The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2)

by Melissa McShane

  “I can’t imagine any of these people stabbing anyone in the heart,” Jeddan said.

  “I know. But it’s an interesting tactic, don’t you think?” I said.

  “I think you’re bloodthirsty,” Jeddan said. “Good night.”

  I’m so tired, but I’m having trouble sleeping. I’d go explore the house, but I’ve already been all through it, and sneaking places is less fun if there’s no chance of being caught. Derria’s shop is too far from Fianna Manor, and it would be after curfew by the time I got there even if I left now, and she’d be closed. I think I’ll go sit on the patio rail and look out at the city. It looks different now I’ll be defending it instead of stealing from it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  22 Nevrine

  List of what I still need to do:

  1. Work out who knows which pouvrin to make our training more efficient. The goal is for every mage to learn the fire and mind-moving pouvrin. They’ll have to be the foundation of our defense (offense?) even though it means we lack flexibility. I don’t know any other pouvrin we can turn against the enemy, and there’s no time to discover more.

  2. Start teaching the concealment pouvra. If we can be hidden as we work pouvrin, the enemy mages won’t be able to find us to strike back. I hope. This assumes we can also teach these mages to maintain concentration on one pouvra while working others.

  3. Practice Tarallan’s tactics. It’s easier to understand the theory than I’d imagined. Not so easy to put it into practice. He wants a lot of simultaneous attacks, which means teaching the mages more of the organized movements Norsselen taught them, and that takes time. Like everything else.

  4. Learn the flitting pouvra. This may be selfishness on my part, but I can’t help thinking it could be useful to us. It’s still not coming together, though.

  Not only the King, but the entire Chamber and Tarallan showed up at the manor around mid-morning without having bothered to give us any warning of their arrival. Fortunately, we knew he’d be here sometime, so nobody was too flustered, or at least not flustered enough to be unable to perform. They all went through their rehearsed demonstration while Jeddan and I stood near King and Chamber, then Jeddan and I showed off the walk-through-walls and concealment pouvrin.

  The King was delighted by all of it. I think he hasn’t realized our magic has anything to do with the war and thinks it’s all for his personal amusement. Batekessar looked sour, more sour than usual I mean, and Lenssar looked bored, but I think he was covering fear. Jakssar watched everything carefully, as did Crossar, but where Jakssar seemed to be formulating questions to ask, Crossar seemed to be analyzing our strengths and weaknesses. Which makes sense, if he’s Chamber Lord of Defense, but it felt uncomfortable, like he was doing it so he’d know how to defeat us if that became necessary.

  And when he turns his attention on me, I feel as if he’s doing the same thing, as if he’s trying to figure out what use he can make of me. I don’t like it, but what can I do, other than try to stay out of his way and remind myself that if he ever physically attacked me, which I don’t think he’d do, I can defend myself.

  After we’d shown off everything we could, Tarallan said, “Do you have any questions, your Majesty, my lords and lady?” I felt as if that was something I should have asked, but he’s our commanding officer, so I guess we’re his responsibility.

  “Sesskia, how is it you know so many magics?” Jakssar asked, overriding whatever the King had been about to say. “You seem so young to be so formidable.”

  “I did almost nothing but study magic for ten years,” I said. “It’s something that matters to me. And the better I understood how it worked, the more magics I was able to learn.”

  “Magic was illegal all that time,” Batekessar said. “You brag about breaking the law openly to your King?”

  “Magic has never been illegal, Batekessar,” Crossar said, “just feared. Thalessi was brave to risk death for the sake of magic. I’m not sure I would have done that.”

  “I’ve seen enough,” said Lenssar. “We should leave them to their training.”

  “I have more questions,” the King said, whining. He whines a lot. “Most of these magics seem useless in our defense. Why do you even have them?”

  “Honored, each of us developed a pouvra when we became mages,” I said. His tone of voice really gets under my skin and makes it hard for me to be patient with him, sovereign or no. “We didn’t choose which one. So even though we’re all learning pouvrin we can attack the enemy with, some of us still have other magics we need to practice. And studying one pouvra makes it easier for us to learn others.”

  “It’s good that you can all produce fire,” the King said, proving he once again hadn’t been paying attention. “That was impressive.”

  “Thank you, Honored,” I said. “Would you like to know anything else?”

  “I want to know if you can take over someone else’s body with that going incorporeal magic,” the King said. “Make them do what you want.”

  The idea made me sick. “No, Honored, and it’s extremely dangerous to pass through living flesh, for both of you,” I said. “We don’t do that.”

  “Implying that you can,” Crossar said.

  “And we don’t,” Jeddan said. “We can’t ‘take over’ anyone else, either. Honored.” He sounded dangerous, and the King looked nervous.

  I said, “But General Tarallan has some ideas for how it can be useful in other ways, Honored.”

  “Intelligence gathering, mostly, your Majesty,” Tarallan said. “Combined with the concealment pouvra, we could have spies capable of entering enemy strongholds and retrieving valuable information without being noticed.”

  “Or men and women capable of stealing anything they wanted,” Crossar said, again turning that needle-sharp gaze on me. “Am I right, Thalessi?”

  “I suppose that’s true, Honored,” I said, “though I don’t think a mage is any more likely to be a criminal than anyone else.” Which was a non-answer to the question he was really asking, but if he wasn’t willing to come right out and ask Are you a thief? I didn’t feel obligated to give him an open answer.

  “Well, keep up the good work, everyone,” the King said, addressing the room. “I’ll probably come back and watch you work sometimes. I think it’s important for a King to be aware of what his subjects are capable of.” Without noticing how all our faces blanched at the idea of being under royal scrutiny, he turned and left the room, followed immediately by Batekessar and Lenssar.

  Jakssar said, “You’re setting a remarkable example, Sesskia,” before following them herself. I think she might see me as a figurehead for female empowerment. She certainly seemed to be scrutinizing the women mages carefully. (I don’t think I’ve said we have more female mages than male, though not by much. With fewer than fifty mages in all, it’s impossible to say if that means anything about the mage population in general.)

  Crossar stayed behind to talk to Tarallan. It didn’t seem like a private discussion, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, so I was about to excuse myself when Tarallan said, “Nessan tells me all mages have the same eye color. Is that true?”

  It took me a minute to remember where I’d heard that name before—the soldier at the gate. “It’s true,” I said. “Nobody who doesn’t have those eyes developed magic after the event.”

  “Fortunate for you no one knew that until recently,” Crossar said. “You would have found it much more difficult to stay hidden.”

  “I’m grateful for that, Honored,” I said.

  “So would it be worth seeking out more like you?” Tarallan said. “Rather than waiting for them to come forward on their own?”

  “We don’ t actually know whether everyone with those eyes developed magic. If they aren’t already mages—if they haven’t already developed a pouvra—I don’t know how to give them that,” I said. “So I’m not sure it would increase our numbers any faster. It would depend on how many resources you have to p
ut toward doing it, identifying actual mages before sending them here.”

  “Then we’ll focus on training the ones we have, and spread the word of the King’s summons more widely,” Crossar said. “But I don’t know how much time we have.”

  “They’ve laid siege to Hasskian,” Tarallan said. “If we leave immediately, we might be able to trap them against the city before it’s overcome.”

  “Hasskian can hold out indefinitely,” Crossar said.

  “Not against the weapons this army has,” Tarallan said. “Not only those battle mages, but weapons we’ve never seen before. They seem to work like rifles, but they fire shot the size of a man’s head that fractures when it hits its target. My spies tell me Hasskian’s walls are starting to look like lacework.”

  My stomach churned at the thought of Hasskian and all its inhabitants being overrun. I wondered if those mystery weapons could be the war wagons. The God-Empress couldn’t have many of them, could she, if Vorantor had transferred most of them to Aselfos’s troops? Idiot, who says that room you saw was the only one she had? I thought. I considered telling them about the war wagons, realized I couldn’t without giving away knowledge I shouldn’t have, realized further there was nothing I could tell them they didn’t already know, and held my tongue.

  “I don’t have the power to order the army away from the city,” Crossar said, “and the—” He seemed to realize I was still there, listening, and turned a frown on me. “Excuse us, Thalessi,” he said, and I nodded and walked away.

  It’s strange that the Chamber Lord of Defense doesn’t have power to maintain the kingdom’s defense, since he can’t order the army to move. I guessed the King, frightened of Venetry being overrun and himself being taken or killed by the God-Empress’s army, insisted the army make their stand here. I don’t know enough about strategy to understand what the best battleground is, but I’m sure Tarallan, and probably Crossar, do, and it’s not in the area surrounding Venetry. My respect for the King, never great, is diminishing.

  Tarallan and Crossar talked for a while longer; I watched them covertly as I worked with my group. Finally Crossar exchanged farewell salutes with Tarallan, looked at me in a way that told me he knew I’d been watching, and left the room. Tarallan also looked my way and nodded to indicate I should join him.

  “You heard enough to know what the problem is,” he said without preamble.

  “I guessed the King doesn’t want the army to leave Venetry,” I said.

  “Not a single division of it,” Tarallan said. “Even though the enemy has divided her own forces somewhat. Hasskian’s the only city of any size in that area, but she’s spreading out to take over all the smaller cities surrounding it, taking provisions and killing the inhabitants. If she can afford to do that and still smash Hasskian’s defenses to powder, she’s a formidable threat.”

  “Does that affect what the mages are doing?” I said.

  “Only in the sense that the more of you we have, the better,” he said. “Hence my question about searching out mages rather than waiting passively for them to arrive.”

  “They still come in, a few at a time,” I said, “and about half of them already know the offensive pouvrin. I just wish I could be sure they can use them, um, offensively.”

  “No way to know until we come to that point,” he agreed. “I’d like to discuss more of the tactics I want you to use, but I don’t have time until evening. Let’s meet over dinner.”

  “All right,” I said, and we arranged a time. Then he left, and I went back to working with the mages. Two more came in that afternoon, both fire mages, both in my group (interestingly, the majority of my group started with the fire pouvra, and most of Jeddan’s knew the mind-moving pouvra first, and the third group is primarily the see-in-dark pouvra. Something for me to study if I had any time which I do NOT). This gives us a total of forty-nine mages. We’re going to need another dining room soon.

  Out of forty-nine mages:

  1. Thirty-six know the fire pouvra, and fourteen of those can do the fire rope.

  2. Twenty-five know the mind-moving pouvra. All of them except Jeddan and me can lift weights of at least five pounds, all the way up to Saemon at several hundred, and I think he hasn’t reached his limit.

  3. Twenty of 1 and 2 combined can do both pouvrin.

  4. Eleven mages have three pouvrin, and all of those except Relania have fire and mind-moving as two of theirs.

  5. The remaining eight are all, probably not coincidentally, Relania’s pacifist friends. They’re all good at seeing in the dark and walking through things. I haven’t told them yet this makes them perfect spies. I’m saving that in reserve for if Relania gets too smug about her pacifism.

  I’ve spent the last few nights going over what I can remember the Castaviran mages doing, wondering if there’s any way I can build a pouvra to replicate those things. I have a good memory, but I don’t

  Oh. The shield. Cederic’s shield kathana. Tarallan never said anything about the God-Empress using it, and I think Cederic only taught it to the Colosse troops. But—no, it’s impossible. It was so complicated, I can barely remember half of what he did.

  22 Nevrine, half an hour later

  I’m confident I can reproduce twelve of the th’an Cederic used. Damn it, if I had that hypothetical memory pouvra…I would still not have any idea how to turn the th’an into a pouvra. I guess that’s not entirely true; I remember how the binding th’an came together into a pouvra, and I know that pouvra works even if I don’t know what it’s for. But this is a lot more th’an than the binding had, and I don’t think I can keep all the pieces in my head at once, let alone practice arranging them into a pouvra. I need an alternative. But not tonight. I’m so tired now.

  I forgot to write about dinner with Tarallan, so I guess I’m not going to sleep yet. He’s set up his headquarters in one of the manors about a quarter mile from ours—not in Janeka Manor, which I think makes a statement about the army’s relationship to the king—but it’s surprisingly non-martial in feel, at least the part of it I saw. Probably he’s turned most of the ground floor public rooms into offices. But we had dinner in a nice dining room, not a huge one like ours but small, with just the one round table, and it was a good meal. I wonder if his cook goes with him when he’s out campaigning. I have trouble imagining anyone, no matter how good a cook, producing meals like that one over a camp stove, so probably not.

  Anyway, we ate, and discussed tactics. Tarallan wants us to practice extending the range of our pouvrin, so we can attack more distant targets. Apparently the God-Empress’s battle mages can do damage from a great distance, and we’re intended to neutralize them (Tarallan’s word) rather than use our magic on the army itself.

  Tarallan told me about the Castaviran city they’d been besieging when they were summoned back to Venetry thanks to our information. Our side didn’t know exactly how it all started, but Tarallan thinks when the city appeared (from our perspective) their ruler decided to start conquering territory by running over all these towns that lie along the highway between Venetry and Durran. I felt sick listening to Tarallan’s description of what they’d done to those Balaenic towns, even though he didn’t go into much detail. They’d managed to claim a good chunk of Balaen before King and Chamber learned about it and dispatched the army.

  Tarallan pinned down their forces, making them retreat to their city, and the siege had been going well until they were forced to withdraw. Tarallan is bitter about that, but he puts a good face on it because it’s not the King’s fault the God-Empress is marching on Venetry.

  I asked him more about the army staying at Venetry rather than advancing south, and he said, “Position is important. By leaving immediately, we have a chance to choose our ground. If we wait here long enough, we’ll be fighting a defensive battle, and in this case that’s a mistake. I want to catch the enemy when they’re weakened from fighting a hundred little battles around Hasskian, not when they’ve had time to regroup and rest and, not
incidentally, cut us off from some of our support.”

  “Are there more troops in Balaen you can call on?” I asked. “I assume they’ve already eliminated the forces at Calassmir.”

  “Unfortunately,” Tarallan said with a frown. “Our forces are already divided. I had to leave troops to watch that enemy city, in case they decide to emerge and go back to sacking and looting the countryside, or, true God forbid, nip at our heels. There are several divisions at Barrekel, but we haven’t regained contact with them, and for all I know they’re fighting off more enemy invaders and aren’t able to join us. Hasskian doesn’t have much more than a token force these days, and Denderiss has its hands full dealing with Fensadderian refugees and maintaining the border defense. It sounds as if Fensadderis is falling apart more rapidly now than it was before, which means it must be in utter chaos.”

  “I wish people could be told what really happened,” I said. Jeddan and I had explained a bit about the convergence to King and Chamber, claiming to have learned it because we are such gifted, experienced mages, but I’m not sure how much they believed. The King got it into his head everyone in this world had a counterpart in Castavir and kept asking, worriedly, what we were doing about his double. Tarallan, on the other hand, understood it quickly and had asked a lot of questions at the beginning of the meal. After dealing with King and Chamber, it’s refreshing to talk to someone so intelligent and quick-witted.

  “I don’t think it matters,” Tarallan said. “It’s unfortunate, but people will always be afraid of things, and people, they don’t understand. Conflict is inevitable.”

  “But it shouldn’t have to be, if we try to understand each other,” I said, but I remembered how afraid and suspicious I’d been of the Darssan mages before Terrael gave me their language, and knew Tarallan was right. It left me feeling discouraged, thinking once again of the destruction of both our worlds not by the convergence, but by each other.