The Delusionist's Son

by Danny Macks

  Commoners would likely assume the enforcer was still alive, but a properly cast shield could outlive its caster as long as it had power. Still, people would want to do something, even if it was too late. Rob the absorption shield of power and it would eventually go down. “Fetch a healer, if you have one, and tell the crowd to get those two some shade. Get that whole area as black as possible. I’ll be down in a moment.”

  Silva’s hands shook when he closed the door. What if she wasn’t dead? He’d only left University the day before. Was he actually ready for lives to depend on him? Being a mage is about control. He pulled a hair brush and grease out of his grooming kit, calming his breathing and his nerves by doing something mundane. Even if he couldn’t do anything, he didn’t need to appear unprepared.

  The extra half a minute Silva put into his appearance was rewarded when he exited the inn and the crowd parted for him. He paused, meaningfully stared at the blazing bright morning sun, then adjusted his vision, with a little extra flourish to his gestures. As his spell took hold, commoners scrambled to finish their improvised sun shelter: blankets thrown in layers on the dome itself.

  When the world turned black and glowing blue, a new problem presented itself. The caster of the shield had anchored herself on a ley capillary and was pulling energy from both upstream and downstream. A corpse couldn’t do that. The senior enforcer’s life did depend on Silva. Damn.

  A ley bender would simply move the ley line away from the shield, robbing the caster of power, but Silva didn't have that kind of training. He needed to drain the ley line feeding the shield, if he could. And — from the way the power was flowing inside the shield from both directions — he needed to drain not only the upstream side of the line, but downstream too. At least the shield didn't intersect the main artery running down the center of the main road, or they'd never get her out.

  All university mages could cast absorption shields, it was one of the most powerful spells in a mage's arsenal and a mandatory part of defense training. Another absorption shield anchored on the same line would drain it of power, but not from both directions.

  No one nearby was storing any significant ley energy in their bodies, and he needed a trained assistant right now. He returned his vision to normal and considered the junior enforcer.

  The lad was likely little more than a trainee, although he appeared too young for even that. His sweating, freckled, red face matched his hair, and his ill-fitting uniform looked borrowed and too well-worn for his tender years. But still, he was an enforcer not a powerless drudge. Why didn't he have any magic reserves?

  A well-muscled commoner took the sledge hammer from the enforcer and another drudge handed the lad water. While he drank, the lad moved to stand on the downstream capillary and started walking up the line toward the artery, his path too exact to be accidental.

  “Enforcer!” Silva yelled. “What spells have you tried to save your partner?”

  The lad turned, only then noticing Silva in his fatigue. “I tried to overwhelm the shield with lightning and stun bolts. She’d keyed her shield to absorb both.”

  Lightning and stun bolts? The lad's specialist training was better than Silva could have hoped for, but he’d made novice mistakes, acting before properly analysing the situation and drawing power from his own reserves instead of tapping into a nearby ley line. He wasn’t a powerless drudge, just drained.

  Lightning — against a shield created to absorb the power — would also explain why an absorption shield powered by only a capillary was strong enough to withstand multiple hammer blows.

  Another mage arrived but the sleeves of her black robes bore the green stripes of a beast speaker, not the white of the surgeon he had hoped for when he requested a healer. But she was still a black-robed journeyman mage, like him, and moved with the practiced confidence Silva only pretended to have. Silva breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed enough to notice she was pretty in a rural way, with deep brown skin and long, sun-bleached dun hair.

  He would take what help he could get, while he could get it. In Winterhaven, he wouldn't have that.

  “The shield is being reinforced from the inside from her own health. She still thinks she's in danger." The beast speaker rudely looked toward the injured enforcer instead of Silva as she spoke.

  “How can you know that?” Silva asked. “She's inside a shield.”

  The beast speaker gave Silva a withering stare. “I pay attention.”

  Silva studied the bleeding senior enforcer. She was moving a little. He couldn't hear her moans through the shield, but she winced at each hammer-blow. Semi-conscious, not unconscious. Minutes into the rescue and he’d already been wrong twice.

  “We need to drain that shield,” Silva said, hoping to sound confident. “I think the junior enforcer and I can drain the lines feeding it, but how do we drain the shield itself without panicking her into reinforcing it with her life? I don't think we have the time needed for it to come down naturally. She can’t wait that long.”

  The beast speaker nodded in agreement and ran a nervous, brown hand across her long hair. “Steady pressure on her shield might tax it without increasing her fear. Do what you need to do to the ley line under her and I’ll get some sandbags or something heavy to lay atop her shield.”

  At Silva's instruction, the junior enforcer anchored a shield around himself on the upstream side of his partner, snapping it in place with practiced ease. Silva checked and the ley line between the two shields was considerably thinner.

  “Don't use your personal energy,” Silva scolded. “The point is to burn up as much energy from the ley line as possible, to drain the line as quickly as possible. Block everything you can: concussive force, lightning, sound … everything. The more things you try to block at once the more energy the shield will require. Except air. Don’t block air. This might take a while and I don't want you passing out.”

  The junior enforcer's shield shifted from transparent blue to opaque black, absorbing even light. Silva wasn't sure how much light absorbtion would accomplish in full sunlight, but every little bit helped. He glanced at the commoners as he moved to his own position downstream. They were unpacking some type of heavy canvas festival tent. Every little bit helped.

  Settling into a wide, kneeling meditation position on the downstream line, he erected his own shield and anchored it on the ley line. A shift in vision verified it wasn't perfect, but he was able to correct the little cracks until only a solid wall met his vision. Now all he could do was wait.

  Abruptly, Silva's shield shattered and he opened normal eyes.

  “She told me to.” The muscled commoner with a hammer in his hands looked sheepish. He pointed at the beast speaker who was assembling some type of battering ram near the junior enforcer's shield.

  Understanding dawned. At its core, magic was a mental process and the human mind could respond to real emotional need with feats of hysterical strength. “You just surprised me. Count to ten after I put the shield back up and do it again.”

  Silva's second shield wasn't pretty. It wasn’t keyed to block light or sound. It didn't need to be. It only needed to be strong enough to withstand a non-magical sledge hammer. Silva reinforced the shield as much as he could, but the first blow still nearly cracked the shield, sending a wave of panic down his spine. He felt himself start to grow tired. Pull from the line. The point of this is to drain the line.

  After the fifth blow, Silva's fear subsided and his power draw normalized. He breathed a little easier and returned his vision to normal. Being from Winterhaven, drawing power from a ley line always gave Silva a twinge of irrational fear, but he calmed down. I’m getting the hang of this.

  “Get some people over here!” The beast speaker yelled over the boom of a battering ram as she walked toward Silva's transparent shield. “We need more hammers!”

  He was starting to loathe that woman.

  The scene grew dark as the festival tent covered them and the sides were pulled closed. Silva felt another
twinge of panic. The muscled guy was pretty tall and was swinging full force, his muscles vibrating with every absorbed impact. Silva had allowed light though his own shield to keep an eye on him. If Silva's shield cracked now, he’d never see the hammer blow which killed him.

  Silva felt a pop. Energy whooshed into his shield as the senior enforcer's shield went down. A moment later, the blows stopped.

  “Don’t stop until I get her moved!” The beast speaker yelled.

  Silva winced when the blows resumed and fought — in his fear — to pull from the line instead of his personal power.

  Silva was relieved when the blows stopped for a second time and he was able to lower his shield. One of the advantages of the kneeling meditation position was it was very hard to fall over, and he was definitely feeling strained. Silva's eyes burned and he raised a hand to his face to find out why. His fingers came back black from hair grease. The stuff was running down his back too, all the way to his butt.

  The junior enforcer, damn him, had followed Silva's instructions exactly and doubly taxed the line by recharging himself while maintaining the shield. He looked fresh as a daisy.

  The junior enforcer inspected the place where his partner had fallen with what little light crept in through the tent sides.

  The beast speaker gave Silva a hand up. Once he wobbled to his feet, Silva summoned mage light to his hand to assist. As a journeyman illusionist, there was no way he would admit to being too tired to summon the first spell he had ever cast.

  The crowd who had erected the festival tent were all outside with the injured senior enforcer.

  “Thank you for sending the riff raff away,” Silva said, “I'm Silva Vatic. I must look quite a fright.”

  “Adeline Presley." She acknowledged the introduction with a nod, but frowned as if Silva had said something unpleasant. He was certain his tone of voice had been perfect. “The bulk of my job involves staring at the back end of a horse. I’m only still in here to make sure I have one patient, not three. Your vanity is wasted.”

  “I’m fine.” Silva walked over to where the senior enforcer had fallen. The ginger enforcer was studying a disturbance in the grass carefully. Drawing close, Silva's mage light illuminated, very clearly, a black circle of withered grass inside the area where the senior enforcer’s shield had cut into the sod.

  Silva's heart froze. Magic required power, but power should never be stolen from life. Pulling power from life was necromancy, and the only crime for which an enforcer was allowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

  “You know what you need to do,” he said to the youth beside him.

  The lad said nothing. He stared at the blackened circle of grass, while biting on his lower lip.

  “She didn't know what she was doing,” Adeline objected, a certain high-pitched childlike quality to her voice.

  “The law is very clear,” Silva said. “There are no exceptions, and no excuses.”

  The beast speaker traced the shape of a rote in the air with her finger and a blue ley stone, on a brooch at her throat, shattered to powder. The withered grass restored to health and the places where the grass was too damaged to recover grew new grass in its place. In moments, it was impossible to tell anything unusual had occurred in the spot.

  “To justify a charge of necromancy,” she said, “an enforcer is required to submit proof after executing sentence. Now the only proof is your word against ours.”

  “Is that how it is?” Silva asked, turning to the junior enforcer.

  The boy shook his head. “If you could only talk to her, you would see she's really not a bad person. You'd see this was just a mistake.”

  Silva glanced back and forth between the pair and sighed. “Fine, I'll talk to her when she wakes. Alone.”

  As the festival tent was torn back down, Mage Presley glanced toward the inn and back to Silva. “You’re traveling, are you sure we aren't keeping you?”

  “My problems aren't going anywhere. I can wait another day.”

  *****

  Gazing at the sunrise the next morning with adjusted vision, Silva smiled. In the sunlight, thin glowing blue lines formed where only blackness had been moments before and flowed toward thicker lines to form rivers. The main ley line at the road, thin from use during the night, swelled as more and more of the sun’s energy flowed into it. This is how the world was supposed to be and Silva never tired of seeing it.

  For most of his fellow students, this was normal. The way the world always looked when the sun shone. Except, of course, back home in Winterhaven. Still smiling, he stepped to a spot near the shadow of a small hill, well away from the new ley capillaries where his spell would not disturb them.

  Kneeling, he called up sigils to his mind, wove them together to form a rote and powered it from his personal energy. To his altered vision, a faint blue disk appeared. It was five-feet in diameter, centered in front of his forehead, and perpendicular to the angle of the sun. He had practiced the solar collection spell hundreds of times before, but never in black robes. The sun was uncomfortably hot. Closing his eyes, Silva promised he'd endure the discomfort for at least an hour today.

  Magic nourished Life. From sunlight to plants, to the animals who ate those plants, magic was a part of life. Water flowed downhill, life grew upward, and magic nourished life. Life didn’t nourish magic. That reversal, painfully easy for a trained mage and — in theory, impossible for anyone else — was necromancy.

  The enforcer wasn't Kate. Yes, like Kate she had been injured through no fault of her own, but — by sucking the life out of the grass to power her shield — the enforcer had done what followed to herself. He would do what needed to be done, leave as soon as possible, and not think about this again.

  “You know,” a bass voice interrupted, “there’s a major ley artery nearby. There are easier ways to recharge.”

  Silva didn’t snap the first words in his mind and simply opened his eyes. The man before him wore the red-sleeved purple robes of a master ley bender with gold buttons. A large ley stone rested in a circlet on his forehead, with eight more on his rings. The neigh of a horse drew Silva’s gaze toward the inn, where two more ley benders dealt with a horse-drawn wagon full of supplies.

  “Thank you for your advice, sir.” Silva rose to his feet. “I’ll do that. Are you on an expedition to Winterhaven?”

  “Yes!” The ley bender beamed. “We're an advance team for a full research expedition. How did you know?”

  Silva gestured to the other two mages. “Not many ley benders still use horses.”

  The master sighed. “Yes, I hear the guild is working on a tradesman version of our carriages. Something with wheels pulling big boxes on metal rails. Heaven save us from engineers.”

  The junior enforcer stepped on the porch of the inn, looking around.

  Silva nodded to the purple-robed master. “Excuse me, sir. I believe I’m wanted.”

  *****

  Inside the inn, Mage Adeline Presley stepped out of a room and glared at Silva as he and the junior enforcer left the stair onto the second floor. This needs to be done. He started to say something — explain somehow — but she stared past him and rushed past.

  Propped up on her bed, the senior enforcer appeared weak, but — freshly healed by several magical treatments over the last day and night — showed no other signs she'd received a knife in the back only the day before. Her eyes took in Silva's black robes as he entered behind the junior enforcer.

  “Hello, I’m Officer Neran,” she said, “and I see you've already met Junior-officer Enthus. What can …” She frowned. “His name is new to you. When did you meet?”

  Silva shrugged. “Yesterday, right after you were stabbed. We were busy saving you and never got around to proper introductions.”

  Her gaze flicked to Enthus and his back snapped to attention like a soldier. “It was Murteck's wife, Teega. I didn't see the knife until she already had it in you. I got her with a stun bolt and you summoned a shield as you fell on a
ley line.”

  Silva smiled. “The part he’s leaving out is he did an admirable job saving you. A credit to the enforcers.”

  She scowled. Officer Neran was too perceptive to miss the way the junior enf… Enthus fidgeted at attention. “Enthus, could you give …”

  “Silva Vatic.”

  “Could you give Mage Vatic and I a moment?”

  While they waited for Enthus to leave the room, Silva picked up a rope he had placed on the room’s only chair the day before, set it under the chair, and sat down.

  The officer fixed Silva with her gaze. “What is he leaving out?”

  Silva still hadn't figured out how she had been capable of casting the necromancy spell. “How much do you know about magic?”

  “I've found people explaining things to me tells me more about them than what they are trying to explain.” Neran smiled and leaned back. “Plus, I’m a bit too tired to be long-winded.”

  Silva nodded and collected his thoughts. “There are two kinds of magic: rote magic and weaving the sigils. Rote magic is ‘cast the spell and get the effect’. The effect never varies. It is fast, easy, and very hard to screw up. I wear the robes of a spell weaver, what most people call a mage or a wizard. Tradesmen, like enforcers, don’t have that kind of training. If someone sees a spell going awry, it’s likely a mage who screwed up. Powered rotes either work or they don’t. My robes are a symbol and a warning, and I’m required to wear them.”

  “You seem abnormally concerned with people screwing up.”

  “I’m from Winterhaven.”

  The enforcer nodded. “That explains it.”

  “Weaving is dangerous and we spend years learning how to do it. I was too busy to notice at the time, but when we were taxing the ley line to reduce power to your shield, your partner, who doesn't wear the robes, modified the shield he had cast to block light as well as magic and physical blows.”