The Black Mage: Complete Series

by Rachel E. Carter

  “What about her?” I pointed to Priscilla. “Doesn’t she get a punishment too?”

  “Are you suggesting I should distrust the Crown’s future princess?” The man gave me a look. “Over a lowborn?” The man was a sexist, chauvinistic pig who had grown up in court.

  “Ryiah isn’t lying, sir.” Ella stood and put her hand on my shoulder in a show of support.

  “You aren’t a source of veritable truth either, Eleanor.”

  “It’s Ella,” Ella said through clenched teeth.

  “Interrupt me again and you’ll get chore duty for a month. Is that what you want?”

  Both of us were radiating with rage as the master walked away; I could barely force myself to concentrate on the commander and her regiment leaders at the front of the room.

  Ella’s fingers tapped against the wooden bench; she was restless like me.

  Finally, after what felt like forever but was only the course of ten minutes, I was able to return to the lesson.

  Unlike the study we’d had back at the Academy, these courses were formed entirely by first-hand experience.

  Today’s topic was continuing a three-week lecture on chariot combat. It was what the desert regiments were famous for. That, and the terrain.

  Ishir Outpost was located at the northernmost boundary of the Red Desert, which encompassed the entire southern region of Jerar. The city and the rest of the desert’s border were made up entirely of tall bluffs and steep crags. There was only one man-made gate that allowed travel between the desert and the rest of the country. The desert’s tall, rocky walls overlooked the middle plains and provided perfect vantage points for the Crown’s Army in the event of a full-scale invasion on the capital, Devon.

  Mostly, the desert’s local regiments serviced the bluffs as lookouts in chariots. There hadn’t been a war between Jerar and its northern neighbor, Caltoth, in over ninety years.

  Supposedly, there were tunnels in those walls to help the central plains evacuate and give the Red Desert’s regiment easy passage to the capital.

  The chariots were intended to be the first charge with a soldier steering and either a skilled archer-knight or Combat mage leading the attack. The carts allowed mages and knights the ease of a distanced approach that enemies would have a hard time countering with long-range attacks. The Red Desert’s regiment was known for their throwing arm, and since Ishir Outpost was the most populous city with the largest regiment, it had become one of the four cities mage apprentices and knights’ squires trained in during their four-year apprenticeships.

  We switched territories every year. I hadn’t known that until the second day of my apprenticeship. Soldiers of the Cavalry were exempt from regional exercises because there was no apprenticeship; they moved onto city placement following their trial year.

  Commander Ama continued on to add the finer points of today’s strategy, pointing to her comrades as she explained what each leader would do in a chariot attack. The mounted knights would follow up with an armed assault—usually the sickle sword if they were desert natives, or the halberd if they’d transferred from anywhere else. Whatever horses remained were given to the soldiers—with the majority serving on foot with battle axes to break up their opponent’s armor and give the knights an easier target. The Restoration and Alchemy mages would remain in the tunnels, equipped for battle, but prepared for healing, and respectively, a last-minute defense.

  Ama had left no possibility unplanned. A part of me was awed just listening to her talk. Strategy was no longer something we heard about; the regiment would give us demonstrations later and let us practice alongside them.

  Though we went over various techniques for breaking up enemy lines and securing a victory, the one thing the Commander and her leaders never disclosed was the tunnels’ location. We knew they were fifty miles apart, but that was it.

  Because Jerar’s capital had never been under siege, the Red Desert’s tunnels had never been used. The laborers who had helped build them had died several centuries ago. The only people who knew their exact coordinates were either dead or currently serving a commanding post in one of the desert cities. The only exception was the royal family.

  From everything I’d gathered, the tunnels were Jerar’s most safeguarded secret. It hadn’t been said directly, but I was almost certain the Crown punished those who disclosed their location with death. There were rumors that those who went looking for them never returned. And then there was the mysterious death of Ishir Outpost’s past commander who had been in the prime of his health when a sudden illness had rapidly taken his life after only three years into his reign.

  Definitely a secret.

  By the time our two hours were over, I had forgotten most of my earlier problems. Priscilla, Master Byron, and my new injury were just small, annoying blips in my otherwise perfect life. Every time I walked away from Strategies in Combat, I felt like I was a part of something great. No one and nothing could take that away from me.

  I was an apprentice now for Combat, the most prestigious faction of all. The Academy of Magic had worse odds than any of the other war schools combined, and I’d beat them all.

  I wasn’t even considered lowborn anymore—as an apprentice mage, I was now afforded the same status as a highborn. Not even squires had that privilege. Magic was rare, important, and so were apprentices.

  And in four short years, I would be a mage of Combat.

  “You sure look chipper for someone with a broken arm.”

  Lynn, and Ella’s mentor, Loren—a tall, dark-skinned boy with startling blue eyes who my brother loathed—were waiting for us at the stairs.

  “Thanks for reminding me.” I gave both of our mentors a wry smile as we started the descent to the third floor. The great building hosted four levels: the first was the privies and wash chambers, the second the squire and apprentice mage barracks—depending on whose year it was to field train, we were never in the same city together—the third was the dining commons, and the fourth was for regiment meetings and lessons. It wasn’t as grand as the Academy, but it was still impressive.

  It was a far cry from my small village of Demsh’aa and the hills I’d left behind.

  “Is Ian staying behind to do extra mentoring with Darren today?” Lynn took a seat beside me on the bench. The commons was smaller than the one we’d had at the Academy, and there were only three tables to choose from. Before, there had been over a hundred of us; now there were only sixty, well, sixty-one since I’d arrived: Twenty apprentices from each faction—five for each of the four years.

  “I doubt it.” The troublemaker was far more likely to be trying to talk his way out of the chore Byron had just assigned. I wished him luck, though I suspected the worst. I said as much aloud.

  Ella picked at her plate, avoiding a curry she had deemed too spicy for her liking. “I’m surprised Ian would try when he could have privy duty with us.”

  “Why would he want to scrub the privies?” I stared at my friend like she had grown an extra head. “He’s got the prince as his mentee. He has a card to get out of any chores he wants.”

  “It’s not the chore.” Her lip twitched. “It’s the people.”

  What in the gods was she hinting at?

  The rest of Combat arrived, so I quickly lost focus on our conversation; the room was distractingly loud. Most of our faction sat at the same table, and everyone’s elbows jostled one another as we pressed close.

  “Ladies. Loren. I hope you didn’t mourn while I was away.”

  Ian had arrived, looking no worse for wear than usual.

  “Did you even talk to Byron?” I asked suspiciously. The third-year seemed too cheery to have just come from a chat with our training master.

  Ian took the seat opposite mine as he slid in next to Loren. “Nah. I decided it was a wasted effort.”

  Ella caught my eye with a pointed stare.

  Is she implying Ian chose the privies because of me?

  After a moment of awkward silence, I fina
lly cleared my throat. “So is anyone else getting tired of all these mysterious tunnels?” It was a change of subject more than a concern.

  My mentor shrugged and then winced as her wrist knocked into Loren’s glass. “It doesn’t matter much. Jerar isn’t going to war anytime soon.” She turned to Ian. “What do you think?” she teased. “Are we ready for war?”

  The troublemaker grinned. “Why don’t we ask our very own royal since it will be his father signing those summons?” He stood up and pretended to scan the row of Combat apprentices for the prince, who was, as usual, missing from the table. “What a shame, my charming mentee is absent. Again.”

  Darren hadn’t taken a lunch with the rest of our faction since we arrived in the desert. Instead, he spent the hour drilling with Master Byron in the training grounds. I wasn’t sure whose idea it had initially been—the man hero-worshipped the prince—but I understood Ian’s irritation. No one else got exclusive training with the master; Byron was grooming Darren for success and leaving the rest of us—particularly the ones he didn’t like—to rot.

  I’d confronted Darren about the injustice a couple weeks back, and the prince had just laughed in my face. “What did you expect, Ryiah? Not everyone is going to treat us like equals. You got lucky with the first-year masters at the Academy, but you are going to have to learn to accept the injustice now. It’s always going to be here, especially while I’m around.”

  He’d made a good point, even if I hadn’t liked what it meant.

  Since Ian was Darren’s mentor, he took the prince’s absence more personally than the rest of us. The third-year didn’t trust Darren and the prince’s aloof nature unsettled him. Darren’s competitive drive only made things worse.

  I sympathized. More than anyone else at our table, I understood Ian’s plight. I had gone through the same thing the first time I’d met the prince, and it’d taken me ten long months to stop second-guessing his motives.

  Normally, the mentor-mentee relationship was a good thing. It gave two apprentices the opportunity to bond over shared trials and common goals in training. Each pairing lasted a year before the partners were switched. We would have two years leading others and two years following them. The varied approach would give us the opportunity to be the best and the worst. The experience was supposed to make us better for it… Ian clearly interpreted Darren’s extra training as an affront instead of what it really was: a lifetime of expectation.

  I thought there were very few who understood why Darren acted the way he did. I wasn’t an expert by any means, but there were things one had to ask. Why was a prince more accustomed to injuries than the rest of us? Darren had never once lost control of his magic in training—and as one of the few apprentices who could pain cast, that was highly unusual. It led me to two possible conclusions: Darren was perfect, which he liked us to believe, or he’d trained in far worse conditions than we knew.

  “I understand wanting to be best, I do,” Ian continued, “but there is nothing wrong with a little bit of amity. Would it kill the prince to take a meal with his factionmates?” He directed the attention to me. “I mean, look at Ryiah. She trains just as hard, but she still manages to have a conversation with the rest of us.”

  Ella winked at me conspiratorially. “Oh, Darren still has ‘conversations’ with some people.” For a time, my best friend had hated the prince, but that had all been part of a misunderstanding in their past. Now she enjoyed teasing me more than anything else.

  I glared at her. She knew very well there was nothing going on between Darren and me. Maybe there had been at one point, but whatever that was—and I wasn’t sure it had been anything—it was long gone. Darren’s betrothal to Priscilla of Langli, one of the wealthiest young women in the kingdom and my personal nemesis, had made that perfectly evident.

  The corner of Ian’s eyes crinkled. “That’s right. You and Darren are friends.” He pronounced the last word with mock distaste, grinning. “So how did you do it? What makes the cold-hearted princeling mortal like the rest of us?”

  I fidgeted in my seat. The last thing I wanted was for the others to find out about last year’s transgression. Especially Ian. I suspected my feelings for the curly-haired third-year weren’t strictly platonic, and I didn’t want him to think that I was, as Priscilla put it, “pining” for the prince. Because I wasn’t.

  Ella snorted. “I don’t think it’s something you would want to attempt, Ian.”

  The third-year arched a brow and then gave me his most disarming smile. “Ry, just tell me whatever you said to convince him to give up that ridiculous pretense.”

  “It’s not an act.” I kept my eyes averted as I muttered, “Darren just has a really hard time opening up to people he thinks are beneath him—”

  Ian gave a mock gasp. “Never.”

  “—But I’m sure after a couple months, he’ll realize you are trying.”

  Ian stole a handful of grapes off my plate. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you were defending him, Ryiah.”

  “I’m not,” I said quickly. Too quickly.

  “Did something happen between the two of you?” Ian leaned across the table, and I gulped.

  “No.”

  His grin grew wider the longer he stared at my face.

  I pushed back from the table, flushed. “Nothing happened!”

  “So something did happen.”

  “Maybe it did, but it didn’t mean a thing.” I snatched my bag from the bench and didn’t bother with an excuse. Everyone was watching me, and I couldn’t bear their grins.

  What had I possibly hoped to gain defending a prince?

  2

  The second half of my day didn’t get much better.

  I was on my way to the training grounds to begin a lesson on desert castings when I ran into Darren.

  “So I heard that you wanted me to carry you to the infirmary.”

  I gave the prince what I hoped was my most disdainful look. “Your betrothed is a pretty little liar.”

  A corner of his lips twitched, and I had the distinct impression he was on the brink of laughter. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I know you’d never accept anyone’s help, least of all mine.”

  We both knew he’d helped last year more times than I wanted to admit. I scowled. “I’m not some inept apprentice in need of rescuing, Darren.”

  “Even if you had asked, I wouldn’t have carried you.”

  This was the person I spent half a year ‘pining’ over? I must have been mad. “I would never ask!”

  “I’m not saying it to be mean, Ryiah. You don’t need to give me that look.”

  I continued to glare at him.

  “Byron is good for you.”

  I scoffed. “I don’t need another ‘adversity builds character’ speech. That man is terrible. Where’s your adversity?”

  Darren smirked. “I’m looking at it.”

  I gave an exasperated huff and went to go find a seat in the back of the stands. I was so distracted, I didn’t notice when Ian slid onto the bench next to me.

  “Lover’s quarrel?”

  I glared at the third-year. Ella, Lynn, and Loren were chuckling right behind him. “I hate all of you.”

  None of my friends paid the insult any heed. Grumbling, I resigned myself to two hours with fools.

  “YOU HEARD those Combat mages earlier. Distance is everything. Don’t get close to the enemy. A mage’s life is far too valuable to be wasted in a hand-to-hand fight. If the Crown wants to send in someone expendable, they’ll send soldiers, not mages!”

  Grimacing, I set to projecting my next attack. Thank the gods the local infantry wasn’t nearby today. The master had a particular way of insulting soldiers almost as much as he insulted women and lowborns.

  Three hundred yards in front of me was a tall wooden fence plastered with dangling wreaths.

  Normally the yard served as a pasture, but today the horses had been stabled—as per the last three weeks of practice. Now, the fence served as an
imaginary enemy line and the target. Sloppily woven wreaths represented the weak spots in the opposing forces’ defense: the armpit, the eyes, and the plated armor nearest the chest. The goal of the exercise was to hit a wreath with casted arrows—a type of long-range magic similar to the longbow exercises we’d been drilling with every morning for weeks.

  If we hit a wreath but the arrow fell or the arrow did not hit our target at all, then our casting was considered a failed attempt.

  Most of the second-years, myself included, only had one or two successful castings since we’d begun the afternoon drill. The older apprentices had much better luck.

  Chariot attacks with long-range weapons were Ishir’s preferred method for attack. As such, Combat mages were the first line of offense. Even though we’d be discharged at the same time as the knights, our castings would give us the ability to reach our targets first. Long bows were usually limited to 120 or so yards, and other ranged weapons even less, but that was without magic.

  If a mage mastered the technique for long casting, not only would he or she be able to project arrows further than any knight, but eventually heavier artillery as well.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Lynn cast out her arrows, one after the other. There was no physical weapon in her hand; her casting was entirely formed by a projection in her mind. Physical shafts manifested in thin air, hovering above her head. The girl strung them back with a flick of her wrist, and then an invisible force launched them across the field.

  The arrows soared and embedded themselves deep in a wreath already brimming with arrows directly across from her.

  Lynn was one of the better apprentices in long casting; I hoped one day I was half as good as her.

  “Apprentice Ryiah, it should not take this long for you to form a casting.”

  Master Byron’s snarl snapped me out of my daze. I hastily cast out three conjured arrows in succession, but my projections were sloppy.