Cursed Mage

by Mia Archer

  12

  Rescue

  They fell, but Sarai refused to accept it. She looked around in confusion as she tumbled through the dark air. She knew it wouldn't be long before she slammed into the ground. Before she felt her bones breaking along with Tiafa’s.

  But there was that glow. It seemed brighter. Warmth wrapped around her.

  As though that light was trying to tell her everything was going to be okay despite all evidence to the contrary. The glow was the bright green that matched what she’d seen out in the Ghost Fields.

  Sarai thought she could almost see figures in that green glow. Like the hint of the dead moving through the mist in the Ghost Fields.

  And with that glow Sarai felt herself slowing. She looked in astonishment as the glow moved out and surrounded Tiafa. She stared at Sarai with equal astonishment.

  Sarai wasn’t knocking anything that was slowing their fall, but it was a shock.

  This had to be magic. The thought terrified her as much as it excited her.

  This sort of thing was supposed to manifest far younger. The people who were going to be Chosen for the witch school were always obvious, and they were always sent off to their own special lessons early on. She’d never heard of anyone manifesting this late in life.

  She’d just come of age, damn it. She’d expected to be sent off to the armies to die in the name of a conflict she didn’t quite understand fighting the twisted armies of a woman who made her dizzy every time she thought of her.

  She never thought something like this would happen to her. She never thought she would manifest. She shouldn’t be manifesting this late in life.

  Yet here she was floating through the air proving to be one hell of an outlier. This wasn’t the magic from the Ghost Fields, and it certainly wasn't some old weapon left behind from before Choikal’s fall.

  No, this was all her. Sarai was making this happen. Somehow. Impossibly. But it was happening.

  Those ghostly hands moving in the glow reached out for them. Tiafa tried to struggle when she realized what was reaching for her, but they held with a firmness that wasn’t to be denied. She looked at Sarai, her eyes wide, and then they rolled into the back of her head as she passed out.

  The dead passed in front of Sarai. Skeletal creatures in mist that reached out and pulled her up even though they weren’t attached to anything themselves.

  They moved up. Instead of falling they floated towards the hole created by their fall through the floorboards. They moved over the jagged edges and the creatures in the mist placed them down lightly by the window where this all had started.

  Sarai looked around. Shook her head. Damn. Talk about a surprise!

  Tiafa fell back against the wood that had so treacherously betrayed them. Her breath came in deep ragged gasps, but she was still passed out. Not for long, though.

  Her eyes shot open. They were wide and filled with the terror of the dead. From the way she stared up at the ceiling with her eyes wide and the light of Ramaya bathing both of them in its gentle purple glow it was clear she needed a moment to process everything that had just happened.

  Maybe more than a moment.

  Choikal’s burned ruins. She wasn’t the only one who needed a moment to process everything that had just happened. Sarai looked at the gaping hole that had done its best to kill them.

  She couldn’t believe they were still alive. That simply wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to people like her. Mostly because the magic wasn’t something that was supposed to take her.

  She’d been sure she would go off to die in the Twisted Lands. To be honest the idea of going to the witch school was more terrifying than the thought of facing the Twisted Lands. Going off to die for the military would almost be preferable than going there.

  Especially with the strange fits that took her whenever Sarai thought of… her.

  Being conscripted was terrible, but at least there was a path laid out for her there. If Sarai was lucky she’d come back from that time in the military with a skill. If she was unlucky she’d come back in a box after being killed in one of the numerous fights with the dark lady’s armies.

  If she was very unlucky then there wouldn’t be enough of her to put into a box to ship home for her parents to cry over.

  Sarai didn’t care about that now, though. Or that she’d been given a brief respite from potentially going off to die fighting in a never ending war.

  She crawled over to the burnt out edge of the window. Once upon a time there’d been glass there. The old people in the village told tales of all the guard towers gleaming in the sunlight during the day and twinkling in the starlight at night as the massive windows reflected the light.

  No more. There was just a burned out husk now. The remains of a frame that had once held a massive piece of glass that had long since disappeared.

  Not for the first time Sarai wondered what the city might’ve looked like then. And she was glad she hadn’t been around to witness the city in its glory since that would mean she would be around to witness the destruction.

  “Sarai?” Tiafa’s voice rang out in the darkness.

  Sarai turned to Tiafa, and the dread she felt was a very different and far more immediate sort of dread.

  Tiafa had witnessed the magic taking Sarai, and the shock of it had been enough to cause her to shy away from her.

  Yet there was another part of her that had a difficult time believing that the magic taking her was the only part of it. There’d been true terror in Tiafa’s eyes as the glow overtook Sarai, and that couldn’t mean anything good.

  What if there was something more than the glowing lines she saw? What if the magic had twisted her and she was like one of the lost souls in the Twisted Lands that didn’t even realize it?

  “What do you see Tiafa?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  13

  Taken

  Tiafa stepped forward. Or it would be more accurate to say she shuffled forward, spreading out her weight as much as she could across the wood planks below.

  Sarai guessed Tiafa had learned the same lesson she had when she first explored this place. The footing could be treacherous up here. Sarai didn’t think this part of the floor was particularly dangerous, but then again she could also understand why Tiafa would be hesitant to test that considering what just happened.

  “I saw the magic take you,” she said. “And then you used it to save me. You used those things to save me.”

  She surprised Sarai by wrapping her in a hug. A hug Sarai wasn’t complaining about, mind you, but it was still a surprise.

  It was particularly a surprise for the feeling that hit her as she wrapped her in that hug. Sarai had hugged Tiafa before, but it had never felt like this. No, this was a hug that was different because there were strange sensations running all over her body. Almost as though there were sensitive lines covering her and…

  Reluctantly Sarai pulled away from the hug. She wanted nothing more than to feel Tiafa against her, but she also wondered why in the burned ruins she would be feeling everything with such a heightened awareness.

  Sarai looked down.

  Her eyes went wide. She thought about the strange feelings that had come over her. The strange tingle that seemed to run across her whole body in that moment the magic took her. The lines that criss crossed her exposed skin glowed as she stared down with fascination and horror.

  It had felt odd, but she’d thought it was simply her mind reacting to the magic taking her. Now, though, she found herself wondering if maybe there wasn’t something else going on here. If maybe there had been something to that overwhelming feeling that her body was changing.

  Sarai felt at her clothes. They felt different too. Wrong, somehow. As though everywhere they brushed against her they were lighting a fire, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good fire or a bad fire.

  All she knew was she had to get them off. She didn’t have a care for Tiafa standing right in front of her. No, she saw a faint glow under her
clothes, and she had to see what had happened underneath.

  She had to see if those lines were still there.

  “Sarai,” Tiafa said, and then she stopped.

  There was a catch to her voice. As though she was having trouble getting out whatever she’d been about to say.

  Sarai’s brow furrowed. Why would Tiafa be having trouble getting out whatever she’d been about to say? What was going on here? What had gone wrong? Was it that she was stripping?

  Sure it was a little more intense stripping in front of Tiafa now, but it wasn’t like they’d never been down to their skivvies in front of each other before. It didn’t stop Sarai either. She needed to see.

  When she finally pulled off her dress she saw something astonishing. Her body glowed with the same faint green she’d seen in the Ghost Fields. The same faint green light that had surrounded them as those spirits lifted them to safety.

  That green magic ran all over her body in faintly glowing and pulsing tattoos. They seemed to be growing fainter with each passing pulse, timed with her own blood pumping, but they were still there.

  Sarai very nearly passed out. That could have been bad. Falling on this rotted wood was not ideal, but Tiafa was there to catch her.

  Sarai placed a hesitant finger on one of those faint lines. It glowed fitfully, but seemed to increase in power as she touched it. And wherever Tiafa touched her as she caught her felt as though it burned with a bonfire of pleasure.

  She felt lightheaded again. The only thing holding her up was Tiafa’s strong arms. Strong from all the hours she’d spent in the village practice yard over the years learning to fight. Sarai smiled. If anyone could protect her it would be Tiafa. Lovely Tiafa. Strong Tiafa.

  “What happened to me?” Sarai whispered, tears coming to her eyes.

  Admittedly the witch school was close mouthed about what happened once an Initiate joined them, but she’d never heard of something like this happening. She didn’t like that what she was experiencing was out of the ordinary.

  It felt wrong that the magic would single her out. The last thing she needed was to be singled out by the witches and mages at that damned school.

  “I don’t know,” Tiafa said. “I thought the magic was supposed to take you earlier than this, but here it is. And those things… What you did there was more powerful than anything old Sirl ever did.”

  Old Sirl. The village wizard. A man who would come and utter incantations over the crops for good luck, for all the good it did. Sarai had never put much stock in him or his tricks, but now she wondered.

  And she knew the last thing she wanted was to see the old man. Not and risk him knowing her for what she was. Sure it was rumored he’d never even finished his time at the witch school and that was the reason he was a hedge wizard in a village barely clinging to life just outside a ruin, but Sarai couldn’t be sure.

  Even a hedge wizard could recognize some magic, after all. The last thing she needed was to be recognized.

  This all seemed like some great prank the universe was playing on her. She shook her head and the world spun around her as a laughing raven-haired woman appeared in her head. Why was her mind filled with the sudden image of a raven-haired woman laughing over a crib?

  Sarai shook her head to push that image away. She’d never seen that raven-haired woman before in her life.

  Everything about this was impossible. Sarai looked over to Tiafa who bit her lip.

  Oh how Sarai had longed to get that look from Tiafa, but she was biting her lip and looking at her out of fear now.

  She’d never shown interest in her before as more than a friend, certainly not with the heat she’d hoped to capture two nights before they were separated, so she wasn’t sure why she thought it would suddenly happen tonight.

  Given everything else that had happened this night it suddenly seemed like a foolish hope. The magic had taken her and her life as she knew it was over.

  That ending had simply come two days earlier than she was expecting.

  14

  Magic Moment

  Tiafa’s eyes were still as wide as the moons hanging in the skies above. Sarai looked down at the transformation.

  Those magical forces had left Tiafa intact, which made Sarai wonder if they were magical forces that were native to Choikal’s ruins or if she’d been hit by some ancient curse that was after her in particular.

  Then again there were no mages or wizards or witches who seemed to truly understand why the magic took some and not others. Perhaps it was simply her curse to bear.

  The idea that she’d been cursed seemed impossible. It’s not like she’d ever made an enemy of anyone who would be capable of performing magic like this. At least Sarai was pretty sure she’d never annoyed someone who’d be capable of doing something like this.

  The only mage she knew was old Sirl, and he hardly seemed like the type to hold a grudge.

  Again there was that flash of the raven haired woman standing over a crib laughing as though she’d just heard the most incredible joke in the world. Then it was gone and it was back to Sarai standing there wondering what was wrong with her.

  It was as though the Dark Lady herself had come out of the darkness to do something to her. Though that seemed impossible. She was far off fighting wars. She was…

  Sarai was thinking about the Dark Lady and it wasn’t knocking her on her ass. Now that was odd. She’d never been able to think of that woman without losing her balance or falling to the ground before, but it was like the magic taking her was enough to get rid of those dizzy spells for good.

  That worried her even more than anything else that had happened.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” Tiafa asked, still with that odd look in her eyes. “The magic did take you!”

  “It did,” Sarai said.

  Sarai was surprised when she felt arms wrapping around her. That wasn’t something she’d expected either, but then again there wasn’t much of anything expected that seemed to be happening on this night.

  Nothing had gone as planned. Though feeling Tiafa’s hands around her went a long way towards making her feel better about nothing going as planned.

  “It’s going to be okay Sarai,” Tiafa whispered in her ear.

  Tiafa’s voice was so close. Her breath was warm magic more intense than the real magic that’d taken her. Sarai thought she could almost feel Tiafa’s lips coming close to her ear, and she shivered.

  Tiafa seemed to take that shiver to mean that Sarai was afraid, and she wrapped her arms around her even tighter.

  “You don’t need to shiver like that. It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Trust me on this. You’ll simply go to the witch school and they’ll…”

  Panic seized Sarai. She thought about stories she’d heard over the years. Whenever someone got struck by the magic there was one thing that all the stories agreed on: nothing terribly good happened to those poor bastards.

  There might’ve been some ancient time when people who were taken by the magic got to live out their lives with the hundred wishes they were given or the magical talking fish they’d discovered or a harp that provided them with endless contentment or whatever in the burned ruins was promised them, but that wasn’t something that happened in these modern and enlightened times when the magic had been reduced to a science by those dabblers and meddlers at the witch school.

  Which meant if they found out about Sarai, if they discovered her condition and the unusual circumstances that caused it, then Sarai would be as good as guaranteed to be carted off to one of their towers or dungeons where they would poke and prod her to an untimely and unnatural end.

  Sure when the Choice came there were many who were sent off to the school to study, but those were people who’d had the magic come to them when they were young. They were the ones who’d been studying basic magery, as was appropriate, for some time.

  Not like her. This was unasked for. She had no idea what to do. No training. No idea how she was going to escape this
fate.

  She pulled away from Tiafa. Sure on the one hand it was very nice to feel Tiafa pressing against her, but on the other hand the terror of that moment was too much for her to contemplate.

  The thought of being carted off to the witch school not as an Initiate, but as an experiment was beyond horrifying. Everyone had heard stories of what the mages did down in the dungeons beneath the academy. Those stories were very detailed about the horrors that waited down there for anything that caught their attention.

  Some people extended that to not wanting to catch their attention as an Initiate, much less as an experiment, but Sarai would settle for the latter.

  “Oh gods in their high towers,” Sarai said, tears coming to her eyes. “They’re going to find out about this. They’re going to take me off to their towers if I’m lucky and likely their dungeons because I’m not that lucky and they’re going to…”

  A hand on her shoulder brought her back from the dark place her mind was taking her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be brought back to reality considering it was a reality where she was looking at the very real possibility of being dissected.

  Tiafa looked at her with that enigmatic wisp of a smile she always had when she looked at the world. As though she knew something everyone else didn’t.

  It was something that had always drawn Sarai to her, and she found herself more drawn to her friend now than ever.

  To Sarai’s surprise Tiafa got down on her knees in front of her. Gods she looked so beautiful. The light of the moons shining down on her only served to reinforce that beauty.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You can trust me on this. The mages aren’t going to cart you off to do experiments on you in their deep dungeons.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” Sarai asked.

  “I can be sure because…”

  She paused. Turned away from Sarai and looked out over the moon kissed landscape. She was taking much longer than Sarai thought was strictly necessary to gather her thoughts, which could only mean she was working through the realities of this situation in much the same way that Sarai already had.