The Making of a Mage King: White Star

by Anna L. Walls

  Methodically, he bent over and picked up his greatsword. Good thing it’s heavy; that had to be the shittiest throw I’ve ever made. The hilt had caught the albino in the throat and the weight had knocked him over backward; somewhere along the line his neck had been broken.

  Sean swayed and Laon caught his arm. “What now?” Laon asked as he spat blood.

  Sean looked around them. He was wiped. “Now we call in reinforcements.” He turned his attention to Cordan. “Cordan, saddle up. I need a little help here. Before you panic, we’re all right; we’re just too tired to get outa here by ourselves. Gotta…clean up this mess, gotta… gotta…” Sean staggered sideways.

  Laon caught him before he fell. “Sit down, my lord. Did you get through?” he asked, then parked Sean against a wall away from their prisoners and wiped more blood from his face.

  “Yeah, he’s coming.” Sean dropped his head down between his knees. He felt like he had after his first seeing, like an overcooked noodle, only this time the noodle named Sean had been splattered against a wall with a lot of force. Dimly he was thankful that he hadn’t been dropped on the floor and stepped on.

  Child Mages

  With the horses already saddled, Cordan had the men moving as fast as humanly possible. He left twenty men behind to guard the camp and keep an eye on their guests. He even brought Mattie and Jenny, though it’s possible he just didn’t argue with them.

  They reached the gate shortly thereafter and the guards were unprepared for them. Accustomed to the guild handling any overt disturbances, they were late to react. When the reinforcements saw the flag Cordan flew, two-thirds of them prostrated themselves, leaving the others in confusion. When Prince and Laon’s horse charged through the gate unsaddled and full of threat, they all scattered.

  Cordan left a contingent at the gate and plowed into the city, hot on the tail of Prince.

  In passing through the square, Cordan had the locks broken off the stocks and the people shooed away, he had the hanged man taken down too, he’d been there way too long and the reek was stomach-turning.

  Everywhere they went, people watched from doors and windows with wide-eyed curiosity, pointing fingers as they passed.

  For the first time in over fifteen years, the guild of mages had failed to respond to a threat, but then this was the first military invasion any of them had ever seen, and none of them had any idea what the guild was supposed to do against a threat such as this. It appeared as though the guild had done nothing, that in itself was frightening, and men who looked like they might have been part of the city’s defense forces were surrendering their swords at every turn.

  Finally, after searching through half the city, Mattie thought to call Laon using the stones, and he was able to tell them where to go.

  By the time Cordan found Sean and Laon, Sean was at least standing again; he was thinking again too, though sluggishly. Drawing on Manuel’s strength and energy both to negotiate the stairs and to cast a little more magic, he shielded the rest of the mages on the upper floor, then made his way outside for some fresh air; the place reeked of stale body and bad breath. It was then that Prince found them, though he had lost his companion; they would have to find him soon.

  Using pallets from the bedrooms as makeshift stretchers, Sean had the sleeping and unconscious mages, as well as their dead companions, carried to the market square. Those who woke labored under his shield and had to be led, as they suddenly found themselves lacking far more than magic, for the first time in a long time they lacked control. The men who had fought without magic went too, more than half of them needing to be carried; they were either dead or wounded. The rest were untied only enough to walk.

  Someone found the door to the cellars and discovered something akin to a dungeon, and another flood of abused humanity left, or were carried, from the building. Even the kitchen was cleared out.

  Mattie and Jenny fussed over both of them, Jenny settled Sean’s crown on his head, and Cordan helped him to re-sheath his now-clean swords. Then they were helped into a saddle; they too would be led from the area; neither of them were in any condition to actively control the horses they rode. As soon as they were settled and steady, they all followed the procession to the town square.

  Prince seemed to take offense to the fact that Sean was riding another horse; he kept tossing his head, snorting and crowding in, making the horse he was riding dance a little more than Sean wanted to deal with just now.

  When he kept it up even after Sean told him to be good, he batted him upside the head with the back of his hand and told him he’d hobble him if he didn’t straighten up. Sean would never know what kind of vocabulary that beast had, but it was either the mention of hobbles or his swat that convinced the horse to settle down.

  In the square, people started coming out of the woodwork shortly after the men began to show up with the bodies. Some people huddled by bodies, and some were still looking; there were even a few willing to take out some grievance on one or another of the helpless mages, but Cordan’s men weren’t allowing that. Mages without their guild weren’t too popular in the city. Seventeen years of oppression and fear was a hard yoke to live under. If only they understood what the alternative would have been…if only it hadn’t gone so horribly bad.

  As Sean walked through the lines of bodies around which family members were slowly gathering, he saw details he hadn’t had time to notice before. There were a handful of older men and women here, older than twenty at least. The rest were teenagers at best, and most of those looked much younger. Aside from the albino who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, he had been fighting a bunch of kids. Given the time to grow and mature, the guild would have become an unbeatable force.

  As he passed one of the younger bodies, a man who looked to be the kid’s grandfather stood to face him, anguish lined his face with tears, and his body trembled. “Why did you have to kill him? He’s only a child; why did he have to die?”

  Sean rested a hand on the old man’s hunched shoulder. “His user killed him. I killed only one man. There is no guild now, and no reason for it any longer.” He looked down at the boy at their feet. “I’m sorry.” He moved on numbly. It was truly sad. He was the only man beside that small body. He had outlived his entire family.

  As Sean made his way back to where Mattie and Jenny were working over Laon, Larry hurried to him, grasping his arm as if Sean might fall down any minute. He might not have been too far off in that assumption, but Sean was managing at the moment.

  “You look like the walking dead. Sit down,” said Larry in a whisper.

  “No, I’m fine enough. I need to keep moving,” Sean whispered back. “How is he?” he asked Mattie. Laon sat in front of her with blood all down his front.

  “He broke his nose, but I can’t seem to stop the bleeding,” she replied.

  Sean could see the white stone in her small hand; her hand was so delicate and he knew how skilled it could be. Details were standing out at the moment and his thoughts were scattered. Her white shroud surged as she tried yet again, to no avail.

  Sean rested his palm on Laon’s forehead and reached for that stone; it was the first time he had ever used them and he could feel the focus it brought to his scattered concentration. He felt Larry on one side and another man stepped up on his other side, likely at Larry’s signal, both of them grabbing hold of him to keep him on his feet.

  Sean found the tiny shard of bone that was causing the bleeding; every breath Laon took caused it to undo Mattie’s work. If that shard had moved another hair, Laon would have been dead the moment he hit the floor. Sean removed it and backed away. Mattie would have to be the one to stop the bleeding; he was having his own problems. Breathing, not to mention standing, suddenly required special attention.

  Sean’s supporters guided him into a chair where he hung his head in his hands in order to keep it from rolling off down an alley somewhere. His weakness had been hard on Laon, too. He had slumped back when Sean had let him
go and had nearly slithered out of his chair before someone caught him. If Sean had been in better shape, Mattie might have hit him for doing what he’d done, being as weak as he was.

  After a while, after he felt certain that his head was going to remain attached to his shoulders, after he could open his eyes and know that he was looking at his own feet, Sean sat up to find a young girl standing in front of him dressed in a plain, gray shift that was too thin for the weather. Larry, with his sword drawn, had kept her out of reach, but she had waited stoically.

  Once she could see that Sean was able to hold her in the center of his view, she spoke. “Sir, what are you going to do with us?”

  Sean considered the question, looking at her white cloud that was accented with a tint of green and highlighted with dark blue. It was quite beautiful, though it was shadowed under his shield. He could see that the girl would be beautiful too, as soon as she grew into the curves that were only just beginning to show. “I’m not taking any prisoners here, if that’s what you mean,” Sean answered, as he leaned stiffly back in his chair. I could do with a Lazy Boy recliner right about now.

  The girl shifted her feet, then made herself stand still again. With a little wave of a hand she couldn’t seem to contain, she said, “No, I mean the magic. Are you going to let us go?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it, but I’ll hear testimony on the matter. Not today, though. You can go home for now.”

  She looked at him steadily with eyes that were the darkest black he had ever seen. Dark circles under those eyes stained her pale cheeks, and her wavy black hair needed to be washed and combed. “I can’t go home. My father… I think he’s afraid of me. He won’t let me come back.”

  Jesus, another problem. I can’t think of what to do with her. How many others are like her? He turned to Jenny with the intention of passing the task on to her, but he must have turned his head too fast. Everything spun and his stomach clenched, then everything spiraled into darkness.

  Sean woke a surprisingly short time later, just as someone was pulling his boots off. A glance around told him he definitely wasn’t in his tent. “What is this place?” he asked.

  “An inn,” replied Larry. Sean could see the concern on his friend’s face.

  Mattie appeared at the sound of his voice. “You go back to sleep,” she said, as she brushed his hair back from his face unnecessarily. “We have everything under control.”

  “Only if you promise to wake me in the morning. I don’t have time to waste sleeping.” If I fall asleep, I’ll sleep for days again, like I did when I first went to the palace.

  Mattie looked at him disapprovingly.

  “Promise or I’ll just stay up now,” Sean threatened, as he pulled his feet away from Larry and started to sit up. The move caused his head to spin sickeningly, but it was enough to get Mattie’s promise, so he sank back into his pillow.

  “All right, all right, I’ll wake you, but if you don’t get up, don’t get mad at me.” She stormed out of the room.

  “I really don’t have time to sleep,” he said as Larry looked at him accusingly.

  Larry pulled his covers over him and said, “Close your eyes this minute, or I won’t let her wake you in the morning. And I know she won’t fight me too hard on that.”

  Sean chuckled as he rolled over. He was asleep in flat seconds.

  When Sean woke the next morning, the room was empty and the inn was quiet; he couldn’t hear anything close by. He rolled out of bed feeling well rested, considering. I wonder if this is the next morning or some days later. As he laced up his boots, he glanced out the window and guessed that it was barely dawn. Why did I wake up? He scooped up his sword belt and headed out the door, finding the rest of the inn as empty and quiet as his room.

  Outside, the early morning dew still glistened on every surface in sight and the freshly scrubbed air was cool enough to make him wish he had brought his cloak, but not enough to make him go back for it or summon it with magic.

  He buckled on his belt and stepped out into the street; not a single person was in sight. Low on the horizon, framed by the buildings at the end of the street was the pair of moons. He stood there looking at them until he got cold, then he decided to warm up with a little workout. He liked doing this, and he hadn’t had much opportunity to enjoy it lately.

  He was just getting less than chilled when he noticed a single spectator standing in the moonlight near the end of the street. He was a big man and he had long swords in each hand. He looked familiar, but it wasn’t Soran. Sean briefly wondered at this piece of information, but it was too fragmented to place, so he thought no more about it.

  The man made no move, so Sean saluted him to let him know that he’d been seen, then he started another set. Even though Sean intended to keep an eye on him, the man was within Sean’s reach before he had made his first move. He blocked it, and with a grin, he met Sean’s next move as well.

  It had been a lifetime ago that Master Mushovic, Sean’s old sword-master, had done this with him. Meeting and matching every move he made to help him understand what his moves were supposed to accomplish; his set became a stilted sparring match. As they progressed from set to set, they became more relaxed. Sean tried speeding things up, which won a few chuckles when his opponent had to hurry to meet him.

  Fighting with two swords can be an advantage since most opponents will only be using one sword, whether right or left-handed. It could also be a disadvantage since, in order to make use of both swords, one must present a broader target. Fighting someone who was just as skilled as he was with two swords, especially when it was just for sport, was an exhilarating challenge.

  When they finally reached the end of his sets, they saluted each other. Sean reached out a hand to shake and grasped Larry’s arm. “Wake up, man; it’s morning. This is the only time I’m going to try.”

  Sean looked at him in astonishment. He was still in his bed. It had all been a dream. Damn, but it was a good dream; I feel jazzed! It was almost as good as a night with my wife…well, not quite.

  Sean came downstairs with his cloak hooked over one shoulder, trying to remember what the man in his dreams had looked like. Mattie, Jenny, Cordan, Manuel, Larry, and Laon, who looked like a raccoon, sat at a large, round table looking at him. They all looked surprised to see him moving at anything better than a crawl.

  Sean had nonetheless expended a lot of energy yesterday and had only allowed himself one night’s sleep. He made up for it by eating two heaping plates of steak and eggs with toast and honey. He even managed a cup of chamma with plenty of sugar, though he was reminded how much he disliked the stuff.

  During breakfast, he listened to a report on what had transpired after his collapse. One hundred and forty-eight mages had survived his coup. Most of them had been those he had shielded while they slept; a handful had been completely snuffed of their magic. There were also twenty-four non-magical survivors. They were the kitchen help and the men who had fought Laon, or at least they would have fought him had they made it through the door. Laon was responsible for an additional nineteen dead men at that door.

  Laon had vouched that Sean likely wasn’t interested in taking prisoners, so the survivors were sent home, but home wasn’t an option for some of them. Like the one girl who had spoken to him, all the nearly twenty children either had no families, or their families refused to take them back. Shielded or not, their families and friends feared them. For that matter, Sean was sure the entire town feared all of them.

  Sean turned to his friends gathered at the table for ideas. Their few suggestions were unsatisfactory, so he went to talk to the kids.

  The innkeeper had housed them in what he called the common room in the attic. It was a room where guests could buy a bed for the night rather than a whole room. The innkeeper had insisted that their door be locked and guarded, or they could go somewhere else. Sean had the guard unlock the door, and, followed by Cordan, Larry and Laon, he entered the room.

  Sean’s entrance di
dn’t cause much of a stir. Only a few of the room’s occupants could bring themselves far enough out of their shells to raise their heads and see who had entered. The rest of them were in varying degrees of coil as they wallowed under Sean’s shield and struggled with the sudden lack of guild control.

  Nineteen small bodies were in the room; all of them dressed in the same plain, gray shift the girl yesterday had worn. There had not been enough beds for half of them, but the room was warm and they didn’t seem any worse for their confinement. Sean saw that more than one bed held two, three and even four children as they huddled together like lost puppies.

  Sean had a guard remove the chamber pot from the corner and stepped farther into the room to sit down on the foot of the nearest cot.

  The girl he had talked to yesterday seemed to be one of the few in the room capable of functioning; she might have been the oldest one in the room too. “You didn’t use any magic,” she said, as she watched the guard disappear with the chamber pot.

  “I use quite a lot of magic during the normal course of events; I don’t need to use it for the little things too,” said Sean when he noticed where her eyes had looked.

  One of the youngest boys shuddered and started crying. The girl pulled him into her arms. “What are you going to do with us?” she asked as she rocked the boy.

  “What do you want me to do with you?” asked Sean.

  She looked around at her companions. “We can’t stay here,” she said simply.

  “Why can’t you go home?” asked Sean. “You said your father was afraid of you.”

  “Yes, that’s the way it is for some of us; some of us don’t have any family left, only the memory of having destroyed them.” She looked down at the boy in her arms. “Some of us… Our families fear for our safety if we try to stay.” She took a deep breath. “We didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t stop what was happening.”

  “I know,” said Sean. “I’m sorry.”