The Black Mage: Complete Series

by Rachel E. Carter

  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 gripped 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 fingers around the reins were so tight my knuckles were white. I could barely feel my hand. I was sorely tempted to turn around in the saddle and tell the knight exactly what I thought of her “concern.”

  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 leaned close to my face. I hadn’t exchanged so much as a word with the Alchemy mage since I’d arrived—mostly because I’d 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’d noticed conversations ending rather abruptly when I approached, but I’d 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’d received my rank and position because of my engagement 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’d 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 probably been a culmination of years of false flattery and cruel speculation.

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

  “Thanks,” I told Ruth, “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 for 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 AND 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’d taken the stream north after the general resurgence of prints leading 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 was more than capable of handling a couple bandits on my own!

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

  “You’re quiet today.” 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 horse 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 that Ray got the premium assignment when Ian was a year older and more experienced. Chancing a quick glimpse, I saw the boy’s face was a mask.

  Since when was he unreadable?

  We wove in and out of the growth, following the obvious indentations of crushed foliage for nearly three hours before the prints finally turned around and backtracked the path they’d 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 ember, peeking out beneath the trees and 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 in 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.

  “Would you three 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’ 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 didn’t 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 along 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’d expected danger; so far this forest plant was the closest enemy I’d encountered.

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

  “Ryiah?”

  I looked up to catch Ian watching me with a cautious expression. A couple yards 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 know.”

  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’re 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’d 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’ve 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?” 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 was Ian, the boy whose heart I had trampled for another, reminding me how silly I looked complaining over the prospect of one disadvantage when he would’ve killed to have any one of those. “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 neck. “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.”

  He 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 subtle.

  “So…” Ian said.

  “So.”

  “You and Darren.”

  “Oh…” I paused. “That.”

  He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “The prince 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…”

  I laughed nervously. “You obviously haven’t spent much time with the royal family.” King Lucius couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as me, and I wasn’t so sure his eldest didn’t want me dead, despite whatever his brother claimed.

  “Ryiah.” Ian shut his eyes. “You convinced Darren to marry you. You have influence, whether you want to believe it or not.”

  “He’s not the heir. He can’t—”

  “Won’t you at least try?” My friend’s voice became increasingly strained. “Or does the lowborns’ cause no longer concern you now that you aren’t one of us?”

  That hurt. Ian knew full well that neither of us had been “lowborn” since our apprenticeship. “O-of course it does!”

  There must have been something in my voice because Ian immediately looked guilty. “I’m sorry, Ry. I didn’t mean—I know you’re a good person. I just don’t want this new life of yours to change you.”

  “It won’t.” I made myself smile as I reached out to touch his arm. “Believe me, it would take a lot more than pretty dresses—” A foul odor rose up, and I wrinkled my nose, peering down at my boots. Horse droppings. I’d managed to step into a mound of them, half-hidden by the grass. “Great, just…” I froze.

  Droppings—fresh, only a couple days old, and located ten minutes past the brush where th
e bandits had supposedly turned around.

  I glanced up sharply and took a quick examination of the surroundings, trying to locate any trampled foliage that hadn’t come from Paige, Ian’s, or my tracks.

  There. I squinted. There. My eyes locked on some crushed ivy, and there. The bandits had come this way!

  I drew a baited breath. “Lord Waldyn’s envoys said their regiment couldn’t find the bandits after two full day’s search. But didn’t their report state they went north, like Sir Gavin’s group? Everyone thought the tracks leading south were too obvious. What if they weren’t? What if it was a ploy?” I pointed to the mound at my feet.

  Ian whistled. “The bandits wanted us to assume they took the stream.”

  I felt my excitement building. “It’s why the southern trail looked so trampled. Because it was. They didn’t just send a couple men to give it that appearance and turn around at our camp—they kept going. Here.”

  I practically danced in place. Finally! Something to show the others I’m more than the girl the prince favors. “If the bandits circled back, they wouldn’t have reason to create false tracks this far south. My guess is they missed this or ran out of magic and figured they were too far south for us to search.”

  Paige groaned. “You mages make everything so complicated.”

  Ian gave the knight a victorious grin and hauled both wood sacks onto his back. “Things would be too easy otherwise, my dear.”

  The guard scowled and snatched back her sack. “I am nobody’s ‘dear.’”

  I waved us forward. “Come on, let’s go see where these tracks lead—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Paige grabbed Ian’s and my elbows and yanked us back with a heavy tug. “You two will report back to the rest of your camp and let them decide whether to pursue the search now or in the morning. You know Sir Gavin will have my head if I let the both of you wander off to hunt the bandits on your own.”

  I made a face. We were already three days behind the bandits’ progress. “Lief said we could go in pairs, and we’d only be scouting—”

  “But Sir Gavin said you mages shouldn’t be doing anything the soldiers can handle on their own.”