Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “Someday, I suppose,” Alfonze said with a frown. “When I’m too old. I’d like to be captain of my own ship someday. That takes not just experience, it takes money, and I’ll need to save.” Captain Reed was part owner of the Lady Hildegard; the ship was named after his mother. “Or have someone stake me the coins. That’s not likely to happen with the war on, and commerce so bad.” He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “If business doesn’t pick up, some of us might find ourselves back on land, whether we intend to or not. Or, taking service in the Navy.” Tarador’s Royal Navy had been neglected in recent years, as the demands of the army on the realm’s finances drained funds away from the sea service. The Royal Navy was frantically rebuilding, but it would be several years before it reached adequate strength.

  “Would you do that?” Koren asked anxiously. He would hate to see Alfonze leave, but Koren himself could never risk daily contact with Tarador’s military. Surely the navy had orders to look for Koren Bladewell, and he had heard that navy ships often transported army soldiers. No, Koren would steer well clear of Tarador’s navy.

  “Not unless I had to. It’s a hard life in the navy, and pay is poor. I’d do it, if I had no other option. Or, if I thought my signing up would make a difference in the war, I guess.” Despite his earlier disdain for the long-running war between Tarador and Acedor, Alfonze had more recently expressed concern when news arrived that the war was not going well for Acedor. If Tarador were to fall, Alfonze fretted, then not even the distant South Isles would be safe from the enemy. “As it is, their navy is so weak, nothing much they do can matter in the war. They can’t even keep pirates away from their own coast.” Word had reached Antigura that pirates were preying on ships in the coastal waters off Tarador; that pirates had been seen taking ships in broad daylight, within view of the coastline. Cargo that once would have traveled by ship along Tarador’s coast now had to go by wagon on slow roads inland, and that had strangled commerce. The decline in shipping had reduced the targets available to pirate, but Alfonze remarked the pirates did not much care; they were paid by Acedor to disrupt seagoing commerce, and any ships they captured were merely a bonus. The pirates needed slaves to row their ships more than they needed booty for their crew to waste; many pirate captains and officers were under magical compulsion and had no desire for anything other than destruction on behalf of their dark master. Alfonze looked up at the sails, which were beginning to flap as the breeze slackened. “I don’t trust this wind to continue,” Alfonze observed sourly, “we’ve had too much good luck with the weather on this trip. It’s time for the weather to turn on us.”

  Fergus the blacksmith inspected the work of his helper, and grunted. “That’s good. Strong, Not fine, but plenty strong.”

  “I told you,” Bjorn said, “I’ve done field smithing before. Repairing parts of wagon, shield, armor. Just enough to hold things together until we could get to a real blacksmith.”

  “You have potential. Have you considered becoming a smith? You might be able to learn, after a while.” Fergus held back the true measure of praise, not wanting Bjorn to know his true value. Fergus was hoping to sign the man as a full apprentice, and to do it for cheap.

  “No, I haven’t. I’m not staying here. Thank you, but I’ve regained much of my strength, and you pay fairly, so I have coins in my pocket. In another fortnight, perhaps a month, I’ll be moving on.”

  “To do what?” Fergus was curious. The broken down, shaking man who had approached him was now strong, and had shown no sign of touching drinks such as whiskey. From what Fergus could tell, Bjorn had not spent a single coin of his pay, content to sleep in the shed behind the shop, and to eat the food cooked by Fergus’ wife.

  “I was a king’s guard,” Bjorn explained. He had told Fergus that before, but the blacksmith likely had not believed him at the time. “Then I became lost, for a while. I lost myself in drink, and I lost my family. I’d like to see them again. My wife has remarried, I’m told, but I’d like my children to see me as I once was. Before weakness and drink took everything away from me.”

  The blacksmith’s helper was so sincere in his words, so hurt, that Fergus only nodded. It would do no good to try asking Bjorn to stay; he needed to go. He needed to find something that he had lost. Fergus had two children; both two young to help in the shop, but he reflected how he would feel if his own children could not look at him with respect. Fergus could not bear that. “A fortnight? We’d best get this order done before then, eh?”

  Ariana’s mother insisted the princess depart for the summer palace as soon as possible, so all Kallron’s efforts to delay the journey came to nothing. Twelve days after the Regent announced the crown princess would be leaving Linden, the carriages were ready, and Ariana glumly went out through the west gate of the castle. The journey to the summer palace was not long; only three days traveling by swift carriage. While at first Ariana fumed at being away from Linden, and mostly fuming at her mother having outmaneuvered her, Ariana decided to force herself to enjoy being at the summer palace. She owed it to her servants and guards, who had all worked very hard to prepare for the journey and had all been tremendously inconvenienced, to put on a smile and pretend that the whole affair was a delightful holiday. She did enjoy the summer palace, perched high on a hill to the northwest of Linden. As a little girl, she remembered many wonderful summers there, when her family escaped the heat of the city. And gained a respite from the constant demand of courtiers, foreign dignitaries, envoys from the seven provinces, and everyone else who demanded the precious time and attention of the royal family.

  Then, after her father had died, she had only been to the summer palace three times, as her mother feared to be away from Linden. Feared not only for the safety of her daughter and herself; Carlana also feared those who might be tempted to seize power in Linden during the Regent’s absence. As the royal carriage wound its way up the long driveway toward the summer palace, Ariana hung out the window, letting the warm breeze caress her face. In days past, she remembered the drive being lined with flower on both sides; now it was mostly low-growing bushes and wildflowers. With the royal family not in residence, the summer palace had been neglected. And, Ariana considered, the increasing financial demands of defending Tarador had likely caused her mother to cut the budget for permanent staff at the summer palace.

  When the carriage went around a curve in the drive, the palace came into view. Being set atop the hill allowed for cooling breezes to blow through the building, a welcome respite from the still, hot summer air in Linden. Ariana could see servants, even guards, working to remove weeds from the flowerbeds and plant new flowers from the gardens. Ariana smiled. Gardening was something she could do to keep herself busy, and take her mind off the fact that she had effectively been banished from her own palace. Until Kallron found a way for her to assume power, Ariana had to swallow the fact that she would have to suffer enforced idleness at the summer palace, far from the seat of power.

  She turned to look at the carriage behind her, where the young wizard Olivia Dupres was also hanging out the window. Having Olivia along would make the summer so much better for Ariana. In many ways, Ariana envied the young wizard, and not only envied her magical power. Olivia had power of her own; power and respect and a future of unlimited prospects. Ariana’s prospects were vast but narrow, constructed by the role of the monarch. Ariana envied that freedom.

  She also envied that Olivia knew what it was like to be a wizard. When Ariana allowed herself to daydream about Koren Bladewell, she often thought of how wonderful it would be for Koren to learn about his own magical powers. Ariana could share his joy, but she could never truly understand it. She could never share that part of Koren’s life with him; his power would always be a barrier between them,

  Perhaps Paedris was right when he cautioned Ariana not to dream too seriously of a life with Koren Bladewell. Wizards were different, that was the truth of it. Relationships between wizards and ordinary people rarely worked. And Ariana had crush
ing responsibilities of her own to occupy all of her attention.

  As she considered the reality that Koren would be a powerful wizard able to go and do as he wished, and she would be trapped by crown and throne, her smile faded. Behind her, Olivia caught her eye and waved with pure delight, pointing to a cluster of butterflies on the wildflowers that lined the drive. Ariana forced a smile back on her face and waved back. She would make the best of her enforced exile from Linden, and she would not be a burden to the servants and guards who had no choice but to join her. She did not, however, expect to be truly happy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Four days after arriving at the summer palace, with life having already settled into a routine, Ariana decided that an outing to the lake would be a nice change of scene, to break her out of her developing dark mood. Although she had done her best effort to smile and enjoy being in the hills, most, people could see that she was deeply unhappy. Even Olivia doing magical ‘tricks’ had failed to cheer up Ariana.

  Lord Feany was all in favor of an outing to the lake. He was certain there were many fat fish waiting to be caught in those pristine waters; indeed he had been talking about the lake since they arrived. Shomas Feany had been enjoying the hard work of the summer palace kitchen staff, so much so that he had not yet found time to continue Olivia’s instruction on wizardry. Gustov Kallron declined the invitation to join the outing; he was much engrossed in studying the ancient law books from the royal library, and much discouraged by what he had found so far.

  On the ride down to the lake, Olivia rode her horse next to Shomas. “Sir, could you help me to work with fireballs? I can’t keep them stable, they go fuzzy and disappear,” she added, her face red. ‘Fuzzy?’ That was not the way a wizard should speak. “Lord Salva was teaching me, and then he got too busy, and, I haven’t been making progress.”

  Shomas tried not to be insulted; the young wizard was not aware that Shomas could barely create a fireball, about which he was still embarrassed. “Creating an impressive fireball is not the true mark of wizard,” he said defensively. “There are powers far greater than playing with tricks to impress the common folk, Olivia.” That came out more grumpy than he intended. “Show me what you can do. Be careful, don’t hurt anyone.”

  “I will be careful, sir.” She let go of the reins so she could concentrate, the road was fairly wide and flat, and her horse gentle. With her right hand, she made a flame flicker, and tried to follow Lord Salva’s direction to make it spin, and feeding power into it. Her connection to the power was tenuous, and kept slipping from her grasp.

  “That is quite good,” Shomas was impressed. At her age, she was already more powerful than he was, in that arcane art of pulling raw power from the spirit world. “It looks like you are doing very well.”

  Olivia took the praise with a dose of frustration. Knowing that she was not using approved technique, she used the fingers of her left hand to draw the flame higher, and the fireball surged to the size of a small apple. It held stable, increasing in brightness. Then her concentration slipped when her horse stumbled, and the flame winked out.

  Shomas was so startled, he nearly fell off his horse, having to hold onto the horse’s mane with both hands. The animal only looked back at him briefly, being used to the sometimes clumsiness of its master. “What?” He exclaimed. “What did you do there?”

  Olivia’s face reddened again. “Oh, sir, I know it is not the way I should be doing it, I’m developing bad habits. But I grow so frustrated,” she shook her fists in the air, “when I can’t make it work the proper way.”

  “No! No, don’t be ashamed. Girl, that is brilliant! Where did you learn that?” He had never seen that technique used before. He had never read about it, in all the hundreds of books and scrolls on wizardry that he had studied over many years. Had Paedris been withholding important knowledge from him? He could not believe it.

  “Nobody taught it to me, sir. I, I figured it out. I tried it one time, and it worked. Only a little at first. After I kept doing it, trying different things, it worked.”

  “Do it again, please,” Shomas pleaded, astonished.

  This time, Olivia got the fireball spinning right from the start. “I kind of reach into it, like this,” she demonstrated, “and you pull up. Stretching it, kind of,” she struggled to explain what she herself did not understand. “When you stretch it out, it, sort of, pulls more power into it?” She shrugged. “I don’t know how it works.”

  Fearing that he would appear weak, Shomas screwed up his courage and opened a hand. A flame then glimmered, barely holding its form. With his other hand, he reached toward the flame, concentrating on stretching it as Olivia had told him. It worked! He was startled again when the flame surged into a ball of fire the size of his fist, and he yelped in fear before the fire could singe his eyebrows. The flame snapped out of existence as quickly as it had appeared. “Miss Dupres,” Shomas said, shaken. “You discovered this yourself?”

  “I know I’m not supposed to-”

  “No! No, you didn’t do anything wrong not anything wrong at all, child,” Shomas reassured her. “It is remarkable that you discovered this by yourself! Yes, it can be dangerous to experiment with magic, but,” he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “For everything we have learned about how to use magic, there was a wizard who tried something new. You have seen the experiments Paedris conducts in his laboratory?”

  “Yes,” Olivia stuck out her tongue. “I’m always cleaning up afterwards. Last week, he nearly burned a hole in the floor. If we hadn’t stopped it, I think it would have burned all the way down into the ground beneath the tower.”

  “See? Most of Lord Salva’s experiments are from old books of wizardry; he is trying to figure out how spells work, or to improve on them. This!” He created another fireball, teasing it upward with his fingers. Shomas laughed in delight as he soon had a very respectable fireball perfectly controlled. How many years had he tried and failed to create anything more than a pitiful flicker of a flame? “This is remarkable! Brilliant! Oh, I can’t wait until you show this to Paedris.”

  When they reached the lake, it was time for lunch, then Shomas sat under a tree with Olivia and taught her healing techniques. Healing was one of the most difficult magics for a wizard to learn; many never mastered it. The trick was to control the flow of power from the spirit world, and direct it to where it could be used by the body of the injured person or animal to promote healing. Or used destructively to burn out an infection. Too much power, even if intended for healing, could harm or even kill. Most importantly, a wizard needed to understand how to feel what was wrong inside the body of the subject. That was what Shomas helped Olivia with, working on his own horse. The animal was used to wizardry; even clumsy, inexperienced wizardry. It bore Olivia’s unskilled attempts to feel the energy flowing within the horse, although it expected to be rewarded with treats constantly, to the point where Olivia ate very little of her own lunch! She ate a roast chicken leg, but the apple tart, the bread and the honeycake all went into the horse’s mouth. And still the animal nuzzled her hair, seeking more. “That’s all I have,” Olivia laughed, as the horse’s insistent actions knocked her from sitting to rolling on the grass. “You greedy animal!” She held onto the horse’s mane to pull herself up.

  “Oh, yes,” Shomas patted his horse affectionately, “he will eat everything you can give him, and more. That is enough for now,” he cautioned. “You should rest.” He looked along the lake shore to a cliff, where the princess and most of the party were taking lunch under the shade of a gazebo. “Let’s go see what else our princess has to offer in the way of food,” he looked at his empty plate. Too much of his own lunch was also now inside the horse. “And then, time for me to try fishing!” He clapped his hands. “That is enough wizardry for today. We will have to walk up that blasted hill. Well, there’s nothing to it, then.”

  By the time Shomas got up the hill to the gazebo, he needed a rest. A cool drink and a seat under the sha
de of the gazebo refreshed him enough that he was able to eat a proper lunch, and Olivia also was able to enjoy lunch without having to feed most of the food to a horse. The horses were gathered on the far side of the field, contentedly munching the tall grass.

  When his hunger was temporarily sated, Shomas sat back and talked with Olivia about the fundamentals of magic, all thoughts of catching fish that afternoon forgotten. He concentrated on helping the young wizard to feel her connection to the spirit world, and the two were so engrossed in conversation that Shomas didn’t realize the sun had moved so he was no longer in the shade. “Ooh, I am thirsty,” Lord Feany announced, and looked around. Most of the outing party was relaxing, even the dozen guards were sitting on the ground, taking a respite. The princess was relaxing in the sunshine, reading something, and she did not appear to be happy. Her brow was furrowed, she was muttering something to herself, and when a servant offered her a cool drink, she waved the man away in irritation. She tossed the book aside and left the gazebo to walk along the cliff, looking down at the lake.

  “Our princess came to this beautiful lake, on this beautiful day,” Shomas observed, “and she is not happy. She is far too serious for her age,” he said, completely oblivious that he was speaking to a young wizard who had been studying intensely since she was a little girl. “We should do something to,” he looked around, then clapped his hands softly. “Olivia, I will show you something.”

  Across the field, near the horses, butterflies flitted about wildflowers. Shomas intended to bring the butterflies up to the clifftop to fly around the princess. That might improve the young woman’s mood, and demonstrate to Olivia a type of magic that she had not been taught yet.