In other words, she hated being out of the gossip. I laughed and she growled at me, “I hate surprises and he should have told me the two of are engaged!”
“Technically it’s only in Turransky,” I admitted. “In Corcoran it’s illegal for me to be anything more than her familiar.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Nora kept glaring at her cousin as if she blamed him for all of this.
“I suppose pointing out that you’ve only been with us for three days and I had no opportunity to mention this to you is pointless?” Maksohm said the words as if he already knew the answer.
Nora’s glare became more lethal.
“Right. Well, you can court-martial me when we get home.” He patted her on the shoulder in a condescending way. “Moving on: we’ll reach the base camp for Toh’sellor in four and a half days, but our only real opportunity to pick up all the food and supplies we’ll need will be in Ehl. Bannen, how familiar are you with the place?”
“Intimately. Most of my jobs were going to or coming out of Ehl.”
“Good. About half of this team has never been in Ehl before so I’m counting on you to play guide when they start shopping. People, this is not like our usual missions—if you feel that it could be useful or if you just want to have it, get it. Don’t second guess yourselves. Money, for once, is no object here—”
Chi perked up with an unholy grin on his face.
Without missing a beat, Maksohm added pointedly, “—although remember that you have to justify everything you buy with Accounting later, so make sure that it is mission appropriate.”
Chi’s face fell.
I had to wonder, just what did he want to buy that was obviously not mission appropriate? With Chi it could be anything. Then the man’s expression turned cunning and thoughtful and I suddenly didn’t want to know. I had a feeling I’d be roped into it anyhow.
“I anticipate that we’ll be scouting the area and spending at least two days of prep, maybe three, before we actually go in,” Maksohm continued as if reining Chi in was an everyday occurrence. It likely was. “So plan accordingly. Rena, I’m assuming that you would have spoken up before now, but I have to ask. Your Master? Can she help?”
Rena shook her head sadly. “Magically speaking, yes, as Master Mary’s skills are nothing to sneeze at. Physically speaking, there’s no way she has the stamina for it. She’s barely able to move around the village.”
That caught everyone’s attention and I realized that we had never spoken much of Mary or Gill before this. “Mary turns eighty this year,” I explained. “Gill, her husband-familiar is eighty-two. So you can see why they’re not really up to something like this.”
“I’m amazed that a woman that old is still using magic at all,” Nora said with arched eyebrows. She looked more than a little impressed. “Normally when a mage hits that age they, well, leak magic too much to really have anything to work with. Their control is shot.”
Rena gave her a sad smile. “A Void Mage can never afford to lose control of their magic. The moment she does, it destroys her.”
Literally. Even with a human familiar to pattern off of, the moment that a Void Mage could no longer control the magic at all, it would eat her from the inside out. Mary had seen it happen with her old master and had told me in grim confidence. She said the only thing merciful about it was that it had been quick, over in a flash, although it left no body to bury. A Void Mage’s grave was the air itself.
Everyone looked more than perturbed about this and I couldn’t blame them. I felt the same. “Anyway, we already considered asking Mary, but she’s really in no shape to help, although she’d like to. She’s the one sending us after shards as she’s heard about them.”
“I had wondered about that.” Vee considered us thoughtfully. “That’s why you would pop up out of nowhere, destroy a shard, and disappear again?”
“That’s why.” I shrugged, cheerful about it. “And before you think to ask, Mary’s the only other Void Mage. For whatever reason, they’re only born once in every generation. There’s enough of an overlap for the previous Void Mage to train the new one, but never more than two in existence in the same time. They’re also always female. Strange, but there you have it.”
“Always female.” Nora stared at me thoughtfully. “And their familiar?”
“Historically male.” I had a feeling why she asked and gave her a knowing look. “Hence why Turransky thinks they’re automatically engaged, yes, the obvious answer is the right one. The familiars are never consistently called from any particular country or culture, though. Rena doesn’t even hold the record for summoning me. There was another mage about three generations back that called her familiar from literally the opposite end of the globe.”
“Bannen is the second farthest out, though,” Rena offered with a smile at me. “I’m thankful he’s fluent in three languages, otherwise I would have been in trouble, trying to communicate with him.”
Chi’s finger drifted in the air between the two of us. “But Rena, you are the first Void Mage born outside of Turransky?”
“Yes, and no one’s sure why. Mary’s still puzzling over it.” Rena seemed to realize what Maksohm was truly getting at and leaned across me again to speak to him directly. It did occur to me to just switch seats so she could speak with him easily, but I liked her half in my lap like this. “The extra power of another Void Mage would be wonderfully beneficial but I think I’ll be enough for this. I’m not saying I can do this in one go, but I do think I can manage, as long as I can determine the structure of Toh’sellor. That’s going to be the real trick.”
“We’ll try to plan so you have enough protection to study it thoroughly,” Maksohm promised.
I knew as well as he that we probably wouldn’t be able to give her much time at all.
We traveled the rest of the day making small talk about nothing of importance or passing around a list of supplies to add onto. I didn’t think to question why Maksohm had to register us. I didn’t know we needed to be registered. MISD regulations of some sort? Perhaps because of the heavy conversation and the distractions on the train ride, I failed to consider the full weight of Maksohm’s original question. I failed to realize it all the way up until we reached our MISD approved hotel that night.
Should he register Rena and I as engaged?
Well, yes, of course we should because in Turransky we are.
I stared at the desk clerk who had a professional smile on his face and only a single key in his hand, and found the strangest urge to swallow my tongue. He seemed a perfectly nice man, he likely didn’t understand that by doing his job and handing me a key, he just set off a minor panic attack. And by minor I meant major.
I…I was supposed to share…no, don’t think about it.
Rena leaned around me and plucked the key out of the man’s hand. “Thank you, sir. Second door on the left, you said?”
“That’s correct, miss.”
A hand tugged at my elbow, spinning me around. “Good, let’s throw our bags inside and then find dinner, alright?”
I stared down at Rena’s head as she towed me along, still panicking. I didn’t know if I should be protesting this or not, because really, according to Turransky’s rules we were perfectly within out rights to share a bedroom and they would look at us strangely if we didn’t, but at the same time I was NOT ALRIGHT with this and if I thought it wouldn’t make the situation worse I would be digging in my heels. Right now.
“Ah, Rena?” That came out more high pitched and squeaky than I intended. I tried again. “Rena.”
She shot me a smile over her shoulder, at ease and not at all worried, because of course, what did she have to be worried about. “It’s fine, I won’t molest you in your sleep.”
So, so not the issue. I cannot begin to describe how that was not the issue.
You know what, I was going to sneak into Chi’s room tonight after she’d settled and sleep there. That’s what I’d do. Because even if it meant sleeping on
the floor—which, really, wasn’t the worst place I’d ever slept—I’d get more shut-eye there than I would in a room with Rena. And Chi knew enough about the situation to not call me on it or tease me or ask potentially embarrassing and awkward questions.
No, it was Chi, he’d ask me embarrassing and awkward questions. Who was I kidding? But still better to face him than the alternative.
Because Rena knew me well, she opened our bedroom door (no, her bedroom, I categorically refused to spend more than two minutes in here) and gave me a funny look over her shoulder as she walked in. “Something wrong?”
I got five feet inside the door and realized that I really could not stay in here. Just the idea of it sent my pulse racing and a flush to my cheeks. Two years ago, I could be in her room with her and not think anything of it because I wasn’t in love with her. I’d cared for her, deeply, but it hadn’t been tangled up with lust and hormones.
That was not the case now. I felt every breath she took like it was my own. I did not trust myself inside this room. “I’m going to bunk with Chi, okay?”
She opened her mouth, to say what, I didn’t know, as I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I did an about face and lit out of the room like my tail was on fire. I had no idea which room Chi had been assigned to, but most people’s doors were open and I followed a quick system of elimination until I found him five doors down. He had the door partially open, likely because he intended to do what everyone else did, just throw the bag inside and find dinner. I stepped inside and closed the door sharply behind me.
Chi sat on one of the two double beds, digging through his bag for something, but at my entrance his head came up. “Ah, hello?”
“I’m sleeping in here,” I blurted out, rooted to the spot and not sure what to do.
He blinked, processed this, and then gave me a sympathetic and knowing look. “They gave you the same room as Rena’s, didn’t they?”
I nodded emphatically.
Chi, bless him, didn’t ask a single question. He gestured to the other bed. “It’s free, take it.”
“Thank you,” I said fervently and dropped my bag beside it.
He weighed me for a moment before offering quietly, “You realize by doing this you’re saying how much you actually want to share a bed with her.”
I felt like snarling at him because yes, I knew that very well. I bit the urge back. “So you’re saying that if you had the chance to share a proper bed with Vee, with the privacy of four walls and a roof, that you would be nonchalant about it?”
He had the decency to look pained. “I’d be flipping my lid. I’m just saying, Rena’s going to wonder what got into you. You’d better think of what to say to her.”
“Any suggestions?”
Chi’s look adequately conveyed I was on my own.
Waesucks.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but Bannen was not…right. Not acting normal. His absolute refusal to be in my room for more than a minute at a time was strange because we’d always wandered in and out of each other’s rooms. On one memorable occasion we even shared a bed. I didn’t understand why suddenly he avoided doing either.
All the way to the Toh’sellor site, I puzzled over this. During the day, Bannen was his usual, snarky self. After dinner, he would disappear completely, normally sharing a room with Chi. Which was fine, I had no problem with that, but the sneaky way he did it made alarm bells go off.
I’d missed something.
Agents trickled in, in groups and pairs, joining us at different stations and introducing themselves all around. Some obviously knew each other from previous jobs, others looked relatively new to the MISD with shiny tags and sharp uniforms. I introduced myself to as many as I could, but had a feeling I’d missed at least a few people. Meeting the other agents proved an adequate distraction most of the time from my growing apprehension. The closer we got to Toh’sellor the more I wondered: could I actually do this? Could we really pull this off without losing everyone in the process?
I’d run the numbers countless times. I’d talked logistics, executions, theories until parched. In my head, at least, this was doable. But would we really be able to pull it off? I didn’t know. I didn’t doubt people would do their absolute best to get me there, to the foot of Toh’sellor, but even when I reached the right spot, would I be able to deliver on the promises I’d made? There was an unknown quantity in that mad, chaotic monster that no one had been able to define. What if not even a Void Mage’s eyes were up to the task? What then?
Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep on the journey there.
Late afternoon after four and a half days of travel, we arrived and all thoughts of Bannen’s weird behavior fled my mind. I stepped off the train, nerves jangling, looking up the slope of the mountain, and I could literally feel the chaos and power radiating from the mountain range. To my eyes, it seemed a terrible clash of chaos and structure, Toh’sellor’s power beating against the multiple layers of the barrier like a pulse. It made my mouth run dry and my stomach convulsed into a Gordian knot.
People talked to each other and coordinated getting luggage off the train, but I couldn’t focus on a word they said. I gathered up my bag automatically, gravitating up the street, straight toward the barrier like a magnet toward steel. I felt Bannen move with me, say something to Maksohm, and both men fell into step with me as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
The place had started out as a boomtown, something to give the agents on duty shelter and a means of surviving, and it still had traces of that in the crooked streets and hodgepodge of architecture. I saw every possible style of roofline, from curved tips to straight lines, cottages, brick buildings, logged houses, and everything in between. No one had planned this place, and the way that we had to cut around sudden buildings in the street, or take U-shaped turns, seemed a reflection of the monster that consumed the near horizon.
Still, it had been here two hundred years. The streets were paved, someone had installed street lights at some point, people grew herbs in box gardens, and I could smell a market from somewhere nearby with all of its variations of food. Death might be hovering nearby but these people had learned how to live even in its shadow.
My eyes took in the area quickly, cataloguing, defining, but I didn’t see anything that Trammel’s reports hadn’t already told me. Nothing surprised me or jumped out, and I didn’t know whether to be glad of that or not.
When I reached the top of the slope, my feet stumbled to a stop. I stared through the layers upon layers of shields and barriers, ignoring them, looking through and past them, staring down into the valley for a glimpse of what I had really come for. The trees outside the barrier were thick, but those inside had long since been completely corrupted into Toh’sellor’s minions, and they shuffled back and forth, distracting me. It took effort to ignore them, too, and look beyond to the thing that had haunted this world for over two hundred years.
It stood like a mountain, the size massive even from this distance, flickering and whirling like a hurricane that didn’t move. I couldn’t see detail from this distance and that was a mercy, because if I had, I would have lost the contents of my stomach quite promptly. To normal sight, this thing would be bad enough, but to magical sight, it was gut-wrenching. It perverted life itself—structure and magic and order non-existent on the surface level, and I wanted to scream with the revulsion clawing its way up my spine. It had all of the malignant force of a hurricane, whirling like a dark dervish of destruction, only it didn’t look dark grey. It contained black and white, every color in between, arcing in and out of the clouds of dust whipping around it, making it nauseating to look at. I had to swallow down my bile several times, making the back of my throat burn.
Better get used to it now, I told myself grimly. I’d have to study that thing up close soon and I couldn’t afford to lose my stomach.
Bannen had a hand at my back, grounding me, and I attributed my control to him because the sigh
t really did make me nauseous in a vertigo-inducing way. Maksohm came up and grabbed my head, forcefully turning my head around so I could no longer look forward. “Take it in stages,” he ordered firmly. “You have three days to get used to this before we try going in. Look at it for a few minutes at a time, then take a break. I’ve lost agents that didn’t try to acclimatize to it and we can’t afford to do that with you.”
The order made sense and I gave a minute nod in his hands, closing my eyes. Bannen’s reaction a week ago, when I told him I was coming here, now made perfect sense to me. His judgment and memories might be skewed because he’d been seven when he saw this thing, but he clearly had a better understanding of what I’d volunteered us for than I had. I’d thought that because I could handle the shards, this would be challenging, but not much different.
I was an idiot.
A part of me screamed to get away from this thing. Probably my survival instincts. I dearly wished I could but we couldn’t afford to ignore it anymore. We’d lose the world by inches if I walked away from it now.
Maksohm’s grip around my head released and his hands landed on my shoulders instead, voice gentle and steady. “Don’t think you have to succeed on the first try. No one expects you to. This will likely take multiple runs, and that’s fine, that’s what we’ve planned for. This is too much for a single magician to be responsible for destroying. We’ll take this in stages.”
Something about his tone eased the panic gibbering in the back of my mind. The calm, no-nonsense of it, the assurance that this plan would work, because he’d done something like this before. I looked up into those dark eyes and to my surprise, smiled. “Maksohm, is there anything that scares you?”
“Losing my people,” he answered with such transparent honesty my heart ached. “So don’t be rash and impulsive, alright?”
“I won’t,” I promised, and meant it.
My sincerity relieved him and he relaxed. “Good. I’ve got rooms for us, so follow me.”
I moved to follow him and felt Bannen’s hand slip into mine, grip firm. I held it tightly in return, needing that contact. Being this close to that monstrosity did more than just unsettle me.
The Void Mage (The Familiar and Mage Book 2) Page 21
