Urgency gripped her muscles more tightly with each step, insisting she forgo stealth and rush to confront whoever was there. She shoved the idea away, tempting though it was, and focused on the voices themselves.
There had been two, young and male, but because she had heard only two people did not mean there weren’t more. As a Magistrate, especially on College grounds, Ennalen enjoyed immunity from any risk of physical assault, but there existed no guarantee she would be recognized or even believed by all parties upon announcing herself. She could offer a considerable defense magically, and physically if need be, against a single, moderately-skilled attacker, even a pair, perhaps. But fending off more was doubtful, despite the odd impulse to attempt exactly that. So she kept stern focus and inched her way along the path, listening as hard as she could.
“You’re not doing it right.”
“I can see that, but you didn’t do any better, so hush.”
Ennalen stopped moving when she could tell the whisperers were around the next turn. There still had come no third voice; no cough or shuffle of feet to indicate anyone other than the two she had already discerned.
“We’re gonna get caught.”
“Not if you shut up, we won’t. Now hold this.”
“Fine. Hurry up, though.”
“Just grab a few and take them back with us.”
“You know that won’t work. They have to be in the ground.”
In the ground?
Ennalen barged around the leafy divide.
“Hold in the name of the Lord Elder!” she roared.
In the center of that next lane, not ten strides from where Ennalen came to a stop, two young boys jumped up from their knees and stood wearing expressions of pure terror.
One was a full head taller than the other, each was dark-haired, and both wore the dingy robes common to freshmen. Familiar-looking bruises lined the smaller one’s neck and arms. Despite being undernourished—also common to freshmen—and a pallor that gave them each a bluish tinge in the thinning light of early evening, both carried in their eyes the familiar bright fervor of student magicians.
The small one twitched as though to make a run for it, but the taller one grabbed his sleeve and held him in place.
Ennalen approached, aware not only of how perfectly frightened they appeared, but also of how palpable their fright felt. The scent of it enticed her, as well as stoked her anger hotter. All at once she felt like someone wracked with hunger catching the aroma of her most hated dish, or more aptly, like a famished predator smelling the blood of her least favorite prey.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing, Magistrate,” the tall one replied.
“No, nothing,” the other corroborated.
“Whispers about being caught rarely mean ‘nothing’. So I’ll ask one last time. What are the two of you doing here?”
Neither spoke, but they stirred Ennalen’s thoughts to a frenzy with a fresh wave of panic. Her eyes closed of their own accord until the surge ebbed, but she opened them in time to see the smaller boy attempting to conceal an item in his cuff.
“What is that?” she demanded. “Hand that to me.”
The child glanced at his companion, then slumped his shoulders and shuffled toward Ennalen.
“Stop,” she said. He did.
“Drop it there and back away.” The boy obeyed.
When he had withdrawn, Ennalen retrieved the object—a slender wooden tube, highly polished and intricately carved with the images of flowers and vines. She had no need to remove the contents; the warmth from what was inside crawled up her hand the moment she picked it up. But her courtroom training pushed past the roiling of anger, and for nothing more than the sake of showmanship and prolonging the boys’ fright she emptied the tube into her palm.
She unrolled the tiny scroll that fell out.
Sloppily—and very likely, hastily—scribbled on the rough brown paper was a spell of restoration, an incantation used when a magician wished to abort an experiment without sacrificing expensive components or ingredients. The spell undid all progress back to a predetermined point; a sophisticated and dangerous tool neither intended nor appropriate for novices.
Ennalen’s stomach turned at what the spell implied.
“Explain the meaning of this,” she said, teeth clenched. “Right now.”
After some mutual hesitation, the taller boy took an unsteady step forward. “It’s mine, Magistrate. Geral here had nothing to do with it.”
“What’s your name?” Ennalen asked.
“Willam, Magistrate.”
“Willam,” she said. “Do you know how severe the punishments are for using magic beyond one’s station? Stolen magic, at that?”
“Yes, Magistrate.”
“Then tell me why you have this, or you will both suffer each and every one of those punishments.”
Willam hung his head. “Last spring I took a course on botany, as one of my herbamancy electives. Professor Varey had me postulate ways in which one might—”
“Apprentice!” Ennalen shouted, which intensified the vicious pounding in her head. “I do not require a recounting of all that’s happened since the Ever died. I want to know what the two of you were doing here, now, with this!” She shook the fist which held the scroll. “Now speak!”
Willam’s eyes filled with tears; the flesh on his chin rumpled as he fought not to cry.
“He was trying to fix the flowers!” Geral blurted.
Fix the flowers?
“What does that mean?” Ennalen all but shrieked.
Willam flinched at the question, then opened his mouth and let his explanation spill.
“There’s this girl, from outside, from Fraal. I met her, and she told me how much she liked Golden Julias. But you’re not allowed to pick Golden Julias because there just aren’t very many of them. So I tried to grow some, on my own. But that’s really hard to do. So I came up with a charm to make the pollen stronger, so I could grow some in my workshop. But the pollen didn’t work right. It made all the new flowers male, and they only lived a day or so, so I was going to get rid of them. But I left the window open, and some bees got to the ones I picked. And I’ve been trying ever since to trace the pollen I changed, but it’s all over, and not just on the Julias, and if I can’t stop it then all the Julias will die out, and maybe more, and then they’re going to find out it was me, and I’ll be thrown out, and—”
Sobs made the rest of Willam’s words an unintelligent mush. Not that it mattered; fury quaking within Ennalen had deafened her. She threw the scroll and its case to the ground in disgust.
Magic. Loose on the campus. Eating at the landscape. Two thousand years of tradition and painstaking care brought to an end, and by whom? For what? A snot-nosed freshman hoping to get his wick waxed when no one was looking by some young harlot for a handful of pretties.
Ennalen covered her face with her hands and groaned. “Do you realize what you have done?”
Neither of the boys responded.
The same compulsion that drove her to confrontation took Ennalen fully in its grips. Incensed by the utter, obscene stupidity at hand, her arms locked stiff at her sides and she screamed with what even then she knew to be more might than which her body should have been capable.
“Do you realize what you have done?”
“Magistrate,” Geral said, wringing his hands. “We should have never—”
“NO!” Ennalen bellowed. “You most certainly should have never! You should have never been so mindless! You should have never meddled with magic beyond you! You should have never dared use the campus as your personal workshop! You should have never tried to fix what you did not understand! You should have never BEEN HERE AT ALL!”
A tremor as though from the center of the world lurched up through Ennalen. From nowhere a grating squeal like overtaxed metal filled her ears, while a sudden wash of either blistering heat or searing cold scalded her outside and in. And then someone screamed; quite po
ssibly herself.
In the next moment she saw the two boys clutch onto one another in fright.
In the moment after that, she saw them vanish.
The arboretum fell silent.
Ennalen, stunned, looked left, right, up and back, though she knew with immediate certainty that Willam and Geral had not simply run off. As much from her habit for thoroughness as her amazement, she approached where they’d been standing.
Neither the partitions nor grass on either side of the footpath had been disturbed. The boys had not somehow managed to rush past her and flee, nor could they have reached the far end of the darkening corridor in so short a time. No, she had spent years cultivating confidence in her powers of observation, and even in the tumult of that instant, Ennalen had seen quite plainly what had happened.
You should have never been here at all.
And in the blink of an eye, they were not there. At all.
The boys were gone.
A hundred possibilities converged and collided in Ennalen’s mind.
Obviously, the greatest unknown at hand and hence the most feasible explanation behind what had just taken place was her cantle. Some elder magicians studied for decades to perfect the disciplines related to telekinesis and teleportation. While certainly far, far from mastery, she seemed to have achieved a real grasp on that very thing, despite however momentary and inadvertent, after mere weeks of effort.
Where had the boys gone? She smiled broadly at the terror undoubtedly racing through their scrawny frames. That they might relay their story caused her no concern—who would believe them? Also, such a ludicrous tale as young Magistrate Ennalen magically heaving children from the arboretum to gods-knew-where? The reputation she’d garnered would only benefit.
Then her smile fell away.
No, she could not allow giddy jubilation to muddle her affairs. Not now. Rumors of such a feat would certainly be enough to warrant scrutiny. The boys would have be found and dealt with. Which, of course, would fall to Rass, who was due back at her workshop that evening.
Ennalen turned and raced for home, slowing to a walk each time she came in sight of others making their way to wherever they needed to be for the night.
The cold, brittle air of the open campus scoured her cheeks. She drew up her hood, which allowed her to smile again without anyone noticing.
Above, the ashen skies of early winter finally made good on their lingering threat of snow.
21
Niel rubbed his head, then groaned in the darkness as sickening surges of pain throbbed through his forehead, face and shoulders. The spot where he’d been struck hurt so badly he stifled a retch when he touched it.
Deciding it might be best to wait before sitting up, Niel rolled onto his back against the hard wooden floor of—
The fog surrounding his senses thinned a bit.
—of the wagon.
Yes, of course. He’d been placed inside a wagon; even before becoming fully awake he had been aware of movement. He stretched out his arms and patted along his cramped confines, which felt more like a small, enclosed cart than an actual wagon. He became thankful he hadn’t tried sitting up; he likely would have cracked his head on the low ceiling barely an arm’s length above, and even more likely that would have done him in.
Niel realized he heard no creak of turning wheels, and that the swaying in the pit of his stomach suggested being carried. He did his best to banish the notion—the less cognizant of the rocking he became, the better the chances would be of not spending the remainder of his time inside the cart sliding about in his own vomit.
Slats in the ceiling allowed moonlight to slip through, though he could barely make out his hand against the smooth wood. Wherever he was, it wasn’t in the Forest. Satisfied he wouldn’t be escaping on his own—not that he would have known where to go if he did—Niel rolled back onto his side, carefully pillowed his aching head onto his arm, and set himself to piecing together what had happened.
Dread seized him again as he imagined the fate of Arwin and the others; he could be all alone and at the mercy of whoever had taken him prisoner.
He closed his eyes and began a simple meditation. Biddleby always said an elixir of stillness and reason made the best antidote for fear.
And Niel needed as much as he could stir together.
***
He had drifted off again, lightly dreaming of being aboard the Alodis, of his body moving effortlessly with the rhythm of the deck as the ship pitched nimbly through the rolling sea…
But the instant Niel realized he had stopped moving, he became very much awake.
Ignoring the achy protest of his muscles, Niel pushed himself up and placed his ear against the narrow openings at the top of the crate. At first he heard nothing beyond the pounding of his own heart. Then came a few muffled voices and a muted clang of metal, followed by a violent jolt that sent his senses jangling as he and his container crashed to the ground.
His face hit the ceiling, then his back slammed into the unforgiving floor, knocking the wind from him. Colorful sparkles danced behind his eyes.
The lid creaked open on thick wooden hinges then banged against the side of the cart. Cool night air caressed his sweaty face and neck, helping him to catch his breath.
For that small moment, he felt better.
Niel struggled stiffly to his feet. He noticed the Dagger constellation twinkling brilliantly above the nearby trees. Odd, he thought, the details one notices sometimes—the stars, the elegant din of crickets, the smell of wood smoke.
Niel turned around, only to jerk backward at the unexpected nearness of his liberator.
Long, fine dark hair; pale brown eyes that shone fiercely in the glow of the torchlight, and a narrow face of olive complexion covered on one side with rows of angular dark tattoos resembling some sort of script. The person’s features were smooth like a child’s, and he stood no taller than Niel, but the face staring at him was clearly an adult.
An adult Galiiantha.
The ground went wobbly.
“Easy, Apprentice.”
The familiar voice rescued Niel from collapse. Over his shoulder he saw Arwin, hands bound with rope. By the look of him, he put up considerably more of a struggle than Niel had managed. A finger-length cut and shiny, violet-green bruises branded Arwin’s left cheek. Blood crusting his nostrils, mustache, and lips undermined his reassuring smile.
Nonetheless, immeasurably relieved to see him, Niel smiled back.
As his vision adjusted, Niel noticed Cally and Jharal behind Arwin. Cally, too, bore similar signs of resistance, but neither she nor Arwin looked as maltreated as Jharal, who sat atop a crate to Cally’s right, torn and bloodied hands bound like the others. Jharal’s shoulders slumped, his head hung wearily by his knees. Niel couldn’t see his face, but knew the dark wetness on his clothes was not sweat.
Out from the shadows beyond the torches, behind the several stern-faced Galiiantha who stood watching, clamored forth a single rider mounted on what Niel first mistook as the largest horse he had ever seen. When the creature’s great breadth of antlers caught the flickering light, he understood the creature snorting and stomping before him to be a magnificent stag.
Mouth open, Niel watched the savage-looking woman astride the animal yank it to a standstill and vault from its unsaddled back. She landed a hand’s breadth from him, the disgust in her expression beyond doubt.
“Ghesalt,” Niel managed.
Those observing at a distance stirred, rustling like trees in wind. A reproachful glare from the woman silenced them. She cast another sharp look at Arwin and the others, then eyed Niel up and down with contempt.
“They follow you?” she asked with a deep, melodic accent. The words were awkward, but that made them no less hostile.
Niel shook his head and gestured at Arwin. “Actually—”
“—yes,” Arwin interrupted, “we do.” He looked intently at Niel. “I speak for him.”
Niel stood petrified with
disbelief as the woman considered them with suspicion. Why would Arwin make so ridiculous a claim? Anyone with eyes, Galiiantha or not, could see he was no leader.
“After,” she said, glaring at Niel. “Now, you come.”
She made a bird-like warble in her throat, and two men appeared from the shadows. Each grabbed Niel by an arm, and three more Galiiantha strode forward. They turned to lead him away, following behind the woman.
“Hey…”
The small procession stopped as Jharal labored to his feet. Niel repressed a grin when Jharal’s guards each took a step backward.
“Harm that boy,” the huge man said, voice like gravel, “and it will be the end of you.”
The woman at the lead cocked her head.
“Jhar,” Cally whispered, “I don’t think she understands.”
Jharal didn’t blink as he scowled at the Galiiantha. “She understands me fine,” he said, a cruel smile spreading. “Don’t you?”
An impassive expression was the woman’s only reply. She motioned for the two holding Niel to continue behind her, and they marched into the darkness.
***
The night swallowed them, robbing Niel of any sense of direction or distance. He barely remained on his own feet, having to lean on one escort or the other to keep himself upright. At least the pain in his skull had subsided.
He damned Peck for leaving him in the tunnel, then damned him even more for putting in his head the asinine-yet-abiding notion of the Galiiantha’s fondness for human flesh.
None of the Galiiantha spoke. The surrounding woods seemed equally soundless, save for the scuffle of Niel’s boots as he tripped along. He wanted to know what would be done with his companions, and about the one who had attacked him in the tunnels, but quelled the urge to ask anything—he’d learned his lesson about being the first to ruin a silence, which made him damn Peck yet again.
After what felt like hours the woman in charge whispered a command and the others came to an obedient halt. Then, she lifted her face and sang out into the night.
Like a waterfall of stars pouring through a rip in the sky, distant points of light high above winked into place and seemed to rain to the ground. When the glowing specks reached the forest floor, enough of the blue-white light had gathered for Niel to recognize that before him towered an entire city—a city in the trees.
A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1) Page 16
