The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2)

by Melissa McShane

  There was another small group who could walk through things, and then, excitingly, a woman who flitted from one side of the room to the other in the blink of an eye. I’m still trying to figure out how to justify taking her aside and making her teach me.

  A couple of people, no more than ten, moved from one group to another to demonstrate a second or even a third pouvra. Norsselen has three—fire, mind-moving, and see-in-dark, though he not so modestly told us this later since of course he couldn’t demonstrate the last. There are another five who have that one, and three who can see through things. No concealment, obviously, no see-inside, and I don’t think any of them can turn their pouvrin on other people. They’re all pouvrin you’d expect someone to develop first based on some trauma, even though we established (through some quiet questioning) none of them had experienced anything unusual but the convergence.

  Norsselen wanted us to be impressed, so we made appropriate noises. Then he said, “You’ve seen which groups you’ll work with. They’ll explain the techniques we’re studying, though of course everyone’s equal and you’re free to make comments of your own.” The look on his face said he didn’t consider himself anyone’s equal. He was really starting to annoy me, despite my resolve not to be drawn and my constant reminders to myself I wasn’t going to be here long enough to worry about what he did. But I couldn’t help saying, “You must be experienced, to be in charge.”

  “I live in Venetry, so I was the first to respond to the King’s summons,” Norsselen said, “and I’ve gained new magics faster than anyone, so everyone agreed I was the logical choice. I like to think I’ve been able to organize us efficiently. Of course I don’t think of myself as better, and I’m certainly not the best at everything. But someone has to take charge, and I’m pleased to do so.”

  “Not everyone agrees with that decision, Norsselen,” said a woman who was just then entering the room. She had black hair, and brown eyes, and was so nondescript I felt a pang of jealousy, because with her looks I could go anywhere and never be noticed. Then I remembered Cederic thinks I’m beautiful the way I am, and the jealousy passed. (It was stupid, I know, but I still think of myself as a thief first and a mage second, no matter how many pouvrin I learn.) “And not everyone believes we are pursuing the right course.”

  “Phellek,” Norsselen said, “it’s good to see you. You see we have new members.” He really did sound genial, not at all offended by her remarks, and when I observed him he didn’t show any signs that he was concealing a different emotion. I think this was because he doesn’t see Relania as a threat and therefore is genuinely unmoved by her disdain for him.

  “Of course I see that,” she said, and extended her palm to Jeddan, who was nearest her. “Welcome,” she said. “I’m Relania Phellek.”

  “I offer you my praenoma in a spirit of kinship between mages,” he said. “My name is Jeddan.”

  “And mine is Sesskia,” I said, “though—”

  Relania gasped, and instead of laying her palm against mine, gripped my hand so tightly it pinched the skin. “Sesskia,” she said. “I know you. I’ve been following the trail you left for two years. Did you ever learn the mind-moving pouvra?”

  I was so shocked I couldn’t pull away. This was no new-made mage. I’d left clues, here and there, for other mages to follow, but I’d never actually believed anyone would find them, much less be able to use them. So I’d signed my praenoma to all of them, more as a gesture of defiance at an uncaring world than to brag. “How long,” I began, realized that was a pointless question, and changed it to, “You found my clues?”

  “Excuse me,” Norsselen said, but Relania overrode him.

  “About two years ago, I stumbled on the cache outside Durran,” she said. “The one that has the see-in-dark pouvra. And you’d left that note about some of the secondary materials in the book, pieces that were incomplete, and that you were going off to find more of it. I never was able to make sense of it, myself, but did you?”

  “Phellek, I’ve told you we aren’t humoring your desire to complicate magic with foreign words,” Norsselen said, though he looked at me as if he wanted to ask me questions but didn’t know which ones. “Or your claims of seniority.”

  “Shut up, Norsselen,” Relania said. “This woman has even greater seniority than I. You should be asking her to teach you.”

  This was where I regretted more than I ever have not having enough knowledge in advance to make the right plan. Not that I blamed myself. I couldn’t have guessed an…well, an old mage, in contrast to the new mages, even though Relania is younger than I am. Anyway, there was no way for me to know an old mage would find her way here, and not only an old mage, but one who’d used the same resources I had.

  I couldn’t have guessed she and Norsselen had been fighting for over a week over Relania’s insistence that she had more experience; in the arguing that followed, I learned Norsselen didn’t believe Relania was any different than the rest of them and was dismissive of her pouvrin, since two of them were the invisible sort (the see-in-dark and see-through pouvrin). Not only that, he thought she was delusional and interested in stealing his power.

  Relania, for her part, not only persisted in her story (because it was true) but was resistant to the idea of using pouvrin in the service of war. What the rest of the mages thought…well, the gang of toughs were Norsselen’s men (all men), and about a quarter of the others were willing to let him boss them around, and a handful of the rest sympathized with Relania, but covertly, since Norsselen seemed to have all the power.

  All of that came later, though. At the moment, Relania was looking at me with something akin to worship, Norsselen was looking at me with suspicion, Jeddan was expressionless, and we were gathering an audience of people who probably were used to Norsselen and Relania butting heads and considered it good entertainment. And I had no idea what to do. I mentally cursed Relania for putting me in this position, and cursed Norsselen for needing to be in charge, and then I said, “I don’t want to interfere with the system you have in place. It seems to be functioning well.”

  “Do you know her, Thalessi?” Norsselen said.

  “No,” I said, and Relania made a sound of outrage. “We’ve only read the same books.”

  Norsselen smiled one of those smug, self-impressed smiles that made me want to slap it off his face. “Another delusional,” he said in a low voice. “I suppose you’re going to claim you learned your magic from those books?”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Norsselen,” I said in my sweetest, most reasonable voice. “How do you know that’s not possible?”

  “We all have magic because of the Event,” he said, and I could hear him pronounce the capital E. “None of us needed books to become magickers, because magic is something inherent to each person. No one can teach magic any more than someone can change their hair color by thinking. It’s not possible.”

  I’m a thief. I’ve survived all these years by not standing out, by not causing trouble, by not letting my emotions get the better of me. And my first reaction to Norsselen’s smugness was to do just that. It didn’t hurt me that he was ignorant and power-crazed. I was leaving in a few days and it didn’t matter what he thinks of me. So I was going to let him keep his delusions. It would crush Relania’s hopes, but I wasn’t responsible for her emotional well-being. And it would give Jeddan the opportunity to choose whether he’d align himself with Relania or continue to conceal his abilities.

  Then I looked around the room at everyone, and at this point it was everyone, watching our encounter. Norsselen had spoken loudly enough everyone had heard him. I looked at their faces, and I realized Norsselen was going to deny every one of them their magical heritage. Who knew how many of them were capable of learning more pouvrin? Who knew how many of them would discover ones I’d never heard of? I could keep quiet for my own sake. Or I could speak out for theirs.

  So I said, “Norsselen, how long have you been a mage?”

  “A magicker,” he
said.

  “Almost exactly a month, isn’t it?” I said, ignoring him. “And yet you are awfully quick to say what is and isn’t possible.” I took a step back and raised my voice. “I’ve been a mage—” I couldn’t help stressing the word—“for over ten years. Jeddan here has been a mage for four. I learned my first pouvra when I was sixteen, and in the years since I’ve developed eleven more.” That got a reaction. I let them murmur for a few seconds, waited until Norsselen opened his mouth to speak, and overrode him. “You’re all young by my standards,” I said, “and you all came about your magic differently than I did. But there’s no reason you can’t learn new pouvrin the way I did. More easily, maybe. So let me show you what I can do.”

  I took a few steps toward the scarred wall and summoned the long whip of fire the way I had minutes before. Then I brought up a huge swathe of fire (I admit I was showing off there), summoned water and tossed it into the center of the blaze, raising a huge cloud of steam. I worked as many pouvrin as were easily visible, saying “I can’t show you how I can see in the dark or see inside things, but I can do those too,” and ended by working the concealment pouvra and making all of them, except Jeddan, exclaim in fear or wonder.

  Norsselen looked stunned and furious. I took a few steps toward him and dismissed the pouvra, making him curse and stumble away. “Sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t very. “You learned three pouvrin in a month, Norsselen. That’s impressive. I mean it. You’re a remarkable mage.”

  “You dare come in here,” he said in a low, vicious voice I had to step close to hear, “and try to take over, as if you had any authority?”

  “I don’t want to take over, Norsselen,” I said. “You’ve got these people working together, you seem to understand what the military needs from us—they look to you for leadership. But I know more about magic than you do. I just want to help everyone learn more. I want us to work together.”

  Norsselen glared at me. He was breathing heavily, and he looked both angry and afraid, and that made me afraid also, because it was the sort of situation that turns on a knife edge, balanced between sanity and violence. I hoped Jeddan was nearby, because if I had to turn a pouvra on Norsselen to protect myself, the room would erupt into a full-out magical war, with who knew how many sides. I kept my eyes fixed on Norsselen’s, willing him to see sense.

  Finally he said, “I don’t think any of us realized magic existed before the Event. Or that…mages…from that time might have been able to survive the prejudice and hatred that dominated society before the King proclaimed magic to be good rather than evil. I think we all have a lot to learn.”

  His little speech made everyone else relax, but my gaze was still locked with his, and there was neither humility nor friendliness in it. If Norsselen could manage it, he’d make me disappear. One more reason he reminds me of Vorantor: he’s dangerous because he hides his true nature behind a façade of cooperation and amity, and even if you know not to believe the façade, there’s still no way to tell where he’ll attack from until he’s already launched himself at your throat.

  “I know Jeddan and I have much to learn about how to use magic in the service of the army,” I said, hoping Norsselen would accept the bone I was throwing him and not toss it back in my face. “Will you let us work with you in mastering more pouvrin, and you teach us your military strategies?”

  Norsselen nodded once. “You’ve seen what we can do,” he said, “and we’ve seen your abilities. I think it would be best if all of us were capable of fire, or of moving things; those will be useful in attacking the foe. Which do you judge will be easier?”

  Jeddan said, “I’ve almost mastered the mind-moving pouvra. I could teach that and you could teach fire, Sesskia.”

  “Either way, we have to begin by teaching everyone to understand what it is they do when they work magic,” I said.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” said Relania. “That it’s all about giving the magic shape. But they can’t understand.”

  “It takes time,” I said. I’d seen Norsselen bristle when Relania spoke, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. She’d been vindicated, and from what little I knew of her I was fairly certain she’d rub Norsselen’s face in it. That would destroy any hope I had of getting Norsselen to cooperate.

  “Remember how hard it was to learn the second pouvra?” I said, hoping her experience matched mine. “How everything seemed counter to sense? It’s not really fair to these people to expect them to understand more quickly than we did, I think.”

  Relania’s gaze flickered to Norsselen’s face for a second. “You’re right, Sesskia,” she said. “But then, of course you’d know best.” (Side note: Relania uses my praenoma ALL THE TIME. As in, every sentence she directs at me. I think she’s trying to show we have a special connection due to our having read the same books and therefore share some magical genealogy. And she doesn’t have much in the way of social graces. Huh. As I write that, I realize that being as isolated as both of us have been makes it logical we’d lack social graces. Which means me having them at all is what’s unusual. I don’t have the heart to tell her to stop, but I’m worried she’ll try to boss people around on the strength of her imagined connection to me.)

  “Thanks, Relania,” I said. “Norsselen, you know everyone’s strengths. Could you direct them to gather in groups based on what pouvra they’re best at?” I hoped I didn’t sound as patronizing as I felt. Either I didn’t, or Norsselen was pretending to be cooperative, because he started directing people into their groups, and I could take a few seconds to think rapidly back over what Jeddan and I had been doing for the last month.

  As I write all of this, I realize how quickly everything happened—too quickly for me to think beyond the moment. It’s cold comfort to realize that even if I’d had time to consider the implications of what I was doing, I still would have made the same choices. Though maybe I would have been happier, making a conscious choice rather than feeling, as I do now, as if the choice was made for me.

  So we sat everyone down, and I talked about pouvrin, and asked people to explain what they felt when they used their magic. It’s remarkable how easy it is to see the connections when you have enough mages in one place, all talking their way through the process of manifesting pouvrin. Where Jeddan and I had been initially frustrated by our different experiences, I was heartened to discover that in this group of forty mages, instead of forty different ways of perceiving pouvrin, there were three.

  So I rearranged everyone into new groups and told Jeddan to handle the mages who learned the way he did. Relania and I fell into the second group, and, somewhat reluctantly, I asked her to work with them. That left me talking to the third group, whose experience was completely alien to me and, naturally, included Norsselen and five of his minions.

  It didn’t go well. Norsselen’s group was resistant to any suggestion I made, and my efforts to teach them the vocabulary of pouvrin were mostly met with confusion. At the end, frustrated and tired, I resorted to bald-faced flattery. I pulled Norsselen aside and said, “You see magic so differently from me I’m not sure I can help you. But I think anyone who could learn so many pouvrin so quickly can certainly figure out how to teach them to other people. And I think Relania isn’t experienced as a teacher. So it would be best if you’d take over here so I can work with that other group.”

  It worked. Good thing for me Norsselen is either not as smart as he thinks he is, or is motivated by a lust for recognition and honor. And maybe I’m wrong, and he’ll be able to analyze his perception of magic so learning new pouvrin will come more easily to him. But the real point is this gives him something to do when we aren’t learning battle tactics and, I hope, keeps him from causing trouble. I don’t want to write about the tactics. I don’t understand about military strategy, but the thing is, I don’t think Norsselen does either. He’s got us drilling in ways I think would be useless in combat, but there’s no point me saying anything, both because it’s Norsselen and because,
as I said, it’s not like I really know anything about it. So I’m going to skip that part.

  It was a long, difficult day, and the only bright spot in it was that my group, and Jeddan’s, learned some of the pouvra vocabulary, enough that they could start comparing notes with each other, and it was amazing how cheerful everyone was about it. Not that this is a morose bunch. They all seem not to have any reservations about using magic, none of the fears we old mages lived with all the time, but I think knowing that learning new pouvrin is not a matter of luck made them all feel confident in the magic they already have.

  Lunch was brought to us in the ballroom, cold meats and cheeses and hunks of bread, but dinner was an elaborate affair in the large dining room (I was wrong, the table seats fifty) and Jeddan and I chatted with some of the other mages and learned something of how they’d come to Venetry and what things had been like in the first few days. Though no one wanted to talk about that last subject, and when bringing it up blighted the conversation for several minutes, Jeddan and I didn’t press.

  I gather that here in Venetry, at least, most of the mages created by the convergence were killed, and the survivors were lucky enough to either have had hidden pouvrin or people who cared about them to keep them concealed. I’d like to ask Norsselen what happened to him, but the odds of my carrying on a civil conversation with him are low. So we danced around that subject, and ate too much, and now I’m in my room, and I’m so tired I can barely think.