The Summoned Mage (Convergence Book 1)

by Melissa McShane

  Pronunciation Guide and Glossary

  General note: in Sesskia’s language (Balaenic), long A and long O are usually written “ae” and “oe,” and she writes Castaviran words as they would be spelled in Balaenic (i.e. Coell (Coll) River)

  aenemica (ay-NEM-i-cah) – in Balaen, a name one uses for one’s enemy to avoid referring to that person in a way that might indicate a positive or friendly relationship

  Balaen (bah-LAIN) – Sesskia’s home country

  Castavir (CAS-tah-veer) – Empire ruled by the God-Empress Renatha Torenz; also the central country of that empire

  collenna (coh-LEN-nah) – engine, either self-propelling or attached to a loenerel

  Colosse (col-LOSS) – capital city of the Castaviran Empire

  Darssan (DAR-san) – combination school and research organization for Castaviran mages

  Endellavir (en-DELL-uh-veer) – country annexed a century ago by the Castaviran Empire

  Helviran (HEL-veer-an) – country in the Castaviran Empire

  kathana (ka-THAWN-ah) – ritual or spell composed of th’an

  Kilios (KEY-lee-ohs) – “highest master”; a mage who has mastered all known th’an and all kathanas that can be performed by a single person

  loenerel (LOH-neh-rel) – a train-like vehicle that runs on any surface, not on rails

  pouvra, plural pouvrin (POW-vrah, pow-VRIN) – a form of magic requiring no words, gestures, or th’an, that is instead manifested through the mage’s will

  praenoma, (plural) praenomi (pray-NO-ma, pray-NO-mee)—Balaenic first name, used only by permission; reserved for the use of friends and family

  Sai (sigh) – “great master”; a mage with advanced knowledge of magic

  senet (SEN-et) – any wheeled vehicle without means of self-propulsion; one section of a loenerel

  th’an (TH-AWN, with a glottal stop at the apostrophe) – magical pictogram or rune; may refer to a single rune or a simple combination of three or four

  Venetry (VEN-uh-tree) – capital of Balaen

  Viravon (VEER-uh-von) – country annexed by the Castaviran Empire, in rebellion to regain their freedom

  THE BALAENIC CALENDAR

  Winter:

  Hantar (30 days)

  Jennitar (31 days)

  Teretar (30 days)

  Spring:

  Shelet (30 days)

  Dorinet (31 days)

  Auret (30 days)

  Summer:

  Evray (30 days)

  Senessay (31 days)

  Lennitay (30/31 days)

  Autumn:

  Coloine (30 days)

  Nevrine (31 days)

  Seresstine (31 days)

  Cast of Characters:

  Sesskia (SESS-key-ah) – Balaenic mage of ten years’ standing

  Cederic Aleynten (SED-er-ic ah-LEN-ten) – Kilios and leader of the Darssan mages

  Terrael Peressten (ter-RAIL per-ESS-ten) – Darssan mage, genius; Sesskia’s friend

  Audryn Engilles (AW-drin en-GIL-is) – Darssan mage; Sesskia’s friend

  Sovrin Ustanz (SAW-vrin uss-TANCE) – Darssan mage; Sesskia’s friend

  Denril Vorantor (DEN-ril vor-AN-tor) – powerful mage and most high priest of the God-Empress

  Renatha Torenz (ren-AH-tha tor-ENCE) – mad God-Empress of the Castaviran Empire

  Perce Aselfos (PERSS ah-SEL-fus) – spymaster for the God-Empress

  READ ON for some scenes from Cederic’s point of view!

  Bonus Scenes

  (25 Senessay)

  Sleep was a long time coming. Cederic lay still in his bed, his eyes open and gazing at the darkness, and tried to order his thoughts so his body could rest, but as was happening more frequently as the convergence bore down inexorably upon them, he found them impossible to control. Plans for new kathanas that might work as part of a larger one to summon the Codex Tiurindi flashed past his unseeing eyes; administrative details presented themselves for review. A rest day had been just what they all needed, himself included, and it had been unexpectedly refreshing.

  It would not have occurred to him to seek out Thalessi—Sesskia—as a companion, because she was… It surprised him that he couldn’t immediately complete that sentence. She was an otherworlder, and a mage whose powers differed from his, but neither of those should disqualify her as someone he could spend an afternoon with. And she was not Sai, but she was also not a Master, someone whose rank would separate her from him—not that he thought of himself as better than those of lower rank, just...and there was another sentence he didn’t know how to finish. He’d never realized how great that divide was until Denril had left and taken the other Sais with him. And he’d never realized he was lonely until this afternoon.

  He gave up trying to sleep and went to the refectory looking for something hot to drink that might calm his disordered mind. He liked this time of night, actually, when everyone was sleeping and the lights were dim. The refectory stoves were off, so he used a couple of th’an to boil water for tea, then carried the cup back to his room, sipping occasionally. The hot astringency was already relaxing him.

  Back in his room, he finished his drink, set the cup on his dresser, and climbed back into bed. That had been the right decision; his muscles relaxed, his eyelids closed involuntarily, and he drifted into sleep.

  In his dream, he wore not the Kilios’s robe, but the honey-gold satin and silk of a high priest, and in the logic of dreams, that made sense even though he had not served as priest for almost a decade. That was Denril’s passion, not his, and Cederic was fairly sure it was the lure of the most high priesthood that had drawn him to Renatha Torenz’s service and not the prospect of researching ways to protect the world against the convergence. His dream-self, despite wearing the priest’s robe, walked the halls of the palace at Colosse instead of standing in the great amphitheater officiating in front of a crowd of thousands. This was one of those dreams in which you were looking for something, a dream where doors opened on rooms filled with more doors, and the deeper you trod in the dream, the greater the number of possibilities.

  As a boy, Cederic had trained himself in lucid dreaming, so he didn’t become agitated as the doors and hallways multiplied, but despite his efforts, he couldn’t make his dreaming brain decide what it was looking for. So he relaxed, and wandered, enjoying his trip through memories of the palace. They were good memories, even if they were tainted by the God-Empress’s presence, but there were still plenty of uncorrupted places to go, like the library.

  As he thought this, one of the doors opened, and Cederic could see the shelves of the library beyond it. Feeling as if the dream had presented this as a gift to him, he entered. The dream version of the library was endless, shelves extending beyond sight ahead of him and disappearing into an invisible ceiling above. He let himself move instantly from one shelf to another, removing a book here and there even though he knew the pages would be blank. It was a pity he couldn’t make the dream bring him knowledge his waking brain didn’t know; he might find the solution to his problem here.

  He took another step and saw a figure in the distance, little more than a black silhouette. It, too, was looking at the books on the shelves. He so rarely saw other people in his dreams that he went toward this one, and was surprised to discover that it was Sesskia, paging through a book as if it did have contents that she could read. How frustrating it must be for her to be surrounded by books in the waking world that she couldn’t enjoy. It would drive him mad to be in her position. Then again, she did have all those books she could read that he couldn’t; he was a little envious that she was the first to read books that hadn’t been read in centuries.

  Sesskia closed the book and put it on the shelf, or rather it was no longer in her hands, and turned to look at him, silent. She was wearing the clothes she’d worn that afternoon, though her feet were bare, and she looked at him with no expression, which made her look like a stranger, because she never concealed how she felt. That was one thing they didn’t have in comm
on; controlling his emotions had become such a commonplace for him that his face no longer reflected what he felt. Looking at Sesskia now, he wondered if it was worth it, that self-control he so desperately needed.

  Sesskia took a few steps forward until she was so close she had to tilt her head to continue to meet his gaze with those enormous green-gray eyes surrounded by thick black lashes. Suddenly they were in the central cavern, standing at the exact center of the kathana ring, and the lights were gone, replaced by a red glow like lava boiling in cracks in the walls. As he thought this, those cracks appeared, and the ground shook and began peeling away until the two of them stood on a pinnacle surrounded by molten rock. His foot slipped, and he could feel the pull of the lava trying to carry him off solid ground.

  Arms went around his waist, and Sesskia drew him close and laid her head on his shoulder. “I won’t let you fall,” she said—

  —and he was awake, ejected from the dream by surprise and, unexpectedly, a rush of desire. He lay in the darkness and willed his heartbeat to slow. Where had that come from? She was a…a colleague, really, and might become a friend, but that had felt so intimate, as if he’d thought of her romantically instead. Which was a terrible idea. He didn’t need a personal relationship now, of all times, and a casual sexual encounter was a very bad idea if they had to work together, not to mention that she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who was satisfied with that kind of thing.

  And now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He dragged the pillow from behind his head and pressed it against his face. She’s your colleague, she would despise you if she knew you were thinking about her that way when she has no interest in you, and besides, this is just because you haven’t had sex with anyone for over two years. But those eyes, and that hair…he pressed harder, willing himself to fall asleep and into a less complicated dream.

  He didn’t sleep again all night.

  (27 Senessay)

  “You stayed up all night reading, didn’t you,” Sesskia said, closing her book and setting it back on its pile.

  “What makes you think that?” Cederic said, and immediately had to stifle a yawn. He’d stayed up late reading to keep from dreaming the way he had the past two nights. The dreams all began differently, but all of them ended the same way: the pinnacle, Sesskia’s arms around his waist, that low voice reassuring him.

  “Because your eyes are bleary, and you keep pretending not to yawn, and you’re cranky as hell,” she said, and promptly yawned herself.

  “I find that amusing, coming from the woman who stayed up all night trying to learn the concealment pouvra,” he said, and immediately regretted how snappish he sounded. Sesskia’s lips thinned in a scowl, and her eyes (those beautiful eyes) narrowed.

  “At least I accomplished something useful,” she said. “All you did was exhaust yourself.”

  “I learned a great deal from my book, whereas you did not succeed in your task, or I would not currently be looking at you,” he shot back.

  “Too bad you don’t have a concealment kathana, because I wish I wasn’t looking at you either.”

  “I was not aware my presence was so objectionable to you. Perhaps you should take your lack of success elsewhere.”

  “Maybe I should!”

  Cederic closed his lips on an angrier retort, conscious of listening ears as well as of how childish they both sounded. “This is pointless. Have your lunch, and take a nap, and let us see if we can salvage anything of this day after that.”

  “You’d better take a nap, too,” she said. “Maybe you’ll shock everyone and turn reasonable.” She turned and stomped away across the chamber and disappeared down the hall.

  Cederic leaned against the table, then had to make a grab for a book as he brushed against it and knocked it over. He ignored the covert stares from the Masters in the room. Probably they had never seen him so close to losing his temper before. God willing, they never would. The thought of some of the rages he’d flown into in his youth filled him with shame and embarrassment. And he’d been about to turn that on Sesskia, who….

  He stood upright and walked out of the chamber with measured steps, willing himself calm. In his bedchamber, he lay down fully clothed and stared at the ceiling. He really ought to eat something, but he had no appetite. He was a little afraid to sleep, if he was going to find dream-Sesskia there, with her unchanging expression and her grip around his waist that he could feel even after he woke. Her dream-self was nothing like her real-world counterpart; the real Sesskia was fierce and intelligent, quick-witted and quick to laugh, stubbornly unwilling to let him intimidate her, passionate about learning magic and unraveling any mystery that crossed her path—

  I’m falling in love with her.

  He squeezed his eyes shut against that idea. Her dream-self was chimerical, and bore no resemblance to the reality of her. It was wrong, it was a little obscene, for him to let his dreaming mind’s obsession with her translate into a belief that the real woman cared for him. But…it wasn’t the dream he cared about, was it? That had only made him see the real Sesskia in a different light. He replayed the conversation they’d just had in his memory and groaned. He would have to apologize. He had definitely allowed his self-control to slip. I don’t want her to hate me, he thought, and exhaustion caught up with him, and he slept.

  This time, he was searching through the halls of the Darssan, through rooms he knew did not exist, searching for Sesskia so he could wake from the dream. The Darssan was empty, and as he became aware of this, he knew that it was empty because the convergence was upon them, and everyone had evacuated but him. The knowledge filled him with terror, and he ran faster, knowing in the way you do in dreams that he could only be saved from disaster if he could find Sesskia.

  He came out of a hallway into the cavern, which was unexpectedly empty of everything except the inlaid gold kathana circle. Sesskia sat cross-legged near it, her head bowed and her eyes closed, with her hands resting loosely on her thighs.

  Cederic approached her slowly, filled with dread, not knowing if she were alive or dead or merely asleep. He knelt before her unmoving form and discovered a brush and pot of silver ink in his hands. He dipped the brush in the ink, then hesitated, and in his moment of hesitation she raised her head, opened those beautiful eyes, and smiled at him with such tenderness that it made his hand shake. Without opening her mouth, she said, I love you.

  Cederic felt the dream shake around him as surprise nearly jerked him out of it. With the brush, he sketched a few swift strokes of a th’an on Sesskia’s forehead, and her eyes went wide with pain, and she screamed, and then he was sitting up in his bed, shaking at the intensity of the dream. His heart ached as if he really had hurt her. He was off the bed and halfway to the door before he remembered it had been a dream, Sesskia was perfectly well, and she would not want his comfort in any case, no matter how much he wanted to give it to her.

  He returned to his bed and sat on its edge. He felt surprisingly rested, given how deeply he’d dreamed, but the thought of returning to the cavern to face Sesskia made him uneasy. If she knew how he’d been dreaming of her, she would be embarrassed, maybe even angry, even if he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

  But you welcome the dreams, he told himself, you look forward to feeling her hold you, you lonely, desperate man. He craved the dreams, but he now knew that he wanted even more for Sesskia to turn those remarkable eyes fondly in his direction. And that was unlikely; he wasn’t repulsive, had had many relationships, many lovers, but he’d become so withdrawn in the last two years he’d forgotten how to attract a woman, let alone someone as defiantly independent as Sesskia was. You don’t need a relationship now. Time enough for that when the convergence is over. But he couldn’t convince his heart otherwise.

  Eventually he realized there was no point putting it off any longer. He took a few moments to calm himself, to put on the expressionless façade that helped him remain strong for the men and women under his care, then combed and secured his hai
r and went to the cavern. Sesskia was already there, paging through a book rapidly in a way that told him she wasn’t actually reading it. She glanced up at his approach, and that one look sent his heart beating faster. Stop being a fool.

  After that one glance, she returned to her “reading,” allowing Cederic to say, when he finally stood by her side, “I apologize for my harsh words earlier. You were correct, I was tired and I allowed that to override my good judgment.”

  She looked at him with some surprise, then blushed a little and turned away again. “I wasn’t being very polite,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. I’m sorry.”

  “I think we have both learned the value of rest,” he said.

  She looked his way again, and this time she smiled, and he thought his heart would leap out of his chest. I would do almost anything to make her look at me that way always. “We may be a little too much alike to be comfortable friends,” she said.

  “Are we friends, then?” he said.

  “I think we must be. Only friends could say such awful things to one another and then forgive them.”

  “Then I hope we will find enough differences to be comfortable friends.”

  “Well, you’re sarcastic and I’m rude, when we’re irritable,” she said with a grin. “Those are differences.”

  “And I am sensible and logical and you are not,” he said, thinking, Does she know I’m flirting with her? Would it matter if she did?

  “I am so logical,” she said with a friendly scowl. “If you could read my book, you’d see all the lists I make when I’m coming to a decision.”

  “I accept your assertion, then, and will cast about for some other difference,” he said with a tiny smile. When did I lose the ability to smile like a normal person?

  “Our magic is different. And I did learn things I want you to know about. I don’t know how useful it will be to the kathana, but maybe understanding my magic will help in some other way.”