“I was wondering,” said Sean. “I wasn’t about to make her, though. Stay here, enjoy your life; I’ll set up a council. Your family has suffered enough.” He took his horse from the servant who had brought them up. With a glance at the early afternoon sun, he headed for the lane.
Demons’ Revenge
Sean made it back to camp long before the men he had sent into the city did. They didn’t return until near midnight, and they brought wounded with them. Sean was angry about this, but he was more angry with himself than he was with them. He hadn’t missed the implication that they were going to be looking for trouble; he should have gone with them. I didn’t have to go meet Lady Lorraine; that could have waited. If I had gone into the city first, I could have accomplished so much more with the Lorraines when I did go see them. If I could go back and do it over again, I would do it all differently.
As he went among the men healing their wounds, he took their reports. Apparently, they had lagged and wound their way through the city, deliberately presenting a target for any takers. The foot might have come away alone, but they found their trouble early on and didn’t think it wise to separate after that.
Fortunately, they were what they were and they had numbers; if the governor had been able to mount a unified defense, it would have been a slaughter. As it was, they fought four separate exchanges and took wounds at each one. The demons, and their grizzly mounts, had been the point and the core of the districts’ military strength for years. Without it, they were somewhat at a loss, especially when that core took the citadel and officers first.
By the time Sean had finished with the wounded, some of which would have died or been permanently disabled without help, the sun was showing itself above the eastern sky. Many of the destriers had been wounded, too. The need to stay with the foot soldiers may have saved their lives, but it also put the horses in danger far longer than they would have been had they been alone.
Grimly frustrated by the time already wasted by bad decisions, Sean put off going to the city in favor of trying to redeem the destriers rather than just heal their wounds, some of which couldn’t wait any longer.
After a sleepless night of using magic to heal his men, Sean was forced to measure out his time to preserve his endurance. He worked slowly through the ten big horses, giving himself no less than two hours to spend on each one, meaning those with minor wounds left him with more time to rest before the next one. He had started with the worst case, and was immersed in healing the seventh horse through a lanky man of his own, when Guire and Louis rode into camp. They were dressed in their best, which caught the attention of Cordan, but he wouldn’t let them disturb Sean, so they waited and watched.
It was well after midnight before the last horse was healed and the last of the tack was made usable. Haggard and drained, and walking heavily, Sean headed for the fire and the stew Mattie was keeping for him. She had kept it warm the entire time he worked, so he could have some during every break. Now that he was finally finished, he could sit down; this time he could let himself relax.
He had almost reached the fire before he spotted the new faces, and it took another moment before his tired brain identified them. “Guire, what are you doing here?” Then he remembered. “I’m sorry; I was supposed to meet you near the city today. I should have sent a message. This just couldn’t wait.”
Guire smiled and bowed low with some flourish. “Perhaps it is for the best, my lord. Lady Lorraine sent me with a message of her own. Her reentry into the city was greeted with cheers, and after the disaster at the citadel, the people cleared out the palace for her to finish the job. She asks that you come tomorrow before the sun is at its highest. She also asked that you arrive with all due pomp.”
“Lady Lorraine rode into the city anyway?” Sean was stunned.
“Oh yes,” replied Guire, as if he had expected nothing less. “Lady Lorraine has always been very popular with the people, and since she was forced to leave the city, that has never changed. She has always been highly visible to the people, and highly invisible to the governor and his minions.”
“But…” started Sean. Mattie guided him into a chair before he stumbled once too often.
Guire smiled a little wider. “All is as it was meant to be, my lord. Shall I inform the lady that you will be there?”
“On one condition,” said Sean, his voice coming out grim from exhaustion.
“And what is that, my lord?”
“I shared a dungeon cell with you, Guire. Drop the fancy manner; I find it irritating.” Sean rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then raked his fingers back through his hair. Irresistibly, he locked his fingers in the hair at the back of his head and stretched. He arched his back and neck twisting from side to side in an effort to loosen up aches and kinks brought on by long hours working over the horses and their gear.
Mattie handed him his bowl of stew, then moved around behind him to work on his shoulders.
“Ah, Mattie, wait until I can lie down and die in peace,” he said with a sigh, as he drooped his head down on his chest.
She chuckled softly and shook him a little; he allowed himself to flop like a rag doll. “You eat first,” she said, then she turned to Guire. “We’ll see that he shows up,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, right, I’ll be there,” said Sean, with a limp-wristed wave; he was fading fast.
When Sean woke the next morning, he found all seven of the ex-demons gathered, waiting for him. Upon his appearance, they all lined up in front of him and knelt with one knee on the ground, their heads bowed and their swords offered to him hilt first, the points imbedded in the ground in front of them, their hands upon the blade near the hilt. They all looked so proper and polished that he decided that calling them knights was much easier to say than calling them ex-demons, more fitting too.
“What’s this?” he asked, as he finished fastening a buckle at his shoulder. The last time someone had done something like this had been when his knife brides’ fathers had come to him. He saw Elias and Gérard watching from a few yards away. Standing together, dressed almost identically, they looked very much like brothers, though Gérard looked like the older brother; he was heavier than Elias and the lack of hair obscured his age.
One of the men in the center of the formation spoke in answer to his question, bringing his attention back to them. “You have ended our nightmare, and in return we have only made trouble for you in the city. We deserve to be punished.”
“Yeah, you probably do, but I seriously doubt that you did anything I wouldn’t have done had I been there. Go, get ready, we’ll be entering the city as soon as everyone’s all mounted up.” When they continued to remain unmoved, he asked, “What?”
They shifted, uncertain what to say.
“All right then, if you insist; when we get back, it’ll be double duty for you until you can be just as deadly as you can be.”
The men had scarcely climbed to their feet when they all heard a scream from the other end of camp. Sean was sprinting the length of the camp before the men who had met him at his tent had scarcely turned, let alone identified the sound.
Others were running too, but the cold chill that ran down his spine lent wings to Sean’s feet. He could have used magic, but the thought was beyond him. He burst into the cluster of excitement to find four or five men sprawled on the ground. It was difficult to tell at a glance how many men had been involved; most of them had been dismembered and the parts scattered. There was only one person here who would, or could, do such a thing, and he was nowhere to be seen.
Sean spun and sought out the horses. They were being saddled and many were already done. Seth was leading Prince out now; he had become one of the few people who could handle him. Sean covered the distance without remembering whether he took a single step, perhaps he hadn’t. After giving the cinch a tug, he climbed aboard. He thought briefly of his sword belts, but just as quickly, he left them where they were. He would not be fighting with swords when he caught
up with his uncle.
He was out of sight of camp long before anyone else had taken more than a dozen steps, let alone figured out what had happened. Ludwyn had managed to throw off his shield, and Sean followed his beacon across the landscape, heading southeast, deeper into the mountains. Using magic, each stride Prince took covered miles.
Sean caught sight of his quarry for the first time shortly after high noon, and that sight spurred him to push harder. With cold calculation, he pushed his uncle until the man made his first mistake. If you’re going to ride a horse in the mountains, you must do so carefully, especially if you want to continue riding. Ludwyn hadn’t been riding at all for some years now, and he’d never bothered to ride in the mountains; doing so with magic, the way they were both doing now, was truckloads more dangerous, so it was inevitable that, if pressed, Ludwyn would lose his horse.
Ludwyn left his horse half imbedded in stone, and the accident left him overly cautious and he slowed; he didn’t want to do the same to himself. He turned at bay several hours later and struck at his pursuer. Sean’s return strike was far more deadly, but it was a second late, though no less effective.
Unaccustomed to using magic for physical attacks of any sort, Ludwyn did the only thing he could think of. Using air, he picked up a rock the size of a chair and hurtled it at his pursuer.
Sean, however, was far more practical. If his uncle was strong enough to throw off his shield, he was too dangerous to keep around any longer; he had to be destroyed.
Prince climbed the sky, screaming a challenge, while the entire mountainside in front of them exploded and started to come crashing down. In desperation, before he realized that something had happened to Prince, Sean threw them out of the main avalanche flow. Only then did he realize that he had brought his own personal avalanche with him. Prince was upended on top of him and the shredding pain was made many times worse by the horse’s death throws.
In a desperate bid for self-preservation, Sean thrust the horse from him, but the damage was done. With ribs crushed and lungs collapsed, Sean couldn’t even draw enough breath to moan, and he would much rather have screamed. Desperately, before he passed out from lack of air, not to mention the pain, he reached for the only help he could think of—Mattie.
Blindly, he pulled the white stone from her bag and the other white stone from the palace. He shoved them each into her hands, then pulled the healing magic through them all. Taking care to preserve this vessel, he healed himself.
Already in pain, he expected the healing to hurt too, but expecting it didn’t help. His first successful breath filled his lungs, then came out in a ragged scream, the last of his awareness went with it.
Mattie, leading her husband, half a dozen of his men, and Sean’s best friends, suddenly found the reins in her hands replaced by the white stones. She only had moments to wonder that there were two of them before she felt the rush of magic through them and her. Her horse nearly spiraled out of control, but Cordan’s hand held it steady as he watched his wife with concern. Anyone close to her, even if they couldn’t wield magic, could feel the amount of power coursing through her.
The magical floodgate cut off a few moments later, leaving her gasping. “He’s hurt.” She looked at the two stones in her hands. Two white stones that looked and felt the same to her. “He’s hurt real bad to do this. We have to find him.”
“Are you all right?” asked Cordan.
She looked ahead in the direction they had been going. “I’m fine; he was very careful of me.” A tear slid down her face. “He’s not using magic anymore. I can’t find him. I can’t find either of them.”
“Then we do it the old-fashioned way,” said Cordan, and he took the lead. Traveling as fast as he dared in the fading light, while still watching for signs of the chase that had gone before them, they moved out again, grimly determined to find Sean and bring him back, dead or alive.
Old Magic
They gathered around the figures sprawled on the bloodied stones. Covered entirely in fur, they looked like very large men wearing heavy fur suits. One of them, he had a reddish cast to his fur as if he had been in the sun too long, knelt beside Sean. His hand brushed and caressed Sean’s body, and eventually that body stirred and moaned.
The fur-covered giant nodded and pulled away the pieces of mangled metal as if they were cardboard and duct tape, then he picked up Sean’s limp body like a child and carried him away, followed by the rest of the group.
Sean groped his way to awareness through a fog that tasted like fresh potting soil. The feeling was confusing because he should feel like he was buried, but he didn’t; the air he pulled into his lungs was clean and crisp. The desire to sort out this odd feeling brought him fully awake, and he opened his eyes to see a very large, very hairy face dominating his view.
He was lethargic, and where there should have been alarm, there was only curiosity. The lack of alarm allowed him to identify that it was magic he was feeling, a very earthy magic, the magic of the ageless cycle of growth made tangible, tastable.
Efforts to talk brought into play muscles that should have stayed quiet and buried in the earth. He moaned.
The giant, hairy face produced an equally giant hand that lifted his head and shoulders like he was a small child. A shallow stone cup was held to his lips and he drank, relishing in the cool of the cup as much as the wet now sliding down his throat.
The giant hand lowered him back down, then pulled a heavy hide up and tucked it around his shoulders. “Sleep,” he said, but it was far more than a word. It meant the sleep of winter that rested the earth before the frantic growth of spring. It was restful and healing, without being cold. Sean slept.
There were other awakenings like that. Sean was wrapped in an earth magic that felt older than the mountains. During his lucid moments, he found it fascinating, but it kept him detached enough that he was unaware of the passage of time and could scarcely concentrate enough to wonder at where he was and how he had gotten there.
The people that tended him did so gently if silently. As Sean became stronger, he caught snatches of the wordless conversation that perhaps he wasn’t intended to hear, or perhaps he wasn’t expected to understand.
“Will he make it? He was badly injured,” said an anxious voice in his head. She—yes, female—felt like flowers and a spring breeze. Rose-Wing was her name.
“He’s doing fine,” said another voice, older, more assured. He was the one who found me. Carried me from…where? Carried me to…where? I can’t remember.
“Is he the one, do you think?” asked another voice, younger, but considering, learning the way of being a leader.
“I do, but his magic has gaps. We’ll wait until later when he’s stronger,” said the elder.
Sean felt the giant approach. He was reminded of something that niggled at the back of his brain. The giant was nearly ten feet tall, or at least he looked it from Sean’s position on the floor at his feet. He was entirely covered with a thick fur that took care of all modesty, and his face was oddly flat. Then it occurred to him: “Bigfoot,” he said, or maybe he just mumbled.
He felt humor in return, and as the creature sat down beside him, he lifted his foot into view. His foot was indeed huge. It was nearly triangular with the toes looking unusually broad compared to the heel, the top was covered with reddish hair that got longer the farther up the leg he looked, but the sole was heavily callused from a long life with no shoes. Sean began to giggle, but that hurt, so he stopped, gasping.
The giant Bigfoot leaned over him, concern in his large, liquid-brown eyes. Then he reached a massive hand to cup Sean’s face, encompassing the entire side of his head and neck. The warm summer breeze that wafted through a sun-warmed wheat field blew his pain away.
“Who are you?” asked Sean, as he basked in the feel of the magic’s warm sunlight and fresh breeze.
“I am called, Mountain-Wave.” Like everything else these people said, this was far more than words. The s
hort statement was the formation of mountains over the eons as they heaved up and sank down, to heave up in another location in another eon.
“What ‘one’ am I supposed to be?” whispered Sean, but the liquid eyes above him only blinked slowly. Mountain-Wave shook his head and Sean sank into sleep again.
Sean recovered quickly, all things considered, but before he was able to do more than prop himself up on an elbow, Mountain-Wave showed him the gaps he had found in his magic. Mostly it was the result of having started so late, and the lack of consistent teaching complicated by the driving need for haste and the lack of time. But a significant part of it was Mountain-Wave’s desire that he be able to use this ancient magic, as well. Again, there was nothing along the way of words in the teaching, and the teaching bore no resemblance to something that might have taken place in a classroom, but by the time he had finished, there were no more ‘gaps’, and Sean felt near bursting with it all.
“They are near,” said the younger voice, Oak-Root by name. A name that spoke of strength and power, but not the power of the conqueror, merely the power of strength, patience, and endurance; the power of the oak.
“Who is near?” asked Sean, as he struggled to sit up and take part in their conversation.
A vision of horsemen gathered around some sort of battle scene was the answer, and the understanding of the distance of a single arch of the sun came through with it. The ‘picture’ was only a snapshot, but Sean knew that they were looking for him, and because of that he knew who they must be, even if he didn’t know who, specifically.
“You will sleep now,” said Mountain-Wave.
Rose-Wing, who was kneeling beside him, helped him with a dish of water, then she helped him lie back down and covered him warmly in the bear hide again. Sean tried to fight off Mountain-Wave’s command to sleep, but it felt like his operating systems were shutting down one piece at a time. By the time Rose-Wing was tucking in the pelt around his shoulders and neck, the lights had been turned off. He didn’t see them tidy up the cave, then file away making no sound and leaving no trace of their passing.
The Making of a Mage King: White Star Page 21
