“Their plans?” Lucas asked, stepping closer to the man. “Whose plans?”
“The traitors, of course.”
Lucas’s expression didn’t change. “Officially speaking, aren’t you lot the traitors?”
The man shook his head impatiently. “Not Kallorwegian traitors. The Ardannian traitors.”
Chapter 21
Lucas stiffened, but I leaned forward.
“The traitors? Do you have names?” I didn’t bother to hide the eagerness in my voice.
He shook his head. “Felice has the names. There was no time for talk, and they wouldn’t mean anything to me anyway. I was there to get her over the border.”
“Over the border?” Lucas’s voice sounded sharp. “So you’ve come from Ardann?”
The man peered at him uneasily, perhaps finally noticing our accents.
“From Bronton, of course. She’s been there nearly a year.” He turned to Declan with a frown. “Who are these people? What are they doing here if they’re not here to meet Felice?”
Declan’s eyes glowed. “This is Prince Lucas of Ardann and the Spoken Mage. They’re going to free Felice, stop this war, and depose King Osborne.”
The man recoiled before recovering and examining us more closely.
“Are you sure?” he asked dubiously. “Maybe they’ll just drag her straight back to Ardann for an intelligencer’s execution.”
“It seems we have similar aims,” Lucas said. “I can’t end this war on my own, and it sounds like you can’t either. For the moment, it would appear we are in this together.”
“We need to move fast,” the man said, striding toward the door.
“Hold on there,” I said.
I didn’t know what he had needed to do to get their intelligencer agent across the border, but he had been seriously wounded, and my healing hadn’t been able to restore his energy levels. I could feel the core inside him, concerningly low. He needed to rest, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to run far.
The man turned to glare at me. “She could be being captured or killed right now!”
“We’ll go,” I said. “We’ll go immediately. But you need to stay here. You’ve just been healed, but you’re on the verge of collapse, and you’ll only be a liability.”
He swore under his breath, not letting go of the door, but Declan stepped in, pulling him to the side.
“Mabel will get you below to one of the beds, you’ll be safe there,” Declan said. “I’ll go with them.”
Lucas had already eased the door open and was carefully checking if the immediate vicinity was clear. His face twitched at Declan’s words, and he looked back at me, a question in his eyes. I shrugged. The old man didn’t look like a fighter and had yet to produce any sort of composition, but he knew the local area. And although his energy felt like he could do with a good sleep, he wasn’t about to keel over.
“We’re clear,” Lucas said. “Let’s go.”
The three of us filed quickly from the house.
“They were coming from the border, so we should head that way.” Declan pointed east, toward Bronton.
Lucas took off at a jog, and I raced to catch up with him. The darkness kept our progress slow enough that we could talk as we went, the moon sliding in and out of the clouds to provide patchy illumination.
“They might already have her,” I said. “What if they’ve taken her back to the Academy already like they did with us?”
Lucas shook his head. “The rebel said there were king’s mages everywhere. They must have left us in that storage room for so long because Cassius was waiting for reinforcements to arrive from the capital. If they catch her, they’ll haul her straight back to the king.”
“We can’t let that happen,” I said. “We have to know who the traitors are.”
I didn’t look at him as I said it. The traitors had always been a touchy topic between us. His mother was a Stantorn, and he felt the same way about his relatives betraying us as I did about Beatrice: unthinkable.
“We don’t even know how many of them we’re up against,” he said. “And if we use any compositions, we might attract them straight to us. But we do have one advantage. Can you tell where they are?”
Declan regarded us with confusion, but Lucas ignored him, clearly having decided that speed now overrode secrecy. And since our enemies now knew about my ability, he was probably right.
I had been monitoring our immediate environment, trying to ensure no one surprised us, but I pushed my awareness out as far as it would go.
“There are two of them moving away from us northward,” I said, pointing to our left.
“That doesn’t sound like Felice,” Declan said.
I growled in frustration. “I can only feel them when I’m close enough. Maybe I should work a searching composition? The power won’t be centered around us, so—”
I stumbled to a halt.
“Wait!” I closed my eyes, focusing on my other senses. We had been moving closer to the border as we talked, and something else had come into range. “I can feel a whole group, it might be…Yes, it must be!”
I opened my eyes and pointed ahead of us a little and to the right. “That way. Come on!”
Lucas didn’t hesitate, racing in the direction I had pointed, Declan and me at his heels.
“I felt a group of them clustered together,” I panted as we ran. “It makes it harder to differentiate when there are more people closer together, but I thought so many out in the middle of the night must be them. And I’m sure now because I just felt a fifth person. I missed them at first because their energy is so low, and they’re just slightly behind the others.”
“Not with the others?” Lucas asked. “So perhaps they haven’t caught her yet?”
“Let us hope so!” Declan said, somehow moving faster despite his age and the poor lighting.
“I only managed to scribble a couple of compositions while Declan was talking earlier,” Lucas said. He glanced at the Kallorwegian. “What is your arsenal like?”
“Empty, I’m afraid.” Declan spread his arms apologetically.
Lucas and I shared a confused glance, but we didn’t have time to explore the strangeness of our guide.
“It’s up to you then, Elena,” Lucas said. “But you can draw from Declan and me, at least, even if the enemy are shielded against you.”
“Draw from us?” Declan asked.
“She knows what she’s doing,” was all Lucas said in answer, and my heart swelled at his praise, despite the situation.
I held up a hand, and we all slowed. We had reached a large clump of trees, almost a small wood. The others I sensed were among the trees. Now that we were closer, I could feel them more distinctly. I focused on the weaker, separate one.
“I think she’s climbed a tree,” I whispered to Lucas and Declan.
We heard a shout and the sounds of someone moving through the trees.
“Sounds like they know she’s in there, and they’re searching through the trees for her,” said Lucas.
“I’ll take them,” I said. “You two find her. Declan, stay close to Lucas and make sure she sees your face first.” I pointed toward the western edge of the trees. “She’s in that direction.” I took off running.
Thankfully the other four had remained together rather than spreading out among the trees, and when I got even closer I could hear why. They thought it was me they had cornered and were therefore approaching her with due caution and strong shields. Although they had been here long enough without any sign of my attacking or defending myself that several of them had concluded I must be weak, possibly even unconscious. And they had gotten sloppy as a consequence.
“Drain,” I whispered, making sure to send my power toward Lucas and Declan rather than the shielded mages of the king or the weakened Felice.
When I felt full of more energy than I could hold, I whispered, “Stop,” and then, “Shield.” The comforting sensation of my power wrapped itself around me.
“Hey! Do you feel that?” one of them asked, turning in my direction.
I stepped out of the trees.
“Evening,” I said. “Were you looking for me?”
All four of them started fumbling at their robes for new compositions. I could feel the strength of their shields, but I was willing to bet they weren’t as equipped as their crown prince. Kicking at a small pebble at my feet, I sent it sailing toward them. It passed through the first layer of shielding around them—the strong one—without pause, only bouncing off the second layer underneath. I grinned. They had heard of my power and put all their strength into shields that would prevent my power from reaching and draining them. But I didn’t need their strength.
“Attack them,” I said, sending a whip of my power toward a nearby tree. It tore itself from the ground and began to slam against their shields like a battering ram.
“Rocks,” I added, and every boulder around us, large and small, lifted into the air and joined the assault.
Their shields crumpled and collapsed, but two of them had released new ones. My attack didn’t let up, wearing these ones down as well. The other two had ripped assault compositions, one sending what looked like lightning bolts in my direction while the other bombarded me with pure power. My own shield didn’t even flicker.
Energy drained out of me at my enormous output of power, but I had extra to spare. When I felt their final layer of physical shields waver, I took a preparatory breath.
They fell, and the next wave of rocks hit the mages, knocking three to the ground. The remaining mage was swept up by the tree trunk and slammed against another tree, sliding down to slump onto the ground.
“Stop,” I said quickly.
A quiet groan told me one at least of them was alive. I knelt beside each mage one by one, my hands slipping in and out of the various pockets of their robes even while I checked their breathing.
Somehow they had all survived. Gratitude filled me even though they were my enemies. I already had enough deaths haunting my dreams, I had no desire to add more to their number. Only one was still conscious—the source of the groans. A broken arm, a severely broken leg, and what looked like several crushed ribs kept him immobile on the ground.
“Next time, come better equipped if you want to take me down,” I said as I divested him of his compositions. “And you can let your king know that the Spoken Mage isn’t a weapon he’s ever going to wield.”
I could see fear in the man’s eyes as well as pain, but I made no further attempt to reassure him that I didn’t mean to finish him off. Let him sweat.
“Elena?” Lucas emerged from the trees, surveying the fallen mages.
“Did you find her?” I asked.
He nodded, a dark woman in her early thirties limping into view behind him, supported by Declan. Her wide eyes stood out in her dirty face as she regarded the destruction around me.
“She needs healing,” Lucas said.
I thrust half my gathered handfuls of parchment at him, giving the remaining slips to Declan.
“Here, fresh supplies,” I said. “I bet there’s a healing composition in there. One that will last to get us out of here at least.”
Declan immediately began to flip through the pieces, muttering to himself, but Lucas frowned at me.
“You can’t do it?”
“I don’t want to run lower than I need to,” I said softly.
“But…” He looked around at all the downed mages.
I shook my head. They might be unconscious, but the stored power from the shields they had released still hung around them. It had been designed for my power, not for stones or trees or my thieving hands, and it had not kept them from injury. It did, however, still keep my power from connecting with them and draining their energy.
“Got one!” Declan announced. “And it doesn’t look like it’s keyed to anyone in particular. I’ll try it.”
He ripped it cleanly in half, flicking his fingers toward Felice. She sighed and then straightened, her stance steadying.
“Good.” Lucas thrust the compositions he held into his cloak without reading them. “Let’s get out of here.”
The four of us left the cover of the trees and hurried back toward Mabel’s house at the steady jog we had first used. When I saw that Felice struggled to keep up, her energy levels near to collapse, I met Lucas’s eyes and gave a nod in her direction.
He fell back and pulled one of her arms over his shoulders, supporting her as they continued to hurry forward, although slower than before. Declan and I led the way, my senses alert for anyone else in the vicinity.
“I knew there was something different about you,” Declan murmured as we strode along side-by-side.
I kept my attention on our surroundings.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Spoken Mage, remember?”
“No, something more than that,” he said. “You drained my energy. It’s supposed to be impossible, but you just did it.”
I almost tripped, and he put out a hand to brace me.
“Is that what the prince was talking about earlier? Can you sense the energy of others?” He sounded breathless and excited.
“How do you know that?” I asked. “You can’t have felt it.”
“But I did.” He turned to me, and his eyes glowed in the moonlight.
“I confess, I have been longing to meet you ever since I first heard rumors of your existence. Another mage whose power doesn’t follow the normal rules.”
“What do you mean another?” I nearly tripped again, too distracted now to watch for pursuers and still keep track of the ground beneath my feet.
“I mean myself,” he said. “You might perhaps have noticed I’m a little odd.” He smiled, apparently reconciled to the epithet. “But what no one still alive in Kallorway today knows is that there’s a reason for it beyond my isolated life.”
My pulse quickened. “You can speak compositions?”
He quickly shook his head.
“How can you take energy then?” I asked, disappointed but also intrigued. “No one has ever been able to do it with written compositions.”
“I can’t take energy,” he said calmly. “But I can feel it because I can give mine away.”
“You can give energy?” I asked. “To anyone?”
He nodded. “Yes.” He paused. “But it’s permanent.” The moon sailed from behind a cloud and illuminated a wry grin that somehow lent gravity to his mismatched face.
“Permanent?” I whispered, trying to grasp what that meant.
“We know that only some families have the ability to control power,” he said. “It’s been like that since before our records began. And we know that they pass that ability on to their children. But my family has always passed on a different sort of ability.”
An extra dark patch in the far distance told me we were approaching the collection of houses. I tore my mind away from his words long enough to do another sweep of the area.
“What sort of ability?” I asked once I was sure we remained safe.
“There is something different about our energy,” he said. “Or, perhaps more accurately, our ability to use it to access power. Unlike everyone else, we cannot access power at all—not in a controlled way, like the mageborn, or even an uncontrolled way, like the commonborn.”
I stared at him. That sounded like the Sekali sealing, but I felt no shadow over his energy. From my perspective, it felt entirely normal, if a little low.
“That’s why your family was excused from attending the Academy,” I murmured. “But why royal healers? Why let you wear a purple robe?”
“King Osborne has no idea why,” Declan said. “Apparently his father did not think to tell him. Or perhaps it was his grandfather who did not tell his father. We have been gone from court life for a long time. He—like those at the Academy—simply assumes I am weak and choose not to work compositions.”
“So, you’re a sham mage?” I asked, utterly confused. Not that it would do any ha
rm in his case, if he couldn’t cause any damage by writing.
“Well…that’s a worthy question,” he said. “I suppose you could say that. But, on the other hand, I can do compositions of a sort. The same ones—the only ones—all my other family members could do while they were alive. And if Osborne knew the truth of our ability, he would have never posted me out here and forgotten about me.”
“You mean the power to give away your energy?”
He nodded. I could see Mabel’s house now—still distant, but its shape distinct against the night sky.
“Members of my family have always been able to work only one type of composition: healings. But we can work any healing, almost without limits—except for one, all-important, limit. Our healings don’t work like normal healings. They don’t use power to accelerate the healing process of the body, or to regrow what can’t naturally be regrown. Our healings use our energy directly, transferring a part of it permanently into our patient. Healing them, yes, but also making them stronger and us weaker. Once that energy is gone, no amount of rest will ever replenish what we have lost.”
He sounded unutterably weary now, beyond our actual exertion. “And that is why the kings of the past gave us honors but kept us close and kept our ability a secret. Each of us has the capacity to complete only a very limited number of healings before we reduce ourselves to the point of death. They wanted our power kept for them and their families alone.”
My eyes widened, and I swallowed, my mind racing through the various ramifications of his story.
“But no one can take it from you?” I asked, suddenly alarmed. “I mean, the energy I took will replenish?”
“Oh certainly,” he hurried to reassure me. “We can exert ourselves like any commonborn, wear ourselves out, rest and recover. It is only when we work our own compositions that we give a part of that energy away forever.”
I looked at him sideways. I could now understand why he felt perpetually tired, although he had done nothing of particular exertion, nor worked any compositions. Who had he chosen to use part of his precious energy on?
Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) Page 25