by T. A. Miles
Korsten sighed and pushed his hand through his curls. “I’m not feeling particularly imaginative. Will Onyx do?”
“Onyx?” Tarin echoed, as if tasting the word. And then he grinned, patting the young horse between the ears. “That’s a brilliant name. It’s perfect.”
“Better than Erschal, anyway,” Korsten mumbled, glancing at Merran.
“My sister once gave a pup that name,” the blue-eyed mage replied, evidently finding no humor in the remark made by his friend.
Korsten knew in that moment that he’d done something thoughtless, yet again, by opening his mouth. He apologized and felt worse for it when Merran wandered away, toward a different stall. Tarin pretended not to notice and Korsten eventually excused himself from the stable master’s presence after thanking him for the introduction to Onyx.
He found Merran in the presence of the white beast Erschal; a large horse named after a small dog that was named by someone who must have meant a great deal to Merran. His sister would have died centuries ago, and the pain still hadn’t left him. “You were close,” Korsten guessed, speaking softly. “You and your family.”
“We were,” Merran replied. His voice sounded distant, shielded.
“You know I didn’t mean….”
“I know.” Merran abandoned Ershcal’s stall and stalked to the open stable doors, leaning against them while he gazed at the sky, granting it more blue than it had a right to.
Korsten joined him, and started to babble, as if that would erase the awkwardness he’d created. “My sisters and I weren’t close. For that matter, I didn’t share a very strong bond with anyone in my family. My mother was actually pleased to have me, though. I was born nine years after my youngest sister and not having a very small child to pamper was a bit too much for her. She wasn’t really interested in having a son, even to please my father and satisfy the matter of an heir, but it all worked out well enough.” He smiled a little when Merran glanced at him. “By the time I was ten, both of my parents were convinced that they’d had another daughter.”
Merran laughed, inspiring Korsten to do the same. Then the elder mage caught his friend by the wrist and drew him into his space. They sat down together just outside the stables and simply talked for a very long time.
“Is it possible for a gift to Emerge without someone knowing right away that it did?” Korsten asked as he lay in Merran’s arms, after a mutual decision to revisit the circumstances that had begun separating Korsten from the most unreasonable of his misery, and that had simultaneously inspired their deeper friendship, something Korsten knew clearly that he did not resent and that he could not feel guilty for. His overheated skin tingled in the cool night air drifting in through the open balcony and he reveled in the fact that he quite simply felt good.
In response to his question, Merran said, “I would have thought no before you asked.” He lifted himself up just a little after having spent several blissful moments nuzzling Korsten’s neck, his mind again beginning its inexorable generation of logic. “Do you believe one of your dormant talents has come forward?”
“Not mine. In Haddowyn, when I was once again on the verge of hysterics, you touched my hand and I calmed down instantly.”
“Hysterics?” Merran echoed. “You were scared, and had a right to be.”
“You’re never scared.”
“I’m not?”
Korsten smiled up at him helplessly. “You do have a flair for mystery, my dear friend. Do you know that?”
Merran lowered once again and kissed him very softly on the lips.
“We were talking about talents,” Korsten reminded when they separated. “And while you have many, I believe my question pertained to an Emergent gift.”
“Emerging without the individual knowing,” Merran finished. “Yes, I recall. And in answer to your question, I invoked a Sleep spell. It had nothing to do with Empathy.”
“Far be it for me to contradict someone with Reasoning as his Ambience, but Sleep makes the subject of the spell drowsy or renders them flat unconscious. I may have passed out, but just before I did, I remember feeling suddenly at ease … like I am now.” Korsten grinned slyly. “Well, perhaps not quite like I am now.”
Merran avoided any embarrassment that might have caused, his brow furrowing as he began to seriously ponder the matter Korsten had brought up. “Well, I’ve never known of a gift to Emerge and then return to a dormant state. And until our first night together, Empathy was dormant in me. My life-mentor and yours would have known otherwise. Mage-Superiors can read into others and determine such things.”
Korsten offered a slight shrug. “So maybe it did. Emerge and resume dormancy, I mean.”
“If that were true, it would make me think that you were the catalyst for that Emergence, rather than time.”
“What if I was?” Korsten wondered aloud. “Could my own burgeoning magic have triggered yours?”
Merran sighed, and then smiled. “You’re not going to sleep until you’ve figured this out, are you?”
Korsten drew his friend down. He closed his mouth slowly upon Merran’s chin, pulling away in even less of a hurry. Then, in his most enticing voice, he said, “Would you care to stay up a little longer and conduct an experiment with me?”
Merran’s answer was not given in words.
Morning came. Korsten rose, robed himself in guilt the moment he was out of Merran’s embrace, then took his time bathing before donning his white cassock. He pulled his red curls back and secured them, and planted himself on the balustrade rimming his bedroom. When he looked at himself in the mirror he had noted that the blood lilies were changing him. Not so greatly as Ashwin, but given a few hundred years, perhaps he would find himself layered in so much glamour that not even his dear mother would have recognized him. He imagined his female admirers of the past would transform from admiring to envious if they were to look upon him, even more effeminate than he ever was, than he ever dared to be.
He’d always attracted the wrong men before. The kind of men who probably preferred women, but who found themselves intrigued or maybe just tempted by someone like Korsten. Firard wasn’t the first masculine man to be interested in Sethaniel Brierly’s exceptionally unmanly son. He was simply the first whose interest Korsten was inclined to return. A young man fostered by Korsten’s father, infamous for starting and finishing a number of fights among the other young men, had tried to befriend Korsten when he was barely twelve. Korsten stayed away from him because he smiled at him too much, too gently, and because a great many of the scrapes the older boy got into stemmed from defending the target of the others’ abuses. Years later, Korsten was able to decipher that gentle smile and it hadn’t made it any easier to deal with Firard.
And then there was Renmyr; tall, strong, lordly, bullheaded … He gave no hints as to his preferences being directed anywhere other than toward the opposite sex. Korsten admired him a great deal, of course, but he had never dreamed Renmyr would or even could return that admiration and he was quite taken off guard when he finally did. Merran, on the other hand, may not have been a cocky, ale-guzzling nobleman, but he was a far cry from the sympathetic potential lover Korsten might have expected to find, had he ever gone looking. After Firard and before Renmyr, Korsten dared to dream of a man like Ashwin, ironically. Someone beautiful and elegant, but still strong and confident. Someone kind and patient, who could offer gentle guidance and endless support to someone as needy as Korsten had always been when it came to relationships.
I think that I could love you, my mentor. Very much. That’s why I have to keep my distance. Renmyr, even if it’s only in memory, will always be my heart’s dearest, no matter how much I may want to love someone else. I would only be hurting myself and opening myself up to still more pain if I actually did fall in love, just like Sharlotte.
Korsten’s gaze wandered into his bedroom and to his bed. A small smile lif
ted the corners of his lips just a little as he studied the figure tangled in his bedding. Merran’s different. He doesn’t love me in that way nor does he claim to. And I am not in love with him. Yes, there is an attraction, but I think it’s a fairly helpless one on Merran’s part. Even if I hadn’t been cursed with my mother’s abundant grace, now made more abundant with each drop of Essence taken from the lilies, I seduced him. And I used magic to do it. It’s as simple as that. And now, like the spell-touch Ashwin used on me, the effect lingers. Merran’s not truly opposed to the circumstances, but I don’t think he quite realizes what he’s gotten himself into. Perhaps he only knows that he doesn’t feel as alone as he once did. He’s a little like me in that aspect; closing himself off from others when he’s unhappy. Maybe that’s partly why we were not friends at first, and now we are. We didn’t want to face ourselves reflected in the other, even if it wasn’t quite a mirror image. By now we’ve come to understand each other and, slowly, we’re working at understanding ourselves.
“That’s the only way I can justify it, Analee,” Korsten said to the red butterfly perched on his upraised knee too lightly to be felt. And then he fell once again into silent rumination.
Several minutes later a voice rose from within the room. “Did it work?”
Korsten returned his gaze to his friend, who was propped up handsomely on his elbow, his dark hair hanging in his face a bit and half of him draped in bedding. “My experiment?” Korsten said with a vague, admiring smile. He shook his head slightly. “No.”
“What were you hoping to accomplish?” Merran asked, raking one hand slowly through his hair, fully revealing his vivid blue eyes, perhaps not intentionally. Korsten didn’t imagine that his fellow mage had any idea how rakish and desirable he appeared just at that moment. He moved like he spoke, when he wasn’t in a mood for being mysterious; charmingly frank and unaware.
Korsten couldn’t help but to tease just a little. “Well, I won’t say that I’m completely displeased with the results of our activities, but I was hoping to induce Ambience, in myself.”
“By seducing me?” Merran guessed, sitting up a little more. “I was already willing. You didn’t have to work enough at enticing me to stay.”
“You speak as if it would have succeeded otherwise.”
“I speak as if I am still half asleep,” the other mage replied, and he lowered his face into his hand.
For a cruel instant, Korsten was reminded of Renmyr, of the way he had often behaved in the morning after a night spent at his friend’s house … in his bed. Korsten pulled his gaze away, just as his eyes stung with moisture. “Thank you, Merran, for staying with me another night,” he eventually said.
“I suppose the polite thing for a guest to say would be thank you for having me,” Merran replied, and Korsten heard the sheets rustling as the other mage climbed at last out of bed.
Korsten decided not to watch him dress. Gazing across the roofs of Vassenleigh from his comfortable vantage upon the balcony, he drew in a long breath of morning air and let it out slowly. He began thinking of what a peculiar place the Seminary was. Peculiar … and beginning to feel very much like home.
Onyx indeed grew to be a handsome and spirited creature. Spirited, but smart enough to somehow know the difference between good behavior and bad and vain enough to recognize how unattractive bad behavior was, even in an animal. For those reasons, Korsten had relatively little trouble establishing a comfortable relationship with the steed. Riding him quickly became a pleasant escape from days when studying or training, both physical and magical, wasn’t enough to keep his mind off Haddowyn and Renmyr. Perhaps it was abnormal of him to be so stuck on a relationship that had evidently failed and on an individual who had strayed so far from his reach, both physically and emotionally. However, abnormal or not, Renmyr could never stray too far from his heart. Korsten still loved him. Some nights, when he was alone, he still wept for him, and every day he renewed his vow to save Renmyr from the evil that gripped him. He believed that he would be able to one day, and it was that belief and that determination which made him one of Mage-Superior Ashwin’s better students. Since his careless return to Haddowyn, Korsten had given all of himself to his training, and mastered four of his spells. It had come to the point where he scarcely had to think about the one he wished to perform. It was habit at least—if not reflex—to invoke an incantation and to bring about the precise effect he’d intended with ritual gesticulation and the merest bit of will.
Yes, by now he had a knack for magic … and no sense of time. Months passed him by as if a matter of days. Seasons rolled over him with no more effect than the motion of clouds across a calm summer sky. He looked no different and, barring the magic growing within him, consistently gaining in strength, he felt remarkably unchanged.
So this is immortality? A state of limbo.
Korsten reined Onyx to a halt on a slight hill outside of Vassenleigh and looked upon the town from a distance, admiring the graceful stone architecture of the Seminary, towering over it, embracing it, as if a winged mother shielding her children from the forthcoming storm. Korsten could see the moisture in the gray clouds creeping along the horizon. He stared at the misty drapes it formed in the distance and thought that he could smell the rain they represented. He felt a tingle inside him, just beneath his skin, telling him that the rains would be heavy, but the winds weak. As an environmental empath, he’d all but learned how to predict the weather a week in advance. That, of course, could never be achieved. All any empath with his focus along the Spectrum could do was sense the conditions and changes in the air. Perhaps he could guess, based on those conditions, but that would be all it ever was; a guess. Maybe, if combined with the right level of Foresight…. The thought put a vague smile on Korsten’s face, one that broadened as the inspiration for that thought drew nearer. Watching Merran approach, the expression faded. Korsten had settled into a state of resignation, that he could feel constantly. The same unhappy condition he’d arrived in clung to him yet, but he had learned to suppress urges to weep that had in the past been urges to break down and beg the gods to take him from this world and spare him the suffering that was life without Renmyr. He resisted by recalling his hope, the daily and sometimes hourly renewal of his faith that magic would one day reunite him with Renmyr, just as it had torn them apart. The deep wounds they had acquired in the separation would be healed with the reunion.
That is my faith, Ren. That is my dream … and I have Merran to thank for it. I never want to think about what might have become of me if he had not taken me away from Haddowyn, away from you, in your time of madness … and helplessness.
The black-clad mage arrived upon his handsome white beast and positioned himself to share Korsten’s view of the weather bearing down on Vassenleigh.
“Has something come up?” Korsten inquired, aware that his voice had become habitually calmer in the time that he’d spent here, under strange circumstances he’d come to embrace as diligently as one embraces a child or a lover who was unwell, requiring a soothing tone to keep the fear at bay.
“A request has been made,” Merran informed. “You’re wanted before the Council.”
“Gods, what have I done now?” Korsten sighed.
Merran looked at him, resisting a smile. “You’ve earned field status.”
“I don’t know anything about farming.”
“Not surprising, with hands as soft as yours happen to be,” Merran stated in a tone that required Korsten to frown on principle. Smiling just a little now, his fellow mage added, “You’re about to be given your first assignment.”
Korsten did not enter the Council Chamber alone. Merran accompanied him and joined him at the center of the floor while the twelve Mage-Superiors assumed their places around them. Korsten’s dark eyes sought Ashwin, who met his gaze and offered a subtle smile of reassurance. Ashwin believed he was ready for this. In spite of the eagerness to learn tha
t had been with him from the start and the resignation to duty he’d begun to feel more recently, Korsten was still not so sure.
“Korsten,” Mage-Superior Jeselle began, commanding his complete attention. Her silver eyes were as severe and scrutinizing as ever. “You have attained full, practicing mage status, through dedicated training, intellectual, physical, and magical. You have four gifts at Resonance, all of which have been so for a period of twenty-nine years.”
Twenty-nine? Has it been so long? I should be an old man. My nieces and nephews’ children should have had children by now.
Before the thoughts could evolve beyond that, Mage-Superior Eisleth was speaking. “It is not routine to promote one so fledgling to Adept status, particularly without an Ambient gift, but there are no other options remaining to us. We have spread ourselves too thin and not been able to sufficiently replenish our numbers since the attack on the Seminary many years ago.”
Korsten glanced to Eisleth, noticing the darker version of Ashwin look at his blond counterpart and noticing that Ashwin reacted with a flash of pain in his green eyes. He was still not over it. He still blamed himself, and apparently others blamed him as well.
“Your talents are remarkably strong,” Eisleth continued and Korsten looked at him again. “And remarkably manageable. You have been able to channel them skillfully and consciously and have therefore mastered more spells than one of your years should even have begun to learn. You currently have four unique spells at your disposal, along with adequate universal spell abilities, and a skill at swordplay that is unsurpassed. As well, you have shown an astounding ability to recover from emotional traumas that might otherwise have impaired you for many years. For these reasons and on the recommendation of your life-mentor, you will be promoted to Mage-Adept as of this hour.”
Korsten inclined his head respectfully to the entire Council.
Mage-Superior Ceth came forward on his willowy legs, looking no more than thirty, though he, like Ashwin and others on the Council, was well over one thousand. He moved like a heron, a graceful deliberation to each step, and held out his hand when he reached Korsten, revealing a tiny sphere of what appeared silver. “Hold out your right hand,” the man instructed.
