by Damien Lake
With dagger eyes, Kineta pressed, “Out with it!”
“I’m not sure if it’s even useful, that’s all. But…” He explained in quick order, passing it off as inconsequential that the court enclave had happened to send him a mirror to communicate with.
Sergeant Kineta grew thoughtful rather than angry, as Marik had feared. “As I understand, you say that you can use this mirror to see what you need to, like…like looking through a window at the street outside?”
“In a way, but it’s complicated.”
“Show me the lieutenant and the other half of the squad.” She stepped closer to Marik.
“See, that’s what I mean. I can’t scrye anything I feel like. It’s a difficult piece of work in the first place.”
Her irritation returned full force. “I am aware you are only half a mage, but have you ever tried?”
“Yes, actually I have.”
The sergeant’s anger grew. “If magic users can actually see whatever they want, then why in the lowest hell didn’t the court’s mages warn us about these beast-monsters! They ravaged all of Tullainia before they crossed the mountains, and you mages thought it wasn’t important information?”
Fraser, Marik reflected bitterly, would have called down anyone shouting at one of his men like that. Sloan stood watching, neither interested nor disinterested.
Marik measured his words carefully. “Scrying is not so simple, sergeant. If it were, then no kingdom’s armies would ever be able to gain the upper hand, right?” Kineta’s spine stiffened, her outrage still burning hotly. Pressing on, Marik continued by saying, “I’m not very good at it, but I’ve studied how scrying works. The strongest mage who ever lived can’t scrye at random. I need an object…connected to whatever I wanted to see, to be able to scrye it.”
“What in the ninth hell is that supposed to mean?” Her cold tone was only matched by the icy glare from Colbey, though the scout also seemed faintly curious at the same time. “Say it plain so us ‘common serfs’ can figure it out!”
A low, angry ember sparked in Marik, a pallid glow beside Kineta’s raging frustrations. It was enough to make his response curt. He had never wanted to be anything except a swordsman and hated his mage gift as much as Kineta did being squeezed in this vice. “In order to scrye…meaning to call someone’s or something’s image in the mirror…I need a catalyst connected to my target that can be used to teach the mirror what I am looking for. It’s like rubbing a scent under a bloodhound’s nose so he understands what you want him to track. If I wanted to see the commander, I’d need a lock of his hair to connect the mirror to him. Without a catalyst, it’s only good for shaving in the morning.” The sergeant still glared, so Marik added with emphasis, “I can’t go poking around in the king’s bed chamber to watch him and the queen make the next heir-royal just because I felt bored!”
“So you say,” Kineta shot back. “And you have this woman’s scalp tucked away behind your belt, have you?”
“She only sent me the mirror.”
“Then by your own explanations, this mirror talking is not a viable option. Stop wasting our time with this nonsense!”
“This,” Marik asserted by stepping off his boulder to face her, angry at the accusation, “is not a simple matter! She sent me this particular mirror because I wouldn’t need her hair or blood to produce the affinity the working requires! She says this mirror has been used to link with her own before, and that makes it naturally want to find hers first before all else! The way water will flow through a dried streambed when the winter snows start melting, rather than cutting a brand new channel.”
“Let’s say I buy into this,” Kineta supposed. “As a practical question, what good would it do us?” She glanced at Sloan. “We are here. They are there. Thoenar is a long piss further off than the outpost, or the nearest division. I hardly need to hear one of Raymond’s pet witches tell me it’s either shit or go blind!”
“We don’t know what she might say,” Sloan spoke up, “unless we talk to her. We can’t move until nightfall at the earliest, and the men need to rest.” He redirected his attention to Marik. “Play around with it, but come dark we’re moving unless you have a good reason not to. The longer the invaders hold what land they’ve taken, the less our chances of passing through unnoticed.”
Sergeant Kineta clearly wallowed in a quandary. She was uncertain what she should do. Sloan had pointed out that they still had time left to them though, and she left to find an unclaimed rock to rest on while she stewed.
Colbey, never one who apparently needed rest, departed to continue scouting the enemies. He had never accepted Marik’s assertions on enemy positions at face value before. It was reassuring to see him acting his usual self.
Dietrik withdrew the wrapped mirror from his pack and handed it over to Marik before returning to his blade. Marik carried the mirror to the hollow’s furthest corner where the light shone dimmest and the rock falls provided a substantial pile that could shield him from view by his fellow Kings.
Celerity had sent this to him under the assumption that he was well versed in scrying workings. No instructions had she written for how to contact her mirror with this one. She assumed he would know, though why she held such confidence in his knowledge after his obvious lapses in her presence mystified him.
It should be simple, if Natalie’s diary contained all the information he hoped he would need. Too bad she had not written the book for teaching purposes, else she surely would have gone into greater detail regarding knowledge she already knew well enough not to set down in record.
He needed, or believed he needed, to send out the seeker without tying it to a specific intention. That should make the working easier, being able to skip that step. It made him nervous. If he erred, he might contaminate the prevailing affinity in the mirror, and then never contact Celerity. Not that he especially wanted to talk to her.
Also, there was the small matter of his never having scryed in quite this fashion. He had simply sought his father. Never had he built a link between mirrors for the purpose of two-way communication. The one time he’d seen Tollaf do it, he had known nothing of scrying, so understood little of what the old man did.
Yet the matter had come to the sergeants’ attentions, and Dietrik’s own worry would ease. He owed his friend that much. Friends looked after each other in whatever ways they could, and there was nobody he would more readily entrust his life to. Dietrik had already gone far beyond the extra mile for him when he’d been little better than an incinerated corpse.
Perhaps he might be able to direct the conversation toward his father, though no doubt Celerity would be asking most of the questions. The magician, Tru, might have shaken that red stranger from whatever tree he’d taken to.
Marik unwrapped the cloths. The small, polished surface reflected his image faintly in the gloom. Would his aura or personal life energies running through his arm interfere with the etheric ring? To be safe, he propped the mirror against a massive slab that had broken free from the upper mountain wall centuries before.
After shuffling away on his rear several feet, he opened his channels. The mass diffusion from the Rovasii was thicker than anywhere Marik had seen it.
Under normal circumstances, completely filling his inner reserves would easily use all the ambient diffusion floating in the hollow. The thick mists, nearly a heavy fog, quickly swelled his reserves with better than half the purple illumination remaining within the mountain pocket.
He expelled his doubts, clearing his mind to leave the highly sensitive scrying working undirected. When he began setting the energy around the mirror’s rim, he stopped and cast it aside. It might not matter but the rope he squeezed onto the frame had been thick as his arm. The larger mirrors at Tollaf’s and Celerity’s had demanded it. Would it overwhelm this smaller version?
Marik didn’t know, and he cursed Tollaf. A true master would have taught his apprentice all he knew to supplement the fragmented information in the diary. If h
e was not a skilled scryer, the old man had no one to blame but himself!
He started over, using a finer gauge strand to impregnate the mirror with etheric power. It was the same size as the ring he had imbued on Ilona’s hand mirror, but at that time he had known the seeking serpent would only need to reach to the edge of the city. Would a smaller ring this time have the power to reach across Galemar? Well, if this failed to provide enough energy for the working to use, it might also be too little to disrupt the mirror’s inherent affinity with Celerity’s.
Go. Just…go. Seek out the mirror you’ve connected to before. This, he risked forming an image from memory, an image of the round mirror in Celerity’s workroom. He prayed that was also the mirror she used regularly. You remember this, don’t you? Go find it!
The serpent shot from the mirror, to his great relief. It would never have formed if there were no clear target to seek. With the mirror being so small, the etheric serpent appeared to be rising straight from the round glass rather than the frame’s top.
It faded after ten feet, as usual. Marik saw it must be uncoiling straight through the mountain wall, streaking north as if it were a compass needle enslaved to one true direction. That’s hopeful. Maybe it’s actually working.
The etheric ring might have been built smaller, but it drained energy from Marik with the same rapidity that the large mirrors did. Given Sloan’s promise, he hoped this would be over soon. Better to be safe than regretful, as his father used to tell him. He set a continual inflow channel from the mass diffusion and started building a surge shield on it.
He had been so concentrated on the problem at hand that he’d neglected to set it in place beforehand. Marik would keep that private if anyone, such as Tollaf, ever asked. Doing it without interrupting the scrye meant having to dual channel. A momentary consideration to simply ignore the shield was quickly rejected. Too many times in the past, his failure to do so during matters he believed were simple had nearly cost him his life.
With all his dual channel practicing though, he should be able to manage it. This shield was the simplest to form. He could have done it without effort, except the scrying remained a complicated business that required most of his concentration. Marik bit his lip and prepared to open a second channel to form the shield.
“—until we can form an accurate assessment of exactly what they are! If we don’t get as many mages—”
The sudden voice cut off as abruptly as it had started. Marik stared at the mirror propped in its crack. A face looked back at him, sandy haired, tan, beard stubble shadowing his jaw and very exhausted. And also very startled. Before Marik could voice his confusion, the man’s startlement changed to indignant anger.
“By Lor’Velath, who do you think you are? And how dare you spy on a report to the royal enclave?”
* * * * *
Marik thanked the gods fervently that he and this incensed mage were separated by substantial portions of Galemar. Or, he hoped they were. No telling where this army mage reported to Thoenar from, only that he was out in the field with the soldiers.
Without knowing how, Marik had managed to connect, not to Celerity’s mirror, but to a separate communication link currently active between it and a different mage. He could hear both the angry demands from the sandy-haired man and a second voice originating from the royal palace, though the image remained firmly fixed on the combat mage. Marik’s stuttering proclamation to have legitimate business with the enclave’s chief brought profound skepticism from the man in the mirror.
Fortunately, his words carried to the opposite party, who fetched Celerity from other business to verify his claim. She did…something…and took control of the odd net between the three mirrors. Her image replaced the man’s while she asked the combat mage to finish his report in ten minutes, or else reestablish contact through Philantha’s looking glass if his information were critical.
Before she could speak, Marik, still confused and upset, burst into an angry question. “Why was he using your mirror? You said I could contact you if I needed to!”
Celerity, mouth opened to ask her own question, looked mildly irate before switching her words. “A mirror used often for mage-scrying becomes finely attuned to the workings. Opening communication channels and holding the working in place becomes far easier for mages who do not scrye on a regular basis if they utilize an experienced glass. There are three mirrors used regularly in the palace, and all of them have been in continuous use by all of us, as of late. I have urgent business to attend to, so be quick and say why you contacted me.”
Her eyes flashed with the glacial chill that he remembered. His stomach churned, drowning the undirected anger beneath unease and apprehension. “You…you know about Armonsfield, and the border breach?”
She nodded. “Fragmented reports filtered in last night. We have been working to piece together the picture. The local scrying we have managed shows only destroyed villages.” Thoughts struck her, and she asked, “You are stationed in the southern posts, are you not? Did you see what happened?”
“More than see,” he growled. “The whole damned lot of us are lucky to be in one piece.”
Marik spoke, reporting events since the battle in the pass. He spoke simply, refraining from long, windy sentences. Only when speaking of the beasts did he linger, unsure whether he could describe their awesome horror to anyone who had never seen them in the flesh.
Her eyes narrowed further still as he reported. Marik knew his words were hard to believe. He emphasized the battles as well as the few weaknesses he knew. The white-robes, the thick hide that was tough, yet short of impenetrable, the average fighters beneath the alien armor.
It only required five minutes. “So we’re stuck up against the mountains inside the Rovasii. The sergeants will move us after dark to go rejoin our forces at the Eighteenth Outpost, or what’s left of them. Frankly, I don’t think you can do anything, but…I suppose…we only wanted to know if you knew anything that might help us.” He stopped talking, mulling anew why he had bothered contacting Celerity. What could she do? Even if she were there with them?
She waited a long moment, eyes cutting through the glass in considered thought. Marik had gathered and used the last etheric whisps floating in the hollow. Maintaining the scrying further would require reaching outside the mountain’s shelter. May as well cut this pointless conversation off.
He opened his mouth to say he needed to go when she curtly ordered, “Inform your officers that you are not to move an inch until further ordered. That comes from directly from me, and I hold captain-commander’s rank! You will renew your contact with me in four candlemarks.”
“Why can’t—”
“Was that understood? Do you need me to repeat any of those orders?” The ice, sharper than broken glass, sliced at his soul.
“I’ll tell them, but I also wanted to know about…” His words beat against the empty mirror. She had vanished instantly after his acknowledgement.
He allowed the channel between his reserves and the mirror to close. The seeker faded until only the silver frame remained. Marik retrieved it with the same fatalistic acceptance as the notes left to his study when he had first been instructed in reading.
Kineta will be happier. She won’t have to fret about making the wrong decision when the orders are being dictated.
The light had faded drastically. In the hollow, darkness smothered the nooks and crannies in nighttime’s shroud. Picking his way across the uneven ground would be beyond difficult; it would be dangerous. With the mass diffusion consumed by the scrying, nothing remained to illuminate his magesight except for the scattered mercenary auras hovering in the black void.
Feeling blinder than he had in a very long time, Marik slowly felt his way back to the entrance where Sloan waited.
* * * * *
“Do you have enough food to last that long?”
Kineta, glaring down over Marik’s shoulder, answered. “Not enough in store. We were expecting to be gone from a
supply tent for less than twelve marks at the outside.”
Celerity grimaced. “Henodd is pulling back to the nearest safe zone with his division. The Seventh Regiment won’t arrive until tomorrow night, at earliest.”
Sloan interjected, “Lady mage, Galemar’s army is too scattered to the winds, needing to cover both east and west kingdom borders. I think it best we take our own chances before these invaders secure their hold on the lands they have claimed.”
Marik quickly glanced backward at Colbey while the enclave’s chief mage frowned. Earlier, Colbey had been as furious as he’d looked while standing over the wounded enemy soldier in the forest. He discounted Celerity’s orders and tried everything short of physical force to make the sergeants follow his lead north right then.
Since that voluble argument, he had perched across the hollow, eyes peeking over folded arms resting atop his knees, a smoldering hatred Marik could not deny directed at him. Marik felt it on his back the whole long wait and while calling forth Celerity’s image for the sergeants to listen to.
“At least two-thousand soldiers have crossed the border already, against no opposition.” Celerity informed Sloan. “Our northern deployments are scrambling! You raced their lead elements south and stayed ahead the whole while, but Henodd and several other mages have been reporting what they know by the minute. The lands from the northern Stoneseams to the Rovasii are under occupation, a land strip ten miles wide, and growing by the heartbeat.”
Kineta pounded her leg with one fist. Sloan remained taciturn as ever. “A blitz,” he announced coolly. “Speed, surprise and a hammer blow to a strategic location. But not a calculated first strike to start a war. What you gain in a blitz cannot be held, so a blitz should only be used to get in, then get out. Useful for destroying a supply line, but useless to advance the frontline.”
Marik turned back to Celerity to see her reaction to Sloan’s decisive comment. “That is true if both fronts are matched in strength. With our forces out of position, holding what they have taken might not be so difficult.”
