Light Mage (The Black Witch Chronicles)

by Laurie Forest

  My attention starts to wander toward the street and the constant stream of passing blonde Verpacians and black-clad Gardnerians, my gaze soon riveted on an unexpected sight.

  Three Alfsigr Elves are striding silently in our direction, reed-straight and graceful as herons.

  I’m instantly mesmerized, having never once seen Elves in my entire life. Their snow-white hair trails behind them like pennants of moonlight, their garments a spotless alabaster. They’re heavily armed with intricately carved ivory bows, quivers full of arrows strapped to their backs. And their eyes. Their eyes. Glittering silver, like bright sun on snow.

  My affinity lines pull taut, enraptured.

  The Elves pass by, silent and ethereal, so close I could reach out and touch the intricate, spiraling white embroidery on the closest Elf’s tunic.

  My eyes are drawn across the street by a sudden flash of glowing gold. There’s a man wearing a golden headband emblazoned with three runes that blaze a brighter gold, as if ignited by fire. He’s black-bearded with deep brown skin, his long black hair tied back in looping, braided coils, and he wears bright yellow garb decorated with an entrancing purple star design. There’s a strange glint along the edges of him, like he’s standing before a late-day sun, the light raying out from him as he moves. My affinity sends up a burst of saffron stars that fizz at the edges of my vision in response to all the gold and his surprising aura.

  The gold-limned man is standing just outside a smithery and securing its two large wooden doors open wide. Multiple Spine-stone domes top the smithery, and an Ishkartan Smiths’ Guild flag flies atop the largest of the three domes, the design a black rune-marked hammer and anvil against a golden background.

  The smithery’s doors are covered with gleaming swords and axes, all hanging in neat rows.

  A young woman emerges from the smithery’s interior and joins the man, her pale skin the color of sand, her hair bright yellow, and she has the same golden aura as the man.

  And her attire is absolutely mortifying.

  She wears hide pants—pants!—and boots like a man, and her form-fitting, sleeveless yellow tunic is marked with runes that look like they were fashioned from molten gold. She’s heavily armed as well, with rune-blades strapped to her arms and thighs and two rune-swords crisscrossed on her back. Glowing gold runes mark the skin of her face and arms.

  The blonde woman pushes first one, then another large display table covered in jeweled rune-blades out in front of the smithery doors. Then she straightens and looks at the headbanded man, saying something to him that I can’t hear, her hands brazenly on her hips, her stance fearless.

  A woman. With so many weapons.

  Everything about her is so bizarre and completely out of the range of what I’ve been taught is acceptable. I wonder if it would be possible for anyone in Verpacia to be more surprising in their appearance than she is.

  Then a young Keltic man emerges from the shadows of the smithery.

  He’s tall, lean and muscular, his movements loping and powerful as he hoists several sheathed rune-swords to add to the outdoor display, and I’ve a sense of vast, contained strength in his body. There’s a rugged elegance to him, his features long and sculpted, his expression watchful and restrained, as if he keeps close control of himself. He wears the leather, guild-marked apron of a smith’s apprentice.

  Every dire warning about the Kelts that Mother Eliss has pressed into me sounds in stark, blaring alarm, but he’s so attractive, I can’t seem to avert my gaze.

  And his hair.

  I’ve never seen anyone with red hair. And his hair is the most luxurious, heart-stopping dark red I’ve ever seen. Red like a blooded sunset, just before night closes in.

  My affinity lines snap toward him with overwhelming force, and my wand hand starts to tingle as my vision is momentarily tinted a rich, deep scarlet. Alarmed, I blink hard and pull my hand under the table, catching a glimpse of the garnet hue forming on my fingertips.

  Look away, I urgently warn myself. Before the color spreads clear up your arm!

  But the red is so ravishing, I can’t do anything but drink him in. And it’s not just his hair—there’s a subtle green shimmer coming off him that’s only apparent when he moves. But it’s not like our faint, Gardnerian emerald shimmer—it’s as if he’s edged in every hue of sparkling green.

  Where is his green aura coming from? What could it mean?

  He glances up and our eyes collide.

  His gaze hits me like a bolt, his eyes taking on an emerald glow as if lit from within by green torchlight. Bright green sparks explode into my vision and strafe through my lines, and I draw back in surprise at the same moment he does, his gaze full of an astonishment that’s almost angry in its intensity, his lips parted, his whole body frozen. There’s a sudden, crackling tension between us that can be felt from clear across the street.

  I tear my eyes from his as my heart pounds hot against my chest, deeply thrown by his obvious power and by our inexplicably intense reaction to each other. And by the strange aura surrounding him and everyone else working in the smithery.

  Don’t look at him again! I caution myself. There’s some type of sorcery at work here.

  I desperately force my gaze down to the table, to the swirling fastlines marking my hidden scarlet-and-emerald hand. Keeping my eyes set on anything but the startling red of his hair, the incandescent shimmer of his body or his relentless, verdant gaze.

  I force myself to breathe deep, half-aware of the lively conversation between Geoffrey and Gwynn and Mage Gyll. When I finally dare to look back at the smithery, the red-haired apprentice is gone. I breathe out a hard sigh of relief.

  “Who are the people in the smithery?” I nervously blurt out, breaking into their friendly morning banter.

  Mage Gyll, Gwynn and Geoffrey all turn to me in unison, as if surprised that I’ve finally joined the conversation.

  “The heathens?” Mage Gyll clarifies, with evident surprise.

  I nod as I pull in a shaky breath. “There’s something...odd about them.” They all shimmer colors, I long to tell them. And the young smith has emerald sorcery in his gaze. But I don’t voice my thoughts, scared that this is my light affinity running amuck again after I’ve managed to keep it under pious control for so long.

  Mage Gyll glances over at the smithery, her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed in deep displeasure. She gives me a cautionary look. “They’re a sordid lot over there. And they should never have been allowed into Verpacia.”

  “Who’s the man dressed in gold?” I ask, my heartbeat still tripping. And the woman with the golden aura, I think, but don’t voice. And the disturbingly stunning Kelt. With hair as red as Gardnerian roses and eyes that spark green lightning.

  Mage Gyll frowns begrudgingly at the smithery. “The one with the rune-marked headband? He’s an Ishkart. From a highborn rune-sorcerer family.” Her frown deepens. “All the Ishkart highborn wear gold. His name’s Zeymir Nyvor.”

  I watch Zeymir Nyvor as he pulls a sword from the door to show to a Keltic customer.

  Does his rune-sorcery have something to do with his sunlike aura? I wonder.

  The heavily armed, golden-haired young woman is now sitting at a sharpening wheel. She’s honing the blade of a sword, the wheel spinning as white sparks fly into the air. I can hear the grating, metallic screech of blade on stone from clear over here.

  “He was a highborn Ishkart,” Mage Gyll says with a cynical tightening of her lips as we scrutinize the smiths. “His own people cast him out.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because of the women. That’s one of them there.” She gestures toward the young woman at the sharpening wheel. “The Issani.”

  “I don’t know much about the Issani,” I say.

  “It’s what the Northern Ishkart people call themselves.” Mage Gyll leans close and lowers her voice
to a discreet whisper. “He bought her. Like a sack of grain.” Shock ripples through me as Geoffrey makes a sound of disgust and Gwynn glares in the direction of the smithery.

  Mage Gyll eyes the young woman with dismay. “The other one’s even worse.”

  As if on cue, a green-skinned woman with pointed ears emerges from the smithery’s interior, and I draw back in surprise.

  She has scales. Bright green scales that send off a luminous shimmer around her, like a verdant constellation that mingles with the glittering green aura encompassing her.

  Her eyes are a dazzling silver, her hair a deeper green than her scales, her pointed ears rimmed with golden hoops. She’s clothed like a man, in a deep green tunic and pants marked with glowing green Snake Elf runes. Her long, emerald hair is gathered in a large swath of yellow fabric marked with golden Ishkartan runes.

  “A Snake Elf,” I marvel. I turn to Mage Gyll, newly alarmed as I remember the chilling things that Father and Mother Eliss have told me about the criminal subland elves. “How can she be living here?”

  “There’s a few loose here,” Geoffrey puts in, his hand protectively covering Gwynn’s. He shrugs. “Verpacia allows it, as long as they have the right papers.”

  “She’s why the Ishkart was kicked out of Ishkartaan,” Mage Gyll says ominously. “That Snake Elf woman. His people could have countenanced the Issani whore, but he insisted on keeping the Snake Elf as well.” She gives the smithery a dark look. “I’ve complained to the Verpacian Council about all this more than once. People with such low morals shouldn’t be allowed into Verpacia.”

  A young child runs out of the smithery and up to the Snake Elf woman. He tugs at her tunic and chatters excitedly in a foreign tongue. His ears are as pointed as hers and his skin is covered in green scales, but his eyes and his hair are black. He’s in a yellow embroidered tunic much like the Ishkart man’s, and like the rest of them, he has a spectacular aura—faint rays of gold and green light that radiate out, like he’s his own tiny sun.

  “There’s the little viper they’ve spawned,” Mage Gyll says with distaste, as if resigned to madness.

  Her words are so unexpectedly harsh that they startle me. The child’s appearance is surprising, to be sure, but his manner is distinctly childlike. He smiles up at the Snake Elf woman as she beams warmly back at him, caressing his cheek, and I’m thrust into confusion.

  Her manner seems so kind. Not criminal at all...

  And it’s hard to keep from staring at both the woman and the child. Their snake scales are like glittering emeralds. And the strange, unique light auras they all possess...

  Beautiful.

  “He’s so young,” I say, thinking out loud. Maybe seven or eight years old.

  “Yes, well, he’s a child now,” Mage Gyll cautions, “but he’ll grow up to be a danger.” She retrieves her teapot and tightens her mouth, grimacing at the smithery. “The next one they all spawn will have red hair and green scales. Mark my words.”

  I glance back toward the smithery as flames leap above the forge and illuminate the building’s shadowed interior with a wavering, orange light. A heated surprise flashes through me.

  He’s there. The Kelt. Standing by the forge, the fire painting his dark, tousled hair with glints of crimson.

  I’m instantly transfixed by him and overcome by the urge to see him more clearly. Staring at him sidelong, my head down to hide my fascination, I surreptitiously tighten the lines around my eyes and draw his image close.

  His handsome form pulls into close view as he thrusts a broadsword into the flames and stares at it with a motionless focus that brings to mind the gaze of a predator. I watch him covertly as he studies the reddening metal gripped in his curiously ungloved hand, his stance as still as the surface of a summer lake. He lays the glowing sword atop an anvil, picks up an iron hammer and, with sudden violence, lashes down, hammer to sword, his aura trailing streaks of glimmering green. A shower of red sparks flies from the sword, and I can feel the force of his blows straight down my spine. Then he dips the glowing sword in a nearby barrel of water, sending up a great, hissing cloud of steam.

  The fog of steam begins to dissipate and surprise rocks through me.

  He’s staring straight at me.

  His gaze is unnervingly bold, and it jostles my affinity lines straight down to my core. But this time, I don’t look away. For a suspended moment, the world drops away and I hold his stare, the color of his eyes like a strong, midday sun through vivid green leaves. I inhale sharply as the verdant color telescopes out toward me and sizzles down my affinity lines in a spangled green rush. Green runes burst to life in the back of my vision...

  “Sage.”

  Gwynn’s measured, disapproving tone jerks me from my decadent, shocking thrall. I immediately loosen my eye lines and wrench my gaze away from the young smith. The rune images lingering in my vision fracture, like glass shattering, the heart-stopping green abruptly clearing.

  Gwynn, Geoffrey and Mage Gyll are all eyeing me with deep concern.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammer as I struggle to breathe normally and keep my color-washed wand hand carefully hidden. “He was staring at me.”

  What just happened? Why did I look at him and see runes?

  Mage Gyll breathes out a sound of derision. “I’m sure he was.” She casts a resentful glare toward the smithery that I don’t dare look at again. “They try to ensnare our women.” She turns back to us, grave resolve in her eyes. “You young Mages stay close to our kind here and you’ll stay safe.” She places her hand protectively on my back as I keep my eyes militantly plastered on the table, my heart pounding against my chest as my wand hand tingles with forbidden color.

  Chapter 2: Rivyr’el Talonir

  A few minutes after Mage Gyll’s warning about staying close to our kind, my heart is still thudding. I risk a sidelong glance at the smithery to find the red-haired smith gone again, and I’m both intensely relieved and disconcertingly aware of the lack of him, as if a glimpse of his sorcery has lit a candle in me that refuses to go out.

  Stop it, I chastise myself, dismayed by being so easily lured away from the Gardnerian fold. Stop being so drawn in by them.

  Stop being drawn in by him.

  Gwynn pauses in buttering her scone. We’re alone at the table now, Geoffrey having left to meet his family, and Mage Gyll is a few tables away from us, pouring tea for two elegant Gardnerian women with gray hair and piously unadorned black garments.

  “Sage, don’t worry yourself.” Gwynn glances at the smithery uneasily. “I did notice the Kelt looking at you rather strangely.” Looking troubled, she turns back to me. “You’ll be with Tobias soon. Don’t forget that. And no one would dare bother you with a Level Four Mage by your side.”

  A prickle of nervous trepidation courses through me at the mention of Tobias’s name, and I realize that this is my chance to ask Gwynn the questions that have been weighing so heavily on my mind—questions that I never dreamed she might have the answer to, until I saw the way she and Geoffrey are with each other.

  “Gwynn,” I haltingly begin, heat creeping onto my cheeks, “I’m nervous about...the sealing night.”

  I’ve read all the stories written for devout young women about the sealing night, searching for some clue as to what, exactly, will happen after the ceremony. We’re to consummate our union that very night, but... I’ve never shown as much as an ankle in public.

  The stories are full of chaste kisses, and even those are enough to set my imagination whirling and send warmth rushing through me, but...then what? Certainly we can’t be expected to fully undress when we pair. Gardnerian maidens don’t do such things.

  Or do they?

  Gwynn sets down her tea and eyes me soberly. I know she surmises immediately what I’m asking, without needing me to elaborate further.

  Her cheeks redden. “You’ll go off tog
ether...” She takes a breath, her brow tensing as she starts to speak, but falters. Then her eyes brighten, as if with remembered knowledge, and I lean forward, desperate for information. “And then,” she lowers her voice, “the Ancient One will draw you together. Seamlessly.” She smiles beatifically, as if completely satisfied with herself for perfectly repeating something memorized.

  I sigh inwardly. This is of absolutely no help whatsoever. “But...we don’t know each other at all,” I press, an anxious frustration rising. “He hasn’t even been permitted to write to me. How can we be so close so fast?”

  Gwynn shakes her head as if she’s shaking away my worries. “The Ancient One has drawn you together. That means that this is the perfect pairing for you both.”

  My unease refuses to be dislodged—it’s stuck deep inside, like a large, dark burr. “But what about the couples at the fasting who seemed really unhappy about it?”

  “That was years ago,” she says, her tone lilting and good-humored as she dismisses this concern. “They were too young to think clearly. You need to trust the will of the Ancient One.” She smiles at me, her gaze full of certainty. “You and Tobias were drawn together by the Ancient One’s own hand. Your union is written in the stars.”

  I’m momentarily caught up in her flowery language, and it smooths the serrated edges of my fears, unspooling a sweet ribbon of hope inside me.

  She’s right. I need to trust in the Ancient One. Tobias and I will be perfect together, otherwise the priest wouldn’t have fasted us.

  But then, Gwynn loses her serene smile and turns sheepish as she rubs her fingertip distractedly along a seam in the inlaid wood table’s tree design. “Sage,” she asks haltingly, “you don’t still have that wand Geoffrey mentioned, do you?”

  I smile at her bashfulness about our childhood games, then reach just under my skirt’s hem and slide the toy wand from where I’ve hidden it in the side of my boot. I often carry it there, my small, heartening secret—a remembrance of a time when I got to play at being a hero. At having power. And it feels so good to have a wand in my hand, even if it’s just a toy.