But I knew I was only trying to distract myself from the thing that scared me most. I had shouted the word stop, and those men had frozen. The power had been unstable, ricocheting back on me quickly enough. But it hadn’t been uncontrolled, exploding indiscriminately. No one had died—instead they had done as I commanded. And that was even more impossible than my wielding power in the first place.
“She has witnesses, at least,” said Mother, the slightest wobble in her voice. “She was right up the front of that whole crowd, you said. They all saw that she didn’t write anything.”
My father nodded, but I could see his slight grimace.
I sighed, my head heavy with exhaustion. I had slept only in fits and starts all night.
“They were all drunk, Mother. All except Father and me. I can only imagine the stories that are already spreading through the village. If any of them can remember clearly what happened, I’ll be more than surprised. They won’t exactly make reliable witnesses.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” said Clementine, the only one who was managing to eat anything—no doubt buoyed up by a childish optimism. “The story will be so muddled up that no one will even think to connect anything to Elena.”
My parents exchanged another glance, but none of us corrected her. Let her keep her optimism for as long as possible. If the mages came, I could only imagine they would have more exact ways of pinpointing the source of the power than interviewing the drunken locals.
But when she had scrambled up to the loft to finish dressing for the day, my eyes followed her.
“What if—” I lowered my voice. “What if someone does come for me? What if they think I’ve been reading and they…take me away?” I winced at the foolishness of the euphemism, but I couldn’t bring my mouth to say the word execute. “What will happen to Clemmy?”
The thought had haunted my night just as much as any concerns over my own fate. Jasper’s chance was gone—he had turned nineteen only three weeks ago. If he signed up for the army now, he would be considered a free recruit. Every family must send an eighteen-year-old. So if the mages came—if they killed me—then in six and a half years, on her eighteenth birthday, the soldiers would come for Clemmy. And she wouldn’t last a month in the army. She wouldn’t even need the enemy to seal her fate. Not given how prone she was to catching every illness that passed through the village.
“That won’t happen,” said Mother, but I could hear how she tried to inject certainty into her voice that she didn’t really feel. “You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve never read a word in your life, let alone tried to write one.”
I nodded, but my mind flew unbidden to that parchment and the alluring black marks that had filled it. She was right, so why did I still feel guilty? Mages couldn’t read your mind, could they? And the desire to read wasn’t forbidden, anyway—so long as you didn’t act on it.
As if in response to my guilty thoughts, a loud banging sounded on our door. Clementine’s head poked out from the hole up into the loft, her expression reflecting the fear that filled me.
Slowly my father got to his feet and crossed the room. The banging continued.
When he pulled the door open, he revealed a guard poised, his hand raised to knock again.
“Yes? Can I help you?” Father’s gruff voice sounded nothing like his usual tones. My mother moved slightly to place herself between me and the door, but I stood anyway. There would be no hiding from whatever was coming.
I noticed with detachment that the man didn’t bear the insignia of one of the elite squads who hunted down rogue readers. He was a guard, not a soldier. But I didn’t know enough to know what that meant.
A taller man, dressed in a dull red robe, pushed past him and into the house. I could see a flicker of my own confusion cross my father’s face at the sight of him. The presence of a mage wasn’t unexpected, but he wore the colors of a general enforcer of the law. A Red. Not the special charcoal gray worn by the mages whose specific role was to sniff out readers. The ones who investigated uncontrolled bursts of power.
Someone had come for me, evidently, but not who any of us had been expecting. I moved to step around my mother, but the sound of the mage’s voice made me falter.
“Where is the mage? He—or she—must surrender themselves immediately for inspection and review.”
Chapter 3
“Mage? There is no mage here.” My father spread out his arms, as if inviting the man to look around.
“Please.” The man sounded bored. “Don’t try my patience. We tracked the use of magic to this house.” He peered around, as if taking it in for the first time. “Although I can’t imagine why one of us would want to hide out here.”
I stiffened in time with my mother, but neither of us spoke.
My father shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. There is no one here but my wife and two daughters.” He gestured up at Clementine and then across at me.
“Look. That mage is ill or injured and in desperate need of assistance—or in equally dire need of re-training. Stands to reason if the backlash could be felt all the way to the capital.” I could tell from his face which he thought it was—and that he wasn’t impressed with being dragged out to Kingslee at the crack of dawn.
“I don’t—”
The mage cut my father off. “You really don’t want me to have to ask again.” His face had changed from irritated to dangerous so quickly that I nearly fell back. But I forced myself to stand firm.
“That blast was so uncontrolled, some at the Academy wanted to send the Grays.” The derision in his voice was clear, but I couldn’t tell if it was intended for those who had wished to send someone else, or for the mages who wore the gray robes themselves.
“Send the Grays.” He shook his head. “Even the greenest trainee could tell that blast had control in it.” He raised an eyebrow. “However poor the control may have been.”
We all stood silently, unsure what to say in response to that. The mage gestured the guards forward with a flick of his fingers, and they joined him inside, spreading through the house. Clementine almost leaped down from the loft to cower against my side as they even climbed the ladder to poke through our bed space.
“No one wants that sort of poor control let loose on the kingdom,” the mage said, his eyes following his men. “We’ll ensure this mage is cared for and their skills re-honed. Such a thing is in everyone’s interest.” He turned to glower at us all. “It’s not only non-bloods who can cause flameouts, you know. There’s a reason all our children must attend the Academy. A poor composition has the potential to wreak considerable destruction.”
Non-bloods? Was that what the mages called us regular people?
“There’s no one else here, My Lord,” said one of the guards, saluting the mage.
“I told you—”
Once again the mage cut my father off, although this time with an irritated gesture. Frowning, he plunged his hand into his robe and pulled out a small curled scrap of parchment. Despite myself I swayed forward, trying to catch a glimpse of any words written on it. But the man ripped it without fully unfurling it, shoving the scraps back into another part of his robe.
Glittering dust rose from around him and hung for half a second in the air. Then it began to move, forming into a stream that wound around my mother and fastened on to me. I held out my hands, turning them over in both fascination and terror. The dust had settled in a film over my skin, so that I was the one who now glistened.
The mage’s eyes widened, and he growled at my father.
“What is this? You said she was your daughter!”
“She…she is.” My father faltered before the mage’s anger.
“Who is her mother, then?”
“I am, of course.” My mother put her hands on her hips, managing to look offended, despite the fear I could feel rolling off her.
“Impossible!”
The mage’s word rang through the room in an echo of my father. Impossible. I was imposs
ible.
“This girl is a mage, my composition cannot lie. She has recently composed a working of her own.” He marched over and gripped me by the arm, giving me a small shake. “What are you doing here? And why are these people lying to me? Clearly you are no daughter of theirs.” He peered down at me. “And no wonder your composition was so poor. You barely look old enough to have started at the Academy, let alone finished. You should know better than to be practicing out here.”
He began to haul me roughly toward the door.
“Wait!” My mother hurried to intercept us. “What are you doing? Where are you taking her?”
I shook my head at her, not wanting anyone else in my family to suffer for my incomprehensible aberration, but she ignored me.
“Back to the Academy, of course. They can sort her out. Dealing with recalcitrant trainees is not part of my job.” His eyes narrowed as his gaze moved from my mother to my father. “I don’t know what game you’re playing here with your lies, but I can assure you that the Academy will soon get to the bottom of it. And mayhap they’ll be sending me back out here.”
The threat hung clearly in the air, but still my mother lunged forward to grip my other arm. For a mad moment, I thought she meant to engage the mage in a tug-of-war, with me as the centerpiece, but instead she leaned forward to speak quietly into my ear.
“Whatever they tell you, you are my daughter. You understand? They placed you in my arms the moment you were born, and I could never have mistaken another for you after that. You are born of my body and your father’s blood. I don’t understand anything else, but that I know.”
I could see the burning certainty in her eyes, and I nodded, since she obviously wished for some sort of acknowledgment. As soon as I had, she dropped my arm and stepped back, the mage pulling me the last of the way through the door.
I had nothing with me but the clothes I wore, and no chance even to say goodbye. The mage shoved me into a carriage, slamming the door behind me before mounting a horse. I peered out the window as the vehicle lurched and took off, my last sight of my family Clementine’s tear-streaked face as she burst outside, calling my name.
The carriage must have been brought in case the mage they sought really was ill or injured because no one else rode in it with me. The red-robed mage and the guards rode in two columns on either side of me, an easier feat once we joined with the main paved road. The South Road ran from the coast in the south of Ardann through the center of the kingdom to Corrin, the capital. Kingslee might be the closest town to Corrin, but we weren’t big enough to warrant a paved road of our own.
And most of us—including me—weren’t important enough to have ever visited the capital either, despite our proximity. Some chose to take their wares to the bigger markets of the city, but few produced enough excess to make the trip worth it. A couple of the wealthier families would sometimes visit for one or other of the festivals, but we had been saving every copper for as long as I could remember. Attendance at the Royal University wasn’t cheap, even if you were clever enough to secure official patronage. And on top of that, to win that position, Jasper had been regularly trekking into the capital for tutoring ever since the age of ten, when regular commonborn children finished schooling. Each stay lasted a few weeks, and between his board and the tutor’s fee, the visits ate through the coin.
I had often longed to accompany him, just to see it for myself. But no one wanted to waste money on board for me as well—not when it was already expensive enough to keep sending him in—and my mother didn’t want me walking back alone.
My parents certainly didn’t have the time to go. Not when the store needed minding every day. They had been in once and once only, leaving me behind with great reluctance to run the store. Jasper had gone along to guide them, having been home at the time for an unusually long period since we had decided to use the coin that should have gone to his latest round of tutoring to take Clemmy to a healing clinic, instead.
I had been so excited for their return, only for them to arrive home late that night, exhausted and downcast. All the coin they had carefully saved had barely been enough to cover the healing of her latest bout of the common cold. Her underlying issue was complex, the healers said, requiring diagnosis and treatment by a senior healer. The figure named had been too vast to even contemplate.
And so we had returned to our old ways. All our coin went to Jasper, along with all our hopes. And the rest of us stayed in Kingslee.
As the miles passed, I watched out the window as our stream joined the larger River Overon, our path taking us across a wide bridge. This was the furthest I had ever traveled from home, and yet I couldn’t take any of it in properly. I kept reliving everything that had happened in the last twelve hours, finishing with my mother’s impassioned words and Clementine’s heartrending cry.
I had been too shocked to consider it earlier, but I could understand my mother’s concern now that I had a moment to reflect. The idea that I might be some sort of foundling or changeling—or even that my mother might have been unfaithful to my father—was an almost logical conclusion. But I had known my mother my entire life, and I had looked into her eyes as she assured me of my blood. I believed her.
Besides, I could neither read nor write. Even if I were a secret member of one of the mage families, that didn’t explain how the power had burst from me at a single spoken word. No. Something inexplicable had happened. The only question was what would happen when the mages realized the truth?
It took Jasper three hours to walk into the capital, but the carriage and horses made better progress than he did, and the first buildings of the city appeared well before two hours had passed.
Even my confusion and fear couldn’t entirely suppress my curiosity as the carriage rumbled over cobblestones. I had dreamed about the day we would move here to join Jasper, and we had even discussed shutting the store for a single day and walking in for the next Midsummer Festival, so we might visit him. But all the imagining in the world couldn’t prepare me for the size. At first the houses and streets looked not unlike those in Kingslee, with the exception of the paved roads. But as we continued deeper into the city, it soon changed.
The houses grew closer together and taller, some visibly sagging from old age and the weight of the top levels. Most were made from a weathered gray stone, mixed with the occasional free-standing building of red sandstone. These appeared to be public buildings of various types and had much higher levels of traffic than the houses.
Some large, windowless buildings must be warehouses—although whether they held wares belonging to the mage families or to the wealthy elite among the commonborn, I didn’t know. These commonborn merchants struggled to maintain equal footing beside their mage counterparts with their written records, and I had often heard Jasper complain about the ways they were cheated by the mage families.
His tutor had retired from business, but he was a university graduate himself and had for decades held a senior position with one of these commonborn merchants. Just the sort of position Jasper would soon hold with the kind of family willing to pay an eye-watering sum to anyone who could allow their business to keep up without the advantages of writing.
We passed two market squares, set back slightly from the road, and even two small parks, the leaves on the trees already red and orange with the hues of autumn. Few flowers remained, but many of the houses had flower boxes, and I could only imagine how bright the streets must look in spring and summer.
As we continued to jolt along the streets, the houses gave way to storefronts, although they all looked far grander than my parents’ version back in Kingslee. Even the smallest of them was much larger, with enormous smooth windows of clear glass. And when the stores petered out, the houses that replaced them bore little resemblance to the earlier ones. These each stood alone, railings and gates separating them from the road. I could catch glimpses of green grass, fountains, and either red sandstone or marble through the rails, as well as see ornate second l
evels rising above.
I didn’t need a guide to tell me that these were the houses of the mage families. The sight of them nearly made me draw back away from the windows, a stark reminder of the power that awaited me at the end of this drive.
But curiosity still won out. I hadn’t seen the palace yet.
I knew that the South Road continued all the way through the city, finishing in the courtyard of the palace itself, but before we arrived there, the horses took an abrupt left turn through gates far more ornate than those even on the mage houses. And this building was surrounded by a solid wall, too high to see past, rather than a mere railing.
As we turned, I got a single glimpse of the palace, only a short distance further up the road. It sat perched atop the hill that housed the capital, and I had heard enough stories to know its grounds extended all the way down the other side to the northern city wall. The Overon lay on the other side, protecting the northern approach to the city.
But I only had time for an impression of glimmering white marble and tall towers before we had stopped inside the courtyard of our destination. It didn’t take me more than a moment to realize this must be the Royal Academy of the Written Word. Known more commonly as the Mage Academy—or just the Academy. The place where my fate—and that of my family—was to be decided.
Chapter 4
A guard yanked open the door of the carriage and gestured for me to descend. When I didn’t immediately respond, he hesitated, and I remembered that I had temporarily acquired the status of a mage. Even a trainee mage ranked well above a guard.
The red-robed mage had no such compunction, however, and when I failed to appear, he pushed past the guard and grabbed my arm, nearly flinging me from the carriage. Clearly I was not forgiven for ruining his morning.
He kept a firm grip on my arm as he towed me across the courtyard and up some stairs to a double wooden door. The building itself was several levels high and made of the same marble I had glimpsed at the palace. But whereas the palace had been elegant and graceful in design, the Academy looked almost utilitarian, a large square block rising above me.
Voice of Power (The Spoken Mage Book 1) Page 3
