by R. K. Thorne
Regin continued. “How does that make sense? How does that add up? No preacher or Devoted is going to feed me that nonsense. It’s not the Way of Things, that’s for sure, and no one will ever talk me out of that. That king is building up a mighty debt against him, and someday I tell you the Balance will set things right.”
Regin regarded Aven for a long moment. Aven hoped he would go on, but he seemed to be waiting for a response. Aven shrugged a little and spread his hands before him. “The Way says that it is natural for people to be free. Of course, if they go against the Way, everything goes out the window. I guess that’s how these slavers justify their actions, not that I agree.”
“Who gets to say what is against the Way, or what is a just punishment once you’ve gone against it? Who gets to judge?” Regin spat. “Let me ask you something—did your magic feel against the Way? Did it feel wrong? Could you hear that little voice in your heart telling you not to use it?”
Aven snorted. “No. It feels… so far from wrong. I’ve never felt so right in my life.” He paused. “How can they justify punishing hundreds or thousands of mages for the sins of a few?” He shook his head, feeling a dark mixture of despair and fury.
“Don’t know,” Regin said. “I suppose they no longer need to justify because no one’s questioning them. Except us in this little tent.” Regin grinned. “Kavanar’s pretty much gotten away with it for this long. Those poor mages must follow their orders; from within their minds they are compelled.”
So, it was just as it sounded, really. She was a mage, therefore she was a slave. She belonged to another and had to follow the whims of another—like kidnapping the prince of a foreign land. This is what she meant about not having a choice. This was why they couldn’t just stay in the forest as chipmunks forever. This was why she could not settle things peacefully. She was compelled, as fully and completely as anyone could be compelled, by magic. Her choices were not her own.
No, it couldn’t be. Just as Regin said, it was so wrong, so against the Way of Things. How had the Balance not righted itself already? How many decades had this gone on? There had to be some way to right the situation—to fix things—to make her whole again.
“Can they be freed?” he said quickly.
Regin’s face brightened with laughter in the corners of his eyes, his mouth. “There’s something more than riding horses going on, I swear it! Maybe not as much as I thought at first, but…”
Aven glared at him again but did not deny it this time. No point in lying when it was already obvious to the old man.
“Not that I know of, son. I’ve heard rumors, but they’re probably just hopes and dreams rather than shadows of the truth. However, if you ask me, magic is magic, even if it’s used to enslave. And any magic that can be worked can be un-worked or worked in reverse. The question is how and with what.”
Aven stared into the now-empty bowl. How? Where could he find the answer to that question? Would his mother know? Someone more trained? But how could one find someone like that in Akaria? Certainly, to keep the king’s power safe, anyone that had known was probably killed at the start. Anyone that knew how to free the mage slaves would hold a huge amount of power against Kavanar and its king.
He smiled at that thought. Exactly why he was going to figure this out.
Then a new revelation occurred to him: if she was kidnapping him to become a mage slave as well, then he could soon be in the same predicament. He had more than one stake in this game, and the sooner he could find a way out, the better. If such a way existed.
Regin refilled his mug and took the stew bowl. “This has been more than enough excitement for now. You should get some more rest.”
Aven bowed his head deeply in thanks and lowered himself back down to the bed as Regin crawled from the tent. For a while, he lay racking his brain for a way to free her, wringing the few facts he knew about magic for anything that could help him. But mostly he just cursed himself for knowing so goddamn little.
He was going to be extremely lucky if it didn’t get him killed.
The next time Aven awoke, the ache in his head was gone. He was hungry, but not so hungry as the last time, and in dire need of a bath.
He got to his hands and knees and lifted the tent flap, squinting at the bright fall sunlight. His eyes watered. When they finally adjusted, he could see a fire pit before him with a young boy tending it.
“Hello there,” he called.
The boy looked at him but said nothing.
“Is there a stream or something to wash in?”
The boy nodded. “Over that hill and down by the boulder. About a hundred paces.”
“Thank you,” he said, nodding. He proceeded to crawl the rest of the way out of the tent and carefully try righting himself. After a few dizzy moments and muscle spasms, he was able to stand well enough. He lurched unevenly down to the creek.
The shackles on his forearms remained. Given how little they actually did, they seemed almost silly. It was not the shackles on his wrists that held him here.
In spite of them, he felt oddly free. No one was watching him or directing him in a certain direction. No one was waiting for his arrival at a specified time or requiring his presence. He could stumble on forever if he wanted to, or nowhere. Perhaps he should think about running more seriously. The threat of slavery was all too real if what Regin said was true. Freedom was something Aven had always had; how could he know how much he would miss it? Not every captor would be like Mara.
He crested the hill, only a little dizzy and out of breath, and headed down the other side. He spotted a large boulder among the trees, and sure enough, water flowed beyond the brush. The area around the camp was lightly wooded, occasionally opening up into fields of tall grass and flowers. Was this the same camp, or had they moved? He wasn’t sure anymore; he knew little of the terrain from their nighttime escape. The skies were bright and clear, and most of the leaves were yellow and ready to fall. A strong, brisk wind hit him from the top of the hill down, and he couldn’t help but feel exhilarated by all that energy, the power rushing by. Power that he could now harness.
He reached the boulder. Near it, the brush had been cleared to make an easy path down to the water. He called out, but no one answered. He looked around the other side of the rock, upstream, downstream, but saw no one. He surveyed his clothes. They were beyond filthy now. They needed to go in with him to be washed thoroughly. He might as well just wade in with his clothes on.
He kicked his boots off and pulled off his socks. He dipped his toe into the stream and gasped. Just as he feared—ice cold. Well, at least it would wake him all the way up. He waded in a little and then a little more, starting to shiver.
As the water was lapping against his calves, he suddenly remembered—the star map!
As if a wave were rushing at him, he darted back out of the water and onto the bank and pulled the map from his pocket. Seeing it made him want to stop and study it, but he needed to focus on the task at hand. He wandered around behind the boulder and searched till he found two dry, flat rocks that were well back from the stream’s bank. The earth near the stream was moist, so he used the dry tops of the rocks on either side of the map to pin it down safely from the wind and protect it from the damp soil.
Now his ankles were freezing. He needed to get this over with, so he rushed back around the boulder and stepped into the water again.
For a moment—fueled by either his imagination or his exhaustion, he wasn’t sure—he thought he saw Mara before him, laughing in the sunlight, bare shoulders just breaking the stream’s surface. And then the illusion, or whatever it was, was gone. He stepped in again, but this time he pretended he was joining her in the water.
Was there a way… ?
There was no time to contemplate such things. It was too damn cold. He needed to wash his clothes. He started with his shirt, removing it and beginning to scrub.
As he worked, he went back through everything Regin had said. He racked his brain for
clues, ideas, loopholes, anything that might break the spell enslaving her. No ideas came.
When the shirt was clean, he pulled it back over his head and made for his pants and undergarments. He was going to have to let these clothes dry somehow; he wondered if the nomads would loan him some, if they even had any to spare. Mara had said he could make fire, tease the sun—wasn’t there some way he could warm himself while his clothes dried on this cold autumn day? He was just finishing with his pants when he sensed a presence, like someone was watching him.
He turned toward the bank just as his mother’s glowing apparition formed, Lord Beneral and the third companion behind her.
“Aven!” she called.
He stared at her, blinking. Oh, gods. This was going to be hard to explain.
“Mother!” he called back. “And Lord Beneral! I hadn’t expected to see you here.”
“Hail, my lord,” said Beneral, bowing with a grin.
“Apparently you are not the only one who’s been hiding some magic,” his mother said wryly.
“Your steward Fayton is quite the observant one,” Beneral replied. “This is my apprentice Vonen, who assists us by casting this spell.”
“I am pleased to have you as allies.” With as regal of a nod as he could muster, Aven grabbed his pants and made his way toward the bank. He stopped as close as he could while remaining in the water. “Water’s cold, but the air’s even colder. Can we talk from here?”
“Of course,” his mother replied. “Are you all right? We’ve been following you—well, watching. Via the birds.”
“I figured you would be.”
“Clever work getting out of those fools’ clutches back there,” she said.
“The nomads? They’re not fools.”
“No, the Devoted. Evana. I knew you were a great warrior. But I hadn’t imagined you with your own set of claws.” Her eyes twinkled with laughter, even more now as a being made of light.
“Ah. Well. Thank you.”
She was silent for a moment. So was he.
“You’re not leaving,” she said flatly. A slight smile remained in her eyes.
He said nothing.
“You’re free. She isn’t here holding you. And yet you sit like this is where you belong.”
He looked at her as solemnly as he ever had.
“Maybe it is where I belong. I can’t leave, at least not yet,” he said, unsure how to broach the subject.
“I assumed you had a reason. What is it?”
“I just…” How could he explain?
“Is it magic? A spell? Does she have something? Know something?” She watched his face at each question for a sign or reaction, but found nothing. “She’s going to kill you or enslave you at best. But—you already figured that out, didn’t you.”
He nodded.
“Then what is it?”
He wasn’t sure if it was the words or the frigid air on his shoulders, but he did find himself shaking. “She’s not the one trying to hurt me, Mother. She’s a slave.”
She paused, frowning. “Does that make a difference?”
He shrugged, searching for words. “To me, it does. I’m not a fool, I know I’m in danger.” He searched her eyes, hoping to find the words to explain that Mara was more than a kidnapper, more than some mercenary from Kavanar. If he was inexperienced in love, he was even more inexperienced in telling his mother he was in love. With an audience, no less.
“I don’t understand. What could be worth giving everything up—” Then she stopped, as if the only reason why he might be so crazy and irrational had just occurred to her. “Ah, but there is that one thing you don’t have. And have struggled to find.”
He glanced up to meet her eyes, hopeful.
“By the gods. You’re in love with her, aren’t you.”
“Indeed.” He looked away, then down at his feet. Anything to dodge her stare. She said nothing. He swallowed hard. Maybe now he could explain the situation if he didn’t have to relay the craziest part of the story. “She might have been born a mage, and so in Kavanar that might mean that she’s a slave. But she didn’t ask for this. She didn’t ask to kidnap me. Just like I didn’t ask for this. But fate brought us together. I can’t leave her. I have to help her. Somehow. I have to.”
Her eyes bored into his, a mixture of sadness and love that he didn’t know how to interpret. “How, Aven? She can’t be helped.”
“Yes, she can. I have to free her.”
The apprentice Vonen gasped, then tried to hide it. Beneral raised his eyebrows. His mother only smiled. “Stubborn as your father,” she whispered.
“I have to find a way,” he insisted, his voice hard.
“I tried to argue with a Lanuken in love once, and I wound up married to him. I won’t fight you, crazy as you are.”
He sighed with relief. Thank the ancients, she understood.
“Well, he’s said he wants to free her. Seeing that he can’t be argued with, what shall we do next, mages? Any suggestions?”
“We could at least check the libraries for spells or histories to give us any clues,” said Vonen.
“We can contact some of the elders. Perhaps there is one who at least knows if it’s possible,” Lord Beneral added.
“All right, you heard that, Aven. We will go back now. It’s midday. Be back here at sundown if you are still able, and I will try to return and see if we can find anything to help you.”
He nodded earnestly. “Thank you, Mother.”
She nodded with a smile as their forms dissolved into the air.
He was alone by the water. He listened to the stream gurgling, the birds, the wind in the leaves. The air across his chest made him shiver, and he dunked back into the water. He hoped they would find something because otherwise, he was purely on his own.
There had to be a way to free her. He was committed now; he would find a way to free Mara or die trying.
Aven fetched his star map from the riverside and retreated to the warmth of his tent to wait for his clothes to dry out. He took them off, laid them out beside him, and hid himself under the furs. Regin brought him a generous helping of some sort of soup this time, as well as some kind of herbal tisane. For the first time since their journey began, Aven felt warm, clean, well-fed, healthy, and safe all at the same time.
“How is she doing?” he asked Regin before the man could leave.
“She’s fine, just needs more rest, that’s all. She did the heavy lifting.” Regin ducked out of the tent with a wink.
As his clothes dried, he studied the star map. Two large circles graced the top half, each overlapping with the other. Dozens of characters circled the outside of each ring. Several characters indicated the months of the ancient lunar calendar. The bottom half of the map was divided into thirteen tall, narrow sections. Now that he had some time to study it, he felt sure he could make out several familiar stars at the top. The names still seemed wrong, for what little he could recognize of the angular, hooked Serabain script. Why would characters be missing, broken? And beyond seeing them labeled, what good was this map? What did it have to do with magic? What did the sections at the bottom mean? Could it just be a very old, very ordinary star chart? Was he ridiculous to think there must be something special about it? Perhaps Teron had just been enthusiastic about the stars. Or trying to indicate something else entirely.
He sighed, folded the map back up, and laid his head down to take a nap.
He awoke with a start, realizing that he had no idea what time it was. Dusk could be long gone. He yanked his still-damp clothes on, shoved the star map in his pocket, and lifted the tent flap. The light sliced through the trees in long, dramatic, beautiful rays. It was not dark yet, but it was coming. He headed for the stream again as quickly as he could while still trying to look casual; he hoped Mara had not woken to see him sneaking off into the forest as fast as he could.
No one stopped him or seemed to notice him. He was back at the stream, sitting on top of the large boulder, with plen
ty of time to wait till the sun set. A few women were washing clothes in the water, talking softly, laughing. They nodded to him, then ignored him. It was a lovely, if cold, fall sunset, and they were all simply going about their business.
In the better light, he examined the star map again. He found Casel, and he studied the characters around it, struggling to translate the old Serabain. The paper was faintly translucent, and the sunlight made it glow a little. Between the sound of laughter and rushing water and the time alone to himself to study the map, he felt a strange contentment. Even with all the other problems in the world, there was still this moment.
As the sun faded, he stopped trying to read the map. The only parts he could decode were names of stars he already knew. The bottom portion completely eluded him. Indeed, the words seemed wrong, nonsensical. If only he knew more of ancient languages, but such scholarly study typically had little practical use. Thel would probably have known better what it said as he’d taken to the more esoteric subjects. Aven sat back and watched the water swishing by. The young women finished their work and strolled back to camp, smiling as they passed. He smiled back, nodded, and pretended to be enthralled by the beauty of nature at the moment. Which wasn’t far from the truth.
As soon as the women crested the hill, his mother and her companions appeared near the water’s edge. His mother’s face looked tired. He hated hurting her. He really hoped they’d found something.
Their glowing forms glided toward him in an odd blend of walking and sliding until his mother could sit near him on the rock. How that worked, he had no idea.
“What did you find?” he asked.
“Not much concrete, but a few things,” she said. “First, Beneral was able to reach Wunik, one of the elders and his teacher.”
“He believes freeing Kavanar mages is possible, based on the oldest tales,” said the lord. “Although he does not know how, he believes that if the tool they use to bind the mages was made by a mage, then it must be possible. We have no examples of magic that cannot be undone with other magic. Aside from, perhaps, this one.”
