The Summoned Mage (Convergence Book 1)

by Melissa McShane

  Cederic said, “This world, naturally.”

  “The destruction of the other world is regrettable, but there’s no hope for it,” Vorantor said. “Its mages will have to save it themselves.”

  “They have no mages,” Cederic said. “You are condemning a world to death.”

  “As I said, regrettable, and the thought of all that death pains me, but I have an obligation to this world,” Vorantor said.

  I’m a thief. If I went around reacting in surprise or anger or fear or horror all the time, I’d be a dead thief. But hearing Vorantor talk so casually about the destruction of my world made me so furious I nearly dropped the concealment pouvra and throttled him there in that seat. Cederic said, “You cannot take the knowledge in our heads. We will still be able to summon the Codex Tiurindi.”

  “Possibly,” Vorantor said. “With the help of the woman. I thought her name was Thalessi.”

  “Sesskia is not a name she shares with casual acquaintances,” Cederic said, “and her magic is key to that kathana, yes.”

  “Unfortunate that the God-Empress has instructed me to bring her with me, then,” Vorantor said, and he sounded so sly that I know, I just know, the bastard waited until that moment to strike at Cederic when he was at his lowest point.

  Cederic sat straight up in his chair. “She is not a thing you can simply carry away,” he said.

  “No, but she will not refuse the God-Empress’s command, I think,” Vorantor said.

  “I would not count on it,” Cederic said. “She has no more loyalty to this world than you have to hers.”

  “I have brought thirty-five mages, thirteen of them Sais, to ensure her compliance,” Vorantor said.

  “That might not be enough to contain her,” Cederic said.

  “They aren’t to contain her,” Vorantor said. “My orders are to begin killing the mages of the Darssan if she refuses. From what you wrote of her, we know she’s developed an attachment to them. The God-Empress thinks she won’t want to see them die when she can prevent it with a single action.”

  Cederic looked horrified, and that frightened me more than anything Vorantor had said. “Denril,” he said, “how can you possibly condone this? Let alone preside over it?”

  “Cederic, I have little choice in the matter.” Vorantor said.

  “No choice. That is never true, and you know it,” Cederic said in a low, intense voice. “I warned you not to throw in your lot with hers. She’s insane, Denril, you know she is. Only a madwoman could order such a vile thing.”

  “Do not make such accusations, even where only I can hear,” Vorantor said. “She is our ruler, Cederic, and she deserved to know what was coming. We will need her temporal power in the aftermath, however well we are able to contain the destruction. She has amassed an army the likes of which no one has seen since the days of the Conqueror to maintain Castavir’s stability after the coming disaster. But the God-Empress is preparing for war against an enemy she knows she can’t fight, and her paranoia is increasing.

  “She insists I produce results, regardless of the cost, and you and I agree on one thing: Thalessi, or whatever you call her, as an inhabitant of the shadow world, is crucial to our ability to preserve this one—that’s true no matter which of our theories is correct. And I am sorry, old friend, I am truly sorry, but you must give up this mad, doomed quest.

  “I need your help. Your skills are unparalleled; I can even admit you’re better than I am. Your continued refusal to join me will mean the deaths of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. You made a request of me. Let me extend the same to you. Help me. Please.”

  Cederic turned away—and looked directly at me. I’m sure he hadn’t been aware of my presence until that moment. His face was once again impassive, but his eyes were pleading with me—for forgiveness? For approval? I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what I was agreeing to. He turned back to look at Vorantor and said, “I will join you. And Sesskia will come peacefully.”

  “Thank you,” Vorantor said. “And I truly am sorry for this.”

  “I am sorry, too,” Cederic said, though he didn’t say for what.

  I wrote that Vorantor was smart; he stood up from his chair and said, “I will leave you to decide how best to tell the mages. They should be evacuated from the Darssan.”

  “And I suppose you have a plan for that as well,” Cederic said.

  “I have called for another loenerel to transport them to Trengia,” Vorantor said. “From there they will be able to return to their homes.”

  “And forbidden the opportunity to save their world,” Cederic said. His voice was as expressionless as his face.

  “You know most of them lack the skills to give us any advantage. Choose your best, and thank the others for their assistance to date,” Vorantor said.

  “They were your best, once, Denril,” Cederic said. “Are you so completely lost to human feeling?”

  “This is a hard time, and we must make hard choices,” Vorantor said. I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded angry. “Past time you learned that.”

  Cederic said nothing, just made a small dismissive wave of his fingers as if to say the conversation was over. Again, Vorantor demonstrated his intelligence by leaving without saying another word. When the door was shut, Cederic said, “I wish you had not heard that.”

  I released the concealment pouvra and said, “I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t use the pouvra like a thief.”

  “I am not angry at your eavesdropping, Sesskia, but you do not need to be burdened with the knowledge that we are at the mercy of a mad Empress who is willing to slaughter innocents,” Cederic said.

  I said, “Why not? It was me she wanted to coerce. I’m the one she’s going to try to control. I think I have a right to know in what way I need to defend myself.”

  Cederic shrugged. “You have a point,” he said. “And now I must decide how to tell two hundred mages that our work is not only over, but has been a waste of time. Without implicating Denril.”

  “Why not implicate him?” I said. “It’s his fault!”

  “He is the Empress’s right hand in this matter. If I give them reason to murmur against him, and that murmuring gets back to her, their lives will be forfeit,” Cederic said. “I will take the blame myself. I will explain that in light of new evidence, I have been convinced our work needs to take a different direction, and the Darssan must be closed for everyone’s safety. If I am lucky, they will hate me and not Denril.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  Cederic looked up at me, and his eyes showed all the pain his face never would. “This has never been about fairness,” he said. “Was it fair to pull you from your world into this one, make you a pawn in a game you never agreed to play? Denril was right, in part—this is a hard time that requires hard choices. The difference is he believes he has the right to make those choices for everyone else. I have never agreed with him in that respect.”

  “Do you still believe you’re right?” I said.

  “I do,” he said, “and I will take with me the mages most capable of proving me correct. We will summon the Codex Tiurindi, and it will prove the truth to Denril. I only hope it will do so before it is too late.”

  “I’ll help you find a solution,” I said. “I don’t have to be cooperative with him,” and then I remembered what Vorantor said about killing the mages, and it made me so angry I couldn’t go on speaking. I would be going to Colosse surrounded by hostages.

  “You see the problem,” Cederic said, drily.

  “Damn him to hell and damn your God-Empress too,” I said.

  “Never say that again. Never even think it,” Cederic said. “She is dangerous in ways you cannot imagine, because she is erratic and paranoid and is capable of destroying things, and people, even when that destruction hurts her cause. Your guess is correct: she wants you in Colosse so she can control you personally, and not because Denril has told her you are necessary to his work. But if she turns on you…God only kn
ows what she might decide to do.”

  “I can defend myself,” I said, “but I can’t defend everyone around me.”

  “Exactly,” Cederic said.

  I sat down in the chair next to him and said, “How can I help you? Since it’s clear I won’t be able to help myself.”

  He smiled. “Behave as if you know nothing of this conflict. You don’t have to be cheerful about it, naturally, but a desire to mitigate the coming disaster would be appropriate. Cooperate with Denril when he asks you about pouvrin. I’m glad you understood what I asked you earlier.”

  “Now I’m especially grateful I did,” I said. “Having pouvrin he knows nothing about could save my life.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Cederic said. “We won’t leave until the second loenerel arrives to transport everyone—I won’t let it seem I’m abandoning anyone. You and I will have to find a way to pursue the correct line of research without seeming to be insubordinate. It could be dangerous.”

  “Because nothing about the rest of this is dangerous,” I said. “I don’t understand ‘loenerel.’”

  “It is a machine powered by th’an that can transport large numbers of people more quickly than walking or riding,” Cederic said. “They are made in segments, so those segments, the senets, can be added or removed depending on how many people it needs to transport. It will require a fairly large loenerel to move all the mages of the Darssan—minus the few I am to be allowed as part of my entourage,” he added, sounding bitter. “I cannot believe Denril is so dismissive of their abilities, simply because he took many of our best mages when he left for Colosse two years ago.”

  That was a surprise. “Those men and women with him, they used to belong to the Darssan?” I said.

  “Many of them, yes,” Cederic said. “Some of them were privately employed before Denril coaxed them to work for him. But enough of those mages have friends here…” We both sat silent for a moment, and I’m sure he was thinking (as I was) about what kind of people could agree to kill their friends for any reason. Or maybe Cederic wasn’t exaggerating about the Empress’s madness. “And there were more Sais here, once,” he went on. “Seventeen of us. They all believe as Denril does.”

  That made my heart ache for him. Seventeen people who might have been his friends in a way the ordinary mages could not. “So you were the only one who saw this possibility,” I said, and he nodded. Then he stood, and said, “I hope for all our sakes you are as good a liar as you are a thief,” and I could see he was trying to make a joke, so I laughed. It didn’t hurt my feelings—I’m sure he meant it as a compliment—but it reminded me my life had suddenly become dangerous, and that I have secrets that could mean people’s deaths, or even my own, if I reveal them.

  The rest of it I’ll sum up, because it’s too painful to remember. I think Cederic told Vorantor to keep his stooges out of the way when he told the Darssan mages what was going to happen, and there was a lot of noise and furor. Cederic was so still during all of this I couldn’t help thinking how painful it was for him, that they all thought he’d abandoned them and the research they’d all worked so hard on.

  I tried to stay out of the way as they all packed up the books and washed down the walls, shut down the kathanas powering the commodes and the pools, and gathered up their belongings, because it felt as if my home were being destroyed. I had so many goodbyes to make that it didn’t help that the thirteen mages coming with us (not including Cederic) were all friends of mine, ten of the group leaders, including Terrael (that was an obvious choice) and Sovrin, plus Audryn and two other men I knew well. I had to hide in my room often so I wouldn’t make them feel worse by how miserable I was. This is why I’ve never had friends. It’s too hard when you have to leave them behind, and you always have to leave them behind.

  No, that’s a lie, and if I’m going to be lying a lot in the days and weeks to come, I shouldn’t lie to myself. I’ve never had friends because I never could trust anyone before, and as much as it hurts, saying goodbye, I’d rather have had friendship than not.

  Sovrin was more miserable than the rest of us. Her lover isn’t coming along, despite her arguments and even my pleas to Cederic to make an exception. He said, damn him for being right, “We can’t look weak in front of the Empress, and Denril will know we didn’t bring our best. Hard choices, Sesskia.” So the best we could do was give them as much time together as possible.

  Eventually, the second loenerel arrived, and I didn’t go up to see it, but if the one we’re riding in now is small, I can’t even imagine how huge that one was. After it left, there was some uncomfortable shuffling around—I think Denril’s mages had the decency to feel guilty about why they were there—for an hour or two before our loenerel was positioned for us to bring our things on.

  It’s beautiful, in a hard and gleaming way—lots of brass and rubbed brown leather, and some of the senets are rows of seats with lots of windows, and others have sleeping cubicles, and there’s one for eating in. It smells of hot metal all the time, though as I wrote above, the smell becomes stronger when it stops, and there’s also a bitter-oily scent I now associate with large quantities of magic, and never mind what Terrael said about magic being completely used up by th’an or kathanas.

  I went up to look at the collenna, which is what actually contains the magic—the senets are all connected to it in a long row—and it positively reeked of that odor. The master, whose name I’ve forgotten, showed me where he draws the th’an, and it was so clever! There’s an engraving on this brass panel in the shape of a couple of linked th’an, a groove thin enough for a skinny paintbrush to fit, and the master has a five-gallon bucket full of that silvery ink or paint Terrael used on the aeden to give me his language. He paints the th’an, following the grooves exactly, and that makes the th’an work.

  That’s how people other than mages can use magic, though I gather it’s not as simple as filling in a line. The masters, not just of collennas but of other machines as well, have to be taught to write their rune in exactly the right way, and they usually only learn the one their job makes them responsible for. I’m not sure how that doesn’t make them mages, though I suppose in Castavir being a mage is defined as knowing hundreds or thousands of th’an. But it is reassuring to know if anything happened to the master, we’ve got fifty people on the loenerel who can make it go, which is good because the idea of being trapped in this horrible, hot, arid, stinking wasteland makes me feel even more queasy.

  And that brings me up to now. To sum up:

  1. We’re all going to Colosse to take part in research none of us believes in.

  2. Denril Vorantor is dangerous.

  3. The God-Empress is even more so.

  4. Cederic still has hope the Codex Tiurindi will prove him right, and in time for that to make a difference.

  We should be out of the desert soon, probably by tomorrow morning. I wish I knew how fast we’ve been traveling, so I could get a sense for how far we’ve come, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. And despite everything, I’m eager to see Colosse. I’ve visited many cities in I don’t know how many foreign lands, but this is my first time visiting a city in a completely different world. I hope it isn’t a disappointment.

  Chapter Eleven

  4 Lennitay, evening

  This is how paranoid I am: There is a perfect little niche in the wall of my bedroom, behind the headboard of my bed, that my book fits into exactly. And that’s why I’m not using it. I’d bet hard money, if I had any, that someone in the palace knows every single hidey-hole there is in every single room, and I’d bet even more of that nonexistent money someone’s searched my room since we arrived this morning. So I continue to keep my book and pencil on my person, and keep it under my pillow at night, because it’s the last thing I have of my world and losing it would devastate me.

  Colosse isn’t as big as I imagined, smaller than Venetry, probably, and not as sprawling as Thalessa, but it’s impressive in a way neither of them ever dre
amed of being. I don’t know if it’s how white the walls are, or how all the lines and angles are so exact, but it looks so clean I wonder how anyone can bear to live in it. Audryn, who comes from Colosse, says no animals are allowed within its city limits, as per orders of the God-Empress. (I’ve decided to call her that even in the privacy of this book, so I won’t slip up when I’m speaking of her or, horribly, to her.)

  So there’s no animal waste in the streets and no smells of warm animal bodies. What kind of stink the humans make is something I haven’t discovered, as the loenerel came straight through the city and inside the palace to unload us, so I’ve only seen a little of Colosse so far and nothing up close. But I saw lots of people walking, and some riding in bearer-borne chairs that in my world would only be used by the very wealthy, and there were some little wheeled carts that fit two passengers while a third person pulled it.

  Audryn also said machines like very small versions of the collenna are becoming popular among the upper classes, but their th’an are so small and intricate it takes a lot of practice to learn how to operate one. I’m guessing the God-Empress has one of her own, but big enough that someone can drive her around in it. It fits what little I know of her.

  What else did I observe about Colosse: it sits athwart what Castavirans call the Coell River but in my world is the Myrnala. (I think it’s Coell, with the long ‘o’, but some people pronounce it as ‘call’, and I’m going with Audryn’s pronunciation, since she’s actually from here). The loenerel crossed it at one point, and it was the strangest feeling, because the Myrnala is so much greener and slower and it bears no resemblance to the Coell; I only know the two are the same, or at least in the same place, because I saw it on the overlapping maps.

  This whole region is much drier and hotter than the corresponding places in my world, particularly that wasteland surrounding the Darssan, which in my world is nothing but grassy plains and a few very unwelcoming settlements. If Colosse is always this arid, the seasons might not even correspond. We ought to be heading into fall, by my reckoning—I’ll have to ask Audryn or someone what time of year this is. Either way, I’m not changing the dates in this book.