CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
If Ember could have run from the council chambers, she would have done so without a thought, but this time it was fear that motivated her rather than the willful defiance of the past. She was immobile—frozen by some unknown magic she could not counter, facing a gathering of the most powerful magi in the land, and they accused her of being a cheater, a liar, and now a spy, and she could not even speak to defend herself.
The council members argued. Ember caught snatches of their conversations, some in agreement with the head mage and others arguing for Ember to present her side of the story. Still others whispered the possibility that she truly was a white mage—perhaps even the wolfchild.
Ember had no idea what they were talking about, but she definitely wanted a chance to speak her piece. They were wrong, and she could prove it, if she could free herself and change to her own form. If Uncle Shad or DeMunth came, they could tell the council. She’d even welcome the sight of her mother at that moment.
As if the thought had been somehow plucked from her mind, the head mage began to speak again, making his case against her.
“Proof? You ask for proof? Then you shall have it. Let them in!”
The flamboyant fat man again nodded to the sixth guard, who leaned out the big double doors and was nearly pushed over by the entrance of Ember’s diminutive mother, her rage giving her strength she wouldn’t normally have. The one person she had been avoiding, the woman she’d tried to evade with her disguise, was now standing not ten feet away and all Ember wanted to do was call out to her—and she was denied even that.
“Where’s my daughter?” Marda demanded angrily, her hands on her hips and chin thrust forward as if to batter the head mage with it.
“Sister Brina. The council welcomes you back to its midst.” The eye-popping mage sneered at Ember’s mother.
“I haven’t been your sister or Brina for fifteen years, Laerdish, and I’m not here by choice. Where is my daughter?” she asked again.
Ember had a memory of Shad calling Ember’s parents Jarin and Brina. Was Laerdish really her brother? Or was it figurative? And why would he welcome her back to a council she’d never joined? Ember’s thoughts scrambled, looking for sanity in the nightmare her life had become.
“Don’t you recognize her, Brina? For the one going by her name is standing right before you.” He swept his arm toward Ember, and her mother’s gaze was on her, burning holes through her soul.
Ember wondered what in heaven’s name she had been thinking when she wished her mother would come. She’d forgotten just how piercing her mother’s eyes were in the short few days she had been gone.
“No. I do not see my daughter here. What game are you playing?”
She glared at Laerdish. The fat man grinned maliciously at her. “This boy took the mage test in Ember’s name while wearing this. I seem to remember Jarin had something similar.” He handed the pendant to Marda. She took the pendant, shock and horror on her face as she realized exactly what it was she held.
“Does it look familiar to you?” Laerdish almost taunted.
Marda cried out and rushed toward Ember with a despairing yell. She reached the edge of the circle where Ember stood and was thrown back by an energy field. She scrabbled at it like a crazed woman, screaming incoherently.
Ember watched, stunned. She hadn’t thought her mother really loved her. She’d spent a lifetime trying to squirrel out from under her thumb, but the panic and near insanity of her mother’s actions made it clear that Marda loved her very much. Ember’s mother pounded against the invisible wall and shrieked through her sobs.
“What have you done with my daughter?”
The instant the question was out of Marda’s lips, Ember found herself able to speak once again. She took advantage of it while she could.
“Mum! Mum, I am your daughter! I turned into a wolf to get away from Ian Covainis when he tried to kidnap me, and then Uncle Shad taught me to turn into a boy so Ian couldn’t find me, and then Uncle Shad found me a room, but I couldn’t bathe with the men because I didn’t have boy parts, so he told me to change back into a girl to get a bath, and so I did, and I saw you there, I talked to you, and then I changed back into a boy for my test, and now nobody believes I’m Ember because I look like some spy of C’Tan’s. Can you believe that?” Ember spat it all out in one breath as fast as she could.
Marda looked at her like she was crazy. “You’re Ember.” She laughed a little hysterically, then stopped as suddenly as she began. “Don’t you think I would know if my daughter was capable of this kind of magic? Wouldn’t a mother know?” Bitter tears rained from her eyes. Marda wiped at them with a closed fist.
“It only started the day I left. Remember when I changed the dress? I didn’t even know I could do things like that until that day, and then I was so scared when Ian caught me, I changed all of a sudden, just like Da—”
“Stop!” Marda covered her ears. Ember suddenly found her mouth frozen again. She wanted to grind her teeth in frustration, but she was denied even that pleasure.
“I would have known! I don’t know how you learned about the dress, but you are not my daughter! You can’t be! Now tell me where she is, and I may be able to convince the council to go easy on you, but if you do not tell me where she is, and right now, I will be there when they sentence and punish you, and I’ll be cheering them on and demanding more. Now, where is my daughter?”
“I am your daughter!” Ember cried back, freed again by the question. “Please, Mum, it’s me. Tell them to release me for just a few minutes, and I’ll change back to my real self. You’ll see it’s really me. I can prove it to you.”
“Or you might be a spy, trying to trick us so you can escape,” Laerdish answered for Marda. “We are not foolish enough to do such a thing, boy. You will stay bound until your guilt is proven.”
“Or innocence, perhaps,” another familiar voice responded. Ember’s fear eased with his arrival. It was Ezeker, Aldarin at his side. If anyone would know her from the inside out, it would be these two. Aldarin had already guessed the truth—maybe Ezeker would as well.
Laerdish spun to face the newcomers, his face reddening under Ezeker’s accusing eyes, but he controlled his expression and yielded the floor to Ezeker. He bowed himself back to his previously abandoned seat.
“But of course, headmaster,” the gaudy man fawned. “That is what I meant. Until guilt or innocence are proven.”
“You have overstepped your bounds, Laerdish. You had no call to begin this council without my presence,” Ezeker said in a low tone.
“I only stood in your place until you were found. I was assured you would be here shortly. Now that you have arrived, the floor is yours.”
Laerdish sat daintily despite his bulk, but Ember saw him glower at Ezeker when the headmaster’s back turned.
Headmaster. The meaning finally occurred to Ember. No wonder he had pushed her all these years—he was head of the mage academy, and she had never known, never even suspected. She wanted to ask him about it, but again the spell left her speechless and frozen until she was questioned.
“Just in case this truly is Ember Shandae, why don’t we return the pendant to her.” Ezeker did not make it a request. He stood next to Marda, his hand out, waiting.
“That is not my daughter, Ezeker, and you know it!” Marda snarled at him.
“I know no such thing, Marda, and if you’d let your heart get out of the way of your head, you’d know the same. Now give me the pendant.”
“But—” she started.
“Give me the pendant,” he demanded, more forcefully.
Marda glared, then threw the pendant into his hand and stormed away to stand by the door. Ezeker turned and nodded to the two front guards, who nodded in return. They pulled their swords and put the tips of them together on the floor, forming a “V.” There was a flash where the tips met before they pulled the swords upward to man height, and then apart, leaving a glimmering shield of blue between them. It s
tood as a portal through the shield that kept Ember separate. Ezeker moved purposefully toward that glowing blue doorway despite the objections sounding behind him, led mostly by Laerdish.
“Sir, I must insist—” the large man shouted, clambering to his feet.
Ezeker stopped in the doorway, one foot on Ember’s side, a snarl of crackling energy surrounding his leg. “Let things be, Laerdish. I’m safe enough here. You wouldn’t let anything happen to me, now, would you?” he said over his shoulder. Laerdish didn’t respond, though he continued to advance. Ezeker took two steps forward, the energy surrounding his body for a moment so his hair and beard stood out around him. Once he was inside, the guards quickly lowered their swords back to the floor, and the portal collapsed. Laerdish stood on the other side, glowering but unable to get through.
Ezeker approached Ember, his eyes wary, but hopeful. “Is it really you, child?”
His question freed her from the spell, and she nearly sobbed with relief. “Yes, Uncle Ezzie, it’s me! Please get me out of here. I can’t move or speak unless someone asks me a question, and it makes it awfully hard to defend myself. Mum doesn’t even believe me.”
“It’s the manacles, child. They dampen your magic and will. The only problem is proving to the council that you are indeed the Ember Shandae I know and love. They won’t accept your word for it, nor mine either, I’m afraid, and most things you could say to prove your identity could have been received from another source. Is there anyone who has known you as both your male and female self, child?”
“Yes! Uncle Shad has seen me, but I don’t know where he is. He was staying in the council house, but he didn’t come when I passed his room and screamed at him.”
Ezeker seemed startled. “Shad? You mean White Shadow of the Bendanatu? You’ve met him?”
Ember nodded vigorously. “Yes, Uncle Shad saved me when I escaped from Ian Covainis after he kidnapped me and I turned into a wolf. He’s traveling with a mute named DeMunth—”
Ezeker threw back his head and started to laugh. Ember was not sure why, and it offended her.
“Ezeker! This is no time to be laughing!”
“No, child, you are wrong. This is the perfect time to be laughing. Aldarin! Come here, my boy!” Ezeker called out to Ember’s stepbrother, who stood silently by the doorway. He came quickly, his armor clanking. He winked at Ember when he got close enough for her to see. Ezeker gestured for the guards to open the portal, and once more they created the glimmering blue doorway with their swords. The old mage stuck his head through the wall and whispered to his captain of the guard. In a matter of seconds, Aldarin was grinning from ear to ear.
“As you wish, master.” He nodded once and backed away, bowing, then turned and strode purposefully through the double doors.
Ezeker stepped back from the portal as it dissolved, and turned to Ember. “I cannot take those manacles off until a majority of the council approves it, and at this moment, that is not the way things stand. Laerdish has done some damage to your reputation, but that is something we may still be able to repair. We can free you and get you into the academy in one swoop. Will you work with me?”
“Of course, but why do you believe me when even Mum doesn’t?”
Ezeker stepped forward and put the pendant around her neck, then winked at her as it sank beneath her skin once again. “Because I know you better than anyone thinks, Ember. I know your potential, I know your spirit—and I know you are the only person alive who would dare to call me ‘Uncle Ezzie’ without pause.”
Ember grinned back at him, relief washing over her. “So tell me what to do, Uncle Ezzie, so I can get out of here.”
“First, I need you to read the colors of all the magi. It will be a lot of work, but I need you to prove that you are capable of being that which your test claims.”
“Which is?”
“Why, a white mage, of course,” he said.
“A what?” she asked, her mind just now grasping the impossible, though why she hadn’t connected the thoughts before, she didn’t know. “But Uncle Shad told me there hasn’t been a white mage for three thousand years. Nobody knows anything about them, so how can I be one?”
“We know a little. We know they are able to do all the magic—and we have the test in place that tells us how to recognize one. If you are truly able to see all the colors of magic, as the test shows, then you are a white mage.” He watched her closely.
The room spun around her for a moment, and Ember reached out for something to steady herself before the floor got too close. Ezeker took her arm and held her up until her vision cleared. “I’m a white mage?” she said, her mind still trying to grasp the implications.
“But of course. What else could you be, child?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t . . . I mean, I never really thought about it, I guess.”
“Well, you’d better think about it now, Ember, because the potential is definitely there, and it is something you need to learn quickly. Not only does our world need your help in healing, but until you understand your capabilities, you are in danger—and not only from the followers of S’Kotos. There are many who will wish to undermine or destroy you for what you are—not because you are a threat to them, but because your power is greater and your experience less. They will destroy you out of envy and spite. Think now and think hard, Ember, because what you decide will change your life and anger a lot of people. You can choose to become a mage and harness the power you’ve been given, or you can choose to deny it and close yourself to the world of magic. The one makes you free, but the other is much, much safer. There is a whole other world out there waiting to be discovered and used. Perhaps even . . . well, we’ll go there later. Right now I am asking only three things of you. One—tell each of the council members the colors you see around them. Two—decide whether or not you want to be a mage. And three—trust me.”
Ember was overwhelmed by his requests. They seemed so simple, and yet they were not. She didn’t think identifying the council members would be difficult, and trusting Ezeker was never an issue, but deciding whether to become a mage or not scared her. She had thought she wanted nothing more than that, but her experiences of the past hour had shown her a different side to the mage world, a place where you could not automatically trust someone just because they were a mage, a place where people would use you to elevate themselves, or put you down because they couldn’t stand the idea of your power. Did she really want to be a part of that world? Did she really want to give up the life she had known to live and study amongst people like this?
Ember pondered for a long moment, searching her heart and soul to feel which way was best, and in the end it all came down to one thing.
The magic.
For Ember, the magic had nothing to do with power, stature, or political maneuverings, and had everything to do with helping people and soaring free. She could not be anything different than what she was.
She was a white mage.
Ember nodded slowly to Ezeker. “I will accept, Uncle Ezzie. I’ll do as you ask.”
He didn’t smile. “Are you sure, child? This is a serious commitment, a thing you never can run away from, and it will change you forever,” he reminded her, placing a gnarled hand on her shoulder.
She straightened and met his eye. “I know. It’s worth it, Ezeker. It’s what I’ve been waiting for my entire life. It’s who I am. I have to do this, no matter where it leads me.”
Ezeker smiled then, a soft, proud smile, and squeezed her shoulders tight in a grandfatherly hug. “I’m proud of you, child,” he whispered in her ear and let her go.
At that moment the big double doors swung open again, and Ember’s champions swaggered into the room, looking none too happy.
“Have I missed the party?” Shad asked the assembly, slamming a menacing-looking cudgel into his oversized hand. DeMunth looked deadly beside him with a drawn sword and glowing golden armor shielding him. “Because I hate to miss a party, and it seems you lef
t my name off the list.”
Shad glared at Laerdish. “Let her go.”
The Sapphire Flute: Book 1 of The Wolfchild Saga Page 35
