The Unconquered Mage

by McShane, Melissa

  I was partnered with Jeddan—I love working with him—and it was his turn to work the pouvra while we watched. This gets boring fast, so I didn’t realize the blurriness in my vision was anything more than eyestrain until somebody near me drew in a sharp breath, not very loud, but enough to be heard over the creaking of the wagon. I blinked a few times and realized the blurriness was extending outward from Jeddan in all directions, a faint haze that was like the finest gauze you could imagine, finer than anything human hand could produce. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out slowly, not wanting to disturb Jeddan’s concentration.

  Then Jeddan said, “I’m feeling a buzzing numbness in my feet and hands. I’m not concealed, am I?”

  “No, it’s working—don’t get excited!” I said.

  “I’m not,” he said. His voice sounded remote, like he was thinking about something other than what he was saying. “Don’t tell me what it looks like. I’ve got the shape of the pouvra surrounding me and I’m afraid if I try to picture something else, it will fall apart.”

  I waved everyone else to silence (unnecessarily) and watched as the haze spread. Then other shapes appeared within the haze. They were round, globular really, and the color of mud, as if someone had mixed together a dozen colors of paint and dunked them in it. It was…underwhelming. I’d hoped for something beautiful, but this didn’t even look like magic. Then I wondered if it was magic at all. Maybe we’d revealed something else.

  “Nobody tell Cederic I did this,” I said, and I reached out to grasp one of the blobs. Nothing bad happened to me or Jeddan. The blob went through my fingers as if it were just an image of a blob. Then the haze shrank in on itself, and Jeddan opened his eyes. “I think I dispelled it,” I said.

  “I don’t think so. I had to let it go because the tingling was turning into fiery burning,” Jeddan said, tucking his fingers under his arms and flexing his feet in their sturdy boots. “What did it look like?”

  “Ugly blobs,” Tobiak said. “Are we sure it’s really magic?”

  “I had that thought, but what else could it be?” I said. “There are people who study the nature of the world—if it was made up of blobs, you’d think we’d have heard about it.”

  “And they’re too big and too dispersed to be part of people, or animals, or even plants,” Relania said.

  Jeddan stretched. “So we know what it looks like,” he said. “Next we need to make it do things without being absorbed by pouvra or th’an.”

  “I couldn’t touch it,” I said, “so it will have to be magic that does it.”

  “Sesskia, see if you can manage it. I want to see them,” Jeddan said. “Try bending your will before picturing the pouvra. I felt as if it were sliding into place around me, like it was there the whole time and I just couldn’t see it.”

  “I’ll try that,” I said. I settled down cross-legged with my hands resting on my thighs, closed my eyes, and let my mind sink into the state where my will is pliant and able to take on the shape imposed by the pouvra. I did as Jeddan suggested and bent my will without having a shape in mind, which is harder than it sounds. You have to reject all the impulses that come to mind, hunger and thirst and muscle pain, and accept that those things are part of who you are and willing them away is only temporary. You have to…I don’t know. Become humble. Bow before the implacable power of reality.

  And it worked. I saw the pouvra as if it were angular shapes rising out of the sea, taking the place of the volition I’d given up, shaping me to their desire. My feet and hands started tingling, but I stayed relaxed and examined the pouvra as if I were looking at my own body, something so familiar I wasn’t surprised out of my reverie. It was smooth, and flowing, like water through a reed contorted in ways no real plant could have mimicked, not and still let water flow freely. I flexed that immaterial shape and saw it bend and try to whip away from me, so I made myself relax again and it steadied. Then I watched it, not trying to interact with it.

  It didn’t give any hint as to what it was for any more than any other pouvra does. It’s not as if the fire pouvra has flames surrounding it or the concealment pouvra looks like it’s made of glass. I wondered what it would be like to observe the other pouvrin this way, but realized it would be impossible because when you work a pouvra (normally, that is) it shapes the magic and then disappears. So the fact that this one persists tells me it really is maintaining whatever field or lens it is that makes magic visible. It’s very strange, and if we weren’t becoming so desperate, I’d want to examine it more closely.

  Eventually my hands and feet started to hurt, and I had to release the pouvra and open my eyes. “Well?” I said.

  “If that’s magic, it’s just a bunch of blobs floating around,” Jeddan said. “We can’t touch them, and the only time we saw them respond to anything was when two of them drifted close together. They didn’t join together, they sort of pushed each other apart.”

  “It was like the wrong ends of two magnets,” Tobiak said. “They didn’t even touch each other, but they moved apart really fast once they came close enough together.”

  “I think we can assume magic isn’t supposed to look like that,” Terrael said, “because we already know magic hasn’t come back together. Maybe whatever made those blobs stay apart is what’s keeping that from happening.”

  “Let’s see if anyone else has made progress,” I said, “teach them the key to the revelation pouvra, and start making plans. We need to work out why they repel each other, we need to learn if that’s what’s keeping magic apart, and we need to find a way to overcome that.”

  So we spent the rest of the day working on the revelation pouvra, with the result that all fourteen of us could work it and maintain it by dinnertime, at which point we were all so exhausted we never wanted to think about magic again. Right now I feel as if I’d walked all day instead of riding in the wagon, which isn’t well-sprung but is better than nothing. Though I found out Thistle came back with us, and I suppose I could have ridden her if I hadn’t needed to work with the mages.

  I can’t believe I even considered that.

  Chapter Nineteen

  12 Shelet

  We reached the Myrnala River early this afternoon and it took most of the time until dinner to get everyone across. I didn’t realize there was some worry about whether we could cross it at all, given that the landscape has changed and the river might be wider or deeper, and maybe the bridge wouldn’t even be there. But the Myrnala was actually narrower than it used to be in either Balaen or Castavir, I gathered, and the bridge was still there.

  We made a huge procession going through Narness, which is the town at the eastern side of the bridge, and people came out and cheered, though I don’t know what they thought they were cheering. I guess it’s not obvious there’s more to us than just the Balaenic Army. I wonder what they’ll think when the Helvirite Army comes through. Unless they came through ahead of us. That would be wonderful. I probably should have asked Cederic whether they have or not. It’s a big army and couldn’t possibly have left no traces of their passing.

  More experimenting. More discussion. Rode with Cederic for a bit and learned something of the tactical situation at Colosse. We have two plans, one for if the God-Empress is there when we arrive and one for if she isn’t. I already knew Colosse isn’t a very defensible city, but I didn’t realize what a problem it would be trying to fight street to street. And our goal is to protect the people. So we’re hoping to get there soon enough to set up between the city and the God-Empress’s army.

  I’m worried the Helvirite Army won’t get there in time and we’ll be crushed between the army and the city, but apparently there are things we can do to mitigate our being at a numerical disadvantage. One of those things, as Cederic pointed out, is for our mages to practice battle magic. So much as I hate giving up research time (because, frankly, I think it’s going to be more important in the long run) I have to admit Cederic’s right. We’re going to compromise and divide our work
day in half—mornings working battle magic, afternoons studying the revelation pouvra. This isn’t the most practical use of our time, since we’re going to be so tired from our morning work we’ll have trouble with the revelation pouvra, but if we did it the other way around we’d definitely be too exhausted for battle pouvrin and kathanas.

  If we aren’t in time, and Colosse has already been overrun…then it gets difficult. Then we get to street-to-street fighting to force them out of the city, and a lot of non-combatants will die, not to mention soldiers and mages. And that’s going to make the mages less effective, too, because they’ll have to be so close to the fighting they can be killed before working magic. I’ve started mentally urging the army to move faster. Too bad there’s not a pouvra for that. I’d flit ahead to see where the God-Empress’s army is, but it would take too long.

  We proved the blobs are what magic truly looks like—well, I say “proved,” but Terrael calls it a hypothesis that’s subject to further investigation. I had to soak his head again. The idea was to see if we could use th’an to make the blobs move the way we want them to. So someone (Jeddan) worked the revelation pouvra, and our Castaviran mages stood inside the haze and drew the mind-moving th’an—the plan was to move on to the mind-moving pouvra if the th’an didn’t work.

  What happened was as soon as the mages started scribing, blobs would drift in their direction, and eventually they would stretch and contort until they matched the shape of the th’an, and then they’d disappear and the th’an would activate and make a breeze as it moved the air away from the mages’ boards.

  It was fascinating. They looked like mud-colored taffy, and when they stretched thin, you could see brighter colors here and there like strands of yarn. We did some playing around experiments with different th’an, and then with pouvrin, and the blobs were attracted to both. So I don’t care what Terrael says, we’ve succeeded in making foundational magic visible. We just don’t know what it means.

  We aren’t sure, either, what it means that it takes so long for the blobs to activate th’an or pouvrin. It might be they’re moving more slowly than usual, or it might mean there aren’t as many of them as before. But no one’s been able to come up with a way to prove which of those is true (unless it’s something else entirely). Maybe the problem will solve itself if we can work out how to bring the magic back together.

  13 Shelet

  Good news—the Helvirite forces did cross ahead of us and we’ll catch up to them just outside Colosse. I really hope the God-Empress’s troops aren’t there, or that General Garatssen will be smart enough not to engage with them if they are. That’s a stupid thing to say. General Garatssen is excellent at what she does. She and Mattiak together are probably another one of our advantages over our enemy.

  We’re so out of practice with the offensive pouvrin we’re almost back to where we were when we started learning them. Cederic was right to insist we work on them. We took our wagons well out of the line of march and practiced starting fires, testing our ranges (I’m still at 600 yards, but some of the others are going to surpass me soon), and they emptied out a wagon and gave it to the mind-movers to practice lifting with. I wish I knew how many battle mages the God-Empress has. If it’s only the Viravonian Army’s mages, we outnumber them, but we don’t know how many other Castaviran forces she’s accumulated. Not something I want to worry about, so I won’t.

  14 Shelet

  Battle practice as expected. Terrael is working on a kathana that will magnify the effect of the revelation pouvra and maintain it longer than a mage working the pouvra can. More difficult is figuring out how to experiment on the blobs without them being sucked into the th’an or pouvra to fuel it. Terrael says he has some ideas but doesn’t want to talk about them until he’s certain, for fear of losing his focus. This probably means it’s something abstract and complicated pertaining to Castaviran magic and I wouldn’t understand it anyway.

  I’ve been putting off having a conversation with Audryn about her not participating in the fight. The problem is while she’s hugely pregnant, she’s also one of our most versatile and creative battle mages, and it would be a huge loss if she had to sit out the war. But I feel uncomfortable asking her to risk her baby. On the other hand, if we lose, the God-Empress’s troops aren’t going to spare her just because she’s pregnant. So maybe I’m not thinking about this the right way. I think I’ll talk to her and see what she wants to do, though knowing her, sitting out the fight hasn’t even occurred to her.

  15 Shelet

  We’re only two days from Colosse and the scouts report it hasn’t been attacked yet. I think everyone’s pushing themselves harder now. Our battle mages seem confident in their abilities, but we’re still practicing. We don’t want to be complacent. Me, I’m not sure what I will do during

  It’s really late now, but I have to write this down. Terrael interrupted me just there. He was beyond excited. “I figured it out,” he said. “We can do it tomorrow.”

  “Figured what out?” I said.

  “The kathana,” he said. “If we create the kathana first and let it absorb as many blobs of foundational magic it needs to activate, then—it has to be th’an—we put the th’an close together in positions where the magic they attract has to cross paths. We can force it to join. And that might—I’m pretty sure about this—teach, maybe that’s the wrong word, but teach the rest of the blobs how to join. They look like they’re independent, but they’re all functionally part of one thing or they wouldn’t be able to exert an influence on the world.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. (I actually had to make him repeat himself, and I asked him a lot of questions, before I understood even that much of what he was saying. So what I wrote above is my intelligible version, written so it reflects some of his excitement.)

  “I’m right about this, don’t worry,” he said. “And if we can do this tomorrow—”

  “We can restore magic in time for it to make a difference in the war,” I said. “What do you need?”

  “We can’t do this in the wagon, because it will need the biggest kathana circle anyone’s ever drawn,” he said. “So we’ll lag behind the army, but I’m sure we’ll be able to catch up quickly. And it’s going to take all of us, and we don’t have time to practice. But I don’t think it will require much practice, just teams of two Castaviran mages working in tandem. And the Balaenic mages who can work the revelation pouvra. I wish we had more of you.”

  “Then let’s gather everyone and get started,” I said.

  We were tired enough that under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t have had the energy to do anything Terrael suggested. But his excitement was infectious, and I certainly felt invigorated enough that the revelation pouvra wasn’t difficult. Terrael paired up the Castaviran mages and showed them the th’an they had to do and the order they had to do them in, and explained how the pouvrin came in—it wasn’t only the revelation pouvra, it was the walk-through-walls and the mind-moving pouvrin too, and Terrael was right, it was the most complicated kathana I’d ever seen, which I realize isn’t saying much, but the Castaviran mages said the same thing.

  Writing this has calmed me down. It must be before midnight still, because Cederic hasn’t come to bed yet, but I think for once I’d prefer to fall asleep alone. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that magic has always been a solitary act for me, and this is the biggest magic I’ve ever participated in. Which isn’t to say I’d kick my husband out of bed if he did come right now, just that I feel the need for solitude and I’m glad to have it right now.

  16 Shelet

  I wish for once things would just go smoothly for us. I’m tired of writing “I’m so discouraged.” So instead I’m going to write “We’re making progress” and hope writing it makes it come true.

  We (the mages, Terrael, Cederic, and I, Cederic having declared he wasn’t about to let me do something potentially dangerous without him nearby) set out before dawn to the place we chose for the kathana
circle. I don’t think I mentioned we’re traveling through thick forests and there aren’t a lot of clearings large enough for what we wanted. But yesterday we passed through a little Castaviran settlement, not even big enough to be called a town, and they’d cleared a lot of the forest out for their crops. So we talked to one of the farmers and asked if we could use a fallow field, and he didn’t like the idea until Cederic handed over far too much money. Then he didn’t care what we did.

  We used the mind-moving pouvra to clear a flat space, then the Castaviran mages drew out a double circle and filled the space between them with inert th’an. The Balaenic mages spread out around the outside of the circle, as evenly spaced as we could get—we were supposed to be close enough to spread our arms and barely touch our neighbor’s fingertips, but some people have longer arms than others—and settled on the ground in whatever position we felt most comfortable. Then we waited for the Castaviran mages to finish and take up positions standing behind each of us. That was so uncomfortable, feeling hovered over.

  The rest of the Castaviran mages, and the Balaenic mages who wouldn’t be working the revelation pouvra, stood inside the double circle, which from my position looked like the rim of a giant magnifying glass, which was a good image considering we were trying to magnify foundational magic. Or something.

  “Begin,” Terrael said, and I started to bend my will to meet the revelation pouvra. This time, I kept my eyes open; I’ve gotten good enough at it that I’m not easily distracted. So I could watch in an idly curious way as mages began scribing the active th’an and the kathana began to resonate. It was something Terrael had incorporated into the inert th’an so we could immediately tell if it was working—the circle gave off a hum that made the tingling in my fingers and toes weaker. I could see the haze forming around the other mages (you can’t see the one you produce yourself, don’t know why) and spreading outward in all directions. We’d thought about trying to direct it into the kathana circle, but decided we didn’t have time to learn a new technique and risk losing effectiveness. So we made a huge, misty dome that completely surrounded us, each mage’s pouvra overlapping with the next. For some reason that didn’t thicken the haze at all the way gauze gets more opaque the more layers there are of it. Strange, but fortunate for what we were doing.