The man gave the boy a sharp glance. “A what?!”
“A Mage,” I answered with quiet menace. “To be precise, I am Rhebengarthen, an Earth Mage.”
Mr. Filthy sneered, obviously not believing me. “And whatcha doin’ here? You ain’t no kin of the boy’s. He ain’t got folks.”
And you’re taking advantage of that, aren’t you, you filthy cockroach? Just beyond the man, I could see a handful of unpolished stones—gems, actually. It was pretty clear what was going on here. The man had somehow stumbled onto the fact that the boy could, with his magical powers, create precious stones. As an Elemental Mage, even untrained, it would be child’s play for him.
From behind me, there was the sound of Shad’s sword leaving its sheathe. “Why don’t I deal with Stinky, here, and you deal with the kid, Garth?”
“Deal.” I headed for the boy, trusting Shad to guard my back, and Xiaolang and Aletha to give me a warning if something went wrong.
The boy, at my approach, scrambled backwards a few steps.
Surprised, I stopped. I’ve never had this reaction before from a magician, not once they knew what I was. Even Reschkeenen, as terrified as he was, had only given a token protest.
Shad was dealing with the man, but the boy’s eyes never wavered from me, even when his smelly acquaintance started loudly squawking. I wasn’t sure what to do to win the boy’s trust.
Busted buckets, where’s Chatta when I need her…
I sank to one knee, holding both of my arms well away from my sides, to prove that I didn’t have a weapon in my hands. “Sorry. Am I scaring you?”
He didn’t give any indication one way or the other, just watched me with those alarmed eyes.
“Let me properly introduce myself, all right? I’m Rhebengarthen, an Earth Mage dispatched from King Guin of Hain. King Guin’s given me orders to rescue any magician in Chahir and help them safely into Hain, so they can be trained. The people behind me have the same task.”
From behind me, there was an outraged bellow. “Get off me, you sword humping idiot!”
I glanced over my shoulder. Shad had Mr. Stinky pinned to the ground, face squashed into the dirt, both arms pinned behind his back at a highly uncomfortable angle.
“Now, now, no talking back to your elders,” Shad contradicted in a pleasant tone. His mouth was smiling, but the eyes… A part of my mind catalogued that look for future reference. So that’s what Shad looks like when he’s really mad.
Mr. Stinky couldn’t see Shad’s eyes, so he didn’t know that his survival depended on remaining still. He started squirming again, and cursing in a foul streak.
Shad grabbed a handful of dirty hair and yanked, pressing the exposed windpipe against a sharp edge of rock. The cursing became hoarse.
“If you continue to use such foul language, I’ll only press harder,” Shad warned in a deceptively cheerful voice.
“Shad,” Xiaolang drawled in a relaxed manner, “I request that you do let the prisoner breathe.”
Shad shot him a thoughtful glance. “You know, I was made captain before you. Technically, I outrank you.”
Xiaolang met him look for look. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t need to. The expression on his face said volumes.
“…oh all right, fine.” Shad let up a little.
Mr. Stinky drew in a few ragged breaths, but wisely didn’t push Shad again. Apparently he was quite attached to his air.
This little side show had been entertaining, but hardly helpful. I had lost my connection with the kid. He was becoming more upset, more involved in what Shad was doing with that reeking globe of flesh. I don’t think he was even really listening to me.
What to say to get his attention? He’d been trying to head up into the mountains when we approached—he’d been worried because he could “see” it clearly. Maybe if I said something about that… I cleared my throat, catching his attention again. “We’re the ones that broke the glamour hiding the mountain.”
“Actually,” Night corrected dryly, “I’m the one that did it.”
“Close enough,” I muttered to him.
I had the boy’s complete attention now. “How?” he asked in a thread-bare voice.
With a casual shrug I answered, “It wasn’t difficult.” It just made your head ring for ten minutes.
Something flashed across his face, and he became wary again, shrinking a little farther from me. “…don’t believe you.”
He had to know by looking at me, and Night, and Xiaolang, that we weren’t normal. What had he been told, that would so thoroughly encourage him to scorn other magicians? Being raised in Chahir was surely part of his attitude, but it went deeper than normal.
“Allow me to prove it, young Magus.” Without taking my eyes from him, I raised a wall of clay and stone behind us, completely blocking the narrow passage we had just come through.
“Garth, give us some warning!” Aletha growled in exasperation.
Oops. Maybe I should have looked first…nah, she was all right. She was irritated, not in pain, so she wasn’t accidentally hit with something. Besides, I didn’t dare look away from the boy.
For several long moments, the kid just looked at the wall that was now blocking him. Then he started shaking, long tremors that traveled from head to toe. “Take it down…take it down…take it down TAKE IT DOWN!”
I grabbed him as he started rushing past me, holding him by the shoulders. It was like holding onto a skeleton—the child was all skin and bones. “I can take it down,” I assured him in a calm, level voice. His eyes shot up, locking onto mine. “I can take it down,” I repeated, as he seemed to need the reassurance. “But I won’t, until I’m sure you believe me.”
He stumbled back a pace, and I let him go without a fight. Wetting dry lips, he let his head hang, peering up at me through dirty bangs. “I believe you.”
As easily as I constructed the wall, I deconstructed it, letting the clay and stone fall back into their original places.
“The—” he cut himself short, biting his lip in blatant uncertainty.
“The cave where all the crystals are stored is fine.” It was a shot in the dark what he was worried about, but instinct said that was the right thing to say.
“You found that?” he squeaked.
“Of course. That’s what the glamour was meant to hide. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.”
He gave a hesitant nod.
I thought I had gained enough of the boy’s trust now to ask this question. “What is your name?”
“Hayden.”
Uh-oh. No family name? I gave him a half-bow from where I still knelt on the ground. “Thank you for the gift of your name, Hayden.”
He looked…surprised…no, stunned at the civility. Had no one ever given this child a polite greeting?
His eyes darted uncertainly to the man that Shad still had pinned to the ground.
“That’s Captain Riicshaden,” I continued the introductions as if it were normal. “Behind him is Captain De Xiaolang of the Red Hand, and Aletha Saboton, also of the Red Hand.” I gentled my voice even more. “Hayden, this man was using your magic, wasn’t he? To make jewels.”
The boy gave me a very hesitant nod.
“That was very wrong of him.” It was probably the man’s greed that saved the boy’s life, though. “Was he right in what he said, about you not having a family?”
“They’re gone,” Hayden whispered.
Poor kid. I shook my head, strangling the urge to break something, or rant about life’s injustices. Not even having a family name in Chahir was like an automatic condemnation. You were considered a vagabond, a criminal, just on that fact alone. After all, decent people had family. I could imagine what this poor kid had gone through because of that prejudice. “We’re here to rescue you, to take you into Hain so that you can be trained in your powers.”
He peered up at me doubtfully. “You’re…taking me into Hain?”
My knee was killing me, but I did
n’t dare stand up. It was important that I could look him eye to eye. I instinctively knew that. “Yes. There’s a school there, called the Academy for All Magic. I was trained there. They’ll train you, too, so that you can use magic freely.”
His wary expression didn’t fade.
“Hayden,” I made my voice as gentle as possible, “I can swear to you that if you go with me now, you’ll never have to fear for your life again. Not like you do here. You won’t want for anything—not food, not shelter, nothing.” Inspiration hit. “In fact, if you’re nervous about living with Hainians, my parents live in Del’Hain. You can stay with them until you finish your training.”
Bright hope exploded over his face. “Will…will you give me your name?”
That wasn’t quite what I meant, but I didn’t have the heart to say so. This child was so desperate for a family to call his own it felt like someone was twisting a knife in my chest watching him. “Yes, if that’s what you want.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” I said firmly.
“Do you give your word?” he insisted.
I hadn’t been called upon to give an oral oath in quite some time. It was legally binding in Chahir—it wouldn’t exactly hold the same weight in Hain. Still…he was asking for my word, on my family’s name, and no matter where I was the importance of that would never change. I extended my hand. “My word as a Rheben.”
He accepted my hand, and every worry, every fear, every trace of anxiety just melted out of his face.
A bit of a mischievous impulse seized me and I said in a teasing voice, “In fact… I swear upon the little toe of my legless teddy bear.”
He blinked, and then grinned, revealing two missing teeth. “Well, I swear upon the tail of my second brother’s dead hamster that I’ll go back with you.”
Not to be outdone, I had to continue. “Well I swear upon the egg of my mother’s dancing hen that—”
“Okay, boys, stop right there,” Xiaolang ordered in amusement. “You’re confusing an already addled mind.”
“Kill joy,” I accused.
“You can continue with the ridiculous promises later,” he promised, eyes sparkling. “But we need to get moving now, unless you want to spend another night freezing on the top of this mountain?”
I considered that quite seriously. For about a tenth of a second. “You win.”
“I normally do,” he drawled.
“What will we do with Stinky?” Aletha inquired idly.
Xiaolang turned thoughtful eyes on the pinned man. “…nothing.”
We all gave him an incredulous Are you serious?! kind of stare.
“What matters to this man more than anything is money,” Xiaolang explained patiently. “And we are about to take away his only lucrative income. No punishment that we can devise can top that.”
Put it like that…and I saw his point.
Shad didn’t entirely agree, judging from the frown on his face. From his pocket, he took a length of strong twine and with deft motions tied Stinky’s hands behind his back.
“What are you doing?!” Stinky demanded irately, tugging at his hands. “Your Captain just said to leave me alone!”
“You’re still breathing, aren’t you?” Shad responded caustically. “But this is just to make sure that you don’t do anything stupid tonight. It will take you a while to get your hands free.”
“You can’t leave me on the mountain like this!”
“I’m sure you can make it down to the village with your hands tied.” Shad’s smile had a feral edge to it. “Or at least, if you want to survive, you’d better make it down to the village.”
I’d often wondered how Shad had become such an infamous captain during the war. He was such a happy-go-lucky kind of man, that I couldn’t see him making serious decisions that decided the fate of men’s lives.
I could see it now. All too clearly.
Xiaolang watched this without a word of protest. In fact, I think he even agreed with Shad.
I turned to Hayden, and encouraged him to climb up behind me on Night’s back. While I had him in close proximity, I decided to ask a few questions. “How old are you, Hayden?” I was thinking about ten, but I could be off.
“I’m twelve.”
He did not look that old. I gave him a doubtful look. “Really?”
He sighed, as if this reaction didn’t surprise him. “I’m small,” he admitted bitterly.
At that, I had to chuckle. “I understand, Hayden. I was smaller than everyone else for years, too. In fact, it’s only in the past two years that I started catching up.” I heaved a rueful shrug. “And even now, I’m still shorter than most of the men around me.”
“Are Mages shorter than normal people?” He sounded distinctly worried by this idea.
“You can’t blame this on magic, kid,” I refuted. “It’s all genetics.”
“Is there magic that can make us grow?”
That stumped me. I hadn’t even thought about it. “You’ll have to ask Chatta. I’m not sure.”
“Who’s Chatta?”
“My friend,” I explained. “Her full name is Witch L-Chattamoinita Delheart, but everyone calls her Chatta. She’s up at the cave right now, packing everything up.”
“She’s packing up the cave?”
I cast him a sharp, enquiring look over my shoulder, but he was more interested than alarmed. Maybe he didn’t realize what was really in that cave. Maybe it had only been a place of refuge for him. “Yes. There’s information in there that has been lost for centuries. We want to take it with us.”
“Good.” Satisfied, he finally relaxed behind me.
I had a pretty fair idea how Chatta would react when she finally laid eyes on our boy Mage. I had it pretty much pegged. As soon as we arrived back at the cave, Chatta stepped out to greet us, took one look at Hayden, and went into Mother Hen Mode.
I knew better than to interfere with a woman’s mothering instincts. I just traded off with her—I handed Hayden over into her capable hands, and took over her job of packing the cave up.
I was elbow deep in a box when Shad drifted up to my side. He started helping, packing everything into a neater pattern in some of the boxes Chatta had conjured.
“You knew she’d react this way, didn’t you?”
I shrugged, not looking at him. “She has strong mothering instincts.” I could wish that the boxes were a little smaller. Fully packed, and they became rather heavy.
“I can’t figure out,” Shad ventured slowly, “if you simply know Chatta very well, or if its women in general.”
I shot him an amused look. “Half of my Jaunten ancestors were women.”
“…you know, that explains a lot.”
“I thought it might.”
Xiaolang’s head popped into the cave. “How’s it going in here?”
“Most of the work is done,” I told him. “They did a lot while we were gone. I think we can finish up soon.” Seeing that we were largely alone—Hazard, Eagle and Shield were toward the back of the cave—I lowered my voice and asked, “Is this the boy you were talking about?”
Xiaolang shook his head in frustration. “Not the right feel. He’s heavy, but…no. Just the wrong boy.”
Shad perked up, eyes darting between the two of us. “What’s this?”
“I had a flash of precognition while we were visiting Garth’s family,” Xiaolang explained quietly. “There’s a boy we’re going to rescue out of Chahir that’s very important—stranger yet, it’s just as important that Trev’nor meet that boy.”
Shad let out a low whistle. “That’s…pretty specific. Is that all you saw?”
Xiaolang let out a growl. “Unfortunately, yes. Precognition isn’t my strong suit, to my everlasting frustration. But I’ll be able to recognize the boy when we meet him, if nothing else. We’ll stumble across him eventually.” Letting out a sigh, he waved the subject away with a casual flick of the hand. “Now. How much longer until everything is packed up?”
>
“An hour?” I offered hesitantly.
He nodded, taking everything in with his eyes. I knew that look on his face—he was mentally calculating, thinking, planning. “We’re not going to be able to take this back down, not even if I went and scrounged up a wagon somewhere. The trail is too narrow and steep. And I know that you want to drop the boy off properly with your parents, considering the promises that you’ve made.”
I saw where he was going with this. “You want me to use the earth transportation spell, and drop off everything in Hain, don’t you?”
“You’re quick,” he approved. “We’ll keep Chatta so that we can continue the search. Take a day and see everything properly settled.”
I gave him a casual salute. “Yes, Captain.”
~*~
Hayden wasn’t bothered in the least by my earth transportation spell. It might have been because he mentally connected being in the earth with being safe—that cave had been his refuge for several years. But it might also be because he was an Elemental Mage with a strong pull toward the earth elements. Either way, he was excited, and peppered me with a hundred questions on the ride in.
The kid looked a lot better now. Chatta had used some sort of cleaning spells on him, and he fairly shone. His hair was already grown out to his shoulders, and considering he was a Mage, we hadn’t thought it wise to cut it. Chatta had pulled it back, instead. It had been the only practical solution, but…well, Hayden had very fair hair. Sometimes, when I looked at him, I felt like I was seeing my reflection—a shorter and younger, reflection, I grant you.
Also traveling with us were the mounds of boxes holding crystals, artifacts, weapons, and other relics from the cave. That would be my second order of business.
And then there was Night…unhappy about being in the earth, and moody in general.
I debated on which to go to first—Palace, Academy or home. I couldn’t very well dump all of these boxes at my parent’s house for long, so home was out. I wasn’t about to drop Hayden into En-Nelle of Tain’s hands without Guin knowing, either—I’d never get the kid back again.
Palace it is.
I did take a moment to drop the boxes temporarily off in my sitting room. It barely fit, but I wasn’t willing to leave that kind of valuable knowledge out in the open. And no one disturbed my rooms in the Palace when I was out.
Magus (Advent Mage Cycle) Page 26