“Well, if all the other jades came about at the end of a royal line and we only have one royal line left—”
“The two kings would argue that point,” Dariak cut in.
Randler waved it off, “Their lines are not from the firstborn son of Hathreneir or Kallisor. But Dariak… think about it… What if the reason the land is always in turmoil and we’re always at war is because there is some other magical force in the world that is trapped and can’t get free? What if freeing that energy bursts like a blister and lets all the pressure out? What if that’s the missing piece, Dariak?”
“It’s a crazy notion.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t a possibility.”
Dariak sat back in his seat as he considered Randler’s words. “So you’re suggesting now that we hunt down this last heir and slay him to see if that creates a new magic force in the world and stops the wars?”
Randler frowned. “It does sound insane when you phrase it that way. But essentially, yes.”
Dariak rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m a little confused to hear you even wanting to discover a new branch of magic. Wasn’t it you who wanted all magic to end?”
“Dariak…”
The mage waved his hand dismissively. “I need to read a little more about my father’s attempts to fuse the jades together. I can’t imagine that the answer lies in murder.”
Randler swallowed hard. “I don’t mean to sound callous. It’s just one stray thought, you realize. It is also possible that it’s far from the mark, and we just have to find the proper way to unite the jades to release their energy back into the world. Maybe that’s the reason for the mess here; they might be trapped against their will.”
The mage’s head sank low and he sighed. “I think that’s what my father was leading up to. Unite the jades to release their powers back unto the land. He talks a lot about the imbalance of power here and there and that storing up energy in one place for too long invariably leads to destruction. And then, he tried to use his own life to unleash that power and send it back to the world around him. But it didn’t work, did it? His life just… ended, and the shards of jade were dropped back to the ground.”
“Dariak…”
“I’m not saying he died in vain. Not necessarily. But if releasing the energy of the jades isn’t the key, then maybe… murder is.”
“Dariak!”
The mage rubbed his eyes again. “I’m being crass, calling it that. But if we strip away the rest, isn’t that what we’re saying?”
“It’s speculation, regardless.”
“The irony is delicious, like the War of the Colossus, where the kings wanted to end the wars by staging a huge battle. And here we’re talking about ushering in peace by killing a man.”
“It’s…” Randler frowned. “It’s not the same thing.”
“How isn’t it?”
But Randler couldn’t think of anything.
Chapter 27
Magical Malcontent
Lica stormed through Magehaven in a fury. Her wounds from the annelidium had been treated and she felt fine, but the mages refused to let her go. The Council of Mages denied her demands for an audience and it was all she could do not to lash out at the acolytes.
The first floor of the tower was locked against her entrance. She had tried over the course of four days to break through the doors, but she was unsuccessful. Her earthen spells had no effect on the wood, indicating that larger forces kept the structure in place. She couldn’t properly sense the energies in the wood to try to tear them apart, for the entire tower was rampant with mages casting spells and she was unaccustomed to the influx of all that feedback.
She thought her previous stay had been stressful; however, she likened this visit to imprisonment without even knowing her crime or sentence. The massive fonts of energies on every floor irked her in ways they hadn’t before. She wondered what was wrong with her now.
“Stop casting those rock pellets and get over here,” she demanded of a young acolyte who was struggling with his magic. He looked at her in confusion, but the irate expression on her face warned him not to disobey. He trundled over and asked what she wanted. “I want to speak with someone on the Council, Rothra in particular.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that, matron.”
“Don’t you ‘matron’ me, you fool!” Lica scolded. “I know you can’t help with what I want, so I thought I would help you instead, if you can handle advice from one such as me.”
“But the masters said I was to learn it on my own.”
“Ha!” Lica barked. “I would bet they were trying to be rid of you for as long as possible so they could go back to the their tea!”
“W—Why are you shouting, Miss Lica?” the boy asked.
“Miss?” She laughed. “Poor thing, that’s been a long time since I’ve been a miss. ‘Lica’ will suffice, Gennry. Now, tell me about that rock spell you’re working on.”
Sheepishly, Gennry set a small line of stones in front of him. He told Lica the words of power and the pebbles all shuddered and then flicked out randomly, pelting ahead without control. “I want to be able to shoot them like from a slingshot.”
“So use a slingshot,” she said dourly, then sighed. “Your hands are all wrong. See, look, by crimping your forefinger, you’re blocking the energy from the stones. Keep them straight while you work the energy into the rocks. After that, then bend them to keep the energy within you. When you’re ready to send them flying, then flick those fingers.”
“That’s all I’m doing wrong?”
She gave a motherly smile. “No, dear, but you’re only launching those pebbles an arm’s length away, and that’s not very useful, is it? At that distance, you’d be better off learning to coat your hands in stones and then punching your foe. Come now, try again, and once you’ve got the distance you’re looking for, you can work on other aspects of the spell to build control over how you’re aiming, which pebbles you’re flinging first, and then you can learn to fling larger objects.”
“That’s… wow, thank you, Lica!” He beamed as he scooped up his stones and scampered away.
Lica looked up at the ceiling and lamented, “There, I did someone a favor, now where’s mine in return?”
The training floors were closest to the main entrance to the tower but the constantly misfired spells were tiresome to deflect and the buzzing of energy was downright irritating, which explained why most of the acolytes on the floor trained alone. Only a few elder mages spent any time there, and usually only if they wanted a seat on the Council, to prove their skill above others.
In some ways, Lica wanted to grab a handful of mages and enter one of the old sparring chambers where the Trials had been conducted before the advent of the jades. She doubted she could control her ire well enough against a younger mage and she feared her skills were too unpracticed to survive against someone stronger.
Mostly, though, she was just frustrated with her situation and her mind was racing. Up the stairs she went, making note of the scorch marks from her companions’ previous visits and escapes from this place. She wondered when her time would come to bust through the gates and leave this place behind; then she shook her head, knowing she wouldn’t be able to do it on her own anyway.
A few more days passed, which Lica spent in the library. She looked through the histories and sought a handful of earth-magic books to brush up on her skills, though she opted only to commit them to memory, rather than head to the training grounds to practice them. For Randler’s sake, she also scoured the shelves for information on the Forgotten Tribe, and for Dariak she hunted down tales about the Red Jade. Her heart wasn’t into any of it and she found nothing she thought was noteworthy. She did find the paintings by Lady Cathrateir that Kitalla had glimpsed through, and she considered stealing them just for spite.
As the days wafted by, Lica’s rage boiled within her ever more powerfully than each day before, like a mountain ready to explode into a fiery vo
lcano. She kept herself out of trouble, watching for signs of weakness from the mages around her, not that she really knew which mages to watch. What amazed her the most was that the entire Mage Council, enshrouded in their representative colors, was never to be seen. Their meeting chamber was locked with innumerable enchantments and there was growing talk among the novices that perhaps the masters were all dead inside.
Lica scoffed at the notion but couldn’t entirely dismiss it either. The tower remained locked and she couldn’t escape without a major ruckus. Banging on the Council doors did nothing. Yelling at mages and knocking down bookcases in the library had no repercussions.
And so, the volcano erupted.
Lica stormed up to the mage chamber with a staff she had absconded with from a darkened room. She emptied her pockets of all her spell components, littering the floor in the process. Then she sat down and used a large rock to cast an impenetrable wall around herself, lest she be disrupted. It was a new spell for her, supported by the staff, but it worked on the same principles as other protection spells. She bashed the rock against her knuckle until she scored a drop of blood to link her essence to the stone, ensuring the spell would hold longer. It was buttressed against the wall and the chamber door, but it didn’t shield her from them, as she needed to reach them with the energies. Then she really began her work.
“Kathkarothakur brendishan roque porro kroschkator!” She swept her hand through the pile of dirt and coated her hand in its silkiness. “Ormadushinor thrakkishar!” Cracking a set of twigs into thirds, she laid them in a grid pattern to represent the powers that sealed the chamber door. Her fingers worked quickly and when she paused between spells, she cracked her knuckles and rubbed the soreness from them.
“Jrakoulich frei k’nnarsh!” Lica took a small hammer and crushed a pebble after several tries, then used the rock dust to smother her hands in a second layer of earth. “Mortshican fruthristra kaie wroque.” With a chisel to hack off a small chunk of the wall surrounding the door, she completed the spell by hammering the fragment into dust and coating her hands with a third layer.
“Brakka forius, krathrotsh fruthia. Kaie!” With a shout, she brought her hands over her head and used them like a sledgehammer to smash the twig grate at her feet. In response, the door to the Council chamber exploded in a rain of debris, pelting Lica excruciatingly, bouncing off the inside of her protective field and raising welts everywhere on her body.
As the dust settled, Lica pulled her aching body from the floor and pushed her way into the darkened room, squinting to see anything of import. She had only been to the chamber once as an audience member in support of Dariak’s claim to the jades, but she remembered there were windows along the right wall. She staggered in the darkness and found a shutter, then unceremoniously ripped it from its holdings with her earth-infused fists. She had forgotten the spell would still be in effect for a while but it didn’t matter. The mages needed something productive to do.
When her eyes adjusted to the light, Lica took stock of the room and was dismayed. The Council members had indeed been fighting each other, and not just with words. Scorch marks marred the ceiling and walls, a pungent odor from some poison made her nose twinge, and the floor was littered with six bodies. As she bent to examine them she noticed the cloying scent in the air and she covered her mouth and nose to mask it as best she could.
She hadn’t met all of the Council mages but she could tell that these casualties were all members. Even in death, their faces held an arrogance that signaled their position. She dug through the bodies, trying to identify any of them, but she found neither Rothra nor Shelloni in the carnage. Either they had been obliterated completely or had escaped, if they had been present at all.
Lica scrounged around looking for… she didn’t know what. Perhaps one of them had a key she could use to open the doors downstairs, though now that she had broken the seal on the Council door, she realized she could probably do so again to leave the tower. It would leave these mages in turmoil without their leaders, but they hadn’t been particularly kind or hospitable to her anyway.
Lica bent over one mage and rifled through his cloak, seeking ingredients she could use to escape the tower without having to forage among the lower levels for them. As she did so, a mild thunder echoed in the distance and before she knew what was happening, fifteen mages ran into the room, staffs and knives at the ready.
At the head of the pack was Shelloni, a mad look in her eye. Her usually well-kempt hair was wildly askew and her robes were burned and torn in many places. “Grab her before she causes any more damage!” Shelloni screamed.
Lica saw the trap for what it was and she didn’t even bother to plead her innocence, though she didn’t submit, either. Her empowered fists charged forth and cracked one mage in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and sending him sprawling to the ground, where two others stumbled over him. She then bent lower and scooped up a handful of dust. “Brobbaforius!” she sputtered, throwing the specks into the air, where they hovered. It was another defensive spell she had read about in the library, and when Shelloni’s group unleashed their spells upon her, the dust absorbed the majority of the energies, and Lica was hit with only minor damage.
Shelloni screamed and spun her arms in a wide circles. Lica recognized the motions and focused her attention on the vibrations underfoot. Sure enough, rock spikes lifted from the floor with each upward thrust of Shelloni’s arms. Lica retaliated by grabbing one of the spikes and hacking at its base with her enchanted hands, after which she lobbed it across the way. It was meant as a show of power, not as an attack, but then she changed her mind and called a spell forth to shatter the stone as it reached the other mages. They were blasted with bits of stone and they shrieked.
Lica raised up a defensive wall to stop the mages from advancing physically, even though it meant she was relatively trapped in the chamber. If she didn’t defeat the lot of them, then she wasn’t likely to leave anyway. Her pockets were void of materials except those she had scavenged off the fallen Council members, and she had no idea what to do with salamander scales, but she was desperate.
While Shelloni and the other mages chiseled their way through the earthen defenses, Lica chanted wildly, pulling pieces of rock, stone, and the salamander scales together. Her fists crushed everything to a fine powder, and then she pulled the dust together into numerous rocks, filled with raging energy. She felt drained from all the spellcasting but she pushed on with her next effort.
The earth wall crumbled enough so the other mages could reach in and cast their spells, and Lica used the same technique she had shown to Gennry days before. One by one, she flicked her enchanted pebbles at her foes, blasting them in the face or chest as they reached the opening in the wall. Each mage screamed and stopped attacking.
Lica could hear Shelloni muttering on the other side of the wall and instead of waiting, Lica rushed up to the gap and flung one of the stones at the Council mage, amazed to see the rock crash into the woman’s face and then explode in a miniature inferno. Shelloni shrieked and collapsed.
She hadn’t expected such a result, but Lica didn’t particularly care about the damage to Shelloni and her cronies. They had baited her into the Council chamber and clearly had intended to lay the blame upon her for all the deaths that had occurred. Shelloni would then have risen up and taken leadership of the tower, and after everything she had known of Shelloni, she decided she could never let that happen. Still seething, Lica stuffed one of her remaining firestones, as she decided to call them, into Shelloni’s mouth and then she coaxed the unconscious mage to swallow it. She didn’t stick around for the gruesome explosion.
Lica hurried away from the area, anxious to use her rock hands and firestones to bust through the tower doors and be free of this place forever. A voice called to her and she ignored it, lowering her head and taking to the stairs.
As a middle-aged and somewhat stocky woman, all the excitement was taking its toll on Lica. Four steps down, she tr
ipped and tumbled down the stairs, breaking her arm and a foot in the process. She tried to stand but her body gave way and she crumpled, furious with herself. Other mages approached her cautiously, fearing a wave of vicious spells for all the words sputtering from her mouth, but had they listened carefully, they would have realized that it was only a string of profanities.
“Lica! Are you hurt?” called the voice that was following her from the floor above. “Metris, Fluva, start the healing magics at once!”
To her surprise, Lica was not bound in any way and as her anger sated, she looked at and saw a battered Rothra on his knees, trying to help her to sit up. “What in the name of creation is going on here?” she demanded.
“In short, it’s a coup,” Rothra answered. “Are you able to stand yet? Oh Fluva, do hurry.”
“A coup?” Lica gasped. “Whatever do you mean? Most of this place looks normal.”
Rothra recapped quickly. “Since my return, things have been tenuous. Once the declaration from the king arrived that we would be working in full cooperation with the Kallisorians, everything fell apart. The Council went to deliberate on the merits and validity of the decree and everyone was split on what to do. Shelloni had already decided and that’s when the fighting began.”
“Shelloni should be dead,” Lica informed him, “but send someone to check just in case.”
“Aphris, go and make certain,” Rothra agreed.
The healing spells worked well and Lica found the pains were gone and she was able to stand on her foot, even though she could still feel that it was broken. The healing magic was sealing the damage even as Rothra hoisted her up. “There is another matter that had us divided even before the king’s missive.”
“You mages here are always divided. It makes no difference to me. Whoever is willing to accompany me back to support Dariak’s quest should come and let everyone else remain here in this accursed tower. I really don’t care about the rest of it, Rothra.”
He forced a smile on his face. “You may be interested in this one piece, anyway.”
The Forgotten Tribe Page 22