“Oh, poor thing. Of course, you’re exhausted, traipsing through the woods all day.” She hurried to take my bag from my shoulder, gesturing for me to sit down while she emptied it, laying the herbs inside out neatly on the table.
“We had some special visitors while you were gone.” She giggled. “Well, not visitors exactly. Customers.”
I ran a hand over my eyes. “I heard. Mages, were they?”
She nodded, looking a little crestfallen that someone had beaten her to the news. “One of the ladies caught sight of some of our fresh fruit and had a ‘hankering that couldn’t be denied’ apparently.”
I rolled my eyes, but Clementine was obviously fascinated by her brush with the upper class. Our oppressors. I pressed a hand to my head. I must be more tired than I realized. Now I was the one getting dramatic.
The mages might wield all of the power and much of the wealth in the kingdom, but they were the only ones able to control the power. And we did all see at least some benefits from it. If only because their growers and wind workers ensured the crops grew, and their creators built roads. Even their healers were available to those who could afford them.
“I hope they paid well,” I said.
“That they did,” said Mother, bustling into the room. “And extra. As if counting out the correct amount wasn’t worth their time.” She shook her head in wonder.
“That’ll be us one day,” said Clementine, pride in her voice. “Once Jasper graduates, and we all join him in Corrin.”
“Aye, that it will,” said Father, coming in from outside. He picked Clementine up and swung her around, although at eleven she was really too old for such things. None of us protested, however.
When he put her down again, his eye fell on the neat rows of gathered herbs on the table. He raised his eyebrows.
“You did well today, Elena.”
I sat up straight and smiled back at him. I had managed a good haul, although the subsequent events of the afternoon had driven it from my mind. I had always been the best at finding the hidden spots in the woods where the rarer herbs grew. The ones that would fetch a good price in the store—either fresh or dried.
My family would miss me when I turned eighteen and signed up to go away to war. I knew they would. But better me than Jasper or Clementine. No one said it, but we all agreed on it. And the law was clear. One child from every family must sign up to join the army when they turned eighteen. And if no one stepped forward to volunteer, then the youngest would be forcibly conscripted on their eighteenth birthday.
I had heard it debated from time to time, but no one seemed able to agree which position was less enviable—to be an older one, forced to choose, or the youngest, without a choice at all. I saw the sadness and the fear in my mother’s eyes sometimes, when she watched me. Most families sent their brawniest son and hoped he could survive the three years until he had served his term and was free to return home.
I sometimes wondered if that was why Mother had fallen pregnant again, a full five years after my birth. It had been clear by then that Jasper was special, and that he could not be wasted on the front line of a never-ending war. My parents had already begun to save their coin, in fact, knowing how much tutoring he would need once he finished in the Kingslee school at age ten.
Perhaps my mother had hoped to bear more sons, who might have been better suited than me to surviving in battle. But she got Clementine, the sweetest—and weakest—of us all.
I had never actually had the courage to ask, though, so perhaps that had not been it at all.
“Did any of them drop anything?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized they were hovering on my tongue.
“Who?” Father looked confused.
“The mages, you mean?” Clementine tipped her head to one side, regarding me quizzically. “Why?”
“Oh, them.” Father returned to packing up the herbs.
“Not that I saw,” said Mother. “Although from the careless way of them, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Why do you ask? Did you stop by the store and find something?”
I shook my head. “Not me. But young Joseph—Isadora’s little boy—found something it seems.” I hadn’t meant to tell them what happened, but I couldn’t keep it to myself—not with the way it weighed on me. The story wanted to escape.
Plus Samuel had been there. I didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, and once he started talking, it was hard to know how others would react. I just hoped he hadn’t recognized Joseph or seen which house I went into to return him. Thankfully he wasn’t the sort to pay attention to details.
“Something valuable?” asked Clementine. “Do you think they’ll miss it? The mages, I mean.”
“I certainly hope not.” I sat up, drawing in a breath. I hadn’t even thought of that. “It was words. Some sort of printed dispatch or something.”
All movement in the room stilled.
“And young Joseph found it, you say,” said Father, after a breath.
I nodded. “Samuel and Alice found him down by the river. We burned it. But…” I took a deep breath and finished in a rush. “He was trying to copy it. In the dirt before I arrived, apparently. They only just stopped him in time.”
“Trying to copy the…the letters?” Clementine stumbled over the words, her face white.
“If he’d managed a whole word…” Even my father looked afraid.
I swallowed and nodded. “But he didn’t. That’s what I keep reminding myself. He didn’t. And he’s only a child, too. Perhaps…perhaps the power wouldn’t have grown strong enough in him to do much damage.”
No one responded to my hopeful suggestion. Because we all knew the power of words. Words had the power of life—and the power of death. Written words shaped the power, released it from inside us out into the world. But only the mage families could control that power.
Certainly not people like us. Or young Joseph. If any of the commonborn wrote so much as a word, the power would come rushing out in an uncontrolled explosion of destruction. Just like in that poor village up north. In one instant gone forever, wiped off the map. How many letters had it taken? And who had written them? We would never know.
I might hate the system that trampled us into the dirt, but I understood it. There was a reason none of us could ever be permitted the wonders of reading and writing. Without the bloodline that would enable us to control the power once we accessed it, it was just too dangerous. One slip up, and…
The door banged open, and we all jumped.
Thomas, the young boy who sometimes helped in the store now that Jasper had left, leaned against the doorframe, panting.
“What is it, Tom?” asked Father.
“Trouble,” he panted out. “Trouble at the store. Something about those mages.”
Chapter 2
We all looked at each other with wide eyes, and then Father was out the door, me close on his heels. We ran together, as fast as we could sprint. The short distance into town seemed endless, but as soon as the road hit the edge of the village, we could see the commotion ahead of us, despite the fading light. Several men milled around the front of the store. And they carried torches.
Somehow we both ran faster.
Father jumped right in among them, elbowing and shoving them aside and apart from each other. I sped around the men instead, positioning myself between the locked front of our store and the small group.
It didn’t take more than a moment—and a single smell—to tell they had been drinking. I should have guessed it, anyway. They wouldn’t have been acting like this otherwise. They knew my parents, and liked them, even. And all of them were customers in our store.
But something had riled them up, and it wasn’t hard to guess what. Cries of, “Mages,” and, “Reading” sounded amid the hubbub.
“Going to kill us all,” one of them said to my father who fixed him with a disdainful look.
“What are you talking of, Murphy?” he snapped, as if he hadn’t just heard the full st
ory from me only minutes ago.
“The mages are going to be back down on us, the guards with them.” Murphy sounded obstinate, fear lacing his words. “They don’t bear with no one trying to teach themselves to read.”
“And fair enough, I say,” called another voice. “I don’t want to be burned in me bed because some fool had delusions. Reading leads to writing. We all know that.”
“No one in Kingslee is trying to learn to read, I’m sure,” said Father, his voice a calm oasis in the chaos. “And what does it have to do with my store, anyway?”
“They was here,” said Murphy, frowning. “We all saw them, talking pretty and paying coin. It had to do with them.” He frowned, as if struggling now to work out how the story pieced together. “I’m sure that’s what the boy said. They left words behind at your store, and now people are reading them.”
A chorus of outraged voices supported him, and he seemed to rally despite having no clear idea of what exactly had happened. But his mention of a boy had been enough. I ground my teeth together. Samuel. He’d been in the tavern, no doubt, talking his head off. And he’d managed to rile up a bunch of drunk men. Filled them with fear and left them with the vague idea that our store was harboring words, of all things.
I would wring his neck next time I saw him. I could only be glad he apparently hadn’t known to give them Joseph or Isadora’s name. Better they face off my father and me than a frightened woman and small child.
But my confidence waned at a further loud cheer from the men. Several of them pushed forward, approaching the store, despite my father’s efforts. He couldn’t hold them all back.
Fear lanced through me. These men had received a scare—just as I had, so I understood how much it could shake you—but they were looking for some sort of physical outlet. I could see it in their eyes. And they had decided that our store was harboring the most dangerous thing in the kingdoms—written words.
Our store. My family’s only livelihood—at least for the three more years until Jasper completed his study.
My father roared loudly, shocking them into stillness for a moment.
“Don’t be fools!” he yelled. “We have no words in our store. Go home to your families before you bring real trouble down on your heads.”
For a moment I thought his words would work. But then someone at the back yelled something indiscernible, and they all surged forward again. My father grabbed Murphy’s arm, and Murphy paused to shout something to him. But the other men still rushed toward me on either side of them.
One of them drew back his arm—the one that held the torch—his eyes fixed on one of the store’s windows. Fire.
Energy coursed through me, and I lifted up onto my toes. For a moment I felt the same exhilarating feeling that had gripped me when I looked down at those written words, and their curving shapes floated before my mind’s eye. Then I shook the thought free and screamed, “Stop!” as loudly as I could.
For half a second he still drew back his arm, undeterred by my shout, and then power pulsed out of me in a vast wave. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it as it crashed against the small crowd in front of me, dousing their torches. They all froze, clearly as shocked as I was.
Only they remained frozen in place. My father still gripped Murphy’s arm, although his face was turned toward me. And the man in the front still held his now extinguished torch back as if preparing a throw. I gulped and stared at them all. They all stared back at me. But still none of them moved. It was almost as if my single word had forced them all to…stop.
I took a shaking step backward, colliding with the store’s closed door. And then the power—or whatever it was—broke, exploding outward and shattering the glass in the store windows.
I ducked, raising my arms to protect my face, although the power had blown most of the shards back into the store. When I straightened the men had all begun to move again. They still spoke over one another, but I could see in their faces that the shock had sobered them more effectively than a cold bath.
“What was that, Elena?” asked Murphy, his voice rising over the others.
I shook my head, my back still pressed against the door. “I don’t know. I just yelled for you all to stop, and then…”
“One of them must still be here,” called a nervous voice from the middle of the group. “One of those mages.”
Several men looked shaken at that possibility.
“Lurking around watching us!” said another.
“Well, if that’s the case,” said Father, somehow remaining calm in the middle of everything, “you’d better all be getting off home. Before he marks you, or some such.”
The men needed no further encouragement to scatter—some back toward the tavern, but most in different directions, heading for the safety of their own homes, no doubt.
“Marks them?” I wished my voice didn’t shake, but I kept reliving the feeling of the power rushing out from me.
“Who knows what those mages can do?” My father shrugged. “Anyway, it worked, didn’t it? They’ve all gone.” He looked around us before raising his voice. “They’ve gone, and you’ve our thanks, whoever you may be. You can come out.”
Darkness had well and truly fallen now, and no voice spoke up to disturb it. No one appeared to join us, either.
“Well, then.” My words rushed over each other. “I suppose we’d better be heading back home ourselves.”
My father frowned, still scanning the darkness, so I took his arm and propelled him down the road. A bobbing light ahead of us caught both our attention, but it turned out to be my mother, bringing a lantern to meet us.
“What of this trouble, then?” she asked, looking around at the empty street. Then her eyes fell on the windows of the store. “The glass!”
I looked back over my shoulder. I had forgotten the windows.
“Don’t worry,” Father said. “I’ll bring back some planks and board it up straight away. But I doubt anyone will be troubling the store tonight regardless.”
“Oh?” Mother looked skeptical.
“There’s a mage about,” Father said. “And for whatever reason, he chose to step in and help us. Murphy and some men from the pub were set to torch the store in a drunken rage.”
“Torch the store? A mage?” Mother looked between me and my father, but I just shook my head helplessly.
As we walked slowly back home, he told her the whole story to many exclamations and gasps.
“Sounds like we were lucky to lose nothing more than the windows,” she said at last, and my father grunted in agreement. But he seemed distracted, and I could still see him peering furtively into the darkness, as if expecting the unknown mage to leap out and accost us.
“Clemmy wanted to come, too, but I made her stay. That’s what held me up.” Mother paused with her hand on our front door. “She’ll be dying to hear the whole thing.” Her eyes fastened on me. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt, Elena. Or…wait…”
She held up the lantern. “It looks like you’ve got a cut. Must have been from the glass. Thank goodness it’s only a small one.” She pushed inside as she spoke, rushing over to fetch water and a fresh cloth.
I dabbed at the dribble of blood from a short gash on my forehead, but she batted my hand away. I hadn’t even felt it.
Clementine rushed forward and demanded an explanation, and Father repeated the story.
“A mage saved us?” Clementine clasped her hands together, her whole face alight. “How terribly exciting.” She turned reproachful eyes on our mother. “You should have let me come.”
“It wasn’t…” The words barely squeezed past my tight throat.
“What’s that, Elena dear?” asked Mother, still distracted by my cut.
I took a breath and tried again, although the words still came out shakily.
“I don’t think there was a mage.” I looked up to meet my father’s eyes. “That…whatever it was…it came from me.”
“Impossible,” Father said, for wh
at might have been the hundredth time. He had certainly said it enough last night, and now he had only restarted the refrain with first light.
I hunched in my chair, my untouched breakfast before me. I wanted to give in and say that perhaps I had been mistaken, and it hadn’t come from me at all. But I couldn’t. Because I had relived the moment in my head too many times, and I was utterly sure. Whatever wave of power had locked all those men in place had burst from me.
I could understand his disbelief, of course. And his fear. I shared both. Because what had happened was totally impossible, just as he said. And yet, it had happened.
Clementine knelt in front of me, and the fear in her eyes rocked me even more than my father’s terror.
“Are you sure, Elena?” She examined my face.
I couldn’t bear her scrutiny and looked away before nodding.
“Well, then,” said Mother. “It either was or it wasn’t. And it seems to me there’s no way for us to prove it one way or the other. In fact, there’s nothing for us to do about it at all.”
“But—” Father’s protest cut off as he met her eyes across the room. “I suppose you’re right. There’s nothing to do but wait, and see what happens.”
No one asked him what we were waiting for because we all knew without needing to voice it. The mages and the soldiers. If I had truly let out a burst of wild power, then they would be in Kingslee today. There were mages and squads whose whole job was to find any hints of uncontrolled power. And any signs of anyone learning to read. The Grays. Those were the same mages who had conducted the investigation after that village went up in one giant ball of fire.
Had it haunted them afterward? They had failed, and too many had paid the price. But none of them, of course. No one from any of the mage families had died in that remote village. So perhaps it hadn’t bothered them so very much. Except as a matter of professional failure.
Voice of Power (The Spoken Mage Book 1) Page 2
