The Making of a Mage King: Prince in Hiding

by Anna L. Walls

  “I saw nothing but you. I do, however know what it was that you saw. That was the Acceptance. Your ancestors all came and gave you their approval, didn’t they? No man wears the crown here without it. Congratulations, my lord.”

  “Those were my ancestors?” asked Sean. “Was that my father I just met?”

  “You met your father? Good. I hoped he had been accepted. He deserved it.”

  “You told me that he was only the prince; that his father was still king.”

  “That’s true,” said Elias. “Your father was doing the same thing you just finished when he was killed. Your grandfather was sitting right here when Ludwyn came in and killed them both.”

  Tears stung the back of Sean’s eyes. “Where were you? Where were the guards?”

  “Ferris and I were your mother’s bodyguards; we were with her. The palace guards should have been here, but I’m sure Ludwyn’s actions were fast enough that it didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing; they probably died just as quickly as your father did.”

  “I didn’t expect to hear the old tongue coming out of your mouth,” said Ferris as he joined them, flanked by Larry and Jenny.

  “What was that you said?” asked Jenny.

  “I said something? I don’t remember saying anything. What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘Ruhinídain, ruhinídain, ahāa mí akēa,’” said Hélène. “It means, ‘people of Ruhin; fight with me.’ Your shout was very moving.”

  “How could I shout something in a language that I have never heard before?” Watching TV, Sean had heard examples of half a dozen different languages and these words bore no resemblance to any of them.

  Elias shrugged and Ferris turned away. “We did our best while you slept,” said Elias, “but there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Are you ready to begin?”

  Forgetting about the strange sounding language, shelving his curiosity about the battle he’d just witnessed, Sean followed Elias’s example. “I suppose. Now that the fun is over, I guess I have to go to work. Fill me in on what you’ve done. Whatever happened to that man I sent off with Cordan?”

  “He’s still here. His daughter is under the care of another priestess,” said Ferris.

  “She is? What happened to her? Never mind; I suppose I should clean my own house before I try to tell other people how to live. Let’s go upstairs and see what my dear uncle has been up to.”

  The main floor extended to either side in two massive wings. Sean couldn’t begin to know what all the space was used for, but he was sure someone would let him know at the appropriate time.

  The throne room with its lofty roof protruded in front of the main body of the structure, and in the back was the kitchen, the laundry and the servants’ quarters.

  Behind the throne room was a vast foyer that housed the huge staircase to the upper floors. Under the stairs was one of the many doorways that led back to the kitchen.

  The second floor was reserved for family apartments, and guards stood at every corner. Sean saw more than one of the women from his party, and others, likely the house servants, were hard at work. Lindleyan was standing on the top of a box step scrubbing the walls as high as she could reach, and another was scrubbing the floor with a heavy brush. Someone else was farther down the hall scrubbing the other wall. The smell of soap was strong in the air.

  “We’re all staying here now. All the rooms on this floor were empty anyway,” said Elias. “The men standing guard here are the same that came with us, but the palace guardhouse is filled with men from the gathering. I’m sure they’ll swear to you at the first opportunity.”

  “We’ll have to create that opportunity soon. As soon as we’re done here.”

  Elias nodded.

  “Why are there four guards outside that one door?”

  “That’s Ludwyn’s room.”

  “You let him stay here? Is he still here? Don’t you know that most royal palaces are built with a bolt hole so that if the place should ever fall in battle, the royal family could escape beyond the walls?”

  Alarmed, Ferris burst into the room in question. Curled up in the middle of the bed was Ludwyn. He definitely looked diminished, but Sean wasn’t about to feel sorry for him.

  Larry tugged at his shoulder. “Lunch is ready.”

  Sean lifted his head from his pillow and realized that he was in bed again. Was that all a dream? I hope not. He sat up and found the armor draped across the chairs with his pants. He still wore his shirt.

  He looked at Larry. “How did I get here? I don’t remember going to bed.”

  Larry chuckled. “Hélène said that you might not remember. After you confirmed that Ludwyn was still in his room, you just came in here and went to sleep. Elias and I put you in bed. Come on, get dressed. Lunch is ready.”

  “At least tell me you moved Ludwyn,” said Sean, as he pulled his pants on.

  “Oh yeah, we moved him upstairs. We put him in the room he protested about most. I, for one, found it very satisfying.” His expression was dark.

  Larry led Sean through a collection of dining halls, meeting halls, gathering halls and hall halls, to one of the smaller dining halls where lunch was laid out. The place was a cavernous maze. Sean couldn’t wrap his mind around the vastness of it all. What did someone do with all this space?

  When Hélène saw them, she asked, “Feeling better?”

  “Why did I do that? Why don’t I remember it?” asked Sean.

  “You have used up all of your reserves,” she said. “It’ll take you a while to build them back up again.”

  “But I feel fine. If I’ve developed narcolepsy, wouldn’t I feel tired?”

  “I don’t know what that is, but don’t worry; you’ll catch up in a few days.”

  “If I’m going to be taking long naps every few hours, I better catch up soon,” said Sean. He was more than a little unsettled by the memory gap.

  After lunch, they took another stab at going through the house. On the way to the third floor, Hélène asked, “Did Ludwyn subject you to any magical tortures while you were in his control?”

  Sean thought for a moment. “I think he started to. That’s when I shut him off; I was in enough pain.”

  “All right then listen, torture with magic can be torture of the mind as well as torture of the body,” she explained. “Ludwyn has made it a personal study of his on how to inflict pain with magic. What he has up here is proof of it. Manuel has told me what you did for him. You must do nothing about what you see here. You have not recovered enough to deal with it yet.”

  Sean stopped dead in his tracks. “Are you telling me that these rooms are filled with people who believe some torture has been done to them?”

  “The rooms are about a third filled. We are currently helping eighty-three people here, and in nearly all the cases, it is much more than just a belief.”

  Sean ground his teeth and his lunch rolled over heavily. “What has he done?” he asked. I’m not sure I want to know.

  She led on slowly. “Just about anything, I think.”

  Oh god.

  The first room they took him to contained the ex-captain general and his daughter. The man looked haggard. His daughter would have been a very beautiful young woman if she wasn’t cowering in a corner, unwashed, unkempt and crying. Sean had no stomach for senseless torture. He attempted to approach the girl, but she leapt to put her father between them, though she was no closer to him than she had been before. Dark circles under her eyes said that her nights were no better than her days. “Why is she crying?” he asked.

  “I can’t get much out of her,” said Carris. “She’s a little better after a priestess helps her, but after a couple hours she’s crying again.”

  Sean started to go to the girl, but Hélène and Elias held him back. “Don’t do it,” said Elias.

  He shrugged them, and the shield, off. The wash of the magical dimension was staggering and filling. He had to heave a sigh. What a rush. He looked at the girl w
ho cowered in terror behind her father. “Come here.” He made the compulsion as gentle as he could.

  She came to him reluctantly as if he were pulling her by some rope. He gently folded her in his arms as if she were something wild, something to coax, something to gentle carefully. He brushed away her tears with gentle fingers and brushed her hair back. “No more fear.” He ran his hands up and down her back and her arms, careful to make every touch comforting and quieting. “Why do you cry?” he whispered. He could see the confused expressions on the faces of everyone in the room, especially Hélène.

  The girl sniffed and twined her hands in his shirt. “He took it from me,” she said in a tiny voice that quavered to the point of being almost breathless.

  Sean looked at her father who shrugged and shook his head.

  “What did he take from you?” asked Sean, as he continued to sooth her with his hands.

  “Me,” she said. “He took me from me. I am so afraid now. No one can protect me anymore.”

  “Then I give you back,” said Sean, simply. He felt a shift within her, and her posture altered imperceptibly. He wouldn’t have noticed a thing if he hadn’t been holding her so closely, if she hadn’t been cuddled so tight to his chest.

  Her quiet sobs faded away with a final sniff. She stood up straighter and pulled back enough to look him in the face, then she looked over her shoulder to her father. “Oh daddy,” she said, and went to him.

  Sean turned to Elias, who was standing closest to his shoulder. “Get me out of here,” he said, as he groped for him.

  They guided him out of the room as weakness washed over him. “I can’t do this. I can’t face this.” He looked at Hélène. “Shield me again.”

  She tried, and Sean tried to let her. It was a struggle for both of them, but she managed it, then they led him back downstairs. They took him to his sitting room. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do that again,” she said after Sean was settled with a blanket around his shoulders. “You are very strong.”

  “Teach me to shield myself.”

  “You cannot shield yourself. It’s not possible. The act of shielding requires the use of magic. You cannot use magic to cut yourself off from it.”

  “I couldn’t resist that,” said Sean, as he studied the grain of the table in front of him.

  “It is natural to want to comfort someone who is sad and help someone who is hurt. You have learned that, with magic, you can help, so the desire to do so is nearly irresistible. You have to make yourself stay away from those rooms until you have recovered more.”

  Elias turned from lighting a fire in the fireplace. “You look like I felt when you first brought me back. Perhaps you should get some more sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep my life away,” said Sean. “I’m tired of sleeping.”

  Elias smiled sympathetically. “Then do what you need to do to get better faster. Sleep.”

  Sean shrugged; he was already sinking into the chair. The warm blanket and the warm room were defeating him.

  Providence Calling

  Sean woke to find himself walking down the wide stairs behind the throne room. Servants were going back and forth using the doorway under the stairs. It must be nearly suppertime, but the thought was fleeting.

  Waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs was the man he had seen standing by the throne during what Elias had called ‘the Acceptance’. Now he was dressed in a fine, white silk shirt and black linen pants. A simple silver circlet held his gray hair off is face. Even without his armor, he was a formidable figure of a man; heavy muscles rippled and bulged with his every move. When Sean reached him, he rested a hand on Sean’s shoulder, and said, “Come with me.”

  Sean dropped the blanket he’d been trailing from his hand and followed him through the kitchen. Miraculously, they strode through the swarming chamber without causing a single hitch in the flow of activity, or having to sidestep a single servant. No one spared them a glance as they passed through. Sean thought nothing of it; after all, such things are common in dreams.

  They went out the back door and into the narrow courtyard. Parked near the door was a supply cart being unloaded. The big man led Sean past the sleepy horse and across the paved yard. He saw a pair of wide unadorned oak doors that looked like they opened up, on the wall. He knew that on the other side of that thick wall was a substantial drop to the next level of the city. A pair of guards paced along its top.

  By the time they were half way across the courtyard, he could see that the doors were in a section of the wall that was wider than the rest; he hadn’t noticed the difference from the roof. His companion pushed the doors wide and strode into the dark.

  Sean followed. He stumbled down the first couple steps of a spiral stairway before his eyes adjusted to the torch-lit way. The man moved ahead of him down the wide stairs, lighting every torch he passed with a touch.

  The stairs spiraled down far beneath the palace. At the bottom, it opened into a vast underground natural cavern; a small part of Sean’s mind wondered what kind of geological forces would make such a formation; it looked like a gigantic hollow half-volcano covered over by the city and its walls. With the river being so close, he was amazed that the chamber was dry.

  Sean followed the glow of his guide’s white shirt into the middle of the cavern, then in true showmanship style, the man gestured to his sides with a flourish and sconces all around the room sprang alight.

  About a dozen large stone blocks were spaced around one portion of the chamber. They differed, some in size and decoration, but mostly they were all the same; they served the same purpose at least. Resting on top of them were what looked to be sleeping figures.

  With a wave of his hand, the man took him to the foot of one of the stone blocks. He stood behind Sean with his hands on his shoulders. “This was your father, Deain Ruhin,” he said. “He was raised in a time of peace and had no battles of note under his belt, but he was strong and fair-minded. He would have made a fine king.”

  The stone figure rose from its rest and approached Sean. He looked into his eyes and smiled. He ruffled his hair much like he had done in the throne room, then he just walked into him.

  Sean was thankful for the solid chest behind him and the hands on his shoulders. Without them, he would have staggered backward. A wave of memories filled him. Memories of a boy just learning his first magics. Memories of boring lessons in philosophy and history. Memories of riding pell-mell across the hills, laughing as the heavier guards tried to keep up; this was coupled with the memory of cleaning out the stalls when he returned. Memories of a willowy woman with curly black hair dancing in the center of the floor – that memory brought a sensation of pain; he loved her so much it hurt.

  The man behind him pulled him away from that stone block with its recumbent figure and guided him to stand at the foot of another. Sean had barely recovered from the first experience when he said, “This was your grandfather, Lardeain Ruhin.”

  Sean barely heard what he said about the man as he rose and walked into him like his father had. A whole new set of memories filled Sean, tangling with the memories that were his own and those that were his father’s.

  The man led him around to each stone block and introduced each man who rested there; each one rose and joined his life with Sean’s and the others who had come before.

  By the time they reached the last one, Sean was utterly lost in the maelstrom of lives and experiences. The old king turned Sean to face him. Across his shoulder, he hung a heavy belt that supported a massive sword. Then he picked up an old horn and slung it across Sean’s other shoulder; dimly, Sean saw silver, green, blue and red splashed across its surface. “My name is Soran Ruhin and I carved a kingdom out of empty land so that our people could live in peace,” he said simply, then he led Sean back to the middle of the floor. Sean was a rag doll in Soran’s hands, but he managed to maintain his feet as long as the man had ahold of him.

  In the middle of the chamber, Soran pulled Sean around to face
him again. “You now have the memories of all of your ancestors. You now know everything we have learned; all of our accomplishments, all of our mistakes, even all of our dreams and wishes. Through our memories, you will be able to reunite the land and heal the damage your uncle has done. Through our memories, you will be able to prepare for what is coming. You don’t have much time. You won’t have time to be nice or gentle. You must be prepared. Do you understand? You are responsible for protecting the people.” He looked Sean hard in the eyes. “Do you understand?”

  Sean was having trouble focusing on his face.

  Soran seemed satisfied with what he saw. He smiled, patted Sean on the cheek, then walked into him like the others had done.

  That was the last straw. Sean retained enough control to not fall, but without his ancestor’s hand to support him, he could no longer remain standing. He sank to the floor. He sat there until all the lights had burned out. He sat there until all the memories organized themselves in his mind. He sat there until he could begin to think again.

  He relived battles, negotiations, and decisions; he had structure to understand and names to remember so he could re-implement the nobility across the land. Then, amazingly enough, there were seventeen years of destruction and fear to undo. He didn’t know where those memories came from; he wasn’t sure if they were memories, but somehow he knew what had to be done and what had to be undone. It was all so clear.

  Someone pulled him to his feet. He had to squint at the bright light from the torch held by a tall blond man. Another man with black hair that was graying at the sides gripped his arms, and yet another man looked on.

  “Seanad, what are you doing down here?” said the man who gripped his arms.

  “Seanad… My name is…” A dozen names marched through Sean’s mind, but only one fit. “Sean… My name is Sean…Seanad. My name is Seanad Moselle…no…Barleduc-Ruhin… My name is Seanad Éireann Barleduc-Ruhin.” Elias steadied him as he swayed, helpless in the grip of the shifting realities and times that swelled his being.