.” Xiaolang folded his map back up, shooting me a look under his lashes. “And I think we’ll be leaving late tomorrow morning.”
I shook my head ruefully. “Surely I’m not that obvious?”
“You are,” Chatta and Xiaolang said in stereo.
“…thanks,” I replied sarcastically.
~*~
To no one’s surprise, Sallah and Aral put us up for the night. Don took the Red Hand, as he had enough guest rooms to accommodate the team. The rest of us were in the brick two-story Aral and Sallah lived in. It was a night of stories, and conversation, and good food, and, unfortunately, the threatened memory crystals. My attempt to snatch them and hide them somewhere was foiled by Shad’s quick reflexes. He grabbed them before I could, and had Chatta put some kind of unbreakable barrier around me while he viewed the memory.
Brat!
I suffered through the resultant teasing with a long face, and distracted them by a different topic as soon as I could.
It was very late when we went to bed, but I found that I couldn’t sleep. After an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up and made my way downstairs. But the walls of the house were a little too confining, so I kept going, winding up on the front porch of the house.
This really was a beautiful place. The sky was so clear I felt like I could reach out and capture a star in my hand. It was becoming a toss-up on where I wanted to retire—Q’atal or here.
I’m not sure how long I stood there, lost in thought, when I heard the scuff of feet behind me. I turned to see Aral standing just outs
ide the front door.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Neither can you, apparently,” I observed.
He moved to stand next to me, arms casually propped against the banister, as mine were. “My mind won’t shut off,” he admitted.
Welcome to my world.
“How many Mages are in Hain, Garth?”
I had to stop a second and add them up in my head. There was me, of course, and Trev’nor, and Hevencoran, and Rheijennaan. Remcarparoden hardly counted anymore, since he was stripped of all magical power. “Four, including me. Why?”
“We have six Mages over here,” he murmured, blindly staring off into space. “Did you know? The most Mages this world has ever seen at once was twenty.”
We had half that number, and we were still searching Chahir for magicians. There’s no telling if that’s all of them, either.
“Sallah and I have a theory. We believe that magic is only partially hereditary. I think there’s other factors, too, that wake up magic in a person. Garth.” He turned to look at me, eyes almost solid black in the dim lighting. “Which place has the most magicians?”
“Here,” I answered slowly, trying to understand what point he was making.
“Why?”
“Because you have concentrated bloodlines of magic here?” I admit it, I was fishing.
“You do in Hain as well,” he pointed out. “So why do we have the most magicians?”
Actually, he had a good point. There were many people with magic in their blood in Hain. So why weren’t there more magicians there?
Long forgotten Jaunten blood surged to the front, giving me an insight I wouldn’t have considered, if not for this conversation. Why had the Jaunten become Jaunten? What had changed their blood so that knowledge became a hereditary thing?
The only people that became Jaunten were from Jarrell, which was close to the Isle of Strae.
A place where a great deal of magic was worked.
My body tensed as my mind raced, putting the pieces together to form a fantastical picture. “Are you suggesting that the more magically enriched the environment, the stronger the possibility that magicians will appear?”
He gave an approving nod. “That’s it exactly.”
Magus (Advent Mage Cycle) Page 22